Egyptian Recipes

[Roberto]

Im a culinary student at Le Cordon Bleu in Minneapolis, Mn. I'm looking for some egyptian reciepes that someone would be willing to share. If you could that would be great. I'm actually trying to find some reciepes from the past, like peasant food. Thanks!

[cabrales]

Roberto -- Welcome to the board I do not cook and have no Egyptian recipes. However, note that Emile Jung of Le Crocodile in Strasbourg had an Egyptian theme to his celebration of the 30th anniversary of the restaurant. I believe the menu consisted of French cuisine dishes; however, there were subtitles and other Egyptian aspects to that evening. Jung and his wife also travelled to Egypt. Sadly, shortly following the celebration, Jung lost his third Michein star.

Below is a link to certain photos:

http://www.au-crocodile.com/F/index/index_..._rencontre.html

[Fat Guy]

There's a great article on the essence of Egyptian cooking in Issue #54 of The Art of Eating. ("A Kitchen in Upper Egypt.")

http://www.artofeating.com/back.htm

[Brad S]

Hi Roberto,

can you be a little more specific on what your looking for?

The history of Egyptian food and culture very old and complex.

[Toby]

A Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden has lots of Egyptian recipes. The author grew up in Cairo; the book contains recipes from Syria, the Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Yemen, the Sudan, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Israel. She says "all are inextricably linked culinarywise." I have an old paperback copy; the author has written a number of other books, including a great big one that came out a few years ago (that may be an update of the one I have). Some typical dishes from Egypt in the book I have are melokhia (chicken soup with melokhia leaves), rice with hamud sauce (rice with a lemony chicken soup/sauce, and ful medames (brown dried fava beans, dressed with garlic, hard-boiled eggs, parsley, olive oil and lemons) which she calls the national dish of Egypt)

Paula Wolfert's Mediterranean Cooking has a recipe for broiled chicken with oil, lemon and garlic sauce.

[Suzanne F]

How much research have you done already?

If you want relatively "contemporary" recipes, you can look at Colette Rossant's Memories of a Lost Egypt.

[cabrales]

A Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden has lots of Egyptian recipes.  The author grew up in Cairo; the book contains recipes from Syria, the Lebanon, Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Greece, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Yemen, the Sudan, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco and Israel.

The Roden book is described by Robert Irwin's "In the Caliph's Kitchen" (1994), which is included in The Penguin Book of Food and Drink (ed. Paul Levy, 1996). Excerpts from Irwin's observations (obviously, not reviewed by me in any manner):

". . . 'Culinary Cultures of the Middle East', generally an extremely valuable collection of seventeen papers, presented mostly by academics who pariticipated in a conference on Middle Eastern food at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, in 1992. . . . In their introduction, Sami Zubaida and Richard Tapper . . . . take Roden's 'A Book of Middle Eastern Food' gently to task for its overemphasis on culinary continuity in the region, commenting that 'our perceptions of the past as origins predispose us to an emphasis on similarity and continuity.' . . ."

The 1992 London University papers are described as covering "such matters as food production, the changing fortunes of rice, Jewish food, the breaking of the Ramadan fast, colours and smells in medieval Arab cooking, the role of food in the Naguib Mahfouz and other novelists, and food as a regional marker of gender, race or class."

It does not appear, however, that the papers would contain many Egyptian recipes.

[Orik]

". . . . take Roden's 'A Book of Middle Eastern Food' gently to task for its overemphasis on culinary continuity in the region, commenting that 'our perceptions of the past as origins predispose us to an emphasis on similarity and continuity.' . . ."

Interesting. My grandmother, of Romanian descent, born in Egypt and raised with a Turkish/Jewish nanny until her family moved to Paris and subsequentially to Venezuela seems to share Roden's pan-middle eastern view of cooking. It was very likely for her to cook a meal that had Bamya (an egyptian okra stew), turkish burekas with wild spinach, stuffed artichoke hearts (where from, I do not know), moussaka (from somewhere in the balkans) and in her particular case, some venezuelan staples such as empanadas and carne mechada.

I think that for Egyptian recipes per se, you may be better off with

Egyptian Cooking: A Practical Guide by Samia Abdennour

Most of it is (in my mind) rather unappetizing, but gives a realistic picture of what egyptian cooking is like.

[oliva]

Everyone has given you some excellent tips, names of books etc. I just want to add quickly, there is a recipe for Om Ali in Nigella Lawson's book. It is a wondrous and wonderful dessert made with Phyllo pastry.

You should of course learn to make Fool, the staple food of Egypt, many would say, it is in the genre of 'peasant food'. It is sold on streets in Cairo where people eat it with lots of lemon and bread.