Tchoukchouka with eggs — fried peppers and tomatoes with eggs folded in, ojja-style

pareve Tunisian Jewish · medium · 45 min, including 30 hands-on

A Tunisian mixture of green peppers fried in olive oil and grated tomatoes, seasoned with harissa and caraway and finished in the style of ojja: the eggs are folded into the sauce in broad, soft ribbons, three per person, to scoop up with bread.

Ingredients for two

Method

1. Halve the tomatoes and grate them flesh-side down over a bowl using a coarse grater, keeping the skin in your hand. Split the bell pepper and mild peppers and remove the seeds and membranes; cut the bell pepper into 1 cm strips and the mild peppers into 2 cm pieces (and the hot chilli, if using, into thin rounds). Peel the garlic, remove the central shoots and crush with a garlic press or the flat of a knife. Finely chop the parsley.
2. Heat the 50 g oil in a 28 cm sauté pan over a medium-high heat. Add the bell pepper, mild peppers, hot chilli and 3 g salt. Cook uncovered for 10–12 minutes, stirring every 2 minutes: the pieces should be soft, with browned edges, and the oil fragrant. Frying the peppers is what gives the dish its flavour; do not shorten this stage.
3. Reduce to a medium heat, add the garlic and stir for 30 seconds. Add the tomato purée, harissa, paprika, caraway and coriander, then stir for 1 minute: the purée should darken and turn glossy, and the spices should smell fragrant. Pour in the grated tomatoes with all their juices; cook uncovered over a medium heat for 12–15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
4. Check the reduction: drawing a spatula through the mixture should expose the bottom of the pan for 2 seconds, without any pool of water. Taste and adjust the salt if needed; once the eggs are added, the seasoning cannot be corrected. Beat the eggs with the remaining 3 g salt, just enough to combine whites and yolks. Cut the bread into thick slices (if desired, warm it on the oven shelf for 3 minutes at 200 °C while the sauce finishes reducing).
5. Only proceed once the mixture has reduced well (step 4); otherwise, cook for another 2–3 minutes over a medium-high heat. Reduce to a low heat, pour the eggs over the vegetables and wait 20 seconds. With a spatula, gently draw the edges towards the centre every 20 seconds for 3–4 minutes: broad ribbons of egg will form. Stop as soon as no liquid egg remains but the ribbons are still glossy; the heat of the pan will finish the cooking.
6. Scatter with parsley, divide immediately between two plates and serve with the bread. Do not leave the pan on the hot hob: the eggs would dry out.

On your plate

Cooking tips

Our shakshuka keeps the eggs whole and poaches them; here they are scrambled into the vegetable mixture, as in ojja. In winter, replace the fresh tomatoes with 400 g tinned chopped tomatoes: reduce the cooking time for thickening the sauce by 3 minutes, and serve the fennel and orange kemia as a starter. The vegetable mixture can be made the day before and refrigerated; reheat to a simmer before adding the eggs.

Equipment : 28 cm sauté pan, coarse grater, garlic press, bowl, spatula, oven (optional, for warming the bread)

Tunisian tchoukchouka of fried peppers and tomatoes, finished ojja-style (ojja bel adham): eggs folded into a red sauce with harissa and caraway. Served cold, without eggs, the same vegetable mixture is a kemia.