• — Tomatoes —

  Tomatoes are the basis of shakshuka and practically the only ingredient that no recipe challenges. At the same time, there are many options for exactly how to add tomatoes to shakshuka. Some people peel them, others make tomato puree, others cut them into slices. The secret is actually to use overripe vegetables that are no longer suitable for salad but will look great baked. They need to be cut into large slices without removing the skin. And the main rule is that no one should use canned tomatoes for shakshuka.

• - Eggs -

  Another main question that usually arises during the cooking process is whether to mix the yolks or leave them whole? Classic shakshuka should look like a fried egg. However, it is worth remembering that when cooking eggs you need to reduce the temperature as much as possible and try to leave the yolks as soft as possible with the whites fully cooked.

• - Onion or garlic -

  Shakshuka fans are divided into two camps. The former claim that this dish cannot be done without onions, the latter are sure that the main thing is garlic. There are also those who add both ingredients. Whichever camp you fall into, remember that both onions and garlic in the same dish, if overused, will deprive it of any flavor other than onion and garlic.

• - Vegetables -

  In fact, all the vegetables you have in your refrigerator - from potatoes to zucchini - will happily join the recipe and will not be able to spoil it. But the classic recipe calls for ingredients such as onions, peppers and tomatoes. If you don't mind getting a spicy, spicy dish, you can experiment with hot and sweet peppers. Together they usually produce amazing results. At the same time, not a single recipe suggests adding eggplant to shakshuka, although it fits perfectly into this dish along with tomatoes.

• - Spices -

  All shakshuka recipes insist on paprika. But, as chefs who specialize in Middle Eastern cuisine say, you can safely replace it with cayenne pepper or chili. It all depends on the individual tastes of those who will eat it. Another required ingredient is cumin. Thyme, cinnamon and bay leaf will also go well with it.

• — Additional tricks —

  Chefs advise not to skimp on butter for shakshuka; there should be a lot of it, but not to such an extent that the fatty content of the dish makes everyone feel sick. Another trick is to add a little sugar at the cooking stage of the vegetables. At the same time, the sugar needs to be balanced with lemon juice; this will highlight all the flavors present in the shakshuka in such a way that it will become truly ideal. Fresh herbs will make the shakshuka feel more summery. Parsley and cilantro are suitable for this dish, especially if you add chopped feta cheese along with the herbs.

• — Recipe for the perfect shakshuka —

  Ingredients:

  4 tbsp. olive oil
  1 onion
  1 red bell pepper
  1 green bell pepper
  6 cloves garlic
  2 tsp sweet paprika
  0.5 tsp cumin seeds
  0.5 tsp cayenne pepper
  800 g tomatoes
  2 tsp Sahara
  1 tbsp. lemon juice
  4-8 eggs depending on their size
  Bunch of cilantro and parsley

  Preparation:

  Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat and add finely chopped onion. Fry until golden brown, add diced pepper. Fry until the peppers are soft, add chopped garlic and spices, fry for another 2 minutes. Add chopped tomatoes and sugar, bring to a boil and simmer over low heat for about 30 minutes. Make several holes in the resulting sauce and break the eggs into them. Reduce heat to low, cook for about 10 minutes. Sprinkle shakshuka with herbs and serve hot.

Fried in tomato and hot pepper sauce. Prepare it for breakfast and get a very tasty and warming start to the day.

Just don’t confuse shakshuka and scrambled eggs with tomatoes. These are completely different things, and experts would even be offended by such a comparison.
Like any traditional dish, shakshuka has its own history and its own rules of preparation.

Shakshuka history of the dish

The word "shakshuka" literally means "mixture". In essence, this is a mixture of vegetables, almost a spicy vegetable stew, into which eggs are beaten at the end of cooking and simmered until cooked.

The recipe for scrambled eggs shakshuka came to Israel from Morocco, Lian and Algeria. And from Israel, in dozens of different variations, it spread throughout the world.

With all the variety of options for shakshuka, the basic recipe remains the same. It includes fresh eggs, meaty ripe tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, garlic, olive oil and spices.

The Jewish shakshuka scrambled eggs are served directly in the pan, with flatbreads that you can use to scoop up the sauce.

How to cook shakshuka at home: recipe step by step

Ingredients:
Ripe large tomatoes - 7 pcs.
Garlic - 6 cloves
Hot pepper - 0.5 pods
Sweet pepper - 1 pc.
Eggs - 6 pcs.
Salt, sugar - to taste.
Olive oil - 2 tbsp.
Oregano, basil - to taste.
Parsley - 0.5 bunch.

Scald the tomatoes with boiling water, remove the skin and cut into large pieces. Cut the sweet pepper into cubes.

Remove the seeds from the hot pepper and chop it together with the garlic.

Heat a thick frying pan, heat the olive oil in it and fry the hot peppers and garlic for half a minute. As soon as the aroma begins to spread, add bell peppers and tomato pieces to the pan. Simmer for 5 minutes, add salt and sugar to taste, cover with a lid and continue to simmer over low heat for another 10 minutes.

Then stir the sauce and carefully beat the eggs into it. Try to do this so that the yolk does not spread, and each egg is surrounded by the sauce, and practically drowned in it.

Add a little salt to each yolk, turn off the heat and cook for another 10 minutes so that the white thickens and the yolk remains runny.

Sprinkle the finished shakshuka with chopped parsley and serve directly in the pan.

Photo "Shakshuki"

"Shakshuka" is a popular dish in Israel and very popular in some Maghreb countries, originally from Tunisia. It has nothing in common with banal scrambled eggs and tomatoes. These are not even fried, but rather stewed eggs in a spicy tomato sauce with spices. In Israel, the dish is prepared everywhere, both at home and in small family restaurants. The most famous of them is "Doctor Shakshuka" in Tel Aviv. If you are in these places, be sure to visit it. Spices here can be replaced with others, as well as the degree of spiciness can be reduced or increased. Sugar should not be neglected either; it is here to balance the acidity of the tomatoes. As for tomatoes, I highly recommend using canned ones in their own juice. Even in the above-mentioned establishment they do not consider it shameful to cook from them. With out-of-season “plastic” tomatoes, the dish loses a lot of flavor. Although if your tomatoes are from your garden, you can take a risk, why not. Shakshuka is usually served in the same pan in which it was cooked, with white bread, challah or baguette.
P.S. The recipe was posted due to numerous requests from workers represented by two Olgas, Elena and Anna :-)

Shakshuka recipe ingredients

For breakfast for 4 people:

• A can of tomatoes in their own juice - 800 ml.
• Eggs-4 pcs.
• Onion - 1 pc.
• Bell pepper (red) - 1/2 pcs.
• Sweet paprika - 1 tbsp. l.
• Cumin (ground cumin) - 1 tsp.
• Ground chili pepper - 0.5 tsp.
• Sugar-1 tsp.
• Oil for frying (olive is best, but not necessary)
• Salt to taste

To submit:

• Choice of white bread, challah, baguette.
• Any greens

2016-09-02

Hello my dear readers! There is food that has long become a ritual. For example, it’s hard for me to imagine our summer breakfasts without shakshuka and eggs. Some of you will object - these are almost the same dish. Ah, this insidious “almost”! This is where the main difference between one dish and another lies. For those who are interested in a colorful and simple dish with a funny name, I wrote this short article. So, I present to you my simplest shakshuka recipe step by step with photos and detailed recommendations.

The idea that shakshuka is Israeli (Jewish) scrambled eggs is not entirely true. Yes, one of the many types of shakshuka is really popular in Israel. It definitely includes eggs. At least that's what my Israeli friends say. But there are other shakshukas, for example, Maghreb ones. Here they are without eggs at all. I could be convinced of this by living side by side with Moroccans during my student years.

After reading a large amount of material on the cuisine of the Maghreb, I came to the conclusion that the word “shakshuka” here refers to a whole series of vegetable dishes such as stews, the composition of which is very variable. Here, in addition to the well-known trio “tomatoes, peppers, onions,” there are also zucchini, eggplant, chard, sausages, seafood, and cheese.

The word itself means “dance” in the Tunisian and Libyan Berber dialects, and “mixture” in Algerian and Moroccan. As you can see, there’s not a word about eggs here! But “dance” and “mixture” imply, in my opinion, improvisation, multi-components, variability and everything in the same spirit.

Does anyone agree with me? Or if someone has something to object to me, I will equally attentively listen to any opinions on this matter. Since I, of course, am not an expert in Maghreb and Levantine cuisine, today I simply want to offer my version of a restaurant dish that is now so popular in the world.

Wow, I wrote so much! The result was a real “hodgepodge”. But maybe this should be the preface to a shakshuka recipe?

Step-by-step recipe for shakshuka with photos

Ingredients

• 2 large onions.
• 2-3 large red bell peppers.
• 2 large, fleshy, ripe sweet tomatoes (necessarily just like that and nothing else).
• 1 tablespoon red sweet paprika.
• A few pieces of fresh hot pepper (optional).
• 1 clove of garlic (optional).
• 4-5 eggs.
• Ground black pepper.
• A generous pinch of kamun (aka cumin or cumin).
• Olive oil.
• Salt.

How to cook shakshuka

Cooking shakshuka according to this recipe consists of two stages - preparing the base and “assembling” the dish. The base of this eggless shakshuka is called “matbukha”. We will return to it in more detail and I will tell you how to prepare matbukha for the winter.

Preparing matbukha

Collecting shakshuka

There are at least three methods known to me for further preparation of food. These are not three different recipes, but rather different ways of preparing eggs.

My comments

My dear readers, please tell me about your favorite breakfasts. I still have scrambled eggs and bacon on my list of favorites (recipe

But this method of preparing eggs cannot be called common and familiar to Russian cuisine. In our country, scrambled eggs are most often fried either plain, or with sausage/tomatoes, or in lard. And eggs still play the leading role in the dish. In shakshuka, on the contrary, the emphasis is on the spicy base of the dish - the tomato sauce in which the eggs are fried. As a bright, spicy and tasty breakfast, especially when there is no reason to rush, and you can spend not 5-10 minutes preparing breakfast, but a little more, 20 minutes - shakshuka is beyond praise.

For shakshuka you will need:

• Tomatoes. Approximately 1 medium tomato per 1 egg.
• Bell pepper.
• Onion. 1 small onion.
• Garlic. taste.
• Jeera (cumin, which is the same thing)
• Paprika. 2-3 teaspoons.
• Hot pepper - optional.
• Salt.
• Freshly ground black pepper.
• Vegetable oil for frying.

Let's prepare shakshuka.

We make the base for shakshuka - tomato sauce.

Cut the onions into thin quarter-rings or ⅙-rings.

Cut the bell pepper into small cubes. It is best to take red bell peppers. I didn’t have a red one in my refrigerator, so I took the yellow one. Well, since, as you know, the color of a car does not affect driving performance, the color of the pepper will not affect the taste of the dish in any way. Perhaps its appearance, although not as much as, for example, green pepper could affect.

Finely chop the garlic. We cut it, not squeeze it out.

If you are going to make a spicy version of shakshuka, then we clean the hot pepper from the seeds and also chop it finely. The amount depends on the desired spiciness of the dish and the spiciness of the pepper. This time I didn't add hot pepper.

Cut the tomatoes into very small pieces.

If desired, you can first remove the skin from them. This is easy to do - cut each tomato crosswise and pour boiling water over it. After a couple of minutes, remove from boiling water, place under cold water and easily remove the skin.

The tomato skin doesn’t bother me, so I don’t waste time removing it.

So, all the ingredients are prepared, let's begin the cooking process itself.

Heat vegetable oil in a small deep frying pan or small saucepan.

I will explain why the size of the dishes should be small. The fact is that the eggs will be cooked in tomato sauce. Therefore, the thicker the layer of sauce, the better for the dish. If the frying pan is large, and the sauce in it has spread in a thin layer over the entire area of ​​the frying pan, then you won’t be able to make shakshuka. You will get regular scrambled eggs with tomatoes, although there will be a lot of tomatoes.

So the utensil should provide a deep layer of sauce.

Place the chopped onion in the heated oil and immediately add a little salt - it will fry better. Keep the heat under the frying pan on medium so that the vegetables do not burn.

As soon as the onion softens and begins to become transparent, add chopped bell pepper to the onion. If you use hot pepper, add that too.

Stir and let the pepper lose its elasticity a little and also soften slightly.

Add paprika, freshly ground black pepper, cumin (cumin) crushed with your fingers and chopped garlic to the onion and pepper. You can also add those spices that you love, for example the same ground coriander.

Stir, let the spices warm up, and let the garlic begin to give off its smell. Then add tomatoes to the frying pan.

Stir again and over very low heat, without covering with a lid so that excess moisture evaporates, simmer the tomatoes and turn them into a thick tomato sauce.

When the sauce has thickened well enough, check it for salt. Add salt if necessary. If the tomatoes were sour, you can add a little sugar to remove this sourness. It's time to beat the eggs into the sauce. To do this, use a spatula or spoon to spread the sauce, forming indentations and break the eggs into these indentations. The main thing is that the yolk remains intact.

A little trick. The fact is that simultaneously breaking an egg and moving the sauce away, forming a “nest” for the egg, is quite difficult. You have to crack the egg and pour it into the sauce with one hand. The sauce is quite liquid and tends to be evenly distributed over the entire area of ​​the bottom of the pan. Therefore, it is most convenient to first break the egg into a suitable cup, and then, spreading the sauce with a spoon in one hand, calmly pour the egg from the cup into the resulting hole with the other.

The main thing to do is to ensure that the yolk is not covered with a white film. To do this, do not cover the shakshuka with a lid, but bring it to readiness over low heat, that is, all the whites have already set and become dense, the yolk is also cooked, but has not turned white on top.

When ready, sprinkle with herbs.

Place shakshuka on plates and serve. A delicious, bright, aromatic breakfast is ready.