A surprise hit: Algerian doubara biskra and kesra

Having nearly finished our journey through Africa, we have reached the region where meals are typically served with couscous, rather than the rice we’ve been eating for months. In fact, the national dish of Algeria actually is couscous, but given that couscous on its own isn’t a meal, we went looking for other recipes and doubara biskra (chickpea and broad bean stew) caught our eye. The two sticking points were a) we have run out of ras el hanout and are not buying any new spices until we’ve moved house (this is not easy!) and b) a lot of recipes called for fresh broad beans which are not in season and, frankly, are a bit of a faff.

Finding The Vegan Planet Kitchen was very fortuitous, therefore: their recipe uses frozen broad beans and also had a handy substitute for ras el hanout (1 tsp of ground coriander and cumin and 1/2 tsp of ground cinnamon and ginger). We felt that we had no choice but to use this recipe!

Unfortunately, Tesco struck again and substituted the broad beans on our online order for a broad bean/green bean/pea mix. Oh, and when we went to add the harissa we realised that ours had gone mouldy. So our doubara biskra is not 100% authentic, but we gave it a good go!

Part of giving it a good go was making kesra, a suggested bread accompaniment. Miranda felt that this was something of a brave move on a day when she had both children on her own, but thought that both the stew and the bread looked easy enough to be able to achieve it. Read on to see whether she was right.

Doubara biskra

Ingredients (we doubled this so we would have leftovers)
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp harissa
1/2 tbsp ras el hanout
1 large red pepper, chopped into 2cm chunks
1 tin of tomatoes
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
300g frozen broad beans
5g fresh parsley, chopped
To serve: sliced tomato, pickled green chillies, thinly sliced spring onion, toasted flaked almonds

Method
1. Heat the oil in a pan over medium heat.
2. Add the cumin seeds and fry for 30 seconds, then add the garlic. Saute until the garlic is lightly golden (around 2 minutes).
3. Add the tomato puree and harissa and continue to saute, stirring continuously, for 1 minute.
4. Add the ras-el-hanout, red pepper and tinned tomatoes, as well as 200ml water, and stir to combine.
5. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to a gentle simmer for 8 minutes, stirring frequently.
6. Taste and adjust seasoning.
7. Add the chickpeas and broad beans. Bring back to a simmer and cook for a further 8 minutes, stirring occasionally.
8. Serve with your choice of garnishes.
Serves 2

Kesra

Ingredients
300g fine semolina
100g medium semolina
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt (or to taste)
125ml water (we needed a little more than this)

Method
1. Mix the semolina and salt together and stir in the olive oil until all the grains are coated.
2. Slowly add enough water, whilst mixing, to make a soft dough.
3. Knead the dough until it has a slight spring when pressed and leave covered for 30 minutes.
4. Divide the dough into two and press into a circular disc about 1/4 inch deep.
5. Cook in a pan over low-medium heat for about 20 minutes, turning often. The kesra should have a firm crumbly exterior and be moist inside.
Serves 2-3

Given how simple this was, we were surprised by how much we enjoyed it. The stew was somehow both hearty and fresh at the same time, and undoubtedly would have been even better with the harissa that was supposed to be in it! We had the leftovers with couscous instead of bread, which was just as enjoyable.

As for the bread, it was different from the sort of bread we’d normally have with a meal and for that reason we thoroughly enjoyed it – well, that and the fact that it tasted nice! The crumbly texture was almost biscuitty yet it was still somehow able to mop up the juices from the stew. We’re glad to have discovered this one as it was very easy to throw together: we can imagine ourselves making it again.

(Kids didn’t think much of the bread and only Baby Mash was interested in the stew. You can’t win them all.)

Bonus dinner: Western Saharan rice

So, Western Sahara. It’s on our tattered list of countries, so we must have seen it on a list of countries at some point. Having just looked at an online list, it’s not there. Nor is it in our Lonely Planet book of countries. Wikipedia tells us it’s a ‘disputed territory’ and a ‘non-self-governing territory.’ We probably could have got away with taking it off the list, but decided to go for it anyway… just in case.

Of course, non-countries don’t really have national dishes. Most of what we found was really Moroccan. We were going to make a Berber recipe for ‘desert couscous’ (not dessert couscous which we initially misread it as and which sounded interesting) but the recipe seemed too complicated and the website kept crashing. The best we could eventually find was ‘Rice in the Sahara’, based on a dish that had been eaten by the author in the Sahara. This seemed about as authentic as it was going to get!

Rice in the Sahara

Ingredients
3 cups vegetable stock
1 cup brown rice (although we used white rice in the hope the kids would eat it)
2 tbsp cooking oil
1 onion, sliced
Pinch of saffron
1/2 cup red lentils
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp ground allspice
3 Medjool dates, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup flaked almonds, toasted

Method
1. In a medium saucepan, bring 2 cups of the stock to the boil over high heat.
2. Add the rice, cover, and reduce the heat to low. Simmer just until the rice absorbs the liquid and leans towards tenderness, about 30 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool.
3. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat.
4. Add the onion and stir until evenly coated, then cover, reduce the heat to low and cook for about 20 minutes. (The onion will still be pale and will have released quite a lot of liquid.)
5. Add the saffron and raise the heat to medium.
6. Add the red lentils and stir to combine.
7. Add the remaining cup of stock, cover again and continue cooking for 10-15 minutes, until the lentils are tender but not mushy.
8. Add the cinnamon stick and then stir in the allspice, cooked rice and dates, and season.
9. Heat over medium heat, stirring to combine, until heated through.
10. Just before serving, stir in the toasted almonds.
Serves 2-3

Not wanting to make the same mistake we did with Cape Verdean rice, we doubled the above recipe to make sure there was enough of it, and there certainly was – nearly too much to fit in the pan, which made reheating the rice quite a challenge. An additional challenge was getting our children to eat it, as neither of them seemed very keen, although Preschooler Mash did have some.

Was it worth the effort of making it, though, for a non-country? Maybe… it was hearty and filling, and it helped us declutter a bag of red lentils that had been sitting in the cupboard for ages. It wasn’t terribly exciting, though. It desperately needed the almonds to give it a bit of interest (we wished we’d made the full quantity in the recipe instead of ignoring that and just doing a handful), and Miranda isn’t a big fan of saffron so wasn’t going to be won over by that. We can definitely see how it’s a desert food, delivering a lot of nutrition with little more than pantry staples, but we bet those desert nomads get really excited when they wander somewhere with a bit more fresh produce.