[Experiments in Kitchen #2] Menemen

What is Menemen?

Menemen is a Turkish breakfast recipe made from eggs.

Various online recipes name this one Turkish Scrambled Eggs/Turkish omelet.

I describe Menemen as scrambled eggs prepared in a sauce composed of tomato, onions and Turkish peppers.

A number of the recipes online use bell peppers in place of the Turkish peppers as they are not available everywhere.

How I stumbled upon it?

This Sunday, I was searching for different egg recipe and this recipe caught my eye because of its exotic name. Another best part, the recipe is very simple.

I chose this recipe out of the many recipes available online.

The Glitch

The recipe calls for peppers. And I didn’t have bell peppers at home that day. Anyways, since I had made up my mind to cook Menemen, I went ahead with the same recipe while switching peppers with green chilis. Another change I made was to grate tomato instead of peeling and chopping. Both give same result but the latter is a lengthy process.

Here is my version of the recipe.

Menemen [First Try]

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Serves: 2 Prep Time: 5 Minutes Cooking Time: 15 Minutes

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp red chili flakes
• 1 small onion finely chopped
• 3 red chilis chopped into long pieces
• Salt to taste
• Ground black pepper
• 1 tomato grated
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• Minced fresh coriander leaves, for garnish

Instructions

1. Heat oil in a pan.
2. Add green chili and onions. Saute them on medium heat till onions become translucent.
3. Add tomatoes, cover the pan with a lid. Cook for 2-5 minutes on medium flame till tomatoes and oil start separating
4. Add red chili flakes, black pepper, and salt. Mix and saute for one minute.
5. Now add the softly beaten eggs. Keep stirring until eggs are cooked. Takes another 5 minutes.
6. Serve hot with bread.

The result

I have never tasted Menemen in my life. But I am sure what I made wasn’t even close to it. It didn’t even look like the pictures of Menemen I saw online and in videos.

But, it tasted awesome. The soft scrambled eggs with the tanginess of tomatoes and spiciness of green chilies together were a delight to eat. I paired them with chapatis (rotis, Indian bread)

There is another version of eggs that we call egg bhurji (Indian style scrambled eggs). Just remove the tomatoes and add coriander powder and red chili powder to the above recipe and you have egg bhurji.

To be truthful my first experiment with Menemen ended up tasting just like my bhurji with the addition of tanginess of tomato.

For the next time

There are two things I would change the next time I am making Menemen. I will increase the tomatoes and definitely add bell peppers. Let’s see how it turns out then.

What’s your favorite breakfast recipe involving eggs? Thanks for reading. See you all in next post. Till then happy cooking.