125 – Taktouka – Cooked Salad with Tomatoes and Roasted Green Peppers
Easy
Ingredients :
- (5) medium-sized tomatoes (grated). (basically cut each tomato in ½ and grate pulp and discard skin)
- (2) large – green peppers
- (1/4) cup – finely chopped cilantro
- (1/4) cup – finely chopped parsley
- (1) tsp – paprika
- (1) tsp – cumin
- (1/4) tsp – pepper
- (1) tsp – salt
- (2) TBL spoons – olive oil
- (1) TBL spoon – tomato paste
- (3) garlic cloves (crushed)
Directions :
Step 1 – Roasting the Green Peppers
1- Grill green peppers (insert wood sticks in peppers and place directly on burner). Goal is to grill peppers on high heat until skin turns black. Cracking noise is a good sign; it means skin is cracking and pepper is roasting
2- Keep monitoring pepper and turn around until all sides become black. If you find it difficult to use wooden sticks, use tongs to turn pepper
3- Once peppers are roasted, place in a bowl with a plastic wrap for 15-20 minutes. This will steam the peppers and aide in removing the skin
Step 2 – Cooking the Tomatoes
1- While peppers are steaming, gently cook tomatoes with spices, olive oil, tomato paste and garlic in a sauce pan on medium heat
2- Cook tomato mixture for 15 minutes on medium heat
Stir from time-to-time
3- Once cooked on medium heat for 15 minutes, reduce heat to low and then start to get peppers ready
Step 3 – Combining the Tomatoes and the Peppers
1- Clean Peppers by removing burnt skin, cutting top of pepper and removing seeds
2- After cleaning peppers, slice and dice into small cubes
3- Add pepper cubes and chopped parsley and cilantro to tomato mixture
4- Cook tomatoes and peppers on medium heat for another 15-20 minutes
Step 4 – Serving this delicious Cooked Salad
1- Salad is ready when it becomes dry and thick.
2- If you have preserved lemons, you can use them for decoration. First wash preserved lemon in water to remove some of the salt, then cut lemon and remove pulp so you can use the skin for decoration
Serve salad with Moroccan bread or French baguette as an appetizer
Eat warm or cold
