Slow Stew · Spinach & White Beans
Pkaila (Tfina Pkaila)
Photo: Ishpashout / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0
The spinach is cooked so long and so dark that first-time diners often assume the stew is built on meat drippings rather than greens.
Spinach is cooked down for hours with garlic, white beans and beef until it turns a deep, near-black color and develops a rich, earthy sweetness. It's one of the signature dishes of Djerba's historic Jewish community.
Why it's made this way: Pkaila belongs to the t'fina family of slow-cooked Sabbath dishes and is traditionally eaten on Rosh Hashanah eve; on Djerba, where Jewish and Muslim communities have long shared food traditions, it's cooked and eaten by everyone, not just Jewish households.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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