French-Algerian Merguez Frites

The Maghreb is an area of Northern Africa west of Egypt covering the modern states of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, and the disputed territory known as Western Sahara. Apart from the lush thin strip of Mediterranean coast and the high plains of the Atlas mountains, the area is mostly desert, the vast arid expanse of the Sahara. In Arabic, Maghreb means “the West”–the area is called this after the western expansion of Arab muslims during the early Muslim conquests. Empires had always sought to control the fertile shores of the Maghreb–the Carthaginians, the Ptolemaic Greeks of Egypt, and the Romans had come before the Arabs, and the Ottomans would follow.

In 1830, with the Ottoman empire’s influence in Northern Africa in decline, France invaded Algiers. This foothold in Northern Africa began what came to be known as the Second French Empire. In addition to its efforts in Southeast Asia, over the course of the 19th century, France took the entire territory now called Algeria, adding protectorates to the east (Tunisia) and west (Morocco). Romantic ideas about French North Africa such as Casablanca and Beau Geste aside, the French colonial occupying forces were as brutal as any imperialist army. During the German occupation of France in World War II, Algiers served for a time as the capital of Free France leading Algerians to believe that France might one day recognize their right to self rule. But it eventually took an uprising featuring guerilla tactics by insurgents against a criminally brutal occupying force to throw off French rule and establish an independent Algerian state.

During and after the war, Algerian-born ethnic Europeans called Pieds-Noirs, Algerian muslims who’d fought on the French side, and many north African Jews fled Algeria to seek asylum in France. They found a Maghrebi population already in place there. During the colonial period, Algeria was considered a Department of France, its citizens French citizens, with rights to emigrate to the parent country if they chose. Of the current 68 million or so people living in France, 5% or more are of Algerian descent.

That’s a long row to hoe just to get to this point: Parisian street food has a heavy North African influence. Yes you can still get a Jambon-beurre, a croissant, a macaron. But for every crêperie you’ll find a couscous stand; tagines and shakshoukas are as much a part of the city’s culinary identity as a croque monsieur.

Enter merguez frites. Merguez is a north African sausage, lamb-based generally though sometimes made with beef, warmly spiced and often colored a bright red with paprika, chilies, or even harissa. My own version, pictured below, is not quite as bright as some I’ve purchased for a previous project (pictured lower right), though the lamb fat that rendered from the sausages as they cooked was clearly as orange-tinted as many a chorizo I’ve seen.

I based the recipe off a French-style merguez recipe on the Spruce Eats, which I modified to alter the proportions slightly, adding more fat and adjusting the spices somewhat. I made this sausage using entirely halal ingredients so that I could share it with some of my friends who are not always able to partake in my homemade sausages due to adherence to sincere beliefs. I’ve always said that a perfect sausage needs 3 things at minimum: garlic, salt, and pork fat. This sausage does not contain any pork fat, but it is among the best sausages I’ve ever made.

Frites are of course French fries, or perhaps their Belgian cousin, straight-cut, fried crisp, and often served as a street food, frankly everywhere, accompanied by a wild variety of sauces, the sweet ketchup of the US or the aromatic curry ketchup of Germany, salt and vinegar, mayonnaise, aioli, and a wild variety of mayonnaise-derived or similar sauces popular in Belgium, France, and the Netherlands such as Sauce Andalouse, Sauce Algérienne, or Fritessaus.

Merguez Frites is a Parisian street food sandwich, derived from North African cuisine, that features merguez sausage, a spicy North African chili paste called harissa, and frites in a section of baguette.

The description on Taste Atlas specifies a “cheap baguette,” which makes sense to me. Good baguettes are often too chewy to make for a cohesive sandwich bread, drawing attention to themselves and away from an ingredient or combination the sandwich maker may be trying to feature. A good baguette, to me, is best used simply, adorned with a spread of butter and a slice of ham or cheese,;or sliced, toasted, and made into bruschetta or pan con tomate. But this is a French sandwich, so I went to a French bakery and bought a French baguette.

To make a merguez frites, first spread the bread with a layer of harissa. An important note: know your harissa. I’ve bought Mina harissa in the past, a Moroccan brand which I’ve always found to be relatively mild. This time I bought cans of La Flamme duCap Bon Tunisian harissa that, subjectively, seems much much hotter.

For a half-baguette, 2-3 good sized merguez sausages should suffice.

Then cover the sausages in frites.

From here, there are a number of options. Some may choose to add mustard, dijon or otherwise. Many may choose mayonnaise and ketchup. In keeping with the French-Algerian theme of the sandwich, I made a Sauce Algérienne of mayonnaise, harissa, tomato paste, lemon juice, grated onion, minced garlic, sugar, cumin, and salt–basically a riff on this recipe. It’s spicy and creamy, savory and a little sweet, great for dipping fries and a solid accompaniment for the sausages as well.

And here is my merguez frites.

I have yet to fully warm up to fries in a sandwich–I like fries, yes, and you know I like sandwiches, but I am content to enjoy them in separate bites for the most part. enclosing crisp hot fries in sauce and bread and other ingredients cannot help but make them limp lukewarm fries rather quickly. But there is more going on in the merguez frites than just the fries, enough possibly to make this particular iteration of the carb-on-carb sandwich worthwhile. The harissa painted onto the bread’s surface, spicy and smoky, bright and earthy; the merguez, salty, fatty, warmly aromatic, now brightly citrusy, now minty and cooling; and the sauce Algérienne, spicy, savory, citrusy and sweet.

In this combination, the good bread becomes the outlier, turning what could be a near-transcendent experience into a chewing exercise. A cheap baguette may be the best option for this sandwich, or, as the Taste Atlas description also allows may sometimes occur, a simple hot dog bun.

This was my best iteration of the Merguez frites, focused on the flavors of the sausage and harissa, the interplay of frites and dipping sauce, and using the bread mainly as a vehicle. I’ve said it many times–a great sandwich doesn’t necessarily start with great bread, it starts with the right bread, and this toasted hot dog bun did the trick for me. I’ll save the good baguettes for pan con tomate–’tis the season.