Barley Dumpling · Tripolitania Staple
Bazin
Photo: Libiya11 / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
The dough is beaten in the pot with a special wooden stick called a magraf until it forms a stiff, smooth dome — cooks say it's a genuine arm workout.
Barley flour is boiled into a thick dough, beaten smooth with the magraf, then mounded into a dome on a communal plate and surrounded by a well of tomato-and-meat sauce, boiled egg and potato. Diners tear off pieces by hand and dip them into the sauce.
Why it's made this way: Bazin is western Libya's defining Friday lunch, so central to Tripolitanian identity that Libyans are sometimes jokingly called 'bazin eaters' by neighbors; food historians trace the dish to Amazigh (Berber) barley cookery that predates Arab settlement.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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Photo credits.