When I made the Greek-style beans the other night, I had quite a lot left over. I put two portions in freezer bags and froze. The other portion I left in the fridge and decided they’d make a good supper dish midweek with some eggs.

I guess it’s a bit of a cheat blog post because really it’s an addition to that previous recipe and which you need to look at to make the beans (click here). But it was so surprisingly good; and I really did want to show that baking your own beans in tomato sauce takes a traditional simple supper dish to a whole new – and quite fantastic! – level.

‘Beanz means Heinz’ the ad used to say. Maybe it still does. I haven’t bought a tin of those baked beans since my son left home a few years ago. I find them far too sweet these days and I left ‘beans on toast’ as a meal behind a long time ago. But with my leftover home-cooked beans it seemed such an obvious thing to do, adding the eggs into them, baking them and serving it on toast.

I guess that apart from Greece – and knowing these butter beans cooked in tomato sauce are a classic there – I was also inspired by Ruben’s Bakehouse’s new Colazione Menu. When we were there for breakfast a few weeks ago (colazione is Italian for breakfast), Jonathan’s amazing Full Italian Breakfast (no English breakfast from Igor!) had home cooked beans in tomato sauce. Wow!

Jonathan said I had to taste them – I’d ordered something much more modest – and they were so good. I think this was the germination of a blog post … homemade baked beans. So when I had those leftover beans, they led me in the ‘beans on toast’ direction.

To heat the beans which had been in the fridge for 2 days, I covered the dish in foil and put them into a hot oven (Gas 7/220C/200 Fan) for about 20 minutes until hot and bubbling. I covered them with foil because I didn’t want them to dry out while reheating. Then I took off the foil, made two dips in the beans with the back of a spoon and broke 2 eggs into them and drizzled over a little olive oil.

I put them back into the oven until I could see the eggs were cooked. It took about 10-15 minutes but I kept a close eye through the glass door.

Meanwhile, I cut a thick slice of sourdough bread from one of Ruben’s fabulous loaves, toasted it, and then slathered it in lots of butter. Doesn’t a good slice of thick toast need lots of butter? 🙂

When the eggs were ready, I removed them from the oven. Then, because I fancied doing it, I sprinkled over a little dukkah and drizzled over some more extra virgin olive oil.

Then I carefully piled spoonfuls of the beans and eggs on top of the toast.

It was wonderfully good. I say that in slight amazement. I knew this was going to be different to your average ‘beans on toast’ but really it was extraordinarily good. It was fantastic. And I thought I didn’t like ‘beans on toast’ anymore!!