I tried to cook Shakshouka
If you google “Shakshouka” you will find that it is a North African dish consisting in soft cooked eggs in a tomato-pepper sauce made with olive oil, onion and garlic and spiced with cumin, paprika and cayenne pepper which is a medium hot chilli pepper.
(Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakshouka)
My child happened to see this dish while watching “Somebody feed Phil” on Netflix, so we tried a variation of this recipe at home. I did not use peppers and hot peppers for my tomato sauce, I only used garlic, salt, pepper, good quality olive oil, bay leaves and of course a good quality (home made in my case) tomato juice.
We made also pita bread as seen in the movie : )). You can skip this if you find it more time consuming and buy a good quality one, or just grill a slice of sourdough bread. But if you have time you should give it a try …
INGREDIENTS : for 2 persons (with an egg for each)
Good quality extra virgin olive oil - 3 table spoons
Organic eggs - 2 pcs.
Organic / Homemade/ Best you can get tomato juice :) - 330 ml
Organic / Best you can get garlic - 2 medium garlic cloves
Bay leaves - 2 pcs.
A pinch of salt
Freshly grounded pepper to taste
Ingredients for the pita bread (Optional)
Using this quantities you will have four pita breads at about 250 grams each
Feel free to adjust them if you consider
Organic flower type 650 - 500 grams
Bio instant yeast - 7 grams
Salt - 1 tspoon
Water - 330 ml
The sauce :
In a thick bottom pot add a spoon of extra virgin olive oil and 2 chopped garlic cloves and mix with with a spoon to pass the garlic flavour to the oil
Add the tomato juice
Add the bay leaves
Add a pinch of salt and the freshly grounded pepper
Bring to a boil and gently simmer for around 25-30 minutes until the juice reduces about half, in order to obtain a delicious tomato sauce
The pita bread (optional) :
In a bowl mix 2 thirds of water, with the flour and let it rest for about 30 minutes (for autolyse - gluten relaxing)
After 30 minutes, dissolve the yeast into the remaining water and add it to the flour bowl together with the salt and a spoon of olive oil
Knead the dough until it is elastic - with a dough mixer it will take 4 to 5 minutes and by hand about 7 to 8 minutes.
Cut the dough in four equal pieces and give them a ball like shape
Put the dough balls into a tray on baking paper sprinkled with flour or semolina and leave them at room temperature about 1 hour and a half. In this time the dough balls should double their volume.
After the dough balls doubled their volume you can give them the final shape, like a 1.5 cm thick round pie with 18 to 20 cm in diameter
Drizzle with olive oil the pita breads as you put them in the oven.
Bake the pita breads for 15 minutes at 240-250 C
The Shakshouka :
Preheat the oven at 240 Celsius
Put the tomato sauce in a heavy frypan or a sauce pan suitable for oven baking, and leave it in the hot oven until the sauce is hot and starts to boil (around 5-7 minutes)
Put the eggs in the hot sauce and let them cook in the oven for about 5-8 minutes. The egg whites should be cooked and the yolks should be soft.
You can grill the pita bread and slice it in narrow pieces before serving.
Enjoy
