Turkish peppers, tomatoes and eggs: how to cook the perfect menemen – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to Cook the Perfect…

As good readers of the Guardian, I'm sure you're all familiar with shakshuka, the North African egg dish that first conquered Israel and then brunch menus around the world. whole (with a little help from a Yotam Ottolenghi), but you may be less familiar with the (arguably superior) Turkish version, menemen, for which the eggs tend to be mixed with the sauce, rather than just cooked on top.

"Quick, simple, and tasty," writes Ghillie Basan in his Classic Turkish Cooking, this thick, tomato-rich stew is something something you'll find in "bus stations, train stations and ports wherever there is passing trade". According to Yasmin Khan, it takes its name from the Greek menemnos, "meaning 'to flood' or 'overflow'", which, as she observes, "makes sense when you see a pan of menemen with its eggs awash in juicy, sweet tomatoes, just waiting for you to scratch with pide ekmek freshly baked”. But, as Somer Sivrioglu explains, despite being a famous breakfast dish in Turkey, "no one can agree on the perfect version. It varies from village to village. and from house to house - even in the Aegean town called Menemen, which is not necessarily his place of origin. With that in mind, take today's recipe as my humble contribution to the debate.< /p>The Plant Base

The peppers and tomatoes are the soul of this dish - although the Green pepper haters, who seem to be legion (on media networks, at least), will be disappointed to find that they seem to be the most popular choice, with Turkey being an avid consumer of peppers of all shapes and colors, including the long, thin, pale green sivri biber (literally "hot pepper", although they vary in pungency) called for by Özlem Warren in his book Özlem's Turkish Table. cater to Turkish or Balkan communities, however, if you're averse to heat, you can swap out the paler green carliston peppers suggested by Bashan, or the larger, greener, flatter bullhorn/roman peppers mentioned by Sivrioglu in Anatolia, which he co-wrote with David Dale, although these are usually sold in red in the UK.

J Kenji López-Alt allows the Most recipes call for a green pepper, but, he writes, the best menemens are made "with an entirely different type of green pepper: a thinner, less herbaceous pepper with a touch more bitterness and a distinct heat". It lists Japanese shishito, Chinese long, green horn or padrón peppers...