haloua chebbakia

Ingredients :

* 250 g (9 oz) of hard wheat flour passed through a silk sieve * 250 g (9 oz) of fine flour

* 1 heaped teaspoonful of salt * 20 g (1 oz) of baker’s yeast * 2 kg (4 lbs 7oz) of honey water

Preparation: 

Put the flour in a “gsáâ” and make a hollow. Put the yeast, mixed with a little water, and the salt in the hollow, draw in the flour and mix to a dough with tepid water. It should be fairly stiff.

Knead hard for 20 minutes then gradually add water, aerating the dough by beating it with both hands against the “gsáá” as in the recipe for ouarka pastry (page 15). Add water until the dough is quite liquid, somewhere between fritter batter and dough for beghrir (see page 15). Leave it for 3 hours. Put the boiling oil nto a pan. Pour the honey into a big saucepan, bring to the boil and remove from the heat.

Fill a funnel with batter and stop up the outlet with the forefinger of one hand. Aim at the frying pan of boiling oil from a reasonable height and, freeing the outlet of the funnel by removing the forefinger, draw a round-petalled flower with the batter in the oil. Make the petals overlap, the whole flower

being about 15 cm (6) in diameter. Brown on both sides and plunge in the hot honey leave a few minutes in the honey and then leave to drip. Cook all the batter in this way. Put the honey back to re-heat from time to time to keep it up to the right temperature. Serve with Harira or at the end of a meal.