"Cooking Quick & Simple" - Lablabi (لبلابي) (a Tunisian ...

Slim Khezri cooks Lablabi (لبلابي) : a Tunisian dish based on chick peas, small pieces of bread and a thin cumin-flavoured soup. It is commonly eaten in cheap restaurants. Partially-cooked egg is often added to the mix, along with olive oil, harissa, capers, olives, and sometimes tuna, garlic and vinegar. A traditional, but rarer, version, hergma is made with cows' trotters. In Assyrian cuisine there is also a chick-pea based dish called lablabi. The version in Iraqi cuisine is boiled chick peas with some lemon juice, mainly eaten during winter as it is served hot. Ingredients: Servings: 8 2 cups dried garbanzo beans or 2 cups canned chick-peas 4 -6 garlic cloves, minced 1 tablespoon harissa 1 tablespoon cumin salt, to taste 1 lemon, juice of 6 tablespoons olive oil 3 slices of day-old bread, preferably day-old French bread, broken into small pieces Directions: Prep Time: 10 mins - Total Time: 50 mins 1 Wash chickpeas and soak overnight (if using dried). 2 If desired, rinse them again. In a large soup pot, cover chickpeas with water, bring to a boil, and cook until tender (ten to twenty minutes). ? Or start with two pounds of canned chick peas, drained and rinsed, and heated in four cups of water. 3 Add garlic, harissa sauce, ground cumin, and salt. Simmer for ten minutes. Immediately before serving: add lemon juice, olive oil, and bread crumbs. Serve hot.