Harr Usbah – Flatbread in tomato sauce
Weekend, sleep in, coffee in bed and then a leisurely breakfast. Just thinking about it warms my heart. I don’t mind having pasta for breakfast. Yes, you read correctly! But you don’t need pasta for this pasta, you need flatbread. This is then made into Harr Usbah.
Harr what?!? Harr Usbah is a dish on shredded flatbread in a super tasty tomato sauce with garlic, mint and a pinch of cinnamon. And in Lebanon, for example, the dish is usually served for breakfast. That’s when the leftovers from the week’s pita bread are recycled. Waste is out of the question. The stale bread is then better turned into a delicious breakfast pasta.
In the Levant, pita bread is a staple food and often a substitute for cutlery. You tear off a piece of the pita bread and then pick up the food with it or dip it in creamy hummus or baba ghanoush. You can think of it as folding little scoops out of pita bread. And then you use the scoop to shovel the food into your mouth. Practical, isn’t it 🙂 But then you often end up with lots of little pieces of pita bread. But in order not to waste the pita bread, at the end of the week there is often a first-class leftover meal: Harr Usbah, i.e. pita bread in tomato sauce!
The recipe is very simple, doesn’t need many ingredients and is ready in about 30 minutes. This is always an extra delicious way to start the weekend.
Recipe for Harr Usbah – flatbread in tomato sauce
Ingredients
- 4 Lebanese flatbreads
- 500 ml Strained tomatoes or tomato pulp
- 1 Onion
- 1 Garlic clove
- 2 TSP dried mint
- 2 TBSP Tomato paste
- 100 ml Water
- 5 TBSP Olive oil
- 1/2 TSP Cinnamon
- Salt, pepper
Zubereitung
- Tear the pita bread into bite-sized pieces and set aside.
- Peel and finely dice the onion.
- Peel the garlic and crush it in a mortar.
- Heat the olive oil in a pot and fry the chopped onion in it for approx. 5 minutes over medium heat until translucent.
- Add the tomato paste and fry for another 2 minutes.
- Add water and strained tomatoes and simmer for about 5 minutes.
- Stir crushed garlic into the sauce and season with salt, pepper, mint and cinnamon.
- Add the pita bread to the sauce and stir well once.
