I was looking forward to telling you about my perfect shakshuka. Eggs sunny side up, simmered or baked in a tomato based sauce, usually a little spicy, usually with sweet peppers.
It all started when I saw some beautiful, long, red peppers at the supermarket last week. I was nervous to touch them, so I picked them up with plastic. The sign said "Sweet peppers." I sniffed. Didn't smell anything sharp, so I bought a few. I also saw some beautiful orange bell peppers. So I decided to buy what I needed to make shakshuka. I grabbed another bag and used it to pick up what looked sort of like a banana pepper.
Today I got out all my peppers to make the sauce for the shakshuka. I scraped a teeny taste of the long yellowish green pepper to gage it's heat. Nothing. I started chopping all the peppers. As I sliced open one of the long red peppers I felt a burning under one of my finger nails. I decided to taste a teensy tiny speck. Suddenly my whole mouth and lips and a couple fingers were burning. I started splashing water in my mouth before clumsily finding a cup and the milk.
As I write this several hours later, I'm still feeling the effects. I made a very spicey shakshuka with only a quarter of one pepper. The rest I sent up to my Sephardic neighbor, thinking maybe they can handle more heat than I.
Another lesson learned today: Don't take your eyes off the bread you are trying to toast. I think I've burnt more bread than I've made good toast lately. It looked cold one minute and was smoking the next. I have a bad habit of loosing track of time when things are cooking. There was the great fire of 2006, the great smoke filled house of 2010... I'd like this to be the end of that. I'm joining food burners anonymous. My name is Yosefa, and I burn things.
Ouch! I'm so sorry! I once cut up a box of jabaneros, thinking they were the mini-bells you can buy in the U.S. The burning didn't start until after I was done with all the prep. It was the worst pain of my life, seriously worse than either of my labors.
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