Netta Keesom, editor of the Cook’s Gazette
Part of why I am so enamored of cooking is that it offers countless opportunities to fail. I made the same dish twice this week: eggs poached in a bed of brothy beans, scented with green tomato and garlic. Both times, I left the table satiated, but unsatisfied. Both times, it was the egg that gave me grief. When preparing eggs in this way, slowly simmered in a fragrant liquid, the goal is for the whites to set and the yolks to remain liquid. This is no easy feat. The yolks will often harden even as the whites tremble, so the cook must act strategically. She can spoon some of the poaching liquid onto the whites to help them set faster. She can take the pan off the burner and hope residual heat saves the day. She can pray. In any case, it’s a game of luck, and I had none this week, even if I did enjoy those semi-solid yolks and creamy beans ladled on a slice of sourdough. I will keep trying. Failure in the kitchen are endeavors in fun as much as in frustration.
Inspired by my trials and tribulations, this week’s menu centers on Chef Rebecca Purro’s wonderful chachouka (sometimes spelled shakshuka). Her recipe will help you build the rich tomato-pepper base in which you will poach your eggs. To do so, bring the sauce up to a simmer in a wide skillet and use the back of a spoon to create a few divots where your eggs will rest. Crack one egg into each divot, lower the heat, and cover with a lid—preferably glass, so that you can monitor those eggs like a hawk and act as needed to avert disaster. How long it will take for them to cook depends on the thickness of the sauce, the strength of your burners, and the material of your skillet, so you’ll have to be nimble. It can be five minutes or 15. Err on the side of underdone, as the eggs will continue to set when plated in the warm sauce.
Bread is a mandatory accompaniment. I served my brothy bean concoction with homemade sourdough (a hobby picked up before the pandemic pandemonium). While the first sourdough bread was indeed baked in ancient Egypt and thus hews to shakshuka’s North African roots, a soft flatbread like Fadia Jawdat’s man’oushé would be better. Even for those less excited to bake bread from scratch than I, man’oushé is as easy as can be. The dough can be prepared and placed in the fridge the afternoon before you plan to serve the shakshuka, or mixed and baked in one go. Down either path awaits the inimitable golden-brown smell of fresh bread. I wouldn’t skip it.
While you wait for the eggs to poach, I suggest a snack with which to occupy anxious fingers. Joe Yonan’s recipe for roasted chickpeas from his wonderful cookbook Cool Beans has given me the most success. Yonan draws on a technique developed by Alton Brown where the chickpeas are first baked at a low temperature and then left in the oven—turned off––for a few hours to thoroughly dry, leaving them as crispy as if they were fried, without the mess (and stress) of hot oil. Preface the flavors to come by spicing the chickpeas with za’atar. Both a wild herb that grows in the dry soils of the Middle East and a spice mix composed of sumac, thyme, oregano, and sesame seeds, za’atar is now easily found at most grocery stores and online, but the spices that make up the blend are useful individually and making your own ensures it is fresh.
Dessert is simple, but stays true to the eastern Mediterranean, where oranges, dates, and nuts are often served with sweetened tea to finish a meal. Enjoy the last of the season’s citrus in a salad with fresh mint, coconut, dates, and pomegranate seeds, if you can find them. Should the oranges in your store already look wan, use clementines. Like cherry tomatoes in winter, clementines offer a good alternative when spring creeps in and oranges out.
To embracing qualified success in the kitchen. Good luck!
A Menu for Mastery
Za’atar-spiced roasted chickpeas
Chachouka (Eggs poached in sweet pepper and tomato sauce)
Man’oushé (Yeasted flatbread)