''Rfissa'' () is a
Moroccan dish that is served during various traditional celebrations.
It traditionally includes chicken, lentils,
fenugreek
Fenugreek (; ''Trigonella foenum-graecum'') is an annual plant in the family Fabaceae, with leaves consisting of three small Glossary_of_leaf_morphology#Leaf_and_leaflet_shapes, obovate to oblong leaflets. It is cultivated worldwide as a semiar ...
seeds (''helba'' in
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
),
msemmen, meloui or day-old
bread
Bread is a baked food product made from water, flour, and often yeast. It is a staple food across the world, particularly in Europe and the Middle East. Throughout recorded history and around the world, it has been an important part of many cu ...
, and the spice blend
ras el-hanout.
It is traditional to serve ''rfissa'' to a woman who has just given birth, as fenugreek is purported to be beneficial for women that are recovering from childbirth.
''Rfissa'' is derived from ''
tharid
Tharid (, also known as ''trid'', ''taghrib'', ''tashreeb'' or ''thareed'') is a bread soup that originates from Mecca, Saudi Arabia, an Arab cuisine also found in many other Arab countries. Like other bread soups, it is a simple meal of broth an ...
'' (), a traditional
Arab dish said to have been the Prophet
Muhammad
Muhammad (8 June 632 CE) was an Arab religious and political leader and the founder of Islam. Muhammad in Islam, According to Islam, he was a prophet who was divinely inspired to preach and confirm the tawhid, monotheistic teachings of A ...
's favorite dish.
The name ''rfissa'' goes back to the medieval ''rafis'' meaning dough kneaded with butter and dusted with sugar.
This dish did not appear in Moroccan cookbooks until the 1990s.
The cultural historian Anny Gaul suggests that this might be due to the fact that ''rfissa'' is related to rural culinary traditions, whereas the people writing cookbooks for a long time were mostly
Fessi elites.
See also
*
Couscous
Couscous () is a traditional North African dish a quote: “Couscous or seksu (Image 1) in Berber language or kuskus in Arabic is by origin a Numidian (the Berber population of Numidia) dish…” of small steamed granules of rolled semolina ...
*
Tajine
References
Arab cuisine
Moroccan cuisine
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