Scrambled Eggs with Arabic Sausage and Za’atar Toast Recipe from Dubai

There is nothing quite as relaxing as a late weekend eggs breakfast or a slow breakfast on a holiday. This scrambled eggs with Arabic sausage and za’atar toast recipe gives a Middle Eastern twist to classic scrambled eggs. Made in our Dubai villa rental kitchen, it’s the first recipe in our Weekend Eggs series of breakfast eggs dishes from around the world.

Our first edition of weekend eggs is made in Dubai, first stop on our Grantourismo project, a year-long grand tour of the world dedicated to slow, local and experiential travel, more immersive, engaging and interactive forms of travel that we believe are more sustainable, ethical and responsible. Our quest this year is to inspire more meaningful and more memorable travel.

We’ll be kicking off the project with a launch party, a Dubai sunset soiree, by the pool of our first home away from home, a beautiful villa rental on The Palm, which is perhaps Dubai’s most quintessential digs. We’re inviting friends old and new, from the arts, media, tourism, and hospitality, and we’ll be serving an assortment of Arabian inspire cocktails and canapés.

But onto our Weekend Eggs Dubai edition and our scrambled eggs with Arabic sausage and za’atar toast recipe, and a few thoughts on our thinking behind this recipe series.

Scrambled Eggs with Arabic Sausage and Za’atar Toast Recipe

After a couple of coffees and an attempt at working your way through the weekend edition of your favourite newspaper, you’re probably getting peckish. When you’re at home, you might whip up an omelette or some scrambled eggs, or at the very least boil a couple of eggs. There’s no reason you can’t do that on holidays and that’s why we prefer to stay in a holiday rental over a hotel whenever possible.

One of the things we love about a rental house or apartment over a hotel is that you can make breakfast at your leisure rather than have to rush down to the hotel dining room with wet hair after a quick shower to find that breakfast service finished ten minutes to go, and the buffet looks like it has been raided by plundering pirates.

The waiters are looking at their watches as they start to clear the tables and prep the room for lunch, the scrambled eggs you’ve scooped out of the bain-marie are cold and watery, the sausages are rubbery, the espresso machine has been turned off, and the percolated coffee pots are empty.

These are things that bring Lara to tears after years living out of our suitcases, on the road full-time as guidebook authors and travel writers. A particularly bad experience of the dreaded hotel buffet breakfast in a luxury hotel in Oman was one of the things that inspired this slow, local and experiential project and a year in which we’re trading hotel rooms for holiday rentals.

One of the things that I’m looking forward to is researching and tasting local eggs dishes in each place we settle into for two weeks at a time, and where those egg dishes don’t exist, I’ll be looking to local produce and ingredients for inspiration and developing new recipes for egg dishes that you can cook in your holiday rental kitchens when you’re away. Welcome to Weekend Eggs!

My favourite dish to make on lackadaisical weekend days is simple – eggs. Eggs to me are a blank canvas. When I’m visiting a new place I try to make some breakfast eggs with a local flavour. In Spain and Mexico that would be scrambled eggs with chorizo; in France an omelette with some Gruyère cheese and perhaps mushrooms; in some parts of Italy I’ll make a frittata.

Here in Dubai I’ve opted for my own version of an eggs dish I used to make when we lived here in the UAE (for almost 8 years!): scrambled eggs with Arabic sausage and za’atar toast. The sausages I use are small lamb sausages and are very spicy. They’re readily available at all the major supermarkets in Dubai.

Za’atar is a wonderful spice mix that’s very popular in the Middle East. There are many variations of za’atar, but the typical za’atar spice mix includes thyme, sumac and roasted sesame seeds, and sometimes marjoram is added.

You can buy za’atar croissants for breakfast and enjoy manaeesh bi za’atar, a type of flatbread ‘pizza’ with a za’atar topping as a snack or late night meal. Za’atar is a popular ingredient used on many dishes, eaten any time of the day here.

Thankfully, if you’re on holidays you can buy a small scoop of za’atar from Carrefour or the spice souq for less than a dollar – you don’t have to buy a giant bag of it – although you might be tempted into sneaking some home after you’ve tried my eggs!

For rich and creamy scrambled eggs I use a variation of Gordon Ramsay’s sublime scrambled eggs.

Our scrambled eggs with Arabic sausage and za’atar toast is a cinch to make and comes together quickly but do let us know if you have any questions or need tips in the comments below.

Scrambled Eggs with Arabic Sausage and Za’atar Toast Recipe

Scrambled Eggs with Arabic Sausage and Za’atar Toast recipe

AuthorTerence Carter

The sausages I use for this dish are small lamb ones and are very spicy. They’re readily available at the major supermarkets in Dubai. Za’atar is a spice mix that’s very popular in the Middle East.

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 15 minutes mins

Total Time 25 minutes mins

Course Breakfast

Cuisine Middle Eastern

Servings made with recipeServings 2

Calories 561 kcal

Ingredients

  

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• 4 eggs - large
• 4 Arabic sausages
• 1 tbsp butter
• 6 tomatoes - vine-ripened
• 1 tbsp za’atar
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 pieces rustic bread - for toasting
• 1 tbsp crème fraiche - or yoghurt
• salt & pepper to taste

Instructions

 

• Cook the sausages in a pan. If you need instructions for this, go to a café for brunch instead. If you’re fussy detail oriented, warm some plates in the oven like you should do when you make pasta – scrambled eggs, like pasta, go cold quickly on an unwarmed plate.
• While the sausages are cooking, break the eggs into a saucepan and add the blob of butter. We want silky, rich eggs, so this is important: don’t whisk the eggs.
• Place the saucepan on moderate to high heat and stir the eggs. The eggs will start to solidify as you mix. If you see they’re cooking too fast just take them off the heat, but keep stirring. You should take them on and off the heat a few times until the eggs come together.
• When they’re almost cooked, add the yoghurt or crème fraiche – this will help halt the cooking process. Season to taste.
• Add some olive oil to the za’atar in a bowl and mix. This mix is called za’atar w zeit. Zeit means oil in Arabic. Spread the mixture over your toast.

Nutrition

Serving: 1gCalories: 561kcalCarbohydrates: 32.5gProtein: 37.4gFat: 34gSaturated Fat: 11.9gPolyunsaturated Fat: 22.1gTrans Fat: 0gCholesterol: 490mgSodium: 1054mgFiber: 1.1gSugar: 3.2g

Please do let us know if you make our scrambled eggs with Arabic sausage and za’atar toast as we’d love to know how it turns out for you.