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One of the most popular dishes of the southern Mediterranean — eggs poached in a spicy
tomato sauce. I love the idea of shakshuka but I've never actually liked it. It's too
soupy for me. This recipe is my attempt to tweak shakshuka until I liked it.
Peel and chop some garlic. Shakshuka just means "mixture" in the Arabic dialect from
North Africa where the dish originated, unless it actually came from Yemen. I'm not taking
sides there. Anyway, lots of different stuff can go in.
People use all kinds of peppers. I'm doing a poblano, which I think is a great all-purpose
capsicum. It's big and fleshy and sweet like a bell pepper but it's also a little hot,
like a smaller chili.
I'm chopping it into long strips that I can easily grab with a fork later. Any form of
onion will work. I'm using green onions because that's what I had around. Get rid of the roots
and slice them up. Toward the top they get really fibrous. Compost those.
All chopping done. Now I am very intentionally reaching for my widest pan. I want lots of
surface area for rapid evaporation and lots of browning. Plenty of olive oil and get that
heating on medium or higher.
In goes all of the pepper slices and most of the onions. I'm holding back some of the
greens for garnish — also the garlic, just for now.
Stir and give all that a head start. Anyway, shakshuka etymology. It's kinda like the word
"hash" in English, which originally just meant a bunch of stuff cut up and cooked, but it
came to mean a specific kind of hash. Same deal with shakshuka, I think.
Time to toast some spices. I'm using whole cumin seeds and whole fennel seeds. I like
the texture of whole spices in this and I love the combination of fennel and eggs — it's
like an everything bagel sandwich. You could use a million different spices. Harissa is
common. Now I'll throw in my garlic. I usually just like it barely fried.
And for some extra intensity of flavor, brown a big squeeze of tomato paste. Not necessary,
but real good. Get the tomato paste in a tube — it's super convenient.
When I'm worried it's gonna burn, I will pour in the juice from a standard 28 oz can of
high-quality whole tomatoes, about 800g. Now that the juice is out, I can reach into the
can and squish up the tomatoes with my hand.
You can use diced or pureed tomatoes. But I like a chunkier texture for this, and the
whole tomatoes are usually higher quality. Use fresh tomatoes in season. Now I'm just
gonna boil this until it's really thick. If you stir it near-constantly, you can use pretty
high heat and it won't burn.
While I'm waiting I can put in some more spices. Some black pepper. And I'm doing a bunch of
smoked paprika. No idea if anyone would consider that traditional and I don't particularly
care. Give that a little pinch of salt to start with, cook cook cook, and with the super-wide
pan, stuff evaporates really fast. This is a very quick dinner. Or breakfast. Whatever.
Now I'll crack a little can of chickpeas and drain off some of the aquafaba. Too much aquafaba
makes the sauce kinda slimy, and in those go when the sauce is looking half-cooked.
Chickpeas — not super common in shakshuka, but hardly unheard of. And to me it makes
this it more of a complete dish. More nutritious and more satisfying.
I put them in halfway through because they're already cooked and I don't want them to break
up too much. Give that a taste. Salt and spice content tastes good. I want the tomatoes a
little sweeter, so I'm stirring in a pinch of sugar. Don't judge me. Or do. I probably
won't read it.
To keep the dish from being too soupy for my taste, I am boiling this until it's really
tight, almost dry. Looks how clean the pan is when I scrape across it. I'm gonna turn
off the heat for now.
That sauce is stiff enough to hold its shape when I carve out little indentations to hold
my half-dozen eggs.
Just crack them into their little saucy cups. If my heat was still on, the first one would
probably end up overcooked by the time the sixth egg was perfect. People often put cheese
on top, usually feta. I don't really like feta, so I'm using gorgonzola, because it
had the distinct advantage of already happening to be in my fridge, plus it melts, unlike
feta — which is a plus in my book.
Use whatever cheese you want. This is a very strong blue cheese though — use it with
caution. Now I'll turn the heat back on to cook the bottom of the eggs, which you should
be able to see really clearly. You don't have to guess whether it's happening. Just look
through the egg window — look for the bottoms starting to cook.
Now, you could just cover this with a lid or foil and steam the top of the eggs until
they are done to your liking. I'm gonna take this to the oven and put it under the broiler
— that top element that Brits and people formerly colonized by the Brits call a grill.
You could just put it in a hot oven but the broiler only takes 30 seconds to heat up,
and it will brown the top, not just cook it — caramelize some of those tomatoes, brown
the cheese.
Just touch or wobble the eggs to assess their doneness. I want them runny, but not like
water balloons. The sauce they're in is already wet. I don't want wet on wet.
Look at that color. The wider the pan, the wider the area that can brown. I think it's
good to season each egg a little bit on top. Alternatively you could kinda over-season
the sauce to compensate. I'll sprinkle on my onion greens for color and crunch.
And tons of fresh herbs could work. I suppose I'd normally use cilantro, but I'm gonna tear
on some fresh mint, because I just inherited a mint plant. You could scatter on some olives
too, that'd be nice. Or some fresh chili.
Those eggs would have been perfect if I hadn't been delayed moving lights and cameras around.
A little overcooked. This is a very easy meal when you're not also trying to film it. You
could scoop it out, but I say if you're family, just crowd around the pan and eat it family
style. The pan keeps it warm and it looks way prettier in there.
People generally mop up shakshuka with bread. I don't know about you, but I don't really
need more bread in my diet. I put in the chickpeas and cooked this more like a casserole than
a stew so that it works all by itself with no bread.
And because I cooked the sauce a lot, I've rounded off tomato acidity that I usually
think really clashes with eggs. It's more like a tomato jam than a sauce now. And hey,
if you really want some bread, go for it.
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And thank you to the people of North Africa or possibly Yemen who invented Shakshuka.
Please don't take my version of it as an affront to your grandmother's version. I believe we
can all coexist.