Menemen: Turkish One-Pan Eggs

Although it’s commonly served for breakfast, Menemen – aka Turkish Eggs – is also excellent as a quick lunch or light evening meal. This one-pan recipe comes from the ‘Van Life Cookbook: Resourceful recipes for life on the road: from small spaces to the great outdoors’ by Danny Jack and Hailee Kukura.

This recipe is vegetarian but if your diet includes meat, slices of sucuk (Turkish sausage) work wonderfully in or alongside menemen.

Read our full review of Van Life Cookbook by Danny Jack and Hailee Kukura by reviewer Ruthy Jenkins.

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Menemen: Turkish One-Pan Eggs

A well-known Turkish breakfast dish. I’d always get this from a favourite breakfast spot in Stoke Newington, North London, called Cafe Z Bar. This area of the city has a large Turkish community and incredible restaurants as a result. This dish was always consistent and offered the perfect hangover cure – an unchallenging, delicious plate of spicy eggs with tomatoes and soft bread that could be eaten with a spoon. Cafe Z even served draught beer, which was sometimes needed.

Servings 2

Author Danny Jack and Hailee Kukura

Ingredients

• 1 red onion, finely sliced
• 2 garlic cloves,roughly chopped
• 1 fresh red chilli, roughly chopped, or 1 tsp chilli flakes, plus extra (optional) to serve
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 small green pepper, deseeded and sliced
• 1 small red pepper, deseeded and sliced
• 2 tbsp smoked paprika (optional)
• 1 400g (14oz) can tomatoes or 400g (14oz) chopped fresh tomatoes
• 4-6 eggs
• 5 sprigs of parsley, leaves picked and roughly chopped
• salt and freshly ground black pepper

To serve

• olive oil, for drizzling
• 2-4 pitta bread or slices of soft white bread (1–2 per person)

Instructions

• In a large, non-stick frying pan, fry the onion, garlic and chilli or chilli flakes in the olive oil with a big pinch of salt over a medium heat for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Add the peppers and another pinch of salt and cook for a further 7 minutes.
• Add the smoked paprika (if using) and stir together with the pepper and onion mix, then add the tomatoes. Swill about 100ml/3½fl oz of water around the empty tomato can, then pour into the pot. Bring to the boil, then simmer and reduce for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. You can make this mix ahead of time. Simply cool and store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2–3 days, then finish it later by going to the next step and reheating it before you add the eggs.
• Finish the dish by whisking up your eggs in a bowl and seasoning with salt and pepper. Make some space in your pan by scraping the pepper mixture to one side, away from the heat, and add the eggs to scramble on the other side. Return to a low heat and, once almost scrambled, fold the eggs through the pepper mix, until fully combined, adding in the chopped parsley and more seasoning, if required. Turn off the heat, allowing the residual heat to cook the eggs a little more.
• Divide between two plates, adding more chilli/chilli flakes, if desired, a drizzle of olive oil and some pitta bread (quickly warmed through in a non-stick frying pan, if you like) or soft bread to mop up the sauce.

Our reviewer Ruthy says of this recipe that it was tasty and soothing to eat, and her husband judged it rather special. She notes that while the recipe lists smoked paprika as optional, the dish may be bland without it. She also underlines the note in the recipe that you can make the tomato mix ahead of time the day before to enjoy an even quicker breakfast the next morning.

Recipe extracted with permission. Kavey Eats received a review copy of Van Life Cookbook by Danny Jack and Hailee Kukura from publishers Pavilion. Book photography by Holly Farrier. Home-cooking photography by Ruthy Jenkins.