Happy Friday, ladies and gentleman — and welcome to the unofficial-official start of summer Fridays! At the CWD Household, we will start the annual weekend migrations to places that aren’t our primary residence. Meals will move outdoors as often as possible. Pants will be replaced by shorts. ‘Tis the season!
As I alluded to last week, we’re going to switch the format up slightly this week. One refrain I’ve heard from many of you is that you want more pictures. Message received! Now I can officially feel like a real Millennial once a week by taking pictures of my food — multiple times! — while I’m preparing and eating it. Can I consider myself a #influencer now?
Today, we’re going to make a CWD favorite, shakshuka. Essentially eggs cooked in tomatoes, this dish came to my palate via a perennial favorite, Tatte. Those of you who visited us while we lived in Beacon Hill have almost certainly been treated to something from Tatte — but their shakshuka has always shined.
This is an easy weeknight meal, and can be exceptionally flexible as far as ingredients go. Feel free to make swaps, substitutions, and additions as you see fit. Mix up your veggies, your proteins, your greens, and your cheeses. It’s pretty hard to screw this up.
Start by pre-heating your oven to around 375(F). While that’s going, dice up some bacon1 and let it start to render in a large cast iron pan. As that’s starting to crisp, dice up some peppers and onions and add those in as well. Let the veggies soften, and then douse with some paprika and whatever spices you’d like2. Let that meld for a few minutes.
Open up a can of diced tomatoes3 and add the whole thing to the pan. You can also add some greens if you’d like the nutrients4. Let this come to a simmer, and the greens to start to soften, adding more seasoning to taste. When everything is good and hot, make a few divots in the sauce, and crack in a few eggs5.
Let this ride for a couple minutes until the whites start to cook, then sprinkle with cheese6, and stick the whole thing in the oven for 10 minutes or so, until the eggs are cooked mostly through7. Take it out of the oven8 and let it cool slightly while you heat up some naan9, pita, or crusty bread. Top with some fresh herbs if you have them and enjoy with the bread and a spoon!
There we have it. Consider yourselves shakshuked. This is one of those recipes that you can truly experiment with. Mix up the seasonings: give it a Mexican theme with chili and lime; Indian with curry, ginger, and garlic; Greek with lemon and oregano; or just freestyle it with whatever you like. Tim Ferris writes about this in his book The 4-Hour Chef using eggs an example10 — I think this is a great opportunity as well.
So go out, enjoy the weekend, and please let me know what you think of the addition of photos. If it’s helpful, I’ll keep it up, but if you don’t like it, well, then I’ll just forget about my career as food photographer and stick with prose!
You could also use ground beef, lamb, venison, or sausage here — or just omit the meat if you’re insane.
You can buy “shakshuka” seasoning at the grocery store (at least you can at Whole Foods). I also like to use harissa seasoning, which is a Northern African spice. If you don’t want to get fancy, you can also just do salt, pepper, garlic, onion, and ideally smoked paprika.
Crushed would also work. Or pureed. Or whole with the juices, or fresh diced tomatoes with some tomato paste. Don’t overthink it.
We had some radish greens from the garden I threw in, which were delightful. Spinach, kale, tsatsoi, chard, or whatever you have on hand would also work.
I used duck eggs, since that’s what I had on hand.
Feta would be lovely here, as would any semi-hard, crumbly cheese. In this cook, I didn’t have that so I used pepperjack and wasn’t unhappy about it.
You want a slightly runny yolk, ideally — when you break the eggs to eat them, it will continue to cook in the sauce.
Obviously!
His list of flavor profiles can be found here.
