My 2nd Attempt At This Recipe

I shared a post a few months back the first time I tried my hand at this recipe. I thought it turned out pretty good but I decided that I wanted to try it out again since my family enjoyed it last time. Over the last couple weeks I have been doing a lot of cooking and really trying out new herbs and spices to see how it tastes in my dishes that I cook rather often. Needless to say, I thought this batch turned out even better than last time and I suspect that next time I am going to tweak it and make it even better! This time around I think my biggest mistake was using my tomato choice. I had went to the supermarket and they had some extremely cheap Roma tomatoes, like 69c/lb so I decided to pick up a bunch and make a batch of shakshuka. Normally Romas are a good choice for sauces, but these particular tomatoes did not have much juice in them at all. Either way, they worked out in the end but my ratio of tomatoes to other vegetables was a little off in my opinion. Regardless, it was delicious!

First, I chopped up my onions and mushrooms and sauted them in a liberal amount of extra virgin olive oil. I made sure to season them heavily as well. I like to season everything at separate stages of cooking with different flavors. That way when you bring it all together you have different flavors hitting your tongue, even when you season with similar/same seasonings just in different amounts.

Seasonings Used - Personally, I don't ever measure... I season to taste preference.

• Cumin (this is the primary seasoning in this dish)
• Paprika
• Black Pepper
• Minced Garlic
• Rosemary
• Thyme
• Cayenne Pepper
• Oregano
• Parsley
• Small amount of chili powder (I want more of the cumin flavor rather than a dish that tastes like Chili)

Vegetables Used

• Tomatoes
• Onions
• Mushrooms

If I had them in the fridge I would have also used..

• Peppers
• Blackbeans

As the picture shows, I sauteed up the onions and mushrooms first to soften them up. Then I added the tomatoes and cooked them down to reduce them into a sauce.

When you see the tomatoes in there it looks like they would never cook down from those big chunks, but they do. Once they heat up they start to push the fluids out of the solids and you will slowly evaporate the water that was within the tomatoes.

You know your sauce is done when you can use a spoon to clear a spot where you can see the bottom of the pan and it is slow to close up the spot. This means much of your moisture is evaporated and now its time to crack your eggs in the sauce.

You can still see some tomato chunks but you can also see that it is reduced quite a bit into a nice tomato sauce and it will continue over then next 10-15 minutes while your eggs cook. At this point, cover the pan and cook your eggs to your liking. The dish is originally down with the egg yolks still runny, but my family likes the eggs cooked all the way through, so that is what I do.

When your eggs are cooked to your liking, you are done! As you can see, I season the raw eggs and garnish with fresh Cilantro and herbs at the end. I really love the flavor of cilantro and how it works so well with the heavy cumin flavor in this dish. Serve it up and enjoy! Share with people and I promise you they will be amazed with this recipe. Since it originates from North Africa/Middle East almost no Americans have ever seen this before and their eyes will light up the first bite. Plus, Shakshuka is just fun to say! Thank you for reading, make it a great day!