Tunisian Recipes

Kafteji

Kafteji is Tunisian street food built on a single idea: fry a range of vegetables separately so each one is properly cooked, then chop them together and serve the result with bread. Potato, courgette, pepper, tomato and aubergine are the usual cast, and the chopping at the end is what makes it kafteji rather than a plate of fried vegetables. It is sold from small counters and casse-croûte shops across Tunisia and eaten at any hour, most often stuffed into bread as a sandwich. It is inexpensive, which is part of its identity: kafteji is what you eat when you want something substantial and hot without a restaurant. Fried egg is a common addition, and in many Tunisian versions it is the only protein. The version here includes ground beef or lamb, which puts it at one end of a range. Kafteji is frequently made entirely without meat, and the vegetable only preparation is at least as common in Tunisia as the meat version. Harissa, olives and a squeeze of lemon are the usual finishing touches, and the dish is eaten from a shared plate with bread as the utensil.

★★★★★Highest Rated

50 minEasyTunisia

Recipe by Laila · Africook

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.

★★★★★Highest Rated

6 hr 30 minHardTunisia

Recipe by Blessing · Africook

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.

★★★★★Highest Rated

6 hr 30 minHardTunisia

Recipe by 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

Recipe by Blessing · Africook