June 2, Tunisian feast at Zingerman's

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One of Zingerman's missions is to expose people to delicious delights. To entice people to eat higher-quality tastier food, from all over the world.

On the 2nd, the owners of Les Moulins Mahjoub (visiting this country for a while) prepared an wonderful meal at Zingerman's for a group of lucky diners.

We were a bit early, but they told us to seat ourselves anywhere, and go ahead and taste the appetizers on the table.





Looking around.

I want the job of arranging the delectables.

Olive oil in the wine bottles, preserved lemons are the highest, beige in the larger jars is couscous........





Flowers on our table.





First, we got a little background on Tunisia and Les Moulins Mahjoub. (a written version of some of the info can be found here.)




One of the things we learned is that harissa is a key to Tunisian cuisine.

Harissa is a hot sauce/condiment, made principally from sun-dried peppers. The Mahjoub harissa is what got Zingerman's hooked on Tunisian food, and particularly the Mahjoubs' Tunisian food.

The Mahjoubs grow essentially all of their own ingredients, organically, on their own farm. Their harissa is made from three sorts of peppers (two hot and one sweet), sun-dried, and their own extra-virgin olive oil.

In addition to harissa, important Tunisian ingredients include sun-dried tomatoes, olive oil, olives, preserved lemons, and capers (which were huge -- much bigger than any others I've had).

The list of dishes we got did not include ingredients, and my recording of what we were told is sketchy, so I'll hope I don't lie to you too often about what we ate.




Salade de m'hamsa (I am deducing that m'hamsa is couscous). The Mahjoubs make their own couscous, from their own wheat (a special varietal). This, too was delicious.





Ojja (on the right) is, I believe, egg with harissa. Here you can really see the pieces of red pepper from the harissa. Delicious.

Brik, which is a very thin (crepe-like thinness) bread, rolled around a fresh ricotta-like cheese with egg and sun-dried tomatoes. Then deep-fried. Also delicious.



We also had zdir soup in the same course with the brik. It was hot, and hot (harissa!), and garlicky, and delicious. As is often the case with my food blogging, I am so eager to eat that I forget to take pics until the spoon is scraping the bottom of the dish. Oops.



Here I remembered before the mbatte were totally gone. The smaller one is an olive, breaded and deep-fried, and the larger is artichoke and chicken and mint, also deep-fried. Delicious.





Market zitoun with scallops. Delicious.





Vegetable m'hamsa. Delicious.





Beef m'hamsa (again with mint). Delicious.





Here, again, my blogging intent was foiled by my appetite.

Lablabi, we were told, is *the* typical Tunisian dish. Eaten everywhere; sold on street corners. It is a chickpea soup, with a clear broth.

I am not a big fan of chickpeas. I don't like the texture that American chickpeas have. I love other legumes. Love beans of all kinds, love lentils, love split peas, love fresh and frozen beans and peas. Do not love chickpeas.

These chickpeas were different. They had a "cooked bean" texture, rather than that more ... al dente ... texture that our chickpeas have.

I would bet, given everything, that these were special chickpeas. Maybe that's why they were better. Or maybe they were cooked longer (or differently). Perhaps all of the above.

I don't know. But these were ever so much nicer than any others I've ever had.

To serve, harissa is put in the bottom of the cup, and then bread (chunks of familiar European-style bread) and chickpeas, and broth, to fill the cup.

Before you eat, you add a good dollop of olive oil on top, and finely-chopped preserved lemon, capers, and sun-dried tomatoes to taste.

Again, delicious. Next time I would stir it up first -- the top was rather bland and the bottom was hotter than I would choose. Duh, my mistake.

Here you see what's left of the additions after we enjoyed our lablabi. Yum.





The primary product of the Majoubs' farm is essential flower oils for the Parisian perfume industry. The rarest one is bitter-orange flower essence, which is worth $20,000 a litre in Paris. A by-product of the manufacture of essential oils is flavored water. Rose oil, rose water; bitter-orange oil, bitter-orange water.

Dessert was made with bitter-orange water.

I was listening to them describe this, and realized I could smell orange flowers. They had placed a dessert in front of my husband, and I could smell it.........

This is a very thin bread (same as in the brik, I bet), wrapped around marmalade (perhaps made from the bitter oranges? I don't know.) and sesame seeds and bitter-orange water. Drizzled with chocolate.

Again, delicious.

The smell of the flowers came up the back of my throat to my nose..........

Delicious.







With dessert there was mint tea. You put a spoonful of toasted pine nuts in your cup, and then mint tea. Which was strongly mint (much stronger than any other mint tea I've ever had), and pleasantly sweet. It was interesting to eat a pine nut from time to time as you sipped tea. The savory taste and creamy texture were not what I'm used to in my tea. Nice, and different.

I was eager to try the mint tea, having read about it in many novels over the years.

American mint tea is ... well, I've always found that if I leave the tea bag in the water for more than about 10 seconds it tastes like hay. I have made my own mint tea by pouring boiling water over fresh mint, and that's better, but not wonderful.

This was much nicer. All mint, no hay.

In the novels, they always describe North African mint tea as sweet, so I wondered just how sweet. This was nicely sweet, not cloying. (Now wondering if my mint tea would have been nicer with a bit of sugar....... I didn't think to add it, as I never do when I have tea.....)





Happy sigh.

That dinner was exactly what I'd hoped. Many new and exotic things to sample, all of them delicious.

The Mahjoubs did much of the cooking, and supervised the rest. Mme. is an amazing cook. This dinner was something unique -- only if you ate at the Mahjoubs' house would you get to have the experience of a dinner like this one.

It was lovely.

Happy sigh.



Then we walked outside to find this.





I tried to minimize wires, lights, etc, while still capturing the most amazing part of the sky, and this was the best I could do. Parking lot light, dome of the former Greek Orthodox church (and yes, in places, you can see right through the dome)........



Wow.

Nice evening, eh?

There are many things to totally love about Ann Arbor, and Zingerman's is certainly one of the best.

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