Quite often the recipes we use involve a bit of a tweak to accommodate whatever veg is fresh from the garden, and we have a few go-to recipes that are very easy to tweak. One of these is our version of shakshuka.
So if you’ve not heard of shakshuka before, basically it’s one pot delight consisting of tomatoes, onions, garlic, spices and poached eggs, which are poached in the tomato sauce. It originates from around Israel, other parts of the Middle East and North Africa. It’s super simple to make, and as we’ve said, very versatile.
The original version we learned to make had paprika, cumin and chilli powder, in it with the garlic, but it wasn’t hot, more a flavourful spice. Although you can customise this to suit your tastes and the veg you are adding. Here’s the details of the batch we made this week.
Veg being harvested from the garden
Right now, we have a huge batch of peppers, tomatoes, onions and garlic all from our garden. That tends to be our staple base and we just add other veg and sometimes a little bit of chorizo. This week, we had loads of pak choi, so that was added as both a main veg (think of the stalks) and the leaves were added as a blanched green, think of how you cook and add spinach to recipes.
A simple recipe
It takes about 30 mins to make and this batch comfortably serves two, or more if you have bread along with it.
- 2 bell peppers (we like green and red) – sliced into strips
- 2 white onions – sliced
- 4 chopped beefsteak or other large tomatoes (or more tomatoes if yours are smaller, you can decide how much to add) If you don’t have fresh tomatoes, a can of chopped tomatoes will be great.
- 4 eggs
Additions
As I said, we generally add whatever is harvested from the garden, this week we added about 10 pieces of pak choi
- 2 cloves garlic – minced
- 2 teaspoon sweet paprika
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- ¼ teaspoon chilli powder
Method
- Saute your onions and peppers in a little oil until the onions go soft and start to become translucent and the peppers start to soften.
- add the chopped pak choi stalks and allow them to soften
- add the minced garlic and your spices and fry off for a minute.
- add your chopped tomatoes, juice and all and simmer, stirring frequently until everything thickens and the tomatoes start to break down.
- add the shredded pak choi leaves and soften them.
- season with salt & pepper to taste
Now, make a well in the mixture and gently break in your egg. You will allow the egg to poach in the tomato juices so try not to break the yoke. Do this for all your eggs and then add a lid and allow the eggs to gentle poach. Aim for a runny yoke if you can. Usually, this takes around 5 or 6 minutes.
When serving, be careful not to break the egg yokes, because it is divine when you burst them into the tomato sauce.
We are Eli and Kate 