Shakshuka

During weekdays I often browse through possible breakfast and brunch foods to cook in the weekends. I was not familiar with Israeli brunch food shakshuka until I bumped into this and this recipe. The pictures were so beautiful that even though I was doubtful about tomato sauce combined with eggs I wanted to give it a try.

And yes it worked. I think eggs are always a must at brunch, in form or another. With tomato sauce they again have a different flavor than when eating scrambled or fried. And as the original recipes say, this dish is extremely adaptable! I also did not follow the recipe, but made it my own version based on what we happened to have at home. This recipe works perfectly like that, as you can mix in different vegetables, different cheese and for example beans, lentils or even sausage of your choice. I had English cheshire cheese in my fridge, but you can as well use feta cheese, cheddar, goat cheese or ricotta, for example.

A friend of mine who lived in Israel told that shakshuka works even better with hummus spread on the sides of your pan. Wipe the hummus and shakshuka with a piece of fresh bread and enjoy the flavors together. Sounds really worth a try!

Here’s my adaptation.

Israeli Shakshuka (serves 2)

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 small green bell pepper, chopped in small cubes

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

1 teaspoon chili flakes, or to taste

400g jar chopped tomatoes

1 tablespoon tomato paste

freshly ground black pepper and Himalayan pink salt

pinch of sugar

1 handful of baby spinach, roughly chopped

1 can of chickpeas, drained

50g English cheshire cheese, crumbled

4 eggs

fresh cilantro to garnish

Preheat oven to 200° C.

Sautée onion and garlic in olive oil over medium heat in a large skillet until the onion softens and gets transparent color. Add cubed bell pepper and sautée for a few minutes more.

Add cumin, paprika and chili and stir to incorporate.

Lower the heat to medium-low. Mix in chopped tomatoes, tomato paste, salt, pepper and sugar. Add spinach and chickpeas and let bubble gently for a few minutes.

Move the mixture in two small oven-safe skillets or pans. Sprinkle with cheese crumbs.

Make two holes in the tomato mixture and carefully crack the eggs in the holes.

Place the skillets in the oven and bake until the eggs have settled. Mine got a bit over-cooked, don’t you let yours to do that ;-)

Top with cilantro and serve with freshly baked bread.

Eggs Benedict with Asparagus

Eggs Benedict, or Oscar Benedict, or my own version between those two. Good morning, it’s Easter Saturday! And only for celebrating the four-days holiday I decided to prepare a nice home brunch. Last night I made a dinner for me and S, the main course being Finnish whitefish and mashed potatoes with white wine sauce. The result was rather disappointing, I will tell you later about it. So my hopes were not that high when I started to prepare the brunch: poached eggs with hollandaise sauce and asparagus.

To be honest, this was my first time ever preparing the very original Hollandaise. I have made before something similar, with less chance to ruin it completely. But this time it was fo’ real. And it turned out perfectly! As did the poached eggs! S was on a computer doing stuff, and sometimes asking what’s happening in the kitchen when he could only hear happy shouts of joy - like “ahh! beautiful! deliccccciouussss! I made it!”

For both Hollandaise and poached eggs I used a video recipe by a Finnish daily newspaper. That helped a lot more than just reading the recipe, so probably would be a good thing to do if you’re not familiar with the preparation style.

So here’s my version of eggs benedict. With this I served a self-baked pita bread, even traditionally you should have your eggs benedict with an English muffin. Also toast would do!

Enjoy the Easter days with good brunches!

Almost Eggs Benedict with Asparagus (for 2)

A small bunch of green asparagus, washed and ends trimmed if necessary

salt

Bring water to a boil in a tall saucepan and add salt. Place the bunch of asparagus into the water, ends down. Cook asparagus (bound together with a rubber band) for around 2-3 minutes. Serve immediately.

Poached eggs:

2 liters water

1 dl spirit vinegar

2-3 eggs

Bring water almost to a boil in a wide saucepan. Keep the heat relatively low, if you let it boil, you will get scrambled eggs instead of poached. Add vinegar.

Crack each egg into a cup individually. Don’t break the yolk. 

Create a whirlpool in the saucepan by spinning the water around for a few rounds with a wooden spoon. 

Place the cup with an egg very close to the surface of the water and drop the egg at once in the middle of the whirlpool.

Keep giving the water a gentle spin every now and then, so that the egg keeps slightly moving all the time. It’s ready when the egg white is set, for a few minutes. The yolk is supposed to be runny so don’t overcook.

Lift the eggs out of the pan and place on a paper towel to drain.

Repeat with the rest of the eggs.

Hollandaise sauce:

2 tablespoons lemon juice

3 egg yolks

150 g butter

salt, pepper

In a saucepan or microwave melt half of the butter. Collect the white whey off the butter so that it becomes clear yellow in color.

Place a small, thick-bottomed saucepan on a stove over a very low heat. I heated my electric stove for 10 minutes with the lowest heat and then turned it off, using the after heat to make the sauce. You can also use bain marie, but be careful not to heat it too hot. If you use too high heat the eggs will cook and the sauce curdle.

Add lemon juice and the yolks in the pan and start stirring constantly. Do not stop but keep whisking for 5 minutes or until the mixture starts to get thicker and is very light yellow in color.

Keep whisking vigorously and add first the melted butter in a thin string in to the pan. When all incorporated add the firm butter in cubes, still whisking (I know this asks for some muscles, eh).

When all is incorporated, let warm up a bit, then spice with salt and pepper and serve on top of toasted bread, poached eggs and asparagus.

Breakfast Pizza

I used to be a big fan of breakfasts. Actually, I still am but these days I’m rarely putting effort on cooking them. When we lived in our previous home it was a weekly tradition to cook in the mornings, try different things and new recipes. Now we mostly spend our mornings grabbing something from the fridge, reading news and browsing social media sites before getting into the things to do during the weekend. Both of us would like to change this though, so maybe in the future you’ll indeed see again more breakfast things in the blog.

The following recipe is adapted from the original recipe of Smitten Kitchen. I actually loved the pizza dough so much that I have used the recipe in my pizzas ever since. The particular thing in it is that you refrigerate it overnight, while it won’t grow big, but in the oven give you a perfectly soft and crispy pizza crust. It’s worth all the time it takes! Talking about pizzas, I love making them and I always - always - make my own dough and never buy the ready ones. I think this is essential for a good, crispy and chewy, wonderfully tasty pizza, don’t you? :-)

The original recipe didn’t call for tomato sauce but I used it in my pizza. I just slowly cooked together crushed tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, a pinch of sugar, salt and black pepper. It makes a perfect basic sauce when you let it boil on a low heat for an hour or so.

Here’s the recipe, I suggest you try it our tomorrow morning. A perfect treat for your slow Sunday! This amount makes two medium sized pizzas.

Breakfast Pizza

Dough:

250ml lukewarm water

1/2 teaspoon dry active yeast

5 dl plus 2 tablespoons bread flour, plus more for dusting

salt

Toppings:

tomato sauce, self made or ready bought

ripe cherry tomatoes

ham to taste, I used smoked turkey

50g grated Parmesan

5 dl grated mozzarella

6 large eggs

freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons minced flat-leaf parsley

2 scallions, thinly sliced

The night before prepare the dough.

Place lukewarm water in a warm bowl. Sprinkle in the yeast, stir and let sit for 5 minutes. Add the flour and 1 teaspoon of salt and knead around 5 minutes until it forms a firm dough. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface, divide into two equal pieces and form each half into a tight ball. Place the balls in separate bowls, cover with plastic film and refrigerate overnight.

One to two hours before baking, place the dough in a warm spot. Preheat the oven to 275 °C 30 minutes before you are ready to bake the pizza.

Then we’re ready to prepare the pizza.

Dip your hands and a ball of dough into the flour. On a lightly floured countertop, pat the dough into a disc with your fingertips, then drape the dough over your fists and carefully stretch it from beneath to form a circle.

Generously dust the baking sheet (covered with baking paper) with flour and place the stretched dough on it. Spread first a little bit of tomato sauce on the dough. Place the ham on the dough. Sprinkle on top half of the Parmesan, mozzarella and cherry tomatoes. Crack 3 eggs over the top (you can prevent the egg whites from running by forming “walls” of cheese around them) and season with salt and pepper.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, depending on your oven. It’s ready when the crust is golden, the cheese is melted and the egg yolks are cooked. Sprinkle half of the parsley, chives, scallions and shallot on top. Let cool for 2 minutes, slice and serve immediately. Prepare the second pizza in the same way.

Spanish Tortilla with Aioli

Happy mid-summer everyone! I don’t know how many of you celebrate mid-summer, but here in the North, I guess at least in Sweden alongside of Finland, it’s a big fest. It’s three days of relaxing, fleeing from cities and spending time at the summer cottage, enjoying the nightless night when the sun doesn’t go down at all, drinking beer and grilling sausages.

I just read from the newspaper that Finnish people, we’re about 5 million all together, eat 4,4 million packets of sausages and drink 11 million liters of beer during the mid-summer. Imagine that! 11 million liters of beer is more in three days than what Saudi-Arabians have consumed in centuries. No wonder alcoholism is the public health problem in Finland.

I spent my mid-summer with S at a friend’s parents place, comfortably near the nature and the city. My friends are food enthusiasts, so for me there was not much to do. Me and S just got to enjoy the incredible summer food and mood. It was a good break from work stress, with good people and we both really enjoyed the weekend!

As I haven’t been cooking anything lately, and I didn’t cook anything basically during the mid-summer either, I am posting you something I did a while ago already. I had a lot of potatoes to use, and I had been yearning for a Spanish omelette for a lot of time. I don’t remember which dish I made, but afterwards had many boiled potatoes as left-overs. So I finally got the omelette done!

Spanish tortilla is basically an omelette with potatoes. It’s super simple to do, just takes a while to prepare it. In Spain they eat it a lot in tapa style, as small snacks with other types of tapas. We had this for brunch. It’s best served with aioli, a strong garlic mayo.

Here I used boiled potatoes, but I know some prefer to use raw ones. If you use raw potatoes, need to cook them in the skillet in generous amount of olive oil before adding the eggs. Using boiled ones is also a bit healthier, if you’re after that!

Spanish Potato Omelette aka Tortilla

4 medium firm potatoes, boiled, peeled and completely cooled

1 large onion

6-7 large eggs

3 tablespoons good olive oil

salt and black pepper to taste

Cut the onions in half and slice thinly. Slice the potatoes.

Heat up the oil in a medium skillet over medium heat.

Beat the eggs with salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Gently mix the sliced onions and potatoes with the eggs.

Pour the egg-potato mixture into the skillet. Cook until the edges start getting firm, and reduce the heat to medium-low.

Cover with a lid and cook more 5-8 minutes until the top starts to get firm too. While the omelette is cooking, check that it’s not stuck in your skillet by sticking a spatula under it or shaking the skillet gently.

Flip the omelette by sliding it on a plate, topping the plate with your skillet and flipping the whole thing over. Now the bottom of the omelette should be nice and golden.

Cook for 5 minutes more until the other side gets a golden color too.

Slide on a serving plate and serve warm or room temperature with aioli.

Basic Aioli

2 cloves garlic

2 egg yolks

250ml olive oil

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon lemon juice

pinch of salt

All your ingredients should be in room temperature before starting.

Peel and carefully ground the garlic in a mortar. It’s important that there are no garlic chunks, would be a nice surprise!

Transfer the mashed garlic into a medium bowl. Using a wire whisk, whisk in first the mustard and then egg yolks.

Very slowly, start adding the oil. It’s very important to add it slooooowly, as it will emulsify and your aioli will become thick. Add the oil first in drops, and then in a slow, fine stream while constantly whisking with a wire whisk.

When your aioli has reached the desired thickness (it should be thicker than a normal mayonnaise), add the lemon juice and a pinch or salt. Whisk until smooth.

If you wish, you can also spice the aioli with chili or lime juice. Be creative!

Parisian Potato Breakfast Omelette

Some months ago I took an objective to try new breakfast dish every weekend, as those days were the only ones we could spend a long time enjoying a breakfast together. I did that actively for some weeks, but then got lazy and the tradition ended before it even really started.

One of my favorite Spanish foods is tortilla española, a potato omelette, that I have some times also had for breakfast (not made by me, though). That is, however, a bit too much work for a morning, with all that peeling and cutting potatoes etc. In the weekends I wish to wake up in a slow pace, enjoying the morning moments with food, coffee and magazines, not spending a lot of time in the kitchen preparing stuff. So one weekend I came up with a solution to my yearn for a Spanish potato omelette: to do it of a ready potato product. Now I know, that it is not the same thing at all. I know those frozen potato products are full of fat and so on, but I will now admit: this was good. We at least were very happy to start a day after this breakfast, so unless you’re totally against using any ready products, try this! If you are, try the Spanish omelette instead :-)

Breakfast Omelette à la Pommes Parisienne

400g pommes parisienne

4 large eggs

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 small onion or half of a big one, thinly sliced

half of a red bell pepper, julienned

handful of mushrooms

1 teaspoon ground cumin

0,5 teaspoon sweet paprika powder

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

a few spring onions (green parts only), to garnish

Sautée the mushrooms on a dry pan over medium heat until they have lost their excess liquid and gotten some golden color. Keep stirring frequently so that they won’t stick in your pan.

Heat the olive oil in an oven-proof skillet. Add in all the vegetables and Parisian potatoes, and sautée over medium heat until the veggies are tender and the potatoes have gotten color. Season with cumin, sweet paprika, salt and black pepper.

Break the eggs on top of the sautéed vegetables, spice up with a little more salt and pepper and place the whole pan into the oven for 10-15 minutes, or until the eggs are cooked.

Garnish with chopped spring onions and serve on a sunny morning.