North African cuisine
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
North Africa lies along the Mediterranean Sea and encompasses within its fold several nations, including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. This is a region marked by geographic, political, social, economic and cultural diversity, and the cuisine and the culinary style and art of North Africa are also as diverse as the land, its people and its history. The roots to North African cuisine can be traced back over 2000 years, with that of ancient Egypt covering a span of over three thousand years.
Over several centuries traders, travelers, invaders, migrants and immigrants all have influenced the cuisine of North Africa. The Phoenicians of the 1st century brought sausages, the Carthaginians introduced wheat and its byproduct, semolina. The Berbers, adapted this into couscous, one of the main staple diet. Olives and olive oils were introduced before the arrival of the Romans. From the 7th century onwards, the Arabs introduced a variety of spices, like saffron, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and cloves, which contributed and influenced the culinary culture of North Africa. The Ottoman Turks brought sweet pastries and other bakery products, and from the New World, North Africa got potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini and chili peppers.
The cuisine of the Maghreb is primarily a mixture of Berber and Arab culinary traditions, with some European influences. The eastern part of North Africa (Libya and Egypt) is heavily influenced by the Ottoman empire and its Turkish culture, sharing characteristics and similar dishes with much of Turkish and Peninsular Arab cuisine. The cuisines of Algeria and Tunisia are less thoroughly influenced by these Eastern elements, deriving more influence from French and Italian cuisine respectively. While Moroccan cuisine for the most part remained outside of these relatively recent and contemporary influences, although Moroccan cuisine itself have roots dating back to the heyday of the kingdom of Al-Andalus in modern-day Spain.
For the North African cuisine, the most common staples are meat, seafood, lamb, dates, almonds, olives, various vegetables and fruit. Because the region is predominantly Muslim, only halal meats are usually eaten. Most dishes are spiced, especially with cumin, ginger, paprika, cinnamon and saffron. Fresh peppermint, parsley, or coriander are also very common. Spice mixtures such as ras el hanout, baharat, and harissa are frequently used.
Most of the North African countries have several similar dishes, sometimes almost the same dish with a different name (the Moroccan tangia and the Tunisian coucha are both essentially the same dish: a meat stew prepared in an urn and cooked overnight in a public oven), sometimes with a slight change in ingredients and cooking style. To add to the confusion, two completely different dishes may share the same name. There are noticeable differences between the cooking styles of different nations – there's the sophisticated, full-bodied flavours of Moroccan palace cookery, the fiery dishes of Tunisian cuisine, and the humbler, simpler cuisines of Egypt and Algeria.
The best-known North African/Berber dish abroad is surely couscous. The tajine, a cooking vessel of Berber/Amazigh origin, is also a common denominator in this region, although what each nation defines as the resulting dish from being cooked in a tajine as well as the associated preparation methods, may be drastically different. For example, a "tajine" dish is a slow-cooked stew in Morocco, whereas the Tunisian "tajine" is a baked frittata/quiche-like dish.
[edit] By country
For more specific styles, refer to the articles on each national or regional cuisine:
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