Croft-Cooke, Rupert. 1970November. Tunisian Cookery. Gourmet 30(11): 29. [Excerpted and adapted from article.]
JUST OUTSIDE OF TUNIS, the capital city of Tunisia, are the ruins of Carthage, the second city of the ancient world. Digging in their gardens, the inhabitants of the bright new villas that now occupy the area turn up Roman coins and pieces of pottery from before the time of Christ. So despite the modernizationÑtowering apartment blocks, continuous traffic, and the Hilton hotelÑthe classical past is very evident, and it would be surprising if there were not some traces of it in the food of modem Tunisia.
And there are. Olives, which were once exported to Rome in the form of oil, for cooking and lighting, and figs from Carthage, which Cato gave to the Roman senators to arouse their greed, are sold and eaten in the streets of Tunis today. And a recipe devised by the Latin epicure Apicius for cooking sea bream is still used by Tunisian cooks.
But Tunisian cuisine has been enriched over the centuries by the influence of the conquering Arabs. Today kebabs are one of its staples, and couscous is on the menu of every restaurant. Finally and most fortunately, in the last century Tunisian cooks have learned finesse from the French colonizers. Thus, in this comparatively small North African country is found one of the happiest combinations of luscious materials (particularly fish and fruit), skilled cooking, and lively appreciation of native dishes.
This culinary richness may not be apparent to the casual visitor or tourist if he is content with the pretentious catering in his newly built luxury hotel. He will be given the largest and most succulent scampi to be found anywhere in the Mediterranean, with a very fair mayonnaise. He will perhaps try couscous made from manufactured semolina and boiled mutton served in a special dish with a plaited cover over it to conserve the full aroma. Or he may be
regaled with strawberries Chantilly, for strawberries are plentiful. He may experiment further with such typically Tunisian specialties as brik a loeuf and tajin. But unless he is entertained in a Tunisian home where there is a cook skilled in the traditional cuisine of his people, he will not know the hundred or so spices in the local repertoire, the many herbsÑboth dried and fresh, and some of them wildÑor the distillations from flowers: geraniums, orange flowers, roses, and jasmine, which enliven the delicious sweet dishes sold by confectioners or made at home.
Nor will the visitor be familiar with the beautiful fish that are caught off the Tunisian coasts, since many of them are rarely found elsewhere. The groupers, for instance, that noble family of spotted creatures with firm, delicately flavored flesh, grow to about forty feet in length. Or the eccentric ange de mer, also called the angel shark or monkfish, which is cooked with green peppers. Then there is the saint-pierre, which we call John Dory; the red and gray mullets; the loup de mer or sea bass; the picturesque saupe with its golden yellow stripes, the colorful mackerels, and the snub-nosed breme de mer (sea bream or pomfret).
Daurade, the gilt-headed bream, which has a golden spot on each cheek and a crescent-shaped one on its brow, is a prized fish also common to Tunisian waters. In Tunis it is usually poached and served with a pale rose-colored bechamel, made with the coral of oursins, or sea urchins. (This preparation obviously was introduced by the French, who are the only people to fully appreciate the spiny little creatures: In Paris when oysters are out of season oursins take their place on hors d'oeuvre trays.)
So plentiful and so varied is the fish of Tunisia that it is possible there to make what is often attempted unsuccessfully in other places outside the southern coast of FranceÑa local bouillabaisse. A variety of two types of fish is used in equal proportions: firm-fleshed fish that remain integrate after cooking and fish of delicate flesh, which add body to the bouillabaisse. For the first, rascasse, red mullet, gurnet, eel, and angler are suggested; for the second John Dory or whiting. All these fish are in occasional supply. Into the pot with them goes a large crab or crayfish, scampi, prawns,
shrimps, and squid. But as readers of GOURMET know, spontaneity and improvisation are the first qualities of a bouillabaisse, and I have found this dish at its very best only in the region of Marseilles.
The street scene in Tunis reminds one that eating, particularly to the young of Mediterranean races, is not limited to meals at home. There never were such people for street eating as the Tunisians. Tunis is a clean city, but before the street sweepers come around in the early hours of the morning it looks as though an army of fruitarian monkeys has passed through. Every few yards there are fruit stalls, which stay open until after midnight, and nut stalls, which offer almonds, peanuts, pistachios, and sunflower seeds.
Paper-wrapped sweets are also sold from the pavement, and brightly lit shops display a wide selection of rich confections Ñhoney cakes, cream cakes, and almond paste. One can buy and eat, messily but
contentedly, all kinds of hot vol-au-vent and sausage rolls, for making flaky pastry is a popular art. And it is not only the children who stroll licking ice-cream cones. A fortune would await someone who introduced the toffee apple, familiar in England a few decades ago, or even the fish-and-chip shop. Swordfish steaks wrapped in Arabic newspapers might seem exotic to the Londoner but would, nevertheless, be popular.
In the restaurants, which are numerous and of differing quality, French and Tunisian foods are found side by side on the menu. The French, who returned to France after Tunisia won its independence, left behind their culinary arts and the habits and modes of good eating Ñ plentiful napery, immaculate tableware, and a tradition of attentive service that is to be found in even the simplest bistro. The waiter, whom you will soon know as Ahmed or Abdul, will expect to shake hands with you and perhaps have a chat about the weather or football if he is not too busy. But he will also see that you have everything you want, advise you about the excellent local wines, and explain to you in French the ingredients of unfamiliar dishes.
Unless you know Tunisian cuisine well there will be several dishes new to you, including the characteristic brik, with which you would do well to start a meal. Brik is not at all what it may sound like; it is a paper-thin pastry folded around some morsel, most often an egg sprinkled with herbs, and fried for a moment or two in deep oil. The wafer covers an area the size of a large plate and the egg, or piece of shellfish, meat, or vegetable, swells it only in the middle. To handle it correctly you must pick it up with the fingers of both hands and nibble your way through the pastry to the prize, an operation that may leave your fingers oily. The process is even more difficult if the egg filling has only been cooked lightly. (The story is told of one visiting royal dignitary who was given brik a l'oeuf at a state luncheon and mastered it, egg and all, but found that his gloves, which had to be worn on such an occasion, were ruined. A lady-in-waiting who had been in Tunis before resourcefully produced a pair of span white kid gloves, and everyone was happy.)
Then there is tajin, which, unlike tajin in other North African countries, is a kind of loaf made by pressing together pieces of meat or poultry, eggs, bread crumbs, grated cheese, herbs, and spices. The loaf is later sliced and served hot. Tajin is an economical dish, for fine bread crumbs account for part of its
volume. But like the bread crumbs in sausages, they are not, or should not be, perceptible. My Tunisian cookery book gives no fewer than a dozen recipes for tajin, all of which have diced meat, eggs, and grated cheese but very little else in common, for the housewife makes the mixture according to taste and what she has in her larder. Peas, green or dried beans, tomato puree, mint, artichoke hearts, eggplant, potatoes, and capers can all go into a tajin. But whatever the ingredients, there should be a sliceable, well flavored mass browned on the outside and served with a piquant sauce.
Where couscous is concerned, I find that restaurants in Tunisia make little pretense of cooking it with anything but manufactured semolina. The dish may be little the worse for its use of the manufactured product, but couscous specialists can appreciate homemade semolina, just as Italian pasta eaters recognize at once the difference between mass-manufactured spaghetti and the freshly made variety. The Tunisians do not add raisins to the meat, as the Moroccans do, but they serve a peppery sauce called harissa, made with dried red peppers.
All forms of kebab (a general term used for anything cooked on skewers over charcoal) are as popular today as they were when the Arabs first introduced them a thousand years ago. Called brochettes by the French and pinchitos by the Spaniards, the skewered meat that nomadic peoples learned to make palatable by roasting over their campfires has come to be recognized as one of the greatest achievements of world cookery. There is nothing quite like kebabs, not even the roast beef of old England, the glorious grilled steak, or the tender gigot. The cubes gain something not only from the spices and herbs with which they are impregnated, but from the aromas that are diffused during the cooking and from the rich smoke that rises as the olive oil drips over the burning charcoal. In any Tunisian restaurant, to order kebabs means to watch the meat, poultry, or fish being stripped from the skewers onto your plate, or sometimes onto a pile of rice. Savoring the fragrant morsels is gastronomic bliss.
Espadon, or swordfish, has a dry, firm flesh that lends itself particularly well to kebab cookery.
The following recipe varies only slightly from the shermoula devised by Apicius and eaten in Bizerte, once the French naval port on the Mediterranean and now an important Tunisian city. The Romans had no red pepper, they used dates instead of onions, and they seasoned the fish with garum (a condiment made from salted sea-water fish) rather than salt. Otherwise this recipe is unchanged from the second century.
Described as a fish ragout, this dish is a favorite in the port of Sfax on the east coast of Tunisia. The fish most often used for it is the handsome saupe, which is supposed to be at its best at the time of the grape harvest. Sea bass may be substituted.
