Egyptian Recipes

Macarona Bechamel

Macarona béchamel is Egypt's pasta bake, penne layered with a spiced minced meat sauce, covered in béchamel and baked until the top browns. The dish arrived through the same routes that carried béchamel across the Mediterranean, and Egypt made it its own. It is a close relative of Greek pastitsio and of the wider family of baked pasta dishes that runs around the Mediterranean rim, but the spicing is Egyptian: the meat sauce is seasoned with cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg rather than with oregano or basil. It is comfort food in the fullest sense, and it is what appears at family gatherings, on Fridays, and at any occasion where a large dish that feeds many people is required. Most Egyptians have a strong opinion about how their mother makes it. The béchamel is the part worth getting right. It should be thick enough to sit on top rather than sink into the pasta, and it is usually enriched with egg, which helps it set into a firm golden layer rather than staying loose. It reheats well and is often better the day after, which is part of why it is made in quantity.

MediumEgypt

Recipe by Blessing · Africook

Kunafa

Kunafa, also written kanafeh or knafeh, is a dessert of shredded pastry layered with a filling and soaked in syrup, and it belongs to a region rather than a country. It is eaten across Egypt, Libya, the Levant and the wider Arab world, and Palestinian cuisine in particular claims it as its defining sweet. The pastry is kataifi, phyllo dough shredded into fine strands, sold frozen at Middle Eastern and North African grocers. It is coated in melted ghee or butter, pressed into a tray as a base, filled, topped with more of the same and baked until the strands turn deep gold and crisp. Syrup goes on at the end. The filling is where regional versions diverge most, and where this recipe departs from the classic. Traditional kunafa is made with a mild soft cheese, Nabulsi or Akkawi, which stretches when hot and gives the dessert its characteristic pull; mozzarella is the common substitute. The version written here uses a thickened milk and cream filling instead, which is a legitimate variation eaten in Egypt but produces something quite different from a cheese kunafa. In Libya it is made in large quantities during Ramadan, and across the region it is a dessert for occasions rather than an everyday sweet.

★★★★★Highest Rated

1 hr 5 minMediumEgypt

Recipe by Blessing · Africook

Kanafeh

Kanafeh, konafa in Egypt, knafeh across the Levant, is a pastry built from kadaif, the fine shredded dough sometimes called angel hair, layered with cheese or cream, baked in ghee until the strands turn deep gold, and soaked in sugar syrup while still hot. Its origins are Levantine rather than African. The most commonly cited account places its invention in Damascus in the seventh century, and an early version appears in Kitab al-Tabikh, a thirteenth-century Andalusian cookery manuscript. From there it spread across the Ottoman world. In Egypt it has become genuinely Egyptian. Konafa is inseparable from Ramadan, sold by weight from bakery windows through the whole month, made at home in large trays, and eaten after iftar alongside qatayef. Egyptian versions lean towards cream, nuts and dried fruit as often as cheese, which distinguishes them from the Palestinian knafeh nabulsieh built on stretchy akkawi cheese and stained orange. The texture is the point of the dish, and it depends on a single rule: the syrup and the pastry must be at opposite temperatures. Hot syrup on hot pastry makes it soggy. Cool syrup poured over pastry straight from the oven keeps the strands crisp while the inside stays molten. Rose or orange blossom water in the syrup is standard, and crushed pistachio or walnut goes on top.

★★★★★Highest Rated

MediumEgypt · East Africa

Recipe by Deborah · Africook

Egyptian Kofta

Kofta is minced meat, seasoned and shaped by hand, and it runs across an enormous stretch of the world: from the Balkans through Turkey, the Levant and Egypt, across the Arabian peninsula, into Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, and along the North African coast. The Egyptian version is lamb or beef with onion, parsley, mint and a warm spice mix, moulded onto skewers and grilled. Its written history is old. Recipes appear in the earliest surviving Arab cookbooks, where large ground lamb meatballs were glazed in saffron and egg yolk, a technique that later reached Europe and was known there as gilding or endoring. From the Arab world it travelled east, and nargisi kofta was served at the Mughal court in India. In Egypt, kofta belongs to the grilled meat restaurants that exist in every town, where it is cooked alongside kebab, grilled chicken and tarb and served with rice, bread and salad. The distinction Egyptians draw between kofta and kebab is worth knowing: kebab is cubed meat on a skewer, kofta is minced meat shaped by hand. It is essentially sausage without a casing, and the comparison to a hamburger, sometimes made, misses that it is almost never served in bread.

★★★★★Highest Rated

1 hrEasyEgypt · Mali

Recipe by Cuisine228 · Africook