SHAKSHUKA & TURKISH EGGS

All about the blend of cultures

Hello you wonderful bunch I am going to keep the intro pretty swift as there is a double recipe in this one! Yes, that’s right, DOUBLE RECIPE WEEK! We are talking about poached eggs! So there is a lot to get through.

The one special thing I did this week was going to Kebab Queen in Covent Garden. I did this crazy fun job where I went around London eating at some slightly different places and Kebab Queen was one of them, I got to taste a couple of the dishes so needed to go back for the full experience.

Basically, it’s a restaurant that sits ten people, there is a heated counter that they serve the food straight onto in, an open kitchen set up so you see everything that is going on. The food that Pam (head chef) serves is a mixture of Turkish and Asian flavours, there were 8 courses and everything was superb! (That’s a very ADHD rambling sentence)

I can’t remember half the stuff we eat, but there were things like gochujang and smoked honey butter served with burnt butter and caraway seed bun!

The best part of the experience was that you don’t get any cutlery you just use your hands and suck the food up from the table, Pam said at the beginning

“This is a safe space and nobody judges you here” Brilliant!

The meal was a gifted experience, but the 8-course tasting menu is £110 per person without drinks, it takes around 3 hours for the full experience. I found the whole experience unreal and would definitely go back.

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Lessons with Mart - Poached Eggs

• It’s called a poached egg, not a boiled egg

• A big pan will allow for more eggs

• The water heat is described as a shimmering stage

• I like vinegar - add it if you like

• Acid helps set the albumen (white part) to set

• Pick the right egg - some eggs don’t work (see below video)

• A deep pan gives you a better shape than a flatter pan

• Give me testicular-shaped eggs

• 3 ½ minutes, drain on paper, eat

Poached eggs 101

The main thing with poached eggs is finding an egg that works for you, everyone talks about the freshness of the eggs, but when buying from the supermarket it's kind of out of your control what freshness you get. BUT!!! The main thing is the egg - please watch my poached eggs 101 and you will see how the different whites perform in the pan and give you a different egg white finish.

STUFFED!

This week is all about Carrots! Don’t forget to subscribe, download and all that jazz!

Recipes

Ok so you are getting two recipes this week, Shakshuka and Turkish eggs, they are two absolute brunch classics and both are brilliant in their own right! I am not going to waffle on and tell you about their origins etc as I have a lot to write and Substack told me off for writing too much last week!