Shakshuka from a Jar of Matbucha: The Ten-Minute Version, the Forty-Minute Version, and Why the Eggs Go in Last
Shakshuka arrived on American brunch menus about fifteen years ago as a slightly exotic skillet of eggs in tomato sauce, and it has been slowly turning into the thing it always was: the easiest good dinner in the Mediterranean pantry. The dish is Maghrebi, from Tunisia and Morocco, carried to Israel by the Jewish communities of North Africa in the 1950s, and its base is matbucha, the slow-cooked salad of tomatoes and roasted peppers our Moroccan pantry guide describes. Crack eggs into matbucha and you have shakshuka. That order is the whole point of this recipe: the sauce is the work, and the sauce comes in a jar.
The ten-minute version
For two people, or one person who has had a day.
- 1 jar matbucha
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 garlic clove, sliced, optional
- 3 or 4 eggs
- Salt, black pepper
- Parsley or cilantro, chopped; feta or a soft goat cheese, crumbled; a few drops of hot sauce or a spoon of chili crisp
- Bread
- Warm the olive oil in a small skillet, eight or nine inches, over medium heat. If using garlic, cook it in the oil for a minute until fragrant.
- Add the matbucha and a splash of water, a few tablespoons, and stir; the jar is thick and the eggs need a little looseness to poach in. Bring it to a gentle simmer, about three minutes.
- Make a small well in the sauce with a spoon for each egg and crack one into each. Season the eggs with salt and pepper.
- Cover the pan and cook over medium-low for four to six minutes, until the whites are set and the yolks still move when the pan is nudged. Check at four; a minute too long is the difference.
- Off the heat, scatter the herbs and cheese, add the hot sauce or chili crisp, and serve in the pan with bread for the yolks.
Why the eggs go in last, and why the lid matters
An egg poaches in shakshuka from two directions: the hot sauce below sets the white from the bottom, and the steam trapped by the lid sets it from the top. Without a lid the tops stay raw while the bottoms overcook, and cooks compensate by spooning sauce over the whites, which works but buries them. With a lid, four to six minutes gives a set white and a liquid yolk. The eggs go in last because a yolk that has simmered in sauce for ten minutes is a hard-boiled egg in tomato, which is a different dish and not a better one. The sauce should be hot, loose enough to poach in and not so thin the eggs swim; a few tablespoons of water into a jar of matbucha is right, and at Denver's altitude, where our altitude guide notes that everything simmers cooler, give it an extra minute under the lid.
The forty-minute version, from scratch
For four, on a weekend. This is matbucha made in the pan and then turned into shakshuka.
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 red bell peppers, or 1 red and 1 roasted jarred pepper, chopped
- 4 garlic cloves, sliced
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin, 1 teaspoon sweet paprika, 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika, a pinch of chile flakes, from the spice shelf
- 1 can (28 oz) whole peeled tomatoes, crushed by hand
- 1 teaspoon sugar, salt
- 6 to 8 eggs
- To finish: parsley, feta, olive oil, chili crisp, lemon
- In a wide skillet, cook the onion and peppers in the oil over medium heat until very soft and beginning to color, 12 to 15 minutes. Do not hurry this; the sweetness of matbucha comes from long-cooked peppers.
- Add the garlic and spices and stir for a minute until fragrant.
- Add the tomatoes with their juice, the sugar and a teaspoon of salt. Simmer, stirring now and then, until thick and glossy and the oil begins to separate at the edges, 15 to 20 minutes. Taste for salt. This is matbucha, and it can stop here and go in the refrigerator for a week.
- Make wells, crack in the eggs, season, cover, and cook over medium-low for five to seven minutes to set the whites.
- Finish and serve as above.
What goes around the pan
Bread is not optional; the dish is a sauce and a yolk, and something has to carry them. Warm pita, a torn baguette, a thick slice of grilled sourdough, or the flatbreads from our cracker shelf in a pinch. A salty cheese on top: feta, a soft goat cheese, or labneh spooned beside. Heat, from a fruity hot sauce, a spoon of chili crisp or, for the Tunisian version, harissa stirred into the sauce before the eggs. A few olives. A squeeze of lemon or a teaspoon of chopped preserved lemon rind, which makes it Moroccan. A pot of mint tea, or strong coffee, since this is breakfast in Tel Aviv and Tunis and dinner everywhere else.
Variations
Green shakshuka. Skip the tomato; wilt a pound of spinach or chard with onion, garlic and cumin, add a splash of stock, and poach the eggs in that. With chermoula. A spoon of chermoula stirred into the matbucha before the eggs, for the herb-and-lemon version. With merguez or sausage. Brown slices in the pan first and leave them in. With chickpeas. A drained can stirred into the sauce makes it a full dinner for four. For a crowd. Double the sauce in a large skillet, poach eight eggs, and serve from the pan at the table, which is the snack dinner warm course that never fails.
The matbucha, chermoula, spices, hot sauce, chili crisp, olives and flatbreads are at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com. Eggs and bread are the errand, and the lid is the trick.
