Red Pepper Shakshouka

Warming, healthy and chances are you already have all the ingredients you need. I like to add a red pepper to my shakshouka to pack more veg into that meal. The cumin does a wonderfull thing to the tomato sauce, making something wildly different to anything you ever poured over pasta.

Ingredients

• 1 can of chopped tomatoes
• 1 red pepper
• 1 red onion
• 1 or 2 eggs
• 1 heaped teaspoon of harissa, or alternatively fresh or dried red chilli and a pinch of cumin
• salt and pepper
• olive oil

Step 1

Cut the peppers into strips and the onions into halve rings and fry them in a small frying pan on medium heat in some olive oil until tender. Then add the harissa or cumin and chilli and fry with the onions for a minute or two.

Step 2

Add a can of chopped tomatoes and lower the heat. Let it simmer for 15 minutes covered with a lid, or plate. 

Step 3

Season the sauce with salt and pepper and optional extra chilli. Push the peppers and onions away from the middle so you create a little pool in the middle. Crack one or two eggs into this pool. Keep the pan on a low heat so it is gently bubbling. The egg whites will take about 10 minutes to cook while leaving the yolk runny. Serve scorching hot with crusty bread. 

Once again I was introduced to shakshuka by Ottolenghi, his Jerusalem cookbook in particular. There is a hot sauce in there that left me with burning hands for 2 days, but it was worth it.