Shakshuka with Feta

If your family is anything like mine, your get togethers are centered around food. With Thanksgiving this Thursday and Hanukkah starting next Sunday, I wanted to share an easy breakfast option. With most of your energy focused on the "main event" of the holiday (i.e., the traditional feast), you don't want to deal with feeding breakfast to a full house. My family usually keeps it simple with bakery breads and bagels, but I decided to do something more tempting this year: shakshuka with feta.

Shakshuka, a Northwest African dish, is composed of a tomato sauce with peppers and spices and topped with poached eggs. Ina Garten's sauce contains fennel, poblano peppers, jalapeño, orange bell peppers, and is spiced with smoked paprika. The dish is topped with feta and then baked. Healthy and filling, this will keep you full as you spend the day with family.

I previously believed shakshuka to be an Israeli stew. Whilst researching this post, I learned that the dish arrived in Israel courtesy of Jewish immigrants from North Africa. This dish encapsulates how globally interconnected food is. It originated in the Maghreb African region. I used poblano peppers from Mexico, bell peppers from Holland, paprika from Spain, and feta from Greece. (And I used an American's recipe!)

To make things less complicated, prepare the sauce the night before. Leave the sauce in the sauté pan, cover, and refrigerate. The next morning, bring the sauce out and let it come up to room temperature while your oven preheats. Add the eggs, feta, an extra sprinkle of black pepper, and bake until the egg whites are set. Mine needed 5 minutes more than the recipe states to cook the egg whites.

Get the Recipe: Barefoot Contessa Shakshuka with Feta

Serve with whole wheat pita bread.

Keep the rest of the meal simple with a pot of coffee and some mixed berries.

Thanks for reading!

- Sam