You really aren’t doing much here. All you have are tinned beans, basically, but you can get flavour into them by cooking them gently and letting the other ingredients flavour them. This is the time to use some good extra-virgin olive oil as it will be the main element to give flavour and creaminess.

Timings

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cook time: 30 minutes

Serves

Ingredients

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for frying the eggs
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed or grated to a purée, plus 1 extra clove for rubbing on the toast
8 cherry tomatoes, quartered
Few sprigs of thyme
1 tin of cannellini beans, drained
¼ tbsp finely chopped parsley
2 large eggs
2 slices of good bread
Parmesan, to serve

Method

Heat the oil in a saucepan and cook the onion over a medium-low heat until soft. Don’t rush this because you’re putting together the ingredients that will make tinned beans seem like more than just tinned beans: the onion and, especially, the olive oil. It will take 7-10 minutes to do this properly. Add the garlic and cook for 2 minutes, then add the tomatoes. Cook these until they’re soft – another 5 minutes. You can crush them with the back of a wooden spoon to help them collapse. Season and add the thyme and the drained beans. Cook the beans gently, stirring them every so often, for about 6 minutes – the important thing is that the beans suck up the flavours of the other ingredients. Check again for seasoning. Stir in the parsley. Cover to keep warm.
Heat 2 tbsp of the extra-virgin olive oil in a small frying pan and fry the eggs, spooning the hot fat over the yolks. Toast the bread. Halve the remaining garlic clove and rub it over the toast – the scratchy surface of the toast should help the garlic to flavour it.
Spoon the warm beans over the slices of toast, top each plateful with an egg – adding the warm oil from the pan – and grind some black pepper over the top. Grate on some Parmesan and serve immediately.