One of my best friends is in town! And we decided to tackle Shakshouka, Instagram’s latest pandemic food fad. Luckily, I had most of the ingredients. So we only needed a grocery run to stock up on zucchini and Jeni’s ice cream. Shakshouka is a mediterranean/North African dish that’s meant to be a hearty, breakfast stew eaten with bread. She checked a recipe once or twice, but we we mostly cooked from memory, catching up and winging it over margaritas.
First, you chop up one big onion and bell pepper (green if you want it to pop, red to blend). Be sure to budget a long time to cook down the veggies until they get soft and translucent. We were definitely not mentally prepared (or, prepared with snacks) for the total cook time.
I showed off my new garlic chopping skills, and she cheered. When we lived together, my abilities were limited to clean up and burning everything.
We added garlic, different spices, and crushed tomatoes to make the base (after what felt like a century of cooking down the veggies). We borrowed my roommate’s cast iron skillet, which admittedly neither of us knew how to use. It takes a minute to get hot and forever to cool down, so when we added the eggs, they burrowed down in the stew and couldn’t reach the heat. So while the tomato base dried out, the eggs struggled to heat up. Oops! (Next time, I’d bake it to cook the eggs quickly or use a skillet that’s not quite so deep.)
When the eggs finally cooked, we topped it with cilantro and feta cheese. We served our Shakshouka over spinach with toasted bread to go along with it. The end result was delicious, even though it definitely wasn’t stew!
Our compiled votes: Four spoons for taste. Two for execution. Five for fun!
