Africa & Middle East > Libyan Arab Jamahiriya > Tripoli > Tripoli > Articles > A Tripolitanian Shopping Basket

If you can get yourself invited into a private Libyan home, an unexpected experience opens up. With no pretensions, good humour and general low-key chaos, your hosts will cook simple, appetising, healthy food, unknowingly alternating original Bedouin recipes with Ottoman ones, then maybe weaving in a dish dating from an influx of Italian-Jewish merchants 400 years ago. Such ongoing gastro-eclecticism is due to a long trail of invaders, from Phoenicians to Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Ottomans and, most recently, Italian colonists, all of whom threw something tasty into the pot.

A major legacy is pasta, the Libyan-Arab word for which is quite simply makarona, and which has been transformed into imbakbka, macaroni cooked directly in a sauce. Seafood is a more obvious Mediterranean passion, while sheep’s head and low-fat camel-meat hail from the nomadic, Bedouin heart. Despite this range of ingredients, Libya easily has the worst reputation for food of all the North African countries. It is tricky to even name a national dish for this still culturally elusive country. Libya’s neighbours do better: Algeria has couscous (the rolled grain, seksu, was allegedly born in the mountains here about 1000 years ago), Tunisia excels in méchouia, brik and Fatma’s fingers, Morocco trumpets sumptuous tagines and sweet pigeon b’stela, and even Egypt has ubiquitous broad bean foul.

While you are unlikely to find a Libyan restaurant beyond the borders, scouring the capital brings up a handful of decent addresses serving local specialities, although this is not a lot for Tripoli’s population of 1.7 million. Thanks for this go in part to Colonel Qadhafi, in power since 1969, whose hard-line socialism combined with strict Sunni Muslim traditions have limited frivolity to backgammon, coffee and shisha while putting a total ban on alcohol. The Colonel himself, seated cross-legged in his celebrated tent, sticks to basic Bedouin fare washed down with bitter mint tea, the Tuareg tipple. Libyan food has in fact been dubbed ‘tent cookery’ but this, I discovered, is far from true.

To better understand the potential, I embarked on a shopping expedition accompanied by Fouad, a budding Libyan restaurateur, and his beautiful wife, Fozia, who would whip off her hijab whenever he was out of sight. This was in preparation for what was to be a cornucopian Friday lunch. We started early, just as slanting sunlight bounced off the vast sweep of Mediterranean fronting Tripoli. First Fouad took me to the fish market down at the old harbour below the medina. As honking traffic circled erratically around Green Square above, we surveyed myriad Piscean offerings together with dozens of eagle-eyed punters, some of whom were Tunisians about to truck their purchases up to the Marché Central in Tunis.

With nearly 2,000 km of coastline, there is no shortage in quantity, quality or variety: red and grey mullet, skate, sardines, amberjack, monkfish, squid, sea-bream, prawns, tuna, whiting, dendici, lethal swordfish and whopping great lobsters; the entire glistening, slippery contents of the Mediterranean seemed to be displayed in multicoloured plastic crates shaded by awnings. Neptune had obviously taken a shine to the old Roman province of Tripolitania. Rusting green fishing-boats bobbed in the water just yards away, while sunburned fishermen struggled past pushing wheelbarrows loaded with their catch. It was an appetite-rousing start.

Once our sea-bream were gutted and in the bag, with a jalah from Fouad we were off to join Fozia who was waiting with their two youngest sons in the family Toyota. Off we rattled down the Italianate boulevards and into the modern quarter to experience the joys of El Mansari, one of a fast expanding chain of large, well-stocked supermarkets. For Libyans they represent modernity but on this Friday, the Muslim Sabbath, it seemed to have become a social crossroads for men with trolleys. Apart from boxes of succulent fresh dates, buckets of olives, huge peanuts, packers of semolina and an entire aisle of local pasta, imported goods set the tone, although purple camel-meat at the butcher’s counter did not exactly recall Sainsbury’s. Luckily Fouad, a rotund, dedicated foodie, only scooped up a few packaged goods and an indecent quantity of lamb before we were out of the air-conditioning and back into the heat.

From here, we headed out to their friends’ house on the outskirts of Tripoli to prepare the blow-out lunch. But shopping was not quite over. Suddenly Fouad braked and pulled over to the side of the road. “Here you are!” he beamed, waving his arms. “These are the vegetables for the lamb cuscusi and the mashi dolma!” And there in all its understated glory was a fruit and vegetable market on the edge of a busy urban highway, typical of this wheels-addicted nation where petrol costs a pittance. “I cruise therefore I am” could be a line in Qadhafi’s Green Book, and in fact the previous night I had witnessed a major traffic-jam leading to a popular suburban bakery. Here, however, immaculate aubergines, courgettes and tomatoes packed in small wooden crates were sold per unit from pick-up trucks, car boots and a few stalls. No weighing, no queues at the cashier, no car-park, no trolley; it was simplicity itself. As another of Libya’s manic drivers squealed to a halt to snap up a crate of oranges, Fouad explained that most of the produce was grown in the fertile coastal strip, though further south on the edge of the Sahara, Qadhafi’s desert-greening produced mirages of crops and even citrus-fruit.

Then came our epiphany. In a corner of this makeshift market sat a crate full of unattractive, knobbly white mushrooms. “Terfas!” cried Fouad excitedly, like a war-cry. These turned out to be much prized desert truffles, so loved by the Romans that they imported vast quantities from their North African province in sealed jars filled with sand. Although common throughout the Middle East, the Libyan version is said to have a unique, strong flavour which even Pliny the Elder enthused about. High in protein. with medicinal and, allegedly, aphrodisiac qualities, terfas only grow in spring, and even then are rare finds. Later we ate them sliced and simply sautéed in olive oil with onions, garlic and herbs. Who said tent cookery?

Fiona Dunlop’s book Medina Kitchen – home cooking from North Africa is published by Mitchell-Beazley, £20.

A version of this was first published in the Financial Times.

Articles

• More from Fiona Dunlop