A Simple Breakfast for a Pile of Cousins

 

This past weekend, I had an experience that reminded me why I ultimately chose food as a career (or rather, why it chose me): I fed people. If you shove aside the writing and the commentating, the bitching and the moaning and the kvetching, the politicking and the interviewing and the editing, the testing and the re-testing and the judgment-passing, the lowest common denominator—the bottom-most bottom line—is that I love to feed people. Especially when they sit at the table, head down, spoon in hand, and eat the stuff I put in front of them making happy food noises. Music to these ears.

Sitting around their kitchen table in Virginia were my cousin Michelle and her husband Bill; Susan; and our cousins-by-proxy Lea, and Vanessa. It’s an exciting time: Michelle and Bill are this close to having their first baby, and while the swirl of palpable, flapping hysteria floats around them, enveloping them and all onlookers in a sort of well-meaning, exhaustively nail-biting truckload of advice, of shoulds, shouldn’ts, musts and must nots, these two people have sanity and good sense firmly in hand, especially where the life of their soon-to-be infant, a.k.a. Spud, is concerned.

I used to think that we were all caricatures in my family, and in some ways, we are, myself included: we can be opinionated and noisy and as subtle as a Sherman tank. We’re warm and welcoming, loving and loyal, difficult and diffident, empathetic, aggravating when we think we’re doing it for your own good because we know better than you do, and always well-meaning and deeply passionate. To a number, we also possess the genetic propensity for fancifying pretty much anything that stands still long enough: we overthink the obvious; we generally believe that more is better; we think of parties as affairs instead of plain old get-togethers that could happily involve a big bottle of wine in a basket and a few plastic cups. We’re almost all preternaturally inclined towards the complicated, and it takes a great deal of self-control (which we do not come by biologically) to haul us back from the edge of fancy-ass-ity. When we get together, we can be a little bit like the act of holding one’s breath: when we’re happy, when we’re joyful, when we’re anxious (which we are, usually all at once), we each create so much energy per square inch that it’s amazing we don’t just spontaneously combust, like the drummers in This is Spinal Tap.

Which is why, in my and Michelle’s cases, our individual mate choices have been so yin to our yang: I chose Susan, a woman exceptional for her calm Buddha nature and equanimity, and her tendency towards quiet introspection and simplicity. Michelle chose Bill, a man who tends towards the peaceful and the wildly philosophical, and also, the simpler (like, say, forsaking black truffle on his burger for bone marrow. How much more elemental could one possibly get?). A big fellow with some fairly spectacular tattoos, Bill is what you’d get if you crossed Emerson with Paul Booth. And together, Bill and Susan have infused my family —which is now theirs —with an air of culinary calm: since we’ve been together with them, the way Michelle and I cook has taken a turn for the more basic. Group breakfasts in our family used to take the form of several burners going at once, a fair amount of shouting, at least one pan burning, and an uncooperative matzo brei that (no matter what one did) would never resemble Aunt Thelma’s. It’s taken a long time for us to say, “you know what? Let it be. Make something easier, and with a little less psychic stress involved.”

So this past weekend in Virginia, while planning and preparing for the arrival of The Infant Spud, I got up early and cased Michelle and Bill’s kitchen; I had no thoughts of coddled eggs and bain maries, of Texas toast and fruit sauce, of parmigiana tuiles filled with lamb sausage and pomegranate molasses glaze. There were leftover pitas from Michelle’s baby shower, the day before. There were eggs. There were canned tomatoes, garlic, onions, and spices. Susan set the table, everybody rolled out of bed in varying states of disrepair, and someone made tea and coffee.

I didn’t ask anyone how they wanted their eggs, although I knew that Michelle couldn’t eat them soft because of the baby. I put Bill’s family’s 100 year old cast iron frying pan on one burner, and a stick-proof saute pan on another; I made shakshouka, the simplest thing I could with the ingredients I had. Susan and I doled out the results into French coffee bowls, sprinkled them with a nondescript feta and some parsley. And we proceeded to do something utterly remarkable for my family: we ate in near-silence except for happy chomping noises, and the sounds of spoons scraping the earthy sauce onto the slightly stale, leftover pita wedges from the day before.

We all looked at Michelle mindlessly patting her belly and beamed; breakfast couldn’t have been any better, simpler, or happier.

 

Shakshouka

Israelis claim it as their own; so do Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Tunisians, and pretty much everyone in the Maghreb. Either way, the act of creating a spiced tomato sauce in which one might cook eggs is universal, and there are as many versions of this dish as there are peoples who love it. A boon when time is an issue — you can make the sauce ahead and keep it warm until everyone wakes up, and then break in the eggs — shakshouka is hearty, satisfying, earthy, and also a great supper dish, served with a small salad and some garlic toast. Leftover sauce can be used to poach chicken or tofu; add a handful of raisins, some garbanzos, and toss it with couscous for a very simple and quick riff on a tagine.

Serves 4

1-1/2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon paprika (I prefer Pimenton dulce)

1 medium onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 jalapeno, minced

1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes

salt, to taste

8 large eggs

crumbled feta

minced parsley, for garnish

1. Heat the olive oil in a large, heavyweight skillet until it begins to shimmer, and add the cumin seeds. Cook until they become fragrant and toasty brown in color, and add the paprika. Stir well, and add the onion, garlic, and jalapeno. Cook over medium heat until the onion becomes transluscent, about 6 to 8 minutes.

2. Pour the tomatoes into the pan, stir to combine, and raise the heat to bring to a boil for 3-4 minutes. Reduce the heat to medium low, cover, and continue to cook for about 8-10 minutes, until the tomatoes have broken down, and the sauce has thickened slightly. Taste for salt and season as needed.

3. Carefully break each egg into the pan, spacing them apart by a few inches. Cover and cook until the eggs are whites are firm and the yolks are cooked, but still a bit soft, around 4 minutes.

4. Serve immediately in deep bowls and top with crumbled feta and minced parsley.

Tagged as: Breakfast, fancy cooking, Shakshouka, Vegetarian