Eggless Shahkshuka

Hey everyone!

I was looking at dishes I could challenge myself to make that had eggs in, and I saw this wild dip thing called Shaksuka that looked like a sort of bubbling tomato sauce, with eggs cooked into the sauce. I immediately got thinking about how I could create something that gave that same impact but didn’t have the eggs, and here we are!

Ingredients

• Tinned Cherry Tomatoes

• Pasata

• Red Onion

• Garlic

• Bell Pepper

• Chilli Flakes

• Onion Powder

• Paprika

• Cumin

• Cinnamon

• Pepper

• Salt

• Vegetable Stock

• Potatoes

• Turmeric (for colour)

• Nutritional Yeast

• Ghirkins

• White Flour

• Sunflower Oil

• Chickpeas

So you basically want to dice some garlic, about three cloves and add some red onion and a bell pepper to a hot pan. I threw in cumin, cinnamon, paprika, onion powder, ground pepper, salt and some sunflower oil and sweated the vegetabks through. I then grabbed some tinned cherry tomatoes, which are not as easy to get as chopped but they have a sweetness to them and they break down very well.

I started to cook these down with a finely chopped red bell pepper, and once the liquid had started to dissapear I then topped the entire dish up again with hot water. I began to reduce the liquid down for a second time before repeating that step with some vegetable stock. When you let the liquid sort of dissipate, you get a sugary taste that cuts through any sharpness and then mixed with the other spices, it just comes to life. I added a sprinkle of white flour to thicken.

In a seperate pan I added cumin to some chickpeas, about half a tin and roasted them for fifteen minutes at 200c.

So for the eggs, I’ve tried to create ‘fake’ eggs before and it worked out pretty well as a sort of disguise for a mustard garnish. This time I wanted it to be more cheesey because I’ve seen this dish cooked with loads of feta and I think that’s what is needed.

So I began to grate some potatoes, I used three medium sized MP potatoes and boiled them til they were soft enough to mash. I don’t know why I grated them I just had some recollection that when doing so it kind of cuts through the starch, and I wanted it to sort of create a silky quality that you find in egg whites by doing exactly that. So I ended up with this mash potato to which I wanted to create my cheesey flavor. So I added some of the cheese sauce I had frozen for the pizza recipe I presented here.

Adding a roux to this potato mixture, really worked fantastically to create a sort of egg white, cheesey dip that worked for what I wanted. I split this in half, mixed some termeric and mustard in to the smaller batch to represent the egg yolks. Started to dish up and added the cooled, slightly crispy chickpeas. I really wanted a green element and I wish I had coriander, but I used rocket and I think it kind of worked!

It was amazing so let me know if you’d try it out yourself, serve with some crusty bread!