Menemen

The eggs are stirred through the tomato and taken off while still visibly wet.

Egg. Not vegetarian — contains cheese whose rennet the source does not name.

Ingredients

• 4 eggs
• 4 ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped
• 3 long green peppers, chopped
• 3 tablespoons olive oil or 40 g butter
• ½ teaspoon Aleppo pepper flakes
• salt and black pepper

to serve

• white cheese, crumbled
• bread

Method

1. THE EGGS ARE STIRRED THROUGH THE TOMATO AND TAKEN OFF WHILE STILL VISIBLY WET. Not poached in it, not set like an omelette -- broken in and moved slowly with a wooden spoon for perhaps a minute and a half, so what arrives is soft curds suspended in tomato, loose enough to need bread rather than a fork. The pan is pulled off while it looks a shade underdone, because the residual heat finishes it on the way to the table. Cooked until it looks ready in the pan, it is dry and granular by the time it is eaten.
2. THE PEPPERS GO IN FIRST AND GET LONGER THAN THE TOMATOES. Long green peppers, chopped, in the fat for six or seven minutes until they soften and start to char at the edges. They are the backbone of the flavour and need that time; added with the tomatoes they stay raw and squeaky.
3. THE TOMATOES ARE COOKED DOWN UNTIL THE WATER IS GONE. Eight to ten minutes, until the mixture is thick and the oil starts to separate at the edges of the pan. A watery tomato base plus eggs gives a pan of pink liquid -- the eggs cannot thicken it and will overcook trying.
4. NO ONION, AND THAT IS A DELIBERATE CHOICE. Onion belongs in the heartier version eaten as a main meal; the breakfast dish is tomato, pepper and egg, and onion makes it sweeter and heavier than it should be at that hour. Worth stating because recipes differ on exactly this point.
5. THE EGGS ARE NOT BEATEN BEFOREHAND. Cracked straight into the pan and broken up with the spoon as they begin to set. Beaten to a uniform liquid first, the whole thing turns one orange colour; broken in whole, there are streaks of white and yellow through the red, which is how it should look.
6. IT IS COOKED IN A SMALL PAN FOR TWO PEOPLE AND NOT SCALED UP. Four eggs in a twenty-centimetre pan. Doubled into a large pan, the mixture is too shallow, the eggs set before they can be stirred, and the texture is lost. Two pans, or two sittings.
7. The oil or butter heated in a small heavy pan.
8. The chopped peppers in for 6 to 7 MINUTES, until softened and just charring at the edges.
9. The tomatoes added with salt and cooked 8 to 10 MINUTES, until THICK and the oil begins to separate.
10. The Aleppo pepper and black pepper stirred in.
11. The heat lowered. The eggs cracked STRAIGHT IN, not beaten.
12. Moved slowly with a wooden spoon about 90 SECONDS, breaking the eggs up as they begin to set.
13. THE PAN PULLED OFF while the mixture still looks a shade underdone and visibly wet.
14. TESTED: it should be soft curds in tomato with streaks of white and yellow, loose enough to scoop with bread. Dry and uniformly orange means the eggs were beaten and overcooked.
15. Crumbled white cheese on top, eaten from the pan with bread.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Turkey · All recipes