Algeria - Recipes

 http://www.foodbycountry.com/Algeria-to-France/Algeria.html

 

Algerian Cooked Carrot Salad

Ingredients

• 1 pound carrots
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped
• Pinch of salt
• Pinch of sugar
• Lemon juice
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
• ¼ teaspoon cumin
• Parsley, chopped

Procedure

1. Scrape the carrots and cut them into four pieces lengthwise.
2. Cook in a little water with garlic and a pinch of salt and sugar for 15 minutes.
3. Drain and chill the carrots.
4. Just before serving, cover with lemon juice, about ¼ teaspoon of salt, cayenne pepper, and cumin.
5. Sprinkle with chopped parsley.

Makes 6 servings.

http://www.whats4eats.com/desserts/makroud-el-louse-recipe

Makroud el Louse

(Algerian almond cookies)

These easy-to-make, flourless cookies are excellent served with tea or coffee. They will keep for over a month stored in a well sealed container.

Image by Whats4eats

Makes 20 to 24 cookies

Ingredients

• Almonds, whole, blanched -- 1 1/4 pound
• Sugar -- 1 cup
• Eggs, beaten lightly -- 2
• Water -- 2 cups
• Sugar -- 1/2 cup
• Orange flower water -- 1 tablespoons
• Powdered (confectioner's) sugar -- 3 cups

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Place the almonds and sugar in a food processor and process until the almonds are finely pulverized. Remove to a bowl.
2. Make a well in the center of the almonds and stir in the eggs with a wooden spoon until the dough starts to come together. Then knead the dough with clean hands until smooth.
3. Cut the dough into 4 equal portions and remove to a floured work surface. Roll one portion out into a rope about 3/4 inch in diameter. Press down with your palm to flatten the rope to about 1/2-inch thickness. Cut the rope on a diagonal into 1-inch pieces and remove to an ungreased cookie sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough.
4. Bake cookies for about 12 to 15 minutes, or until they are lightly browned on top. Remove to racks and cool completely.
5. While the cookies bake, bring the water and 1/2 cup sugar to a rapid boil in a saucepan over high heat. Stir to dissolve sugar and let boil for 10 to 15 minutes. Remove and cool to room temperature. Stir in the orange flower water.
6. Put powdered sugar in a large bowl. To finish, dip each cookie first in the sugar syrup to wet. Then toss each cookie in the confectioner's sugar to coat well. Place on a rack to dry and repeat with the rest of the cookies.

Variations

• Add 1 tablespoon lemon zest to the almond dough if you like.
• If you are unable to find orange flower water to flavor the syrup, try using 1 teaspoon of lemon essence instead.

Couscous aux Sept Légumes\

http://www.whats4eats.com/vegetables/couscous-aux-sept-legumes-recipe

This straightforward couscous dish is one of the most popular dishes in Morocco and the rest of the Maghreb. Seven is considered a lucky number, and while the vegetables used in the dish may vary from family to family, town to town and season to season, the number used is constant.

A great vegetarian dish, you can add meat if you like. Known as seksu bil khodra in Algeria.

4 to 6 servings

Ingredients

• Butter or oil -- 1/4 cup
• Onions, chopped -- 2 onions
• Ground ginger -- 2 teaspoons
• Ground cumin -- 2 teaspoons
• Ground coriander -- 1 teaspoon
• Turmeric -- 1/2 teaspoon
• Tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped -- 2 cups
• Carrots, peeled and chopped into 1-inch chunks -- 4
• Turnips, peeled and chopped into 1-inch chunks -- 2
• Cabbage, chopped into 1-inch pieces -- 1/2 head
• Zucchini, chopped into 1-inch chunks -- 2
• Pumpkin, peeled and chopped into 1-inch chunks -- 1 pound
• Chickpeas, drained -- 1 (15-ounce) can
• Salt and pepper -- to taste
• Cilantro, chopped -- 1/2 bunch
• Couscous -- 1 (1-pound) package

Method

1. Heat the butter or oil in a large pot over medium-high flame. Add the onions and sauté until translucent, 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in the ginger, cumin, coriander and turmeric and sauté for another 3 to 4 minutes.
2. Stir in the tomatoes and simmer for another 3 to 4 minutes to reduce the liquid somewhat. Then stir in the carrots, turnips, cabbage and about 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover and simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes.
3. Add the zucchini, pumpkin, chickpeas, salt and pepper and bring back to a simmer. Cover and cook for another 15 to 20 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare your couscous according to package directions or following this recipe.
4. Remove the vegetables heat, stir in the cilantro and adjust seasoning. Pile the prepared couscous in a large serving dish. Use a slotted spoon to arrange the vegetables nicely around the couscous. Pour the juices around the dish and serve immediately.

Variations

• With Meat: Many recipes add lamb or beef. Use about 1 1/2 pounds of stewing lamb or beef chunks or lamb shanks. Brown them first in the butter and set them aside. Saute the onions and stir in the spices and tomatoes as directed, Then return the meat to the dish, along with the 2 cups of water. Simmer, covered for about an hour to give the meat a head start. Then add the carrots, turnips and cabbage and proceed with the recipe.
• Other vegetables: Potatoes, cauliflower, eggplant, celery. Add a handful of raisins toward the end. Stir in some chopped parsley.
• Spices: Try adding harissa, ras el hanout, paprika, chile pepper flakes, saffron.

Algeria Film- Days of Glory -Indigènes- بلديون‎ - (20060

Days of Glory (2006) is a fantastic joint Franco-Algerian film about the Algerian soldiers who fought for France in WWII.  Superbly written, acted, and directed, this gives a great glimpse into the fractured nature of Algeria's view of it's past.  One can see the passion and drive of the Algerians who fought to liberate France even as their own homeland remained a colony and they were treated as a subject people.

Algeria - Photos

Albania Film - Der Albaner / The Albanian (2010)

A young Albanian emigrates to Germany to earn money for his love.  As an illegal immigrant, he is faced with many a tough choice and doesn't always make the right one.

Albania - Recipes

http://foodsoftheworld.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/albania/

Albania: Fërgesë of Tirana with veal

We found very little when we looked for classic dishes of Albania, and what we did find look very boring. But the compensation was that the dishes looked easy to make. It seems that Fërgesë of Tirana is the classic dish (Tirana is the capital of Albania) so that’s what we decided to make.
But first, a bit about Albania. From the Frugal Traveler:

… a deeply weird place: a majority-Muslim country where the mosques are mute but the miniskirts are loud, where horse carts share highways with Hummers, and where people shake their heads to mean yes — except that sometimes they shake their heads to mean no.
Yes, Albania can make you shake your own head in confusion, but what can you expect after almost 50 postwar years of hermetic Communism and, more recently, a mania for pyramid schemes that plunged the poor European nation into near-anarchy? In this stumbling nation, I was hoping that my Frugal Traveler budget might afford me more luxury than it had elsewhere. People in neighboring Montenegro, Croatia and Italy, however, warned against such romantic notions. Albanians, they kept informing me, were criminals, corrupt and untrustworthy. But Tirana, it turns out, is quite lovable.

Ceratainly when you look a the map of Albania is looks an incredible place: lovely mountains on the East, the Mediterranean on the West, close to Italy, a long border with Greece. But the food…

Click for larger map

The menu for Fërgesë of Tirana is surprisingly simple with very few ingredients. We had to shop for feta and veal, so headed to Sprouts, but alas, no veal. On to King Soopers where veal was $16 a pound. We decided that Albanians must be rich, despite such being such poor country, until we remembered that they also make this dish with liver. We decided to compromise between the two and used sirloin steak.
The original recipe was for 4 people so we cut it in half, and the 2-person recipe is shown here.

1/2 pound steak

1/4 feta cheese

1/2 tablespooon flour

1/8 lb. (1/2 stick) butter

1.5 tablespoons virgin olive oil

1/2 medium-sized onion

salt, black pepper, and chili pepper to taste.

Cut the veal cutlets into small pieces. Dice the onion. In a saucepan, preheat the olive oil and sauté the meat and onion for 15 minutes. In another saucepan, melt the butter and then add flour, cottage or feta cheese, and black pepper, salt and chili pepper to taste. Mix all the ingredients together (adding the sautéed meat and onions) in the saucepan and place in a preheated 350 oven for 15 minutes. Take out and serve immediately. Note: Instead of veal cutlets, beef liver can be used in the same quantity of meat and preparation/cooking instructions as above.

It was quick and easy to prepare and cook, although we didn’t saute for 15 minutes – that would have way overcooked the meat, especially since it was going to be in a hot oven for another 15 minutes. So we cooked the meat and left it slightly underdone. Now, half a stick of butter for two is a lot of butter, but we did as we were told, and mixed that with the feta, the salt, pepper and chili.
After stirring to blend the feta with the butter, we mixed it all together and put it in the oven for 15 minutes. What do Albanians eat with this, we thought? The recipe called for no vegetables on the side, and no carbs in the form of bread, rice, potatoes or pasta.
So this old dish turned out to be a very modern one in that it was a very low-carb meal. The flip side is that it’s a very high-fat meal. We’d thought it would be pretty awful but it was surprisingly good and very filling, probably due to the high fat content. We did cheat though and use bread to mop up the sauce.
That was the good part of the evening. Later on we could hear a rushing of water and wondered if we’d left a tap on somewhere. It turned out that the hot water heater had broken and water was flowing out of it. So we filled the kettle and other containers with water, and turned off the water to the house, so now, as I write in the morning, I have my coffee but no way to shower or clean things.
I’ll be visiting Home Depot in the hope that they can install a new hot water heater today, so we’ll see. We have 4 guests coming over for dinner tonight, so it’s going to be interesting to see if we can make a four-course meal for 6 people and have a dinner party with no running water.
Update: A little learning is a dangerous thing. I’d previously replaced the bath taps and had to turn off the water to the house, so knew how to do that. So when I had to turn off the water to the hot water heater I turned off the water to the house since that automatically came to mind. As I was at Home Depot I realized there must be a shutoff to the water heater itself, and sure enough there is. And I’m getting a new water heater installed this afternoon before the dinner party, so it will be nice to shower before the guests arrive :-)

Cucumber Soup

Servings:

3-6

Units: US | Metric

2 cucumbers (about 500 g or 1 lb)
500 g plain yogurt (1 lb)
3 -4 garlic cloves
2 -3 tablespoons of crushed walnuts (optional)
1 bunch fresh dill
oil
salt
water (optional)

Directions:

1
Cut the cucumbers into cubes and put them in a bowl. You may aslo grate them but it changes the look and the consistency.
2
Beat the yogurt with a fork until it gets liquid and pour it over the cucumbers.
3
Add the crushed garlic, the walnuts and the minced dill as well as salt and oil to taste.
4
If needed add some water to make the soup as liquid as you like but take care not to make it too "thin".
5
Put into the refrigerator to cool or add ice cubes.
6
Serve cold.

Albania - The Tale of the Eagle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_the_Eagle

The Tale of the Eagle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The flag of Albania features an eagle.

The Albanian eagle.

The tale of the Eagle is an Albanian folk tale that explains how Albania and Albanians received their indigenous name: A youth was hunting in the mountains. An eagle flying above him alighted on top of a crag. The eagle was especially large and had a snake in its beak. After a while, the eagle flew away from the crag where it had its nest. The youth then climbed to the top of the crag where he saw, in the nest, an eaglet playing with the dead snake. But the snake wasn't really dead! Suddenly it stirred, revealed its fangs and was ready to pierce the eaglet with its deadly venom. The youth quickly took out his bow and arrow and killed the snake. Then he took the eaglet and started for his home. Suddenly the youth heard above him the loud whir of the great eagle's wings.
"Why do you kidnap my child?" cried the eagle. "The child is mine because I saved it from the snake which you didn't kill," answered the youth.
"Give me back my child, and I will give you as a reward the sharpness of my eyes and the powerful strength of my wings. You will become invincible, and you will be called by my name!"
Thus the youth handed over the eaglet. After the eaglet grew, it would always fly above the head of the youth, now a grown man, who with his bow and arrows killed many wild beasts of the forest, and with his sword slew many enemies of the land. During all of these feats, the eagle faithfully watched over and guided him.
Amazed by the valiant hunter's deeds, the people of the land elected him king and called him Shqipëtar, which is to say Son of the Eagle (shqipe or shqiponjë is Albanian for eagle) and his kingdom became known as "Shqipëria" or Land of the Eagles.The two heads on the eagle represent the north and the south.

Albania - Photos