Recipes

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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

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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

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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

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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

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