I had shakshuka for breakfast today. The recipe was a modified version of The Mediterranean Dish‘s recipe. Suzy has a pile of good recipes, and the ones I’ve tried have never been bad. I highly recommend her site and her YouTube channel.
The main difference between her recipe and my attempt is I added some za’atar, and I used crushed tomatoes instead of diced. I’m blaming the stroke for the tomatoes – I ordered them, it wasn’t a mistake on Food Hive’s part, I just had a Bad Brain Moment.
As expected, the recipe was easy to make. I chopped up a tomato, some green peppers, and garlic. Fried it up in olive oil with the seasonings, added the tomatoes, threw on the lid, and let it festrate for fifteen minutes. Then I gave it a good stir, let it reduce a little, added the eggs, cracked the yolks (I like hard eggs, not runny), turned the heat way down, and threw the lid back on. While the eggs set, I made two pieces of toast. Served it up on a plate over the toast, and I was good to go. It took less than an hour to make, with most of that time being the hands-off cooking time.
The Good
It was tasty, pretty nutritious, and low carb – it didn’t affect my blood sugar significantly. I went from about 150 to 180 briefly, but that’s to be expected. A croissant sanmich from the gas station does about the same. Just what I’m looking for in a meal.
It had a sweeter taste than I expected, but it wasn’t unpleasant – which was possibly my doing.
I really can’t complain about this one. I’ll definitely make it again.
The Bad
It’s fairly time-consuming to make. That’s the only downside to it. Using pre-diced vegetables and jarred garlic would probably shave five or ten minutes off the process, but there’s about half an our of largely hands-off cooking time, so it isn’t a significant difference.
The Ugly
Nothing except one specific potential issue that’s easily remedied. My wife would get terrible indigestion from it. The obvious solution is simply not to make it for her.
So this one really doesn’t count.
Final Verdict
The sweet taste was possibly the result of using crushed tomatoes and my addition of za’atar. I suspect it would taste somewhat different if I had used canned diced tomatoes or fresh tomatoes. That said, I liked the taste, so I’m not going to bother trying to “fix” it. It’s also entirely possible this is what it’s supposed to taste like.
This is a solid breakfast, and it filled me up – it’s noon now as I write this, and I don’t have any pressing urge to eat my sandwich.