Eat IN BED: Lamb Shakshuka
Words & Images by Sam Hillman
As anyone who has tastebuds but lacks self-control can attest, the only way to make the morning-after-a-night-out vaguely less harrowing is to console yourself with food.
Brunch food, specifically; eggs and carbs and the like. While elaborate sandwiches, pancake stacks, and all approximations of the fritter are obvious go-to’s, getting your hands on them involves pants, daylight, and the possibility of running into somebody you offended last night.
While elaborate sandwiches, pancake stacks, and all approximations of the fritter are obvious go-to’s, getting your hands on them involves pants, daylight, and the possibility of running into somebody you offended last night.
Attempting to pull off such foods in a domestic space hold a similar capacity for disaster. You need vigour, dexterity, and an elevated attention span; none of which you presumably have. While there’s a time and place for poaching eggs and individually frying spoonfuls of batter, the throes of a vicious New Year’s Day hangover isn’t it. If you’re fragile, hungry, and tasked with feeding a similarly useless crowd, this is the recipe you’re after. One pan, (less than) one hour, and minimal chance of messing it up.
Recipe
400g lamb mince
3 cups of loosely packed baby spinach
1 ½ cups of chopped kale
1 large Spanish onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves of garlic*, crushed
2 tablespoons of harissa paste
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon cumin
A small handful each of: coriander, dill, parsley
A bit of mint
Juice of one lemon
1/3 cup cold water
¼ cup of olive oil, plus a bit extra
½ cup of feta cheese, crumbled
6-8 eggs
red pepper flakes
Pita bread, lemon wedges and yoghurt sauce (below), to serve
Yoghurt sauce:
1 and a half cups of very thick full fat yogurt**
¼ cup finely chopped mint
2 scallions, finely sliced
1 tablespoon of lemon juice
dash of olive oil
a pinch of red pepper flakes
sea salt and cracked black pepper
Sauté the garlic, onion, harissa paste, and lamb mince over medium heat with a little olive oil, in an ovenproof fry pan for about four minutes. Add the chopped kale and cinnamon toward the end (the lamb will continue to cook in the oven, so don’t become frazzled if it’s still a bit pink), then turn the heat off.
Next, grab a blender, and add the spinach, coriander, dill (save some dill to sprinkle on top), parsley, olive oil, lemon juice and cold water, as well as a good pinch of salt and pepper. Whizz together until a bit puree-ish. Add the greens to the pan with the lamb, and toss them about to combine. It will look vaguely like a muddy riverbank at this stage, but stay with me. Cook this all for another minute, stirring as you go, and remove from heat. Next, use your wooden spoon to poke out nests into the mixture, crack open eggs and slide them into the indentations. Sprinkle the whole ordeal with feta and bake at 325 degrees for fifteen to twenty minutes, until the egg yolks are custardy and the whites relatively set.
While that’s baking, make the yogurt sauce combining all ingredients and seasoning to taste. Throw in the pita bread to warm up during the final few minutes. You can also just leave them in the oven for a moment once you’ve removed the shakshuka.
Sprinkle the dish with extra dill and serve warm, with lemon wedges to spritz, yoghurt to drizzle, and warm pita to dip.
*Feel free to omit if you’re not down with garlic in the AM or don’t want the dish to reach its full potential
**Do not use low-fat. No.