Being good Guardian readers, I’m sure you’re all familiar with shakshuka – the north African egg dish that first conquered Israel, and then brunch menus around the world (with a little help from one Yotam Ottolenghi), but you may be less familiar with the (arguably superior) Turkish version, menemen, for which the eggs tend to be stirred into the sauce, rather than simply cooked on top.
“Quick, simple and tasty,” Ghillie Basan writes in her Classic Turkish Cooking, this chunky, tomato-rich stew is something you’ll find in “bus stations, train stations and ports anywhere there is passing trade”. According to Yasmin Khan, it derives its name from the Greek menemnos, “meaning to ‘flood’ or ‘overflow’”, which, as she observes, “makes sense when you see a pan of menemen with its eggs flooded in juicy, sweet tomatoes, just waiting for you to scrape up with some freshly baked pide ekmek”. But, as Somer Sivrioglu explains, though it’s a famous breakfast dish in Turkey, “no one can agree on the perfect version. It varies from village to village and from house to house – even in the Aegean town called Menemen, which is not necessarily its place of origin.” With that in mind, take today’s recipe as my humble contribution to the debate.
