Cooking Around the World: Egypt

Tonight I cooked a meal from Egypt. I used recipes from The Global Table Adventure. Sasha, the author of the blog, mentioned that you would need every pot in your kitchen to prepare these dishes. She was not kidding! I used five of my stove burners. I needed six, but one of mine does not work. I also used my oven and my microwave.

 preparing the meal

First of all, this meal took a long time to prepare! And I made only three dishes: Fava Bean Mash, Kushari with Spicy Egyptian Tomato Sauce and Umm Ali (a dessert). You can click on the link on each recipe title for the recipes with pretty photographs. 

Here is my report.

Fava Bean Mash:

I could not find fava beans at my Kroger. The store manager didn't even know what they were! I googled fava bean substitutes right there in the grocery store and bought 1 can of lima beans and 1 can of butter beans since both were listed as acceptable substitutes. 

Here is the fava bean dish before it began simmering. 

 While the bean mixture was simmering, I cooked in three separate pots the lentils, macaroni, and angel hair pasta for the the kushari. I cooked the rice in my rice cooker.

I used only 1/2 the amount of cayenne pepper called for in the original recipe. That was spicy enough for us. Both the fava bean mash and the kushari were good. Jimmy, Leah, and Sam were all good sports and ate everything!

the kushari 

Here is my little bowl of fava bean mash with the toppings (lemon juice, olive oil, parsley, and chopped boiled egg). We did not care for the soft pita bread. When we eat the leftovers for lunch tomorrow, I plan to spread some melted butter on the pita triangles and bake them in the oven until they are crispy. Pita chips would be good with this bean dip too.

My bowls of fava bean mash and kashari with the tomato sauce.

The dessert was delicious! It called for only 1/8 cup of sugar, so it was not sweet at all. I don't care for raisins....I think chocolate chips would have been better!

Umm Ali

Before we ate, I explained to my family what each dish was and read a little bit about it from the recipe's website. We listened to Egyptian music (found on Apple music by Leah) while we ate and also while we washed the one million dishes that we used preparing and serving the food! During the meal Leah read us a few facts she found online about Egypt. The food was not too strange, and I think everyone enjoyed the meal.

One country down, over 190 to go!