Shakshuka at long last

Several years ago I read about shakshuka for the first time: a thick, spicy tomato sauce in which eggs are poached. It sounded like something my husband would like so I filed it away mentally....and never tried it. Until last week. I don't remember what kind of food ideas I was looking up, but green shakshuka came up in my results and reminded me of its existence. I did a red shakshuka but still with greens in it; I'd bought kale for salad but an entire bunch of kale makes an awful lot of salad for one person to get through.

I looked at Love & Lemons' Best Shakshuka and Downshiftology's Shakshuka; my version is mostly the former but with changes emboldened by the comparison. In particular a friend had given me a few spices including berebere, and this seemed like the perfect way to try that out.

My process:

Dice a bell pepper and most of one red onion [I saved some slices for the kale salad I was also making]
Saute in olive oil
Add 3 minced garlic cloves and stir in
Add 1/2 tsp each berebere, cumin, paprika (not smoked)
Crank in several grinds of pepper
Add a couple shakes of salt and, rashly, a shake of chipotle powder
Stir and add one 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
Cook, stirring occasionally, until well thickened.

At this point you would ideally add a handful of kale (washed, torn, and scrunched). I forgot and had to work it in later.

Make wells in the sauce and add as many eggs as you will be eating in that meal (for me, 1-2). Cover the pan and let the eggs cook to the doneness you prefer.

When the eggs are basically done, toast up some nice bread (this is what I bought the Klinger's Roasted Garlic and Parmesan bread for).

Scoop out your eggs and a generous amount of sauce; top with chevre and eat with toast.

Save the remaining sauce to reheat and poach new eggs in for another night. Make sure to downsize your pan as needed so the sauce doesn't become a thin coating on the bottom. I got 3 meals out of this, with a total of 5 eggs.

It will be a few weeks before I make this again, but each of the 3 nights I ate this (with one night off in between each time) I thought, grar, that was goooood.