Comfort Zone: Tomatoes and Eggs Scramble Recipe

Comfort food is a warm blanket for your belly and heart on a chilly night at any time of the day. Maybe to you, it’s a chicken noodle soup, beef stew, or jook (rice porridge). To our resident chef, Martha Cheng, it’s this simple tomato and egg dish her mom would whip up for her in no time.  She shares with us this security blanket of a meal, with her own personal touch.

For the freshest selection of local produce, meats, and products for Sunday and Monday deliveries, shop our marketplace now.  There, you’ll find Roma tomatoes from Ma’alaea Wonder Farm, eggs from ‘I‘o Farm and Shaka Moa, and other ingredients to make the recipe below your own.

Shop Roma tomato, eggs, and green onions
Martha Cheng

My mom isn’t much of a cook—my dad did most of the cooking in the family, whether simple Chinese stir-fries or a French dinner lifted from Jacques Pépin’s cookbooks—but when she did cook after school snacks for me, it was usually either a peeled tomato sprinkled with sugar or tomato and eggs. Which, I’ve only learned in later years, is a straight shot of nostalgia for lots of Chinese-Americans like me.

Whenever she’d make it, she’d just beat the eggs with a little bit of salt and throw it in a pan, let the eggs set and then add the cut-up tomatoes until warmed through. I do this a lot when I’m craving something simple and easy and no fuss at all. But when I wanted to actually write down a recipe for this, it seemed embarrassingly simple, like a recipe for peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So this one has a bit more panache—not much, but just a little—something you could serve to friends, or just eat all by yourself when you’re missing friends and family. —Martha

Tomato & Eggs
Makes 2 servings 


Ingredients

  • 1 pound Roma tomatoes
  • 4 eggs 
  • ½ teaspoon salt, divided
  • ½ teaspoon sesame oil
  • 1 teaspoon Shaoxing wine or dry sherry (optional)
  • 3 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
  • 2 green onions, sliced
  • 1 teaspoon sugar

  Preparation

  1. Cut out the stem part of the tomatoes and slice into wedges about ½-inch thick.
     
  2. In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs with ¼ teaspoon salt, sesame oil and Shaoxing wine.
  3. In a nonstick pan, heat 2 tablespoons of oil over high heat until hot, add most of the green onions, saving some for garnish.
  4. Give them a quick stir until fragrant, and then add the eggs. Stir with chopsticks or a spatula until the eggs are just set, but still wet, and then transfer them back into the mixing bowl.
  5. Add the remaining vegetable oil to the pan, and then add the tomatoes. Cook until the tomatoes begin to soften and release liquid, about 3 minutes, then add the remaining ¼ teaspoon of salt and sugar. Stir to combine, and then add the cooked eggs back into the pan.
  6. Stir to mix and heat everything through. Sprinkle the remaining green onions on top and serve with hot rice.