Recettes Libya

Aslooz (Libyan Couscous-Based Dish)

Aslooz is a Libyan couscous dish named after a plant, and the plant is the reason it belongs to a season rather than to a calendar. Aslooz is a wild weed that grows across the countryside and the mountain regions of western Libya, gathered rather than farmed, and harvested in a narrow window through January and February. It is picked from roadsides and hillsides in the Nafusa mountains and the western districts, and only the tender twigs and flowering branches are used. Because it grows wild and its season is short, aslooz has never been a commercial crop, and it is effectively unavailable outside Libya. Libyan families abroad substitute, most often asparagus with dill, sometimes carrot with cumin leaves, and this recipe is written that way. Everything about it is plain: steamed couscous, a tomato base, a wild green and a carrot sauce sharpened with lemon and chilli. Libyans describe it as cheap and cheerful and treat it as a family dish, made and eaten together rather than served to guests. The couscous is steamed over the greens so it takes their flavour from below, which is the technique that separates it from a couscous simply mixed with vegetables, and it is what a Libyan cook would notice first if it were skipped.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hrMediumLibya

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Asida (Flour Pudding)

Asida is a cooked flour pudding from the Maghreb, eaten with honey or date syrup and melted butter. Its first recorded appearance is in the Arabic cookbook Kitab al-Tabikh, around the tenth century, which makes it one of the older dishes in this collection with a documented date. It is communal food. Like bazeen, asida is served on a large flat plate called a gas'a and eaten with the fingers, though spoons are used. The distinction the source draws between the two is worth keeping: bazeen has Amazigh origins and is purely North African, while asida has an Arabic name and versions of it are made across the Arabian Peninsula as well. In Libya it is a breakfast dish, eaten to carry someone through a working day, and it appears at celebrations: births, Eid, Mawlid. The plain version is simply flour cooked in water, turned out, and served with a hollow pressed into the top for honey or date syrup, with melted butter or ghee poured around it. This particular recipe is a considerably richer version built on a date paste with cardamom, cinnamon, fenugreek, saffron, rose water and walnuts, which is a celebration preparation rather than the everyday one.

35 minMediumLibya

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Ka'ak (Libyan Ring Bread)

Ka'ak is a ring-shaped bread, crisp outside and soft within, scattered with sesame seeds. It is Libyan in this version, and made across a wide stretch of the Arabic-speaking world, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria all have their own. The shape is what defines it. Ka'ak is formed into a large ring, bigger and thinner than a bagel, which is why street vendors across the region can carry stacks of them on a pole or a cart. In Libya it is eaten at breakfast alongside hummus and falafel, and it comes in savoury and sweet versions. The name travels further than the shape does. Ka'ak, sometimes kahk or kahqa, covers a whole family of baked goods across the Arabic-speaking world, from this ring bread to the small filled Egyptian cookies eaten at Eid, which are a completely different thing. The word means something closer to "baked good" than to any specific item. One technique in this recipe is worth borrowing for other breads. A tray of water is placed in the bottom of the oven while it heats, so the loaves bake in a steamy environment. Steam keeps the crust soft for the first minutes, letting the bread rise fully before the surface sets, and then produces a thin, crisp finish.

2 hr 45 minMediumLibya

Recette de Blessing · Africook