Chraime is a spicy fish stew, cooked in flaming red tomato and garlic sauce, a personal favorite dish from the Jewish Mediterranean cuisine. I've been cooking this dish for special guests and on special occasions for more than 20 years now, using firm white fish and fresh spices from Levinsky market.
I fell in love with Chraime in Netanya's old market's Jewish-Libyan restaurants, where they used to use local mullets and grouper, caught by fishermen in the city's shores. A slice of fish, bathing in thick spicy sauce that patiently awaits to be wiped with a slice of Challah.
My recipe is based on Dia and Haim Zuaretz's family recipe, who taught me to make Chraime in Dia Restaurant, located in my hometown, Ramat Ha'Sharon.
Chraime History
Jewish-Libyan is a recipe that most likely was not born in Libya, but arrived there in the early 20th century.
Libyan Jews' cuisine in general differs significantly from that of their Muslim neighbors in Tripoli and Benghazi (who, for example, did not eat fish for centuries for fear of the evil eye. True story). Therefore, it is likely that Chraime was created and inspired by the hot and intensely flavored cuisine of Western Sicily.
The Tripolitan fish stew, as well as stews of Kirsha (tripe), Mchuma (offal stew), and Nocchides (dumplings in sauce) all arrived in the kitchen of Libyan Jewry from the Italian island, with which the local communities maintained extensive trade relations.
The Salsa – the thick tomato sauce, which is also the base for making Chraime, was born in Sicily about 200-300 years ago, after tomatoes arrived in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, a possession of the House of Bourbon which included the region of Campania, the province of Calabria, and the island of Sicily, and was seated in Naples, in the 18th century.
Here they ripened and reddened (as the first tomatoes that arrived in Europe were not red but yellow) – and began to be used as salsa, a sauce and base for stews, similar to the way they were used in their Aztec homeland in Central America, as early as the 15th century.
Salsa served as the base for the Sicilian fish stew "Zuppa Di Pesche" (Zuppa Di Pesche, fish soup in Italian), the conceptual father of Chraime which includes fish slices as well as not so kosher seafood.
In Tripoli, seafood was omitted and hot and sweet paprika were added to the salsa, a pair of spices that arrived here from the East and made popular with the Ottoman conquest. The act of wiping the sauce from the plate by bread, scarpetta in Italian, was also kept and is still a must when eating Chraime properly.
Chraime recipe – Roy Yerushalmi
The use of the freshest possible spices is very important in the case of Hraime. It is advisable to buy the paprika types, cumin, and carwiya (ground caraway) at a spice shop with high turnover and only close to the preparation time.
Ingredients for a large pot (6-8 servings):
1 sea fish – large Grouper or Sea Bass weighing kilograms
cup oil – a very mild olive oil is preferable
6 level tablespoons crushed garlic, preferably fresh and local (the one with the white peel and purple stripes)
6 level tablespoons hot paprika
1 heaped tablespoon of sweet paprika
grams tomato paste
Juice from 1 small lemon
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon ground caraway
optional – 2-3 peeled and seeded tomatoes, sliced in to quarters.
Preparation:
Slice the fish crosswise, into slices cm wide. Rinse well in a strainer under running water and sprinkle with a teaspoon of salt.
Pour the oil into a wide, shallow pot (sauté pan) and heat lightly over a medium flame. Add the garlic, hot and sweet paprika, peeled tomato slices and tomato paste. Mix well for 2-3 minutes.
Add 1 cup of water, mix well, and lower the heat. Cook the salsa for 20 minutes until a reduced, thick sauce is obtained.
Pour in another cup of water, mix well, and cook for an additional 10 minutes.
Add the cumin and caraway and the lemon juice. Mix and finally add the fish slices while gently tossing the pot from side to side so that the sauce covers all parts of the slices.
Increase the heat and bring to a boil. Reduce the flame to a minimum, cover the pan, and cook the stew for 12 minutes. Serve with challah or white bread.