Random Egyptian food questions

[Smithy]

*bump* OK, I've figured out how to do the fatta shamy and show it, without violating copyright issues. I've done the work. I've recovered enough to post about it.

I am not an efficient cook, but even having done it recently and been able to plan it better, this was a big undertaking. I've decided that it's either something for a big party, or better still, something that several people work to made...like the village operation DianaBuja mentioned upthread.

Fatta Shamy - my interpretation of the recipe printed in Flavors of Egypt: from City and Country Kitchens, © 1992, Susan Torgersen. This particular recipe is credited to Hella Hashem. The writeup, interpretations, comments and photos (and errors!) are mine.

This is a layered dish with several separate components. I'm going to describe it that way, with photos as necessary, instead of in the usual recipe fashion.

1. Boil a chicken. This will produce a chicken's worth of cooked meat and broth. You'll need all the meat and some of the broth. The recipe calls for cooking the chicken with an onion and a bouillion cube added for flavor. The recipe goes into more detail about the process, but most people here know how to boil a chicken and separate the cooked meat. Save the meat and the broth (separately); dispose of the skin and bones. I defatted the broth as a matter of routine, but it doesn't actually say to do that.

2. Cook up some rice, unless you have some leftover rice from another dinner. You only need a cup's worth.

3. Dice some bread and fry it in butter. The recipe calls for 2 shamy breads, broken into medium-sized pieces. (I'm fuzzy on how big a shamy bread is, and I didn't want to make any, so I cut 4 or 5 leftover dinner rolls into chunks for this step.) Set the fried bread chunks aside on paper towels to drain.

4. Slice 2 medium onions into thin slices. Fry them in oil until golden brown. Set them aside on paper towels to drain.

5. Another layer is made of 5 thin green peppers and 4 -5 tb chopped garlic. I confess, I substituted thin green onions for the peppers. I must not have been reading well at the time. Anyway, what you do is you chop them finely then mash them together with a bit of salt until you have small pieces, but not a paste. I used a food chopper for this step. I feel really silly that I read "green peppers" as "green onions".

6. Finally - and what started this whole conversation - you make the sauce. Here are the raw ingredients for the sauce:

5 tbsp tahina, 1/4 c. vinegar, 4 - 5 lemons, salt and cumin to taste, and 3 c. yogurt. The instructions say you mix the tahina, vinegar, juice of 4 lemons, 1/2 c. water, and mix well, adding more water if necessary. The mixture should be thick. Then add salt, cumin, and more lemon or vinegar, to taste. The instructions caution that there should be enough lemon for you to taste it at this point, because the yogurt still has to be added. Then you start adding yogurt. There's an interesting instruction that says you keep adding yogurt (mixing well as you go) until you can't tell whether the sauce is brown or white. Here's my photo of the mixing process:

OK, so now here are the layers, ready for assembly:

Fried bread, caramelized onions, heated broth, cooked chicken, tahina/yogurt sauce, rice. I forgot to include the peppers and garlic in this photo. Start layering as follows:

Bread, dipped in hot broth, and layered on the bottom of the pot

Cooked chicken next

Sprinkle with the garlic/peppers (I cannot *believe* I misread that as onions! That explains a lot!)

Tahina sauce next

Fried onions on top of that

Then the layer of rice, and another layer of tahina sauce. Garnish the whole with chopped parsley. (Oh yes, that's another layer.)

What's especially interesting about this is that there's no indication that it's supposed to be cooked afterward. I did cook it at about 325*F until it had set and all the layers were warmed through, since the chicken had spent a night or two in the refrigerator by then. I garnished it with parsley after it came out of the oven. As I look over both my fatta shamy recipes, I see that neither seems to indicate cooking the final assembly. You cook the layers, you throw them together, you eat. How one does all those steps before the chicken gets cold is beyond me. That's why I think this must be a group project.

Anyway, here's what the finished dish looked like this time around, after cutting into it so the layers could be seen:

The flavor was not as good as the last time I made it. The tahina sauce steps threw me: I added water, then realized the whole sauce should be thick, so added a lot more tahina to thicken it up, then added lemon until I could well and truly taste the lemon. I gave up on adding enough yogurt "until I could no longer distinguish whether it was white or brown" because I was about to overflow the bowl and I was out of yogurt. I think I shouldn't have added the water in the first place (I didn't, the first time around) because the brand of tahina I used is runny anyway. The lemon and tahina flavors shouted down the yogurt as a result.

Still...with salt, or extra yogurt on the cooked dish, the strong tahina and lemon flavor is tamed, and the dish is good. I think it would be better if I'd used green peppers instead of green onions; those are pretty strong. Actually, I think last time around I used red bell peppers and liked those immensely.

Compared to the restaurant fatta I've had in Cairo, this was firmer. That may be because they really toss everything together while it's hot and don't cook it afterward. I wish I'd had it this last year so I had a more recent memory.

So, there you have it. It's a good dish, but the more I read this recipe the more I think I've taken accidental liberties and not done it properly. Even done properly it would be a LOT of steps. Still - it's worth it for the right crowd. We've certainly been enjoying the leftovers.

I'd appreciate comments (polite and helpful, if you please) from anyone who knows how this dish is usually made. Anyone else is free to ask questions or provide suggestions.

Oh, and I apologize for the size of the photos. I thought I'd saved them to a smaller size. At least they aren't huge pixel-wise, so maybe they won't take too long to load.

[Behemoth]

Smithy -- I would probably prefer the green onion version as I am not a huge fan of green pepper. This is pretty close to the fatta I am familiar with, the only things that come to mind are

1) The fattahs that I am familiar with are done with flat bread, fried crisp. I think that might improve the balance. (Mexican chilaquiles remind me a lot of fatta, actually -- maybe that is a guideline?)

2) My family always served it in a big shallow or flat platter, so that some of the bread remained crispy, while other pieces were softened by the sauce. The yogurt was drizzled over the top but didn't cover everything. Now that I think of it, again it's less like tortilla pie, more like chilaquiles.

Of course, the egyptian version could be totally different -- do they usually serve it in a deep-ish bowl?

Will give this a shot next time I am near a working kitchen. I am really jealous of your clay pot though.

Edited April 23, 2006 by Behemoth (log)

[Smithy]

Smithy -- I would probably prefer the green onion version as I am not a huge fan of green pepper. This is pretty close to the fatta I am familiar with, the only things that come to mind are

1) The fattahs that I am familiar with are done with flat bread, fried crisp. I think that might improve the balance. (Mexican chilaquiles remind me a lot of fatta, actually -- maybe that is a guideline?)

2) My family always served it in a big shallow or flat platter, so that some of the bread remained crispy, while other pieces were softened by the sauce. The yogurt was drizzled over the top but didn't cover everything. Now that I think of it, again it's less like tortilla pie, more like chilaquiles.

Of course, the egyptian version could be totally different -- do they usually serve it in a deep-ish bowl?

Will give this a shot next time I am near a working kitchen. I am really jealous of your clay pot though.

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That's funny. The first time I made this at home I used pita bread, fried crisp. This time around I actually read the directions and tried something with more body, as I'm pretty sure shamy bread is a thicker flatbread than the Egyptian baladi (pita). Both versions came out pretty well as far as texture goes, but you're right that it makes a difference.

I don't know how this is served outside restaurants, as that's the only place I've ever had it. There, it's in smaller bowls for an individual serving, but yes, they're deep-ish. I do think there's a bit less sauce over everything in the restaurant version, and I know it's runnier. Again I think that's because I baked it to warm everything. Next time we go (insha allah) I absolutely must not be dissuaded from ordering this again, just because we ate too many appetizers!

[Behemoth]

Duh, another difference is that the Lebanese version wouldn't have rice. This is a totally different animal. Nevermind...

[FoodMan]

First, thank you for taking the time to make and post about this recipe. It really looks very good, and I like that brown clay pot you have it in.

It seems to me, from the instructions you posted that the recipe in the book is just not very good. What on earth does mix it until you cannot tell if it is white or brown mean? That’s just sloppy recipe writing. Over all I am very tempted to try this dish now.

It is similar to the Lebanese chicken rice with fatteh that I like so much. Basically it is cooked rice with lots of spices and nuts. Then at the time of serving, the rice is layered in individual plates with chunks of chicken, cooked chickpeas, crisp fried pita and garlicky cold yogurt. The textures and tastes are amazing. This brings me to conclude, that you are correct, you dish should be assembled right before serving and NOT baked. The chicken can be heated through in some stock and the sauce should be room temperature. Again, the recipe should’ve made this clear.

As a side note, yesterday I was reading through Clifford Wright’s “Cucina Paradiso” about Sicilian–Arab cuisine and I loved the chapter about rice dishes, especially the layered baked “casseroles” whose main ingredient is rice. To me this is just so Arabic. With minor alterations your dish could probably fit anywhere in the Mediterranean.