shakshuka: a retrospective

i’ve written elsewhere about principles that undergird straightforward recipes; now the onus is on me to bang out instructions that my cooking rookie cousin can follow to make her take on my take on shakshuka. my process resides mostly within my head, but also partially on a spartan phone note that i seldom consult. the note in question:

this note thumbs its nose at everything i said a recipe Should Be, and yet it’s all i had time to jot down after spinning up a shakshuka of gratitude for two kindly hong kong host-friends when travel was a thing in 2019.

my brain certainly didn’t birth shakshuka: shakshuka’s roots lie in north africa, and my ties to it originate in the pantry-first cookbook the kitchen shelf. preparing phaidon’s take on shakshuka got me (and one of the aforementioned host-friends, who is, incidentally, an erstwhile college cooking comrade) hooked. i’ve been riffing on it ever since. it might just be the first meal i made for Another Person! even if my memory serves me wrong, shakshuka holds a special place in my heart as the savory dish i’ve served most often to friends and family. it has borne witness to my culinary bloom (pun intended hehe), the very same salad days (heheheh) that have caused its standby status in my repertoire to wane.

here’s to you, shakshuka, faded from my day-to-day but never forgotten, revived by a keen cousin’s 2022 intentions and memorialized on the website of my employer of yesteryear. i’ll do my best to beget a recipe tantamount to the role shakshuka has played in my cheffy journey in the hopes that it might spark someone else’s.

shakshuka (alaina’s version)

yields 2–3 servings

ingredients (see ingredient notes)

• ~¼ cup olive oil
• 1 white or yellow onion, diced
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• a spoonful of harissa (see ingredient notes)
• pinches and sprinkles (anywhere from ~¼ to 1 teaspoon) of a subset of the following dry ground spices, to taste: cumin, paprika, smoked paprika, chili powder, any allium powder, sumac, turmeric (see ingredient notes)
• 1 28-ounce can of whole and/or crushed tomatoes
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 5+ heaping handfuls of spinach, roughly torn
• 1 4-ounce block of feta cheese in brine, crumbled (see ingredient notes)
• 3–6 eggs (see ingredient notes)
• half a bunch of cilantro leaves and stems, chopped
• a crusty loaf of bread, sliced and optionally toasted

equipment

• large nonstick stainless steel skillet/pan with a lid that fits (avoid cast-iron unless your skillet/pan has been well-seasoned)
• rubber spatula or wooden spoon
• dining spoon
• ramekin or small bowl

ingredient notes

• an overall caveat: all quantities are suggestions that i will likely never follow, so feel free to ignore them, too! shakshuka can adapt to your larder du jour.
• harissa: if using jarred harissa, know that some blends will be spicier than others. feel free to try some plain and adjust the amount of harissa you use in the recipe based on your spice tolerance.
• ground spices: choose whatever combination speaks to you! trial and error is okay here, as it is everywhere. :)
• feta: feel free to omit or adjust based on your personal relationship to dairy. you didn’t ask, but the kafkes fam stans dodoni feta in brine as Top Feta.
• eggs: if making shakshuka for one, i suggest only cracking one serving’s worth of eggs into the recipe when you first prepare it. you should then have plenty of egg-free shakshuka base left over, into which you can crack your next meal’s worth of eggs whenever you’re ready to eat them. you could alternatively use your remaining shakshuka base in another recipe! i encourage you to experiment.

recipe

1. place a large nonstick stainless steel skillet/pan on a stovetop burner. glug olive oil into it and turn on the burner to medium heat until the oil starts to shimmer. swirl the oil around the pan, thoroughly coating it.
2. drop diced onion into the pan. move it around with a spatula, cooking ~5 minutes or until translucent.
3. add minced garlic into the pan. move the onion and garlic around with a spatula, cooking ~1 minute or until the garlic is fragrant.
4. dollop in harissa. move it around with a spatula, cooking for ~1 minute or as much time as it takes to thoroughly coat the onion and garlic.
5. pinch and sprinkle in some ground spices, cooking for ~2 minutes or as much time as it takes to thoroughly coat the onion, garlic, and harissa.
6. dump in canned tomatoes. if using whole canned tomatoes, stab them with a spatula to break them down into pieces of a size you’d happily consume. swirl the chunky tomatoes into the onion, garlic, and harissa until the resulting mixture — the shakshuka base — looks well combined.
7. pinch in some salt and grind in some black pepper. grab a dining spoon and scoop up some shakshuka base. let it cool for a few seconds and taste it. continue adding in salt, pepper, and, if desired, more of the ground spices used in step 5 until the flavor profile suits you.
8. turn the burner’s heat up to medium-high to bring the shakshuka base to a boil. once it begins to bubble, cover the pan with its lid and lower the burner’s heat to medium-low. let cook, untouched, for ~8–10 minutes, until the base has thickened (or, in other words, appears less liquid-y).
9. remove the lid from the pan. add in the roughly torn spinach. swirl the spinach into the shakshuka base until it starts to wilt.
10. add in half of the crumbled feta. mix the feta into the shakshuka base until well combined.
11. crack each egg (one at a time) into a ramekin. drag spatula through the shakshuka base to create a small divot, and quickly tip the ramekin to slide the egg into said divot. repeat for each egg, spacing the divots a couple of inches apart from one another to prevent the eggs from running together.
12. pinch some salt onto and grind some black pepper atop each egg. cover the pan with its lid. let cook, untouched, for ~5–7 minutes or until whites look set and yolks still look shiny.
13. remove the lid from the pan. scatter the remaining crumbled feta and all of the cilantro atop the shakshuka.
14. spoon shakshuka into bowls. tuck in a slice or two of crusty bread and serve.