Ottolenghi's Shakshuka

Are you up for a ratatouille-style dinner with egg with the perfect spicy touch? Yes, here’s the charm of this Yotam Ottolenghi recipe that Miriam (author of El Invitado de Invierno) brings us today. Addictive! Go get some bread...

The word shakshuka sounds so exotic… and even more so if we know the recipe comes from the well-known and cool chef Yotam Ottolenghi, Israeli-born but based in the United Kingdom, from his book El Gourmet Vegetariano.

I’m going to proceed to take all the glamour away from this shakshuka: it’s basically baked eggs on a bed of sautéed vegetables suspiciously reminiscent of a Manchego pisto or an Almerían tavern stew. I’m wicked, but it’s not my fault, that’s how I was drawn.

That said, what sets it apart from more familiar preparations is the spice blend. Also, as Ottolenghi himself notes in his book, this is a North African and Eastern Mediterranean dish that has many variants, many more exotic than the one we present here.

This shakshuka has the advantage that the vegetable sofrito can be made in good quantity and in advance to liven up any quick dinner or meal: you only need to crack one or two eggs into a small skillet or casserole lined with the sofrito and cook them to be reasonably happy with a very balanced dish and imagine you’re in the old city of Jerusalem. Come on.

Skeppshult cast iron frying pan, Luigi Bormioli glass oil bottle, Mediterránea glass tumblers and Mediterránea glass pitcher.

Ingredients (for 4 people)

• 100ml of olive oil
• 2 large onions
• 2 Italian red peppers
• 2 Italian green peppers
• 6 large, meaty tomatoes
• ½ tsp of whole cumin
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tbsp of sugar
• Salt to taste
• Thyme to taste
• A good sprinkling of ground cayenne
• A good pinch of saffron threads
• Water (if needed)
• 4 large eggs

Preparation

1. We chop the onions to taste and sauté them over low heat in a wide pan with the oil, until they are translucent (in the original the onions are only lightly sautéed, but I don’t like them hard).
2. We cut the peppers into strips and sauté them when the onion is to our liking, until they soften.
3. We add the cumin so it can toast.
4. In a saucepan with boiling water we blanch the tomatoes for 1 minute to remove the skin easily. We peel them and cut them into pieces, removing the seeds.
5. We add the tomatoes to the pan along with cayenne, sugar, bay leaf, and saffron, and keep sautéing until they soften and the Set thickens into a sauce. If the mixture dries out too much, we will add a little water.
6. When the sofrito is ready, we divide it into casseroles or small pans that can be put on the heat. In each of them or two portions per pan as seen in the photos, we make a hollow in the sofrito and crack an egg.
7. We salt the egg and heat the pot or pan over medium heat until the Set is hot and the egg is set. If you don't want to risk having the yolk set completely, as happened to me, you'll have to add only the white (you can use a egg separator) and pour the yolk carefully at the last moment.
8. We serve the shakshuka immediately, piping hot and with plenty of bread for mopping up.

Skeppshult iron pan and Mediterránea glass pitcher.

The mix of cumin with the sweet note and the spicy kick is quite addictive, I tell you… Try this shakshuka because you’ll like it, and you can also make it by the bucketful for a rainy day, as the Anglo-Saxons say.