Saturday, August 18, 2007

Menemen: Tomato and Egg Scramble, Turkish-Style


This is a delicious twist on scrambled eggs. While it may seem odd to have a breakfast centered around tomatoes, it's really quite good, easy to prepare, and a wonderful way to use slightly mushy tomatoes ("seconds") you can get for quite cheap at a Farmer's Market this time of year.

1 large tomato per person, chopped (for 4 people, 4 large tomatoes, 6 medium, etc.)
1 egg for every 2 tomatoes (so, for 4 people, 2 eggs)
1 pepper*, chopped (optional)
1/2 medium onion, chopped (optional)
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 pats butter
1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled (optional)
Salt
Pepper

*cubanelle (or banana, or green, or pretty much any variety)

Place the olive oil, butter, onion and pepper in a large, deep frying pan. Cook for about 2 minutes on medium-high heat, or until onion is translucent and peppers are soft. Then add the tomatoes, salt and pepper. Cook for another 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Mix the eggs in a bowl, and pour into the pan (or, crack eggs directly into pan, then fish out bits of shell that fell in). Keep stirring periodically until the eggs are done: should only be 2 minutes or so, or it will overcook and get dry and rubbery, which is never a good thing.

Serve with toast to soak up the juicy tomato goodness. Add a small dish of black olives, a hunk of feta cheese, a few slices of lightly browned Turkish sausage (Sucuk), and you have a lovely, traditional Turkish breakfast!

Edited: Picture courtesy of Binnur's Turkish Cookbook.

3 comments:

M said...

Breana, you made me miss home sooo much! I haven't had (or made) Menemen in ages and ages. :)

Binnur said...

Hi,
I'm glad you like the recipe and I would love to see my site's name
and address under the picture:)
Take care,
Binnur

MommySquared said...

Binnur-Thanks for the reminder! I thought I had captioned the photo correctly...I guess I'm still figuring out how that function works. :)

Twitter Updates