Like many dishes, the subject of this month’s How to Eat, shakshuka, is caught in an international tug-of-love among its possible parents.
This staple of hip, British brunch cafes is commonly thought of as coming from Israel, where it has been adopted as a national dish, but, insomuch as they can be traced, shakshuka’s origins lie in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Morocco. Tunisia is frequently cited as its birthplace, but the country’s varied repertoire of shakshukas may itself riff on older Ottoman Empire dishes. In Israel, shakshuka has embedded itself in recent decades thanks to the arrival of Jews from around the Maghreb. Many worked in catering and later opened restaurants, bringing such beloved north African dishes with them.
Zoom out from that simmering regional rivalry, however, and it is striking how universal is the world’s love of eggs baked in a punchy tomato sauce. Long before Yotam Ottolenghi turned the UK on to shakshuka in 2010’s Plenty, the world had embraced numerous dishes – Turkish menemen, Italian uova in purgatorio, Syrian jaz maz, even certain versions of Andalusian huevos a la flamenca or Mexican huevos rancheros – that could be categorised as shakshuka-adjacent.
Easy to make, flexible and hugely popular, shakshuka has been described (by the website Chowhound) as the closest we will ever get to “a truly perfect dish”. It was hype. But understandable hype.
That said, it is perfectly possible to create bad shakshuka, which is where How to Eat – the series trying to identify how best to enjoy Britain’s favourite dishes – comes in. It will not attempt to define the authentic shakshuka experience (how could it from a pavement table in London, Manchester or Glasgow?), but HTE, as ever, has opinions.
A word (OK, several) on ingredients …
It is often said that “tomatoes are the backbone of shakshuka”, an obvious point worth reiterating (HTE is still scarred by an encounter with a version that was 95% bell peppers). “In the end it doesn’t take a genius to put eggs and tomatoes together, we can all agree that they are a logical match,” as the food writer Sarah Elmusrati put it at Food Libya.
You will of course be loudly channelling Kate Bush as you cook your shakshuka, but do not get overexcited. As you add onion, garlic, cumin, perhaps bay, thyme and heat (chilli flakes and a mild paprika offer greater warmth, in this case, than fresh chillies or cayenne), think of it as building an interestingly designed stage set for those headline stars. For all this dish takes from a certain punchy intersection of bold flavours, those ingredients are ultimately seasonings that must not outshine shakshuka’s Lennon and McCartney, its Max and Paddy, its Falcon and Winter Soldier – eggs and tomato.
If for some reason you insist on including bell peppers, particularly those bitter green monstrosities, you must to be prepared to patiently sweat them until they cede any structural integrity. It is the only way to make them edible.
Purists may insist on the use of fresh tomatoes, but those purists have clearly never shopped in UK supermarkets, where tomatoes are more a source of concentrated hydration than flavour – trapped water with a residual hint of tomato. Use tinned toms or expect a hopelessly insipid shakshuka.
Further additions
Around the Mediterranean, there are established shakshuka variations involving, for instance, courgette, pulses or Merguez sausage, which make obvious intuitive sense. That apparently limitless flexibility, however, is a kind of trap for gormless British cooks. It invites experimentation among arrogant, misguided chefs who feel they can always improve any dish – often using a kind of fevered, fusion-cooking free association that cuts’n’shuts flavours, not out of creative necessity, but because we crave novelty. Think: full breakfast fattoush salad; hot coleslaw carbonara; roast potato ramen; steak and kidney chai.
Some Libyan recipes include a modest amount of dried lamb, AKA gideed, as flavouring. That is very different to lumping burnt ends, bacon or chorizo into your shakshuka, which would make it a far heavier dish. Shakshuka should leave you pleasantly full but energised for the day ahead. Conversely, ignore those urging you to pack your shakshuka with greens (spinach, broccoli, broad beans), which take it in a worthier direction. Does that sound like a Sunday brunch treat?
If the spiced-tomato-sauce shakshuka has achieved dominance internationally, there is probably good reason for that. It works. This is not a dish crying out for a twist. “Anything goes,” says Chowhound. But does it?
Garnishes
To chefs (yes, them again), a plain shakshuka looks suspiciously amateur. That unmediated sea of red, white and yellow, that tempting blank canvas, demands a territorial display of their professional status. They must creatively assert themselves, usually by scattering excessive herb mulch across it, even though it detracts from the dish.
Nobody wants that heavy-handed harvest of soapy coriander or flavourless flat-leaf parsley. It brings a bovine, grass-chewing edge to shakshuka’s bold, sunny flavours. Even worse is having to pick through a random handful of herbs added last minute (basil, tarragon, chives, mint even). It is the sign of an insecure, lazy kitchen: a chef thinking, “that needs something”, some visual titivation for Instagram, without actually considering what that suitable something might be. As your mum used to say when you were getting ready for school, this isn’t a fashion parade. In beautifying food, people frequently detract from it.
If you feel your shakshuka needs colour, at least add it in a format that, if ultimately unnecessary, adds a complementary dimension: zhoug delivers herby flavour with greater zing; swirls of labneh or Greek yoghurt offer an acidic counterpoint; and cheese – nuggets of salty feta or a flurry of extra mature cheddar – adds a layer of luxury to a dish that, when you break those egg yolks (do ensure they are served intact and runny), is not without a dimension of indulgent richness.
Bread
A cynic might suggest that, in British cafes, shakshuka is served with bread for commercial reasons. It is partly a cultural thing – eggs and toast are intertwined in the UK breakfast psyche – and partly padding. It would require some brass neck to charge £9 for a bowl of tinned tomatoes and eggs without at least leaving diners feeling sated. Shakshuka needs bulking out, carbing-up, value adding. It needs sourdough toast.
However that standard emerged, it is correct. Globally, bread is a constant with shakshuka. The bread options are endless but something thick, pillowy and pliable is preferable. Mop up shakshuka with a wholemeal tortilla and it feels like all known joy is being sucked from the world.
Contrast that with a wodge of crusty, thickly buttered bread, lightly toasted or no, and the extraordinary alchemy that happens (ask any child who has ever eaten tomato soup) in the interaction of bread, butter and pulped tomatoes. It produces an intensely sweet, creamy mouthful that vividly amplifies the tomatoes’ flavour. Think of cleaning your shakshuka bowl with buttered bread as an encore – during which that band you are obsessed with finally plays the song that made you fall in love with them. The main set was interesting, incredible at times, but this is a moment that speaks to your soul.
Note: never serve bread or toast balanced on the edge of the bowl, where it will soak up shakshuka until its edges become a thick, swollen slop. No one likes wet bread.
Green salad on the side?
No. Of course not.
When
Shakshuka is frequently talked up as a hangover restorative. Is it the cysteine in the eggs? How simple it is to make? Or are people prescribing chilli heat to clear a foggy head?
Any of those explanations do shakshuka a disservice. It is far too good to be deemed medicinal. Enjoy it as a late breakfast/brunch when you have a clear head and time to revel in its majesty at a leisurely pace. Or break it out as a midweek tea; the kind of meal that, if this column had been brung up proper, it would refer to as a “light supper” (the most toe-curling phrase in English-language food writing).
Kit
Connoisseurs insist shakshuka should be eaten from the pan. Why is hard to discern, and, obviously, it’s impractical if serving a group. Instead, use bowls with curved sides – rather than diagonally sloping – to facilitate an easy circular sweep with the bread. Also, deploy proper, deep, round soup spoons with a thin, almost sharp edge rather than blunted oval dessert spoons. The latter can make it difficult to cut your egg. You may end up chasing it around your bowl as it dives for cover.
Drink
Do you need one? Your brunch order would surely start with a flat white that you will finish before the arrival of the shakshuka, which like any soupy dish will become bloating if consumed with a large drink. Keep a glass of water handy. You may need to rinse your mouth periodically – like sluicing down a clogged cattle-grid with a hosepipe – but more fluid is unnecessary.
If you must have booze, in Israel a shot of arak often follows. Aniseed and tomatoes are bedfellows of sorts, and it will, finally, banish the vapour trails of any lingering hangover.
So, shakshuka, how do you eat yours?
