Shakshuka

I LOVE eggs…so much so that I often say if I was stuck on a desert island for the rest of my life with only one food to eat eggs would be my immediate choice.  So versatile, delicious and nutritious.  That means when I find an egg meal worthy of dinner I get very excited.  A friend of mine shared this recipe with me that she found a while ago on smittenkitchen.com (which is a fab site that I aspire to be even 50% as great as some day!) and swears she makes it at least once a month now, so I’m looking forward to adding it to my recipe repertoire!

Shakshuka is an Israeli (although there are debates about this) dish of eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce.  Since this one is new for me too, I’d love to hear what you think when you make it!

Update & Recipe Review: February 22nd

This dish reminded me of a Spanish dish I used to make a lot, pipperade…in fact you’ll likely see it on an upcoming menu now that I’ve remembered how much I used to enjoy that when living in Spain.

Anyway, this particular recipe was a new one for me.  My friend Julia (www.chitterchittter.blogspot.com) recommended it from an old SmittenKitchen post and I have to say I love the idea of this recipe…but I’ll likely make a few tweaks next time I make it.

First…I think it needs a bit more kick.  I used 3 anaheim chilis & 1½ jalapeños but it was stil a bit mild, so I would likely dial up the jalapeños and/or add some cayenne pepper next time.  I also might use canned diced jalapeños instead of chopping up all of the chili’s myself to make it a bit quicker (since chopping those spicy little suckers with rubber gloves on slows me down!). I might dial up the cumin a bit too.

I also think I would add olives…black or green would work well.  Lastly, I used extra gremolata that I had on hand from Osso Bucco instead of just fresh parsley and I kind of liked the extra kick the lemon zest and fresh garlic added.

Overall, yummy dinner.  We served it with grilled asparagus (can you believe it’s already appearing at our farmers market? So exciting!) and leftover cheesy polenta…which was a nice accent despite the Italian/Israeli mix intermingling on our plate!