Breakfast for Dinner with Lamb Shakshuka and Farmer Jess

BY JESS JAGER

In our house we don’t eat breakfast until after the animals have had theirs. After a hot cup of coffee we are out and into the barnyard by 7am.

We busy ourselves with the task of feeding the animals, filling water troughs, milking the cow and checking to make sure that the evening hours had been kind to our herd. Upon returning to the house, we are ready for our day and the desire to to make a large breakfast is usually lost.

Big breakfasts with bacon and pancakes or waffles, fruits juices and fresh produce are often saved for dinner meals around the farm. And we don’t mess around, we take the task seriously. It often begins with checking the freezer for a delicious cut of meat, we collect eggs from our chickens, pull out butter from our cow and find cans of veggies put up from the summer’s harvest.

One of our favorite recipes is Lamb Shakshuka, as it highlights many of the things that we grow right here. It uses lamb from the fall harvest, eggs from that day, tomatoes that were canned at the peak of the growing season with garlic and onions grown by some of our fellow farmer friends.

This is a recipe that shows off the hard work of the farmer and the beautiful provision of this land. It is a meal that is full of flavor for the mouth and warmth for the belly.

Shakshuka means, shaken. And because of that I want you to feel the freedom to let go of a picture perfect dish and instead allow the ingredients to bring the beauty. I also want to encourage you to make this recipe as it is written the first time and invite yourself to play with it, making the sauce your own the next.

This is a dish that should reflect what you have and in knowing that you can change the meat, the peppers, the chilis and even the cheese in honor of what’s available to you at the moment.

I suggest serving this with a warm loaf of crusty bread to act as a vehicle for the sauce or some roasted potatoes and a green salad.

Whatever you choose, keep it simple, the sauce and meat in this recipe are more than able to do the talking here, allowing you to bring a dish to the table that wows without costing you hours in the kitchen.

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