The dish that anchors a brunch menu
A great brunch menu has three or four dishes people come in for by name. The Big Breakfast is one. Eggs Benedict is another. In most cafes, Avocado on Toast is the third. The fourth slot is the one that defines the cafe: the dish a regular orders without looking at the menu, the one someone mentions when a friend asks where to go for brunch on Sunday. Shakshuka has taken that fourth slot in a lot of Australian cafes, and it's worth understanding why.
It suits almost everyone who walks in. It's vegetarian without apologising for it. With the right feta, it suits halal customers too. It looks dramatic, with the sauce still bubbling in a small pan and steam coming off the eggs as it lands on the table. The portion is generous, and small differences from one plate to the next don't hurt it. And the sauce, which is where the character comes from, is a batch item you can make on a quiet day and hold cold for three days of service.
The sauce, in batch
The sauce is the dish. Get it right and the rest is mechanical. The method is simple and you can mostly leave it alone.
Heat olive oil in a large heavy based pot over medium heat and sweat brown onion and red capsicum together slowly for eight to ten minutes, until they soften and lightly caramelise. Take your time here. You want the onion sweet and the capsicum soft. Add garlic for thirty seconds, just long enough to bloom. Then the dry spices: smoked paprika, ground cumin, ground coriander and a small hit of chilli flakes. Stir for a minute to release the aromas, pulling the pot off direct heat if the spices look like burning.
Next go the crushed tinned tomatoes, with a little brown sugar to balance their acidity. Bring the pot to a gentle boil, then drop it back to a low simmer for twenty five to thirty minutes, until the sauce is thick and the colour has gone from bright red to a deep rust. Finish with salt and pepper.
An eight portion batch yields around 1,940ml, which divides neatly into eight 240ml portions. Cool the sauce within thirty minutes (spread thin on a tray), portion it into labelled 250ml containers and refrigerate. It tastes best within forty eight hours, and after that the smoked paprika slowly fades. Three days is the food safety hold.
The eight minute plate
When an order comes in, put one 240ml portion of cold sauce into an eighteen centimetre ovenproof pan on the stove. In a minute or two it comes up to a gentle simmer. Make two wells in the surface with the back of a spoon.
This next step matters. Crack the eggs one at a time into a small ramekin, so you catch any shell and can throw out a bad egg without losing the whole portion, then slide each one into a well. Leave the pan on the stove for another minute or two, until the whites just start to set around the edges. That head start is what stops the whites being runny at the end of the bake.
Move the pan to a 190 degree fan forced oven for six to eight minutes, until the whites are fully set and the yolks are still soft. Put the bread in the toaster while you wait. Take the pan out (with oven mitts, because the handle gets very hot) and finish it with crumbled feta, chopped fresh parsley and a small drizzle of olive oil saved from the batch. Plate the toast beside the pan and send it.
From order to plate takes about eight minutes. Most of that is the bake, which needs no attention, so the kitchen can run other dishes at the same time. A pan of Shakshuka won't slow the rest of service.
A generous plate at a clean food cost
Eight portions of Shakshuka cost around twenty eight to thirty six dollars in food, so about four dollars a portion, mostly in the feta, eggs and tomato. On a well judged brunch menu it sells for twenty two to twenty six dollars. That puts food cost around 15 to 18%, which is excellent for a substantial brunch dish and leaves room in the menu for dishes that run tighter.
It also fills a useful spot on the menu. It sits between the Eggs Benedict at the top of the price list and the Avocado on Toast at the bottom, and it gives customers a third option that's neither the cafe classic nor the health pick. People who order Shakshuka tend to bring a friend who orders something else, and across a Saturday service that adds up.
The dish to anchor a brunch menu around
Shakshuka is one of the most generous dishes a cafe can serve at brunch. The sauce is made ahead and ready to portion. The pan goes from cold sauce to finished dish in eight minutes. The customer gets a small bubbling pan with two soft eggs, crumbled feta and the smell of smoked paprika, and the kitchen has sent a high margin dish without holding anything else up.
More cafes should be running it, and the ones serving it well are quietly building a following. Make the sauce on Thursday. Hold it through the weekend. Crack two eggs into a hot pan and bake. Keep going until the regulars ask for it by name.
A cast iron pan of bubbling sauce with two soft eggs and the smell of smoked paprika is a bit of theatre on the table, and people remember it.