Chocshuka

When Ethel the Goat first came into my life and tempted me with the #capricornchallenge, I was really excited at the prospect of creating some savoury chocolate and goats cheese dishes. When the hamper arrived full of good things, including olive oil, onions, peppers, tomatoes, thyme and goat's cheese of course, the very first thing I thought about was a chocolate version of Shakshouka. This is a North African dish which is purportedly the precursor to the Spanish Omelette. It's a dish of onions, peppers and tomatoes topped off with poached eggs and is really delicious. This together with Megadarra, a Middle Eastern rice and lentil dish is a staple in our house, especially if we have friends or family eating with us. I first had it when I was living in Egypt and immediately fell in love. Much as I love it, however, I had never had it with chocolate before - well why not? As goats cheese was the challenge ingredient, I substituted this for the eggs and thus Chocshuka was born.

This is how I made it:

• Cut one red onion into thin slices
• Heated 3 tbsp olive oil in a large deep frying pan and threw in a tsp of cumin seeds.
• Added the onion and fried gently until soft.
• Deseeded and cut one large red pepper and one large yellow pepper lengthways into slices.
• Added these to the pan and stirred.
• Deseeded and finely chopped a red hot chilli pepper (lacotto) and added this to the pan.
• Chopped 300g small ripe tomatoes in half and added these.
• Added 2 cloves finely chopped garlic and the leaves from 3 sprigs of thyme.
• Seasoned with salt and freshly ground black pepper, added a splash of water and left to simmer for about 15 minutes.
• Added 25g of chopped 70% dark chocolate and stirred until fully incorporated.
• Added 100g of sliced Capricorn goat's cheese and allowed to melt a little before serving.

We ate this, scooping it up with ciabatta bread and it was even better than I was hoping. The chocolate added a certain richness, without turning this flavoursome,  colourful and inviting dish into the vegetable equivalent of Nile mud.