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Tunisian recipe

How to make Ojja with merguez

عجة

All of Tunisia

Ojja with merguez
Photo: Habib M'henni, CC BY-SA 4.0

A quick dish of eggs cooked in a spicy sauce of tomatoes, peppers, garlic, caraway and harissa, often with slices of merguez, a small spicy sausage, or with shrimp. It is eaten straight from the pan with bread.

Serves 4 35 min

Ingredients

  • 3 tablespoons olive oil
  • 300 g merguez sausages, cut into thick slices
  • 3 cloves garlic, crushed
  • 2 green peppers, sliced
  • 1 tablespoon tomato paste and 1 teaspoon harissa (more if you like it hot)
  • 4 ripe tomatoes, chopped, or 1 x 400 g tin chopped tomatoes
  • 1 teaspoon ground caraway, salt and black pepper
  • 150 ml water
  • 6 eggs (use pasteurised eggs if the yolks will stay soft)
  • Chopped parsley and bread to serve

Method

  1. Heat the oil in a wide frying pan and brown the merguez slices for 5 minutes. Lift them out and set aside.
  2. In the same pan, fry the garlic and peppers for 3 minutes, then stir in the tomato paste and harissa.
  3. Add the tomatoes, caraway, salt, pepper and water, and simmer for 10 minutes until the sauce is thick. Return the merguez to the pan.
  4. Make six hollows in the sauce and break an egg into each. Cover and cook over a low heat for 5 to 8 minutes, until the whites are set. For pregnant women, young children, older people or anyone with a weak immune system, cook until the yolks are firm too, or use pasteurised eggs.
  5. Sprinkle with parsley and serve at once from the pan, with plenty of bread.
Made it at home? Tick it off and it goes into your kitchen passport.

With onions, potatoes or other vegetables added, Tunisians call the dish chakchouka instead.

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