Matbucha

Cooked down for three hours until the oil separates and the colour goes from red to brick.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg ripe tomatoes, skinned and chopped
• 6 red peppers
• 8 cloves garlic, sliced
• 2 green chillies, chopped
• 150 ml olive oil
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt

Method

1. IT IS COOKED DOWN FOR THREE HOURS until the oil separates and the colour goes from red to brick. That is the whole dish and there is nothing else to it: no thickener, no purée, no reduction trick. One and a half kilos of tomato and six peppers go into a wide pan with the oil and are left over the lowest heat, stirred now and then, for three hours or more. The water leaves, the sugars concentrate, the colour darkens from bright red to a deep brick, and the olive oil comes out of suspension and pools on the surface. That separation is the signal it is done. Stopped at forty minutes it is a pleasant cooked tomato sauce; the three hours make it something dense, sweet and jammy that is eaten by the spoonful on bread.
2. THE PAN IS WIDE AND THE LID IS OFF. Evaporation is the entire mechanism. A deep narrow pan with a lid takes six hours and may never get there.
3. THE PEPPERS ARE GRILLED AND PEELED FIRST. Blackened, steamed, skinned. Pepper skins will not break down in three hours and stay as tough translucent shreds through the finished dish -- the single most common fault.
4. THE TOMATOES ARE SKINNED TOO. Scored and blanched, or grated on a box grater which leaves the skin behind in the hand. Same reason.
5. IT IS STIRRED ONLY OCCASIONALLY, AND SCRAPED FROM THE BASE WHEN IT IS. Every fifteen or twenty minutes, right down to the metal. Left entirely alone it catches and the whole batch tastes burnt; stirred constantly it never develops the slightly caught edges that give it depth.
6. THE GARLIC IS SLICED AND GOES IN AT THE START. Eight cloves, sliced rather than crushed. Over three hours it collapses into sweetness and disappears; crushed garlic added late would be sharp and out of place.
7. IT IS SERVED AT ROOM TEMPERATURE AND IS BETTER THE NEXT DAY. Cooled in the pan. Like the long-cooked olive-oil dishes it belongs with, the flavours settle overnight.
8. The red peppers grilled until BLACKENED, covered 10 MINUTES, then PEELED, deseeded and chopped.
9. The tomatoes SKINNED and chopped.
10. Everything put in a WIDE pan with the olive oil, sliced garlic, chillies, paprika, sugar and salt.
11. Cooked UNCOVERED over the LOWEST heat 3 HOURS or more.
12. Stirred every 15 to 20 MINUTES, SCRAPED down to the base each time.
13. TESTED: the colour should have gone from red to deep BRICK and the OIL should have SEPARATED and pooled on the surface. If it is still bright red and loose it is not finished.
14. Cooled in the pan and served at room temperature with bread. Better the next day; keeps 5 days.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Tunisia · All recipes