Morocco - Beyssara

Background
Moroccan cuisine reflects its multiple interactions with different culture through trade and conquest. It is in the Mediterranean tradition. The Berbers brought influences from just west of Egypt (their best known contribution is couscous). The Moors conquered Spain and Spanish influence flowed back across the straight of Gibraltar.
We found lots of different options for breakfast. Lassida is a porridge made of semolina or couscous and flavored with honey and butter. But it is traditionally eaten to break the fast during Ramadan, which has long since past. Baghrirs are a pancake made with semolina and only cooked on one side. The batter has the consistency of a crepe. Beyssara is a spiced fava bean stew served with bread. We found a recipe for this in Mediterranean Street Food which looked simple and tasty, and so decided to make the beyssara.
The national drink is green tea with mint. Making it is considered an art and has ritual associated with it. We had some trouble with the mint tea. Though we did have an errand at the Burlington Mall yesterday and would have bought some at Teavana, it took us 40 minutes (!) to get into and out of the parking lot and so we ran out of Zipcar time. The grocery store was also out of mint of any kind, so we made regular green tea.
The one difficulty in making beyssara was finding split, peeled fava beans. The best option available were a pickled peeled bean and I did not know how they would effect the test. I give a method of peeling the beans in the recipe.

To peel dried fava beans

• 1 cup dried fava bean
• 3 cups water
• 1 tbsp oil

1. Put fava beans, water, and oil into a pressure cooker.
2. Cook at high pressure for 15 minutes.
3. Quick-release the pressure.
4. Open the pressure cooker, tilting the lid to that the steam is released away from you.
5. Drain the beans and put them into a ice water bath. Let them sit for 20 minutes.
6. The skin around the bean should now be loose and can be removed using your finger nails or started with a paring knife.
7. Discard the skin and keep the bean. Split the beans if you can.
8. Refrigerate the beans until you use them.

Beyssara

• 1 cup peeled split broad beans, soaked overnight in hot water with 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 gloves garlic, unpeeled
• 1½ tsp ground cumin
• ½ tsp red pepper flakes
• 1½ tsp paprika
• Salt
• Extra virgin olive oil

1. Put the beans in a sauce pan with the garlic, cumin, red pepper flakes, and 1 quart of water.
2. Bring to a boil on medium high heat.
3. Cover the pan and cook for 30 minutes or until they are mush.
4. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes.
5. Add the paprika and salt to taste.
6. Serve in a shallow bowl and garnish with a drizzle of olive oil and cumin.
7. Eat with Moroccan bread.

Results and Discussion
This recipe takes a while, but that is in the nature of cooking dried beans. The cooking time could also be reduced by cooking them longer in the pressure cooker. Most of the water boils off or is absorbed by the beans, but you can easily control how moist the beans are by adjusting the cooking time. The end result is nicely spiced with an enjoyable rough texture. I think ours was a bit drier than it was supposed to be as we ended up with more of a paste than a soup but it still pretty good.
The drizzle of olive oil added a nice flavor. It also provided a strong contrast of textures with the beans.

Algeria - Chakchouka

Background
I was only able to find two dishes in my search for Algerian breakfast. The first meal I found was makrout, which is a fried cookie made with semolina flour and flavored with almonds or dates. This week was our first time taking the IBP on the road and we were unsure how our host was equipped deep frying, so we went in another direction. We settled on making chakchouka which consists of peppers and onions in a tomato sauce and then poaching eggs in the sauce. The chakchouka is then eaten with either a local flat bread or a baguette. The recipe we used was from a very comprehensive cookbook of vegetarian cuisine from the Mediterranean called Mediterranean Harvest. It has over 500 recipes and seems pretty well written from what I have read of it. We went with a purchased baguette for simplicity, and we substituted poblano peppers for the recommended anaheims because we could not find them.

Chakchouka

• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large onion, sliced thin
• 2 green peppers, sliced
• 2 red peppers, sliced
• 2 poblano peppers, diced
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 tsp of harissa (we used more)
• 1 tsp tabil (recipe follows)
• 1 (28oz) can diced tomatoes, drained
• ¼ cup chopped parsley (optional)
• 4 eggs

1. Heat oil in pan and add the onions.  Cook until golden, about 10 minutes.
2. Add the peppers and cook until they are soft, about 5 minutes.
3. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant (just a few seconds), then stir in harissa, tabil, and salt & pepper to taste.
4. Add the tomatoes and cook until thickened.
5. Add most of the parsley, reserving some to add with the eggs.
6. Use a spoon a make 4 depressions into sauce, and crack an egg into each depression.  Cover the pan with a lid or tin foil if a lid is not available.
7. The eggs will poach in about 5 to 6 minutes and they should still have runny yolks.
8. Flavor the eggs with harisa, tabil, parsley, and salt & pepper to taste.
9. Eat with baguette or flatbread.

Tabil

• 4 tbsp coriander seeds
• 1 tbsp caraway seeds
• 2 tsp garlic salt
• 2 tsp cayenne pepper

1. Grind whole seeds using a spice mill.
2. Mix this with the garlic salt and cayenne pepper and keep in a jar. (It makes enough to fit in an average spice jar.)

Results and Discussion
This meal was a big success. It comes out as a very flavorful and spicy tomato sauce with eggs in it. I added a couple more teaspoons of harissa to make it spicier and this was really nice. The baguette soaks up the juices really well and quickly takes on the chakchouka flavor. The cookbook mentions making the sauce a day or so before hand and adding the eggs before serving to let flavor mingle. I will use this as a pasta sauce in the future.

Sudan - Fool Medamas

Background
The history of Sudan is closely linked to Egypt's. Both countries have conquered one another and both were under British and Ottoman rule. I had difficulty finding a published source on the Sudan and in the end I decided to use the web site Sudan.net. This site listed fool medamas and tamayya as possible breakfasts. We made fool medamas as our breakfast for Egypt, though we spelled it differently. Tamayya is another word for falafel and it is eaten at any time of the day.
After we made our Egyptian breakfast I ran across an article in the paper listing the best dishes in Boston. One of these dishes was the fool medamas from Falafel Palace. We were not very thrilled with our recipe so I wanted to try a much different version. Falafel Palace makes a great version more like a bean salad with fresh vegetables and a yogurt dressing. It made a great light lunch and is really cheap. The new recipe is very different than the one we used for Egypt so I decided we should do a comparison.

Fool Medamas

• 1 (16 oz) can of fava beans
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 large tomato, diced
• 1½ tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• ¼ cup chopped parsley,
• 4 tbsp lemon juice
• salt, pepper, and chili powder to taste
• pita bread

1. Pour fava beans and juice into a sauce pan and bring them to a boil.
2. Mix all other ingredients—except lemon juice—in a bowl.
3. When the bean juice has almost evaporated add the remaining ingredients to the pot along with the lemon juice.
4. Cook uncovered for about 5 minutes, until most of the water is gone but the mixture is not dry.
5. Eat with pita bread along with hard boiled eggs and tahini.

Results and Discussion
This recipes was much better than the one we used for Egypt. The first major improvement was the inclusion of spices so that I actually tasted something. Not mashing the fava beans was also key. When the beans are mashed they suck up all the moisture and the result is a very dry paste with some vegetables mixed into it. Not mashing the beans keeps the fool medamas moist and much more palatable.

Egypt - Ful Midamess

Background
The menu for this meal was taken from Egyptian Cooking by Samia Abdennour. This book provided a long list of dishes. Most of the dishes involved fava beans, eggs, and bread. We chose to make the dish ful midamess as it is a national dish in a nation whose cuisine has been influenced by being the center of trade routes since time immemorial.

Abdennour also describes a bread called aish baladi, which simply means local bread. A simple description of the bread was given in the cookbook but no actual recipe was given. Some further research showed that local bread changes with location so a list of comprehensive recipes could not be put in a small cookbook. Fortunately someone had gathered many recipes and created a website that lists them.  A major consideration when making this bread is a 1 to 3 hour rising period. We made our bread the night before and it kept fine overnight.

Ful Midamess

• 1 cup fava beans
• 1/4 cup split lentils
• 1 tomato, chopped
• 1 medium onion, coarsely grated
• 1 medium carrot, finely grated
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• Olive oil
• Lemon juice
• Salt

1. Cook fava beans in pressure cooker for 10 minutes at 10 lbs of pressure.
2. Boil lentils until they are soft.
3. Mash the fava beans and lentils together until they are a paste.
4. Mix in the carrot, tomato and onion, then add salt, olive oil, and lemon to taste.
5. Serve on top of bread.

Results and Discussion
This breakfast was a simple and hardy.  My only major complaint with this meal was that was bland. In the future I would look for variations with more flavor.
For our readers without pressure cookers the same recipe can be repeated with a slow cooker and simply cook overnight.