Mahjouba

a recipe by Takia
a film by Anissa Kaki


France - Algeria


2h | 4 people

Mahjouba

clock 2h | 4 people

Ingredients

  • 500g medium semolina
  • Salt
  • Water
  • 4 onions
  • 5 tomatoes
  • 1 table spoon of tomato paste
  • 1 little cut chili pepper
  • Chili pepper in powder
  • Pepper

1. Mix the semolina with the salt. Add water progressively and knead till the dough becomes soft. The dough is flexible and elastic without ripping. 

2. Once ready, make some little ball with (you can dip your hand in a little sunflower oil to shape the balls more easily).

3. Slice the onion and then chili pepper. 

4. Finely dice the tomatoes.

5. Mix everything with the tomato paste with salt and pepper. 

6. Coat the work surface with oil.

7. Coat your hands with oil and spread the first dough bowl with the palm of your hand. From the center to the ends, knowing that the center will be a little less thin than the edges.

8. Take the edges of the dough with your hands. Lift it up to stretch it gently and spread it out as well as possible.

9. Repeat the operation with another dough ball. Superimpose the two pancakes thus obtained. 

10. Put the stuffing in the center.

11. Stretch two new balls of dough, and superimpose them on the first to close.

12. Cook on a tawa (plancha). Don’t hesitate to keep spread the dough with your fingers on the plancha to make it finer as possible. 

Takia was born in the Biskra desert in the 1930s. She arrived in France in 1968 to join her husband. For 40 years, she went back and forth between France and Algeria. In her dishes, she calls the heat of the desert.

Anissa is an actress, director and trainer. Its engine: the invisible stories, those of which History has not erected the effigy. Currently at the theater in 1983 by Alice Carré and Margaux Eskenazi.