Ramadan Recipes of the Ummah – Moroccan Harira Recipe

Today on our series Ramadan Recipes of the Ummah we travel to Morocco. My friend Ahmad Fariss is a special guest. He is Moroccan and shares this recipe that he learned from his aunt.

What is a soup that you love to have to break fast during Ramadan or to have in general?

You can find Ahmad’s photography website here: https://www.farissphotography.com/

Our website is here: https://www.afghancooks.com

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I’m Miriam I’m the Afghan who cooks and today we have a very special guest Ahmed who is the Moroccan cook oo he is the Moroccan cook and today for our very special Ramadan series we are making what are we making Moroccan harera Moroccan herera which is a soup and it’s

Made with tomato and all the ingredient that you’re going to discover he’s not going to tell you right now I’m not going to tell you the secret let’s go make it just cut them quick remove the center and then just cut them really quick okay oh my God you’rein the tomato

And this is cleaner look look at that look at that okay so go ahead cut that cut the tomatoes really impressed with your skills skills yeah now how do you pronounce it Hara har so in Arabic is har and what does the word mean or is it

Just the name of this so if I know exactly Hara is is coming from a word mixing so that’s what we’re making right now right we’re making the Moroccan herera the Moroccan herera and this is particular to your family this is how your family makes it yes and I know this

Because he just called his aunt on the phone cuz we’ve been watching some videos of people making Hera yes and I was like that doesn’t look good right whatever so he called his aunt they talked to each other in Arabic and so this is actually it is genuinely their

Family’s recipe I can vouch for that yes shout out to my my aunt s yeah shout out shout out to his aunt so we also have one onion one onion this is my way how to cut the onion okay show me how you cut an onion so I know you’re going to

Cry or I’m I’m going to go move away then if you’re I’m going to cry we’re going to put it right in the yes okay the small pieces and I’m going to my job now is to clean up after you thank you so for those of you who don’t know I have a

Cookbook that will be coming out inshah in just a few months and Ahmed Faris is our photographers one of our our on our photography team he’s the lead photographer of the book the pictures are W now I know this is not how your family would do it so please

Nobody give ahed the hard time go ahead pour it in there I’m respecting it my family I’m sorry for this but we’re going to use dice tomatoes in a can in a c all right now you’re going to add the water so for now we’re going to just blend it

Okay go ahead blend it up so forgive me about this I never Ed the blender I I think you can handle it yeah I believe in you please don’t laugh my family please forgive me I told you we could use a blender I’m going to use regular blender

Now thank you technology I prefer using this I can’t even see it you see this is easy so much easier e all right you ready yes so now we can add the puree to the our pot and that’s ginger powder that’s one teaspoon of ginger powder perfect and

What I learned it’s it also depends on the taste so if you want to feel like like the ginger flavor you can add more okay but you like it light Ginger for me I like less Ginger okay light ginger for you okay and then we also

Have salt yes and pepper so not a very heavily spiced dish which for Ramadan is good right yeah cuz this is something that you have a lot in Ramadan oh we use it like every day every day but so it’s really nice because it has a lot of

Nutrition but not a lot of spices and Ginger is so good for your digestion too after a whole day of fasting to have ginger yeah but I don’t like it strong flavor my my taste but we use like so the measure m is one teaspoon of Ginger one teaspoon of um salt

Okay and then black pepper and then black pepper so we also have here a couple of other things that are just kind of sitting here right now while we let this cook for a second we have ghee yes which you say that you use but if you have a

Special kind of ghee that you use for your Hara right yes it’s like Moroccan ghee so basically Moroccan ghee I I don’t quote me on this it’s like the butter but it stays for like kind of preserve for at least a year more goes by years more flavory so but we have

Thisy a buan cube too yes and so this this combination is kind of what you the flavor you’re going for yes usually we don’t use this because we add like because we add salt pepper and ginger and everything but this one has like a special Taste of the ghee that’s

Right American way got flavor and so also I bought some Moroccan olive oil I’m proud of you so for the olive oil so my family my aunt told me like you need to have like um one and half of big like uh spoon okay just like for people to

Know the measurements yeah one and a half big spoon you know put two what comes next tomato sauce yeah and lentil we’re adding water to the tomato paste so it can become more of a sauce and it will blend a little bit easier into the tomato and onion

Mixture I’m going to turn this heat down now we have some lentils and you said that your family doesn’t necessarily use lentils but your aunt just told you to use a little bit so she likes lentil chickpeas is the main is a must yes lentil it depends I was like maybe

Families Maybe part of Morocco so because I had like few people they said like we don’t use lentil but my family we use lentil and we use chickpeas right and sometimes some people they like this kind of U small I’m not going to call Spaghetti but like the small noodles yes

They add it too so that’s the kind of hara that I have had has always had the little vermicelli in it as well but my family doesn’t do it like this I did a whole cup here but I think for this recipe it’s too much so we’re just going

To add a couple of so we just add a little of that I’ll cook this for myself later and the other vegetable that we use is celery yes so before that I would say like this is a Moroccan saying that we say so I I’m

Sure that you have it too so your eyes your measurement so right we don’t use like we don’t use measur but you guys go on to YouTube and Instagram and other places to get measurements yes right so we will give you measurements we were talking earlier about celery yes

And this is not necessarily the kind of celery you use in Morocco yes we use the leaf more right but there’s a celery there that is more Leaf than this in America they take out now this actually has so much flavor exact and this is usually a little bit bitter exactly yes

That’s why so we’re going to take this and cut it from here so or we can do it my way from this country is just take the the middle see smart the middle is like here so we break this apart and you take the leaf from inside because look at that

They forgot to take off this maybe we’re going to use this it depends on and also it depends on the flavor if you wanted like strong celery flavor you can add more yes right okay so we add this once the lenil are C and then we also have

Cilantro and when does the cilantro get added um the same time as as the C all right so this is kind of like the ghee flavor that you were talking about but since we can’t we don’t have it in a jar you have it in a buong cube yes and then the trick

Is do this I’ve seen him eat buong cubes oh I love it I love tomato paste and this that’s my childhood memories well he doesn’t seem like he has a lot to recover from from his childhood I love it I mean this looks like a lovely

Tomato sauce so we this has been cooking now for exactly 15 minutes the lentils are are just about cooked they’re not mushy but they’re definitely soft and so now what I have two eggs here that you asked me to get yeah so this is the final step the final step so I’m just

Going to put we’re not going to crack them yet so we’re going to add the water first okay let it cook like for a little bit so until it’s like the the water blends with do you want to add this water that’s the tomato and then add so we going to add

The water and the water is like it depends on your measurements so if you want it like more soup and you can add more water you want it less okay so so this is about about three cups of water two cups right now that you added

So it’s still like kind of we need more very thick yes okay so we added about four cups of water you know what be generous okay so we add four cups of water yeah so now we we lost the texture of the tomatoes it’s like blend with

Water let it cook the cilantro the cilantro okay and the celery all right so cilantro and celery so you since this is your first time trying it like this so you’re going to add cilantro and celery and tell me like how much flavor you want it to add okay

I like I think that the celery leaves have a ton of flavor and I really like it a lot so I’m going to add all of the celery leaves add it right that way every single bite has some of that wonderful celery flavor and I think for

Cilantro I’m going to start with about half we have enough celery right because I think it’s going to compete with the celery flavor so we’ll add half of the cilantro that’s perfect and so we have two cans of chickpeas you can also use dried right so I have here we’re doing a Ramadan

Prep video at the same time and these are still soaking so we’re not going to use these and then you could use it you could use and then you could cook this in a pressure cooker yes right if you using dried so if you want it like the

Fast way you can do the pressure cooker if you wanted like the the medium way it’s not it’s not going to be like slow but still you can just use okay you take one smells really good you’re right you know what’s the next step cover it and then let it cook and

Go we’re going to make our our flour and water mixture okay you know why to thicken the soup yes so for now it looks like water yep it’s very thin and also it looks delicious but also yes very thin yeah so there is no exact measurement for for this we’ll give you

An exact if you want it like to be like really thick be generous so this is 1/4 cup of flour in here and this is about 6 oz of water I’m telling you the exact measurements so he added about 2 oz of water and you just do that to make sure

There’s no clumps when you pour it into the soup I know everyone says that you know I know that when I started cooking it was very difficult like you call your mom or your on the phone and you say how much of whatever and they try their best

Right they give you their best estimate but when you go and practice it doesn’t work right with actual cups or uh teaspoons or whatever else they’ll say yooa right one spoon but they don’t say like is it a teaspoon is it a tablespoon is it like what kind

Of spoon this is so a lot of what I’ve had to do with our food anyway because we don’t use measurements is just make a lot of mistakes yes right so you make a lot of mistakes you listen to people and eventually we do give measurements because a lot of people in the

Diaspora right who didn’t necessarily learn how to cook at home they have a very hard time just grasping this idea of just measure with your heart so Morocco is the same so as Afghan and then I learned this trick yeah my my mom and my aunt didn’t tell

Me this that the flour need like a minute to be thick and I was like pour in P in P in adding more and more and more yes yeah so one thing that people I think really need to think about with flour too is that you cannot eat raw

Flour so that’s why in a lot of Cuisines and a lot of cooking you cook your flour first and at this stage you would add corn starch um this uses flour and water which is also great but it does take a little bit more cooking time to cook off

That kind of raw flour taste and which would be very bad for your stomach it’s completely vegan we’re going to add the eggs it’s still vegetarian some people add meat right so yeah it depends on the flavor what kind of meat so people either you have like um bones if you

Want to add just like like the flavor but with the bones but some people they just add like a cube of meat red meat just a cube just to add some flavor to the add flavor and you can eat it okay we didn’t add any meat this is like I

Said it’s a vegetarian dish and I think it really is perfect for Ramadan because it has so many nutrients it doesn’t have a lot of spices so not a lot of like heavy flavors in your body to shock it and the eggs give you just a little bit

Of protein not much but you have the protein from the chickpeas and the lentils and one last thing please do not add chicken well it’s not Moroccan at all for us use two okay look at that and so now you just stir it yes okay so in a professional way in a professional

Way okay so now what do we do we open this so we’re going to open this okay and I’ll take that from you thank you you’re welcome and so we’re going to just like pour it but like not everything at once we just like pour it like this okay and then

Mix and you’re going to see the the color change and then you pour it and mix you see it doesn’t matter like to be an omelette or like that it doesn’t have to be an omelette it’s like I’m fancy way fancy way and voila that looks amazing amazing oh my God you know what time it is to break the fast let’s break our fast what do you think oh my God it’s so perfect because it’s not so heavily spiced it’s like perfect it’s perfect it’s like it’s like when your mom gives you a hug and you’re not a

Teenager you know like when you’re a little kid or an adult not teenagers cuz you know how teenagers are it’s easy to make it but the secret is you know what’s the secret the hands the hand I was going to say the secret is having a

Let’s come and cook it for you if you like this video what soup in your culture if there is one do you most connect with Ramadan something that your mom made have made maybe it’s chicken soup I don’t know um what else do you have to do oh hit the Bell notification

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