How egg-citing!!!

This evening, I decided to try Tom N-D on for size.. My lovely friend, Maria, sent me the April issue of Delicious UK, and Tom had a column in there with some fantastic egg recipes. I did a double-take when I saw the recipe for chakchouka. It was a coincidence because I had just been talking about this dish (shakshuka to us Israelis) with my brother-in-law and reminiscing how much we loved it. The Israeli version of this North African egg dish is basically scrambled eggs in a tomato and pepper sauce... with a hint of heat. Mmmmm. It seems like everyone in Israel knows how to at least cook shakshuka. It's the epitome of Israeli comfort food -- and a dish young people know how to cook for themselves when they are living away from home. I once had a kick-ass shakshuka in a mall in Tel Aviv... and there is a small restaurant on the Lower East Side that my brother-in-law told me about that specializes in only two things: shakshuka and hummus! That is my idea of heaven, with a side of pita.

I was curious to see how Tom's version would be and felt like this would be a perfect weeknight meal.

The ingredients came first: yellow, red, and green peppers (I omitted the green, don't like it) with some onions, garlic, chilli, and peeled plum tomatoes.

Some of the ingredients -- I love how colorful this dish is!

The chopped peppers, onions, garlic and chilli were sweated down for a few minutes while the peeled tomatoes were being prepared.

The veggies are sweating!!!!

I was quite keen to do this dish before the project began because almost the whole of the Pasta chapter in CL involves crushing peeled plum tomatoes over a sieve to get rid of as much juice as possible. This was what I had to do for this dish.

The crushed tomatoes were then added to the rest of the vegetables with some balsamic vinegar and slow-cooked for about 45 minutes till the peppers were quite soft.

Slow-cookin'

After 45 minutes I didn't get the peppers as soft as I wanted but was getting quite hungry so impatience overcame precision.

The vegetables were added to an oven-proof dish, and a well was made in the middle into which an egg was broken. The dish was then baked in a hot oven for about 10 minutes until the egg was set.

We're ready for dinner!

Tom-Norrington Davies' Chakchouka -- Delicious UK, April 2006

It turned out really well! I thought I'd mess up somewhere with the egg breaking but I was quite pleased. The dish was quite flavorful, but I think I prefer the Israeli version. There's something comforting about scrambled eggs in a tomato-ey sauce... With Tom's recipe, it seemed like peppers were the key players, and I am not too keen on cooked pepper.. Rafa really enjoyed the dish, and at least it was a hit with 50% of the household.

At any rate, I am happy I got an introduction to one of Tom's savory dishes. He really excels in using simple ingredients and utilizes them to their best extent. I think Tom has a column every month so am quite looking forward to that, as a bit of a break from the book now and again.