Moroccan dried fava beans cooked in a silky and lemony sauce and topped with aged preserved lemon

Moroccan dried fava beans in chermoula – Foul mengoub

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Moroccan dried  fava or broad beans recipe in a thick silky sauce is a frugal vegan/vegetarian dish served in winter during lunch time. Whilst it’s meant to be a cooked salad or starter, I personally started serving it as a main dish.

The Arabic name is telling

Some of us call it foul mengoub due to the way how we eat it from the top: you have to discard the skin as you suck the soft and buttery inside as you go. There is a bit of multitasking there but basically your palace receives the thick sauce before you get the inner bit of the fava bean, which is generally bland. So it’s a perfect pairing exercise.

Moroccan dried fava beans cooked in a silky and lemony sauce and topped with aged preserved lemon

Moroccan dried fava beans. Credit @Nada Kiffa

Moroccans love fava beans

We are massive consumers of fava or broad beans and we have recipes for them depending on their freshness as well as calibre. By the end of the broad beans season, bigger calibre with the thick skin that no one would cook in its fresh green state will be dried.

The downer about this dish (apart from flatulence) is that it’s best served hot after its cooked. Like many pulses, it looses in greatness if reheated.

Moroccan dried fava bean in chermoula

Moroccan dried  fava or broad beans recipe in a thick silky sauce is a frugal vegan/vegetarian dish served in winter during lunch time. Whilst it's meant to be a cooked salad or starter, I personally started serving it as a main dish.

  • 200 gram fava or broad bean with skin on (pre-soaked and precooked until 90% done)
  • 1 tomato (seeded and grated or skinned and finely chopped)
  • 1 onion (yellow or brown, medium-size, finely chopped)
  • 1 bunch of coriander (small, chopped)
  • 1 tbsp parsley leaves (chopped)
  • 1 tbsp tomato paste
  • 3 garlic cloves (grated or chopped)
  • ½ preserved lemon (seeds out)
  • 1 tbsp salt (or to taste)
  • ¾ tsp cumin (ground)
  • 1 tbsp paprika (sweet)
  • 1 tbsp harissa (mild, to taste)
  • 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

  1. Watch the video here

 

Moroccan cauliflower fritters

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Moroccan cauliflower fritters is a vegetarian starter but can also be served as a garnish for a chicken or meat dish.

Yummy Moroccan cauliflower fritters with chermoula

It’s funny I’m  enjoying them now that I’m older because I never had when my mother used to make them regularly during my youth.

Recently, these beignets de chou fleur popped into my mind and I’ve been making them ever since. It’s true that our tastebuds change throughout time.

The recipe is fairly simple as we just parboil or steam cauliflower before coating it with a spiced batter before we shallow-fry them for a few minutes. That’s all what there is to it really. If you have a chermoula jar ready, it’s the time to pull it out from the fridge. If not, you can still make this in no time.

 

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Moroccan cauliflower fritters

Moroccan cauliflower fritters is a vegetarian starter but can also be served as a garnish for a chicken or meat dish.

  • 450 gram cauliflower (broken or cut into chunky big florets, leaves and inner heart discarded.)
  • ½ tsp salt (or to taste)

For the batter

  • 30 gram durum semolina (substitute with flour)
  • ½ tsp baking powder ()
  • 240 ml water (at room temperature, depending on flour absorption, you might need a couple more tablespoons)
  • 2 eggs (medium size)
  • 3 tbsp coriander (finely chopped)
  • 2 tbsp parsley (finely chopped)
  • 1 garlic clove (grated)
  • ½ tsp cumin (ground)
  • ½ tsp turmeric (ground)
  • 1 tsp salt (or to taste)

For frying

  • 30 cl frying oil (depending on the depth of your pan as you just want 1 to 2 cm of depth in oil)

For serving

  • lemon wedges
  • vinaigrette
  • harissa

  1. Chop the herbs finely, mix all the ingredients for the batter. Set aside for at least 30 min the fridge.

Making the cauliflower fritters or beignets

  1. Dip each cauliflower floret in the batter after you stir it. Coat all the way through and place into the pan. Do no fill the pan a lot as you want to have space to flip them over.

  2. Heat the oil over medium heat.

  3. Fry each side for about 2 minutes, all the way around until nicely golden.

  4. Transfer to a sieve and when they're cold, over a kitchen paper to get rid of excess oil.

Serving

  1. Serve the cauliflower fritters warm or at room temperature, with lemon juice or wedges. If you have a harissa, make our family spicy harissa vinaigrette (coming soon).

  • You can steam the cauliflower florets ahead of time. Sprinkle them with salt and place them on top of a double boiler or a couscoussier and fill the bottom with hot boiling water. Cover and steam for 7 min or until cooked but firm. Set aside to cool.

 

 

 

Cooked Moroccan salad with pepper, tomato and potatoes. Vegan, Gluten-free

Moroccan potato, pepper and tomato salad

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Moroccan potato, pepper and tomato recipe is an easy vegetarian/vegan cooked salad. Usually served warm, you can also serve it as a side dish to grills or fried fish while enriched with meat or seafood, can be a meal in itself as it has it all.

A family recipe

Here is a decades old recipe, if not centuries, coming straight from my family’s “grimoire”. This cooked salad of potatoes, pepper and tomato salad has a funny name in our family: we call it Drapeau sbalioun or Spanish flag.

Grandpa who died when he was 73 around 1997 brought this recipe from Larache, a Northern Moroccan city.

My aunties told me this is how it all started. My grandma used to add courgettes while my dad used to add small okra and sometimes add some proteins in the form of small pink shrimps, meatballs or spicy sausages to serve it as a main dish.

A Moroccan recipe after all

After all these years of searching if there was a similar recipe elsewhere (books, blogs..), I was able to make a link between a recipe from Z.Guinaudeau’s in her “Fes vu par sa cuisine”and my family recipe.

The similarity was striking except for the type of potatoes. The book was written in the 50s. Another famous Moroccan Jewish blogger who passed away in the last couple of years also had a version posted but under a different name.

These findings were comforting considering that I came to think this must have been a family creation until I found it there.

Ainek mizanek!

I suggest considering the recipe below as a guideline. The vegetables have different sizes around the world but also some like more potatoes than others.

Also, this is not meant to be a complicated recipe as the cook is just filling the tables with sides to feed the family, they were not trying to make their lives difficult by measuring each bit of ingredient in it. As long as it has potatoes, peppers and tomatoes and it’s reduced and served warm, that’s all what you need to stick to.

 

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Moroccan pepper, potato and tomato salad

Moroccan potato, pepper and tomato recipe is an easy vegetarian/vegan cooked salad. Usually served warm, you can also serve it as a side dish to grills or fried fish while enriched with meat or seafood, can be a meal in itself as it has it all.

  • 1 green pepper (The pointy version, seeded and chopped or cut in small cubes)
  • 1 onion ( any type, finely chopped)
  • 1 tomato ( medium-sized tomato, peeled, seeded and finely chopped)
  • 1 potato ( large and firm variety, peeled and diced 2 cm large.)
  • Okra (a handful (in Morocco they are small so we don't dice them).)

Chermoula

  • 4 tbsp coriander (finely chopped)
  • 2 tbsp parsley (finely chopped)
  • 1 tsp salt (to taste)
  • ½ tsp black pepper
  • 2 cloves garlic (crushed)
  • 1 tsp paprika (sweet)
  • ½ tsp cumin (ground)
  • 4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Optional additions

  • 1 pale courgette (small, small dice (if you add courgette, omit okra))
  • 1 red pepper (pointy variety, seeded and diced small)

  1. Over medium heat, sautée onionsand peppers with chermoula about 3 minutes. Top with 1/4 of water and simmerfor another 5 minutes.

  2. Add the rest of the vegetables and stir. Add enough water to cover the ingredients.Put the lid on and let simmer away, over low heat until everything cooks tendresses and the liquid has reduced.

  3. If you notice that it has massively reduced halfway through the cooking, top it with a little bit of water so it evaporates near the end of cooking. This cooked salad is not supposed to be a saucy dish when served as a cooked salad or side dish.

  4. Once cooked. Add another tablespoon of olive oil and serve warm or at room temperature. garnished with chopped parsley leaves.

  • For a non-vegetarian version, you can add spicy sausages such as merguez, sujuk or chorizo to the mix. My dad used to add meatballs or sausages to make it a wholesome dish.
  • You can use whole tiny new potatoes instead of the diced ones as they also cook fast and won’t break.
  • You may use char-grilled peppers for this recipe.
  • You may add a touch of harissa or cayenne for a kick.

Stuffed dried apricots - Mechmach mâammar

Stuffed dried apricots – Mechmach mâammar

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Today’s post has been put together by a friend of mine who shares with me the love for everything Moroccan. We share similar interests when it comes to finding the origin of Moroccan recipes and how they’re done across the country.

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Moroccan Sephardi stuffed dried apricots

Moroccan Sephardi stuffed dried apricots. Credit @Nada Kiffa

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She is a very knowledgeable person who constantly looks for ways to promote Moroccan culture and traditions and she does it so beautifully.

When I asked her to write a guest post for the blog, she was so kind to accept and come up with a wonderful recipe from the magical word of Moroccan Sephardi Cuisine. Happy reading and cooking!

Stuffed dried apricots or mechmach mâmmar is a very old Jewish Moroccan recipe.

Moroccans Jews are known for having a rich repertoire of stuffed fruit dishes, such as stuffed fresh medlar (mzah), dried apricots, dried prunes and so on.

Moroccan Jewish cooking is mild and uses spices which are different from the usual ones used in the common Moroccan cuisine. The main spices used are cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, bay leaves and white pepper.

This recipe was adapted from the book : “La cuisine Juive Marocaine”, by Lévy-Mellul Rivka.

Stuffed dried apricots – Mechmach mâammar

Moroccan Sepharid cuisine is rich and flavoursome. Jews are known for having a rich repertoire of stuffed fruit dishes, such as stuffed fresh medlar (mzah), dried apricots, dried prunes etc..You could follow the same recipe for different dried fruits.

  • 500 gram dried apricots (rinsed with hot water )

For the stuffing

  • 1 tsp oil
  • 1 onion (yellow or brown, finely chopped)
  • 200 gram minced meat
  • 1 tbsp parsley (finely chopped)
  • salt (to taste)
  • ¼ tsp ginger (ground)
  • ¼ tsp cinnamon (ground)
  • ¼ tsp nutmeg (ground)
  • ¼ tsp mace (ground)
  • ¼ tsp white pepper (ground)
  • ⅓ tsp black pepper (ground)
  • 4 tbsp water

For the sauce

  • 2 tbsp oil (or clarified butter (smen, or ghee) )
  • pinch spices (ginger, white pepper, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, saffron threads)
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 100 ml water (or enough to cover the apricots)

  1. In a pan, melt the butter and fry the onion until translucent.

  2. In a bowl, mix the fried onion with the rest of the ingredients for the meatballs. Make small balls (hazelnut size) with the minced meat mixture.

  3. If the apricots you are using are large, make larger meatballs.

  4. Open the apricots with a sharp knife, along one side so they partially resemble to open clam shells.

  5. In a pan, reheat the clarified butter. Add the stuffed apricots and the rest of the ingredients. Cover with enough water. Cover the pan and cook until the apricots are soft.

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