Tiny Potatoes, Spicy Salad

The number of vendors has increased over the past few months in Harare – shop-side vendors dangling plastic sleeves of tomatoes, potatoes, onions and okra from sticks like veggie mobiles; street-side vendors displaying their greens, mangoes, avocadoes and maputi (popped maize) on upturned boxes; and, my favorite, the men who defy death itself, standing smack dab in the middle of busy roads (even when the lights aren’t working) hawking the most delicate of commodities – crates of eggs.

Given Zimbabwe’s ever-more-astronomical currency denominations, bargaining for these items sounds absolutely ridiculous. “Tomatoes, imari?” I ask. “Five million.” “And the potatoes?” “Seven point five.” "I’ll give you 10 million for both." “11.” Sold. And so I count out a small pile of bills – one 5 million note and 30 200,000s.

I am picky about my produce. The tomatoes can’t be too ripe or too firm; the mangoes and avocados must be string-less. And the potatoes I seek out from venders are the tiny, spherical ones that you barely need to chop. A quick slice or two and they become bite-size.

These potatoes are ideal for tourchi batata, a spicy potato salad from Tunisia that can be served hot, cold or anywhere in between. This salad is quick to prepare and easy to double – after making it the first time and seeing my husband gobble it up I have vowed never to make a single recipe again. You could peel the potatoes, but I like to keep them on. I served tourchi batata last week as a tapas-like dish with afternoon drinks – beer cuts the spice best. I’ll let my friends make their own comments, but I think the salad was a hit.

Tunisian Potato Salad (Tourchi Batata)
Adapted from Sephardic Cooking: 600 Recipes Created in Exotic Sephardic Kitchens from Morocco to India
Serves 4 as a side dish

1 pound / 450 grams small boiling potatoes
2 tablespoons / 30 milliliters olive oil
1 teaspoon harissa (more, or less, to taste)
½ teaspoon / 2.5 milliliters salt
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground cumin
1 lemon, freshly squeezed

Cook potatoes in boiling water for 15 minutes, or until tender. Cool and cut into cubes (or, with tiny potatoes, just in half). Heat the oil in a skillet, and add the harissa, salt, ground cumin and lemon juice. Bring to a boil and boil for a few seconds. Pour over the potatoes and toss. Let marinate for twenty minutes or so and serve warm, or serve at room temperature, or refrigerate for at least one hour and serve cool.

The Red and Green Gimmick

When my husband and I first moved into our furnished rental house in Harare, we discovered a heart-shaped plaque on the wall that featured two kissing mice and the slogan "mouse-to-mouse resuscitation." We took it down. Immediately. And hid it in the farthest corner of the closet. I am not a fan of the tacky or the twee.

I do, however, take pleasure in the occasional gimmick. Gimmicky is at the seedier end of the tacky-classy spectrum, I’ll admit; although I hope you’ll agree that it doesn’t quite approach the excess of plastic mice attempting to cutely feign a life-saving procedure. Predictably, my gimmicks typically enlist the assistance of food and drink. I’ve dyed cookies all colors of the rainbow to match holiday hues. In college, my roommate and I turned our apartment’s thermometer up to 80 and held a July in Winter party, complete with umbrella-ed margaritas. A year-and-a-half ago, when the Zimbabwean government dropped three zeros from the currency, my husband and I hosted a “zeroes” fiesta featuring zero-shaped food, including bagel pizzas. And, over the past two weeks, I have been obsessed with preparing red and green food. Roasted red pepper soup with a dollop of avocado cream for garnish? Made it. Spinach lasagna? Check. Watermelon and feta salad with mint? Yep. And, for breakfast on Christmas morning, testira (sometimes written tastira) – a Tunisian egg and pepper dish. Red and green peppers, of course.

Although some recipes call for the egg in testira to be poached, the egg is scrambled in the recipe I use from Kitty Morse’s The Vegetarian Table: North Africa. In any case, the egg is really beside the point because what makes this dish a standout are the peppers – roasted until sweet and spiked with harissa (also spelled harisa), a traditional Tunisian condiment of chilies, garlic, spices and olive oil that makes you breathe like a dragon.

Testira is typically served as an accompaniment to fish. My taste buds have a difficult time imagining how this combination works, although I certainly don’t doubt the flavor amalgamation skills of the people who brought us tabil and chakchouka. Fish and testira might be one of those things I’ll just need to try someday in Tunisia. In the meantime (and this could be a very long meantime), I think testira stands up for itself quite well as a breakfast centerpiece.

Hmm….maybe I could have a party where the gimmick is that everyone brings a food combination that they like, but that other people think is strange; or maybe the gimmick could be egg dishes from around the world, or maybe…

Testira
Adapted from The Vegetarian Table: North Africa
Serves 3 as a main dish

2 red bell peppers
2 green bell peppers
1 red or green chili pepper
4 large tomatoes
2 tablespoons / 30 milliliters olive oil
2 teaspoons / 10 milliliters ground coriander
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters harissa (See note below)

Roast the peppers and the tomatoes, using the roasting method you prefer. Here’s what I do: I preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F) and put the vegetables on one tray, with the tomatoes on a piece of aluminum foil with the edges rolled up so that the juices they emit during roasting don’t spread. Place the tray on an oven rack near the top. Turn the peppers every 5-10 minutes. The chili pepper will only take about 20-25 minutes to roast. The tomatoes and peppers will take about 35-40 minutes. The peppers are done when their skins have blackened and separated from their flesh.

Set aside the tomatoes to cool. Place the peppers in a glass or ceramic bowl and cover with a plate. When the peppers are cool enough to handle, peel and seed them, and cut them into 1-inch (2.5-centimeter) pieces. When the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, peel, seed and chop them.

In a large skillet over medium heat, heat the olive oil. Add the tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes break down and thicken a bit – about 5-6 minutes. Add the peppers and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10-12 minutes. Stir in the coriander, salt, pepper and harissa. Add the eggs and stir gently until they are cooked. Serve immediately with toast and some extra harissa on the side for those who like spice!

Note: I’ll write about harissa in a future post. In the meantime, in some countries you can find prepared harissa in a jar at the store. These two recipes also look quite good, and are similar to the Madhur Jaffrey recipe that I use. If you don’t have harissa, you can add a teaspoon of chili powder when you add the ground coriander, although it won’t pack the same punch.

P.S. Happy 2008!

Dear Salad

Dear Salad,

It is a sunny Sunday afternoon here in Harare – a day just calling out for a salad – and I decided it was high time I write you a short note of appreciation. After all, I have enjoyed salads my whole life.

I’m not certain which came first – me liking salad or me liking the praise adults showered upon me whenever I ate raw vegetables. In any case, I started eating salad young. Growing up, my mom prepared a salad to accompany almost every dinner meal. To our great fortune, she saw right through the pale, watery leaves of iceberg lettuce and introduced us to romaine and red leaf and Boston lettuce way before the Jones’. We might not have had cable until 1995 or an answering machine until 2000, but we were eating tasty, nutritious salads.

My dad dressed you, salad, with his special vinaigrette. He has tried many times to show us how to accomplish this perfect balance of olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and dried oregano, yet we can never make it quite the same. Whatever dressing remained at the bottom of the bowl was (and still is) carefully absorbed with a slice of Italian bread.

The other three salads I remember my mom serving were tomato salad (only made in August with tomatoes from our garden and, again, with my dad’s vinaigrette), chef’s salad, and ravioli salad – a “keeper” recipe my mom clipped from the newspaper that combines ravioli, fresh tomatoes, shredded zucchini and grated parmesan. I still make this salad today.

College might have expanded my brain, but it did not expand my repertoire of salads, even though I ate daily from the school’s salad bar. Since the cafeteria charged students according to the size of the salad bowl we used, I learned how to maximize the “small” bowl. I selected the sturdiest slices of cucumber and lined them up around the edges of the bowl, effectively adding another inch to the bowl’s height. Salad, I valued you, but I valued my precious “food points” more.

Once I began cooking on my own, I experimented with salads formed around bulgur and tofu, and learned to appreciate egg salad – now I not only like this Africa-inspired version, but also one by Mollie Katzen that mixes hard-boiled eggs with gremolata and ricotta. When my husband and I moved to Australia to study, we quickly adapted to ordering sandwiches “with salad.” As you know, in Oz, “with salad” does not translate to “side salad;” rather, it is the lettuce, tomato, and, oftentimes, beetroot, placed inside the sandwich itself.

Yet, it has really been over the last two years that I’ve discovered how diverse a genre you really are, salad. Since I began experimenting with North Africa cuisine, I’ve learned that by looking to Tunisia, Algeria and Moroccan, I can take any abundant fruit or veg from my fridge, garden or cupboard – carrots, zucchini, beetroot, dried peaches – and transform it into salads, both warm and cold. Now, I understand that anytime I am cutting up a vegetable and adding some sort of dressing – well, salad, there you are. Thank you.

Best wishes,
Carolyn

The salad I’m enjoying at the moment is a traditional grilled vegetable salad from Tunisia called mechouia (also written salata mishwiyya). It contains a cast of characters familiar to those who prepare chakchouka or turlu turlu. I’ve seen recipes that call for blending the vegetables together after they are grilled or crushing them with a mortar and pestle; others, like this one, request a good fine chop. In addition to the topping of hard-boiled egg and feta cheese, some recipes also call for tuna. Olives or capers would be welcome additions, too.

Mechouia (Grilled Vegetable Salad)
Adapted from Classic Vegetarian Cooking from the Middle East and North Africa
Serves 6 as a side salad

2 large red bell peppers
4 firm medium tomatoes
3 medium onions
1 small chili
45 milliliters / 3 tablespoons freshly-squeezed lemon juice
45 milliliters / 3 tablespoons olive oil
5 milliliters / 1 teaspoon oregano
5 milliliters / 1 teaspoon salt
2.5 milliliters / ½ teaspoon black pepper
2 hard boiled eggs, cut into wedges
40 grams / ¼ cup feta cheese, crumbled

Grill the red peppers, tomatoes, onions and chili (outdoors or on the stovetop), or broil in the oven. Turn the vegetables periodically. Remove the vegetables as they become soft – the chili will grill faster than the onion, for example.

Peel the skins from the peppers and chili and remove as many seeds from the chili as you want; you can keep a few in to add additional heat to the dish. Chop all the vegetables into small pieces.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together lemon juice, olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper. Add the chopped vegetables and mix well. Transfer to a serving platter and scatter the egg and cheese around the top of the salad. Serve warm.

With an Egg on Top

Sometimes you learn a new recipe. And sometimes a recipe teaches you a whole new strategy for composing a meal.

As a fish-a-tarian who rarely cooks fish, my dinners usually fall into one of the following categories: Indian curry; risotto; pasta; veggie or legume-based soup; frittata/quiche; polenta. Until now. Welcome – the vegetable sauté with poached eggs on top.

The inspirational dish was chakchouka, an Algerian/Tunisian creation that, I discovered through a little online searching, was brought by North African immigrants to Israel and is also quite popular there (spelled shakshouka), especially during Passover. Chakchouka is basically eggs poached in a sauté of tomato, onion, green pepper and North African spices. It is so easy to put together – and so warming and flavorful – that you’ll start inventing many other vegetables sautés that could cushion an egg. I’m thinking tomatoes and zucchini with some fresh basil; mushrooms, leeks, parsley and thyme; veggies with Indian spices and a handful of brown lentils; and morshan. In my humble opinion, just like pasta, risotto, or quiche, chakchouka is a brilliant dinner template.

The other reason I love this dish is that I adore poached eggs, but am a failure at poaching eggs myself. (Here is where my husband would say: and you have the audacity to call yourself a food blogger? Yes, I know, I should be able to poach an egg.) I’ve even used those special poaching pans with the ready-made indents, and I still screw things up. Chakchouka is a foolproof way of producing lovely poached eggs, and it even comes with a bonus stew.

The recipe below calls for chickpeas, which are a North Africa ingredient, but are not traditional to chakchouka. To me, the chickpeas are what make this a dinner dish. (Chakchouka is traditionally eaten for breakfast or lunch.) For an added Tunisian touch, and some more heat, stir in a dollop of harissa when you add in the tomatoes.

North African Pepper and Tomato Stew (Chakchouka)
Adapted from The Vegetarian Times Complete Cookbook
Serves 4

2 teaspoons / 10 milliliters olive oil
1 tablespoon paprika
½ large onion, cut in half widthwise and then into fine slivers
1 large green bell pepper, cut into 2-inch/5-centimeter long slivers
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 green chilies, seeded and cut into 2-inch/5-centimeter long slivers
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground cumin
2 medium tomatoes, coarsely chopped
1 15-ounce/425-gram can of chickpeas, rinsed and drained
½ cup/125 milliliters vegetable broth or water (more, if needed)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
4 large eggs

Heat the olive oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Stir in the paprika, and cook 10 seconds. Add the onions and cook, stirring often, until they are lightly golden – about 2-3 minutes. Add the bell pepper, garlic, chilies and ground cumin, and cook, stirring often, for 3-5 minutes until the vegetables have softened. Add the tomatoes and chickpeas and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes have broken down into a sauce, about 10 minutes. If, as the tomato cooks, the stew is getting too dry, add some vegetable broth (I used ½ cup). Season the stew with salt and pepper to taste.

Make four small indentations in each quadrant of the stew. One at a time, crack each egg and drop it into an indentation, taking care not to break the yolk. Cover the skillet and cook over medium-low heat until the eggs are set, about 5-7 minutes. Transfer one egg with stew to each plate, and serve immediately.

Tags: recipe, chakchouka, eggs, vegetables, Algeria, Tunisia, North Africa, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Dinner, Now Now

Once upon a time, Mark and I had a friend from Tonga. One day he invited us to his church for a special celebration. He said the festivities started at 11. Mark and I took the train from Brisbane to the suburb where the Tongan church was located, arriving just before the scheduled hour. We spotted our friend sitting in the shade of a tree, eating oranges. He invited us to sit with him, and handed us each an orange. There was no other activity on the church grounds; Mark and I were slightly baffled. But, we were enjoying the shade, the oranges and the company, so we lazily let time pass.

About 45 minutes later, our friend said, “I bet you’re wondering where all the people are and when the service will start.” Why, yes, we said, that question did cross our minds. “Well,” he said, “We are on Tongan time. Which means it doesn’t matter when we start. All that matters is that the service happens.” People began trickling in a few minutes later, and after another half an hour there was a boisterous crowd. The service, indeed, did happen. (And was followed by a feast that involved five whole spit-roasted pigs, but that is another story.)

In Zimbabwe, time is not quite so loosely conceived as in Tonga. However, we are certainly not on German time, or New York time, or even Southern U.S. time. It took me a while to get the hang of what exactly time here means:

Zimbabwean English: U.S. translation

Let’s go now: Let’s go sometime in the next couple of hours.

Let’s go just now: Let’s go sometime in the next hour.

Let’s go now now: Let’s go now.

After a day of meetings that started “just now” and e-mail replies that came, belatedly, “now,” sometimes I want dinner now now. If you find yourself in a similar situation, then you can prepare Chickpeas and Swiss Chard in the Style of the Tunisian Sahel. The recipe comes straight from Paula Wolfert, the doyenne of Moroccan and Tunisian cuisine. I am reprinting it here only so I can provide the metric equivalents – I didn’t change the recipe one bit. It makes for a quick, light nutritious meal, or a vibrant side. I love the different textures, the spicy kick and the fact that you can eat this dish warm or cold. The one question your dinner-mates will ask, of course, is where, oh where is the Tunisian Sahel? “Sahel” means coast or margin in Arabic; in Tunisia, the Sahel refers to the central part of the country’s eastern shoreline.

Time to go eat – now now!

Chickpeas and Swiss Chard in the Style of the Tunisian Sahel (Morshan)
From Mediterranean Cooking
Makes 2 servings (4 as a side)

¾ pound / 340 grams Swiss chard leaves, stemmed, rinsed and torn into large pieces
2 large cloves of garlic, peeled
½ teaspoon / 2.5 milliliters coarse salt
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground coriander
1 small dried red chili
30 milliliters / 2 tablespoons olive oil
½ cup / 80 grams minced onion
2 teaspoons / 10 milliliters tomato paste
1 cup / 165 grams cooked chickpeas, with ¾ cup / 190 milliliters cooking liquid*
1 lemon, cut in wedges (optional)

Steam, parboil or microwave the chard leaves until tender, about 5 minutes. Set leaves in colander to drain. Squeeze out excess moisture and shred coarsely.

Crush garlic in mortar with salt, coriander and chili until a thick, crumbly paste forms.

Heat olive oil in large skillet and sauté the onion until pale-golden. Add the garlic paste and tomato paste and stir into oil until sizzling. Add chard, cooked chickpeas and cooking liquid and cook, stirring occasionally, 10 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand until ready to serve. (Contents of skillet should be very moist but not soupy. For a looser texture, stir in more chickpea cooking liquid. Serve warm, at room temperature or cold with lemon wedges.

Note: Broccoli rabe, dandelion leaves, mustard greens, kale or turnip tops may be substituted for Swiss chard. Discard any yellow or damaged leaves and cook like chard. Cooking time will vary.

*Okay, I lied, I realized as I was typing that I didn’t follow this recipe to the letter! I actually used two tins of canned chickpeas, drained, and water instead of the freshly cooked beans and their cooking water. I wanted dinner now now, remember?

Tags: recipe, Tunisia, main dish, side dish, chickpeas, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Well-herbed Couscous from a Well-loved Cookbook

Like a child’s blanket, hugged until threadbare, my copy of Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian has been loved too, too much. Its spine is broken, its pages are oil-spattered, and its recipes accompanied by barely legible scribbles and flurries of exclamation points.

I was first introduced to Jaffrey by my friends Matt and Steph, hooked by a recipe for salmon curry. I copied a few pages from their edition of From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail, and so began 2004, the Year of Curry. For me, Indian food presented a whole new way of cooking. The recipes made me breathless with their instructions to add ingredients mere seconds after one another, my spice rack became a spice cabinet, and my tolerance for hot chilies went through the roof. Another new discovery was curry leaves, an optional ingredient in what seemed like half of Spice Trail’s dishes. Serendipitously, my now-husband had just begun gardening for an elderly Indian woman with an out-of-control curry plant. He would return home, ever-chivalrous, with curry leaf bouquets.

I acquired World Vegetarian in 2005 and have been cooking my way through it ever since, adopting as dinner staples the Bengali squash curry, Italian chickpea flour pizzas and curried tomato soup. Over these two years, an ever-more-tattered green post-it has marked a recipe for Speckled Green Couscous with Red Potato Sauce. This recipe, a Tunisian dish, attracted my attention with its use of four fresh herbs – cilantro, dill, parsley and arugula – but it remained untried simply because I could never accumulate all of the ingredients at one time. My cilantro plant would be flourishing just when my dill plant had died. The supermarket would have arugula, but scallions were nowhere to be found, or perhaps the tomato paste was out of stock. Today, however, my stars aligned. In fact, even though I couldn’t find fresh dill at the store, I did discover and purchase a dill plant at the nursery (I hope it didn’t mind quickly losing half its leaves), and I compensated for my remaining dill shortfall with some feathery fennel tips, which, according to Jaffrey, are more traditional in Tunisia anyway.

Jaffrey recommends mixing a ¼ cup of the red potato sauce with cayenne and serving it as an accompaniment to the dish in place of harissa, a hot, North African spice paste. My sauce did not produce enough liquid to spare, however, so next time I’ll prepare some of my own harissa beforehand. I also think I’ll double the sauce portion of recipe, as it had a satisfying richness that well-compliments the herb-lightened fluffiness of the couscous. I wanted more! Next time…if only my new dill plant will not die, and the stars that oversee ingredient availability once again align….

Speckled Green Couscous with Red Potato Sauce
Slightly adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian
Serves 4

Potato Sauce
3 tablespoons / 45 milliliters olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons / 30 milliliters tomato paste
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground cumin
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground coriander
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters paprika
¼ teaspoon ground cayenne
12 ounces / 340 grams boiling potatoes (about 5 medium), peeled and cut into 1 x ½ x ½-inch / 2½ x 1¼ x 1¼-centimeter pieces
1½ teaspoons / 7½ milliliters salt, or to taste

Couscous
1½ teaspoons / 7½ milliliters salt
1 tablespoon / 15 milliliters olive oil
½ cup / 125 milliliters parsley, finely chopped
4 tablespoons / 60 milliliters cilantro (a.k.a. coriander), finely chopped
3 tablespoons / 45 milliliters feathery fennel tips, finely chopped
1 tablespoon / 15 milliliters fresh dill, finely chopped
4 scallions, green parts only, finely sliced
½ cup / 125 milliliters arugula (a.k.a. rocket), finely chopped
2 cups instant couscous

To make the potato sauce, put the oil in a medium saucepan and set over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the onion and fry it for a minute. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds. Next, add the tomato paste, and stir it for a minute. Add the ground cumin, ground coriander, paprika and cayenne, and stir once more. Put in 4 cups of water, the potatoes and the salt. Stir and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat to a rapid simmer and cook for 30 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender. Adjust the salt, if necessary.

To make the couscous, bring 2½ cups of water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the salt, oil, parsley, cilantro, fennel tips, dill, scallions and arugula. Cover, turn the heat down to low, and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Add the couscous, stir and cover. Remove the pan from the heat and let it sit in a warm place for 5 minutes. Uncover, and fluff thoroughly with a fork.

Serve the couscous immediately, topped with the red potato sauce.

This post is an entry in Weekend Herb Blogging, a food blog event founded by Kalyn’s Kitchen and hosted, this week, by Tomato.

Tags: recipe, Weekend Herb Blogging, Tunisia, couscous, food blog event, main dish, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa

Soup for a Rainy Season

It is easy to overlook the wonder of rain. Beyond the fact that it emerges from moving, ominous grey things called CLOUDS and falls from the SKY (two awe-inspiring features, if you ask me), there is also the breath of cool air that foreshadows its first drops, the sound rain makes on different objects (a tin roof, a pool, a window pane), and the moist, earthy smell that land somehow conceals until rain comes, just like bread hides the smell of toast.

I’ve always enjoyed rain. After all, if the weather was beautiful everyday, when would I play cards, watch two movies in a row, bake cookies, organize photos, paint my fingernails, or write long e-mails? Rain gives you permission to be cooped up and sedentary, and to ponder, over a bowl of soup, how to make the best out of the situation.

Living in Zimbabwe has deepened my rain-appreciation. Here, rain only falls between November and April. Those first dust-dampening storms literally transform the landscape from shades of brown to a bright, new green. Rain is also critical to the country’s lifeblood – agriculture. This year, the rainy season got off to a sluggish start. There were a few storms in mid-November, but then the sun and heat returned, and by the time I visited a few rural communities in early December…well, people had begun whispering the dreaded D-word (drought). With farmers facing many challenges beyond the weather (such as the inavailability and high cost of seed and fertilizer), a good rainy season is critical to averting hunger. So, I am especially happy to see today’s rain, and a steady, soaking rain it is.

We had invited two friends over for tennis and a light lunch, but the rain nixed the tennis, as well as my enthusiasm for the green salad I had planned on serving alongside a chard and saffron tart. Soup was in order, and Tunisian Tomato Soup is the prefect choice for a cool, drizzly day, combining all the comforts of tomato soup with the heartiness of lentils and chickpeas, a sunray of lemon, and classic Tunisian accents of cinnamon, turmeric, cayenne and raisins.

Let it rain!

Tunisian Tomato Soup
Adapted from Mollie Katzen’s Vegetable Heaven
Serves at least 8 as a starter

1 cup brown lentils, rinsed and picked over
1 cinnamon stick
6 cups / 1½ liters water
2 tablespoons / 30 milliliters olive oil
4 medium onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons / 10 milliliters salt
1 teaspoon / 5 milliliters ground turmeric
1½ teaspoons / 7½ milliliters cumin seeds
2 teaspoons / 10 milliliters ground cumin
3 bay leaves
1 28-ounce / 800-gram can crushed tomatoes
1 14-ounce / 400-gram can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
3-4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Cayenne pepper, to taste
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
½ cup raisins, soaked in warm water and drained

Put the lentils, cinnamon stick and water in a medium saucepan, and bring it to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 30 minutes, or until the lentils are tender but not mushy. Remove the cinnamon stick and drain the lentils, saving the water.

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Toss in the onions and garlic and sauté for 5-8 minutes until the onions are soft. Add the tomatoes and six cups of water (including the reserved cooking water from the lentils). Bring the pot to a boil, and then lower the heat so that the soup is simmering. Partially cover, and cook for 15 minutes. Remove the bay leaves.

Add the cooked lentils and chickpeas and stir. Simmer for five minutes, until the chickpeas are heated through. Stir in the lemon juice, cayenne pepper, salt and pepper. Serve hot, topped with a sprinkling of raisins. (I like to soak the raisins in warm water beforehand so that they are nice and plump, but you don’t have to.)

Tags: recipe, Tunisia, tomato, soup, Field to Feast, food blog, Africa