Israeli breakfast: scrambled eggs, za’atar labneh, chopped salad, olives and pitta
An Israeli café plate: soft scrambled eggs cooked in butter, labneh swirled with grooves filled with olive oil and topped with za’atar, a chopped tomato, cucumber and onion salad with lemon, olives, and flame-warmed pitta to bring it all together.
Method
- Wash the vegetables and parsley; pick and finely chop the parsley leaves. Peel and very finely chop the red onion; if pungent, rinse under cold water for 1 minute and drain well. Cut the tomatoes and cucumbers into 5 mm dice without deseeding the tomatoes. Leave any juices released while chopping on the board rather than pouring them into the bowl, so the salad does not sit in liquid. Put the diced vegetables, onion and parsley in a bowl without seasoning.
- Divide the labneh between two small bowls. With the back of a spoon, make a spiral groove from the centre out towards the edge. Pour 10 g olive oil into each bowl (1 tbsp), filling the grooves and leaving a glossy surface. Sprinkle each bowl with a heaped teaspoon of za’atar and, if available, a pinch of sumac. Put the olives in a small dish and the thinly sliced green chilli in another.
- Hold each pitta with tongs directly over a gas flame for 15–20 seconds per side, until it puffs up and develops brown spots at the edges. Without gas, heat for 30–40 seconds per side in a very hot dry frying pan. Immediately wrap the pittas in a clean, dry tea towel to keep them warm and soft.
- Squeeze the half lemon over the salad, add 15 g oil, 3 g salt and 2 turns of the pepper mill, mix and taste: it should be bright, distinctly salty and rounded. Divide between the plates beside the bowls of labneh.
- Beat the eggs with a fork, 2 g salt and 3 turns of pepper, without making them foamy. Melt the butter in the 24 cm frying pan over a medium-low heat for 1 minute. If you have just used the pan for the pittas, first let it cool slightly off the heat for 1 minute. The butter should foam without browning, and a drop of egg should set in 2 seconds without sizzling fiercely. Pour in the eggs, wait 20 seconds, then draw the edges towards the centre with a flexible spatula every 10 seconds for 3–4 minutes.
- Remove from the heat when the folds are set but still glossy: the residual heat finishes cooking them. Immediately slide the eggs onto the plates and serve with the pittas, labneh, olives and chilli.
On your plate
Recipe
741 kcal · protein 33 g · carbs 54 g · fat 42 g
Quantities per person
- 110 g Eggs
- 5 g Unsalted butter, 82% fat (200 g block)
- 100 g Labneh, 5% fat (250 g pot)
- 80 g Pita breads
- 100 g Tomatoes, vine or round
- 90 g Cucumbers
- 20 g Red onions
- 4 g Flat-leaf parsley
- 30 g Lemon
- 17.5 g Extra virgin olive oil
- 2.5 g Za'atar (hyssop, sumac and sesame blend)
- 0.5 g Sumac
- 20 g Black olives in brine (Kalamata, Gaeta or Israeli)
- 7.5 g Hot green chillies
- 2.5 g Fine salt
- 0.25 g Black peppercorns
Cooking tips
Chop the salad ahead, but season only at the last moment: salting too early makes it release water and lose its crunch. For more sweet crunch, add 60 g red pepper in 5 mm dice. The eggs can be cooked in 10 g olive oil instead of butter, for a lighter, less rounded flavour. Plate the labneh the day before and keep covered in the fridge, adding the oil and za’atar only in the morning. With a gas hob, for pittas that stay crisp at the edges, warm them over another burner during the final minute of cooking the eggs, 15–20 seconds per side between strokes of the spatula. For a bigger appetite, add 60 g diced tsfatit or feta to the salad and use a little less salt.
An Israeli café breakfast, adapted for home with labneh and chopped salad.
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