Modern Israeli Cuisine - Shakshuka
Deconstructing Modern Israeli Cuisine – Shakshuka
A quintessential breakfast dish eaten throughout Israel and North Africa, shakshuka is a simple egg dish with decidedly complex flavors due to the use of a poaching medium comprised of a heavily spiced bed of tomato and pepper sauce topped with fresh herbs. Shakshuka is the king of one-pot breakfast dishes and is typically served tableside in the dish it was cooked in.
Shakshuka is a Maghrebi Arabic word meaning mixture, referring to the quintessential mix of eggs and tomatoes. Although the origin of the dish is unclear, food historians have found historical references in a wide variety of North African countries including Morocco, Libya, Yemen, Algeria, and even Turkey.
Although the original birthplace of the dish might be in dispute, the inclusion of New World ingredients makes the timeframe easier to estimate as it wasn’t until the mid-16th Century that tomatoes were introduced to the region.
Jewish immigrants from North Africa brought the dish to Israel in the 1950’s and 60’s and over the next quarter century the dish became a mainstay of Israeli cuisine, not only at the breakfast table, but also for lunch, dinner, and even as a part of the Israeli Defense Force soldier’s rations.
What is Shakshuka?
Eggs, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and garlic are the typical cornerstones of shakshuka but from there regional varieties can take on a huge range of flavor profiles and can include a wide variety of additional ingredients. Spices usually include cumin, paprika, and chili but may also include caraway and coriander. Fresh herbs are almost always added to finish, but other additions might be olives, spicy harissa, preserved lemons, or beans.
Many regional variations include meat in the form of spicy sausage, such as merguez or chorizo, or ground lamb. Dairy may make an appearance in the form of yogurt or sheep’s milk cheese. In Tunisia the dish becomes a hearty stew with the addition of eggplant, beans, artichokes, and potatoes, and the Turkish version, called menemen, scrambles the eggs in the tomato mixture rather than poaching them and green bell peppers are used instead of red.
Like so many dishes found in Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisines, the list of potential ingredients is only limited by the imagination of the chefs in the kitchen. Perhaps one of the few similarities that all variations share is the true joy of dipping warm bread into the tomato and runny egg mixture and scraping the dish clean.
Shakshuka at Saba
True to his Israeli roots, Chef Alon Shaya has included his own version of Shakshuka on his lunch and brunch menus at his New Orleans flagship restaurant Saba, where he pays homage to the traditional dishes of his past while highlighting the incredible bounty of local ingredients found in his adopted home of New Orleans.
About Chef Alon Shaya
Alon Shaya is Chef-Partner of Pomegranate Hospitality, which includes Saba in New Orleans, Safta in Denver, and both Miss River and Chandelier Bar at the Four Seasons Hotel New Orleans.
He is the author of Shaya: An Odyssey of Food, My Journey Back to Israel. Part memoir and part cookbook, Shaya shares Alon’s deeply personal journey of survival and discovery, exploring the evolution of a cuisine and the transformative power and magic of food and cooking.
Alon, a multiple James Beard Foundation Award winner, was named Best Chef: South in 2015 and his restaurant won Best New Restaurant the following year. He was named one of the "50 People Who Are Changing the South" by Southern Living and one of the "50 Most Influential Jews in America" by The Forward.