Chili paste heats up dishes and warms hearts at northeastern Tunisia's harissa festival

NABEUL, Tunisia — 

For years, Tunisians person been picking agleam reddish peppers, combining them with garlic, vinegar and spices and turning them into a saucy dispersed called harissa. The condiment is simply a nationalist staple, recovered successful homes, restaurants and nutrient stalls passim the coastal North African nation.

Brick-red, spicy and tangy, it tin beryllium scooped up connected breadstuff drizzled with olive lipid oregon dabbed onto plates of eggs, fish, stews oregon sandwiches. Harissa tin beryllium sprinkled atop merguez sausages, smeared connected savory pastries called brik oregon sandwiches called fricassées.

In Nabeul, the largest metropolis successful Tunisia's harissa-producing Cap Bon region, section cook and harissa specializer Chahida Boufayed called it "essential to Tunisian cuisine."

"Harissa is simply a emotion story," she said astatine a festival held successful grant of the chili paste condiment successful the northeastern Tunisian metropolis of Nabeul earlier this month. "I don't marque it for the money."

Aficionados from crossed Tunisia and the satellite converged connected the 43-year-old mother's basal to effort her recipe. Surrounded by strings of drying baklouti reddish peppers, she described however she grows her vegetables and blends them with spices to marque harissa.

The region's yearly harissa festival has grown successful the two-plus years since the United Nations taste organization, UNESCO, recognized the condiment connected a database of items of intangible taste heritage, said Zouheir Belamin, the president of the relation down the event. He said its increasing prominence worldwide was attracting caller tourists to Tunisia, specifically to Nabeul.

UNESCO successful 2022 called harissa "an integral portion of home provisions and the regular culinary and nutrient traditions of Tunisian society, adding it to a database of traditions and practices that people intangible taste practice including Ukrainian borscht and Cuban rum.

Already fashionable crossed North Africa arsenic good arsenic successful France, the condiment is gaining popularity passim the satellite from the United States to China.

Seen arsenic sriracha's North African cousin, harissa is typically prepared by women who sun-dry harvested reddish peppers and past deseed, lavation and crushed them. Its sanction comes from "haras" – the Arabic verb for "to crush" – due to the fact that of the adjacent signifier successful the process.

The finished peppers are combined with a substance of ail cloves, vinegar, salt, olive lipid and spices successful a mortar and pestle to marque a fragrant blend. Variants connected show astatine Nabeul's Jan. 3-5 festival utilized cumin, coriander and antithetic spice blends oregon types of peppers, including smoked ones, to make pastes ranging successful colour from burgundy to crimson.

"Making harissa is an art. If you maestro it, you tin make wonders," Boufayed said.