Recettes

Rishta, Libyan hand cut pasta steamed in a couscoussier and served with lamb and onion sauce

Rishta (Libyan-Style Pasta)

Rishta is Libyan pasta, and the important thing about it is that it is steamed rather than dropped into water. Fresh noodles are cut fine, set in a couscoussier over a sauce, and cooked in the rising steam, which is the same method Libya and the rest of the Maghreb use for couscous. That single decision separates rishta from every Italian pasta it superficially resembles. The sauce beneath is busla, built on a large quantity of onion cut into thin wings, cooked down with chickpeas, cinnamon and cloves. Lamb goes in with tomato paste and a warm spice mix of turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, black pepper and chilli. In Tripoli, where the dish is most closely associated, it appears under the names rishdat cascas and rishda imbaukha, meaning steamed rishda. The wider North African context is worth knowing. Dry meat called gedid, salted and sun cured, is used across the region to give dishes a smoky depth, and its use is generally traced to Amazigh practice. Rishta is also easily confused with makaruna imbaukha, another Libyan steamed pasta, which is made with dry angel hair rather than fresh cut noodles. The two look similar on a plate and are made from different things.

LibyaBlessing

Tarb, Egyptian kofta wrapped in lamb caul fat and grilled until golden

Tarb (Grilled Kofta Wrapped in Lamb Fat)

Tarb is kofta wrapped in caul fat and grilled, and the caul is what the dish is named for. Tarb is the Egyptian word for the lacy membrane of fat that surrounds a lamb's stomach, and wrapping seasoned minced lamb in it produces something that ordinary kofta cannot: the fat renders during cooking, bastes the meat from the outside in, and crisps to a golden shell. Its occasion is Eid al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice, and the connection is direct rather than customary. Eid al-Adha involves the slaughter of an animal and the distribution of its meat, and caul fat is one of the parts that becomes available when a whole lamb is broken down at home. A dish built on caul is a dish that belongs to the moment when a whole animal is being used, which is why tarb appears then and rarely otherwise. Kofta itself runs across Egypt and the whole Middle East, minced meat with onion, parsley and spices, formed and grilled. Tarb is the version that takes it somewhere richer, and Egyptians treat it as a heavy dish for a family celebration rather than everyday food. It is found in the grilled meat restaurants that specialise in kofta, kebab and grilled chicken across Egypt, served with rice or pasta.

Egypt1 hr 55 minBlessing

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.

Tunisia2 hrBlessing

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.

Tunisia1 hr 30 minBlessing

Dobara

Dobara is a chickpea and fava bean soup from Biskra in northeastern Algeria, and it is winter food in a place that gets genuinely cold at night despite sitting on the edge of the Sahara. It is also spelled doubara, and it is known widely enough by its region that Algerians call it doubara Biskra. It is vegan by construction rather than by choice. Meat is expensive in Algeria and many households cannot buy it regularly, and dobara is one of the dishes that answers that directly: beans, chickpeas, spices and bread, filling enough that nobody at the table is thinking about what is missing. It is also the dish that gets made when a guest arrives unannounced, because the components are always in the house. The heat is not incidental. Harissa goes in, and so do chilli, black pepper and paprika, and Algerians describe the warmth it produces as the reason to eat it in winter. What makes it distinctive is that the fresh elements go in at the table rather than in the pot: grated tomato, chopped coriander, garlic, pickled peppers, lemon slices and olive oil are added to each bowl as it is served, so the dish is finished by whoever is eating it.

Algeria1 hrBlessing

Tunisian Mloukhia

Tunisian mloukhia is not the dish of the same name eaten in Egypt, and the difference is fundamental. Egyptians cook the fresh leaves of jute mallow into a green soup. Tunisians dry the leaves, grind them to a powder, and cook that powder in oil for hours until it turns from green to deep brown and finally to something close to black. The two share a plant and almost nothing else. The name carries a claim. Mloukhia derives from the Arabic malik, meaning king, and in Tunisia the dish is called the delicacy of the king. It is cooked slowly over the low heat of a kanoun, a charcoal brazier, for at least eight hours in the traditional method, and it is not unusual for the paste to be started the evening before and finished the next day. Its occasions are precise and they cross religious lines. Tunisian Muslims eat it on Ras el am, the first day of the Hegira new year, so that the year begins under the sign of green, which is the colour of Islam and of hope. It appears at the end of mourning periods and on the first day of Eid al-Fitr. The Jews of Nabeul kept the same custom and now cook mloukhia for Rosh Hashanah. Tunisians say plainly that there is no middle position on it: you love it or you do not.

Tunisia6 hr 30 minBlessing

Akod

Akod is a tripe dish and it is the emblematic dish of Tunisian Jewish cooking. Beef tripe and a cow's trotter are cleaned, blanched through several changes of water, then cooked for hours with garlic, cumin, tomato paste and harissa until the sauce is thick and the tripe has surrendered completely. Its place is at the kemia, the Tunisian Jewish spread of small dishes that opens a meal, alongside banatages, briks, fricassés and minina. A host laying out a proper kemia would be expected to have made it. Tunisian Jewish cooking developed over centuries in Tunisia and has since largely relocated to France and Israel with the community, which makes recording dishes like this more urgent than recording better travelled ones. The wider family is large and worth knowing. Moroccan douara, also called t'qualia or kercha, uses mutton tripe. Algerian bakbouka includes carrots, courgette and chickpeas. Chkamba in Oran and chmenka in Tunisia are seasoned differently again, and the Moroccan Jewish version, tajine al guezar, meaning the butcher's pot, uses cumin and paprika without tomato paste and is cooked for close to ten hours over coals at Pesach. Offal has fallen out of favour with younger generations across the region, which the source for this recipe notes with some regret.

Tunisia6 hr 30 minBlessing

Mbakbaka, a Libyan one pot pasta stew with lamb, potatoes and North African spices

Mbakbaka (Libyan Pasta Stew)

Mbakbaka, also written imbakbaka, is Libya's one pot pasta stew and it is a direct product of Italian colonisation. Italy occupied Libya from 1911 to 1943, pasta arrived with the occupation, and Libyan cooks absorbed it into a North African spice framework rather than adopting Italian technique alongside it. The result is a pasta dish that no Italian would recognise. Turmeric, ginger, curry powder, chilli and mixed spices go into a tomato base with lamb or beef, and the pasta cooks directly in that liquid rather than being cooked separately and sauced afterwards. Potatoes go in too. Cooking the pasta in the sauce is the defining decision: the starch thickens the liquid and the pasta absorbs the spice, which is what makes it a stew rather than pasta with sauce on it. Macaroni elbows are the traditional shape, and ditalini, gemelli and other small pastas all suit it for the same reason: the tubes and twists hold the sauce. Harissa is a common addition for heat. The comparison people reach for is minestrone, which captures the one pot logic and misses the spicing entirely. It is winter food and family food, and it is eaten across Libya and among the Libyan diaspora.

Libya28 minBlessing

Mtewem

Mtewem is an Algerian dish of meatballs and meat cooked together with chickpeas in a garlic heavy sauce, and the name says exactly what it is. Mthawem derives from the Arabic for garlic, and the quantity used is the point rather than an aromatic detail. It belongs to Algiers, where the original preparation is made with a white sauce, and it appears at the occasions that matter: Ramadan evenings, weddings and celebrations. Most families now make it with a red tomato based sauce, which has become the more common version, and cooks disagree about which is correct in the way that families always do about a dish attached to celebration. Cumin carries it alongside the garlic. The meatballs are formed small, about the size of a walnut, and are added to the sauce only after the meat and chickpeas have already cooked, so they poach gently rather than breaking up. Some households press a blanched almond into the centre of each one, a touch that belongs to the wider North African habit of hiding something in a dish for the person who finds it. Cinnamon divides opinion and is entirely optional.

Algeria1 hr 30 minBlessing

Tunisian Makrouna

Makrouna is Tunisian pasta, and calling it that undersells how thoroughly Tunisia has made pasta its own. Tunisians are among the heaviest pasta eaters in the world, second only to Italy by consumption per head, and makrouna is the everyday expression of that, a dish cooked in most households, taught mother to daughter, and served at Sunday tables. The Italian connection is real and close. Tunisia sits directly across the Mediterranean from Sicily, and the two coasts have exchanged food, people and language for centuries. But what Tunisia did with pasta is not an imitation of an Italian sauce. Makrouna is built on tomato paste cooked down hard in oil until it darkens, and on harissa, the fermented chilli paste that is Tunisia's defining condiment. The result is deeper, redder and considerably hotter than an Italian tomato sauce. Spicing follows the Tunisian rather than the Italian pattern: tabil, caraway, coriander seed, sometimes cinnamon in the versions cooked with lamb. The pasta itself is usually a tubular shape that holds sauce, and it is finished in the sauce rather than dressed with it, so it takes on colour and heat all the way through. Meat varies by household and occasion, lamb, beef, merguez or chicken, and the dish is often built around whatever the week allows.

TunisiaBlessing

Rachta

Rachta, also written rechta, is an Algerian dish of flat handmade noodles served under a pale, cinnamon-scented sauce, and it is celebration food rather than everyday cooking. The noodles are made from flour, salt, water and ghee, rolled and cut into flat ribbons, then steamed rather than boiled. Steaming is what gives them their particular texture, and it is the same technique used for couscous, which tells you something about how the dish is understood in Algerian kitchens: rechta is treated as a member of the steamed-semolina family rather than as pasta. The sauce, the marga, is deliberately white. There is no tomato in it. It is built on chicken or lamb, onion, garlic and chickpeas, with turnip, potato and courgette, and it is perfumed with cinnamon and ras el hanout. That pale, sweet-spiced character is unusual in North African cooking and is the reason the dish reads as special. It appears at the occasions that matter. Rechta is strongly associated with Mawlid an-Nabawi, the Prophet's birthday, and with Ashura, Eid al-Fitr and weddings, particularly in Algiers, where it is close to the definitive festive dish. It is a relative of chekhchoukha, which uses torn flatbread rather than noodles and is usually served in a red sauce.

AlgeriaBlessing

Ojja, Tunisian eggs poached in a spiced tomato, pepper and merguez sauce

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.

Tunisia45 minBlessing

Tajine Zitoun

Tajine zitoun is an Algerian chicken and olive dish, zitoun meaning olives in Arabic, and it is a fixture at iftar during Ramadan and at occasions generally. Chicken, green olives, onion and carrot are cooked together and the sauce is finished with lemon juice and, in most versions, a little flour to thicken it. It looks like a Moroccan tagine and is not one, though both countries cook in earthenware and the resemblance is real. What distinguishes Algerian cooking, and this dish in particular, is the spice handling: restrained rather than layered, letting the olives and lemon carry the flavour instead of burying them under a heavy blend. Saffron or turmeric provides the colour. The olives need attention. Two cups of green olives brings a lot of salt with it, and the recipe is explicit about washing them well before use. Some cooks blanch them briefly for the same reason. Cooking the chicken bones in the broth and removing them before serving is the other technique worth noting: the source describes deboning the breast first, using the bones to build the sauce, then returning the browned meat at the end, which gives depth without anyone having to negotiate bones at the table.

Algeria55 minBlessing

Libyan Couscous

Couscous is the national dish of Libya, as it is of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Mauritania, and the Libyan version has its own clear identity within that shared Maghreb tradition. The first thing worth clearing up is what couscous actually is. It is not a grain. It is semolina, granules of durum wheat rolled and coated with finer flour, which makes it closer to a very small pasta than to rice or barley. That matters for cooking it, because it is steamed rather than boiled. The Libyan preparation is built on meat, lamb or chicken, cooked with onion and a spiced tomato sauce, alongside vegetables that reliably include pumpkin and chickpeas. Pumpkin is a good marker: it appears in Libyan couscous far more consistently than in the Moroccan or Tunisian versions, and its sweetness against the chilli is much of the dish's character. The sauce runs spicier than Moroccan couscous, closer to the Tunisian end of the scale. The steaming is the technique the dish is really about. Couscous is steamed in stages over the simmering stew below, so it takes the aroma up through it while staying separate and light rather than turning to paste. In Libya it is described as folk heritage passed down through generations, and it is the dish for Friday lunches, weddings and gatherings.

LibyaBlessing

Mrouzia

Mrouzia is a Moroccan tagine of lamb cooked slowly with honey, cinnamon, ras el hanout, raisins and almonds until it is deeply sweet, dark and falling off the bone. It is made in the days after Eid al-Adha. That timing is not incidental, it is the whole origin of the dish. At Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, a large quantity of meat becomes available at once, more than a household can eat quickly. Before refrigeration, mrouzia was how it was kept. The heavy seasoning, the quantity of honey and the long cooking all work as preservation, and the dish was made specifically to hold meat that would otherwise spoil. That practical origin is still visible in how it is cooked. It uses fatty cuts, it is cooked for a long time, and it improves after a day or two rather than being served immediately, which is why it is often made ahead. The flavour is at the sweet end of Moroccan cooking, further than most. Ras el hanout carries it, saffron gives its particular perfume, and the balance between honey and spice is what a cook adjusts. Tunisia makes a version, prepared differently. In Morocco it remains firmly attached to Eid, and many households cook it only then.

Morocco2 hr 45 minNympha

Libyan Mafrum

Mafrum is spiced minced beef sandwiched inside a slit potato, floured, egged, fried and then cooked through in a red tomato sauce. It comes from the Jewish community of Libya, and it is among the most distinctive dishes in North African Jewish cooking. The construction is what makes it. Each potato is sliced most of the way through so it opens like a book, and the meat is packed into that opening before the whole parcel is coated and fried. Aubergine and cauliflower are used in the same way and are equally traditional, and some versions substitute them entirely. Nothing is wasted: the potato offcuts go into the sauce. Two details mark its origins. Matzo meal appears as an alternative to breadcrumbs in both the filling and the coating, which reflects the dish's Jewish provenance and its place at Passover. Cinnamon and nutmeg in a savoury minced beef filling is a North African and Sephardi combination rather than a European one. The contributor is direct that this is weekend cooking rather than a weeknight dish: an hour of preparation and two hours of cooking. It is served with couscous.

Libya3 hrBlessing

Maqluba, a Middle Eastern pot of layered lamb, rice and fried vegetables turned upside down

Maqluba (Upside Down Lamb and Rice)

Maqluba is a Middle Eastern dish of meat, rice and fried vegetables layered in a pot and turned out upside down to serve. The source names it as Syrian, Iraqi, Palestinian and Jordanian, and it belongs to those traditions rather than to any African one. Its name is its method. Maqluba means upside down in Arabic, and the whole point is the moment the pot is inverted onto a platter and lifted away, leaving the layers standing. It is spelled maklouba and maqlooba as well, and it is many centuries old, often placed in the thirteenth century. The layering follows conventions. Aubergine is paired with lamb, cauliflower with chicken, and other vegetables go in according to what the cook has. Toasted pine nuts or slivered almonds with chopped parsley are the traditional garnish, and yoghurt or a simple salad goes alongside. It is a feast dish, made in quantity. Note that the method in this source refers to layering the beef, while the ingredients specify lamb; the lamb is correct. It sits in Worldwide Recipes with its URL unchanged.

Libya2 hrFoodChef

Moroccan Chicken Tagine

Chicken tagine is Moroccan slow cooking at its most recognisable: chicken with preserved lemon, olives, onion and a warm spice blend, cooked gently until the meat falls apart. The name belongs to the vessel as much as the dish. A tagine is a shallow ceramic or unglazed clay pot with a tall conical lid. The cone is not decorative: steam rises, condenses against the cone and runs back down into the base, so the dish cooks in its own recirculating moisture with very little added liquid. It works like a slow cooker and gives the same result, meat that is tender and a sauce that has concentrated rather than evaporated. The spice profile is the Moroccan signature: paprika, cumin, ginger, coriander, cinnamon and cayenne together, with honey for balance and lemon for sharpness. Cracked green olives and preserved lemon go in at the end so they keep their character. It can be made in a tagine, in a Dutch oven, or on the stovetop, and this recipe uses the last. If you cook in an actual tagine on a hob, use the lowest setting you can: raising the heat cracks the clay.

Morocco1 hr 10 minAmara

Moroccan Couscous Salad

This is couscous with roasted vegetables, chickpeas, raisins and almonds, dressed with lemon, cumin and olive oil. It is a salad in the sense of being served at room temperature rather than a leafy one: the couscous is the bulk of it and the vegetables are folded through. Couscous was first made by the Amazigh people of North Africa, who worked out how to turn wheat into fine granules, and it remains a staple across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Moroccan couscous is the smallest of the common grades, finer than Israeli or Lebanese couscous, and it is what this recipe uses. The technique is absorption rather than steaming. Hot broth is poured over the dry couscous, which has been tossed with olive oil and turmeric, and it is covered and left for five minutes. The raisins go in during that time so the residual heat plumps them. Traditional Moroccan couscous is steamed repeatedly in a couscoussier, which produces a lighter grain; this is the quick domestic method. The vegetables are roasted separately and folded in, which keeps them caramelised rather than steamed into the grain.

Morocco50 minDebby

Egyptian Koshari

Koshari is Egypt's national dish and its most famous street food, rice, lentils and macaroni layered together, topped with a spiced tomato sauce, crisp fried onions and a sharp garlic-vinegar dressing. It is a dish of components, and none of them is complicated. What makes koshari work is that all of them are made separately and assembled at the end, so each keeps its own texture: the rice and lentils soft, the pasta firm, the onions properly crisp, the sauce sharp with vinegar and cumin. It is cheap, filling and entirely plant-based as standard, which is why it feeds an enormous number of people every day. Koshari shops exist across Egypt doing nothing else, and it is eaten as often at home. Its ubiquity is genuine, the comparison to macaroni cheese in the source is about how ordinary it is rather than what it tastes like. The daqqa, the garlic and vinegar dressing, is what stops the whole thing being stodgy, and it is the element most often underdone by people making it for the first time. Be generous with it. Chickpeas are usually added on top.

Egypt41 minBlessing

Feseekh, Egyptian salted fermented mullet, served with bread and green onions

Feseekh (Egyptian Salted Fermented Fish)

Feseekh is mullet salted heavily and left to ferment for two to three weeks until it turns silvery and develops its notoriously powerful smell. It is eaten at Sham El-Nessim, the Egyptian spring festival whose origins reach back to pharaonic times, and it is one of the oldest continuously eaten preparations anywhere. **This preparation carries a serious and well-documented food safety risk, and it must be stated plainly.** Improperly prepared feseekh causes botulism poisoning in Egypt every year, sometimes fatally, and the Egyptian health ministry issues public warnings before Sham El-Nessim annually. The conditions the method describes, fish sealed in airtight containers, without refrigeration, for weeks, are precisely those in which *Clostridium botulinum* produces its toxin. In Egypt feseekh is traditionally bought from licensed fassakhani, specialist salters who do this professionally, and the strong advice is to buy it from a reputable source rather than attempting it at home. The recipe is recorded here because it is a genuine and historically significant part of Egyptian foodways, and because AFN's job is to document rather than to omit. It is not recommended as a home project. One error worth noting: feseekh is made from mullet, and the source's ingredient list specifies herring, a different fish, and the basis of a different preparation, renga, which is eaten alongside it.

Egypt30 minBlessing

Hamam mahshi, Egyptian pigeon stuffed with spiced rice

Hamam Mahshi (Egyptian Stuffed Pigeon)

Hamam mahshi is pigeon stuffed with spiced rice or freekeh, poached and then browned in ghee. It is an Egyptian speciality and one of the dishes most closely identified with the country. **It contains mixed nuts, which the title gives no indication of.** Pigeon is farmed rather than hunted in Egypt, and has been for a very long time. Villages along the Nile keep them in distinctive mud-brick towers, structures that have been part of the Egyptian landscape since pharaonic times, and the birds are raised specifically for the table. That agricultural fact is why a dish built on pigeon is ordinary in Egypt and almost unknown elsewhere. The stuffing is what varies. Rice is common; so is freekeh, the roasted green wheat, which gives a smokier, chewier result and is the more traditional choice in many households. The source mentions grits, which is likely a rendering of freekeh or of coarse cracked wheat. The source attributes mahshi as a category to the Ottoman period, which is a reasonable and widely repeated account, though the specific claim that hamam mahshi is originally Turkish is contested and has been recorded as a claim rather than a fact. The method's step order is muddled, it fills the birds before the stuffing has been made. Reordered below.

Egypt1 hr 30 minBlessing

Prepared couscous, fluffed with a fork in a bowl

How to Cook Couscous

How to prepare instant couscous: boiling water or stock poured over, covered, left to steam, then fluffed. This is a technique page for a staple ingredient rather than a recipe for a dish, and it is filed as such. Couscous is North African, specifically Berber in origin, and it is a staple across Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. Its status was recognised by UNESCO in 2020, when the knowledge and practices around couscous were inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in a joint submission by Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. It is not a grain, despite looking like one. Couscous is pasta, durum wheat semolina moistened, rolled into tiny granules and dried. Three sizes are common: Moroccan, the smallest; Israeli or pearl couscous, about the size of peppercorns; and Lebanese, the largest. The traditional method has nothing to do with pouring boiling water on. Couscous is steamed, usually more than once, in the upper chamber of a couscoussier over a stew whose vapours flavour it as it cooks. That is how it is made for a proper meal in North Africa and the results are much lighter. Almost all couscous sold in supermarkets is pre-steamed and dried, which is why the rehydration method here works.

Morocco20 minFoodChef

Macarona Bechamel

Macarona béchamel is Egypt's pasta bake, penne layered with a spiced minced meat sauce, covered in béchamel and baked until the top browns. The dish arrived through the same routes that carried béchamel across the Mediterranean, and Egypt made it its own. It is a close relative of Greek pastitsio and of the wider family of baked pasta dishes that runs around the Mediterranean rim, but the spicing is Egyptian: the meat sauce is seasoned with cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg rather than with oregano or basil. It is comfort food in the fullest sense, and it is what appears at family gatherings, on Fridays, and at any occasion where a large dish that feeds many people is required. Most Egyptians have a strong opinion about how their mother makes it. The béchamel is the part worth getting right. It should be thick enough to sit on top rather than sink into the pasta, and it is usually enriched with egg, which helps it set into a firm golden layer rather than staying loose. It reheats well and is often better the day after, which is part of why it is made in quantity.

EgyptBlessing

Mahshi

Mahshi means stuffed, and the dish is exactly that: vegetables hollowed out, filled with a mixture of rice and minced meat, and cooked in a tomato and cumin sauce. It is the archetypal dish for feeding people. Making mahshi is slow, repetitive work, hollowing, filling, packing the pot, which is why it belongs to occasions and to households cooking for numbers rather than to a weeknight. The vegetable used varies by country and by season, and this variation is much of the pleasure of the dish. Courgette, particularly the pale Lebanese kusa, is among the most common. Aubergine, bell peppers, tomatoes and potatoes are all used, and vine leaves and cabbage leaves are rolled rather than stuffed but belong to the same family. Egyptian versions frequently combine several in one pot. The filling is rice and minced beef or lamb with herbs, and it is packed loosely, the rice swells substantially as it cooks and a tightly packed vegetable will split. A vegetarian version made with rice, herbs and no meat is entirely standard rather than an adaptation, and is often served cold.

EgyptBlessing

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.

Tunisia1 hrBlessing

Seffa medfouna, saffron chicken buried under sweetened vermicelli with almonds

Seffa Medfouna (Moroccan Buried Chicken with Sweet Vermicelli)

Seffa medfouna is saffron chicken hidden inside a mound of steamed, sweetened vermicelli, dusted with cinnamon, icing sugar and ground fried almonds. Medfouna means buried, and the concealment is the whole presentation. **It is finished with a cup of ground almonds, which the title gives no indication of.** It is the clearest example on this site of the Moroccan savoury-sweet axis. Saffron chicken cooked with ginger, turmeric and pepper is buried under vermicelli that has been sweetened with butter and icing sugar, studded with raisins, and decorated with cinnamon and almonds. Neither element is subtle, and the point is that they arrive in the same mouthful. This is the same tradition as pastilla, and it reflects the Andalusian and Arab influence that runs through Moroccan festive cooking. Seffa on its own is the sweetened steamed vermicelli or couscous, served as a dish in its own right. Medfouna is the version with meat concealed inside. The vermicelli is steamed four times. That is not an exaggeration in the method, repeated steaming with resting in between is what makes it light rather than claggy, and it is the same principle as double-steamed couscous. It is a dish for a table with several courses on it, not a weeknight.

Morocco3 hr 15 minBlessing

Recettes

Libyan Couscous

Tajine Zitoun

Ojja (Shakshuka)

Rachta

Hamam Mahshi (Egyptian Stuffed Pigeon)

Feseekh (Egyptian Salted Fermented Fish)

Egyptian Koshari

Moroccan Couscous Salad

Tunisian Makrouna

Mtewem

Plats emblématiques

Recettes les plus populaires

Rishta (Libyan-Style Pasta)

Tarb (Grilled Kofta Wrapped in Lamb Fat)

Tunisian Couscous

Usban

Dobara

Tunisian Mloukhia

Akod

Mbakbaka (Libyan Pasta Stew)

Mtewem

Tunisian Makrouna

Rachta

Ojja (Shakshuka)

Tajine Zitoun

Libyan Couscous

Mrouzia

Libyan Mafrum

Maqluba (Upside Down Lamb and Rice)

Moroccan Chicken Tagine

Moroccan Couscous Salad

Egyptian Koshari

Feseekh (Egyptian Salted Fermented Fish)

Hamam Mahshi (Egyptian Stuffed Pigeon)

How to Cook Couscous

Macarona Bechamel

Mahshi

Masfouf (Tunisian Sweet Couscous)

Seffa Medfouna (Moroccan Buried Chicken with Sweet Vermicelli)

Recettes

Recettes à la une

Libyan Couscous

Hamam Mahshi (Egyptian Stuffed Pigeon)

Feseekh (Egyptian Salted Fermented Fish)

Egyptian Koshari

Moroccan Couscous Salad

Tunisian Makrouna

Mtewem

Plats emblématiques

Recettes les plus populaires

Rishta (Libyan-Style Pasta)

Tarb (Grilled Kofta Wrapped in Lamb Fat)

Tunisian Couscous

Usban

Dobara

Tunisian Mloukhia

Akod

Mbakbaka (Libyan Pasta Stew)

Mtewem

Tunisian Makrouna

Rachta

Ojja (Shakshuka)

Tajine Zitoun

Libyan Couscous

Mrouzia

Libyan Mafrum

Maqluba (Upside Down Lamb and Rice)

Moroccan Chicken Tagine

Moroccan Couscous Salad

Egyptian Koshari

Feseekh (Egyptian Salted Fermented Fish)

Hamam Mahshi (Egyptian Stuffed Pigeon)

How to Cook Couscous

Macarona Bechamel

Mahshi

Masfouf (Tunisian Sweet Couscous)

Seffa Medfouna (Moroccan Buried Chicken with Sweet Vermicelli)