Skip to main content

Nabila's Weekday Lentils

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Lentils: Quotidian Moroccan food

When you want something that will take you through the next 5 days of classes, lentils are the way to go, and I’m throwing in some long hot green peppers for added spiciness. The Arabic name for lentils is ‘Adas, but when texting or chatting online, the word appears as something like 3adas. I’m not sure how this system of transcription evolved—wikipedia says it’s an ad hoc development necessitated by the limited options of cell phone keypads, numerals being presumably easier to type than an apostrophe—but I like it, and most of my Moroccan friends and students enjoy when I use it on Facebook or in a text message—to them, seeing a non-Moroccan doing this is like watching a dog playing the piano.

There are a number of distinguishing consonants in the Arabic alphabet which are velarized or pharyngealized versions of the same unemphasized consonants that are represented in English using d, th (as in these), s, and t, and the glottal letters g, k, and h. These other consonants give Arabic its very throaty sound, because the consonants are articulated further back along the alveolar ridge and soft palate, and provide a deeper coloration of the surrounding consonants, so that “sad” with the unemphatic “s” becomes something closer to “sod” with the emphatic “S”, also known as the letter “Saad”.  The most difficult character for many English people to get their tongue (and throat) around is the “Ain”. It was described in my Arabic alphabet primer as a voiced version of the unvoiced “H” sound one would make while fogging and cleaning ones eyeglasses. That “H” sounds itself is the emphatic version of the unstressed “h”, which is the last letter in the name “Allah”. The stressed H is represented in text messages using the numeral 7, and the “Ain” is represented as the numeral 3. In fact, in its standalone appearance, unconnected to other letters, the “Ain” appears as a reversed “3”, or “ع”. And ‘Adas, which begins with the letter “Ain”, appears as 3das or 3adas in text messages or in Facebook chat.

Since these 2 letters are very common in Arabic, you’ll see a lot of 3’s and 7’s in text messages, along with other numeral used to represent the emphatic, or what I call “deep-throat” consonants.

So quotidian are lentils, that along with loubia, a white bean dish, and bisaara, made with dried cracked fava beans, they are the most common legume dishes in Morocco.




   
Ingredients:
  • 1/2 kg. lentils (about 2 cups, or 1/2 liter), washed and picked over
  • 1 liter of water
  • 2 medium onions, chopped fine 
  • 1 tomato, grated
  • 1 tomato, sliced
  • 3 long green hot peppers, sliced lengthwise, for a spicy flavor (as desired)
  • 2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
  • 1 small bunch of parsley, chopped
  • 1/2 c. olive oil
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 1 tsp. ginger
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
Pressure cook the lentils and water on setting 2 for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, collect the remaining ingredients in a separate bowl.
When the lentils have been pressure cooked, relieve the pressure and drain the water. Combine all the ingredients and boil for 25 minutes longer. Serve with fresh bread. 

Let me know how you like this. Your comments are welcome.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thin-crust pizza

I had a 20-year career in telecommunications engineering in my thirties and forties, at times working alongside an Italian-American guy from New York. Bob had deeply set eyes and a hangdog look, at odds with his pleasant manner. On Fridays, he'd show up at the office with a homemade pizza that he called his "garbage pie”—baked dough, sauce, cheese, and whatever leftovers were in his fridge. Pizza is a dish of humble origins, so when it became known that Margherita of Savoy, the first queen of unified Italy, loved pizza and often asked her kitchen staff to prepare it, the dish was elevated to an honored position, and the Pizza Margherita, in the colors of the Italian flag, was named for her. On a personal level, some things   about this dish are inviolable.   I’ll never let barbecued chicken or sliced pineapple  near it. Or broccolli or cannned tuna. That being said, it’s probably the most bastardized, personalized dish in the world, but I keep it simple.  I once...
Post a Comment
Read more

Moroccan Seafood Bastilla

Moroccan seafood bastilla is a rich mixture of shrimp, calamari, and whitefish, seasoned with herbs and spices, fluffed out with cellophane noodles, and wrapped in "warqa" (Arabic word for "paper") a Moroccan filo dough made fresh daily in the souks, the large marketplaces filled with independent vendors that are in any Moroccan city of any size. In coastal cities like Essaouira and Agadir, bastilla is available in the souks in individual serving sizes .   But wherever I tried it, it seemed a little underwhelming. There was a potentially great dish there, but the flavors were muted.  It seemed strange that the seafood bastilla should be as bland as it was. After all, its cousin, chicken bastilla, albeit with a much different set of ingredients and spice mixture, is such a special occasion dish that I'd ask Nabila, our housekeeper in Fes, to make it whenever there were guests.  The typical seafood bastilla contained ingredients that I felt blunted the flavor of t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Moroccan Geometry: S9 Master Class: 10-fold with the Eye of the Sun from Bou Inania Medersa, Fez

  Adv S9 Master Class: 10-fold with the eye of the sun, from Bou Inania Medersa, Fes Part A: Draw the main circle and subdivide it into tenths. This 10-fold design is based on 2 concentric circles. These two fully contain the 4 central shapes. 10 other overlapping circles whose centers are outside of the outer circle complete and contain the remaining shapes. The first of the 2 concentric circles to be drawn is the outer one 1.  We want the finished drawing to fit with 5 mm margins above and below. The ratio of the circle's radius, A, to the distance between the center and the outer point of the pattern, B, is approximately 5 to 7. Using a watercolor paper that is 304mm high, B should be no more than 304mm, minus the 5 mm margins, then divided in half, or 147 mm. So then A, the radius of the main circle, should be about (5/7) x 147 mm, or about 105 mm. Use the usual method of finding the center of the page, draw a circle of the desired radius and quarter the circle with horizo...
Post a Comment
Read more