Eggs with tomatoes, red peppers & bacon

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Eggs with tomatoes, red peppers & bacon from Scrummy Lane

What are your feelings about cookbooks, if any? Do you own any? And if so, just a few, or truckloads? Do you leaf through them and drool over the pictures a few times then shove them on a shelf where they remain for years gathering dust? Or are your favourite ones used so often that the pages are crumpled, stiff with water stains and splattered with salad dressing and cake batter?

Me? Easy. Buy me a cookbook for Christmas and I’m one HAPPY girl (see my Amazon wishlist, family and friends! Ha! Only (half) kidding!) Once lunch and the Queen’s speech are over on Christmas Day, you may just find me curled up on the sofa anti-socially for the rest of the afternoon leafing through the pages of my latest acquisition. And the heavier and thicker the book is, and the nicer the cover, the better!

But thanks to the somewhat ‘always-sort-of-on-the-move’ lifestyle I’ve led over the past decade or so, actually I have ended up owning surprisingly few cookbooks. I have my well-worn ever-faithful Jamie Oliver , Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson tomes and a few others, but not nearly as many as I would have if I had free rein (aka suitcase space) to raid my favourite bookshops’ cooking sections whenever I liked. But this is about to change. Once we’re settled in the UK, expect to find me on the sofa in my pyjamas at 2pm buried under a big pile of cookbooks! Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Mr. Scrummy!

Ingredients for eggs with tomatoes, red peppers & bacon

So don’t laugh, but one of my favourite cookbooks is one that I don’t actually own yet! I know what you’re thinking: ‘Aha! She just scours the Internet for recipes from well-known cookbooks instead of buying them. Cheap-skate!’ Ahem. Well, I may have done this once or twice. Or three times. But honestly honestly, as soon as I get that permanent bookshelf space in this as-yet-non-existent new house or flat of ours in the UK, I will be a cheap-skate-cookbook-recipe-Internet-scourer no more! I’m getting those lovelies ordered by first-class post!

So this ‘much-loved’ book of mine that I haven’t even read yet is Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem: A Cookbook. I know, how ridiculous that I am saying this. But in my defense, I have stroked the front cover and furtively leafed through display copies several times while lurking for far too long in bookshops, as well as ooh-ed and ah-ed over a few of the recipes published in newspaper food sections or adapted on other blogs. Just take a look at the recipes here, for instance. Drool drool! So how can you think that it’s at all premature of me to declare this book a favourite?

Eggs with tomatoes, red peppers & bacon from Scrummy Lane

So this eggs in tomatoes, red peppers and bacon sauce is inspired by a recipe in this very book for shakshuka, which if you didn’t know is a popular breakfast dish in both North Africa (where it is believed to have originated) and in Yotam’s homeland, Israel. I certainly wouldn’t call my version shakshuka, especially with the addition of the bacon, and in fact if you preferred it to be like a more traditional shakshuka you could easily leave out the bacon and add some spicy heat instead! But what I found so inspiring and worthy of copying from his recipe was the suggestion to pan-roast the cumin first to bring out its flavour and then add more olive oil than you would think sensible to the pan and stir it around to let it infuse into the oil really well. Simple and yet genius!

As is usual for the recipes on this here little corner of the Internet, putting this together for a lazy weekend breakfast is easy-peasy. And yes, if you were wondering, I did mean to post this in time for this last weekend but had a little ‘mishap’ related to emailing myself the post from the computer that I wrote it on. As in, I forgot to. I nearly posted something else today as a result, but … nah! You can plan to make this next weekend instead. Never mind at all that it’s only Tuesday because, let’s face it, it’s always good to be well prepared for the weekend!

Anyway, back on track … after doing ‘the cumin thing’ as described above, you simply add the onions, bacon, peppers, herbs and paprika to the pan before adding a tin of tomatoes and a little brown sugar and letting everything simmer gently for about 20 minutes. Finally, you crack in four to six eggs depending on how many you’d like to feed, or how greedy you’d like to be, cover the pan and let the eggs cook for about ten minutes for runny eggs, slightly longer if you like them not-so-runny. Finito!

chopping onions and baconMaking eggs with tomatoes, red peppers & bacon

I’ll leave you with the recipe below, and with an important question. Anyone got any more favourite cookbook suggestions for me? All recommendations gratefully considered!

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5 from 1 vote

Eggs with tomatoes, red peppers & bacon

Inspired by North African/Middle Eastern Shakshuka, this is a delicious and healthy weekend brunch of eggs cooked in a tomato, red pepper and bacon sauce lightly spiced with paprika and cumin.
Prep: 10 minutes
Cook: 35 minutes
Total: 45 minutes
Servings: 4

Ingredients 
 

  • 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 1.5-3.5 ounces bacon or pancetta, chopped
  • 1 onion
  • 1/3 cup olive oil, plus a little more for drizzling
  • 2 red peppers, or 1 red & 1 green or yellow
  • 2 teaspoons brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon paprika
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley plus another for sprinking at the end
  • 14 ounces can of tomatoes, (1 can)
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 4-6 eggs

Instructions 

  • In a large skillet/frying pan (choose one that has a lid), dry-roast the cumin for a couple of minutes to bring out the flavour.
  • Add the oil and bacon and fry for a few more minutes.
  • Add the onion and cook for yet another couple of minutes, then add the peppers, paprika, bay leaves, parsley & sugar and cook for a little longer to bring out the colour.
  • Now add the tin of tomatoes, then half-fill the empty can with water, swirl it around and add the water to the pan as well. Bring the mixture to a boil, then lower the heat and let it all simmer for about 20 minutes. Add a little more water if it starts to get too dry (the consistency should match that of a pasta sauce).
  • Add a little salt and pepper to taste, then crack 4 to 6 eggs into the pan. Put the pan lid on and cook until the eggs are set to your liking (about 10 to 12 minutes – I cooked mine for about 12 minutes and I would have liked them a little runnier!)
  • Drizzle a little more olive oil over, sprinkle with the reserved fresh parsley and serve immediately, with pitta/flat bread (or any other kind of bread) if you like.

Notes

A few tips were taken from Yotam Ottolenghi's wonderful book Jerusalem: A Cookbook to make this dish.
You can leave the bacon out and add a pinch of cayenne pepper or a little chopped chili if you would like it to more closely resemble the more traditional North African/Middle Eastern shakshuka.

Nutrition

Calories: 278kcal, Carbohydrates: 12g, Protein: 7g, Fat: 22g, Saturated Fat: 3g, Cholesterol: 163mg, Sodium: 210mg, Potassium: 424mg, Fiber: 2g, Sugar: 8g, Vitamin A: 2545IU, Vitamin C: 88.6mg, Calcium: 66mg, Iron: 2.5mg
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About Helen Schofield

Don't expect to find anything fussy or complicated here. Just QUICK, EASY & (mostly!) HEALTHY recipes from the Mediterranean and beyond. ENJOY!

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71 Comments

  1. Oh my. This looks delicious! My grandma used to make something similar to this as a scramble, but cracking the edds straight on top and letting them kinda poach up there sounds amazing. YUMMY!!! 🙂

    1. Thanks, Melissa! I just love this brunch … feels kind of a treat, but healthy, too! I really hope you give it a go some time!

  2. aaggh!! OMG we are SO similar, Yotam is a GOD! Jerusalem is my favourite cookbook of all time at the moment, I have made so many things from it whether directly or inspired by it. This caught my eye because when I saw it I thought “that looks like shakshuka” which I LOVE!! And how funny that I just posted a huevos rancheros recipe! The addition of bacon is iso obvious and yet I never thought of it. You rock!

    1. Hahaha … thanks, Nagi … you rock, too!! I love Jerusalem so much that I bought it at a food show in Australia and have just taken it back to the UK with me in my suitcase … even though it was far too heavy and took up too much space! The things we do for food!
      That is a coincidence that you just posted a huevos rancheros recipe – which I loved, too! I think you and I are quickly creating a mutual appreciation society!

  3. This has to be my favourite way to eat eggs! Looks so good! 🙂

    1. Thanks, Matt. You’ve just reminded me that I need to make this again some time! 🙂

    1. Haha … yes, me too, now that you mention it! (it’s breakfast time right now here) Glad you liked it, Pam!

  4. Yotam Ottolenghi’s cookbook is apparently the best thing since sliced bread, so after your recommendation too, I’m going ahead and adding it to my own Amazon wishlist. 🙂 I have loads and loads and loads of cookbooks, and I love to just page through them and daydream about food. SUCH a bad idea right before bed because I end up getting very hungry. But I love to look for inspiration and new ideas and pretty pictures. This recipe is pretty inspiring, too. I used to make an Eggs with Tomatoes dish in college all the time, and I haven’t had it in over a decade. Yours is far fancier, so I’ll have to make yours too. Beautiful photos, I’ll be sharing this on my CH Facebook page! 🙂

    1. Thanks so much for the Facebook share, Sweet Megan! At the moment I am deciding which of my books to give away and which to ship back to the UK, and guess what kind of books mostly make up the ‘keeps’ pile?! I hope you do have a go at making this and enjoying it! Please do let me know what you think! 🙂