Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Cooking Egyptian Food

Ahh, one of my favorite topics -- food and Egyptian food at that.

My mom always cooked, but I never envisioned myself as a cook -- I never thought I would get married, so why would I need to cook? Let's go over some of the great Egyptian dishes.

When Americans think of good "ethnic" or "Middle-Eastern" food, Egyptian cooking is not on the list. Heck, Americans probably think it's the same as the Lebanese or Moroccans, after all, we're all from the same part of the world.
After being married awhile, and traveling to Egypt, I realize the sacrifices that Hassan made in terms of food. He never really pushed me to cook Egyptian, and I thought there was no need to, until we went to Egypt on vacation. I came back with an entirely different mindset. All we do is eat Egyptian now. We ate Egyptian food before, but now it's All Egyptian all the time.

Some of our favorite dishes are mese'ahh (yum), Mira's favorite (or beef stew), chicken and kishk (my favorite), baked fish, baked leg of lamb with garlic, fettah, chicken pane, bittengen mekhalel, tamaya and the ever present fuul. I even cook it from scratch now that I know how easy it is to make. Basically, all I do is soak the beans, then drain them, add 1 garlic, water and let it cook for an eternity. Egyptian feta cheese and zetoon, although I don't cook them, are staples at almost every meal.

Ma3salaama,

Marian

6 comments:

Colleen said...

Marian :)

I was very surprised to see what Egyptian food consisted of. I was very interested in cooking Egyptian for Mo cause he missed his mom's cooking lol. He never forced me to cook, but I was curious if I could master it. Now we just cook Egyptian food cause I love it soooo much and also I bought a cookbook in Carefour on Egyptian Cooking and its GREAT!! One other thing...Does your husband like to eat meat (beef, chicken,ect) at every dinner? Mine sure does and when I told him we would have a "No Meat" dinner one night, he just couldn't comprehend it lol.

Take care and Salaams
Layla

Marian said...

Layla,

Hassan loves meat too, although it's not very good for diabetics. We used to eat a lot of lamb. Hassan eats fuul everyday and tamaya a few times a week. You know, poor man's food is always the best. Egyptian food is the best!

Ma3salaama and love,

Marian

Anonymous said...

Hi Marian -- thanks for sharing your blog page. This is the first I read. Anything about food catches my eye!! LOL!! I know my husband gave up a lot on food when he came here. Though you are more of a woman that I am to feel sympathetic about that. I just feel that when in Rome do what the Romans do. At first I was excited to learn about Egyptian food and cooking, but then I realized, hey, HE doesn't try to learn and eat Chinese food and I've totally given that up when I married my husband, as now he only eats Egyptian food. We are not very good cooks so we just eat the same 3 things over and over again. How on earth do you have the time to cook such variety of foods.....???

Susan said...

Marian: I would be eternally grateful if you could share a couple recipes with me. I can do koshari well enough. And foul? I buy the foul beans here already in the can (no spices)but how do you prepare it? I've made ok batches before, but sometimes at work (in Egypt) someone would bring a homemade batch that was much better than anything I had every cooked. Since my husband prefers some meat, I'm hoping to find a way to incorporate that (could be chicken, beef, turkey, etc.)

Also, ma'ashi. Do tell. I'm thinking stuffed aubergine and stuffed corgette, mainly. But I do love the grape leaves...

Anyway, it's Ramadan and my husband is a bit homesick. hoping you can share something that will make him feel like he's at home!

Any wisdom you can share would be greatly appreciated!

Anonymous said...

Hi Marian
You can solve this problem by finding other ways for preparing dishes that does not harm Hassan's health in a way he likes. for example you can prepare fuul with lamb meat using few amount of meat. If you wanna know the way you can find it in
Egyptian Dish
it presents many easy ways for preparing fuul or beans

food4memories.com said...

Hi, wondering if I could post my Egyptian food recipe site? I didnt see any recipes or I'm not looking in the right place, so I thought I would ask!