Food with Friends: Part II

I love love love hearing about the creative and delicious meals that friends are cooking, no matter where they are in the world. Since starting this blog, I have been sending and receiving so many good food pictures and ideas, it's like a whole new form of communication. 

One of my most recent suggestions came from great friends and foodies France Hahn and Garrett Bauer, all the way from South America (ya gotta love technology!). They suggested that I try making something I had never heard of: Shakshuka.

Shakshuka is a North African/ Middle Eastern dish that basically consists of eggs poached in a spicy  tomato sauce. Food friends France and Garrett sent me this link to a Shakshuka recipe, knowing that this time of year in New Hampshire there is an incredible bounty of tomatoes that could be used in place of, or alongside, canned tomatoes in this dish.

The first step I took in creating this meal was cooking up some homemade chunky tomato sauce (you can certainly stick to canned tomatoes, but I wanted to try making my own sauce, something I have been meaning to do for a while). I used CSA tomatoes and tomatoes from my parent's garden that needed some love. I kept this process very simple:

• Core the tomatoes and cut big X's into the skin

• Dump them into boiling water for 1 minute
• Transfer them to cold tap water
• Use the X's to peal off the tomato skins (I have learned from my dad, a master cook, that it really is important to remove the skins while making tomato sauce because they will be very tough, especially after freezing the sauce)
• Coarsely chop the tomatoes and throw them back into the pot with some olive oil to cook down to the desired consistency. The longer you cook them, the more they cook down and thicker the sauce will become. I used a potato masher to break up some of the larger chunks as it cooked. 

This made about 2.5 cups of tomato sauce. It is crazy how much tomatoes cook down. This is a great process if you have lots and lots of tomatoes to use up, but not really if you only have a few. 

Next, onto the Shakshuka process, which really could not be easier! I loosely followed the recipe, but definitely improvised as I went along. The great thing that I have learned about Shakshuka is that, traditionally, it is a dish that is made with anything that you have on hand. My kind of meal! 

First, I sauteed chopped onion. After a minute I added lots of garlic. 

Then I added green pepper a couple jalapeños.

And eggplant, because I had some that needed to be used. 

After a few minutes, I dumped in my tomato sauce. To that I added some canned sauce to give it more volume, a couple tablespoons of tomato past, the juice of one lime and spices: cayenne pepper, cumin, ground coriander, chili power, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper. This all simmered for about 7 minutes.

Then, the fun part - cracking in the eggs! 

I covered it and let the eggs poach for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the yoke was pretty much cooked. This part is all about preference, whether you want the eggs runny or cooked completely is up to you! I served it for dinner with lots of parsley and feta cheese, along with crusty bread and an herb salad. Lots of CSA ingredients and lots of yumminess!

But I'm not done yet! I had so much tasty Shakshuka sauce left over that I was able to make two more meals out of it! 

Rolling it over to breakfast and another continent: Huevos Rancheros! 

This just felt like the natural next step. First, I heated the Shakshuka sauce with some rice that I had leftover in the fridge. 

Then, I opened a can of black beans and heated them on the stove. 

I baked some corn tortillas until they were nice and crispy. You can fry them but there was a lot going on on my stovetop so I thought baking them would be easier. Either way works great!

I then fried some eggs.

And then I melted some cheddar cheese on the eggs and began assembling the dish: the tortillas first, covered in the sauce and beans, topped with eggs and some parsley, all served with sliced avocado, salsa and sour cream. 

Finally, for dinner that night I made tacos with the leftover sauce and beans. A toasted tortilla with melted cheese, lots of chard and the sauce and beans...

Wow! Making Shakshuka was a huge success. And the whole time I had my good friends, France and Garrett, in mind, even though they are so far away! This is a beautiful thing!