Tomatoes Ticho 🍅 Vegan Alternative to Eggs Benedict

The site’s motto is ‘21st century food’. Because I believe the time has come for plant-based food. I believe an important step in the transition to plant-based food is to veganise our existing traditions.

So here’s an example of one way to veganise eggs benedict. You’ve still got the creamy, savoury sauce, but now the focus is on beautiful veggies: a delicious, juicy poached (yellow) tomato and a smoky portabello mushroom. Served on a whole-wheat English muffin, because the science is pretty clear that we should incorporate whole foods when possible.

This post is more of a how-to than a recipe, since the different elements don’t require much explanation.

Poached tomato

At the time of writing it’s tomato season and there’s lots of beautiful fresh tomatoes around. I chose the yellow tomato here for its beautiful colour, but this works with red tomatoes too.

It seems that whole, poached tomatoes are not that common, but I think they should be: this way of cooking preserves the shape, the colour and amplifies the tomato flavour. The tomato, with an X scored in the bottom, is simply boiled for 10 minutes in salty water, then peeled. The result is a juicy, fresh, fruity tomato that’s unlike any other tomato preparation.

Another, more decadent option would be to slow-roast the tomato with olive oil and salt. But you will probably lose the nice spherical shape, and the flavour will be more rich and rounded, less fruity and fresh.

Whole-wheat English muffin

Vegan English muffins are rare and whole-wheat vegan English muffins even more so. I wasn’t 100% satisfied with my results here so I recommend finding one of the many tried-and-tested vegan whole-wheat English muffin recipes that are online. Maybe I’ll post my own in future once I’ve perfected it.

Alternatively, just serve with toast. Another version I’d like to try is the same dish but served on top of a vegan scone. I haven’t posted my recipe for vegan scones yet but when I do I’ll come back here and post the link.

Smoky portabello

The portabello mushroom is simply sauteed in a pan with olive oil, garlic powder, smoked paprika, salt and pepper. You could also do it in the oven if you are making lots of them.

Eggy sauce

Those who are familiar with my recipes will not be surprised to discover that the sauce used here is simply my velvety vegan yolk sauce. I added a splash of lemon juice to make it more fluid and hollandaise-like and heated it gently before serving.

Any questions?

Leave a comment here or find me on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter (@tichostable on all of them). If you make this, let me know what you think! And tag me if you take pics!