Recettes

Balah El Sham

Balah el sham is fried choux pastry soaked in syrup, and it is one of the desserts Egyptians most associate with childhood. It is piped into short lengths through a star nozzle, fried until golden and ridged, then dropped into cool sugar syrup, which seeps into every groove. The name translates from Arabic as Levant dates, and it contains no dates at all. It is called that for its size and shape, and Sham for the Levant region where it originated. It is eaten across much of the Middle East and in parts of Eastern Europe under other names, and the closest familiar comparison is churros, with one important difference: churros are rolled in cinnamon sugar, while balah el sham is submerged in syrup. Choux is the technique, and it is the same pastry used for éclairs and profiteroles. Flour is cooked into hot liquid until it forms a ball and turns glossy, then eggs are beaten in off the heat, one at a time. What is unusual here is that it is fried rather than baked, which gives a crisp ridged shell around a hollow, airy centre. It is often split and filled with cream, custard, mascarpone, chocolate or nuts, and pistachios on top are standard. It can be eaten hot or cold.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

50 minMediumEgypt

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Om Ali (Egyptian Bread Pudding)

Om Ali is Egypt's most beloved dessert, a warm, sweet pudding made from torn pieces of puff pastry or bread baked in sweetened milk with nuts, coconut, and raisins until golden and bubbling. It sits somewhere between a bread pudding and a milk-soaked pastry and manages to be simultaneously comforting and festive. The dish is a fixture of Egyptian restaurants, home celebrations, and Ramadan gatherings, where it is often served in communal baking dishes at the end of a large meal. Despite its simplicity, Om Ali manages to taste luxurious, the puff pastry creates layered, crispy edges while the centre remains soft and creamy with the absorbed milk.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hrEasyEgypt · Middle Eastern

Recette de FoodChef · Africook

Tunisian Fricassé

A fricassé is a small oval roll of enriched dough, deep-fried and then split and packed with tuna, potato, olives, egg and harissa. It is Tunisian street food, and it is one of the country's most recognisable things to eat. The word does not mean what it means elsewhere. In French, a fricassée is a braise of meat in a white sauce; in Tunisia and its diaspora it means this sandwich and nothing else. That divergence is complete enough that searching the French term will not find you the Tunisian food. The filling is the point and it is fixed by convention rather than by recipe: tuna in olive oil, cooked potato, black olives, egg and harissa, with slata méchouia, the grilled pepper and tomato salad, very often alongside. Capers and preserved lemon appear in some versions. What matters is that the bread is fried rather than baked, which gives a rich, slightly greasy roll that stands up to a wet filling. **A significant gap in the source.** Its ingredient list contains only the dough, yeast, water, flour, egg, oil, salt. Not one of the filling ingredients it spends its article describing appears in it. The filling below has been reconstructed from that description and flagged. **It contains eggs and fish.**

1 hr 55 minMediumTunisia

Recette de Blessing · Africook