Roasted Grain Paste · Ramadan Staple
Bsisa maa Tamr (Bsisa with Dates)
Photo: Om abdo85 / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Because it needs no cooking — just a stir with oil or water — bsisa has long been a travel food, carried on desert journeys where a fire was not always possible.
Roasted barley and other cereals or legumes are ground into a fine powder with fenugreek, aniseed and coriander, then bound into a paste with olive oil and eaten scooped up with dates or fresh figs.
Why it's made this way: Bsisa carries deep Amazigh roots in Ghadames and the nearby Nafusa Mountains, and it remains a fixture of the suhoor meal eaten just before dawn during Ramadan across Libya.
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