Light My Fire

I've barbecued a lot of ribs, hamburgers and chicken in my time, but I never stopped to think where the charcoal came from, other than from a nice bag at the grocery store. Out here in the farmland, however, there are small corners of land where the owners of trees that have to be trimmed can sell their wood to the charcoal burners. These people layer the wood carefully and then cover it all with wet straw. The wood and straw are then covered with a layer of dirt and old charcoal and the wood is set alight. It burns very slowly over a number of days and then the fire is put out. When everything is cool, the mounds are opened and the charcoal is taken out and put into bags, but usually old feed bags out here.  And that's how they do it.

Strange Dry Spiky Thing

While visiting Adam Henein's garden, I noticed a string of objects hanging from a tree in the sun. It's a long time since I've seen dried okra, which the Nubians and Sudanese use to make a dish known as wayka. Wayka is a stew of ground beef, tomatoes and the ground dried okra. It has a rather interesting texture and is often eaten scooped up in bread. Delicious.

A Blessed Eid

Tonight it was announced that Ramadan officially ended today and the four day Eid el Fitr (known in our family as "The Cookie Feast) will begin tomorrow morning. After fasting from food, water, and cigarettes from dawn to dusk for 30 days, families will spend four days on a sugar high eating lovely powdered sugar covered shortbread, sometimes filled with dates, nuts, honey, or turkish delight. There are about four other traditional cookies for the Eid, but the kahk is my favourite. Virtually everything will be closed with the exception of the odd gas station or 24 hour pharmacy. This young girl from the farms near me looks like she's more than ready for some cookies.

The traditional greeting is "Eid Mubarak" or blessed eid. I figure that we've had more than enough Mubaraks, so I used the English. It will be understood too.

Working Against The Heat

A sweet potato vendor in the city, while offering healthy fast food, finds not too much interest in his hot treats. You can see the sweat on the tshirt of the man striding past without a look. He'll have better sales after dark when it cools off.

Milling the grain

We were riding through Sakkara village and saw these two women seated on the ground facing each other milling grain with an old stone hand mill. I suspect that they were grinding sorghum and possibly fenugreek to make a very old type of local bread. It's extremely thin and crispy with a slight herbal taste...Egyptian crackers. I love it and it isn't something that you can buy anywhere. You have to get it from the village women.

Full Service

I suppose it's pretty obvious that I love cooking and eating, and I love the fruit and vegetable stands in Egypt. This one carries all the usual seasonal fruits and vegetables (you have to go to expat heavy areas like Maadi for broccoli) and also has a small stand at the end that sells hummous el sham, a cross between soup and a refreshing drink that is a light tomato broth with chickpeas.

On a quiet day the men who run the stands find it more comfortable to sit across the little road to watch their shop and chat about the events of the village and world.

Flipping It

Last week we held a barbecue for a friend and she specifically asked for us to bake bread in our outdoor oven. It is a bit more work to fire up the wood burning oven, but the bread is wonderful. My housekeeper was showing everyone how to prepare the bread for baking.

Stuffed Cabbage for Dinner Today

No one associates cabbage with Egypt. Cabbage is cold, European. But Egyptian cabbage rolls as the village women prepare them are wonderful. They stuff them with rice, herbs, onions, garlic, and chopped tomatoes and then cook them in a broth until done. Fabulous, spicy, warm winter food. And our cabbages themselves aren't too shabby either.

Egyptian Fast Food..take one

This is koshari, a mixture of pasta, brown lentils, chick peas, rice, fried onions, a tomato sauce, a vinegar/cumin/garlic sauce, and an optional really hot chili sauce. This particular koshari was being consumed at El Maalim Koshari (The Koshari Boss) right next to the Sultan Hassan mosque and the Rifai mosque in old Cairo. Cost for lunch was about $4.

The Ghost of A Cow

Many Egyptians like their meat fresh, very fresh. On Thursdays very often one will see a beef carcase hanging outside a village or city butcher, possibly covered with a damp cloth to keep flies away and preserve freshness.

Spice of Life

To be honest, I'm not sure what all these things are, but they certainly are colourful. The selection is even better when you visit the attar...the spice market.

The Rolling Machine

Stuffed grape leaves are a favourite dish in Egypt, and at least in the old days a woman's cooking skill was partly determined by her ability to roll small tight stuffed grape leaves or cabbage rolls. The filling might include some ground meat, but more usually is seasoned rice. While at the Souq el Goma (the Friday Market) in old Cairo we found this gentleman who had a wonderful gadget that he was demonstrating. It was a rolling machine for grape leaves. What is the world coming to?

Cookin'

Clang, clang, clanga-clang-clang. A noisy percussion announces the butagas bottle man as he makes his way around the neighbourhood. In the city, homes have access to gaslines, but in the countryside the bottles keep our kitchens cooking. Some of the butagas men have pickups like this one, others use horse-drawn carts. The replacement bottle is about 6LE or roughly a dollar. One bottle lasts me almost a month...but then I'm only cooking for one.