Matbucha Salad

After visiting the "Holy Land", I had to prepare something that will go well with the large amount of Tahini we brought back with us. The truth is my, wife believes – and I have to admit, she also lives by this believe, that there is nothing that doesn't goes well with Tahini. And besides, this salad looks perfect on the breakfast table.

The word Matbucha comes from Arabic and it means "cooked". Of course there are a lot of different versions to the Matbucha (also known as Turkish Salad), like many dishes that went through a lot until they made "Aliyah" to Israel. This recipe is quite simple but very tasty.

The Ingredients :

Tomatoes

A few sweet peppers

A couple of onions

One carrot

A few cloves of garlic

Olive oil

Fresh parsley

Cumin

Sweet paprika powder

Sea salt

Pepper

Heat some olive oil in a deep pan and in the meantime chop the onions. Sauté the onions until it becomes nice and brown and toss in a few whole cloves of garlic. Chop the tomatoes, not too thin, and toss them in. It's better to use tomatoes that are a bit hard and sour, to give contra to the sweetness of the sweet peppers. Chop the carrot and the sweet peppers as well and toss them in the pan. Add a bit salt and pepper, stir and put the lid on for a few minutes. Add the cumin and the sweet paprika powder and put the lid on for a few more minutes. After the tomatoes are nice and soft, remove the lid, stir a bit, taste and if necessary add some more spices. After about 20 minutes with the lid off, remove it from the heat and let it cool down for a while. Then chop the parsley and add it to the salad. If you like things spiced up a bit, you can use instead of sweet paprika powder a spicy one, or just add a chopped chili pepper or so. Let it rest a bit in the fridge and serve it with a nice bowl of very lemony Tahini. Enjoy!