Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Harissa is as essential to the dining table as salt in Tunisia. It is an ever-present condiment, from elegant restaurants in whitewashed Sidi Bou Said to roadside snack bars in Mahdia.
“It’s the base of our entire cuisine,” says the Tunis painter Myriame Dachraoui as she prepares a lunchtime spread in her kitchen in La Marsa, a bohemian seaside suburb of Tunis. Today, Dachraoui is making ojja, a classic harissa recipe similar to, and sometimes indistinguishable from, Tunisia’s most famous dish, shakshuka, adding red dabs of thick paste from a plastic bag into the pan as if applying the final touches to her canvas. Quantity matters: not too much, not too little.
“Before we eat, Tunisians make a little appetiser,” she explains. “Add olive oil around the harissa so it brings balance and softens the heat, then scatter tuna and capers to soak with bread.” This isn’t the puréed, or “industrial” tubed harissa found in British supermarkets (notably the famous Tunisian Le Phare Du Cap Bon brand). The version she uses – as does pretty much everyone in Tunisia – is homemade harissa arbi (the name comes from the Arabic verb harassa, to crush): a thick, fragrant sauce typically made of roasted red and baklouti peppers, a spice and herb blend, and olive oil.
It is often smoked on the enchanting island of Djerba where, near the chilli fields of Gabès, the old Jewish population preserves alternative recipes to traditional Tunisian cuisine. On our visit, a brik (a deep fried and stuffed pastry) served with harissa in the Sephardic quarter of Hara surprised Dachraoui. Further south, using the Islamic centre of Kairouan as a starting point, another type of harissa crushed with onions and garlic named h’rousse becomes the favoured condiment. Then, on the eastern tip, nestled on the sparkling coasts of Cap Bon, which stretches out like a finger toward Sicily, is Nabeul – the home of harissa – where Moorish refugees from Andalusia settled in the 17th century, bringing with them the vital capsicum pepper. Visitors are greeted by the waft of spices from the market, where dried peppers hang outside yellow-tiled shopfronts and streetside banners declare: “Nabeul: capitale mondiale de’harissa.”
Raising the jar
Les Moulins Mahjoub Tunisian Traditional harissa, £7.25 for 185g, artisanoliveoilcompany.co.uk
Saveurs Du Cap Bon harissa Arbi Fumée, €1.50 for 180g
Zwïta Spicy Traditional harissa, £9.35 for 170g
Le Phare Du Cap Bon harissa paste, £5.25 for 760g, bonnebouffe.co.uk
Its environs hold the majority of factories and chilli farms – endless green lanes tended by women and men wearing palm leaf hats that protect them from the sun. These workers, who endure the midday heat, follow a 1,000-year-old Amazigh calendar named Ajmi to guide their farming cycles.
It inspires so much pride that a harissa festival is held in Nabeul each October by the colourful celebrity chef Rafik Tlatli. As he stands in his chef’s whites, Tlatli’s chest flaunts an impressive medallion surrounded by various pin badges from competitions and events across the world – he is sent abroad as an ambassador for Tunisian cuisine. He is Mr Harissa. “We’re the biggest exporter on the globe. But our priority with the festival has always been to ensure people visit Nabeul to buy and learn about authentic local harissa,” Tlatli explains. “It is a part of our identity.”
Harissa is ingrained in the nation’s consciousness: pharmacies promote medicine with illustrations of sentient peppers suffering indigestion, and empty Cap Bon tins are repurposed as pen pots or vases. In 2022, the paste became protected as part of Unesco’s intangible Cultural Heritage list, as a Tunisian product – key word: Tunisian. Much is owed to Tlatli, who has committed himself to empowering the reputation of Tunisian harissa abroad. He wrote the initial letter to the UN. “Once we started making progress, the government joined us to take action,” he says. When I ask if there is still debate over its origins, he jokingly replies: “Says who? I’ll find them!”
“The UN recognition certainly put a lot of arguments to bed,” says Sami Lamiri, founder of Lamiri Harissa. We meet in La Marsa. Lamiri spends half of his time here, meeting producers, and the other in London, where he was raised and where his harissa has become popular with chefs and home cooks, mostly by word-of-mouth. The business is part of his mission to introduce authentic product to the UK. “When we started three years ago, I was smuggling jars in my suitcase using my grandma’s recipe,” he says. “People loved it, and so it took off.”
Each of his jars reads: “Imported from Tunisia: the home of Harissa” in bold, upper-case type. It’s a point made. “London has too few Tunisian restaurants, so people aren’t aware of how important harissa is,” Lamiri notes. His brand has earned a following in Tunis, and is stocked at the trendy Bleue! store in Sidi Bou Said. “Harissa is a part of every Tunisian’s life. As kids, me and my cousins would place bets on who could eat the most,” he says. “As an adult, Lamiri has allowed me to rediscover my heritage, find a home here and, as we grow, take people on the journey along with me.”
It’s a journey that I happily reignite back in London. I spot Lamiri Harissa at a deli in Shoreditch and then a bakery near Charing Cross. When I come down with a cold, the two scarlet pots of harissa in my fridge from La Marsa’s souk remind me of a piece of advice from Dachraoui – a sort of folktale passed through the generations: when you’re ill, you eat harissa. Of course you do. Whether sick or homesick, for Tunisians, harissa is always the remedy.
