← For Teachers
🌍 Country of the Week · A Spin the Globe Teacher's Guide
Tunisia
TunisiaAfrica · This week's dish comes from Tunis
About Tunisia
Tunisia is North Africa's spiciest kitchen, where fiery harissa paste flavors nearly everything, from couscous to brik pastries and shakshuka. Its Mediterranean coast brings olive oil, seafood, and tomatoes to a table shaped by Berber, Arab, and French hands.
Harissa is not a condiment on the side but the base of the pot, and UNESCO inscribed the knowledge, skills and practices around it in 2022. Sun-dried chillies are pounded with garlic, caraway and coriander, and the paste goes into couscous broth, into stews, and straight onto bread with olive oil and tuna.
Brik is judged on one thing: whether the egg inside is still runny when it reaches the table. A sheet of malsouka pastry is folded around egg, tuna, capers and parsley and fried for barely a minute, then eaten by hand at a careful angle. Tunisia's coast supplies the tuna and its olive groves the oil it is fried in.
The wider picture: Fifty-four countries of tagines, stews, and fire-kissed grills.
This week's dish: Lablabi
Chickpeas in garlicky cumin broth ladled over torn bread, hit with harissa, lemon, and a soft egg, Tunisia’s working breakfast.
Serves 3 · Prep 10 min · Cook 25 min · Difficulty: easy
See the full recipe: ingredients, steps and dietary swaps →
Grown-up jobs: any step that uses a hot stove, oven, boiling water, or a sharp knife is for a teacher or parent. Children can measure, mix, and assemble.
Discussion prompts
1. Find Tunisia on a world map or globe. It sits in Africa. Which oceans or neighboring countries does it touch, and roughly how far is it from where you live?
2. Lablabi comes from Tunis, in Tunisia. Read its ingredient list together. Which of those foods do you think are grown or raised nearby, and how might the country's climate and landscape explain that?
3. Read the short story behind Lablabi. How have the people, trade routes, and history of Tunisia shaped what ends up on the plate there?
4. Compare Lablabi to a dish your own family cooks. What is similar, what is different, and what one question would you ask a family in Tunisia about how they make and share it?
5. After you cook Lablabi, add Tunisia to a classroom map and give it a stamp. Write down one fact about its food or geography that you did not know this morning.
🌍 Spin the Globe · Geography through food · spintheglobeofficial.com/for-teachers