Tangier-Style Harira

Making this is a procedure. You need to start a day in advance, and actually making it requires two large pots (or one large pot and one large bowl) plus a big chunk of counter space. The results are so worth it, though! It's extremely delicious and makes a huge batch.

The original recipe uses dried chickpeas; we used tinned cooked chickpeas to slightly reduce the effort required. We also tweaked the proportions a bit, in particular adding more meat than called for (and I think it could have taken even more without issues).

Ingredients

• A whole lot of marrow bones
• ¼C pasta flour
• Juice of ½ lemon
• 1-2 lbs cubed boneless lamb, beef, or pork
• Olive oil
• ¾C chopped onion
• 1 large tin cooked chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1½tsp La Kama spice mix (below)
• 1/16 tsp crushed saffron threads
• 3 qt chicken stock
• ⅓C finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
• ⅓C finely chopped celery leaves
• ⅓C finely chopped cilantro
• ¾C short-grain rice
• 1½C peeled and crushed tomatoes
• 1 tsp sugar

Procedure

1. The day before:
1. Cover the marrow bones in saltwater and put them in the fridge.
2. Combine the flour and lemon juice with ½C lukewarm water, partially cover, and leave in a warm place to ferment overnight.
2. Drain the marrow bones. Put them and the diced meat in a large pot, cover, and steam over medium heat, adding a few spoonfuls of water if needed, until the bones and meat no longer look raw, ~10 minutes.
3. Add the oil and onions and cook, stirring, for ~5 minutes.
4. Cover with 6C water and bring to a hard boil, then skim to remove impurities.
5. Add the chickpeas, spices, saffron, and salt and pepper to taste. Bring back to a boil, then cover and reduce heat to simmer for 1h.
6. Remove from the heat and fish out the marrow bones. Extract the marrow and pulp it with the back of a spoon; discard the bones.
7. Combine the marrow, chicken stock, more pepper, the parsley, celery leaves, rice, and half the cilantro in another pot (or in the same pot after buffering the contents of the first in a large bowl). Bring to a boil and cook for 20 minutes.
8. Add the tomatoes, sugar, and flour/lemon mixture and continue cooking, uncovered, for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.
9. Combine the contents of the two pots and garnish with the remaining cilantro.

La Kama Spice Mix

• 1 tsp each ground ginger, ground turmeric, and ground white pepper
• ½ tsp each ground cinnamon and, optionally, cubeb pepper
• a pinch of nutmeg