Matbucha: Another great option if you need a break from Humus
Matbucha can take many forms but is a northern African cooked salad. When I spent my six months in Jerusalem while an undergraduate at BYU, we had the full traditional breakfast which consisted of fish, cheese and salads. Matbucha was a pretty constant visitor to our breakfast table. I know it is called a cooked salad but this is much more of a dip-much like humus or baba ganoush. Many of the ways of making it require hours of cooking on the stove top and involve roasting and then pealing tomatoes and green peppers. I am, by far, too lazy to go that direction. The easiest way is to roast all the vegetables in the oven and then blend in a food processor. How spicy you wish to make it depends on how many jalapenos you add.
Matbucha
Ingredients:
5 tomatoes, cut in half
5 green peppers, cored, seeded and cut in half
2 jalapenos, cored, seeded and cut in half
¼ cup olive oil
4 cloves of garlic
1 ½ teaspoons hot paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoons black pepper
3 tablespoons lemon juice
Preparation:
Place the tomatoes and peppers on a baking sheet, coat with the olive oil and bake in an oven for 30 minutes at 400 degrees. Remove the jalapenos and continue to bake for an additional 15 minutes. If the peppers are still not soft, allow to bake for 10-15 minutes longer. Let the vegetables cool for 5 minutes. Place all the remaining ingredients in a food processor and pulse to the desired thickness (this can be eaten as a smooth puree or chunky).
Eat at room temperature with crackers or this can be used as a marinade for fish or chicken.
Oh, and it is one of the 1000 Foods to Eat Before you Die (just in case you weren’t keen on eating it before).
