Bissara

What it is

Bissara is a thick soup of dried peas or broad beans, seasoned with cumin and paprika and drizzled with olive oil.¹ In Morocco it is cooked with garlic, olive oil and spices and often eaten for breakfast.²

Harrell’s dictionary of Moroccan Arabic describes bisar as a dish of mashed broad beans or potatoes, served with olive oil, cumin and paprika.³ Mohamed Oubahli distinguishes bissara, a soup of dried, skinned broad beans, from ful mdammas, the boiled unskinned beans.⁴

Where it comes from

Le360 calls bissara a speciality of Tangier; it is very popular in Tetouan, Chefchaouen and throughout the north, and elsewhere in the country too.⁵ Hassan Akdi and Noureddine Achboun, in their study of the cuisine of Tetouan, count it among the city’s breakfasts: some start the day with bissara, others with harira or with bread and rghaif.⁶ The name goes back to baysār, which in medieval al-Andalus and North Africa referred to dried broad beans and a dish made from them.⁷

History

Cookbooks from 13th-century al-Andalus, Muslim Spain, contain the oldest known recipe for baysār, a purée of dried, ground broad beans.⁸

One such recipe appears in the cookbook of Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī (1227–1293), a scholar from Murcia who later settled in Tunis and compiled his collection of 480 recipes there.⁹ In it the beans are cooked in water with onion, garlic, cumin, coriander and fennel until they form a smooth paste, and eaten with cumin and olive oil, accompanied by rue, onions or olives.¹⁰

When

Bissara is regarded as a dish for the cold season that fills you up and warms you; in Tangier it is also eaten quickly on the go.¹¹ Along with chickpeas, it is in great demand among Moroccans in winter.¹²