It was a glorious autumn morning in 2018, when we stumbled upon Dan Whalen, and his cookbook, “Tots!” on CBS Sunday Morning. It was as if Dan just got us. Not kidding, by the time the segment was over, we had already ordered the book, and were anxiously waiting for it to arrive to our home. The book itself, even to the touch, it is appealing.
The book had barely made it into our kitchen before we were gathering the ingredients for Tot Shakshuka, one of the recipes in Gerry’s favorite section of the cookbook, “Tot O’ the Morning to You: Tots At The Breakfast Table.” For this recipe, we mainly followed Dan’s steps, however we did make this dish Arner Style-Meatless. If you are comparing our recipe and his, you may notice a few other changes with the way he prepares his eggs, and he cooks his dish in separate baking dishes and we cook ours in a casserole dish. Note, we will post our recipe dupe here, and for our version, we used Beyond Sausage Brats.
If you are a tot lover like us, and Napoleon Dynamite, of course, then we highly recommend this cookbook. Don’t ever be afraid of novelty cookbooks like this one, if you are vegetarian, or even vegan. You can always use substitutes and still make tasty and fun recipes that are available to you.
Tot Shakshuka- Arner Version
Ingredients
- 24 frozen tots
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1/2 lb Beyond Sausage
- 1 small onion diced
- 1 green bell pepper stemmed, seeded, diced
- 1/2 tbsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1 can 28 oz. diced tomatoes with their juices
- 6 large eggs
Directions
- Cook the frozen tots according to their instructions.
- Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over high heat, then add Beyond Sausage to cook.
- After removing cooked sausage from pan, chop sausage into bite size pieces.
- Bring frying pan to medium/high, add diced onions, peppers, and the chopped sausage. Cook for 10 minutes.
- Add garlic, cumin, and paprika, Cook for 2 minutes.
- Stir in tomatoes, reduce heat to low. Cook for 10-15 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Pour sauce from pan into casserole dish.
- Make indentations for 6 eggs with a spoon, and crack an egg into each indentation.
- Scatter tots on to of the dish.
- We added a step here, and poked the yolks with a fork to make them runny.
- Bake for 15 minutes.
- Cool momentarily, and serve hot.
*We eat this for breakfast for about a week. It lasts us a lot longer than the recipe calls for, but it all depends on how large you want your servings to be.
