So my friend S e-mailed me the other day and recommended I try making Matboucha, as it was something she had made herself once. I have a feeling she saw my previous post, where I expressed a desire to find Israeli salads that didn't include cucumber.
To my delight, my cookbook, The Book of New Israeli Cooking: A Culinary Journey, includes a recipe for Matboucha (Salata Matboucha translates to "cooked salad" in Arabic), which is one of many options when ordering Israeli Meze.
According to my cookbook, Meze is another term for something like "antipasti" or "tapas" -- where several small plates are put out on the table along with pita. The plates can be filled with salads, hummus, cheeses, fish, etc.
As S warned me, Matboucha is very tasty (and SPICY!!!), but time-consuming, so make sure you set aside a couple of hours just for preparation (and more if you need to bake some pita, like I did).
The trouble with my first attempt at Matboucha is that I definitely overcooked it -- even though the recipe specifically says to cook the veggies for two hours. By hour 1:30 the dish looked like the color of blackberries as opposed to a healthy blood-red tone. When all was said and done I probably shaved a good 40 minutes off of the cooking time, but it was still overdone, so if anyone has a better idea of how long to cook Matboucha, I'm all ears!
Matboucha
Recipe courtesy of The Book of New Israeli Cooking: A Culinary Journey, by Janna Gur
It can be eaten hot or cold.
Ingredients
4-5 ripe tomatoes
4 sweet red peppers
4 hot green peppers
8-10 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup oil
1 tablespoon paprika
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 pinch sugar
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1. Using a sharp knife, cut a cross on the bottom of each tomato. Blanch the tomatoes briefly in boiling water, peel, halve, remove the seeds and chop coarsely.
2. Roast the red and green peppers over an open flame or under the grill. Allow to cool (preferably in a sealed plastic bag to make peeling easier), peel and remove the membranes and seeds. Chop coarsely.
3. Cook the tomatoes in a saucepan for 5-10 minutes, until all the liquid evaporates.
4. Add the remaining ingredients except the tomato paste. Lower the heat and cook for two hours, stirring occasionally (Note: I had the saucepan cooking over the lowest heat possible but two hours was definitely too much, even though the veggies are supposed to be slow-cooked. I would check the ingredients after cooking for an hour. If they're well-cooked, that should be enough.)
5. Add the tomato paste and cook for another 30 minutes (Note: Again, use your judgment. Since I had already overcooked the veggies, I maybe cooked them for five minutes more after adding the tomato paste). The salad is ready when it is shiny and very thick. Keep in the refrigerator up to 10 days or in the freezer up to three months. Bring to room temperature before serving.
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