Shakshuka with Spinach

1. Heat the oil in a wide frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and pepper with a pinch of salt and cook for 8 to 10 minutes until soft and starting to colour. Do not rush this; it is where the flavour comes from.
2. Add the garlic, cumin and paprika. Cook for one minute until fragrant.
3. Pour in the tomatoes. Simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until thickened enough that a spoon leaves a trail.
4. Stir in the spinach a handful at a time until wilted. Season.
5. Make four wells in the sauce with the back of a spoon. Crack an egg into each.
6. Cover and cook for 5 to 8 minutes, until the whites are set and the yolks still soft. Check at five; they go from perfect to firm quickly.
7. Scatter over feta and parsley if using. Serve from the pan.

Most people eat almost no protein at breakfast. Toast, cereal and pastries deliver under ten grams, which is why hunger arrives at eleven and stays. Two eggs plus feta here gets you to roughly 30g, which is the threshold where muscle protein synthesis actually responds.

The eggs bring more than protein. Yolks carry cholesterol, which is the raw material testosterone is synthesised from, along with vitamin D and choline. Men on very low fat diets consistently show lower testosterone, and skipping yolks is how most people end up there.

Adding spinach does two things. It brings magnesium, one of only two minerals with reasonably consistent evidence linking status to testosterone, and iron, which matters more for women with heavy periods than almost any other nutrient.

Cooking the tomatoes in olive oil is not incidental either. Lycopene absorbs several times better from cooked tomatoes with fat present than from raw ones.

More on why breakfast matters: three breakfast mistakes killing your testosterone.