Eat like an Egyptian

18/5 – 2012

In order to succeed with this trip to Egypt, we asked our friend Johannes, a great connoisseur of the country and its culture for advices. He had quite a lot and helped us to arrange a simple but very nice dinner.

At first we thought that we would write a bit about Egypt’s history (is it possible not to?). Then we sort of… ehhh… gave up in light of the six thousand years of recorded history of the country.

Instead, want to share this short text from the book Hungry planet that we believe gives an idea of the atmosphere in Cairo.

We would like also to say a few words about the scientist that succeeded in deciphering the Egyptian hieroglyphs, thus opening for the entire world, the opportunity to learn about Egyptian History. Jean-François Champollion was born in France in 1790. It is said that his interest in Egyptology was originally inspired by Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaigns 1798–1801. Anyhow, his success was made possible by the discovery of the Rosetta stone in 1799 by a French officer near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta. The Rosetta Stone is an ancient Egyptian stele inscribed with a text of law issued in 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V. The text appears in three scripts: the upper text is Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle portion Demotic script, and the lowest Ancient Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three scripts (with some minor differences between them), it provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Champollion published the first translation of the Rosetta Stone hieroglyphs in 1822, showing that the Egyptian writing system was a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs but he spent the years 1822–1824 on the task of understanding the hieroglyphs. His 1824 work Précis du système hiéroglyphique gave birth to the entire field of modern Egyptology. Champollion organized an expedition to Egypt in 1828 and made several other discoveries in the field of Egyptology and was subsequently made Professor of Egyptology at the Collège de France.

During the 1828 expedition, the Khedive of Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha, offered the two obelisks standing at the entrance of Luxor Temple to France, and one was transported to Paris where it now stands on the Place de la Concorde. Champollion died in Paris in 1832 at the age of 41, exhausted by his intense work and his expedition to Egypt.

Going back to cooking, it can be said that Egyptian cuisine makes a large use of vegetables, as Egypt’s rich Nile Valley and Delta make possible the production af large quantities of high-quality crops. Our friend Johannes gave us several links, among them these two (one and two) with a number of egyptian recipes. He told us that we should do a Kushari (could be transliterated as Koshary, Kosheri, and Kushari), a vegetarian dish that is very popular in Egypt. It is an inexpensive food, but still very nutritious served at roadside stalls and restaurants all over the country. It is done of rice, lentils, chickpeas and macaroni topped with tomato sauce and fried onion. Also optionally, with garlic juice.

Ingredients:

• 2 large chopped onions
• 4 cloves of minced garlic
• 1,8 dl vegetable oil
• 1,8 dl uncooked long grain rice
• ¼ tsp red pepper
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 can of tomato sauce
• 1,8 dl brown lentils
• 2,5 dl elbow macaroni
• ½ cup white vinegar
• 2,5 dl of boiled chickpeas
• 1l water

Preparations:

1. In a large saucepan, put the lentils in water and bring it to a boil.
2. Simmer over medium heat for 25 min, then drain.
3. Add new water to the lentils and then add the rice.
4. Continue to simmer for 20 min more or until rice gets tender.
5. Fill a separate saucepan with water, add a little bit of salt and bring to a boil.
6. Add the macaroni to the boiling water and cook until it gets tender, then drain.
7. In a skillet, put some of the vegetable oil and heat it up then add the garlic and simmer until its color starts fading.
8. Add the vinegar to garlic and bring it to boil.
9. Add the tomato sauce and some salt and pepper to taste, then add the cumin. Bring the mix to boil on high heat, then lower heat.
10. Put the rest of the oil, should be plenty, in another skillet and heat it up, then add the chopped onions and stir until it is brownish. Take it out of the oil and leave it aside.
11. Take a little bit of the oil used with the onions and out it on the macaroni and stir it until the macaroni gets the onions flavor.

Then you just have to serve and enjoy. We learned that Egyptians serve Kushari in layers:

1^st:  A layer of rice and lentils.
2^nd: A layer of macaroni.
3^rd: A layer of the special sauce.
4^th: A layer of the boiled chickpeas.
5^th: A layer of fried onions on top.

How kushari is supposed to look like.

Our version.

We really enjoy this Egyptian trip: Easy to make, very tasty, rich, cheap, vegetarian… Que demande le peuple?
A pity Johannes was in Egypt when we made this dinner so he was not able to give us his rating on our Kushari.

To finish this post, we leave the floor to the fabulous Swedish cartoon artist, father of Arne Anka, Charlie Christensen.

– “Look my son! They have been standing here for more than 4000 years!
Which other human creation could compete with this?”
– “Nuclear waste?”