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WFAEats
Welcome to WFAEats — a fun adventure where we explore all things tasty and interesting in the Charlotte food scene. We want to share stories, recipes and culinary escapades and hear about yours!

A Breakfast To Love, Israeli Style

Amy Rogers
/
WFAEats
Shakshuka

Shakshuka changed everything for this breakfast hater. For years I've insisted that "the most important meal of the day" was nothing more than a bland and boring chore.

This morning in Jerusalem, I sampled my first-ever, authentic Israeli breakfast. And that's where I found it: shakshuka, and it made me swoon.

It's not at all fancy, just eggs poached in tomato sauce with peppers, olive oil and herbs. Like most seemingly simple things, it's deceptive. That's because a successful shakshuka relies as much on texture as flavor. First, a cook must make a sublime tomato sauce. The sauce can't be too watery or too thick, and it needs to be the right temperature to cradle and cook the eggs uniformly, not runny or rubbery. Mine were silky and buttery and perfect. It's no surprise many diners dip bread into their plates to soak up the leavings.

Food historians are divided on the dish's origins. Some believe it originated in North Africa while others place its beginning in the Ottoman Empire. A wave of Jewish immigrants from both regions to Israel in the mid-twentieth century brought shakshuka with them.

There's much, much more to say about the sumptuous Israeli breakfast experience -- but it will have to wait for another day. Today my heart and my palate belong only to shakshuka.

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Amy Rogers is the author of Hungry for Home: Stories of Food from Across the Carolinas and Red Pepper Fudge and Blue Ribbon Biscuits. Her writing has also been featured in Cornbread Nation 1: The Best of Southern Food Writing, the Oxford American, and the Charlotte Observer. She is founding publisher of the award-winning Novello Festival Press. She received a Creative Artist Fellowship from the Arts and Science Council, and was the first person to receive the award for non-fiction writing. Her reporting has also won multiple awards from the N.C. Working Press Association. She has been Writer in Residence at the Wildacres Center, and a program presenter at dozens of events, festivals, arts centers, schools, and other venues. Amy Rogers considers herself “Southern by choice,” and is a food and culture commentator for NPR station WFAE.