Clearly I don’t own photo editing software. These winter dinner photos are rough. But also, I’m trying to cook seasonally and winter foods just aren’t as bright and that’s okay. They taste incredible and bring a sense of comfort so I will be content.
I’ve made shakshuka before and I remember enjoying it but this time around, we loved it. I used Melissa Clark’s recipe and served it on cheese grits, which in no way goes with its Middle Eastern roots but goodness, it was perfect. If you want to be a little more authentic, you can go with pita, naan or some crusty bread (and that would cut out an entire dish you would have to make if you just don’t have it in you to get those cheesy grits going.) I started preparing the meal at 5:00 and we sat down to eat at 5:50. Not a quick 15-30 minute meal but doable nonetheless. You could cut this time down by slicing the onion and red pepper the night before. And bonus, if you’ve had a bad day, you can cry all your onion tears right before bed instead of in the midst of dinner cooking chaos. The only changes I made to Melissa’s recipe was to leave out the cayenne entirely and instead of putting it in the oven, I just covered the skillet with a lid to cook the eggs. That way, I could monitor the yolks a little better so they didn’t get hard boiled.
Timeline-wise, while the onion and pepper were cooking, I started on the brussels to get them roasting. And while the tomatoes were cooking, I started the cheese grits.
The cheese grits recipe came from Food and Wine and it was insanely good. I subbed out the chicken broth for veggie broth since I wanted to stay true to “meatless.” Side note on broths, if you aren’t able to make them yourself, I highly recommend Better than Bouillon.
I roasted brussels for the side but another good one would have been arugula with fresh shaved Parmesan, drizzled with lemon, olive oil and salt and pepper.
Here are both recipes:
This is a meal we will be repeating often this winter and winters to come, though maybe not with cheese grits every time because cheese. butter. heavy cream. But when a meal is this simple and this incredible, it will be made again and again. Hope this inspires your meatless cooking, you meat lovers!
*Note, it is not lost on me that the cheddar, heavy cream, and butter in the grits all come from cows which would negate the environmental impact. From the research I’ve done, those emissions are still less than beef production and right now, that’s what I’m going for. Less.