Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day. At weekends we often head in out in search of adventurous brunch offerings, and I’ll usually end up with something that tickles my love of spicy food that I can dip some crunchy sourdough toast into.
My go-to dish when I’m cooking breakfast at home is Shakshuka eggs, a simple middle-eastern/North African dish of slowly poached eggs in a spicy tomato sauce.
The key to the dish is the harissa paste that brings the heat and the flavour of Marrakech. You can find harissa everywhere nowadays and supermarkets will usually stock a well priced own-brand version which will do the job, but if you can then I would recommend finding some rose harissa then that will bring more subtle floral flavours.
The recipe below is pretty simple but has bags of flavour. The recipe serves two people but you can easily double it up with a bigger frying pan.
My record is a 12 egg shakshuka but I needed a huge pan and to continually move it around the heat to evenly cook the eggs.
If you have a frying pan with a lid then that is useful for helping to cook the top of the eggs more quickly, but it’s not essential.
If you don’t have a red pepper in the fridge then you can substitute for a red onion and cumin powder can be substituted for the seeds.
For a vegan alternative you can use chunks of roasted sweet potato instead of the eggs. You can add other elements like chopped coriander leaves as a garnish, or a good dollop of natural yoghurt to serve.
And don’t forget some good crunchy toast to go with it too for a super tasty breakfast. Tuck into your shakshuka eggs and mop up the spicy sauce with some crunchy sourdough bread.