Today I created my best strapatsada ever. It tasted fantastic. So I'll try to document it for more people to use.
Strapatsada, or kagiana, is a simple dish for breakfast or dinner. Basically, it's a dish of scrambled eggs with added tomatoes and feta cheese. This way it becomes more like a 'dish' by itself -- the only thing that needs now is some bread, chapata etc. Its name comes from the italian word 'strapazzare' which means scramble, mistreat or chop.
Warning. This is not a good-looking food. But its taste is fantastic.
Ingredients
Serves 3 people:
- 12 eggs
- 300g feta cheese, medium hardness
- 6-8 mid-sized tomatoes. Juices are needed in this dish, so ripe tomatoes are preferred.
- 2 tbsp tomato purée
- 1 tsp Indian Garam Masala
- 3 fresh chilies, very finely chopped.
- 4 tbsp milk
- 1/4 cup olive oil
In short, my variation is to use garam masala spice mixture for flavor, chilies for hotness and some milk for fluffiness.
How?
- Peel tomatoes and grate.
- Cut feta cheese in square cubes (e.g. 1cm big)
- Sauté tomatoes and chillies in olive oil. Add respective salt and pepper. Cook for a couple of minutes, until almost all the juices evaporate and you have a nice sauce.
- In parallel, beat eggs until a solid mixture and before they start to produce any foam. Stir in milk.
- Put eggs in pan. Stir like common scrambled eggs: Use a flat spatula to constantly push mixture towards the center of the pan.
- When the mixture starts loosing its liquids, add feta cheese.
- Before the mixture looses all its liquids remove from fire.
- Serve immediately. Goes well with some crispy bread, like grilled thin pita bread.
Tips
- Due to the simplicity and little cooking time of this food, your core ingredients (eggs, feta cheese) should be of good quality.
- Tomatoes can be easily peeled when put into hot water for 1 minute.
- Do not use food processor/multi for grating tomatoes. It breaks the seeds and adds bitterness.
- Tomato purée adds 'depth' to the color (orange-red instead of light-organge) and flavor of tomatoes, and thickens the sauce. Its a must-add IMHO, otherwise your dish might end up having some liquids in the plate.
- Like good scrambled eggs, your strapatsada should be fluffy. You want to get a solid mixture but which the egg has not completely lost all its liquids, otherwise the dish will be somewhat 'dry'. Milk or creme helps here.
- Keep in mind that after removing from the heat, the food continues to cook slightly for the next 30 seconds due to resident heat.
- I don't use oregano because it adds small dry pieces in the bite. Like good scrambled eggs, the greatness of this dish is its simplicity, and for this reason I'd avoid the temptation to add any omelette ingredient like ball peppers, onions, sausages etc.
- Fresh chillies add freshness to the dish and a slight "unbalance" in chewing (some bites are a bit more spicy). This is nice due to the simplicity of the dish. Alternatively, one can use chili powder.
- Garam masala spice blend can be replaced with a good mix of similar spices. Refer to the wikipedia page for more info.