What does this have to do with Algerian cuisine? Well...

Almost Italian

Recipes and Stories from the ‘Little Italy’ Communities Across America-An Online Book In-Progress
by Skip Lombardi and Holly Chase

A big thank you to Charles Perry for mentioning this online cookbook. And thank you to Holly for emailing me a very thoughtful response to the comment I left on their blog.

One of the things I find fascinating about the Italian-American culinary heritage in the United States is that so many of the immigrants came from "south of Rome" like the Italian pieds-noirs and workers who came to Algeria during French colonialism at about the same time period.

"Between 1860 and 1917, four and a half million Italians emigrated to America...Eighty percent of the Italians came from “south of Rome”—a slightly derogatory term used by Italians who came from “north of Rome.” Most of the southerners were poor contadini and giornalieri, sharecroppers and day-laborers from Abruzzi, Campania, Calabria, Puglia, and Sicily. Many of these immigrants were also skilled artisans, but the language barriers, prejudice, and licensing restrictions they encountered often prevented them from working at their trades. So, initially, most worked at the same menial jobs as their paesani, countrymen."

The blog has me rethinking my casual assumption that Italian colonials in Algeria brought with them dried durum wheat pasta.

More from Almost Italian:

"However, one foodstuff that all Italian immigrants had in common was pasta made from soft wheat, flour, water, and salt. At the time, semolina pasta, made with prized durum wheat, the starch that would later symbolize a national cuisine, was a staple for only the Italian upper classes. But that would change once the newcomers found housing and steady incomes here."

I did not know that durum wheat pasta as a staple was limited to the upper classes in Italy at the time. I'm assuming for now that this soft wheat flour pasta is the same or similar to what we call reshta in Algeria. Most commonly served steamed with chicken.

Durum wheat is of course the same wheat we use in Algeria for making couscous, breads and pasta. It has long been our staple grain. The love of semolina flour is very Berber. And during colonial times the Europeans took land and semolina wheat from Algerians and they built pasta factories.

...The Spaniards came first, because history had woven age old bonds between the "Barbary States" and the kingdoms of Spain. There were nearly 35,000 in Algeria when the French began to arrive in 1849. There was also a long history of ties between Italy and Algeria; in 1886, 35,000 Italians were concentrated primarily in Constantine and Bône ... Spanish truck farmers and day laborers settled in Orania; Italian masons worked in the east; Maltese became goatherds and shopkeppers...By 1896, the number of Europeans born in Algeria was greater than that of immigrants. That turning point represented the birth of an original people on Algerian land, a sort of Mediterranean mix.

[Algeria: 1830-2000 A Short History, by Benjamin Stora page 9]

So, Holly Chase your hunch is correct. In the 19th & early 20th c. Italian immigrants to Algeria found there (as they did in No. America) that they could afford durum wheat, a commodity that had been beyond their means back in southern Italy & Sicily.

Almost Italian, highly recommended reading and yes, they have delicious recipes online.

Skip Lombardi (other blog, Sarasota Soundings)
Holly Chase (Middle Eastern Travel Services)

Almost Italian, Introduction: Part VI (read the discussion below between myself and Holly)

Posted at 09:23 PM in Opinions and Reviews | Permalink