Recettes Tunisia

Tunisian Brik

Brik is a thin pastry folded around a filling and fried, and the Tunisian version is defined by the whole egg inside it. The yolk stays runny, and eating one without spilling it is a small skill Tunisians acquire early. It is an Ottoman inheritance, and its relatives survive across the former empire: bourek in Algeria, burek in the Balkans. What makes the Tunisian version specific is that egg. Other fillings are entirely standard, tuna, chicken, chicken liver, beef, turkey, anchovies, capers, cheese, and this recipe uses tuna with gouda and parmesan, which is the most common contemporary combination. Cheese in brik is a fairly recent addition that has become popular. The pastry is malsouka, a very fine partially cooked sheet of Tunisian origin, sold across France and North Africa but hard to find elsewhere. Phyllo is the substitute this recipe uses. Triangles and cigars are the two standard shapes, with triangles conventional for tuna brik. It appears at iftar during Ramadan and on the assiettes anglaises served at celebrations, alongside minina, pickled vegetables and fava beans. It cooks in one to two minutes and is eaten immediately.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

35 minEasyTunisia

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Tajine el Bey

Tajine el Bey is a Tunisian tajine, and the first thing to understand is that a Tunisian tajine is not a Moroccan one. The Moroccan tajine is a slow-cooked stew named after the conical earthenware pot it is cooked in. The Tunisian tajine is something else entirely: a baked dish closer to a thick omelette or an Italian frittata, built on eggs and cheese with meat and vegetables folded through, cooked in the oven and cut into squares or diamonds to serve. The two share a name and almost nothing else. Tajine el Bey is the refined version. It is assembled in three separate layers, meat, spinach, and a ricotta-style cheese, each mixed and cooked apart before being brought together, which gives a cross-section of distinct bands rather than a uniform bake. It is then cut into diamonds and presented the way baklawa el Bey, the tricolour almond pastry, is presented. The name and the colours are the point. Bey was the title of the ruler of Tunis under Ottoman suzerainty, and the red and green of the finished dish are the Bey's colours. It is a dish designed to be looked at as well as eaten, which is why it belongs at the elegant end of Tunisian cooking despite being straightforward to make. The texture is its other distinction, soft and yielding rather than set firm.

MediumTunisia · north african

Recette de Blessing · Africook