Rfissa

Rfissa (Arabic: رفيسة) is a Moroccan dish that is served during various traditional celebrations.^[2]

Rfissa

Type	Tharid
Place of origin	Morocco
Main ingredients	msemmen, chicken, lentils, fenugreek, ras el-hanout
Food energy (per serving)	901[1] kcal (3,770 kJ)
Other information	Sodium 1,437 mg, protein 37 g, vitamin A 6%, calcium 7%, vitamin C 12%, iron 50% [1]
Media: Rfissa

It traditionally includes chicken, lentils, fenugreek seeds (helba in Arabic), msemmen, meloui or day-old bread, and the spice blend ras el-hanout.^[3]

It is traditional to serve rfissa to a woman who has just given birth, as fenugreek is purported to be beneficial for women that are recovering from childbirth.^[4]

Rfissa is derived from tharid (ثريد), a traditional Arab dish said to have been the Prophet Muhammad's favorite dish.^[4] The name rfissa goes back to the medieval rafis meaning dough kneaded with butter and dusted with sugar.^[5]

This dish did not appear in Moroccan cookbooks until the 1990s.^[4] The cultural historian Anny Gaul suggests that this might be due to the fact that rfissa is related to rural culinary traditions, whereas the people writing cookbooks for a long time were mostly Fessi elites.^[6]

See also

• Couscous
• Tajine