I know I said it before and it is very likely I’ll say it again: there’s no ingredient more versatile than eggs on God’s Green Earth. In my particular case here, we’re taking last night’s dinner leftovers and making them into a satisfying brunch in the late morning the next day. So, what one does when he has some leftover Grilled Tomatoes with all the Goodies? A Shakshuka, of course! You crack a few eggs in that great sauce, add some nice, toasted garlic ciabatta for mopping it all, and you’re in business. Precisely what I did here, perfect late morning brunch for Sandra and myself.
As there’s not a ton of ingredients here. The base of the dish are the tasty leftovers which only need a little bit of “multiplying” and not much else. So, we’re getting some passata, eggs, parsley and a food dose of garlic. A couple of ciabatta minis complete the picture. Passata is a nice time saving shortcut, keeping you from having to start the sauce from scratch but if you want to go for all fresh tomatoes or perhaps for the tinned variety, there’s no problem, the dish is going to take a little longer to cook, that’s all.
I’m starting cooking with three of the four garlic cloves and the parsley’s minced stalks in the cold pan over medium-low heat. I like to heat the pan gently so the garlic has time to infuse the oil before starting to fry. The parsley’s stalks are also really tasty, never waste them!
As soon the garlic starts frying, I’m interrupting the process with the passata. You may want to brown the garlic a bit, but in this case there’s plenty of roasted taste in the leftovers so there’s no need. Besides, if the garlic is browned a bit too much it becomes unpleasantly bitter, requiring starting over the cooking with a fresh batch. Anyway, we’re going a bit “Marinara” here with a sprig of basil thrown in for good measure. We let this sauce develop a bit on medium-low heat for around 10 minutes or so.
While the sauce is happily blipping away, we can concentrate on giving some love to the ciabatta. I prefer pan toasting it with a bit of salt and olive oil. It becomes crunchy and gnarly and delicious. And then you rub it with garlic. Perfection!
Once the sauce is reduced a bit we’re adding the leftovers and we mix it all well. A couple more minutes are needed for complete sauce synergy. Umm… perfection?…synergy? I’m starting to sound ridiculous here. Must be the hunger and the rather subversive smell…
All that’s left to do is creating four nice alveoles in the sauce and cracking an egg into each one of them. Make sure the egg is in contact with the pan, otherwise cooking them will take a while. Might even test your patience… Anyway patience is still needed here as we’re slowly poaching the eggs in the sauce. The process can be sped by covering the pan, thus steaming the top of the eggs. I’m not doing it however. I like soft, liquid gold warm yolks and steaming the top makes the process a bit harder to control. If you constantly have to yank the cover off to check on the eggs, and losing the steam every single time you do it, you might as well not use a cover at all. In any case it takes around 8-10 minutes to cook the eggs like shown above.
I went all fancy-schmansy in serving the dish by going all chiffonady on the parsley. Yes, hunger can do odd things to people as you can very well witness here. What can I say in the end but reiterate what I said in the beginning. The eggs are a wonderful vehicle for experimentation and chances are, even when you make a mistake, the results will still be pretty decent and enjoyable. So there you have it, my Leftover Shakshuka with garlic toasted ciabatta bread. Great brunch!
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