Normally, I can take or leave bell peppers. Even though their brilliant colors are irresistibly shiny, they still elicit no more than meh when eaten. But chef Lior Lev Sercarz showed me how to make bell peppers essential to a dish.
The secret is spices.
Sercarz owns La Bo�te, an online and specialty food shop in New York City that sells well-sourced spices and his signature blends. When he asked if I wanted to help him write a cookbook a few years ago, I immediately said yes. Despite years of professional kitchen training, I knew little about spices and wanted to learn from the master.
One vital lesson: Spices bring out the sweetness in bell peppers. This is especially true in shakshuka, the Israeli dish in which eggs simmer in sauce sunny side up. Born and raised in Israel, Sercarz ate countless versions of this breakfast dish before creating variations of his own.
My favorite is green shakshuka, for which cooked leafy greens replace the more common tomato-based sauce. Sercarz's easy recipe is ideal for brunch, but I am a nonfunctional human on weekend mornings, so I came up with a shortcut. Palak paneer, an Indian spinach dish, comes already spiced and cooked. Added to a simple base of peppers sauteed until sweet, it's an instant, super-flavorful base for your eggs. (It's the dish I turn to when I have leftover palak paneer from restaurants or takeout from Indian groceries, but freezer aisle options aren't bad either.)
Sercarz taught me how spices fluidly cross borders in the kitchen, and you can taste that here. You'll want to sop up the savory sauce with bread. Pita, naan, chapati, challah _ it all works.
