Harira
Photo: Carolina Ayala / Contributor
When my family and I first moved to Houston back in the nineties, a Moroccan family, with young children like ours, lived in a house down the street. We spent many evenings at their home enjoying traditional Moroccan foods like bastilla, tagines, all sorts of vegetable salads and couscous. Occasionally, we ate harira, a nutritious aromatic tomato-based meal-in-one-pot stew made with beans, vegetables and meat. A popular meal for iftar during Ramadan, harira is heartwarmingly delicious and can be easily adapted to what is available and like most meaty dishes, it tastes better the next day. Make it your way, meat or vegetable forward and finish with aromatics like cinnamon and parsley and just add more liquids to transform it into a soup. If using meat, pick meat with bones, which will add a lot of flavor. It is important to allow plenty of liquids to stay in the stew while cooking as all the elements from garbanzo beans to rice or vermicelli will absorb a considerable amount. To skip the meat entirely, make it with wild mushrooms like chantarelles, morels or maitake. Either way, this stew is a crowd pleaser and whether you celebrate Ramadan or not, you can enjoy harira during this wonderful spring weather.