‘Adass ~ Algerian Lentils

‘Adass is a delicious, warming and very hearty Algerian lentil stew perfect for the winter months. It is tasty yet has surprisingly few ingredients and is simple to prepare. Typically eaten with French baguette.

Ingredients:

• 1 finely chopped onion
• 4 medium carrots, halved and chopped
• 1 stick of celery, chopped
• 1 turnip chopped into smallish chunks
• 1 potato cut into 1 inch chunks
• 2 1/2 cups green lentils
• 1 tablespoon tomato concentrate past
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 2 litres water
• 2 tablespoons oil

Place all ingredients into a pressure cooker, bring to the boil and then reduce the heat to medium or a little less than medium, screw on the lid and pressurise. Cook for 1 1/2 – 2 hours but check water level regularly. Take care when stirring not to break up the vegetables.

 

The lentils are ready when they are soft but not disintegrating. There should be some liquid remaining, giving the consistency of a very thick soup. Eat with bread and a little harissa if liked.

If you have leftovers, you’ll find that some of the liquid will be absorbed overnight so be careful not to make the stew too dry.

Cous cous ~ Algerian style

This is the typical cous cous with stew from my husband’s region of Algeria which is the capital and surrounding area. The sauce is ‘white’ (contains no tomato or harissa). I use courgettes, turnip and carrots although it is common to find this stew with meat/chicken and turnip (mouli/luft) only. I occasionally add one medium potato cut into 4-6 pieces also. The stew is easy to cook in a regular saucepan and the cous cous can be cooked in the traditional couscousiere or in the microwave.

Ingredients:

• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 1 chicken cut into pieces
• 5 small courgettes (zucchini) topped and tailed
• 5 medium carrots halved vertically
• 2 small turnips, in 4 chunks
• 1/2 tin chickpeas, drained
• 1 medium potato if desired
• salt, pepper and a sprinkle of cinnamon
• 1.5 litres water

Saute the onions until soft then add the chicken pieces and spices and fry until sealed. Add the carrots, turnips, chickpeas and water and cook with pressure until almost done. Add the potato and courgette and cook further until all ingredients are cooked through.

To cook the cous cous, best results will be obtained by steaming not soaking.

Wash your cous cous, drain and leave to soak up whatever water remains. Rub grains together to separate them and then place in the top part of a steamer or couscousiere and cook until the steam breaks through the grains. Empty out into a large tray, break up the grains with a spoon and sprinkle on half a small glass of salted water and then return to the steamer. Steam a second time until the steam breaks through, turn out into a tray and with a spoon or fork rub through some butter, margarine or vegetable ghee (smen).

An alternative method of cooking the cous cous that also uses steam is to cook it in the microwave.  Wash the cous cous and leave to absorb excess fluid. Place in a large microwavable plastic bowl and cover with cling film. Microwave on high for 3 minutes. Remove from microwave and stir through a half a glass of salted water making sure to break up the cous cous grains. Cover with cling film and return to microwave for a further two minutes and then rub through some butter, margarine or vegetable ghee as above.

I find this method less messy as you use only one large bowl to cook the cous cous in and the cling film keeps the steam build up aroud the cous cous so the cooking principle remains the same. You end up with nice fluffy grains as with steaming.

Arrange the chicken and vegetables over the cous cous and serve.

Above: Cous cous after having been rinsed – leave it to absorb residual water

Above: Cous cous 10 mins later. Grains have been rubbed to separate them.

Above: Cous cous after 2 steamings in the microwave. Knob of margarine/butter melting into the hot grains.

Above: Cous cous with chicken and vegetables arranged over the top; sauce from the pot served in a separate jug.

M’barja

If you are at all familiar with Arabic cooking then you have probably heard of Ma’amoul and Maqrout. Both are types of cookie with a soft date centre. Ma’amoul is normally made with flour or flour with a small amount of semolina and of course butter. The dough is pushed into attractive moulds, the filling added and then more dough pressed in before finally dispatching the moulded dough onto the baking sheet and baking.

Similarly maqrout is made from semolina (sometimes with a small amount of flour added) and has a date or nut filling, a wooden device is used to make a pattern on the top and the maqrout are baked before being drenched in honey.

The recipe below is for an Algerian variation called M’barja or M’thaqaba. Maqrout are common in Algeria but this variation seems to be quite unique to Algeria. It is cooked on a hotplate and is eaten dry, not drenched in honey or syrup.

M’barja contains a date filling and M’thaqaba is the semolina cookie without filling.

You need:

4 cups coarse semolina

pinch salt

1 cup melted butter or margarine

1 cup orange flower water/water combination (3 tablespoons orange flower topped up with water)

soft pitted date mixture – you can buy this ready mashed

To make:

Pour the melted butter into the semolina and salt and rub in well.

Pour the water in and mix well with hands to obtain a crumbly texture. The dough will still be a little dry but if you squeeze hard you make the dough stick together.

Turn out onto the worktop and press down with your hands. Roll out with a rolling pin or your hands to about 1/2 centimetre thickness.

Cut the dough in half.

Take a handful of the soft mashed date and squeeze it with your hands to make it fairly thin. Mine was very soft so I was able to do this and then place on one half of the semolina dough and using a wet knife I spread the date completely across one half.

Using a palette knife lift up pieces of the other half of the semolina dough and piece together on top of the date layer. You should end up with something quite messy as below:

With wet hands carefully push together the edges to seal so there is one complete layer over the date with no holes.

Cut into diamonds and place on hotplate which is set over a medium heat.

Cook on each side until golden.

Traditionally eaten with morning or mid-afternoon coffee.

Algerian Chicken Chtit’ha

I don’t cook Algerian food very often, the meals we eat are quite eclectic so it seems that hubby is missing all the Algerian delights he would be enjoying if he were spending the month of Ramadan back in Algeria with his mum, sisters, brothers and extended family. Today he made a special request for Chicken Chtit’ha which is a very simple Algerian dish which is essentially chicken cooked in a tomato and garlic sauce.

You need:

1 small onion

3 cloves garlic 

1 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon black pepper

1/8 teaspoon chicken spices/baharat/ra’s al-hanout

1/8 teaspoon paprika

2 whole Allspice (the round ones that look like large peppercorns)

2 teaspoons tomato paste concentrate

1/2 can chickpeas

pieces of skinless chicken – this amount of sauce should be good for 2 or 3 whole legs

water

To make:

• Use a cheesegrater (with the largest holes) and shred the onion into a pan containing 1 tablespoon oil then using a finer grater, grate in the garlic.
• Saute on a medium heat taking care not to over colour the onions.
• When soft, add the chicken pieces and fry to seal.
• Add the spices and tomato paste, stir well and add 1/4 cup of water and the chickpeas.
• After a short while add another cup of water and bring to the boil and then reduce the heat to low-medium.
• Stir regularly and add small amounts of water if and when necessary.
• If you like it hot, add 1 teaspoon of harissa with the tomato paste.

The end result should be tender pieces of chicken in a thickish sauce that you can eat with bread; you don’t want it to dry out but also you don’t want it tobe too runny and soupy.

Ramadan recipes – Algerian Shorba

One of the Ramadan ‘staples’ in Algerian homes is Shorba Frik which is basically a kind of Minestrone soup with burghul/cracked wheat (a.k.a. frik) instead of pasta.

Shorba Frik is often accompanied by Borek – the Algerian version of samosa or spring roll or bread.

My simple recipe for Shorba is as follows:

Ingredients:

1 onion, peeled and quartered

1 medium carrot, washed and halved (no need to peel)

1 small courgette/zucchini

small piece of green pepper/capsicum

a few lamb chops

6 fresh tomatoes, peeled OR 1 tin plum tomatoes

2 tablespoons tomato concentrate

salt, pepper, sprinkle cinnamon

1.5 litres water

Method:

• Throw all the above ingredients into the pressure cooker as they are, no need for chopping or dicing. Put the lid on and pressure cook until the meat and vegetables are soft.
• Carefully remove the pieces of meat and then puree the soup with a handheld blender or pour into a jug blender.
• Return to a gentle heat and proceed to remove the meat from the bone and break up into fairly small pieces and return meat to pan. Add 1/2 tin of chickpeas and 2 handfuls of cracked wheat/burghul – the fine variety is better. Add more water as and when necessary.
• Simmer until the chickpeas are softened and the burghul is cooked. Remember to stir occasionally so the burghul doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.
• Just before serving stir in some chopped coriander and garnish with additional chopped coriander. Serve with quarters of lemon.

Sidi Fredj, Algeria

Sidi Fredj, Algeria, originally uploaded by Umm Ibrahim.

I caught the Flickr bug and have started uploading a few photographs and thought I would test out the ‘blog this’ function for pictures so here goes…

Oh, and you can find my Flickr photostream here.

More traditional craft stuff!

More traditional crafty stuff…

The turquoise set that I want but we didn’t get because we don’t know how to get it home intact. There were far more pieces than this though; there were also couscous dish, oval fish plates, laban jug and mugs, large serving plates, beautiful latticed fruit bowl. I’m so disappointed! I now wish we’d bought it and brought it back a few pieces at a time, leaving the rest at my in-laws to collect later!

And some traditional Kabylie jewellery:

Hammam Melouane

Hammam Melouane is a small town at the foot of the Blidean Atlas mountains; 37km south west of Algiers. Hammam is the Arabic for baths and it is the presence of the baths with thermal spring water that gives the town it’s name.

The drive from Algiers to Hammam Melouane is a beautiful one; as you turn inland away from the coast the scenery quickly becomes mountainous and you drive past fields upon fields of olive trees, apricot trees, orange groves already bearing tiny green spheres which will grow and become ripe by December, fig trees which have already been harvested for the first batch of larger figs – the smaller sweeter ones will come later, grape vines and prickly pear cacti which are interestingly named in Algerian although I am unsure as to why: they are called Qarnous Nasaara (Pears of the Christians) or Hindi (Indian).

As you enter the town of Hammam Melouane, you drive along a narrow road through the mountains and arrive in a populated valley with green mountains rising on all sides; these mountains are covered in snow during the winter.

If you pass right through the town, you will come to another mountain road and the stream which comes from higher in the mountains and people enjoy bathing there.

The actual hammam, Station Thermale, is reasonably priced at 120Dinars (6Riyals/75p) for adults and 60Dinars for children. The men’s section is to one side and ladies’ section to the other side. There are private rooms with a chair and bath so there’s no need for communal bathing.

The water is hot and salty and full of minerals, rare gases, nitrogen, magnesium and iron. It is especially recommended for those with any kind of rheumatism; illnesses of the bones; joint pain; problems with the intestines, liver, pancreas and kidneys; circulation problems in addition to other conditions.

It is not recommended for those in the final stages of cancer, those with advanced tuberculosis and those with acute infections. *

On the main road through the town there is a busy street market and shops selling seasonal fruits, traditional clayware and other souvenirs and novelties.

Traditional Algerian crafts

I love all the traditional Algerian/North African handicrafts – there’s just too much that I want to buy! We went to a market this week for a browse and there was just so much to see and at such reasonable prices.

The traditional clay dinner services were gorgeous; the one I want is like the orange and lime ones in the pic below but in turquoise. The plate with a pyramid lid is for serving cous cous and the lidded bowl beneath that is for shorba (soup).

The clay plates in the photo below are tagines for baking traditional Algerian semoline bread, matlou’. There is the type with a plain base or the spotted one has a patterned base so the underneath of the bread comes out with a nice pattern.

Clay couscousieres… the bottom part is for making the stew and the top part is a steamer for the couscous, it has holes in it.

Beautiful, intricate woollen woven rugs:

Random tiling that you see around the place on walls and even around the outside tap in my in-laws house. This was just a tiled area on a wall and you buy this sort of thing framed to hang at home:

La Grande Poste

This beautiful piece of Arabesque architecture surprisingly is La Grande Poste in central Algiers and was built in 1910.

The steps you can see leading down in the photograph below lead to the metro station although Algiers is still awaiting completion of that project.