Libyan stove top flat bread: Ftat Misrati فتات مصراتى

Ftat is a thin flat-bread, made of a simple mix of flour and water and cooked on a hot flat surface. This is the Ftat recipe from the Western city of Misurata. An ingenious technique makes them twice as thin with half the effort: a mixture of cornflour and olive oil is used to 'sandwich' two pieces of ftat dough, the sandwich is thinned as much as possible and then cooked, the heat separating out the two pieces of Ftat.

Ftat literally means small pieces, and this bread is often torn up and covered with different soups or stews, to make a variety of fatta meals. Every Arab country has multiple Tharid or Fatta dishes using torn up bread as a base. In the South of the country Fatta dishes are made with leavened Tanoor bread, while the East of Libya has a bread so thin its transparent, which is used to make Mathruda (a sweet-and-sour fatta with meat and dates). Ftat is specially suited for Fatta meals as it holds up well.

Ftat are not always torn up! They are also enjoyed whole with different fillings, the most popular being Ejja (thick omlettes, the Arabic for Frittata/Tortilla). A slice of spicy herb and potato Ejja wrapped in Ftat is the perfect combination, and is especially popular in Ramadan. Plain Ftat are also served with tea alongside other kinds of Libyan bread.

Makes about 20 Ftat

Ingredients

Dough

750g fine flour

1/2 litre water (you may need more)

5 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon salt


more olive oil to brush the dough  

Paste

5-6 tablespoons cornflour (you need a smooth thick consistency)

50 ml olive oil 

For the dough, combine the flour, salt and olive oil and gradually add water till you have a soft but not sticky dough. Knead well, smooth olive oil over the dough then cover with cling film. Leave to rest for at least an hour. 

 Add olive oil to the cornflour for the paste. 

Mix the cornflour and olive oil to a smooth paste, leave for 10 minutes and it should thicken, add more cornflour if needed. 

After having left the dough to rest, knead again and then, keeping your hands well-oiled, take a piece of dough and squeeze your fist around it to form balls about the size of a ping-pong ball. Cover with cling film and leave to rest for half an hour. Flatten the balls by hand, not to thin them out but just to get a larger surface area. Now spread about one teaspoon of the cornflour paste thinly on one piece and cover with the second. do the same for the other pieces.

Cover and leave to rest for at least another hour. Pinch the edges of the sandwich, trapping the paste inside.

The sandwich should now have a little raised dome in the centre, with the paste in it.

Start spreading the ftat out. You can use a dinner plate and your hands. This helps you keep the round shape. Oil a large dinner plate, place a ftat 'sandwich' in the centre, brush with olive oil and using the fingers of one hand stretch and spread out gently to form the shape above.

Place the ftat on a hot surface to cook, using only medium heat. A hot flatplate (e.g pizza maker) is ideal, but really any old frying pan is fine as you can see above.

Turn after few second then sprinkle or brush the upper surface with olive oil. Once cooked the ftat will seperate easily into two, turn each one of these ftat pieces uncooked side downward for a few seconds, each (seperately)

Then place both back in the pan in the position above to sear the edges. It is important to wrap fatat in towel as soon as you remove it from the pan to keep it soft and warm. Fatat must be eaten warm, whether freshly made or warmed up in a frying pan just before serving. They keep best wrapped in foil in the fridge. It can be stored for one week in the fridge in an airtight container.

Roasted Salad: Salata Mashwiya سلطة مشوية

For azleena, who requested this one. Thanks to  everyone who has commented or is a follower of the blog. We appreciate your support!

Salata Mashwiya literally means roasted salad, and is known by that name in Tunisia and in western Libya. This salad doubles as a hot sauce, and is served with barbeques in much of the Arab world. When made for a barbeque, the vegetables are grilled over the fire while the meat marinates, and get that smoky distinctive barbeque flavor, but you can just as easily use the grill at home. The salad's color and thickness depends on the vegetables you use. Bell pepper in  Arab countries is generally thinner, so you can use eggplant to thicken the sauce, grill it with the other vegetables and peel it to keep the color bright. Grilled eggplant is used in baba ghanouj and mtabal.

Ingredients:

5 medium tomatoes

3 large sweet bell peppers 

2 medium onion

1 medium eggplant (optional )
2/3 medium hot chillies 
5 garlic cloves

1 tablespoons (freshly ground) caraway seeds 

 salt to taste

for decoration:

2 hardboiled eggs

olives and olive oil as needed

Prepare the  bell peppers by cutting into thick equal strips, and cut the onions in half, or smaller, depending on size. You might also want to de-vein and de-seed the chillis at this point. Cut the tomatoes in half. If they are large, scoop out the insides into a bowl. This will keep them from becoming soggy. Set the pulp aside.

Heat a grill tray at 250 degrees. When the tray is hot, lay the vegetables on it. It should be hot enough that there is a sizzling sound. It has to be hot, and the vegetables have to be dry, so that you get the roasted taste, otherwise the salad will taste like steamed vegetables. Make sure you put the garlic cloves closest to you as they will need to be removed before the rest of the vegetables.

Remove the garlic cloves once they're done.

Take out the rest of the vegetables. Remove the overly burnt pieces.

Place in a processor. Add the ground caraway and salt. I like to add some of the raw tomato pulp to the roasted vegeatbles. If you like the salad with a chunky consistency, omit the tomato pulp and process just enough to blend.

Cut the hardboiled eggs into quarters. Garnish the salata mashwiya with pitted olives and drizzle generously with olive oil. Serve with mixed grilled meat and freshly baked bread.

Libyan Lamb Casserole with Carrots and Green Olives: Tajin Sfinari bil Zaytun طاجن الجزر بالزيتون الأخضر على الطريقة اليبية

Tagine in Libya doesn't refer to the distinctive Morrocan cooking vessels, it just means casserole.

This colourful Tagine is distinctly North African, its combination  of carrots and green olives is popular in the region, and it is similar to an Algerian chicken, preserved lemons and green olives recipe.   The Libyan casserole diffrentiates itself from the latter by its unusual mix of flavourings: caraway (which goes really well with the carrots) is dominant, but without overwhelming the lemon, cinnamon,  harissa and parsley.

Nowadays a Libyan Tajin is usually made by cooking the meat or chicken in a pot and then adding it to the rest of the ingredients in a pyrex dish. The traditional method  uses an ovenproof  clay casserole dish (pictured above) that goes from stove top to oven (they used  to be sent to the neighbourhood bakery).  A Moroccan Tagine or Dutch oven would also make this a one-pot meal.  When I don't have time for slow cooking I use a pressure cooker for the meat in which case this casserole takes about 1 hour cooking time (15 minutes for the lamb and 45 minutes in the oven).

Serves 6
Ingredients

1 kilo veal or lean lamb (deboned and diced into bitesize pieces)
Bone or 1 litre stock

1  kilo carrots sliced diagonally (more surface to absorb the flavour!)

1 medium onion, chopped

1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger (or ground ginger )

2 cinnamon sticks

2 teaspoons caraway seeds
salt and pepper to taste

Handful good quality pitted green olives
1 heaped teaspoon harissa (homemade or commercial)

Before Serving

Olive oil 

 juice of one lemon

1 cup chopped parsley

           Place the onion and spices in the pan with olive oil, and stir on medium heat.

                                                      Add the diced lamb or veal

                               Stirring occasionally until it is evenly browned

                                
Add about one litre water and a bone, or cook in stock. Cover and leave to cook on a medium heat until the meat is just done, at this point the stock should be reduced to about half the amount (concentrated).

Remove the meat from the pot with a slotted spoon and place in an ovenproof dish, cover it with the cooking liquid after straining it through a sieve (fine enough to catch the  caraway seeds)

Add carrots sliced at an angle to the meat and broth, cover tightly with foil or your ovenproof pot lid, and place in the oven for about 45 minutes at  250 °C.

When the carrots are fork tender the lamb should practically melt in your mouth.

Add a teaspoonful of harissa, and mix it in the sauce. Scatter olives on top and place the Tajin in the oven for about 10 minutes without a cover.  When some of the sauce has evaporated and the lamb has browned slightly, remove from the oven. Don't let it dry out!

Add the fresh lemon juice over the Tajin and drizzle generously with olive oil, then garnish with chopped parsley.  Eat with with warm Arabic bread to soak up the sauce.

Steamed Pasta with Pine Nuts, Raisins, Almonds, and Liver: Makaruna Imbaukha bil Khalta مكرونة مبوخة بالخلطة

This pasta dish is a famous Shargawi recipe, and is often served at Weddings in Eastern Libya. Thin pasta is lightly grilled until golden then steamed over chicken stock. It is then fragrantly spiced with cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and cardamom. The topping is a mixture of fried liver, almonds, pine nuts, and  raisins. The raisins are traditional and add sweetness to the dish, but I had to omit them for a guest. With slight variations this mix is served over rice in many Arab countries, including Libya.
This is the original recipe for Makaruna Imbaukha bil Khalta, but nowadays most Libyans cut the amount of oil and samn used - unless it is made for a Wedding feast!

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1/2 kg pasta capellini or other thin wheat pasta
4 pieces of skinned chicken (thigh/wings)
4 tablespoons corn oil in 1/2 cup of warm water

1/2 cup samn (clarified butter also known as ghee)

1 medium onion chopped
1 medium tomato chopped
4 bay leaves
2/3 cinnamon sticks
1 tablespoon cardamom pods, crushed
1/2 tablespoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon ground ginger
salt, pepper
Ground spices:
2 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon ground dried ginger
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon black pepper
Khalta Topping: 

1/2 kg lamb liver

1/2 cup samn (to fry the nuts and raisins)
1/2 cup blanched almonds 
1/2cup  pine nuts
1/2 cup raisins (optional)

Ideally steamed dishes or Imbawakh (an important category in Libyan cuisine) should be cooked in a kaskas, but any pot with a fitted steamer is fine, especially for steamed rice and pasta.

In the bottom pot of a steamer (kaskas), add about 1 litre boiling water to the chicken, along with the chopped onion, chopped tomato, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, spices and salt. 

Break the pasta up and put it in tray under the the grill, until the top layer becomes golden. When it's mixed it will be two-coloured.

When the pasta has cooled down, sprinkle with 1 tb spoon oil mixed with 1/2 cup warm water.

When you can see steam  rising, place the pasta in the steamer.

Meanwhile melt a 1/2 cup of clarified butter (ghee) in a pan.

Fry the pine nuts first as they are the most sensitive to heat, then the almonds. If you like raisins with the khalta, fry the raisins next, taking them off the heat once they plump up. Set aside the left over samn (clarified butter).

Cube the liver and put in deep casserole. Pour boiling water on top leave about one minute then  strain well.

        This helps the liver cubes keep their shape.

Heat the samn used to fry the almonds and raisins. Add the liver and half the amount of ground spices. Stir constantly, make sure you don't overcook it or the liver will be rubbery. 

Drain the liver from the excess fat.

Set aside the fried liver, raisins and nuts to use as a topping later.

After about 45 minutes, remove the cooked chicken pieces and leave the stock in the bottom of the steamer. Remove the pasta from the steamer and put it in a deep bowl. Using a ladle, take about 3 cups of the stock from the bottom of the steamer, especially the oily top layer. Mix it into the pasta and return the pasta to the steamer. How long the pasta takes to cook depends on the pasta type. If the pasta is still not cooked , moisten it with another 1 or 2 cups of stock, and continue steaming.

Once the pasta is done place it in a heatproof bowl. Place the cooked chicken pieces under the grill or brown in a frying pan. Meanwhile add the remaining ground spices to the pasta. Heat up the  1/2 cup of samn until it just starts to smoke, then pour on top of the spices. It should be hot enough for a sizzling sound and bubbling. This  method of infusing flavour by 'burning' spices with hot samn is called the kawi, and is used in a lot of Shargawi recipes.

 Mix the spices and samn (clarified butter) through the pasta. 

Plate the pasta and cover it with the fried khalta of  liver, nuts and raisins then top with the browned chicken. Serve with Mseyer pickles.