Temrika Meslalla (Garlic Beef with Green Olives)

By SuzyHomemakerGoneBad

Beautiful dish and I would love to have some ”khobz eddar” (home made bread) to eat this lovely braised meat, Temrika in Arabic is from the verb ”temrek” which means make a sauce, Meslalla (or mchermel depending on area) in Arabic is a variety of olives that have been home preserved, usually olives are crushed with a stone and then washed, placed in jar with water that should be refreshed twice a day for three days, and then refreshed every two days until olives have softened, when olives are soft, lemon juice and olive oil, salt, cumin, paprika, crushed garlic, coriander and parsley finely chopped are added to the olives to marinate/ preserved, usually these olives are used in tagines or braised meat stews, now where is the bread so I can taste this yummy dish?

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 lbs beef cut in medium-large chunks (I used NYstrip, which I sliced into strips on a bias. You can use beef chuck.)
• 1/4 cup flour (I used rice flour.)
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp coarse ground pepper
• 1 tbl cumin
• 1 tbl smoked paprika
• 1/2 tbl harissa
• 1/4 cup red wine (can substitute water)
• 5 cups large chunk chopped tomatoes (about 2 lbs of tomatoes)
• 1 cup green olives
• 4 whole medium-sized garlic heads with papery outer skins removed
• 1/2 lemon juice/zest
• 1/3 cup chopped flat leaf parsley

Details

Servings 1
Adapted from allyskitchen.com

Preparation

Step 1

Preheat oven to 350

In a large heavy skillet (Dutch oven or enameled casserole) over medium high heat, put olive oil.  Salt and pepper the meat then coat in the flour.  Put in the skillet and brown cooking about 5 minutes. Sprinkle on cumin, paprika and harissa and toss/coat the beef.  Add wine to deglaze the skillet.  Turn off heat.

Add tomatoes, olives and nestle the garlic heads in with the mixture.  Cover and put in oven for about an hour.  Remove and zest the lemon on the beef.  Squeeze the juice all around.  Toss and blend.  Garnish with parsley.  Serve right from the hot skillet.  Have plenty of crusty hot bread for dipping in the sauce/’gravy’!