Shakshuka - Healthy Hot Plate Recipe from Horsepower Coach Maddy Curley

   Hi! My name is Maddy Curley. I’m so glad you’re here to get fit and healthy with me. Even though I have a pretty impressive athletic background as a national champion gymnast, successful CrossFit athlete and coach at Horsepower, I never really learned how to cook, eat and train on my own until my late twenties! My mom and coaches just did everything for me (oh the good old days). But in college I gained 20 pounds. Thus, I began working tirelessly to learn how to lose all that weight and KEEP it off for good, all while having no kitchen and only one hot plate. I’d like to share some of my favorite healthy, simple, and delicious recipes, all of which can be prepared with only ONE HOT PLATE!

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SHAKSHUKA

Ingredients:

2-4 garlic cloves sliced

1 medium onion, diced

1 jalapeno sliced

Olive oil (few tablespoons)

4-6 med./large tomatoes (diced roughly)

Tomato sauce up to 8 oz - small can (instead of tomato paste)

8 eggs

1-2 teaspoons paprika according to taste

Red pepper flakes (optional)

Salt

Black pepper

Fresh cilantro leaves (chopped or whole leaves) to garnish (optional, although gives the dish another layer of flavor)

Fresh baguette, or any other fresh loaf 

Preparation:

1. In a deep frying pan sweat garlic, onion and Jalapeno in a bit of oil on LOW to MEDIUM. Be careful not to brown or burn garlic or it will turn bitter. 

2. Add tomatoes and cook for about ten minutes on MEDIUM. 

3. Add tomato sauce, paprika, salt and fresh black pepper according to taste. 

4. Crack eggs and drop gently one by one into sauce next to each other in the pan and cook on LOW to MEDIUM according to desired level of doneness. You are sort of poaching the eggs in the tomato sauce....traditionally, the yellow of the eggs should be runny when serving. If more firm eggs are desired, cover the pan with a lid. 

5. Garnish with fresh cilantro leaves (but not a must). 

You can serve it with bread and eat it directly from the pan as a communal meal, or it can be served individually!

Variations:

Can cube red bell pepper and sweat/fry it with garlic and sausage. My friends and I like Merguez spicy Moroccan lamb sausage or turkey sausage, but any sausage will be fine! If adding sausage, cut them up into 1 inch slices and drop in during step 2 (with the tomatoes). 

If adding other vegetables, always, always cook with garlic, onion and oil as a first step to cook/soften them.

Improvise, be creative, use your imagination!!