Recettes

Fish Chermoula

Fish marinated in chermoula, the North African herb, garlic and spice paste, then grilled or baked. Chermoula is used across Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, so no single country has been assigned to this page. Chermoula is essentially a marinade built around parsley and coriander in roughly equal measure, with garlic, cumin, paprika, lemon and olive oil. That green colour is the signature and it is also a warning: chermoula is at its best made fresh and used within a day or two, because the herbs darken and dull as they oxidise. Regional versions diverge from there, saffron in Morocco, more chilli in Tunisia, preserved lemon in some Moroccan households, but the parsley, coriander, garlic and cumin core holds everywhere. Its main job is fish, and the pairing is not arbitrary. Cumin and paprika stand up to oily fish without overwhelming white fish, and the acidity of the lemon does the work that a squeeze of lemon at the table would do, only from the inside. The one thing to watch is marinating time. Thirty minutes to an hour is what this recipe calls for and that is right; several hours in an acidic marinade begins to cure the fish rather than season it, which changes the texture in a way you probably do not want. A related page on this site covers braised snapper with chimichurri, which is a South American parallel to the same idea.

40 minEasy

Recette de Laila · Africook

Tanjia Marrakchia

Tanjia Marrakchia belongs to Marrakech specifically, and it is named after the pot rather than the food. The tanjia is a tall, narrow clay urn with a small neck, and the dish cannot properly be separated from it: meat, spices and a little water go in, the neck is sealed with parchment and clay, and the whole vessel is buried in the embers of a hammam furnace to cook for hours. That cooking method is the reason it exists. The hammam, the public bathhouse, kept a wood fire burning to heat its water, and the ashes were free heat available to anyone who brought a pot. Labourers and workers would leave a tanjia with the furnace attendant in the morning and collect it cooked at the end of the day, which made it food for men working away from a kitchen. It is still called the bachelor's dish in Marrakech for that reason, though it now appears at celebrations, religious occasions and family gatherings as well. Beef or lamb is standard, with cumin, ginger, saffron, turmeric and paprika, and preserved lemon and olives in some households. Without a hammam the substitute is a very low oven over several hours, which gets the tenderness but not the smoke.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

5 hr 20 minMediumMorocco

Recette de Debby · Africook

Mhajab - A Traditional North African Dish

Mhajab is a stuffed North African flatbread, and the technique is what makes it. A soft dough is stretched out until it is thin enough to see through, folded in from the sides and then from the top and bottom into a square parcel around a filling, and cooked flat on a griddle. The folding creates the layers, and the layers are the dish. It belongs to Algeria and Morocco and is closely related to the Moroccan msemen and rghaif, which use the same stretch and fold method without a filling. Mhajab is street food and it is household food for special occasions, which is a combination that usually indicates something that takes skill but not money. The filling is conventionally a cooked mixture of onion, tomato and pepper, sometimes with meat, and the version here uses beef with potato and carrot. Vegetable fillings are as common as meat ones. It is eaten on its own, or served alongside couscous, harira and salads with mint tea. Cooked on a griddle it comes out crisp outside and soft within; baked it is softer throughout and takes longer, which is the trade the source lays out honestly.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

50 minHardAlgeria · north african

Recette de Debby · Africook

Moroccan Pastilla (Bastila)

Pastilla is the Moroccan dish that most confounds people who meet it for the first time: shredded spiced poultry and toasted sweetened almonds, layered inside buttered pastry and dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon. Savoury and sweet are not separated but deliberately built into the same mouthful. It is celebration food. Pastilla appears at weddings, at Eid, and when a household wants to demonstrate hospitality to a guest, and the effort involved is part of the message. Historically it was made with pigeon; chicken is now standard, and the shift is one of availability rather than taste. The dish is known by both names. Bastila and pastilla are the same word under different regional pronunciations and are used interchangeably in Morocco. Its regional forms diverge considerably: Fes makes a lamb version, coastal Essaouira a seafood one with prawns and fish, and Atlas households work dried fruit in for extra sweetness. Two notes on this particular version. Its ingredient list names both phyllo dough and filo sheets, which are the same thing under two spellings. And it gives no oven temperature, deferring to whatever is printed on the pastry packet. A hot oven is what the method needs, and the figure is given below. There are a lot of almonds here, which matters for anyone with a tree nut allergy.

1 hr 40 minHardMorocco · Moroccan

Recette de Debby · Africook