Tunisian Tbikha of Turnips, Saniya, Tahini Sauce and Harissa

This week I started moving my recipes to a Wiki site for easier management and to allow for searchability. Just click on the links and they will take you directly to the recipes. Thank goodness for my IT day-job!

Remember the z'hug I made a few weeks ago (recipe here)? We're going to use it again this week in a wonderfully simple dish called Saniya -- meatballs with a tahini/tomato sauce. We also have another vegetarian dish for my veggie friends out there, Tbikha of Turnips with Spinach and Fava Beans.

The Tbikha is an extremely healthful and easy-to-digest dish. It's best served over brown rice with a lot of homemade harissa. Tbikha is a Tunisian dish; the Tunisians, like the Yemini, love spicy food. The Romans, Turkish, French and Arabs all left their marks on Tunisian cooking.

The version of harissa I make is piquant, but not necessarily as spicy as the harissa you find in many middle-eastern stores. The dried New Mexican or Chipotle peppers used to make it can be found in the Mexican food section of your grocery store, or at any corner market carrying dried chili peppers.

Saniya (sinia, siniya, snia, snniya) is an arab dish, most commonly found in Israel. In this casserole you find strong influences from Turkey, where meat is extremely prevalent (think kebabs and bbq) and tahini sauce that's so good, it's drinkable!

As a sidenote, the tahini sauce can be used over many dishes. Try boiling some eggs, cutting them in half, taking out the cooked yolk and filling with parsley and tahini sauce...yum! It's great over any meat or salad, with pita...the uses are endless.

Enjoy!

--Adam