Shakshouka (baked eggs), Norwich style

This is a dish that was inspired by our holiday to Tunisia last year.  We were in Sousse only a week before the tragic terrorist attack and our hotel was just a few kilometres away from where it took place.  It was hard to believe that such a beautiful and peaceful place could be the scene of such awful violence.

We both love North African and Middle Eastern food with its rich spice and vibrant flavours and the food we experienced during our stay in Sousse was sensational.  Shakshouka is a traditional dish of baked eggs in a spiced tomato and pepper sauce.  It was often available at breakfast, lunch and dinner at our hotel and was a great vegetarian option, though it was equally appreciated by the meat-eaters at the resort.  The dish varies from place to place and this is our own take on it.  Like many of the things we cook, we've taken the key traditional elements that make it a great dish and added a few little twists here and there.

We hope you enjoy making the dish as much as we love eating it!  It's an excellent midweek meal as it takes very little time to prepare and cook, but it also looks fancy enough to impress dinner guests and works brilliantly as an alternative weekend breakfast.  Let us know how you get on.

Ingredients (serves 2 for a hearty dinner):

Half a medium onion
1 sweet pointed red pepper (a regular pepper of any colour is fine as a substitute)
2 cloves of garlic
1 can of cannellini beans (400g - chick peas or butter beans work as an alternative)
1 can of chopped tomatoes (400g)
2.5 tsp. smoked paprika
1.5 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tsp. chilli flakes/crushed chillies (chilli powder or a fresh red chilli also works)
3 tsp. capers (optional)
4 medium eggs
Olive oil (approximately 1 tbsp.)
Fresh parsley and chives to garnish (fresh coriander can be used instead)

Preparation time: 5 minutes.

Cooking time: under 25 minutes.

Preparation:

Pre-heat your oven to 200°c (fan assisted, go 220°c if your oven isn't fan assisted).

Chop the red pepper into chunks roughly 2cm by 3cm, you want reasonable sized pieces to give some texture but the size and shape need not be uniform.  Finely dice the onion or as a cheat use frozen chopped onion instead.  Crush and finely chop the two cloves of garlic, sprinkle with salt and use the back of your knife to help break the garlic down into a paste. 

Drain the cannellini beans and rinse with cold water.

Cooking:

In a medium saucepan or large frying pan, heat a good drizzle of olive oil over a medium heat and allow it to come up to temperature.  Add the peppers to the pan and let them sit for a minute or two, it doesn't hurt the flavour of the dish for them to take a bit of colour.  Add the onions and allow the onions and peppers to soften in the pan, stirring occasionally, for a few minutes.

When the onions and peppers are soft, add the garlic and allow this to soften (this should only take a minute or so).  Adding the garlic earlier runs the risk of it burning and this can give an acrid taste so don't be tempted to throw it in at the same time as the onions or peppers.  Add all of the spices and stir well.  Leave the spices, onions, peppers and garlic to cook together for a further minute or two, stirring occasionally so that the spices don't catch and burn.

Add the tin of chopped tomatoes and stir thoroughly so that the spices and vegetables mix through the tomatoes.  At this point we often add just a pinch of sugar to counteract the acidity of the tomatoes.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  When the mixture has come up to the boil, allow it to simmer for a couple of minutes and then add the cannellini beans and capers (if you aren't a fan of capers you can leave them out, but we feel they add a nice bite to the dish that works well with the eggs). 

Transfer the contents of the saucepan to a tagine or if you don't own a tagine (not everyone loves North African cooking as much as we do - we have two!) then a regular casserole dish will work fine too.  With the back of a wooden spoon, create four small wells in the mixture.  You don't want to leave the bottom of the dish exposed as the eggs could catch, but you want a small dip for your eggs to sit in.  Crack your eggs into the wells you have created, don't worry if they spill over the side of the wells slightly as this won't affect the cooking.  Drizzle over a little more olive oil and season the eggs with a little salt and black pepper.

Put the dish in the oven and leave for 10-15 minutes.  Cooking time can vary slightly depending on the oven and the size of the eggs but usually 15 minutes will give you a yolk that is just set firm, 10-12 minutes will give you a softer yolk.  Whilst the dish is cooking, chop a good handful of fresh herbs ready to garnish.

Remove from the oven, sprinkle over the herbs and serve.

Shakshouka is great with some nice fresh bread (we had ours with sourdough) to mop up all of the juices but can also be served with couscous, bulgur wheat or rice.  You can also crumble some feta over the top to finish, if that's your bag.  We will be bringing you our go to bulgur wheat recipe in the near future with some tips for cooking it just right.