Smithy

You're welcome! I'm excited for you! Let us know how your trip comes out, and feel free to ask more questions!

What do you mean? It didn't cure them, or you couldn't see a difference?

I can't imagine why people were discouraging about it. Cairo: You MUST go visit Khoushary Tahrir, near Midaan Tahrir (Tahrir Square). I can't remember the street it's on, but I can find out and let you know. Khoushary may be the closest thing to a national dish in Egypt. It's a hot meal of rice, macaroni, lentils, crispy fried onions, tomato sauce and another thing or two that I've forgotten, all in a bowl. At the table you add your own sauces to your tastes: a lemon/garlic sauce that's tart and almost sweet, and a hot red pepper sauce. Caution! The hot red pepper sauce really is liquid blow torch, and it does that slow burn thing that sneaks up on you. Pour a little into your spoon, swirl it in the khoushary, and do not lick the spoon until you've stirred thoroughly. I didn't believe my husband the first time he warned me about this, and my taste buds were seared for 2 days. But oh, under the heat there's a wonderful flavor. Khoushary can be found all over - it's cheap and filling - but I think Khoushary Tahrir makes the best I've had, anywhere. You pick your table and tell the waiter what you want: the 2LE bowl or the 1LE bowl. The 2 LE bowl is huge. I've lost track of the exchange rate, but last year 1 LE (pound Egyptian, in case you're wondering) was about $0.15 U.S. Cheap, filling, and good. Out in the Garden City area of Cairo is a Lebanese restaurant named Tabbouli. Excellent food, good prices. Yes, I know it's Lebanese, but Egyptian cuisine seems to borrow heavily from other Middle Eastern countries. If you go, PLEASE see if you can figure out what's in the taouk motefa - grilled chicken bits, but not the standard shish taouk, and let me know what you find out. I wish I'd tried to get a recipe. Prices are a bit more there than in the hole-in-the-wall joint, but they're still not bad. It's a nice sit-down restaurant with a good quiet atmosphere - a nice change from the street chaos. I've eaten there several times and it was all excellent. Their fattoush and fetta are particularly good. Go to that place hungry, because you'll be staggering by the time you leave. Don't hesitate to try cooked street food: shwerma, shish tawouk, tameyya on pita. (Tameyya is what we usually know as falafel.) When (not if) you go into the Khan el Khalili, make sure you try one of the roasted sweet potatoes from the vendors who ply their wares there. There are little hole-in-the-wall joints all over Cairo that do wonders with grilled chicken and grilled lamb. Unfortunately I know how to find them when I'm there, but not exactly where they're located. Baba ghanoush is another dish to make sure you try, wherever you get the chance. Try moussaka, also. The Egyptian version is different than the Greek version. I love them both. If you're staying in Maadi, the Sofitel there has a nice bunch of restaurants in the hotel, but they're all foreign cuisine (Tex-Mex, Italian, etc.) except for the breakfast buffet upstairs in the morning. (The breakfast buffet caters equally to foreigners and locals, and does justice to all its food.) For other meals, if you wander down the Corniche (river street) about a half mile you'll find a restaurant that's right down on the Nile - for a while I thought it was actually on a barge. Sorry I don't remember its name, but it was a grand discovery last year. Walk down the Corniche until you pass a big plant nursery, then a little farther you'll see a private club, then this restaurant. You have to go down a flight of steps toward the river to get to it. Luxor: Near the train station is The New Radwan Hotel. They used to have a fine restaurant with what seemed to be a classically-trained chef. Once he know how much we liked his food, he really went to town for us. Our meals typically came with little plate decorations like tomatoes carved into Jack O'Lanterns, or curled into flowers. We never had a bad meal there. The report I got a year or so later was that the staff had changed and the food wasn't as good. I hope that isn't true, but I can't say for sure. He did great things with fish, and with chicken and lamb tagines. Please note, an Egyptian tagine is not a Moroccan tagine (in terms of the spices or the cooking vessel) but it's darned good anyway. Out back of the ticket office where you buy tickets for the Valley of the Kings is a road that will take you to a place called something like The Pharoah Hotel or the Pharoah's Garden. They have a quiet walled courtyard where you can sit in the sun and enjoy the birds and trees as you sip your tea, bottled water, or Stella beer. Their baba ghanoush is the best I've ever had. I paid the rather puzzled cook a bit of baksheesh so I could stand and watch him make my order. I still haven't been able to reproduce it. Someplace in or near the souk street that peels off of Temple Street (near Luxor Temple) is a restaurant set back from the street, with an elevated platform that has tables overlooking the street. My husband always calls it the Happy Chicken because of the bright red chicken on the sign over the door. I finally got around to deciphering the sign last year and realized it said something entirely different, so if you ask directions (I advise against it) nobody will know what you're talking about. Just keep an eye peeled for the chicken sign. The St. Joseph Hotel and the Hotel Mercure have wonderful breakfast buffets. However, you can also go wander the streets and pick up pastries from the bakeries. We used to chow down on these fig-stuffed breadstick-looking pastries that cost pennies. Note, the baked goods have no preservatives, so you're best eating them the day you buy them. PLEASE don't go to McDonald's, for crying out loud. Just don't. From the Nile you can look through the Luxor Temple and see its sign. ("The Golden Arches through the Olden Arches", my brother-in-law commented). It does land-office business. But if you just wander up the street a bit farther away from the Nile, toward the souk street, you'll see a small stand or two that sell tameyya (maybe they call it falafel there) sandwiches. Much cheaper, much better. For safety's sake the usual advice is not to eat any produce that hasn't been cooked except fruit that you peel yourself, but that gets real old real fast. We take the basic precaution to drink only bottled water, tea, or Stella Beer. We have always avoided the fabulous-looking strawberries because there probably isn't any way to make sure they don't have pathogenic organisms. At first I avoided uncooked tomatoes, but after a few times back and forth I ate just about everything except the strawberries. There's a cucumber and tomato salad with a lemony dressing (I think they call it "salad baladi", meaning country salad, and it's ubiquitous) that I ate quite a bit and adored. You have to make your own choices about precautions, though. Everyone's system responds to new biota differently, and it's no fun missing the trip because you're lying around feeling ill. My husband has a cast-iron constitution and lived in Egypt for a while. He says the only time he's ever gotten sick was after he ate a salad from the salad bar at the Hilton or some such western hotel. I got sick once from something, and never could figure out what it was, but I lived, and started a weight-loss program that eventually led to 20 pounds off and kept off, so I'm not complaining. Make sure you hit Souk Day someplace, where the people shop, not where they try to send tourists. The folks bring their stock and produce in from the countryside, and even if you don't buy anything it's worth looking at the variety and quantity. Stacks and bales of garlic and onion. Ducks and chickens and rabbits in wooden cages, looking around, we can hope ignorant of their fate. Herbs, citrus, basketry, pottery. Tools of all kinds. If I remember anything about my Red Sea Coast times, which are considerably more limited, I'll post about that. They have the Really Good Fish. Even in the Nile Valley, if you're eating fish you'll be told it's Red Sea fish because the Nile is too polluted. (A fisherman friend thinks that may be a scam, but we never got to the bottom of that rumor.) Feel free to ask questions. Maybe this response will get some other people going. Edited mostly to correct misspellings of English words.

Oh man, I'd better order mine before they run out!

Never mind, I answered my own question again...

BWAAHAHA! I am enjoying this. Don't forget there's a Raytek out there calling your name, too.

Interesting article. It makes the methods discussed here sound pretty easy, doesn't it? I wonder why the milk works to make the black Chamba pots stronger? In this case does 'stronger' mean less susceptible to thermal shock, or less susceptible to breakage when dropped?

OK, here goes my dumb question. I'm wondering how the tagine would work with lean cuts of meat. Specifically, I have some deer meat that's quite flavorful but quite lean, and tends to dry out easily. I'm still trying to find ways to cook it without drying it out. Stew has worked pretty well. Would braising in the tagine work, or does the meat need more fat for that?

OK, I have a painfully dumb question. After becoming inspired by the previous couscous thread, I bought a Le Creuset tagine (although now that I've read this thread I wish I had held out for a crockery tagine, but I digress). I tried the Honeyed, spiced chicken tagine recipe that came with the pot. I lightly sautéed the onions & garlic & then added the chicken as instructed. I could not get the chicken to brown. It was delicious, but very white. The Chicken Tagine recipe Sackvill Girl posted sounds wonderful & I'd like to try it but it starts the same way as the first recipe I tried. Should I remove the onions after sautéing? How do I get the chicken to brown? Sigh, I did warn you that this was going to be a painfully dumb question. ← Ha, that isn't a painfully dumb question! You should see the one I'm about to post! I have some guesses and questions, and I'm sure the resident experts will chime in soon. First, I wonder whether the Le Creuset is changing the browning from what you're used to. Do you have other LC pieces? Other posters have noted that it doesn't brown as easily - although I have to say I haven't noticed that problem with my stuff. Second idea: was there too much liquid in the pan from the onions? Maybe you needed to let the onion juice boil off a bit before adding the chicken. My third idea goes to what Paula's been teaching here for other meats: brown the chicken at the end of the cooking, under the broiler. You might have to separate the chicken from the rest of the sauce for that step. That isn't the sequence in the recipe noted above, but it might work for you.

I hope you'll post photos when you're done, along with your comments, so we can see what difference the curing makes. Hmm, I have a couple of uncured moussaka bowls sitting around. Maybe I'll try a comparison too. Edited to remove a question already answered elsewhere, and to fix a formatting error.

When it came right down to it, I just COULDN'T give 4 chicken thighs the same treatment when there were tests and comparisons to be made. I salted two, then dredged them in salted flour. The other two got salt and paprika on the skin, then were dipped into a lightly beaten egg, and then dredged in flour mixed with salt, paprika, and a home-made Cajun seasoning mix. Everything was cooked in the same pan at the same time. Interestingly, the egg-coated chicken seemed to cook more quickly. The egg-coated chicken had a much thicker crust than the stuff that had just been dredged in flour. I thought, when removing the chicken from the pan, that the egg coating would be tough, but it was a tender thick crust with tender juicy chicken underneath. I preferred it, both for the texture and for the extra skin seasoning. I couldn't tell any difference to the texture or flavor of the chicken flesh beneath the crust. I took the chicken pieces out a bit too soon and ended up with them undercooked. Microwaving two made them tougher, so I reheated the pan and fat, this time a little hotter, and replaced two of the pieces. I got the fat too hot, and the brown bits in the bottom of the pan started charring. Note to self: the correct setting on this burner is around 5, not 7. I rescued the chicken in time, though, and it came out better than the microwaved stuff. No photos worth showing. Next time I'll try someone else's recipe.

Well-preserved, indeed! I don't suppose you've ever stuck a thermometer over the brazier coals, right at the pot base, to know what the target temperature is? Is the coal/brazier method basically looking to maintain the lowest simmer possible after the initial boil?

I've always heard pots of those dimensions referred to as chicken fryers. I figured that's what they were for. Mine, a garage-sale special and properly seasoned, is heating up the fat right now. On the way home tonight I debated using the old family heirloom steel pot (slightly larger but same dimensions) that Mom used until she got an electric skillet, or this chicken fryer. The fryer needed cleaning anyway, so it's the choice. We never did advance soaking in our family; by contrast with everyone else's recipe Mom's approach sounds very pedestrian, but it was always wonderful. Wash and pat the chicken dry, dredge it in flour and salt, drop into the hot grease. Bacon grease and Crisco were, I think, the mix. I have lard and Crisco, small bits of each, maybe enough for the pot. If I need to supplement it'll have to be with vegetable oil. If the results are worth photos I'll post later.

I finished cooking, and nearly finished eating (there aren't many leftovers!) Wolfert's Moroccan Lamb Tagine Smothered with Lemon and Olives last night in my Egyptian clay pot. That one's a keeper. First, some notes on the pot curing process: my clay pots came from Egypt, and I followed the curing process I was taught in Luxor despite a powerful temptation to try Paula's olive oil and ash treatment. (I guess I'll have to buy a tagine for that one!) I rinsed and scrubbed the pot in water to get rid of loose clay, let it dry thoroughly, then rubbed it inside and out with molasses. Then I set it upside down on a baking sheet (this one's usually a drip pan so I didn't bother with foil) and baked it in the oven at 350F for, oh, several hours. I don't remember the timing. It's done when the molasses has beaded up and hardened. The difference in before and after is amazing: before curing, the pots are brick red and smell like clay (think garden pots). Afterward the pot is brown, hard, and doesn't have that smell any more. Here are some "before" and "after" pictures, with an uncured small bowl compared to the larger cooking bowl I used. Sorry about the less-than-optimal lighting! Here's the mix coming to the boil atop the stove. I have an electric coil stove, so I put the pot on a flame-tamer and raised the heat very, very gradually. After it came to the boil I lowered the heat and simmered with wet crumpled parchment paper on top of the food and a foil lid over that. While that was cooking, I made some of Elie's pita bread, from his Introduction to Lebanese Cuisine at the eGCI. It's sure fun to watch those pitas puff. I misread the instructions and realized too late that I was supposed to have separated the meat and sauce and added the olives to the sauce on top of the stove while the meat was browning in the oven. I just left the foil and parchment off and let the sauce reduce in the oven. It may have mattered in the presentation, but it sure didn't matter to the taste. Here's the finished product: I tasted, and tasted, and then couldn't stop. I make lamb stew frequently, but I've never gotten this sort of tenderness. The bits of meat were melt-in-the-mouth tender, with an unctuous texture brand-new to me. The olives were as tender and tasty; I didn't know that cooking olives like this would change them so much. Wow. Wonderful stuff. Paula, if you want to update that recipe on your website, go right ahead, but don't you dare remove it!

Thank you for your answer, chefzadi. I have to admit, until just now I thought "taouk" (or tawouk or whatever, it's always hard to transliterate) meant cooked chicken. Now I have to ask, what does that word mean? I take it the word "motefa" (I think that's how they put it in the English portion of the menu) doesn't sound like any recognizable Arabic word?

This seems like a good time to re-ask a question I asked here about a year ago with no success. Does anyone know what goes into tawouk motefa? It's a chicken kebab dish I had at a Lebanese restaurant (named Tabouli) in Cairo a little over a year ago. It may have had more sauce than their standard shish tawouk (which was also excellent, but quite different). The grilled chicken chunks were sprinkled with a reddish spice that might have been sumac (or paprika?). The sauce had garlic, and had a hint of spicy heat that might have been paprika or might have been something hotter but in very small amounts. My memory is getting more vague about it all the time, but I remember it as being well worth trying to make at home - but I haven't been able to find a recipe, or even someone else who knows what I'm talking about. My post last year scrambled the name (a friend has since corrected me), and that couldn't have helped. Does this sound familiar to anyone here?

I second the thanks for resurrecting this thread. I hadn't seen it before now. The mehemmer/amhemer sounds fabulous, and I'm already hungry thinking about making it (although I have a tagine to finish tonight). Someone, please tell me more about the eggs. Are they lightly beaten, heavily beaten, or not beaten but just cracked into the mix?

That recipe was written for an enameled cast iron pot,and published in food and wine magazine back in the 80's before anyone has access to tagines. I really should remove it from the site. Or test it over and edit it! You only need one pot and it should be the same one you serve in.. What I would do is put the claypot filled with whatever on low heat and slowly bring to a boil, then remove it from the heat for a minute to cool down, return to the lowest heat, cover and simmer for about 2 hours. Cooking time will depend on the age of the lamb. We're coming to spring now and young lamb will cook faster than mature meat. ← Too late to pull it, I've printed it and am cooking it! So now I have a couple of questions: - Step 1 says, among other things, to "toss the lamb with the spice mixture over very low heat for 2 minutes." Since I'm using an Egyptian clay pot on the stovetop for the first time, I'm being a real weenie about it: very low heat, electric coil with a flame tamer. So now I'd like to know how one determines "very low heat" and the "two minutes" bit. What should I have been looking for? I added the water, onion and herbs before the pot even got warm, for fear of shattering the pot. Of course, since the pot wasn't warm the meat was still quite cool. It was well-coated with the spice mixture. - Step 3 says to transfer the cooked meat to an ovenproof serving dish and bake it at 450F for 15 - 20 minutes. You stated upthread that you wrote this recipe in the days before tagines were available in the U.S.A. and this recipe can be done with one pot. I'm doing the preliminary cooking now, to finish tomorrow (I hope) night. I think I'll let the tagine warm to nearly room temperature, then place it in the oven and let the over heat everything to 450F at the same time. Does that sound right? Nancy

<Claps self on the head> Of course! Just try frying a few pieces instead of a whole chicken! What a great idea, Fifi! This way, I'll be able to try it the way my mother taught me and compare it to some of the tantalizing versions y'all are describing. I'll be living on salads the rest of the time, though, just to keep the bathroom scale from snickering at me.

The website describes both the '02 and '03 as having grapefruit and tropical flavors, with 'notes' of green pepper. Perhaps the tart acidity is more grapefruit than lemon? In addition, by 2005 a 2000-vintage wine of this style might be getting a little tired and flat. It sounds like a disappointment and not a wine you're likely to buy again, but you might take note of others' comments if you come across them, just in case the wine was too old. A fresher vintage might be more appealing. ← Oops, my bad. I checked the Rancho Zabaco bottle again. It's a 2002 vintage, not 2000 as I reported. My wine shop didn't sell me something as old as I'd implied. That raises the next question of whether I missed some nuances (highly likely) or just have different preferences than the tasters quoted on the web site. Maybe I'll try this one again alongside some of my preferred s-b's in the same price range. Now that you mention it, grapefruit may be a better descriptor than lemon for what I remember. I can see the advantage to having several people in the same room trying these at the same time, to spark ideas and refine descriptions. It appears that I'll be needing to add to my aroma kit: grapefruit, apricot (see below) and plum. How long do these kits last? Do they develop "off" notes, or do I just have to worry about their taking over my refrigerator? A few winemakers claim that an excellent zinfandel will have overtones of apricot, so that's very interesting. I would expect that in a large, affordable production like Alderbrook there may also be additions of cabernet or merlot. Many of these productions are "cut" with a gentler, more familiar varietal to make the wine more "cabalicious," to help it appeal to a broader market base. Excellent review. I haven't tried their mourvedre yet, but after this writeup, I think I'd better! ← Organoleptic - now there's a nice word to work into a conversation! I'll be interested to try that zinfandel again and see whether apricots are a closer match than peaches. Maybe. This will be an easy one to test again, since it's a family favorite. But, uhm, "cabalicious"? Cabernet-like? The label doesn't mention any other wines blended, but maybe it wouldn't. I do note, however, that in very fine print it says "14.2% alcohol". Yet another correction to make! I really, really like the Cline Mourvedre, and have liked it for several years. I'm still trying to work out what foods are most complimentary to it, but at least I'm beginning to learn which foods aren't.

Two words: splatter screen. And, it would be quicker to clean grease than accumulate all of those ingredients for the curry. Besides, since we can't garden, we just as well clean grease . ← Sponge in one hand, seed catalog in the other?

Gaaahh. I LOVE fried chicken. I HATE the cleanup. I rarely do it here, unless I can do it outside. It's 10*F right now. Can we save the chicken until it's warmer? Or do you experienced folks have ways to tame the grease spatters? Nancy (but if that's the consensus, count me in)

I went the other way round making a lamb and rice pilaf one night. I thought that cup of frozen chicken broth was unusually yellow, but it wasn't it was thawed and pitched into the dish that I realized it was frozen Meyer lemon juice. Man, that finished dish had pucker power...

In your Recipe for Moroccan Lamb Smothered with Lemon and Olives, you call for bringing the mixture to a boil over high heat, and then covering and simmering it. I think I've been reading that the tagines are okay on the stovetop over low heat only. Do you bring the mixture to the boil in another pan and then put it in the tagine to simmer over low heat? Or rather, is that what you'd recommend for my Egyptian bowl? What about the Riffian tagine that Mark bought and Sam may be about to buy?

Note to the moderator: thanks for moving this! Now, Ms. Wolfert: I managed to restrain myself the other day just before hitting the "checkout" button on the tagines.com web site. It occurred to me that I have an All-Clad braiser with a lid, an unglazed Egyptian clay pot of approximately the size and shape of the Riffian tagine bottom (no lid), and this glazed ceramic casserole with a lid. The unglazed pot and the glazed casserole are oven-proof but probably not stoveop-proof. The metal braiser, of course, goes either place. What would the Moroccan tagine do for me, aside from looking way cool and giving me some thermodynamics to think about (that cooling tower on top), that these can't? I know it's stovetop unglazed clay - which I don't have - but I don't know how important that is. Am I shorting myself in the name of $40 if I don't get that tagine, or will my tagines come out well without it? Advice, please. Tax time is coming up... Nancy