Shakshuka with leafy greens, somewhat deconstructed

Shakshuka is an amazingly easy, tasty, and typically a healthy dish. It really is eggs poached in tomato sauce, spiced up with paprika, cumin, and chili peppers. 

When we started to make shakshuka, I found a recipe that included spinach, and we quickly expanded that to kale and later to beet greens, which is at the moment our favorite. We realized that it could be somewhat challenging to control cooking of the eggs as we often overcooked them. We still loved the sauce, so now we usually cook an egg separately - hence a somewhat deconstructed version of the dish. It remains one of our favorite breakfasts.

One can, of course cook eggs in the tomato sauce, which is the traditional approach. About 3 minutes tends to do the trick.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 onion, diced
• 1 TBS ground cumin
• 1 TBS smoked paprika
• 1 bunch leafy greens, washed and chopped: kale,  collard greens. chard, beet greens, spinach all work well
• 1/2 cup broth or water if using kale, collards, or beet greens
• 1 cup top quality tomato sauce
• 1/2-1 TBS harissa
• 1/2 TBS miso, optionally
• eggs - we find one per person suffices

Procedure:

• In a pan, saute onions until they are soft and translucent. Use a scant pinch of salt to speed up the process
• Add cumin and paprika, and fry them for up to a minute on medium heat. Add a bit of oil if necessary.
• Add leafy greens.
• If cooking spinach, sautee until the spinach wilts
• If cooking tougher greens, add 1/2 cup broth or water, cover the pan and cook for a couple of minutes so that the vegetables soften
• Add tomato sauce, harissa, and optionally miso. Mix well and bring to boil.
• Adjust usage of salt if using miso as it is quite salty on its own.
• Cover the pan, set heat to medium-low, and cook for up to 5 minutes.
• If you want to cook eggs in the sauce, then crack each egg separately in a small bowl, make an indentation in the sauce to hold the egg, put each egg in its own indentation, and optionally, add a touch of salt to the egg.
• While the sauce is cooking, add more liquid if the sauce feels dry. The sauce should not be watery either.
• If you did not cook eggs in the shakshuka, then fry or poach them separately.

Serve with savory grain porridge - quinoa, teff, oat, millet, etc., or brown rice, and an egg.

Variation

One can steer this recipe in various directions - I don't think the result would be still called shakshuka, but that question is not something I'd prefer to spend my time on. A simple variation that we almost always do is to add some beans - we usually add cooked beans to the plate and cover them with piping hot shakshuka. One can, of course add cooked beans to the pan with shakshuka and meld the flavors some more. Red lentils are another option - add them and enough water to the onion and spices mixture and cook the lentils with the spices and tomatoes or tomato sauce.

A more radical variation involves meat. One can add ground beef (or pork or lamb or a combination) to the onions and spices, brown the beef and then continue with the recipe - one can add some more salt and spices to season the beef properly. The result becomes surprisingly similar to chili - especially if one also adds some beans and skips the green vegetables. But I do prefer the vegetables, this dish is my go-to approach to use tougher greens such as beet greens. Of course, one can always replace beef with tofu...