Recettes Tunisia

Tunisian Couscous

Couscous is the national dish of Tunisia, and it is also the national dish of Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania and Libya, which tells you something about how the Maghreb understands itself. The same steamed semolina appears across all five countries under names that shift with the language: kousksi in Tunisia, taam or kesksu in Algeria, seksu in Morocco, and cuscusu in Sicily, where it crossed the water. The Tunisian version is distinguished by its heat and its colour. Harissa goes into the broth rather than being offered alongside it, and the finished couscous runs orange to deep red depending on how much broth and harissa it has taken up. Caraway is the other Tunisian signature, appearing in a quantity that Moroccan and Algerian couscous would not use. What goes with it depends on the coast. In Sfax and the other coastal cities, couscous is made with fish. Inland it more often carries lamb, sometimes with dried fruit. Turnip, carrot, courgette, potato, pumpkin and chickpeas are the usual vegetables, cooked in the broth and removed as each becomes ready. The word itself is traced either to the Arabic kaskasa, to pound small, or the Amazigh seksu, meaning rounded or well rolled, and both derivations describe the grain rather than the dish.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

2 hrMediumTunisia · north african

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Usban

Usban is a North African sausage made from the parts of a sheep that a whole animal butchery yields and nothing else does: the stomach, the liver, the lungs and the heart, chopped and mixed with rice, herbs and spices, sewn into pouches and cooked in a sauce. It is eaten in Tunisia, Algeria and Libya, and it is written both usban and osban. Its occasion is Eid al-Adha, and the connection is structural rather than customary. The festival involves the sacrifice of an animal and the use of all of it, and usban is what the offal becomes. It cannot be made casually because it requires a quantity of organ meat that only arrives when a whole sheep is broken down at home. Tunisian households make it on the day of Eid despite the considerable labour, and the effort is part of what the dish means. The work is real. The stomach must be scrubbed, blanched, scraped of its lining until it turns white, cut and sewn into pouches by hand with a needle and butcher's twine, then filled and sewn shut. Usban is documented in Tunisian references as far back as the 13th century, and it is held up as a demonstration of skill: proof that a cook can use every part of the sacrifice properly. It is served alongside rice or couscous.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hr 30 minHardTunisia

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Ojja (Shakshuka)

Ojja is a Tunisian dish of eggs cooked in a spiced tomato and pepper sauce, and it is one of the country's most eaten meals. The name comes from Tunisian Arabic slang meaning mixture, which describes it accurately: tomato, pepper, onion, garlic and spice, with eggs finished in the sauce. Whether ojja and shakshuka are the same thing is genuinely disputed, and the disagreement is worth stating rather than resolving. Some Tunisians hold that ojja is made with garlic and no onion while shakshuka uses both. One published account draws the line differently, arguing that in ojja the eggs are stirred through the sauce while in shakshuka they are poached whole on the surface, which would make ojja a close relative of Turkish menemen. Others say the two words name one dish. The recipe here allows both egg treatments and notes that both are used in Tunisia. Its origin is generally placed in Tunisia or Yemen, and it is eaten across North Africa. It has also become a fixture of Israeli cooking over the past few decades, where it is eaten at any meal. Merguez, the North African lamb sausage, and harissa are what mark this version as Tunisian rather than anything else, and toasted whole coriander, caraway and cumin ground fresh give it a depth that pre-ground spice does not.

45 minEasyTunisia

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Masfouf (Tunisian Sweet Couscous)

Masfouf is steamed couscous sweetened with milk and honey and mixed with dates, raisins, nuts and banana, layered with a vanilla custard. It is Tunisian and it belongs to Ramadan. It is the sweet counterpart to Tunisian couscous, which is otherwise a savoury dish, and that inversion is the whole idea, the same grain, the same steaming technique, turned into a dessert or a breakfast. During Ramadan it appears at suhoor, the meal before dawn, because it is filling and sustaining, and at iftar as a sweet. Geranium water is the ingredient that places it. Distilled from scented geranium leaves, it is used across Tunisian sweets in the way rose water and orange blossom water are used further east, and it has a green, faintly citrus perfume that neither of those reproduces. Middle Eastern and North African grocers stock it. Steaming the couscous properly rather than pouring boiling water over it is what the recipe asks for, and it is the difference between light separate grains and a claggy mass. This is a dessert made from properly cooked couscous rather than instant. **It contains almonds and walnuts, which the title gives no indication of.** The source's ingredient list repeats milk, honey and geranium water without indicating that the second set belongs to the custard.

1 hrMediumTunisia

Recette de Blessing · Africook