Rechta

Ingredients

• Flour600 g
• Water280 ml
• Vegetable oil120 ml
• Chicken — in pieces1.4 kg
• Turnips500 g
• Chickpeas — soaked200 g
• Onions2
• Cinnamon stick1
• White pepper2 tsp
• Butter60 g
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Knead a stiff dough from the flour, water, a spoon of oil and salt and work it fifteen minutes.

   18 min

2. 2

   Roll the dough into a thin sheet and cut it into two-millimetre noodles.

   40 min

3. 3

   Spread the noodles on a cloth, dust them with flour and dry them twenty minutes.

   22 min

4. 4

   Simmer the chicken with the onion, chickpeas, cinnamon and white pepper in two litres of water for forty minutes.

   45 min

5. 5

   Add the turnip in wedges and cook twenty minutes more, until tender.

   22 min

6. 6

   Steam the noodles over the broth fifteen minutes, take them off, sprinkle with oil and toss them.

   20 min

7. 7

   Repeat the steaming twice more, mound the noodles, top with the chicken and turnip and ladle broth over.

   45 min

About the dish

The noodles are not boiled but steamed over the pot in three rounds, oiled between each. Boiled they clump and lose their spring.

The broth is white: no tomato, no paprika. The colour comes from cinnamon and white pepper, and that is what separates rechta from Algeria's red stews.

The turnip is not substituted here. Its bitter sweetness is the identifying flavour of the dish; courgette or carrot make something else.

Worth knowing

• — Do not cut the three rounds of steaming short. In one round the noodles stay raw inside and gluey outside.
• — Break the noodles apart by hand between rounds. A stuck clump never steams evenly however long it sits.
• — Ready-made vermicelli can be steamed instead, but the texture comes out softer. That is a fair substitution rather than the same dish.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

720 kcal

Protein

42 g

Fat

26 g

Carbs

82 g

More from Algeria

• Algerian couscous — Semolina steamed three times over a pot of meat and vegetables, with the broth served apart.
• Chorba frik — A soup of freekeh, the smoked green wheat, with lamb and mint. The first thing on the table in Ramadan.
• Makroud — Semolina diamonds with a date filling, fried and steeped in honey.