Egyptian Dishes

Specialised

FUL MEDAMES — fava beans simmered slowly overnight in a narrow-necked idra pot, dressed with oil, cumin and lemon: breakfast, and the most eaten dish in Egypt. TA’AMEYA — ⚠ the Egyptian falafel and a genuinely different thing from the Levantine: made from skinned FAVA BEANS, not chickpeas, green inside with herbs, and flatter. KOSHARY — rice, brown lentils, macaroni, chickpeas, fried onion, tomato sauce and the vinegar-garlic daqqa; ⚠ NOT ANCIENT, and it cannot be: it contains rice, pasta and tomato, and is documented as a nineteenth-century urban dish, with the pasta plausibly Italian and the lentils-and-rice plausibly Indian by way of the army. MOLOKHIA — jute mallow chopped to a fine green slick and finished with fried garlic and coriander; the texture is the point and the Egyptian form is chopped, unlike the Levantine whole-leaf version. MAHSHI of every vegetable and of vine and cabbage leaves. FATTA. HAWAWSHI, spiced meat baked inside bread. SOGO’ and kofta. HAMAM MAHSHI, squab stuffed with freekeh or rice — pigeon towers are an old Egyptian rural fixture. BAMIA, SHORBAT ADS, ROZ MEAMAR. MACARONA BECHAMEL. SAYADEYA and salted fish. ⚠ AND FESEEKH — mullet salted and fermented for weeks — IS A DOCUMENTED BOTULISM RISK: Egyptian authorities issue warnings annually and deaths are recorded most years. It is described here and emphatically not given as a method.