travelistica.ae.com: Eat in Tunisia Food & Drink in Tunisia

Food & Drink in Tunisia

Tunisian food has a reputation of being very hot and spicy cuisine that is influenced by Mediterranean cusine. Couscous, harissa (chilli paste), Tajine, Baklava as well as salads are usually hot and can be conversation stoppers as well. The Tunisian cuisine is usually packed with flavors and based around grains, vegetables,' fruits, seafood, liquid-gold olive and garlic. It had been influenced through time by other cuisines of different nations like the Roman, Arabic, Jewish, Turkish, Andalusian, French, Spanish and Italian flavor that were all mixed with the traditional Tunisian cuisine, although perhaps the most obvious influence is the French one. The Berbers brought couscous and the Maghreb staple. Mixture of meat, fruit and cinnamon derive were originally Turkish. It must not also go without saying that International cuisine as well is available in many restaurants in Tunisia.

Cafes, Restaurants and Bars

There are different types of places in Tunisia where you can eat in. The local restaurants are either gargottes - serving sandwiches, chicken, fish, and couscous, or rotisseries, serving fried and roasted meats. Local restaurants however don't usually serve alcohol. You may also prefer the more formal restaurants touristiques which, despite its name, are not just for tourists. Theses restaurant are assessed by the ONTT (national tourist of¬fice), and are granted from one up to three forks. In addition to serving Tunisian food, they also serve international specialties and alcohol. Cafes and cafeterias in Tunisia are of different types, from stand-up patisseries to leisurely male-dominated havens, where men usually play chess and dominoes and smoke sheeshas - tobacco water pipes which you can have it mwassi (honey¬soaked) or tufa (apple-flavoured) tobacco. Most bars are raucous and filled with smoky all-male dives, so if you want to have a more salubri¬ous drink, in a place where women may feel more comfortable, you would better head for a reputable hotel bar.

Eating Habits

Families in Tunisia eat sitting around a mida, which is a round, low table, and food is served in a big dish. Men and women sit eating together, unlike in some Arabic countries. In some traditional families, women leave the table at the end of the meal while men stay. In religious families start their meals by saying bis millah and ending it with ilhamdulillah, ((mentioning God's name in both cases). It is expected that you are dressed well when invited in the home of a Tunisian. You may not begin eating before the father of the family. When eating, avoid passing things or eating with you left hand as it is reserved for the less salubrious tasks. You should not refuse if someone offers you something. If you are invited to a Tunisian home, it is better to bring a gift from your own country, however sweets from an upmarket, Tunisian patisserie, fruit, nuts or flowers will also do.

MAIN DISHES & SPECIALITIES

The Tunisian breakfast (ftoor) consists of milk, coffee, eggs, assida (a belly-filling pudding made with flour or semolina, oil and dates), fritters, sohlob (sorghum, sugar, cinnamon and ginger), while in winter, hsou (spicy semolina and caper-based soup) is served also. The lunch and dinner include as starters: soups, salad vegetables, tajine (an omelette with white beans or potatoes, breadcrumbs, chopped meat, cheese and egg) or fish followed by a plain dish of couscous or pasta.

Harissa and Bread

Harissa is important as Tunisian cooking usually revolves around it. The name Harissa comes from the Arabic word meaning "break into pieces" which refers to the making of its paste in which red chillies are pounded in a mortar. Harissa is made from crushed dried chilli, garlic, salt and caraway seeds, neat with olive oil. The taste of Harissa is very appealing; when you eat it with bread as an appetiser it gives you a spicy and delicious taste. Bread is found in every meal and is best served warm from the local boulangeri. The bread is usually a baguette (long crusty French loaf), however it may be tabouna that is found usually in the countryside and is traditional kind of bread that is flat, round in shape and heavy, flavored with hab hlaoua (aniseed). Bread price is controlled in Tunisia as price rises may cause riot in the country.

Starters

Small tasty dishes are served as appetizers and are called Kemia. They contain nibbles such as nuts, olives, dried fish, Poutargue (mullet roe) and spiced octopus. In addition to that, there are also vegetable dishes with a delicious taste that usually consist of carrots, pumpkin or courgette, and are mixed with spices and imalah (pickled carrots and cauliflower). One of the widely popular starters is the smoky-tasting salade Mechouia. It is made of delicious mixture of roasted peppers, garlic and harisaa and mopped up with crusty white bread. Another starter is Salade Tunisienne consisting of chopped tomatoes, onion and peppers which are seasoned in lemon juice, olive oil and mint. Perhaps the less spiced starter is Omni houria which is served cold and is made of cooked carrots mashed with garlic and olive oil. Chorba is an oily tomato-based soup and is a starter that is often served in winter. Another starter that is obviously from a Middle Eastern origin is the briq. It is a deep-fried envelope of pastry filled with slurp of egg (the white of the egg is cooked but the yolk should remain runny), and it can also be stuffed with onions, parsley, potato, tuna, seafood, meat or chicken. briq can also be sweet too in such case it is filled with almond or sesame paste and soaked in honey.

Seafood and Meat

Tunisia has excellent and delicious kinds of seafood. Sole, red mullet, mackerel, grouper, perch, octopus and squid are some of the seafood you will find there. Fish is sometimes grilled with lemon and olive oil and seasoned with many seasonings like garlic, saffron, cumin, paprika, turmeric or dried rosebuds. Fried fish is often served accompanied by tastira, which consists of a mixture of chopped and fried tomatoes and eggs with caraway seeds, salt and olive oil. A favored seafood dish is kabkabou, an aromatic and tangy baked dish seasoned with saffron and lemon, with tomatoes and capers. Also mussels, clams, calamari, prawns, oysters, crayfish and lobster are boiled and usually served with a roux (white sauce made from butter and flour) and mayonnaise. A popular meat dish is merguez (consisting of spicy lamb or goat sausages) which tastes very well. Roast chicken are also delicious specially when piping hot and accompanied by chips. Camel meat can be eaten usually in the southern areas. Some interesting dishes also combine meat, fruit and spices. Maraqa usually is a lamb meat slow-cooked and has some variants like koucha with chilli, potatoes and tomatoes, klaya with paprika or kamounia which is cooked in cumin.

Meat

Merguez (spicy lamb or goat sausages) are hard to beat, but some cheap joints sell delicious roast chicken - best when piping hot, with a pile of chips. Around Ain Draham you can sometimes eat marcassin (wild boar piglet), though it's off-limits to Muslims and has been illegal in recent years. Camel meat is a southern novelty. Particularly interesting are dishes combining meat, fruit and spices. Tunisians like maraqa, a slow-cooked stew, normally lamb, in versions such as koucha, with chilli, tomatoes and potatoes, klaya, with paprika, or kamounia, cooked in cumin. You can find a similar cooking style in Provence, where dishes were brought back by French settlers in North Africa.

The Dependable Date

Until recently, life in the Sahara was almost entirely dependent on one remarkable plant: date palm (Phoenix dactylifera). So important was it to desert life that the traditional way of assessing the size of an oasis in terms of the number of palms it could support, rather than the number of people. A date palm can live to be over 100 years old, growing up to 24m high. The trees start pro' ing fruit at around 20-30 years. The fruit supplies begin to decline at about 70 years, so the) normally cut down around then (at around 20m, before they reach their full potential heig Nowadays palms are mainly used for their fruit, but in the past the trunk was used for buile or hollowed out to channel water. The branches are used for roofs and fences, while leaf fi can be woven into mats and ropes and the woody fruiting stems make good brooms. Notl went to waste. Even the date pits are used: in the old days they were roasted and groun make an ersatz coffee; today they are ground up as animal fodder. The date palm's very presence is an indicator of the desert's most precious resource, w The tree is specific in its climatic requirements. There is an old Arab saying that it likes 'its in heaven and its head in hell', a reference to its need for sizzling summer temperatures and of water - about SOOL a day in summer.

There are more than 100 varieties of date, finest of which is the deglat ennour (finger of Ii, so called because the flesh is almost translucent. It constitutes 50% of all plantings in Tuni' If you can, try to make it to Douz in October for the date harvest, when the abundant dates are at their succulent best.

Couscous (the National Dish)

Couscous (semolina granules) is the national dish in Tunisia that is eaten by rich and poor alike. It is also a dish eaten at celebrations. It is served with vegetables, lamb, poultry or fish and has more than 300 ways of serving it. Couscous is steamed and usually served with sauce covering. It is cooked by steaming wet grains in a couscoussiere (a two-piece pot). The upper part of the pot holds the couscous, while sauce (vegetables, chickpeas, beef, chicken, lamb or fish) cooks in the underneath pot, thus the steam which holds the tasty scents rises to cook the grains.

Fruits & Sweets

There are many delicious and wonderful fruits that grow out in Tunisia and have subtle and extraordinary flavors. Juicy bousa'a - medlar-fruit that is orange in color and tastes like plum - is usually available in May. Boutabguia is a variety of peaches that has an unusual compact texture and usually found abundantly at the end of June. The finest grapes can be found in Tunisia at the end of August. The best of these grapes are either the fragrant white muscats from around Kelibia, or razzegoui which is a white grape shaded pink. Mishmish (apricots) tastes extraordinarily delicious. It might be eaten with some crunchy, sweet inzas bouguidma (meaning sized miniature pears). Blush-red pomegranates come out from September and you can specify if you want them sans sucre (without sugar). There are different kinds of sweets that you can eat in Tunisia, the most popular is the delicious and nutty baklava - sticky filo pastry filled with nuts and honey. samsa is equally delicious and is made from a filo pastry and ground roast almonds and baked in lemon and rosewater syrup. Other sweets include bouza - hazelnut cream with grilled sesame seeds, and Makhroud - small date¬stuffed, honey-soaked wheat cakes.

DRINKS

There are many cafes in virtually every area in Tunisia. Cafes offer several drinks of choice including the thick and gritty coffee, called ahwa arbi and (Turkish coffee) fragrant with orange blossom or rosewater, as well as the express (espresso coffee), cafe direct (coffee with milk) or capucin (espresso with a dash of milk). All coffees are provided with sugar which makes them more palatable, however you can also specify if you want little or no sugar. Tea drinks include the classic North African a la menthe (mint tea), it can be also au pignon - with pine nuts, or a l'almande ¬- with almonds. Several juices are also available in most cafes like lemon juice, the delicious freshly squeezed orange juice, as well as the seasonal juices or milkshakes with fresh fruit. You have to specify if you want a little sugar or it'll be assumed that you want a lot. Another drink that can be offered is lait de poule which does not mean 'chicken's milk' but rather a fruit milkshake with egg white. Alcohol drinks are relatively easy to obtain in Tunisia, in spite of being a Muslim country, as many locals frequent bars. Among the drinks, beer is popular as well as Celtia, the local brand that is a lager and is the cheapest one as well. German Lowenbrau is available and brewed locally. Boukha is a popular aperitif that is served at room temperature or chilled and is made from distilled figs mixed with Coke. Whisky is also popular and may have a snobbish appeal. Other drinks include the herb-based Thibarine which is made according to an ancient recipe in the Thibar region near Dougga, Sambi which tastes like a liqueur distilled from dates, Laghmi, which sometimes can be powerful, is a fermented palm sap and is found in the southern oases.