Most Tunisian food is blazing hot, easily the hottest of the North African cuisines. This dish, however, plucked from the excellent cookbook Real Stew by Clifford Wright, highlights the flavors of the Maghreb without the excessive fiery spice.
It is essentially a long-simmered (3+ hours) beef stew with lots of cayenne pepper, chile powder and Tabil (a spice mixture with air-dried garlic, caraway seeds and coriander that means "seasoning" in Tunisian Arabic). After the first 90 minutes, I was sure this dish was going to be too hot. However, the difference comes in the last 90 minutes - by adding a cup and a half of green olives and covering the pot, the combination of the olives releasing their oil and the steaming effect of the cover serves to significantly mellow the heat.
What you are left with is nothing short of a stellar beef stew. I paired it with a 2005 Domaine de Nizas Coteaux du Languedoc (60% syrah, 35% mourvedre, 5% grenache), which had a bit of blackberry and pepper. While I'd like to say I picked the wine after extensive research, I only did a cursory glance in the wine fridge and asked "what wine is closest geographically to Tunisia? Southwest France, that will have to do ..." (a riff on If It Grows Together, It Goes Together).
