Recipes

Browse the archive by country, course and cooking time.

Active filters

Egyptian Meshabek

Meshabek is a fried batter sweet, piped into loops through a narrow nozzle, fried until it turns brittle, and dropped straight into cold syrup while still hot. The name translates as twisted, and that is precisely what it looks like: a tangle of thick threads holding syrup in every gap. It is street sweet rather than restaurant sweet, and it is cheap enough that half a kilo costs under a dollar in Egypt. Its documented origin points to Tanta and Damietta in the Nile Delta, from where it spread across the country, and it now turns up at sweet shops and street stalls nationwide. The hot into cold step is the technique and the whole reason it works. Batter fried to brittle and then plunged into cold syrup absorbs it in seconds without going soft, which is what gives meshabek its particular quality of being simultaneously crunchy and soaked. The same principle appears in fried syrup sweets across the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. As with most Egyptian home sweets, the recipe moves between families rather than from books, which is why the proportions shift from one household to the next.

Highest Rated

MediumEgypt

Recipe by Blessing · Africook

View Full Recipe →

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.

Highest Rated

1 hrEasyAlgeria

Recipe by Blessing · Africook

View Full Recipe →

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.

Highest Rated

1 hr 30 minHardTunisia

Recipe by Blessing · Africook

View Full Recipe →

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.

Highest Rated

2 hrMediumTunisia · north african

Recipe by Blessing · Africook

View Full Recipe →