Lamb with Tomatoes and Eggs

This was like a meaty shakshouka, another dish I love. It is an Iraqi breakfast dish, and a bit meatier and more aromatic than most American breakfasts. If that offends you, make it for lunch or dinner. I tried this with lamb and beef. The lamb is my favorite but it is more expensive and I know not everyone is a fan. This is such an easy recipe that once you try it, you'll see this is the kind of thing you can throw together at the last minute and has lots of possible variations. I kept the original amounts from the original recipe, but I think it should really read more like, "lots of chopped parsley, lamb for four people, plenty of juicy tomatoes, lots and lots of curry powder, etc."  According to the Saveur article where I first saw this, this is based on a recipe found in a tenth-century Mesopotamian cookbook. It's called Makhlama Lahm, if that means anything at all to you. Here's a link to the original article. 

This recipe finishes the eggs in the oven, but if you have really juicy tomatoes, you can just cover the pan and let the eggs finish on the stove. 

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound ground lamb 
1 minced yellow onion
1/3 cup minced parsley
1 teaspoon curry powder
2 chopped tomatoes, or enough to make it moist and juicy
salt and pepper
4 eggs
crushed red chile flakes to garnish
griddle bread or flatbread

Directions:

Heat the olive oil in a 12-inch frying pan over medium high, and cook the lamb until it is brown and broken into pieces. Add the onion and cook until it's soft. 

Stir in half the parsley, the tomatoes, and the curry powder. Season with salt and pepper, and let it cook until the tomato has broken down. This much lamb takes more salt than I expected, so be sure to taste it. 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. 

Make four little indentations in the meat mixture and crack four eggs in. Season the eggs with salt and pepper and put it in the oven. Bake it until the egg whites are set. 

After you bring it out of the oven, sprinkle on the rest of the parsley, chile flakes to taste, and eat it up with the flatbread.