Tunisia Unit geography 12th Africa recipe

Tunisia Unit

For some reason, Tunisia has always seemed exotic to me. I think it’s because it gets brief mentions in older movies, or they’ll film there to find alien landscapes (cough Star Wars cough cough). Either way, our Tunisia Unit was a great way for me to learn more about Tunisia than the vague memories I have of it being unusual, and it was a great geography lesson to add to our Africa Unit.

I just remembered something else about Tunisia! Pirates! The United States fought the Barbary pirates who were based there.

Tunisia Unit geography lesson

(there are affiliate links in here)

Tunisia Unit resources

I’m going to admit I did not check my library for books initially because I thought they wouldn’t even have any books. So let me check that now.

Interestingly, it appears there is a form of Tunisian crochet, and my library has several books about this. I wish I was good at crochet.

Tunisia websites I found as I trolled the web.

  • 24 Tunisia Facts– some fun pictures here as well as facts, in including some pictures from filming Star Wars
  • 8 Interesting Facts– gonna admit I primarily had fun looking at the pictures, rather than the facts, some gorgeous pictures here
  • 39 Tunisia facts- How did I forget Carthage was here? What? Unleash the salt memes!
Tunisia unit geography

And finally our geography videos.

And since Tunisia is pretty late in the alphabet, there is also a Flag Friday video.

I find these videos fascinating. It’s fun to guess why the colors and symbols are chosen for each country.

Yes, I am weird and a nerd.

Tunisia Unit recipe: Batata Bel Kamoun

I searched up and found a recipe we would all like on 196 flavors. Ours didn’t turn out like the pictures on the post, but it was fairly tasty.

Batata Bel Kamoun recipe Africa main dish 12th

Batata Bel Kamoun ingredients

  • 3 pounds of potatoes cut into bite-sized pieces
  • 1-2 pounds of stew meat
  • 5 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon cumin
  • 1 tablespoon harissa (make harissa powder)
  • 2 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • salt
  • pepper

Making Batata Bel Kamoun

I’m going to put what I did here, and as per usual, the actual instructions over in the recipe card.

  1. In a Dutch oven add oil and heat. Once the oil is heated, brown the meat on all sides.
  2. Add the garlic and add the water (I’m of the opinion it would be so much more flavorful if we added beef broth). Bring this to a boil and then reduce to a simmer for 45 minutes.
  3. Now, if I were following the recipe this is where I would add the potatoes, but I don’t like boiled potatoes. I like roasted potatoes. So I tossed the potatoes in some olive oil, parsley and garlic salt. Then I stuck them in an oven at 425 for 25 minutes. I pulled that out, stirred it, tossed it about a bit, and stuck it back in for 5 minutes or so.
  4. Meanwhile, add the cumin, harissa, salt, pepper, and tomato paste. Stir to mix all of that together with the meat and the water.
  5. Cover and simmer. You need to keep an eye on the water because it will boil down, until you are left with basically no sauce, and while you are supposed to have a thick sauce, you should have more than I did. This should be done for another 45 minutes.
  6. Get a spoonful of roasted potatoes and then put a spoonful of the Batata Bel Kamoun over it, and have a delicious “stew.”
Batata Bel Kamoun recipe for cooking around the world

I wonder what would happen if I attempted this as a slow cooker meal? It seems like it should be theoretically possible.

And there was nothing that supremely stuck out to me about this meal. I should try making it again to see if I can do better with the sauce.

Batata Bel Kamoun recipe

Batata Bel Kamoun recipe Africa main dish 12th

This flavorful beef stew is a great meal to share with your family.

Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour 30 minutes
Total Time 2 hours

Ingredients

  • 3 pounds of potatoes cut into bite-sized pieces
  • 1-2 pounds of stew meat
  • 5 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon cumin
  • 1 tablespoon harissa
  • 2 tablespoons tomato paste
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • salt
  • pepper

Instructions

  1. In Dutch over heat oil over medium heat, add the stew meat and brown on all sides for a few minutes.
  2. Add the garlic, then cover with water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes.
  3. Add the potatoes and mix well. Then add the cumin, harissa, salt, pepper, and tomato paste, and mix again. Make sure there is still enough liquid to cover all of the meat.
  4. Cover and simmer again for another 45 minutes.
  5. The sauce should be just covering the potatoes and stew meat. If it is not, add more water, if it is too high, then reduce the sauce by raising the heat for a few minutes with the lid off.

Notes

Make your own harissa powder by combining 2 tablespoons chili powder, 1 tablespoon coriander seeds, 1 tablespoon cumin seeds, 1 tablespoon caraway seeds, 1 tablespoon paprika, and 1 tablespoon dried garlic powder

In a dry pan toast the whole seeds over medium heat until fragrant. Remove from heat and allow to cool, then grind with a spice blender or a mortar and pestle. Add in the rest of the spices and mix together.

Tunisia animals

Grab that Animal Report minibook for early learners, and print off a few for the cool Tunisian animals:

  • flamingo
  • cream colored courser- the national bird
  • fennec fox
  • barbary sheep
  • addax
  • dama gazelle

I have another animal listed, but I cannot tell for sure what the animal is, it looks like I wrote smew. Huh, just looked it up, and a smew is a type of duck.

Tunisia Unit geography 12th Africa recipe

I was searching for images of Tunisia and I found this colorized picture from 1899 that was so cool looking and so unique I had to use it. I know this does not reflect modern Tunisia, but it was so much more unique than any of the modern Tunisia pictures I found that were available to use.

Tunisia Unit notebooking pages

We filled out the Africa notebooking pages, as we watched the Geography Now video.

Tunisia unit notebooking pages

Here are my interesting facts I wrote down:

  • Fort Santiago is the ruins of a Roman fort
  • the site of Carthage
  • the first country in the Arab world to get internet
  • Matmata is the site of Tattoine, now I want to look at pictures of Matmata to see how similar it is to Tattoine or how much of it was modified
  • Tunisian bab doors have blue shutters to ward off evil spirits
  • Arabic is one of the official languages, but French is spoken more commonly

So that’s our Tunisia unit, overall it was a pretty good unit and I quite enjoyed it. It was actually one of the last unit I did with the kids before they graduated last spring.

Tunisia Unit

More learning fun

Let’s see what I can find.


Comments

One response to “Tunisia Unit”

  1. Natalie PlanetSmarty Avatar
    Natalie PlanetSmarty

    Oh, this recipe is certainly worth a try. I love North African cuisine after living in Paris for a year and a half. It’s quite popular there.

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