Algerian Cuisine Cuisine Algerienne by Farid ZADI

Chorba for Ramadan

This chorba is very low salt, nutrient dense and soothing- perfect for suhur (pre-sunrise meal). Instead of using a more traditional whole chicken I used cubed chicken breast for a lighter finished product. I used a soup pot but this recipe can be made in a pressure cooker or slow cooker.

This soup is so easy that it's a none recipe. I went to Whole Foods (oops, didn't have a chance to go to a farmer's market) and purchased a variety of vegetables based on freshness and color. I bought onions, garlic, carrots, kale, yellow zucchini, a fresh fennel bulb, and kuri squash. The key ingredient for me is the kuri squash, it gave the soup a beautiful golden yellow/orange hue and added body to the broth. You can substitute acorn, kombucha or pumpkin.

I finely chopped the onion and minced the garlic, the kale was cut into a chiffonade and the remaining vegetables were cut into small cubes.

Le Creuset Tagine- Cookware Review

First of all I'd prefer a larger and deeper base. The shallow, small base limits the kind of tagines that can be prepared in it. It performs best for braised tagines with very little liquid added, but is simply not large enough for layered tagines or tagines that call for lots of sauce.

Algerian Samsa

I used the same dough and stuffing for these samsas that I prepared for my meloui

Ramadan is the month for fried foods! Especially fried sweets or savory pastries like these samsas. These are fried in just a little bit of oil and are quite light compared to most fried pastries or turnovers. They taste rather like a semolina pizza dough stuffed with spiced potatoes.

I serve these with a spicy chermoula or a salsa tomatish. A mixed green salad or a sweet and peppery orange and arugala salad. A spicy chick pea or lentil soup is also quite nice with these samsas.

According to The Oxford Companion to Food 10th and 13th century Arab cookbooks call these sanbusak derived from the Persian sanbosag. South Asian samosas, Afghani sambosas, Central Asian waraqi samsa or sambusai varaqi, and Turkish samsas all belong to the same family of turnovers.

Samsa is an Ottoman influence in Algerian cooking, but that doesn't mean we didn't have stuffed turnovers before the Turks. We had Moorish pastillas (beestiya), Arab trid, and Berber kesrettes. And post Ottoman rule, Algerians added cocas from Catalan to our culinary lexicon.

 

Algerian Meloui- Layered Bread

Ramadan is also the month for special breads and savory pastries in Algeria. Breads, boureks and samsas perfumed with spices or stuffed with a variety of vegetables or meats.

Meloui is a layered flatbread, some versions are similar to South Asian parathas or Malaysian roti canais. It can made with durum wheat semolina, whole wheat flour or all purpose flour. I prefer to use semolina or Indian durum atta which is the closest thing to Algerian whole wheat flour I can find in the states. White flour is becoming increasingly available in urban areas in Algeria. I don't like to use it, the flavor and texture just isn't doesn't sing bled (countryside) to me.

I made a very large batch of dough because I used the same dough to make samsas (my next post). I used 4 cups of fine semolina, salt, and 1 package of yeast (you can use natural starter or a piece of leftover dough from a previous batch of bread dough), but I used packaged yeast because it was convenient for me. Besides, most North African cookbooks call for packaged yeast.

I only kneaded the dough for 10-15 minutes because I wanted a very tender meloui. The addition of yeast also helps make for a lighter meloui. Some versions of meloui call for 30-40 minutes of kneading to really build up the gluten.

Marqa Recipe for Ramadan (Marka, Maraq or Marak)

This is my entry for Super Soup Challenge another food blogging event via Is My Blog Burning.

Marqa is the Algerian derja (dialect) word for Arabic maraq (marak or marag). I was curious about the variations in pronunciation and meaning, so I looked up the word in Medieval Arab Cookery and Delights from The Garden of Eden by Nawal Nasarallah.

In Algerian derja marqa means sauce. Medieval Arab Cookery confirms my understanding of the word. I found a South Asian food blog that refers to marag as a stew (Hyderabad marag). In Delights from The Garden of Eden Nawal Nasrallah tells us that marga or marag in Iraq is a stew "of meat and vegetables simmered in tomato sauce". In Tunisia marqa usually refers to braises or stews cooked in tagines.

Lamb and Fig Tagine Cooked in a Clay Tagine- It's Fig Season!

This is another intermediate tagine recipe, which means I am assuming basic knowledge of clay tagine cooking for the cook who wants to try this. You can make this tagine, as with all my clay tagine recipes, in a casserole or dutch oven. Many of my recipes can also be prepared in a pressure cooker or slow cooker. Contemporary North Africans cooks mix old and new cooking techniques.

I used thick lamb loin chops- but duck, chicken, veal or rabbit are also delicious with figs. However, the cooking methods must be modified a bit for different proteins.

I sprinkled the lamb chops with spices and a 1/4 teaspoons of salt, placed them in my clay tagine with 4 tablespoons of olive oil and turned the heat on a low setting to seize the meat, not brown it. I added one cup of water and let it braise for 2 hours, adding more water as needed. Remember the rate of moisture loss can vary considerably depending on the type of clay tagine you use.

When the meat is almost done cooking let the braising liquid reduce to a glaze of olive oil and rendered lamb fat. At this point the lamb chops will start browning. Remove the lamb pieces from the tagine when they are lightly browned on both sides.

Cut the figs in half or quarters depending on how large they are. Add them to the tagine and cook until they start to caramelize. If you're not experienced with cooking in clay and controlling heat, I suggest browning the figs in a non stick skillet. The sugars from the figs will caramelize and it's just a short step to burning if the tagine vessel gets too hot. Remember clay retains heat longer than say a non-stick skillet, once a clay vessel is hot moving it off the fire won't work as a quick way to reduce temperatures to impede burning.

Ramadan Recipes Around the World

In anticipation of one of my upcoming cookery books about spice trade routes and silk roads for this year's Ramadan I'm traveling the world (virtually) in search of recipes. My wife and I have already begun preliminary research for our books and we have a pantry stocked with the necessary spices.

I think I'll start with Indian Ocean trade and the South Indian State of Kerala. Grains, Greens and Grated Coconuts: Recipes and Remembrances of a Vegetarian Legacy by my friend Ammini Ramachandran (www.peppertrail.com), an excellent source of historical information and delicious recipes. Ammini's cookbook is one of the first to focus on the Hindu traditions of Kerala for a Western audience. She tells us though that Kerala cuisine is informed by a confluence of peoples including Muslims and Christians. Indian Ocean trade, as with all trade, is not just about ingredients and goods- it is also about the migration of peoples and dynamic exchanges of ideas.

Ammini sent me a copy of Malabar Muslim Cookery by Ummi Abdula (book link) - I can see quite a few similarities with North African cooking in terms of basic techniques. Obviously we don't use tropical ingredients such as coconuts or mangoes in Algerian cookery, but after a quick glance of the recipes in the book I estimate that I have about 95% of the spices and herbs, the remaining 5% are really easy to find in Los Angeles.

Then I'll go "island hopping" over to Southern Thailand inspired by a recent meal at Jitlada in Hollywood to make a Mussaman beef curry then go just a little further south into Malaysia for a flaky roti canai.

I'll sprinkle in a little food history and make cultural connections on our Ramadan culinary adventure. For example Malaysian roti canai, Indian paratha and Algerian meloui are all cousins and share very similar preparation methods. Of course there are fine distinctions between them, what I hope to do is offer something balanced between looking at things too broadly from miles away and standing one inch in front of the blackboard. 

I doubt that I'll have enough time to cover the entire realm of Islamic cooking, but there is always next Ramadan... Oh, and what I mean by Islamic cuisine is something along the lines of what Rachel Laudan wrote in "The Mexican Kitchen's Islamic Connection":

Today Mexican families still sit down to dinners that reveal their Islamic origins. They begin with a “watery” soup (sopa aguada), such as a broth with tiny albondigas. Then comes a “dry soup” (sopa seca), such as “Spanish rice,” which is none other than the pilau of the Islamic world. The main course is a piece of chicken or meat accompanied by a green sauce, a nut sauce (nogada), an almond sauce (almendrada) or a spicy reddish-brown sauce (mole). After the meal comes a quince paste, with a little fresh cheese. Accompanying the meal is a refreshing drink—an agua fresca, as the Islamic sharbat is called in Mexico—a colorful, lightly sweetened homemade beverage of lime, melon or milky ground rice with almonds and cinnamon.

 

 

Badendjal Chtetha, Eggplant Ratatouille, Ratatouille d'Aubergines

This post was initially published on October 13, 2005. Not surprisingly lately it's been one of the post popular posts. Yes, I saw the movie Ratatouille too.

I'm bumping up this almost 2 year old post to link to Russ Parsons' LA Times blog post about The rat's ratatouille .

You'll see a couple of comments at the bottom of the post.

Me:

"I am beginning to investigate whether or not byaldi entered the French lexicon via Algeria. Some say byaldi is derived from the Turkish imam bayildi and the historical "bridge" between France and the Ottoman empire is Algeria. (Where is Charles Perry to answer?)

Anyway, a byaldi (with neatly sliced or coarsley chopped vegetables) in a casserole is a Provence style tian to me.

Enjoy!"

Response from Charles Perry (staff writer for The Times):

"Now Chef Zadi mentions it, Algeria probably is the route by which imam bayildi reached France. You can say it could have come by way of Syria or Lebanon when they were French protectorates in the Twenties and Thirties, but there was a much older, broader and more intimate contact with Algeria, so my vote is for Algeria."

A Provence style tian of layered ratatouillevegetables is also an Algerian Badenjal bil Tomatish (eggplant and tomato) Tagine.

The same ingredients and essentially the same cooking techniques are found in more than one food culture.

Seksu Khoubbiz, Couscous with Lavender, Couscous au Lavande

I left my camera somewhere and will not have it until tomorrow morning. So there go my plans to take photos of ghribia. I'll present a sweet couscous dish that is not well known. It's actually a very simple variation.

Ingredients:

500 gr of cooked couscous
500 gr de couscous cuit

1 tablespoon of lavender flowers, discard the stem
1 cuillere a soupe de fleur de lavande

1/4 cup of confectioner's sugar
25 gr de sucre glace

Method:

1) After the final couscous steaming add the lavender and dust with confectioner's sugar. Paula Wolfert's recipe for a sweet couscous with raisins. In Algeria we call couscous with raisins simply mesfouf, mesfouf b'z-zbib or seffa b'z-zbib. There are possibly more variations in what it's called.

Baghrir, Algerian Pancakes, Crêpes Algérienne

My maman made baghrir with 100% semolina flour. Other cooks use a combination of semolina and all purpose flour which produces more holes and a lighter pancake. Some versions do not contain eggs. I'll do a photo tutorial of those too. But my preference is for the way my maman made it, so I present her recipe first.

I think of Algerians more than other Maghrebis as having a preference for breads, cakes and crepes made from 100% semolina flour.