BuzzEssen Foods: North African Cuisine

Assida Zgougou

Assida Zgougou is a very popular dessert in Tunisia. Assida Zgougou is a cream made from seeds of Aleppo pine, not to be confused with stone pine nuts and pine Armand.Traditionally, Tunisians exchange bowls Assida between neighbors and family members, making decorating bowls Assida as important as the taste of the recipe. Many use all kinds of dried fruit to vary the decorative shapes and colors (pistachios, walnuts, hazelnuts)

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African Cuisine

Basbousa

This easy semolina cake is popular in Morocco, Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab speaking world. Commonly known as basbousa, in Morocco it may also be called chamia or qalb el luz. A quick, egg free batter moistened with yogurt is scored and decorated, baked until golden, then topped with sugar syrup. Sweet, moist and delicious!

You'll find a number of variations for basbousa including recipes with coconut, almonds or other ingredients. The syrup is sometimes flavored with lemon zest and vanilla, but in Morocco orange flower water provides traditional flavor. Some Moroccan families might layer the cake with pastry cream or garnish the top with a date and almond paste, but this recipe for almond basbousa keeps things classic and simple. There is less sugar in the batter than some other recipes, allowing the syrup to provide most of the sweetness.

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African Cuisine

Moroccan lamb with prunes and apricots

From Asia and the Middle East to Africa, Europe, and back, spices have traveled far to find their place in the cuisines of many nations. But there's something very special about the flavors used in Moroccan food. Even though individually the spices seem similar to ones used in other cuisines, Indian per se, it's the unique blend that makes them so distinctively Moroccan. Arabic, Mediterranean, Moorish, and nomadic African cultures have had a great influence on the food culture of Morocco. And the ancient spice trade profoundly effected the play with flavors, contributing to how we recognize Moroccan cuisine today.

The need for preservation led to the liberal use of spices and the techniques of drying, salting, pickling, and fermenting. It's quite common to find dried or preserved fruits in many Moroccan dishes. This slowly braised lamb tagine features dried prunes and preserved lemons. Dried dates, apricots, and raisins are also very common. Lemons, preserved in salt, are used in a variety of dishes for adding citrus flavor or as a condiment. The tart/bitter lemon flavor truly brings out the savoriness of meats, particularly lamb. Instead of the usual roast lamb for Easter, how about a Moroccan tagine?

Tagine, named after the vessel the stew is cooked in, is pretty much the nationally recognized dish of Morocco next to couscous. It can be made with almost any meat and even seafood. The clay cooking vessel has two parts, a bowl-like pan and a conical lid, sometimes with a small vent hole. Cooking in a tagine produces the most succulent meat because the dome top locks in moisture by allowing condensation to recirculate and help along the cooking process. The meat ends up being so tender that it just about falls apart when pressed with a fork. There's really no better stew than a Moroccan tagine.

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African Cuisine

Egg Shakshuka

Though it's North African in origin, these days shakshuka is popular throughout the Middle East (particularly in Israel, where it may as well be one of the national dishes) and in hip neighborhood diners all over the coastal US. Given its versatility, it's easy to see why. It's quick; it's simple; it's easy to scale up or down; and it works for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, or a midnight snack.

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African Cuisine

Baba Ghanoush

Baba ghanoush is a Levantine dish of cooked eggplant mixed with tahina, olive oil and various seasonings. The Arabic term means "pampered papa" or "coy daddy", perhaps with reference to a member of a royal harem.

The traditional preparation method is for the eggplant to be baked or broiled over an open flame before peeling, so that the pulp is soft and has a smoky taste.It is a typical meze (starter), often eaten as a dip with khubz or pita bread, and is sometimes added to other dishes. It is popular in the Levant(area covering Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Syria) as well as in Egypt and Armenia.

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African Cuisine

Couscous

Couscous is one of the staple foods of the Maghrib (western North Africa). Couscous is made from two different sizes of the husked and crushed, but unground, semolina of hard wheat using water to bind them. Semolina is the hard part of the grain of hard wheat (Triticum turgidum var. durum), that resisted the grinding of the relatively primitive medieval millstone. When hard wheat is ground, the endosperm—the floury part of the grain—is cracked into its two parts, the surrounding aleurone with its proteins and mineral salts and the central floury mass, also called the endosperm, which contains the gluten protein that gives hard wheat its unique properties for making couscous and pasta--that is, pasta secca or dried pasta, also called generically macaroni. Couscous is also the name for all of the prepared dishes made from hard wheat or other grains such as barley, millet, sorghum, rice, or maize.

Although the word couscous might derive from the Arabic word kaskasa, "to pound small," it is generally thought to derive from one of the Berber dialects because it does not take the article indicating a foreign language origin. It has also been suggested that the word derives from the Arabic name for the perforated earthenware steamer pot used to steam the couscous, called a kiskis (the French translation couscousière is the word English-speaking writers have adopted), while another theory attributes the word couscous to the onomatopoeic--the sound of the steam rising in thecouscousière, the most unlikely explanation.

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BuzzEssen Foods

Assida Zgougou

Basbousa

Moroccan lamb with prunes and apricots

Egg Shakshuka

Baba Ghanoush

Couscous

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