Libya...was a tough one. I had assumed the food would be similar to Algerian, Moroccan, Egyptian, etc. And it is! If you decide to go the easy route. Which I did not. Since I had already done couscous for Algeria, I couldn't just do it again. I needed something a little more unique. Two of the national dishes of Libya include bazeen and aseeda, which are very similar in technique but one is savory, one is dessert.
The bazeen starts out easy. The base of the sauce is onion and spices.
Normally meat would be added, like lamb. In my case, I simply skipped that step and went straight to adding tomato paste.
Water is added to thin out the sauce. If using meat, you would let it cook for 45 minutes. In my case, I only simmered it for a few minutes before adding potatoes.
While the potatoes cook in the sauce, the dough is formed. Normally this would be a mixture of barley flour and white flour (or all barley flour). I used whole wheat flour in place of barley because I didn't want to search for and buy it. That may have been a mistake. The flour mixture (it's literally just flour, no other ingredients) is added to a pot of lightly salted boiling water.
You push the edges a bit towards the middle so the water can make its way up. Then, you stick a wooden spoon in the center and wiggle it around so it creates a little volcano so the water can boil up into the center as well. Then, you just leave it alone. For 45 minutes. I have never cooked anything like this and probably will never again, because it's just boiled flour! I understand that it's meant more for sustenance probably, but wow it does not taste that great.
Once it's done boiling, you then mix it all together into a smooth-ish dough. The recipe I used said it's easiest to hold the pot in the corner of your sink so you can press the wooden spoon repeatedly against the edges to get all the lumps out. That worked, but it's still an arm workout for sure.
Once the dough comes together, you have to knead it until it creates a smooth ball.
Then you place it on your serving dish and press the edges down a bit so it sticks to the plate. I don't really have any large serving dishes so I probably should have made two or three smaller balls to make it easier to eat.
Because the next thing you do is smother the ball in the tomato sauce, and arrange the potatoes along with some hard boiled eggs, around the circle. The sauce came out great and tasted good with the boiled eggs, but in hindsight I should have cut the potatoes smaller so they soaked up more of the flavor. Along with the bland dough-ball in the center, they also didn't have the richest flavor.
The dessert portion of this meal did not turn out better than dinner, I'm sorry to say. The sauce was the best part, just like its savory counterpart. I started by making a date syrup, which involved chopping and soaking dates in boiling water, discarding that water, and then simmering them in a pot of water on the stove for an hour.
Once they're done simmering, they end up broken down to a pulp. That pulp is then strained to release all the water. A cheesecloth over a sieve is the easiest way to wring all the water out, but I didn't have cheesecloth at the time so I ended up just using a clean dish towel. It worked okay.
All of the juice it creates gets put into a pot to simmer on its own for 45 minutes to create a syrup consistency.
The aseeda itself it made almost exactly like the bazeen, except it's made of just plain flour. You boil a pot of water, then take it off the heat and add the flour. You stir and stir and stir until all the lumps are gone, then add more water and bring to a boil. After all that hard work of stirring the dough, you end up breaking it all up in the pot and cooking for about 20 minutes. Then you have to work the dough with your spoon again. Some people on the internet liken this process to making choux dough. Certainly doesn't taste like an eclair though.
Once the dough is smooth, you put a bit of butter on a plate, put the dough on top, then fold the edges over so it's coated in butter and no longer sticky. This also forms it into a circular shape. Then you turn it over and create a little crater in the center for more butter! The butter is joined by the freshly-made date syrup, which is the only thing that gives this dish flavor. You can also use honey. Wikipedia likens this dish to "gruel" so I shouldn't have been expecting, like, the most amazing thing ever. It wasn't the most awful thing I've ever tasted either, though. The consistency left much to be desired, chewy and thick, hard to swallow. I'm really selling this dish, huh? It was better after chilling in the fridge overnight, hardened up a little bit. I still could only eat small portions at a time, which might actually be the point since it's a communal dish that's supposed to be eaten with two fingers.
Needless to say, I won't be making these again just for funsies. I didn't take any pictures of the cooking process for the aseeda because I actually made it after we had sat down to eat the bazeen and since the process is very similar and I was a little annoyed at the amount of effort for so little payoff. However, if I was offered a taste of either of these dishes made by an actual Libyan, I would gladly accept. As is the case with any other food I make for this project. Because I'm sure they could tell me exactly what I did wrong and that if made correctly, it's delicious. I'd believe them.
Recipes Used: Bazeen // Aseeda // Date Syrup
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