Mlewi, Tunisian Flatbread

We’ve covered just a few Tunisian sandwiches on this site–Fricassé got its own dedicated post earlier this year, while we worked Casse-croûte Tunisien into a more general Tuna Sandwiches post back in 2020–and from what I can see, Tunisian sandwiches tend toward a common set of ingredients. Casse-croûte featured tuna, harissa, boiled eggs and French fries with various pickle and salad ingredients, and Fricassé featured tuna, harissa, boiled eggs, and potato salad with various pickle and salad ingredients. The main difference between the two sandwiches was the bread–the Casse-croûte I made was served in a baguette, while Fricassé used a fried bread similar to an unsweetened donut.

Turns out the Tunisian palate is remarkably consistent: when they make a wrap using a flatbread, a similar set of ingredients is often used. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Flatbreads in the Maghreb are often served for breakfast along with olive oil and honey or jam and a cup of hot tea or coffee. Mlewi, a layered flatbread similar to an Indian paratha, is no exception. But many a site discussing mlewi and its uses describes making a wrap with a similar set of ingredients to those listed above: tuna, harissa, cheese, olives, French fries, etc.

The flatbread is made from a semolina dough, usually unleavened but some recipes call for yeast, flattened out by hand, rubbed with olive oil, and folded over and flattened again to create flaky layers like those in a paratha.

My own efforts were not entirely successful–they could have been flakier. I believe that I should have used more olive oil. But the flatbread is tasty, stretchy, chewy and flexible, a sturdy platform for building a wrap.

Multiple writeups of mlewi mentioned Laughing Cow brand cheese–or sometimes cream cheese as a substitute for Laughing Cow–as a wrap ingredient, along with tuna, black olives, harissa, boiled eggs, and French fries, and the references to Laughing Cow unlocked a memory. Thirty years ago, I spent a lot of time with my friends Beth and Kevin at Kevin’s parents’ house. Mostly what we did was get high and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation and Babylon 5. But I got to know Kevin’s stepdad a little during that time. Youssef, whom we mostly just called Joe, was from Lebanon as I recall, a smiling, laughing man for the most part, not a whole lot older than me but he seemed very happy having inherited a family when he married Kevin’s mom Juanita.

What came back to me suddenly was a penchant Joe had for spreading Laughing Cow cheese on flour tortillas and eating them as a snack. The flour tortillas, he said, reminded him of Lebanese pita, or were at least the nearest thing he could get in Quincy, Illinois. The Laughing Cow is a French brand, and while it’s definitely available in Northern Africa, I’m not sure about the Levant. But perhaps it reminded Joe of Labneh, which also would have been difficult to get in Quincy, Illinois.

In any case, as we were picking up Laughing Cow cheese at the store, I mentioned the memory to Mindy and thought little else of it. I hadn’t spoken to Joe in at least 25 years, and it’s been almost that long since I’ve seen Kevin. Then 2 or 3 days later, Beth got in touch with me over Facebook Messenger with sad news: Youssef had passed away the previous month. It’s odd how someone who you haven’t thought in decades about can pop into your head, seemingly at random, and downright unsettling when you receive such terrible news about that person a short time later. But the world is weird, and stranger things happen every day.

I am not crushed by Joe’s passing. The friendship we had much earlier in my life was not a deep and abiding one–I’m glad to have known him, but I don’t need to hold every person I ever meet close to my heart for all time. But I’m sad he’s gone, and my heart goes out to those who loved him–Kevin, his brother Bill, their mom Juanita, and all the rest. And this much is certain: every time I eat Laughing Cow cheese, I’ll think of Joe.

To assemble this wrap, I started with a warm mlewi, spread it with Laughing Cow cheese and then a layer of harissa. I’d bought cans of tuna from the Mediterranean market I frequent, not realizing they were lemon-pepper flavored–but lemon and black pepper should surely not conflict with any of these flavors. My favorite olives are oil-cured black olives, with the pits still in them, vacuum-sealed in plastic with a little brine (as opposed to the dried ones sold in jars), with an understated bitter yet fruity flavor that reminds me of salty licorice–it’s some work to remove the pits and shred them into little pieces, and I’d rather simply eat them out of hand, but I won’t eat the garbage kind that come sliced in a can.

I finished the wrap with rough-chopped boiled egg and a handful of fresh-cut fries, then closed the flatbread tightly around the ingredients and wrapped it in tinfoil to help the wrap keep its shape.

And there is nothing I don’t like here. The particular brand of tuna I bought was a little on the dry side, but between the olives, the cheese, and the harissa the wrap didn’t suffer as a result. Laughing Cow has a mild, creamy flavor that along with the neutral bulk added by the egg and potato, helps offset the fiery heat of the harissa nicely. The olives add a nice, briny, salty but understated flavor–some pickled cucumber or even capers would go nicely here as well. And all of these flavors complement the tuna well, as amply demonstrated by every other Tunisian sandwich we’ve tried.

I look forward to trying the flaky flatbread in a simpler setting, at breakfast, with a cup of strong coffe and some honey and olive oil for dipping. But the simplest meals require the best ingredients, and while my ham-handed version of a mlewi here works fine for a wrap, I want to perfect those flaky layers before I present it so elementally. I may try making it again before I post the inevitable short-form companion video to this piece on our Tiktok, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube, so be sure to watch there if you would like to see more!