The best way to describe these beans is a spicier version of English baked beans! Haricot beans are cooked in a tomato sauce flavoured with lots of garlic, cumin & paprika. This recipe is for the way I cook it most – the slow cook way – but you can make it easily in a pressure cooker; just reduce the water to a total of 2 litres, add a chicken stock cube & take care with the seasoning. It should only take 45-50 mins in the pressure cooker. If you have any Algerian hot green peppers, this is really nice with 1-2 thrown in half way through! N.B: Time to make doesn’t include overnight soaking of the beans.
This Algerian dish offers oodles of taste and plenty of healthy carb’s and protein to norish and up the energy levels. Serve with a good bread to mop up the delicious juices.
Shorba Baidha, literally means white soup. It is a classic soup in Algeria & is extremely simple to make. The subtle flavours work well together to make a delcious, light soup. I have to say this is one of my all time favourite soups. It’s great all year round but especially loved during Ramadan or to eat when you are feeling ill. It is the egg yolk that makes this soup white so don’t leave it out! The chicken in Algeria is free range & has a rich taste, if you use non-free range chicken, you might need to throw in a stock cube…
This stew is a traditional Algerian recipe called “Died b’l-Qasbour.” It is seasoned with saffron and cilantro. Serve over rice or couscous.
This recipe comes from Farid Zari, who adapted his traditional way of spit roasting chicken to roasting it in his Los Angeles oven. He advises that the spices are a matter of personal taste–use what you like. He says the method does approximate the really crispy skin that he remembers from Algeria, but stresses that the quality of the chicken makes a huge difference, saying that at home in Algeria all the chickens were organic, free range and very fresh, and suggests that a soak in a salt water bath overnight would improve a run-of-the-mill supermarket chicken. Interestingly this cooking method follows the basic French method for roasting a bird — and, after all, there is some cross-cultural history there.
