Seffa Sucrée

Everything here turns on the steaming. The vermicelli looks fragile, but it has to be treated with the same respect as couscous: loosened by hand, steamed in passes, rested, and worked again until every strand is tender without collapsing. Boil it and you lose the dish. Steam it and it stays light, sweet, and separate under the butter.

Seffa sucrée is not the buried meat medfouna. This is the plain sweet one, brought to the table in a mound and dressed like celebration: cinnamon in fine lines, icing sugar falling like powder, almonds toasted until they smell warm and full. It can arrive between savory courses at a wedding table, or at home when you want comfort with ceremony still inside it.

Keep your hand gentle and your table generous. The scale is in the eyes here: enough butter to gloss, enough cinnamon to perfume, enough almonds so every spoon finds one. Une table, c'est une porte qu'on laisse ouverte, a table is a door you leave open, and seffa is very good at making people stay a little longer.