Everything changes everything remains
I have no market haul this week because I’m in London for a few days, visiting my old life. But I do offer you an easy recipe for a Turkish-ish breakfast.
I got off the plane in Luton and we drove straight to Stoke Newington, our home for thirty years before we moved to France. We parked outside of Devran, a Turkish restaurant on the High Street and as soon as we got out of the car into the damp cold of the evening, I could smell roasting lamb and garlic. We ordered plates of humus, sucuk (spicy sausage), and lamb sarma beyti (minced lamb wrapped in lavash, served with tomato sauce and garlicky yoghurt). This is the taste of home, my old home.
I could put the key into our old front door and everything would be the same.
These past few days of running about London (not so much running, more sitting on my beloved 73 bus, gazing out of the window at the landscape of my former life), I’ve been fuelled by bangbiang noodles in chilli sauce, crab linguine, dim sum and Gelupo’s ricotta and marmalade ice cream. I’ve dropped into Boot’s for A Big Shop, and Waterstones to buy too many books. I’ve seen friends and gone to meetings. It feels very familiar. I slip into it easily, as though the past two years have been a holiday and now I’m back in my normal life, as though I could put the key into our old front door and everything would be the same, the creak of the floorboard in the hallway, the plates on the kitchen shelves, the books piled up on my desk. But other people live there now, the address is the same but it is a different house, filled with different lives. Nothing stays, even when everything feels the same. You can’t step in the same river twice.
Turkish breakfast eggs
When we lived in Stoke Newington, I often used to make this for breakfast at weekends, inspired by the menemen I loved at the neighbourhood’s many Turkish restaurants. If you want to make a dish more like shakshuka, poach the eggs in the sauce rather than scramble them. Make small wells in the thick sauce with the back of a spoon, tip an egg into each well and put a lid on the pan for a few minutes until the whites are just set and the yolks are still runny.
Serves 2
1 tbsp olive oil
A knob of butter
2 red onions, halved and thinly sliced
2 peppers, traditionally green peppers, though I used red here as it’s what I had, halved, cored, deseeded and sliced
3 garlic cloves, finely grated
1 red chilli, finely chopped – leave in the seeds and membrane if you like a little heat
4 large, ripe tomatoes, cored and finely diced – don’t bother to skin or deseed them
A good pinch of sugar
Some chilli flakes (optional)
4 eggs, seasoned and lightly beaten
A small handful of parsley, fine stems and leaves only, chopped
Salt and freshly-ground black pepper
Warm the olive oil and butter in a frying pan approximately 20cm diameter over a medium heat until the butter has melted and stopped foaming.
Add the onion, peppers, garlic, chilli and a pinch of salt and fry, stirring from time to time, until everything is softened. This should take about 10 minutes.
Add the tomatoes and sugar. Stir and continue to cook, stirring from time to time, until the mixture is thickened – you want it to be rich, and not watery at all. Taste, season and add a pinch or two of chilli flakes if it’s not fiery enough for you.
Season the eggs with salt and pepper and pour them onto the vegetables. Don’t stir them at this point. You want them to set a little before you stir them into the eggs. At the last minute, just before serving, give everything a brief stir, scatter with parsley and eat with bread.
But now I need to know where you went for bangbiang noodles in chilli sauce, crab linguine, and dim sum! This is so evocative. I live in west London but love going to east London and eating all over.
Ooh I love menemen/shakshuka… some say that if you don’t scramble the eggs, just before you are ready to serve them you break them whirling them around the pan a little with a fork, so that’s what I always do 😋