The story of menemen, piperade, shaksouka, and ratatouille
when i was in Istanbul, Turkey, we had quite a nice breakfast at a cafe nearby our Airbnb. It was a rainy morning, and the cafe was warm, full of friendly locals of the area, enjoying their turkish breakfast with their coffee. Here we discovered a dish called Menemen, essentially a mix stir of pepper, tomato, and chili, served with eggs and bread. Its quite a refreshing dish for breakfast, and the cafe ambiance was also really nice. We had a really great time.
A few moons ago i was watching some Marco Pierre White on Youtube, and found one of his cooking video on making Salmon Piperade. On one note, he really is quite an interesting character to study, and is quite inspiring to a degree, and i found his cooking motivating enough for me to actually cook something serious after a long while. On the other hand, it never really registered to me what Piperade is essentially when i watched that video, until i watched it again tonight.
I find myself curious, as both of those dishes look quite the same, and i was wondering whether they have evolved from the same origin, and lo and behold it actually was!
A variation of the food is called Shakshouka, a very similar dish from the maghrebi region —which i found out liteally means the land where the sun sets, its basically the west-most side of the old world: Algeria, Libya, Morocco, etc. The word Shaksouka itself was etymology derived from a turkish sidedish named Şakşuka, which is a different kind of dish, but seems to be an earlier iteration of the others. The dish is also brought by the Magrebi Jews as they migrated to Israel, and has been adopted there, eventhough it was never present in those area.
The word Shaksouka itself is borrowed into French as Chakchouka, and what do you know, the dish also spread to Spain and France with their own twist as Piperade ...and Ratatouille! While its not obvious to see how Ratatouille is connected, especially if youre used to seeing it in the arrangement called Confit byaldi that is famous from the movie with the same name, the original dish itself looks almost the same.
These dishes mustve been spread during the Ottoman era. Its nice to find these connections, and i find these Ottoman dish as a rather nice comfy breakfast!
That breakfast in the Cafe was actually the highlight of the trip for me. I really enjoyed that.
