I’ve been branching out with my cooking lately, trying to find a few new recipes to add to heavy rotation and some fun things that are slightly out of my comfort zone (read: not asian.) 😉

Monday night, we tried out a totally new dish for dinner called shakshuka. It’s basically eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce and eaten with crusty bread. It’s of Tunisian origin, but has become a popular dish in many cultures and has endless variations.

It’s pretty simple to put together too. You start by toasting the spices in oil…

Next, add diced onion and garlic and allow to soften in the spices.

When the onions are soft, add a huge can of whole peeled tomatoes and mash em’ up.

While the sauce was warming up, I got some bread ready to toast. I drizzled on olive oil and then seasoned it with salt and pepper before placing under the broiler.

Last step is to poach the eggs. You can crack them right into the sauce and just let them go until they’re as done as you like. I kept them a little runny cuz that’s how we like em’.

The original recipe calls for feta sprinkled on top, but I chose to use goat cheese and a handful of peppery arugula.

Use the toasted bread to scoop it up!

Shakshuka

A north African dish of eggs poached in a spicy tomato sauce with crusty bread for dipping.

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

• 4 to 6 eggs
• 1 28oz. can whole peeled tomatoes
• 5 cloves of garlic (minced)
• half an onion (diced)
• 1 tbsp. paprika
• 1 tsp. red pepper flake
• 1 tsp. cumin
• 1/2 tsp. ground coriander
• salt and pepper to taste
• top with goat cheese and arugula
• bread for dipping

Cooking Directions

1. Toast spices in olive oil. Add in onion and garlic and allow to soften.
2. Add canned tomatoes and mash into sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste. Heat through.
3. Crack eggs into sauce and allow to poach to desired doneness, at least 5 minutes.
4. Top with crumbled goat cheese and arugula.
5. Serve with toasted bread for dipping.

Protip: Let the shakshuka cool off a bit before eating. Jeff and I both burnt our hands on runny molten-hot tomato lava. It was totally worth it though, this recipe is delicious!

Who knew I could cook North African food?

What’s your favorite “ethnic” dish?

July 20, 2011 Alayna Discussion, Recipes 2 comments

Good morning!

Puffed wheat made an appearance at breakfast again. I’m in love with this stuff, it has the texture of popcorn with the flavor of wheat. I sprinkled it on top of fig yogurt with blueberries and puffed amaranth. Apparently, I really like puffed foods.

Tried something a little different for dinner last night. I make miso-glazed salmon about once every other week. As delicious as it is, it’s getting old. This time I used black bean sauce instead and it was really good!

This is the sauce, it’s very salty and slightly sour, not beany-flavored at all. I just spread a thin layer of the sauce over the salmon and baked it at 400 degrees for 20 minutes.

And served it with a stir fry of yo choy sum and shiitake mushrooms…

To make this, I heat sesame oil in a wok and first stir fry the chopped yo choy sum stems. Then the mushrooms and scallions go in, followed by some pre-cooked rice. Once the rice is toasted I toss in the yo choy sum leaves and add a splash each of rice vinegar, mirin, and soy sauce. I also threw some seaweed flake and sesame seed in this one for some added flavor.

This whole dinner is done in 20 minutes. It’s one of my favorite meals to make because it takes very little effort for a very nice result. That and I love cooking with my wok, it’s a fun toy!

Today I’m polishing up a few new blog features that I’ve had in the works for a while. I completely overhauled my About page because the story I had there has absolutely nothing to do with what I blog about now. And maybe you noticed that I changed my header image. Well, I don’t like it and I’ll probably change it again soon. The bright block of green is just too jarring.

What types of header images are your favorite?

July 20, 2011 Alayna Discussion 2 comments