Time doesn’t stop, and if I don’t want to take an eternity to finish this challenge, I really have to keep cooking as often as possible. For this one, we travel from Europe to the big Africa! 

Let’s cook something from Algeria. 

Algeria, officially the People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria, is located in North Africa, and it’s actually the biggest country in the continent, as well as the tenth-largest country in the world by land area. 

Algeria has a rich history because it has been at the crossroads of numerous cultures and civilizations for millennia, like the Phoenicians, Numidians, Romans, Vandals, and Byzantine Greeks, just to mention a few.

Today, Algeria is a semi-presidential republic. It is a regional power in North Africa and a middle power in global affairs.

Algeria’s cuisine is rich and diverse due to interactions and exchanges with so many cultures and different nations over the years. It is based on both land and sea products, and overall it’s a mix of four main roots: Arab, Berber, Turkish and French.

Algerian cuisine offers a wide variety of dishes depending on the region and the season, but vegetables and cereals remain at its core. 

It’s only the third dish and I already had some trouble choosing what I wanted to cook, in part because the cuisine is so diverse. I also wanted to try something that did not involve lamb—I don’t want to have flavor exhaustion so early in the challenge.

This week I’m cooking Mahjouba, a savory, spicy crepe filled with  vegetables and lots of tomato. 

The exact origins of Mahjouba are not precisely documented, but it is deeply rooted in Algerian culinary traditions. It is a popular street food and is often made at home for special occasions or family gatherings. This dish reflects the simplicity of Algerian cuisine, where basic ingredients are transformed into flavorful dishes through traditional techniques and local flavors.

What I liked about this dish is that it’s simple, meatless, and since it’s a street food, it really takes me deep into the culture–at least gastronomically. But at the same time, because it’s street food, I had a bit of a hard time finding a recipe, as there are so many variations. So I chose one that seemed to be the most popular and included a couple more ingredients than usual, like carrot (not every recipe uses carrot).

3 small to medium onions

2 Holland chiles (can be substituted with long green chiles, or as a last resort, jalapeños)

Tomato paste

Coriander 

2 cloves of garlic

1 tablespoon of olive oil 

2 cups of semolina flour 

1 cup of Water

Salt

1 teaspoon of olive oil 

I had to replace the Holland chiles with green serrano chiles because, believe it or not, I could not find that type of chile. In Mexico 🌶️. The land of chiles ಠ_ಠ. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but at least at my local farmer’s market and supermarket there were none. 

Anyway, finding a substitute wasn’t hard. As for the semolina flour, Amazon saved me in this one. And as for the rest of the ingredients they were easy to get at my local supermarket. 

There are no major prerequisites, but I recommend chopping the onions and garlic, peeling and grating the carrots, removing the seeds and stem of the chiles, and chopping them along with the coriander. This is mainly to have everything ready to just toss into the pan, but it can also be done during the preparation phase.

Let’s start with the dough, since it needs to rest for a while and it’s the easiest part of this already easy dish. 

1. Put the semolina flour in a bowl, add one tablespoon of salt, and mix.

2. Add 1 cup of water.

3. Start mixing with your hands until it becomes elastic. Add water or flour as needed. 

4. When the consistency is right, add one tablespoon of olive oil and keep mixing for a couple more minutes. 

5. Let it rest for at least 30 minutes. 

Now let’s move on to the filling.

6. Chop the onions finely. 

7. Grate the carrots. 

8. Remove the seeds and stem from the chiles, and also chop them.

9. Chop the garlic. 

10. Open the can of tomatoes, put them in a bowl, and squeeze them with your hands. They should to be smaller, but not perfect. 

11. Over medium-high heat, pour in the oil and add the onion, garlic, carrots, and chiles. 

12. Mix for about 20 minutes, until the onion caramelizes. 

13. Add 2 spoons of tomato paste and mix for 3 minutes. 

14. Add the crushed tomatoes, coriander, salt, and pepper. 

15. Mix until the whole mixture is semi-dry and thick. This should take around 45 minutes. Stir every now and then so it doesn’t stick to the pan or burns. 

The dough and the filling are ready… time to put it all together and finish strong. 

16. Grab your rested dough and separate it into 6 equal parts.

17. Pour some oil over your table and flatten the dough as thinly as possible. You can use just your hands, but using a rolling pin is highly recommended. If you don’t have one, I’ve seen people use a bottle.
It doesn’t have to be a perfect circle or square; it just needs to be thin, but not so thin that it breaks.

18. Put 2 spoons of filling in the middle of each dough piece (or as much as you want to add—who am I to restrict you?).

19. Close it by carefully bringing the ends to the center.

20. Over medium heat, add a little more oil to your pan and place the crepes in it.

21. Cook on both sides until they’re golden-brown. At that point, they’re ready to be served.

I’m not going to hold back… it was amazing! 

I knew this recipe would be easy and tasty, but it turned out better than expected. I know it’s just the third dish and  I’m basically just getting started, but this became my favorite dish so far. 

And while overall it’s an easy dish, I did run into a couple complications. The original recipe I followed, for the dough, it only said to “add water”, with no cups or milliliters indicated. So I added a cup and a half because… why not? Well, that was a mistake. It turned out to be a lot of water so I had to keep adding flour to make it less runny. If the original guidance was to use just 2 cups of flour, I think I ended up using 4 or 4½ cups. So in the recipe I’m sharing above, I specify using only 1 cup of water. Subsequently, adjust as necessary, but that should be enough. 

And when I say the dough has to be thin, but not so thin that it breaks… I mean it. I emphasize this because my first three crepes broke and looked terrible. I had to change tactics to avoid messing up the whole batch, and that led to the final crepes, which looked amazing. And even though the first three looked awful, they all tasted incredible. Proud of myself. 

Oh boy… at the beginning, I didn’t think I’d learn much from such a simple dish. I’m glad I was wrong, because I did learn a couple of things. 

The first one is that you don’t always need meat to have a great dish. This dish is 100% vegan–even the dough, as it doesn’t have eggs, milk, butter, or any other animal-derived ingredients. The filling is made entirely of vegetables. And both together taste amazing and the whole thing is surprisingly filling. 

I ate three crepes because I loved them, but I was already full after two. And that’s great. I think here in the Western world we often have the idea that a great and fulfilling meal has to include meat, and that’s not always the case. This is proof that there are incredible dishes made only with vegetables.

Don’t underestimate street food. I also believe there’s an idea that street food is fast, greasy, and just meant to fill you up in a hurry, and therefore not nutritious. But this dish, as I mentioned at the beginning, is street food that tastes amazing (I won’t get tired of saying it), is healthy (maybe not like a salad, but better than, say, a burger or even a club sandwich), and while simple, takes a bit of skill to prepare. I’m sure that along the way in this challenge I’ll find more dishes like this that challenge the belief that street food isn’t good. 

Food heals the heart. I have no proof, but also no doubt that this is a universal law. When you want to celebrate something, you go out to eat or prepare something nice. When you’re sad, you eat something comforting. In Mexico we have a saying when something scary happens: “un bolillo pa’l susto 🥖”, which translates to “a bread roll for the fright.” So yeah… after a scare, we eat.

You get the point: when there are intense feelings, food is almost always present. This week has been a bit rough and I haven’t felt so great, and for me, not only does food make me feel better, but the whole process of cooking does too. So this advice, more than for my readers, is for future Max: whenever you’re feeling down, cook.

And lastly this is something we–I–often forget: you can’t get to perfection without some failure first. 

I don’t know if it’s always been like this, but at least nowadays we live in a time where we want immediate success. We expect to be experts right away, and and we want everything to be perfect. 

In this case, I thought this dish was easy and I was confident I’d nail it 100% in the first try. But my first three crepes were awful. They broke, the filling spilled out when I put them in the pan, and I had to use way more flour than expected because I added too much water. I may have said the F word a couple of times and started to get frustrated because things weren’t turning out the way I imagined.

But I kept adding flour and mixing. I changed the way I was flattening and folding the dough. The whole thing took me waaaaay longer than I expected. But in the end, I was happy with the result. My crepes were delicious and beautiful. And it was all worth it. 

I often forget that I’m not an expert at everything, and that’s ok. I need patience and perseverance. And in the end, it’ll be good and worth it. When cooking. When working. When living. 

And with this, I’m ready to go back to Europe, because Andorra is waiting with another new dish.