eggs

I’m not even going to get into all of the reasons why I haven’t posted since, ahem, before Thanksgiving.

They are myriad and I could go on about them all day, but that would just be burying the lede, which is to say: Shakshuka! Have you tried it? You really, really should.

We’ve been eating, and loving, shakshuka for years but I never bothered to write about it before because it has been all over the Internet for quite some time. I guess I figured most of you have already at least heard about this North African dish of eggs poached in smoky, spicy tomato sauce.

But I want this blog to be about the foods I’m excited to eat right now, so shakshuka it is.

A common breakfast dish in places like Israel and Tunisia, I especially like shakshuka for dinner. It retains a strong spot on my list of favorite cold weather comfort foods, is quick enough to pull off on a weeknight and reasonably healthy to boot.

I’ve seen lots of recipes for this homey dish, sometimes with the addition of red bell peppers, leafy greens or assorted other spices, and though I always mean to try them, I keep coming back to this simple version instead.

Paul and I used to eat this pretty regularly, but that more or less fell by the wayside after we discovered that E is allergic to eggs. Last weekend, however, we shipped the little guy off to his grandparents’ for the night and had a date night in, complete with a steaming bowl of spicy poached eggs, topped with lots of salty feta and a flurry of flat-leaf parsley.

Sure, there are more romantic menu options out there, but for sheer deliciousness on a chilly winter night, shakshuka is hard to beat.

Simplest Shakshuka with Feta

Yield: 3 filling dinner portions, allowing 2 eggs per person. (The photos above show a half recipe.)

Adapted from Smitten Kitchen were it was in turn adapted from Savuer

Essentially eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce, shakshuka is perhaps my favorite breakfast-for-dinner meal.

Make sure to serve this with bread to mop up all the delicious sauce. Pitas are a traditional accompaniment, but I like pillowy challah bread best.

1/4 cup olive oil
one small yellow onion, chopped
five Anaheim chilis or three jalapeños, stemmed, seeded and finely diced
five cloves garlic, minced
one tablespoon paprika
one teaspoon cumin
one 28-ounce can whole, peeled tomatoes
salt to taste
6 large eggs
1/2 cup feta, crumbled
1/4 cup parsley, roughly chopped
challah or pita, to serve

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and chili and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and beginning to brown. Add the garlic, paprika and cumin and cook for another minute or two.

Next, add the tomatoes and any juices to the pan, gently squeezing each tomato between your fingers first to break it into smaller pieces. Watch out for squirting tomato juice! Add about 1/2 cup of water to the pan, turn the heat down to medium and simmer until the sauce is slightly thickened, about 10-15 minutes. Taste the sauce and add a little salt, if needed.

Crack the eggs into the pan, spacing them evenly, and cover the pan. Cook, covered, until the whites are cooked through and the yolks are just beginning to set, about five minutes.

Top with feta and parsley and serve with challah bread (my preference) or pitas.

http://pleasepassthepeas.com/simplest-shakshuka-with-feta/

All content and photos copyright Please Pass the Peas ~ pleasepassthepeas.com

Our chickens started laying last week. Well, one of them did.

We read that they would start laying when they hit around 20 weeks of age, which was two months ago. So we’ve been eagerly anticipating the first eggs for weeks and were definitely excited to discover the first one, which was no bigger than a robin’s egg and deposited right on the ground.

Altogether, we’ve had maybe nine or 10 pretty brown eggs so far from Calpurnia, the biggest and friendliest bird in our small flock. After the first one, her eggs became more normal-sized and she started using the nesting boxes like a good hen.

We’ve since used up all of our farmers market eggs and all of our eggs are coming straight from the backyard. It’s really nice for E. to be able to go outside, check the nesting box and carry in a fresh egg, cupped in his little palms. Unfortunately, he’s still allergic to eggs, so he can’t eat them yet. Fingers crossed that he’ll grow out of that soon.

Anyway, I thought I’d celebrate here with something equal parts eggy and showy, like a soufflé or ouefs a la neige or an autumnal take on pavlova.

But once I got into the kitchen I decided that a soufflé could wait, because what I really wanted was far more pedestrian: good, old-fashioned egg salad.

You probably don’t need a recipe for egg salad, but I’m giving you one anyway, just in case.

The key to a great egg salad is, of course, perfectly cooked eggs. I don’t think there’s a single right way to hard cook an egg, plenty of different methods will get the job done just fine. Apparently steaming eggs is a thing now too — it supposedly makes them easier to peel (so does using older eggs).

Maybe I’ll try steaming my eggs one of these days but, for now, I’m hard boiling my eggs the same way I have for years: place eggs in a pan with enough water to cover them by at least 1 inch and bring to a boil. As soon as the water boils, turn off the heat and let the eggs sit in the hot water for 14-15 minutes, then drain and cover with ice water to stop the cooking and make the eggs cool enough to peel. Easy peasy.

If your hard boiled eggs have a nasty gray-green ring around the yolk, it just means you cooked them a little too long.

I don’t typically measure anything when I make egg salad and you don’t really need to either, just consider these general guidelines.

So, for today, egg salad, with thanks to Calpurnia for supplying the eggs.

Egg Salad with Capers

Yield: enough for about four sandwiches

A basic egg salad, gussied up just a little with grainy mustard and the briny pop of capers.

5-6 hard boiled eggs, peeled and roughly chopped
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon whole grain mustard
1 tablespoon (or more!) capers, drained
salt and pepper, to taste

Combine the eggs, mayo, mustard and capers in a medium-sized bowl and mash everything together with a fork. I like for my egg salad to have easily discernible bites of egg, so I don't mash it much, but that's really a personal preference.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. You might find you don't need any additional salt, especially with the capers, so make sure to taste as you go. Serve, preferably with lettuce and sandwiched between a couple slices of seedy, wholegrain bread.

http://pleasepassthepeas.com/egg-salad-with-capers/

All content and photos copyright Please Pass the Peas ~ pleasepassthepeas.com