Stuffed cardoons or Dolma of cardoons is an interesting Sephardic dish found in a few areas of Morocco. However, it’s even more interesting that not all Jews of Morocco seem to cook it.

Not a common recipe across Morocco

Although stuffed cardoons is a recipe that can be found in some Jewish Moroccan cookbooks.

In “Ch’hiwate Bladi” , our famous Choumicha went accross Morocco to showcase traditional regional cooking to the Moroccans. The show had such a success because of the things each of us learned about the rest of us. A brilliant show where many of us discovered the multigrain couscous and a few other goodies from remote regions throughout the country. The whole thing got picked by Non Profit associations to promote rural women’s work; the rest is history…

The episode I mentioned earlier covered some of the recipes from Ksar Lkbir; a Northwester  city of Morocco with Portuguese and Spanish fingerprint due to a tumultuous colonial past. So like many other cities in Morocco; they have an interesting Moroccan repertoire!

How to cook stuffed cardoons

The sauce or marqa is usually cooked with chunks of meat in it, which makes it rather a broth for the cardoons that will be cooked it later. But you don’t have to do that as you can use any form of stock you have.

When I posted pictures of this recipes on the facebook page, I was surprised to read posted insults from some of our Algerian neighbors claiming that the recipe is solely theirs. It turns out that Algerian cuisine does have a variation of this but with different set of spices and usually with the addition of an egg to thicken the sauce.

In one of the recipes published in her old magazine, Choumicha refers to a fried dolma of cardoons. She mentions the addition of an egg and flour to coat the cardoon sandwiches before placing them over a meat stew

Moroccan Sephardic recipe of chard with meat stuffing. Credit @Nada Kiffa

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Ingredients
Serves 2
Prep: 30 min – cooking: 45 min

• 1 head of cardoon (use chard (*) as an alternative)
• 2 lemons, 1 juiced and one in quarters
• A string

For the kofta filling

• 200 g of minced beef (or lamb, from the shoulder part)
• 1 glove of garlic, crushed or grated
• 1/2 medium-size onion, finely chopped or grated
• 2 tbsps parsley, finely chopped
• 1 tsp of ground ginger
• 1 tsp of turmeric
• 1 tsp of salt or to taste

• 1 l of stock (beef or chicken)
• 1 glove of garlic, crushed or grated
• 1 medium-size onion, chopped
• A few sprigs of parsley thighed together
• 1 tsp of ground ginger
• 1 tsp of turmeric
• 1 preserved lemon, use the pulp only (leave the skin for decoration)
• 1 tsp of Moroccan smen (my addition, totally optional)
• ¼ tsp of ground black pepper
• 2 tbsps of olive oil
• Salt to taste

Bunches of chard (white and red). Credit @Nada Kiffa