North Africa · Volume 14, The Tagine and the Preserve
Harira
National, and above all Ramadan
Illustration
- Time
- 1 hour 30
- Researched
- Researched from 101 sources in the brief
The dish that breaks the fast, served with dates, chebakia and breads such as batbout. Note the two things carrying the flavour that almost every British version omits: a tablespoon of smen, and the tedouira, a flour and water slurry added at the very end.
As tradition built it
Serves 6 to 8. About 1 hour 30.
Ingredients
- 1 handful dry chickpeas, soaked overnight and peeled
- 2 handfuls dry green or brown lentils
- 225 g diced lamb, beef or chicken, plus soup bones
- 900 g ripe tomatoes, passed through a food mill to a purée
- 1 large onion, grated, and 1 celery rib with its leaves
- 1 small bunch each of parsley and coriander, chopped fine
- 1 tbsp smen
- 1 tbsp ground dried ginger
- 1.5 tsp black pepper, ½ tsp turmeric, 1 tsp cinnamon (optional)
- 1 tbsp salt
- 120 g plain flour whisked into 475 ml water, for the tedouira
Method
- Brown the meat with the onion and celery, then add the chickpeas, the tomato purée, the smen and the ginger, black pepper, turmeric, cinnamon and salt. In a pressure cooker, 25 minutes.
- Add the lentils and the parsley and coriander. Then either 30 minutes plus rice for a further 15, or 45 minutes then vermicelli.
- Whisk the tedouira completely smooth. Add it gradually at the very end with constant stirring, using only as much as you need, then simmer 5 to 10 minutes more.
Notes
The source measures pulses by the handful, which is honest rather than sloppy: this is a soup built to a texture, not to a weight.
What a modern chef changes
The tomato treated as a stock, the tedouira understood, the smen dosed
Rungs 4, 5 and 3
Method
- Pass the tomato and keep the passings. Simmer the skins and seeds separately in a little water for 20 minutes and strain that back in: twenty minutes for a measurable gain in tomato depth, and it is free.
- Understand the tedouira and stop over-adding it. Starch gelatinises and then continues to swell for several minutes after it looks thick. Add two thirds of what you think you need, wait the full 5 minutes, then judge. Almost every gluey harira was over-thickened by a cook who did not wait.
- Add the smen off the heat, at the end. Rung 5. Its short chain free fatty acids are volatile, and twenty minutes at a simmer removes most of what you paid for.
- Split the ginger. Half in at the start with the tomato, where it rounds out; half stirred in at the end, where the shogaols still read sharp and warm. Rung 4.