Eggs are our ingredient of the season. That link will take you to our archive of egg posts.

This is one of those recipes that I mentally added to our blog calendar the moment we picked eggs as our ingredient of the season. 

Shakshuka originated in North Africa, and appears to be a popular Middle Eastern breakfast dish. There’s a similar Italian dish called Eggs in Purgatory, it lacks the variety of spices that this dish contains, but is similar in that the eggs are cooked in a tomato-based sauce.

The recipe below is based on one found in the NYTimes, with just very minor changes. Everyone in my family loved it (yes, kids too)! The only downside may be that our dinner appetites have grown so that this isn’t quite enough to fill us up. We’ll definitely eat this again, but likely pair it with a salad next time.

Shakshuka

Shakshuka starts on the stovetop where you make a simple tomato sauce with spices. After the sauce has simmered, add the raw eggs and move the pan to the oven where the eggs will cook. While it’s in the oven, you can warm up some bread, we used naan, which is perfect for dipping and scooping up delicious bites of sauce.

We cooked ours slightly longer than the 7-10 minutes suggested because I wanted a firmer egg. You should do you, just get your whites firm, that’s all I’m saying.

Ingredients

• 3 Tbsp Olive oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/8 tsp or less cayenne
• 1 (28 ounce) can diced plum tomatoes
• 3/4 tsp salt
• black pepper
• 1 cup feta cheese
• 5 or 6 large eggs
• toasty bread and hot sauce (for serving)

How-to

• Heat oven to 375F
• Heat olive oil in an oven-safe skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and bell pepper, sauté until soft and the onions are translucent. Add the garlic and cook for about 1 minute, being careful not to let it burn. Add the cumin, paprika, and cayenne, and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.
• Pour in the tomatoes with their juices. Add the salt, and black pepper to taste (my preference is to leave the black pepper out and add it at the end). Simmer the sauce for about 10 minutes, at this point it should have thickened slightly. Stir in about 3/4 of the crumbled feta.
• Remove the skillet from the heat. Using the back of a ladle, create small bowls within the sauce. Gently crack an egg into each bowl.
• Transfer the skillet to the oven and bake until the eggs are just set. Keep your eye on this step – it may take 7-10 minutes, or slightly longer.
• Remove from the oven, sprinkle the remaining feta over the top and serve with warm bread and a splash of hot sauce.