Shakshuka. A red anthropology of insatiability

Shakshuka is an edible archive of wanderings, desires and the human tendency to turn hunger into ritual. The name murmurs, knocks and shakes the pan, for it sounds like chopping and stirring. In the Arabic Maghreb it means a mixture; against a Berber background it recalls a vegetable ragoût; to a Hebrew ear it carries movement. The word announces that nothing will stay pure or separate. First the olive oil. Heated to the limit of patience, it receives cumin, coriander, caraway, garlic and harissa. The spices crack in the heat, releasing oils that do not ask reason for permission. They enter through the nostrils, settle on the tongue, set the saliva running. Then tomato and pepper, newcomers after the Columbian exchange, dye the old North African stew red: the colour of fire, blood, sunset and an appetite that has stopped being innocent. The sauce thickens, bubbles, reduces to an essence. The sweetness of tomato brushes against acidity, fat carries the heat, garlic leaves its trace on the palate. Hollows form in the boiling matter. The eggs drop into them. The white must set, the yolk must stay runny, velvety, ready to spread over bread. The whole delight lives on a boundary: not yet hard, no longer raw; homely, yet spectacular; simple, and yet demanding precision. Shakshuka is served in the vessel in which it was made. The cast-iron pan keeps the heat and the memory of every batch. Cutlery is superfluous. Bread becomes an extension of the hand, a tool of tenderness and plunder. Pita, challah or a crusty slice dips into the sauce, prises up the yolk, scoops the oil. Someone slurps, someone smacks their lips, someone wipes the bottom of the pan. A shared meal topples hierarchies. Everyone leans over the red centre and, for a moment, wants the same thing. Temptation comes in many varieties. Tunisia sees in shakshuka the heritage of the Maghreb, home cooking, variants with broad beans, pumpkin, seafood, merguez or kadid meat. Israel has made it an icon of the migrant melting pot, a taste carried over by Jews from North Africa, and the restaurants of Jaffa have turned everyday fare into a spectacle of identity. What at home was often women's work became, in public space, a male performance, a stage of smoke, gesture and reputation. Around the pan gathers a whole family of Mediterranean delights. Tunisian ojja, Libyan versions with gideed, Neapolitan eggs in purgatory, Turkish menemen, Sicilian sciakisciuka. Every culture seasons a similar hunger with its own memory and pride. The rules of kashrut enter the story, deciding the status of eggs, dishes and feta cheese, for man can bring even pleasure under the law. The ethnology of food reveals the secret. People do not eat merely to survive. They eat to remember, to belong, to desire, to show off, to console themselves and to seduce. Shakshuka is cheap, filling, communal, and at the same time shamelessly sensual. It smells of migration, tastes of dispute, stains the fingers, burns the lips and makes you go back with bread for the last streak of sauce. A little always remains at the bottom. Not by accident. It is bait for the insatiable. ## Three etymologies of one pan The name has three fathers, and none will disown it. In Maghrebi Arabic, shakshouka means "mixture" or "combination". The word describes a method, not a list of ingredients: chaos in a pan. The Berber hypothesis derives the name from a traditional vegetable ragoût and places the dish in the indigenous cuisine of North Africa. The third route leads to the Hebrew verb leshakshek, "to shake", "to mix", invoked by cookbooks devoted to Jerusalem. There is also a fourth father, the least romantic but the most important. Without the Columbian exchange, shakshuka would be green. Only tomatoes and peppers, which reached the Mediterranean after the 16th century, turned the Maghrebi stew into a red banner of appetite. The most "traditional" colour of this dish sailed in from America. ## Rigour disguised as chaos Shakshuka pretends to be improvisation, but it is a procedure. It begins with what cooks call blooming the spices: cumin, coriander and, crucially in Tunisia, caraway are fried in good olive oil until they release their oils. Then fresh tomatoes, peppers, garlic and harissa, deliberately mixed into an anarchic whole that reduces into a thick emulsion. The critical point is the eggs. They are laid into hollows in the sauce, and temperature decides everything. The white must be fully set and white, the yolk runny. A few moments too long and the pan loses its soul. Tradition says shakshuka is served in the same vessel it was cooked in, ideally cast iron. No cutlery is used. The only tool is bread, French, pita or challah, and this rule is not folklore. Eating from one pan without cutlery makes people equal at the table. ## Whose is shakshuka? A quiet dispute is waged over shakshuka, which scholars call gastronationalism. For Tunisia it is an indigenous national dish and the foundation of home cooking, the heritage of the Maghreb and of the Berber tradition, with regional variants passed down by word of mouth. For Israel it is an icon of modern national cuisine and a symbol of the melting pot in which immigrants fused together. The most famous face of Israeli shakshuka is Bino Gabso, known as Dr. Shakshuka. A descendant of Jewish immigrants from Libya, he runs a restaurant in the heart of Jaffa and serves Libyan variants, with kadid meat or merguez sausages. He is a living monument to the migration of flavours and at the same time an illustration of the thesis that in public space women's home cooking becomes a male spectacle. Shakshuka is classic diaspora cooking. Tunisian Jews who came to Israel in the 1950s ate it in a new and often unfriendly environment, like medicine for a lost home. Scholars speak of gastronostalgia. Put more simply: the smell of cumin in olive oil was the only place you could go back to. ## A map of the siblings In Tunisia shakshuka is confused with ojja, which has more garlic, more caraway and differently cut ingredients. The argument over whether potatoes tell one from the other has no end. Mahdia adds broad beans, Ksour Essef pumpkin, Djerba dried kadid meat. Libya reaches for gideed, preserved dried meat. North of the Mediterranean the same idea wears other clothes. Sicilian sciakisciuka admits its Maghrebi roots in its very name. Naples has uova in purgatorio, eggs in purgatory, stewed in a spicy tomato sauce. Turkish menemen is eggs beaten into the sauce, closer to loose scrambled eggs with vegetables. Turkish şakşuka, on the other hand, is an entirely different dish, a cold mezze of roasted aubergines in tomatoes, with no eggs. Spain bakes huevos a la flamenca with vegetables and cured meats. One hunger, a thousand stamps. ## Law and pleasure Kosher cooking takes shakshuka seriously, because in halakha the egg is a subject. A blood spot in an unfertilised farm egg does not mean an embryo, only a hen's burst blood vessel. The spot is removed for appearances and custom, and the rest of the dish stays kosher. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein was stricter in 1957, because he feared farm eggs being mixed with fertilised free-range eggs. Today's candling of eggs before packing allows the authorities more peace of mind. And there is one rule that changes everything. Add feta cheese, and shakshuka stops being neutral and becomes a dairy dish, with its own dishes and a waiting period before meat. Man can bring even a spoonful of cheese under the law. ## Wisdom from the pan Maghrebi cooking speaks in proverbs, and every one of them fits shakshuka. "If your friend is honey, do not lick him all up." Moderation in relationships, even when the bread reaches for the last streak of sauce by itself. "She who cannot dance says the floor is crooked." Whoever burns the eggs will blame the pan. "Only the one who walks on the embers feels their heat." Other people's toil is not judged from across the table. Shakshuka is cheap, because it is made from seasonal vegetables. It unites, because it is eaten from one pan. It gives identity, because it carried the memory of entire communities across the sea. And it always leaves a little at the bottom, so there is something to come back for. ## Recipe **Ingredients:** - good-quality olive oil - cumin - coriander - caraway (obligatory in the Tunisian version) - garlic - harissa - fresh tomatoes - peppers - eggs - bread to serve: pita, challah or a crusty baguette **Method:** 1. Heat the olive oil in a cast-iron pan and fry the cumin, coriander and caraway in it until the spices become fragrant. 2. Add the garlic and harissa, then the chopped tomatoes and peppers. 3. Simmer until the sauce thickens and reduces to a dense, bubbling emulsion. 4. Make hollows in the sauce and crack the eggs into them. 5. Keep on the heat until the whites are fully set and the yolks remain runny. 6. Serve at once in the same pan, without cutlery, with bread for scooping up the sauce and yolks.