Shakshuka

Spiced tomato sauce with eggs poached directly in it. One pan, no fuss. The quality depends on the sauce — cook it down until thick before you add the eggs.

Heat olive oil in a wide, lidded frying pan. Cook the onion over medium heat for 8 minutes. Add the peppers and cook for 5 more minutes. Add the garlic, cumin, paprika, and cayenne; stir for one minute. Add the tomato purée, then the tomatoes. Season and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes until the sauce is thick and the oil has begun to pool slightly.

Make wells in the sauce with a spoon. Crack an egg into each well. Cover the pan and cook over low heat until the whites are just set but the yolks are still runny — about 6–8 minutes. Check from 5 minutes.

Scatter parsley and crumbled feta over the top. Serve directly from the pan with flatbread or crusty bread.

The eggs carry on cooking after you remove the pan from the heat. Pull them slightly early.

Method

The sauce is the dish. Cook it down until it's thick and the oil separates slightly — this concentration of tomato solids and the rendered fat emulsified with water is what holds the eggs and flavours them. Skip this step and you'll end up poaching them in broth, which defeats the point.

Heat the olive oil in a wide lidded frying pan over medium heat. Dice the onion and cook it until the edges turn translucent and it's begun to soften — roughly 8 minutes. Add the diced peppers and cook for a further 5 minutes until they've lost their raw edge but still have bite. Mince the garlic finely and add it with the cumin, sweet smoked paprika, and cayenne; stir constantly for 60 seconds to sauce-making|bloom the spices in the oil. This opens their aromatics — you'll smell it immediately. Add the tomato purée and stir it through, then tip in the tinned tomatoes. Season generously with salt.

Simmer uncovered for 15–18 minutes. The sauce should darken, thicken noticeably, and shrink back from the sides of the pan slightly. When you drag a spoon across the base, it should briefly leave a trail before the sauce flows back. The oil should bead on the surface. This egg-cookery|concentrated, emulsified sauce is what matters.

Make four shallow wells in the sauce, spacing them evenly around the pan. Crack one egg into each well — the white will set against the hot sauce while the yolk stays runny from the residual heat. Cover the pan and reduce the heat to low. Check from 5 minutes onwards. The whites should be just opaque and set, with the yolks still jiggling slightly beneath the white — usually 6–7 minutes, though it depends on your pan and the egg size.

Remove the pan from the heat while the yolks still tremble. They'll carry on setting for another minute. Tear the parsley over the top. If you're using feta, crumble it into shards and scatter it across. Serve straight from the pan with flatbread or sourdough for scooping.