Tomatish bil Bassal

So what to do when hubby brings home with an enormous amount of tomatoes, “because they were a good price” and no amount of salads will use up this glut of tomatoes?! 🙄 Go Algerian and make Tomatish Bil Bassal or in English, Tomatoes with onions.

Tasty dish perfect for summer when tomatoes are cheap and all you need is some French baguette or other crusty bread on the side to mop it up with. Simply delicious!

4 large onions, halved and sliced
a few small chunks of meat, preferably on the bone to impart more flavour – however much you want to eat, I used 4 small chunks which was probably barely 100g
1kg chopped tomatoes
1 green chili, deseeded (I recommend the use of rubber or latex gloves for this!)
salt
black pepper
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Slice the onions and add them into a pressure cooker with a tablespoon of vegetable oil and a tablespoon of olive oil, add the meat and stir fry for a few minutes until the meat is sealed.

Roughly chop 1kg fresh tomatoes and deseed 1 fresh green chilli. I’d recommend using latex or rubber gloves when handling the cut chilli.

Throw the tomatoes and chilli into the pot with the onions and meat. Add a teaspoon of salt, 1/8 tsp black pepper and 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon, put the lid on the pot and leave to gently simmer for a while.

Liquid will start to come out of the tomatoes but after about 10 minutes add about a cupful or so of extra water and then screw on the pressure lid and leave on a low to medium heat for about an hour. Check the water level after about half an hour though.