“Sounds like a Digimon.”

-My roommate

Kind of. But not quite. It has been awhile since I made something but this past week for DT breakfast, I made a dish called menemen, a Turkish scrambled-egg dish, very similar to shakshuka, using this recipe from SeriousEats. I was actually planning to make shakshuka until changing my mind last minute and wanting to try something new. As a result, the ingredients are not quite the same but I figured it could still work.

Menemen vs Shakshuka

Though very similar, these two dishes have their distinct differences.

Menemen	Shakshuka
Is of Turkish origin	Is of North African origin
Contains paprika, oregano	Contains paprika, cumin seed, parsley/cilantro
Involves gently scrambling eggs	Involves poaching eggs
Uses diced green peppers and onions	Uses sliced red bell peppers and onions
Sounds very similar to the Muppet song, “Mahna-mahna”	Phone once auto-corrected this to “shark’s hula”

The menemen that I was going to make was already going to be different, based on the ingredients where I had red bell peppers, instead of green peppers.

To scale it up to feed ~6 people, I decided to double the recipe and made the following ingredient changes:

• 1/4 of a 28 oz can of whole peeled tomatoes
• 2 red bell peppers
• 1/2 of a large yellow onion
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp oregano
• 7 large eggs, gently beaten

First, I diced the red bell peppers and the jalapeños but out of laziness, decided to just slice the onions and call it a day.

On a nonstick skillet, I cooked the onions/peppers with the spices for about 10-12 minutes over medium heat before adding the tomatoes.

After letting that cook down for another 5 minutes (which was probably a little too long in hindsight, most of the tomato liquid boiled off), I took out half of the mixture and added the eggs, pushing them around and scraping the bottom frequently until they were just set before adding the latter half back in and folding it in.

Overall, it took about 30 minutes to make? Though it was pretty easy/straightforward to make, I was late making it for DT breakfast since I started making it at 7 and DT started at 7:15. It ended up looking like a decked out Chinese tomato-egg dish. Not sure if menemen is supposed to look like this.

I took some leftover sourdough bread and baked it for 7 minutes at 350F to make it crunchy to eat with the menemen.

Crusty bread + menemen = perfection.

Oh, this was a good breakfast. I was in a rush for a morning meeting so I had to take it to go but as I wolfed it down in the car, I was surprised by how good it was. The oregano/pepper notes and the sweet notes from the vegetables paired well with the sourdough bread. I really like the difference in textures of crunchy/soft.

Regardless if it turned out the way it was supposed to be or not, I would make this again. Probably with red bellpeppers again.

Mahna-mahna.

Doo-dooo be-doo-doo.