Cooking while under the influence off . . . Northern Africa - Shakshuka

I first heard of this dish from my fiancé’s best friend. I was a bit weirded out. I was just like "ja, ja". I saw this BuzzFeed Food article and went for it. I really winged the recipe. Now we can argue about were this is originally from but let's let food bring us together. It may seem exotic but I really bought all the ingredients at the friendly Spar

For two but I stretched it for 3 with added protein in the form of chicken

Diced Bacon

Onions*

Cumin*

Garlic

1 Can of Tomatoes

Salt (to taste)

Pepper (to taste)

Sugar (to taste)

6 eggs

Fresh Cilantro/ Coriander leaves*

I made it for a dinner meal so I bought Portuguese and a Garlic loaf and made easy cook in a bag Chicken to keep the other components simple as the prep for the shakshuka.

Fry off your bacon. I don't give an amount because I feel that some people love bacon on a higher level than others. For mine I used half a packet of 250g bacon. (I made two pans though, so for all the bacon lovers I did use the whole packet. I HAVE 6 PEOPLE TO FEED before you get judgey)

The onion has a star because of variables. Yellow or red I would use half an onion. Since some of my family aren't real big onion eaters I fried off three spring onions in the bacon. I cooked them until they were soft.

Cumin is also a variable. (Yes you can buy whole cumin from the <Mister Spices or the Robertsons part of the spice isle) Here you can add coriander seeds, crushed chilli, turmeric and paprika. Now that I mention I added a small bit of Paprika.

Only now I add the Garlic. I didn’t want it to burn and spices react to hot heat better that Garlic does.

Then I added the tomatoes. You could buy fresh and chop them up and add them or use the All Gold ones with the chillies or even the onion mix. Feel free in being creative. (Before you add the tomatoes you can even deglaze the pan with wine.)

FOR THE LAZY PERSON: You could skip out on all of this and buy store bought ready made tomato pasta sauce. Spice it up with some mixed spice maybe. . . if you want.

Now taste the sauce. Add salt and/or pepper and sugar if it's very acidic. Swirl it into the tomato mixture and let it cook for 5 minutes and taste again. Season again ONLY if necessary.

Bring the mixture down to a slow bubble. If the boil is too rampant it will biol the egg to scramble. Make a small well in the sauce and break the egg into it.

For hard eggs set your timer for 10 minutes, for soft 7. 

Sprinkle with fresh herbs. I used Coriander leaves. I think Basil might be awesome as well as Parsley.

 Enjoy. Ever tried this type of meal?

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