Recettes Egypt

Egyptian Koshari

Koshari is Egypt's national dish and its most famous street food, rice, lentils and macaroni layered together, topped with a spiced tomato sauce, crisp fried onions and a sharp garlic-vinegar dressing. It is a dish of components, and none of them is complicated. What makes koshari work is that all of them are made separately and assembled at the end, so each keeps its own texture: the rice and lentils soft, the pasta firm, the onions properly crisp, the sauce sharp with vinegar and cumin. It is cheap, filling and entirely plant-based as standard, which is why it feeds an enormous number of people every day. Koshari shops exist across Egypt doing nothing else, and it is eaten as often at home. Its ubiquity is genuine, the comparison to macaroni cheese in the source is about how ordinary it is rather than what it tastes like. The daqqa, the garlic and vinegar dressing, is what stops the whole thing being stodgy, and it is the element most often underdone by people making it for the first time. Be generous with it. Chickpeas are usually added on top.

41 minMediumEgypt

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Katayef (Mini Pancakes)

Katayef, qatayef, atayef, are small yeasted pancakes cooked on one side only, then folded around a filling, sealed, fried or baked, and soaked in syrup. They are Ramadan food across Egypt and the Levant. The one-sided cooking is the whole technique and it is what makes katayef katayef. The batter is poured onto a hot dry pan and left until the top surface is covered in open bubbles and has set dry to the touch, without ever being flipped. That bubbled, sticky upper surface is what allows the folded pancake to seal shut around its filling without needing anything to hold it. Fillings split two ways: sweet cheese, or crushed nuts with cinnamon. Both are traditional and households tend to make each. Once folded they are either deep-fried to a deep gold or baked, then drizzled with warm sugar syrup scented with orange blossom or rose water. Through Ramadan they are sold in enormous quantities from bakeries, often as bare unfilled pancakes for people to fill at home. Alongside konafa, katayef is one of the two desserts that define the month in Egypt.

MediumEgypt

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Kawaree (Cow Feet)

Kawaree is Egyptian calf's feet cooked with chickpeas until the meat falls from the bone and the broth turns thick with gelatin. It belongs to the older end of the Egyptian repertoire, and Egyptians are direct about the fact that it appeals more to their parents' generation than to their own. It is served in more than one way, and each has its own name. Kawaree fettah puts it over rice with tomato sauce, in the manner of the wider fattah tradition where bread or rice sits under a rich meat and broth. It is also eaten alongside stuffed vine leaves, and the intended technique there is specific: a piece of kawaree and one vine leaf in the same mouthful, so the gelatinous richness and the sharp stuffed leaf arrive together. The dish belongs to a family that runs across the region. Sudanese kawari uses sheep or cattle hooves with cinnamon, cardamom and cloves. Moroccan hergma is spiced with ginger, paprika and chilli and finished with rice. Turkish fasulyeli paça uses white beans in place of chickpeas and no turmeric at all. All are the same principle handled by different kitchens, and all exist because a foot yields a great deal from almost nothing.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

EasyEgypt

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Roz bi Laban (Rice Pudding)

Roz bi laban is rice with milk, which is exactly what the Arabic says, and it is among the most commonly eaten desserts in Egypt. It is sold from dessert shops and traditional restaurants in small individual bowls, set rather than loose, and served cold more often than warm. Its ubiquity comes from its simplicity. Rice, milk, sugar and a thickener are ingredients every household has, and the whole thing can be made in under half an hour if the rice is cooked separately rather than simmered in the milk from the start. That shortcut is common in Egyptian home kitchens and makes the dish close to foolproof, where the traditional method of cooking the rice slowly in milk demands constant stirring in the manner of a risotto. Rice pudding exists across most of the world and the Egyptian version is placed by its details. Cornstarch is used alongside the rice to give a firmer set than European rice puddings have, coconut flakes and raisins go on top, and cinnamon and chopped almonds are the other standard finishes. It sits in the same category as mahalabia and umm ali on the Egyptian dessert table, and is considered relatively light against those.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

EasyEgypt

Recette de Blessing · Africook