Of falafels, mint tea & more

indulgent cuisine

Kebab & kofta. Kosheri. Feta. Falafel. Pasopsa. Cruising on the River Nile in the opulent The Oberoi Zahra, I should have ideally been seeking gods.

As the boat sailed, temples whizzed by. Ancient temples of Karnak, Luxor, Kum Ombo. Temples with sky-scraping obelisks. Etched stories. Painted hieroglyphs. Tombs. Mummified crocodiles. Statuesque princess. Kings with false beards.

And the unending narrative of Egyptian civilisation. But in the orange-tinged restaurant of Zahra, I forgot about gods and was listening intently to Chef Ahmed Saleh Abbas as he rattled his five must-haves in Egypt. Kebab & kofta, he insisted, has to be the first on his dinner plate.

Thousands of years ago, if you had asked a pyramid worker, what’s on your plate? He’d say, bread.

Emmer wheat bread. Ancient Egyptians ate a lot of bread — dental analysis of
mummies dating 3,000 BC have proved that. Historians also believe that bread and salt constituted a part of the pyramid worker’s salary. Bread was also found in tombs.

Bread-loving nation

Not surprisingly, bread is everywhere in Egypt and not just the square slices or bulky loaves. They come in various shapes and sizes. Flatbreads are common and every noon and evening, men walk around markets carrying countless flatbreads on their head. Interestingly, bread in Egypt is used more as a pocket to stuff things, to scoop food or to ladle soup. The most popular take-away lunch is sandwich — not the usual bread sandwich, but pita bread filled with falafel or meat.

Bread is everywhere, but it is not the national dish — that honour belongs to ‘kosheri,’ a mixture of lentils, rice, pasta, and other ingredients served with tomato sauce and caramelised onions. In a meat-eating nation, kosheri stands its ground as a vegetarian dish. The best kosheri is served in Cairo’s historical Abo Tarek restaurant where the meal is concluded with ‘roz bel laban’, a sweet rice porridge. Other popular traditional dishes
include ful medames, kebda, kesh, mahshi hamam, falafel, asih merabrah, hummus, fetir,
dolma, molokheyya.

The sweet-toothed travel to Alexandria, the old capital of Egypt, which was established by Alexander, the Great, and famous for Alexandria Library and the Lighthouse, one of the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World. No one steps out of Alexandria without having large scoops of ice cream in a cone. Or buying crunchy presca (a cross between cookie and chikki) outside the Citadel of Qaitbay.
Other desserts include ‘khushaf’ (dates plus dried fruits in water), baked sweet potato, ‘gullash’ (filo pastry filled with cream or custard and dipped in sugar syrup), ‘kunafa’ (baked noodles with nuts and double cream).

As any gourmand will tell you, in Egypt you need an extra stomach. Perhaps a stomach as large as the pyramids to savour everything that the nation has on its menu.

Must-eats in Egypt
Aish Merahrah: Flatbread made of maize flour and fenugreek seeds
Ful Medames: Mashed fava beans
Kosheri: Rice, lentils, pasta/macaroni served with caramelised onions and tomato puree
Kebda: Fried liver with seasoning
Mahshi hamam: Pigeon stuffed with rice and herbs, then roasted or grilled.
Basbousa: Sweet cake made of semolina
Molokheyya: Bush okra cooked with garlic and coriander sauce
Falafel: Deep fried balls of cooked beans