Matbucha

Hi there. I made matbucha, pronounced mott-boo-cha, where the 'ch' is the sound of clearing your throat. Matbucha is a Moroccan tomato dish that primarily consists of tomatoes, spicy peppers and garlic. I guess red peppers are often also put in there but I'm not sure. Technically you're supposed to make it with really ripe tomatoes but I had to make it with normal tomatoes. This is how it went down.

I cut up about 6 medium sized tomatoes into big chunks. I seeded and cut up 6 jalapenos, and chopped about 8 cloves of garlic, as shown below.


I then put all of these ingredients, as well as 1/4 cup of olive oil, and salt and cracked black pepper in my soup pot:


Next I opened up a big can of whole peeled tomatoes:


And poured them into the soup pot (aw yeah, action shot):


And then it looked like this:


I had these roasted red bell peppers hanging out in my fridge and decided that I wasn't going to use them for anything else


So I threw them in the pot:


And then it looked like this:


I then let these ingredients simmer, covered, for about an hour and a half, stirring every once in a while


Eventually the whole thing becomes pretty watery and at that point you want to let it cook half covered, to let the juices evaporate


...And finally, you end up with something like this:


All that fit in this little container:


I made a wheat challah to enjoy this with, but you do your thing