Food in Libya is one of the most important activities of any
Libyan family. The Libyans always say: one must eat well.
Olive oil is the main ingredient of nearly any dish or meal
in Libya, and it is almost impossible to cook or prepare
any Libyan food without it. Its use in North Africa goes
back thousands of years, and its healing and life-prolonging
properties were well known to the ancient Egyptians. Offering
of the olive branch to the Libyan oracle of Amon at Siwa
indicates its sacred nature and antiquity.
Its use in Mediterranean
diets has always been associated with good health and
preventing major diseases like stroke, heart disease and
lung cancer. The healing properties are found mainly in the
extra virgin olive oil (and virgin olive oil), which is naturally
produced, unrefined oil (also called
"cold pressed"); while the active ingredients of the
second type, known as "pure oil" or "olive oil
",
were badly destroyed by the chemical processes used to extract
the oil. According to recent research extra-virgin olive oil
contains a natural painkiller similar to ibuprofen (found
in headache tablets), and its active ingredient oleocanthal inhibits
the activity of enzymes involved in inflammation just as ibuprofen does.
Olive oil is also widely used as a skin ointment for its healing
properties and in perfumes and medicines.
Ancient oil lamps in
Libya were also kept alight by a regular supply of olive oil;
adding a bit of salt around the wick prolongs the life of the
lamp and reduces the consumption of oil.
In fact the first commercial advert in the world was said to
have been a Carthaginian oil lamp which went for sale for one
penny.
"Your balanced diet is your medicine."
Dates & Date Syrup in Libyan Food:
Dates at various stages:
yellow when first ripen, dark brown when mature, black-dark-red
as date syrup (rreb). The image on the right shows the seed,
housed inside the date, which will go on to become another Palm.
There are four
main ingredients of traditional
Libyan food: olives (and olive oil), palm dates, grains and milk.
These are very ancient foods and their use must go back to neolithic
times, when humans first began to harvest their produce and make
use of the natural surrounding ingredients.
Grains are roasted, ground, sieved and used for making bread,
cakes, soups, bazin, and other dough-based dishes. Dates are harvested, dried and stored
for the rest of the year; they can be eaten as they are, made
into syrup or slightly fried and eaten with "bsisa",
or eaten with milk as a delicious delicacy. This traditional
breakfast was very common in Libya until recently, when many
of the traditional dishes and foods began to slowly disappear
into the corridors of darkness, and supplanted by modern, bland, fat-rich
foods.
Anthropologists tell us
that early neolithic societies never kill female cattle and that
it is always the male who is killed (and subsequently consumed);
females are a regular source of both: milk and more females, to continue
the cycle of families - the foundation of mammals. Thus milk by itself becomes
a meal of its own; and from milk one obtains ghee, yogurt, butter and cheese. Sahara's slim and dignified Tuareg can easily live on dried dates and fresh milk provided
by the palm and the goat respectively. Date syrup, olive oil,
and boiled dough make one of the most ancient and popular dishes in Libya: "a'eish", "utshu" or "bazin" --
names which also mean "food" and "life".
Palm dates, bsisa and a glass of milk: prehistoric dish.
Libyan Traditional Sand Ovens:
Baking Bread in Hot Sand, Ghadames.
The sand in Libya gets really hot in the summer
that walking slowly on it with bare feet
becomes unbearable; one needs to walk fast
just like some walk on embers.
Adding some real fire to that, one can imagine
the effect on tender dough: instant
baking.
Traditional Tuareg
way of cooking bread by burying it in hot
sand, which is as effective as an oven. The
technique can also be used to bake potatoes
(jacket potato) and eggs by burying them
whole beneath the hearth. A good shake and
a couple of whacks renders the bread clean
and ready to eat (see photo below).
Local Libyan Bread From Ghadames.
Modern bread: the one on the right is made in the bakery, and the one on the left is home-made tajeen-bread, some of which is made of real wholemeal flour and thus comes out really heavy and tasty.
Libyan Black
&
Green Tea
One of the most important social occasions in Libya is
the daily session of tea drinking.
Brings families together,
to chat, laugh, discuss and gossip about the highlights
of the day
and about life in general. Talking in Libya
is very important social activity; it firmly bonds the
family.
Libyan tea is rather very strong, thick, syrup-like black
tea. After boiling water in a traditional tea pot, one adds a handful
of red tea leaves, and leaves to boil for a long time (ten to twenty minutes).
Remove the pot from the fire, open the lid, add some sugar, and boil again
for a few more minutes. The ready tea is then removed from the fire, left
to settle for a few seconds, and served in small glasses (as shown in
the photo). Normally this is prepared during a chat session, around which
members of the family gather together to socialise for an hour or so before
they each carry on with their own separate paths, and during which one
drinks two rounds of tea (each round prepared as above and lasts about
half an hour). The third round is served with roasted peanuts or roasted
almonds (mixed with the tea in the same glass).
In special occasions and for those who still follow the
old tradition, the tea is first poured into another
mug, and then using two mugs, one continuously empties
the content of one mug into the other and then back
into the original mug for at least twenty or thirty
times, to produce what the Libyans call
reghwet
or
reghwa, which can be translated as froth or foam, which is steadily added to one
glass at a time as being made. (To see a video
of a woman making tea froth,
please visit
our video gallery and click on the Ghadames video,
and forward the video to about
the end of the first third of the video.) After all the
empty glasses are half-full with froth, the hot tea
is poured over the froth and served hot. The trick to produce
the froth is to lift one mug as high as possible,
by stretching your arm over your head, while pouring
the content into the other mug, and then repeat the
process by lowering the raised hand and rising the
other one, and so on until enough froth has been
produced.
After meals, the Libyans traditionally always use green
tea to aid digestion, and also help eliminate stomach
problems after a heavy meal. It really does work.
Green tea is better for you, especially when drank
without milk. Adding milk destroys much of the powerful
effects of its antioxidants.
One of the main components of tea are antioxidants.
The process of oxidation in the human body causes
damage to our cells. A free radical is a charged
atom that steals an electron from a healthy cell
in order to re-establish its own stability, leaving
you with a bit of damaged DNA. Given time, the damage
accumulates and as a result one ages faster or even dies quicker.
Now
comes the important role of antioxidants. They talk to
the free radicals, and say: hi, I have some free
electrons, do you want some? The free radicals, being
lazy radicals, care less where the electrons come
from, and thus happily take up the free offer and
spare your helpless healthy cells the loss of much-needed electrons.
The process of oxidation
is accelerated by pollution, alcohol and smoking,
and therefore regular supply of green (or red) black
tea and vitamins help keep the supply of antioxidants.
Ask your Libyan guide to prepare some Libyan tea
for you and taste the difference.
The above photo is of a tea session we prepared for an Italian
group while camping in the desert - in Adiri.
Garlic
Garlic, lemons and eggplants for sale in a local market.
Garlic is the most important item in Libyan food, as it is usually added to most dishes that involve preparing sauce or stew, especially for couscous and pasta sauce. It is finely chopped over the sauce as it boils, just before taking it off the ring (or the fire source) to preserve its goodness and flavour; and then served immediately while its rich aroma still in the air. Garlic can also be crushed and then either mixed with honey and eaten with bread, or mixed with olive oil and spread over food and salads.
Garlic in fact is the most important medicinal food on the planet. It contains nearly 60 minerals, vitamins, antibacterial, anti-fungal and anti-cancer chemicals, all of which are almost essential to human's health, and many of which are said to ward off many types of cancer.
The way nature compacted the individual cloves into one uniform head is instantly comparable to a jar of multivitamin tablets - except that the manufactured multivitamin tables are said to be devoid of any goodness and many scientists still think they are a complete waste of money. If nature has already made them for us, why then buy expensive artificial ones? Is there anybody in my head that is not me?
Utshu, A'eish or Bazin
One of the main and most popular dishes in Libya.
A traditional, and probably neolithic, dish made of dough
and sauce. The dough is kneed into a semi spherical ball and placed
in the middle of a large bowel, around which the sauce is poured,
making the dish look like a rock island surrounded by water.
The Dough: the first stage is to prepare the flour which
then can be stored for up to two years and used when needed:
roast the grains in an empty frying pan until golden brown;
grind into fine flour; sieve well and store away in a jar.
To prepare the dish, take about one kilogram of flour from the
mix, boil about third litre of water in a large deep saucepan,
and then as the water is boiling keep adding a bit of flour with
your hand while mixing with the other hand, using a large
wooden ladle. Once you start this, do not stop, just keep adding
flour with one hand while mixing in a circular fashion with the
other, until the dough becomes hard to stir and the mixture solidifies
into dough. Remove the saucepan off the ring, take out the dough,
place in a larger bowel, and while wetting your hand
with a bit of water (because the dough is still hot) start kneading
the mixture into consistent dough, just as you kneed bread, and
shape it into a ball, and finally place in
the middle of a large bowel and pour the sauce all around.
It is eaten by hand by breaking a small bit with your fingers,
pulling a small bit down into the sauce and kneading it with
the sauce into a tasty lump which you throw into your mouth for
further chewing. The traditional type of bazin, especially the
one prepared by the mountain people, is very hard to drive
the fingers in and thus known as "mountain bazin".
This stiff consistency is achieved by boiling the final dough
(after it has been prepared as described above).
Doughing: making the dough.
The consistency is solid and thick, where a bit of force is required to push your fingers through the finished dough. It is nothing like bread. And if you want a really tough bazin you need to visit Nafousah Mountain (say Jado) and ask for a traditional mountain bazin: very hard. Although in the above photo the cook is using one hand to mix the dough, usually women sit on the floor, wrap a thick cloth around the hot pan, and hold the pan between their feet, while both hands holding the wooden ladle (aghenjay) to mix the dough with their full strength - something many modern women cannot do, or instead they use white flour wich produces light and soft bazin, instead of the traditional wholemeal flour.
The dough then is worked into a solid dome-shaped lump and placed in the middle of the plate.
The Sauce: any kind of sauce can be used with this. Normally
a simple meat and a couple of vegetables is used as follows:
fry two large onions, add garlic, turmeric, chili powder, salt
and tomato puree, then throw in the lamb chops (or beef or fish)
and water, and then cook until the meat nearly done. Add potatoes
and pumpkin pieces and further cook until vegetables are done.
Pour the sauce around the dough, and serve
while hot with lemon (ready to be squeezed into the sauce).
A simple version of white bazin (made of white flour) is normally
cooked for breakfast, but eaten with olive oil and date syrup:
instead of mounting the dough like a mound, spread flat onto
a plate, then sprinkle with olive oil and pour some date syrup
in the middle (or alternatively use honey, or sugar, or fenugreek
powder instead of date syrup). It is eaten in a similar way:
break a small piece of dough, mix thoroughly with oil, dip into
the syrup and mix with your fingers a few more times before throwing
it into the mouth for further
chewing.
The sauce used for this one is made of tomato puree, turmeric, chili powder, potatoes, chicken and fenugreek seeds (still visible at the top). The fenugreek seeds are really unique: strong in flavour and slightly bitter.
The sauce used for this one is made of sour milk (milk that tastes like yogurt) and topped with fenugreek powder. Delicious, to say the least. Again, this is an ancient dish, possibly neolithic.
Libyan bazin with fish & potatoes
Zummeeta
Z'ummeeta or zumita is yet another ancient Libyan dish. It is a doughy dish
made of mixing water with flour until it is firm and doughy.
It is eaten by dipping a small bit, taken by hand, in olive oil,
and with the option of dipping in chili sauce.
It is usually eaten for breakfast, but some times it is eaten
whenever one is hungry, as it takes only few minutes to mix.
The
flour mix is made of whole grain barley or wheat, a bit of coriander and
cumin seeds. These are dry roasted in an empty
frying pan until golden brown, then ground into powder, sieved
and finally placed in clay jars and put away. Normally this process
is done once a year, although the mixture can last for even two
years. Whenever you need some z'ummeeta, just take some flour, add a pinch of salt,
mix thoroughly with a bit of water, spread on a plate, and pour
the olive oil on top. The mixture breaks up in the hand nice and dry,
and smells fresh with a hint of coriander and olive oil. The modern way of making it is to mix the oil with the mixture and serve it ready mixed, as in the above photo, normally with a bit of harisa in the middle as a dip.
Couscous (Kesksoo)
Traditional couscous meal, covered with a straw-made
cover.
I can see the chickpeas (chick peas): an essential ingredient.
From Ghadames, Libya.
Couscous is one of the most widely popular dishes in Libya and,
for that matter, in the whole of North Africa.
Its recent spread in Europe is a testimony to its unique
qualities and special taste,
rarely found in other dishes.
The dish involves cooking two things: the couscous, made of wheat or barley,
ground into coarse flour just like semolina (but without the stickiness), and the
vegetable and meat sauce to go with it.
The couscous: to start with, sprinkle some salt,
pepper, olive oil and a bit of water over the couscous grains,
then mix thoroughly by hand, from right to left, slowly rolling
the couscous grains into larger balls. Keep mixing and adding
a few drops of water at a time until the balls become round and
about a third the size of a rice grain. Keep mixing in this manner until all couscous has been used. (Nowadays you buy it mixed and ready to steam.) Place the mixture
in a special saucepan called "keskas", which is like
a steamer or a saucepan with lots of holes, and cover with the
lid.
This steamer is then placed on top of the other saucepan
containing the vegetable and meat sauce, so that the couscous
will be cooked by the steam rising from the simmering sauce,
thus transferring the flavour to the couscous itself. The modern,
commercial way of cooking couscous by placing the
contents of the ready-mixed couscous bag in a saucepan and covering it
for a few minutes with boiling water does not produce a good
quality couscous, but some tasteless stuff you buy in supermarkets. Real
couscous needs to be steamed over a good sauce for the flavour
to soak in, and then needs to be thoroughly mixed with a bit
of extra virgin olive oil to further enhance the flavour, before
covering the couscous with the lamb and vegetable sauce.
Couscous with meat, vegetables, chickpeas, chips, and A fried hot green pepper on top.
The sauce's recipe:
olive oil, water
onion & garlic
spices: chili powder, turmeric, cumin, coriander,
salt.
tomato pure
vegetable: potatoes, carrots, pumpkin, chickpeas
lamb meat (or fish, or dried octopus, or chicken): lamb meat is the traditional
favourite for its rich flavour.
Heat the oil, fry the onions until golden brown, throw in the garlic, the spices and tomato puree and mix
for a few minutes, and then add the meat and about half a litre
of water and cover the saucepan with the lid and cook for at least half an hour. Then remove the lid and add the vegetable and the chickpeas
to the sauce, make sure there is enough water but not to much
so that the sauce comes out nice and thick, and place the steamer containing the
couscous on top and cover with the lid and leave to cook
for a further 15 or 20 minutes on a slow heat.
After that, take the couscous
out of the steamer and pour into a large bowl and leave to cool
for a few minutes, then sprinkle some olive oil and mix again,
breaking the congealed clumps into fine soft grains of couscous
and place back in the steamer for a further few minutes cooking.
To serve, put
the couscous in a large bowl (if the whole family eating from
one bowl) or serve small portions into plates, cover with the
vegetable sauce (using a good ladle), place a piece of tender lamb on
top of the sauce, then finally fry some finely chopped onions
until golden and mix them with a bit more of cooked chickpeas
and sprinkle the mixture on top of the sauce and the meat. Some
people further place peeled boiled eggs between the lumps
of lamp. Finally, do not forget to eat.
Sacks of dries beans, nuts, seeds and roots in a local market.
Dried beans and grains are also a fundamental part of food in Libya. Chickpeas are soaked in water for a few hours, then cooked with tomato and meat sauce for couscous or added to pasta sauce. Broad beans are cooked in a dipping sauce of tomatoes and herbs and deliciously eaten with bread.
Mb'atten
Mb'atten is really a Libyan specialty dish, prepared on special
occasions, celebrations and festivities, often with Kofta and
couscous. It is a unique dish never to be found anywhere else
in the world (according to our current knowledge). It is made
of slicing potato lengthwise into thin slices (about 3mm thick)
but keeping each two slices joined together at the base, to form
a sandwich, which will be stuffed with minced meat and herbs
and then fried. The remaining mix of meat and herbs can be flattened
into small burgers, dipped into white flour and then fried to
make Kofta.
The Stuffing: a good quantity of minced meat (beef or lamb),
about half of the mixture should be meat, a bundle of fresh green
dill, a bundle of fresh parsley, two bundles of spring
onion, a bit of fresh parsley, 3 cloves of garlic (ground into
paste), teaspoon of salt, teaspoon of hot chili, 2 teaspoon of
turmeric, a touch of cinnamon, 3 tablespoons of tomato puree,
and one egg. (Modern variants of the dish do not include dill any more in the ingredients.)
Weighing fresh herbs at the local market. The most common herbs used in some dishes, like Mb'atten, include spring onions, coriander, parsley, dill, and vine leaves (used for stuffing with rice).
Cutting the fresh herbs, to be mixed with mince, egg, tomato puree, spices, salt.
Finely chopped herbs (left), then mixed with mince meat, spices and the rest of the mix (right).
Preparation: finely chop the fresh herbs (parsley, dill and
spring onion) and place in a large bowel. Spice and season with
the spice mixture and add the tomato puree, break in the egg
and mix and squeeze (with your hands to force all the juice out
of the herbs). Pour some oil in a frying pan, chop in one onion
very fine, and add the mince, and cook until nearly done, and then put the mince in a bowel and leave to cool down, before finally mixing it with the fresh herb mixture.
How to cut the pototo as described: you cut a thick slice, then cut each slice half way down.
The second stage involves preparing the potatoes: slice the
potato lengthwise, cutting one slice three-quarters down and
stopping just before reaching the bottom, then cutting the second
all the way down, ending with two slices of potatoes joined at
the base, each about 3mm thick. Sprinkle some salt on all the
slices and dry with kitchen paper, if wet. Open the two slices and stuff with the mixture (about 2 tablespoonfuls
for each sandwich), until the sand witch is full and fat, and
then tap in firmly with your hand along the exposed edge.
Stuffing the potatoes with the mixture of mince and herbs.
The herbs, the sliced potatoes, the egg mix and the flour. Stuff the slice, dipped in egg then in flour and put on the side (or straight into hot sizzling oil).
Hold
the two slices from the joined end and dip the exposed stuffing
into white flour and then dip (only the exposed stuffing, not
the rest of the potato) in egg (to hold together while frying)
and throw in a deep fryer (or frying pan with lots of oil), and fry
until golden brown.
These are now ready to eat, but traditionally,
they can be cooked for a further few minutes in a saucepan with
a bit of tomato sauce, as follows: place all the remaining
potato pieces that were left over from the slicing in the saucepan,
place all the stuffed potatoes on top, pour in a bit of tomato
sauce, cover the saucepan, and heat over a very low heat for
about ten minutes. This turns the fried potatoes into soft and
sauce-covered delicious chunks, just like adding a bit of ketchup to chips.
Serve warm with couscous or salad. If there is a lot of mixture
left over, then roll into small balls, flatten onto a plate containing
white flour, then fry in olive oil as koftas. The stuffed potatoes
are also great cold, after being kept in the fridge overnight (my favourite).
Summer Salad
Traditional Libyan "slatha" is a main meal eaten by
itself and is not a side dish that accompanies a main course.
This is a traditional summer salad in Libya, often prepared by
the beach for an easy and light lunch after swimming in the sea.
Preparation: cut one onion very thinly into a large bowel, chop
five tomatoes into six segments each, cut half cucumber into
small cubes, throw in a handful of pitted green olives, cut one
fresh green chili pepper into small pieces, add a pinch of salt,
3 tablespoons of olive oil, and about half a cup of water. Mix
well by hand, squeezing the tomatoes and the vegetable to release
some of the flavour into the water (but not to much as to mush
up the contents), squeeze a bit of lemon and serve with crispy
bread.
Libyan Summer Salad
The dish is eaten by breaking a piece of bread and dipping
it into the salad and lifting some of the vegetables with it
by folding it over the vegetables. Many of the younger generations
nowadays add a tin of tuna to the salad for richer flavour and
some protein.
Pumpkins at sale in the local market.
Pumpkins are cooked in tomato and herb sauce with other vegetables like potatoes and carrots (or/and meat or chicken), and served either with couscous, rice or pasta, or even eaten as a dip with bread.
Shorba (Libyan Soup):
Fry finely-cut large onion and garlic in ghee until golden
brown; add the meat cubes (beef or lamb), spices (turmeric, chili,
salt, a bit of curry powder, and a teaspoonful of sugar), tomato
puree and water, then cover and simmer
for about 40 minutes until the meat is cooked. Add in the orzo
(pasta shaped like pearls of barley) and cooked chickpeas and
cook for 15 minutes until orzo is cooked. Chop a bit of fresh
parsley and crush one clove of garlic and mix with olive oil
and add to the mixture just before removing from the ring. Serve
with lemon wedges, raw chopped parsley (sprinkled at the top)
and crispy warm bread.
T'ajeen or Tajeen
Peel and cut potatoes into thick slices, boil
until cooked, crush, and spread in a "tajeen" (a baking
tray). Fry thinly-chopped two onions until brown, and add the mince and cook for a few minutes, then add the crushed
garlic and spice up with chili, turmeric, salt and curry powder,
and stir and simmer until cooked. Remove and spread on a large
plate and leave to cool. All the ingredients cold, add to the potatoes and mix in the beaten eggs and bake
for 20 minutes at mark 180. Finally, take out from the oven,
sprinkle some mozzarella cheese on top and bake for a further
15 minutes until the dish is covered with a light golden crust.
Serve hot with crispy bread.
Boureek: Bureek: Burik:
The Libyan basic boureek, also written as bourik, burik or bourek, is a very simple and deliciously crispy dish, made as follows:
break an egg on a flat piece of pastry
fold the other half of the pastry over to form a triangular shape
pinch the edges together to seal firmly
brush the edges with a solution of egg and water (to prevent the egg leaking out while frying)
throw in hot oil to sizzle for a few minutes
turn over and fry the other side for a few more minutes
then take out and serve hot and crispy
Of course, there are other flavours of the dish, made by varying the filling, including one with minced meat: fry the meat with onions, add the herbs of your choice, then take a large table spoonful and spread on the pastry, break the egg on top, fold over and then continue as above. In other North African countries, like Algeria, the shape of the boureek is like a "spring roll" or a sausage roll.
Libyan Boureek
Lebrak
Lebrak is a dish made of stuffed vine leaves (locally called esselk leaves). In fact any kind of green thick leaves will probably do the job. The mixture is made of rice, tomato pure, herbs, spices, garlic, a bit of salt, and either small pieces of meat or mince. Mix all well, put a bit on a leaf, roll over and fold the edges, then place in a saucepan, making sure you place a few leaves in the bottom of the saucepan to take the heat, and these extra leaves (or carpet) often come out burnt. Once all in the saucepan, you need a lid that is slightly smaller than the saucepan so that it will drop all the way down inside the saucepan and sit directly on the stuffed pieces. Then you need a heavy stone to put on the lid, to keep it down. All this is to prevent the stuffed pieces from opening up while cooking. Finally put a little bit of water in the saucepan, not much at all (maybe a small cup), and then place over slow fire to simmer gently for about half an hour until the rice is cooked. Take out gently, sprinkle some olive oil, and serve. Really nice cold too.
Mbekbka: Boiled-Macaroni
Mbekbka: quick macaroni:
Mbekbka is an onomatopoeic word derived from the sound of macaroni boiling in a saucepan. Instead of the European way of boiling pasta or spaghetti in water and then throwing the water away (with all the goodness it contains), the Libyans boil pasta with the sauce, which adds a real pasta flavour to the sauce.
You can make it with any type of pasta, and the simplest dish involves frying onions in oil, throwing in the tomato puree, chili powder, turmeric, then adding water and salt and leave to boil, before adding the pasta. But the proper way to do it is to add some lamb chops, chickpeas and garlic to the sauce. Serve hot with a sprinkle of extra virgin olive oil, and lemon, fresh chili and crusty bread (optional) on a separate plate. You can also add other vegetable like pumpkin (as in photo), potato and green pepper.
Megetta' (home-made fresh thick spaghetti):
This dish is also probably very ancient. A fresh dough is knead from flour, and then flattened like thick pastry, (mixing with flour as you go to prevent it sticking together), cut into small strips as in photo, then cooked in tomato sauce with vegetables and/or meat. You need to cook the vegetables and meat in the sauce first, and only once these are nearly cooked, you add the pasta and cook for a few minutes more.
Although it looks like spaghetti, it tastes much better, because you can taste the flavour of fresh pasta and because it is very chewy and delicious. Owing to the time it takes to prepare, don't expect your mum to cook this yummy dish for you as often as she would dry spaghetti.
Rice
Rice in Libya can be cooked either boiled with sauce, just like risotto, or steamed over a vegetable and meat sauce, just like couscous. The following one is steamed rice with meat, chickpeas and potato sauce.
O's'b'an or Ma'danous
A kind of sausages stuffed with meat, liver, fresh herbs, onions and rice.
Ma'danous is in a way a thicker kind of herb sausage, made of
stuffing intestines with a mixture of fresh herbs, rice and meat and liver pieces.
Preparing the intestines: clean the intestines with hot water,
turning inside out and flashing all the way through, then marinate
in a mixture of lemon juice and salt for at least one hour. Wash
again, very well, and then stuff with the mix.
The mixture: take two bundles of spring onion,
two bundles of fresh parsley, a bit of mint, and one bundle of
fresh coriander, chop finely in a large deep bowel, add the spices
(chili, turmeric, salt, curry powder, black pepper, a handful
of raw white rice, few spoonful's of olive oil, and then cut
in the meat pieces of liver, kidney, lungs, heart and belly, which
would have come with the intestines from the same animal. [This indicates that this dish was originated as a means of using up all the parts of the animal, as to avoid wasting nothing. Even the head and the legs are burnt on wood fire to remove all the hair, and then cleaned, chopped, and boiled in tomato and spice sauce to prepare a special stew.]
Mix
the mixture very well, then use to stuff the intestines, tie a couple of
knots at each end, and place in a saucepan in which a sauce of
tomatoes, spices and salt brought to boil. Remember one
thing: before you put the stuffed intestines in the saucepan,
make sure you prick them with a needle in few places, otherwise
they will explode when the stuffing expands with heat. This dish may not appeal to some, but its unique flavour and rich aroma makes it more delicious than ordinary sausages.
Ghrayba With Almonds
Heat the butter, add the sugar, flour, almond,
mix well, cut in diamonds, place in a baking tray, and put in
a preheated oven. Once cooked (when it looks firm and slightly
golden by the edges), remove from the oven and sprinkle some sugar over
the ghrayba.
Leka'ek or Ka'ek:
Leka'ek is a kind of shortbread, made of flour, baking powder, and olive oil. Once the dough is knead, one takes a small piece, rolls it into a long round strips (just like sausage), then cuts it into short lengths, and rolls each one into a ring. You can leave this ring as it is, or take a knife and cut small cuts on the outer edge of the ring to give it the shape you see on the left. There are two verities, one with sugar added to the mixture to make sweet, and the other is salty, which makes it more like bread sticks.
The one on the left is the sweet one, while the other is the salty leka'ek.
Watermelons & Melons:
watermelon market, with the scales just by the edge of the road. In the way back from work one often pulls over, choose a good melon, weighs it, pays for it, puts it in the car, then continues the journey home.
Bsisa: Ademmin:
Excellent ancient breakfast.
Bsisa or Ademmin, topped with halva.
Bsisa is probably very ancient.
A sweet, rich-textured dish with strong aroma of ground coriander seeds and olive oil, best eaten with palm dates, and washed down with hot black tea. Nothing like it.
Recipe:
Dry barley
Dry chickpeas
Dry green lentils
Dry broad beans
Fenugreek seeds
Coriander seeds (and/or sweet cumin seeds)
Turmeric
Sugar
Oil
Mostly made of ground roasted chickpeas, and handfuls of roasted green lentils, barely, and broad beans, a bit of turmeric (good for the stomach), a few coriander seeds, all ground and sieved into fine powder, finally mixed with sugar and kept in a sealed jar. The powder can last for the whole year (or even longer). Whenever you want some bsisa, you would take a bit of powder into a bowel and mix with extra virgin olive oil until smooth and ready to eat. The yellow colour comes from the colour of ground chickpeas and of turmeric.
Some recipes of bsisa include sweet cumin seeds. Chickpeas are very rich in iron and therefore important to vegetarians. The fenugreek seeds are very, very bitter, and their taste succulently stays in the mouth as an after taste to the sweet bsisa, similar to the zest of a sweet orange that lingers behind on the tongue.
You can eat it in its own, two or three table spoonfuls at a time, not more; but traditionally bsisa is served with palm dates (either fresh, or slightly fried in olive oil and fenugreek powder) and a glass of milk or, my favourite, a cup of hot black tea. Recently, the new generations modify the original recipe by adding almonds, honey, or halva (as in the photo above), which is a similar sweet of its own, made of crushed sesame seeds, flour, sugar and oil.
Magrood
Filling: mix one pound of dates (paste) with one teaspoon of
cinnamon and three tablespoons of olive oil. Take a handful
of the mixture and shape into a small ball, roll into a long
thick strip.
Dough: mix about 4 cups of semolina, one
teaspoon of baking powder, half a cup of flour and one
cup of oil. Mix into soft dough and roll into a shape of a loaf. Press a deep line along the middle of the loaf, and stuff with the date mixture and roll again into a closed loaf (this keeps the date mixture inside the dough), then cut into diagonal, 2 inch
pieces (like diamonds), and place in a baking tray.
Bake in a preheated oven at mark 200) for about
35 minutes, or until golden brown. Take out of the oven, and
while still hot pour the sugar syrup and/or honey over the
whole pieces, and leave to soak
for a while, before serving.
Seafood: Fish & Squid & Octopus
Libyan diet is also rich in sea food, like fresh fish, and sun-dried octopus and squids. Couscous with dried octopus is an old delicacy the new generations seem to gradually leave behind; probably due to the fact that this dish requires a long time to prepare. First, the octopus needs to be dried in the sun for days, then cut and preserved, then boiled in water for hours, before finally adding it to the tomato and herb stew.
Once tender and flavoured with garlic and olive oil, couscous with octopus stew is really something special.
The main types of fish used include the following: