Caliente (dish)
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Caliente, often mistakenly written "Kalinti" (transcribed into
darija Maghrebi Arabic, often known as ''ad-Dārija'' to differentiate it from Literary Arabic, is a vernacular Arabic dialect continuum spoken in the Maghreb. It includes the Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, Libyan, Hassaniya and Saharan Arabic di ...
: كالينتي or كالينطي) is a street food eaten in
Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...
. It is a specialty originating from the North of Morocco. It's a kind of flan or a savory
pie A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients. Sweet pies may be filled with fruit (as in an apple pie), nuts ( pecan pie), fruit preserves ( jam tart ...
made from
chickpea flour Besan or gram flour is a pulse flour made from chana dal or chickpea flour (split Bengal gram) or brown/ ''kaala chana'', a chickpea. It is a staple ingredient in the cuisines of the Indian subcontinent, including Indian, Bangladeshi, Burmese, ...
. The recipe contains oil, water, chickpea flour, salt, pepper and cumin. More elaborate versions may contain eggs. It is typically sold in slices by food vendors.


Etymology

The name of the dish comes from the northern Judeo-Moroccan language (
haketia Haketia ( ''Ḥakkītīyā''; ''al-Ḥakītiya''; ) (also written as Hakitia or Haquitía) is an endangered Jewish Romance language also known as ''Djudeo Spañol'', ''Ladino Occidental'', or Western Judaeo-Spanish. It was historically spoken ...
) term ''caliente'', meaning hot.


Origin

The origins of this street food go back to Moroccans of Jewish faith in the city of
Tangier Tangier ( ; , , ) is a city in northwestern Morocco, on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The city is the capital city, capital of the Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region, as well as the Tangier-Assilah Prefecture of Moroc ...
. The Moroccan jews living in the old medina spoke
haketia Haketia ( ''Ḥakkītīyā''; ''al-Ḥakītiya''; ) (also written as Hakitia or Haquitía) is an endangered Jewish Romance language also known as ''Djudeo Spañol'', ''Ladino Occidental'', or Western Judaeo-Spanish. It was historically spoken ...
, a form of Spanish. They named the dish "caliente" because it must be served hot.


Similaries

A variation of this street food exists in the city of Oujda where it is called "karan". A similar dish exists in Gibraltar. Flavored with
paprika Paprika is a spice made from dried and ground red peppers, traditionally ''capsicum annuum''. It can have varying levels of Pungency, heat, but the peppers used for hot paprika tend to be milder and have thinner flesh than those used to produce ...
, it has been described as one of the culinary symbols of Gibraltar by
Hélène Jawhara Piñer Hélène Jawhara Piñer is a French-Spanish historian, educator, and chef. She is the author of a cookbook on Sephardic cuisine and a study of medieval Jewish food culture in Spain and France. She has published articles and recipes in English, Fr ...
.


References

{{Reflist Moroccan cuisine Jews and Judaism in Tangier