Menemen🥚🫑🇹🇷

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Menemen is a traditional and very common Turkish Breakfast dish. It is a simple and delicious egg dish you can enjoy at any time of the day as well as breakfast time. It has simple ingredients like green and red peppers, tomatoes, Turkish white cheese or yogurt and eggs along with butter, olive oil, and seasonings. I prefer not to scramble the eggs but to create some pockets in the sauce and let them stem cook whole in the sauce. Much better also when you serve them in a dish.

Menemen is a traditional and simple Turkish egg dish (originating in a small town called Menemen close by to Izmir, southwest of Istanbul), which combines tomatoes, several spices, green peppers, and eggs, and sometimes with onions and other vegetables (usually when made as a main, not for breakfast, and yogurt or cheese). Several modern versions include sucuk (spicy sausage), minced lamb, or other vegetables like mushrooms.

Finally, you are welcome to top this dish with chopped parsley or chives, if you would like. I also love adding some herbs, like dried oregano or fresh mint, to the yogurt to give a fresh twist to the dairy sauce. It is also traditional to serve this dish with some good bread, which you can use to dip up the sauce and use it as a spread.

Ingredients for 2 people:

4 eggs at room temperature
2 red or green peppers, halved deseeded and sliced
1 onion
1-2 red chillies , deseeded and sliced
400g can chopped tomatoes
6 tbsp thick, creamy yogurt
Fresh parsley sprigs, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
Nutmeg
Dried oregano
Salt and pepper

To serve:

Artisanal sliced bread

Preparation:

Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan. Stir in the chopped onion, followed by the chopped peppers and chillies. Cook until the vegetables begin to soften.

Add the chopped tomatoes mixing well and cook until the liquid has reduced, then season with salt, pepper, dried oregano and nutmeg to taste.

Using a wooden spoon, create 4 pockets in the vegetable mixture and crack the eggs into them. Cover the pan and steam cook the eggs over a low heat until just set.

Beat the yogurt with the dried oregano or the fresh chopped mint leaves and season. Sprinkle the dish with parsley and serve from the frying pan with a dollop of the herb-flavoured yogurt.