Earth Oven - Middle East & North Africa

Middle East & North Africa

Earth oven cooking is sometimes used for celebratory cooking in North Africa, particularly Morocco; a whole lamb is cooked in an earth oven (called a tandir, etymologically related to the Central- and South Asian tandoor and possibly descended from an Akkadian word tinuru) in a manner similar to Hawaiian kalua. Among Bedouin and Tuareg nomads a simple earth oven is used, often when men travel without family & kitchen equipment in the desert. The oven is mostly used to bake bread but is also used to cook venison such as waran.The wheat or barley flour is mixed with water (and some salt) and then placed directly into the hot sands beneath the camp fire. It is then covered again by hot coal and left to bake. This kind of bread is eaten with black tea (in the absence of labneh).The sand has to be knocked off carefully before consuming the bread. Sometimes this type of bread is also made when the family is together, because people like the taste of it. The bread is often mixed with molten fat (sometimes oil or butter) and labneh (goat milk joghurt) and then formed into a dough before eating. This bread is known as Arbut but may be known under other local names.