The first meal I had in Egypt when I arrived last September was a healthy dose of ma7shy, which literally means stuffed. I think it's called that because what you are eating is literally stuffed with rice, and because when you are done eating it you feel "stuffed." A lot of things can be stuffed to make ma7shy, my favorite are the bell peppers, but we can also stuff cabbage leaves, eggplants, chickens, and yes, pigeons.
I ate stuffed pigeon. It's not something I ever thought I would eat, but it was just the beginning of a long list of foods I tried I never thought I would. Even more bizarrely, it was the beginning of a long list of foods I never thought I would like, but then ended up being okay with them, and sometimes even craving them.
Let's begin with the dishes in the picture on the left. Four of the plates are filled with ma7shy, the stuffed vegetables. In the middle is a duck, which I swear I ate a quarter of. For a week I was telling people the story of how I ate a duck, and afterwards walking like a duck.
Ana akalt rub3a butta, wa ba3deen ana masheet zay butta. Wuk wuk wuk. The green dish is mulikhia, which is a soup/sauce made from some green leafy plant, chopped to pieces and cooked into a seasoned, slimy mess. I used to think it was awful. I ate it at people's homes to be polite and because I knew everyone loved it. Surprise, surprise, after a few months I was asking for it.
These above dishes are very Egyptian, and usually the first thing people mention when asked about Egyptian food. A list of all traditional dishes could be easily Googled, so I will only include some here. But of course, between the classic dishes, there are a lot of other things people eat on a daily basis that are not so famous, like french fry sandwiches.
I honestly don't know what's weirder... That french fry sandwiches are a thing or that I have begun to order french fry sandwiches... And liked it. You can get these delicious carbs in carbs sandwiches from little corner joints that most likely also sell fool, which is basically refried beans.You can get refried bean sandwiches, fried bean sandwiches, bean and egg sandwiches, eggplant sandwiches, scrambled egg and tomato sandwiches... Basically bread is just a medium here for anything.
Koshari is a staple in my life (and will also probably come up on a Google search of Egyptian food, because it's everywhere). It's a pasta mix, available anywhere, anytime, and it's dirt cheap. Different kinds of noodles, rice, lentils, garbanzo beans, and French-fried onions are all smacked into a takeaway container complete with twisted bags of tomato sauce, vinegar, and hot sauce. Really, thank goodness for koshari. I vaguely remember a time I didn't like it, but fortunately I got over that, and now probably eat it twice a week.
Kofta can be found in a wide range of restaurants, from high end sit-down restaurants that charge one hundred pounds for a meal to street carts that sell sandwiches for four pounds. Kofta is seasoned ground meat grilled on a stick, this picture also has some kebab stuff mixed in, all served on a bed of parsley.
This is a picture of two kofta sandwiches from a street cart because, well, it's me and let's be real, I eat cheap. Way more economical. Plus it comes with a little bonus bag of vinegar-soaked vegetables that people here call pickles.
What are these things? Not sure. Some sort of boiled bean things. You can buy them from a cart on the side of the road, or they are often served in cafes or bars. You have to squeeze the bean part out of the skin, it's taken me awhile to realize I should always aim down because sometimes those suckers shoot out all over the place. Other popular street foods: cotton candy, grilled corn on the cob, roasted yams, peanuts, and cheese and jelly sandwiches.
Yes, that's a McDonalds. There are fast food joints everywhere, like KFC, Hardees, Cinnabon, Pizza Hut, even some Burger Kings. But the prices translate into about the same as you would spend in America, so expensive compared to local fast food places, like Gad. If you do go to a McDonalds here, the menu is mostly the same, with the absence of any pork items and the addition of some Middle Eastern flavors, like kebab sandwiches.
Fateer is kind of like an Egyptian style pizza, where it is thin, buttery crust wrapped around cheese, veggies, and meat. Or it can be sweet. I really like fateer, even though it's kind of messy to eat. Not like that's ever stopped me from eating something tasty. If you get a "normal" pizza, they are usually made without any sauce worth mentioning, and are instead served with ketchup on the side.
With one of the longest rivers in the world plus coasts on two seas, the Mediterranean and the Red, fish and seafood are a big thing in Egypt. If you travel to Alexandria, the first thing people ask you is if you ate fish and seafood. Egypt is the first place I ate shrimp, squid, and an entire fish (head and all, but it was a little fish).
When I worked in the school, the most common lunch kids brought packed with them were sandwiches. Usually they were made with long bread and white cheese. Soft white cheese is very popular here. Also romy cheese, which is a strong white, sliced cheese. At first I thought it was awful, and I like strong cheese (all hail blue cheese). But eventually... Yeah, I bought my own package last week to make sandwiches for work. Oops. Tastebuds change I guess...
Sent by a friend here's some more ma7shy and mulikhia, this time served with a chicken dish. The funny thing about Egyptians and meat is that linguistically there is "meat," which refers to dark meats like beef and goat, then there's chicken. So if you order a sandwich, you ask for either meat or chicken.
Another friend sent me a picture of this meal. Notice the salad in the bottom left corner. I love the salads here, because they are usually full of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and lemon juice. Very fresh. Also note the strawberries. The perk of living in Egypt is that fresh fruit is very easy to get a hold of. Oranges. Bananas. Watermelon. Mangos. Kiwis. Lemons. Pineapples. It's great.
I will never be able to see lentil soup the same after eating it here in Egypt. Delicious! The lentils are blended together, and you can order it with butter. Popular in the winter, it's served with dried bread pieces and onions. Even when you order it to go, they still send you off with a package of onions, which is the purplish bag in the picture. This is from one of my favorite restaurants, Kazaz, which is an Egyptian fast food place where you can get burgers, fries, kofta, and most importantly shwarma. Shwarma is the meat that they slow roast in layers on the really tall poles, slice off the meat and chop it up with tomatoes and peppers.
Naturally in Egypt, one is not limited to Egyptian cuisine. This is from a Chinese restaurant, and there are also other types such as Italian, and Japanese. There are restaurants from all price ranges, sometimes I walk into fancy places and feel like I am in America. It's funny to see familiar dishes like macaroni and cheese available with a local twist, even if it's just in the name. It feels weird to ask for "mac cheese" or "mac chicken." But I suppose it's normal to put your own twist on something.
Sometimes we eat a meal with some greens on the side, and you eat the greens just like that, fresh. They are usually slightly bitter, but somehow still good. Again, I wasn't crazy about the idea at first, but when you continually eat food when you are hungry, eventually you start to associate that food as something good.
It would be impossible for me to write a blog about Egyptian food without including hawawshi. It's my fave. It's basically flat bread stuffed with flavored, ground meat. The meat kind of reminds me of meatloaf, kind of spicier. It's greasy, fantastic, and served with a side of tahini. Tahini is the white sauce made of pinenuts. If you've ever eaten Middle Eastern food, you've probably had tahini. I think it goes into hummus.
We just celebrated Sham El Nessim, which is the first day of Spring in Egypt. The holiday goes back to pharoanic days, and people go outside to enjoy the fresh air of Spring. Traditionally, people eat salted fish and raw green onions on this day. This is Sandy taking the bones out of the fish for our "family" celebration. We ate the salted herring, which was okay. There is another kind of fish, faseekh, which is more hardcore because it's kind of rotten, but we didn't eat that one.
This plate is a mess. The picture was sent to me through my phone, thank goodness because I don't even want to think about it. I know you shouldn't waste anything, but are lungs, intestines, tongue, head meat, and kidneys really necessary? But I am scared to say I won't eat anything, because every time I say that I end up eating it. For example, liver. Used to avoid it like the plague. Then I was served so much in December I got used to it. I also always said I wouldn't eat stuffed intestine. Ate that. Didn't want squid. Ate that. Nutella covered pizza. Ate that. See the trend here? Hopefully I get out of this one though. And brains. I don't want to eat brains.
The cakes here are really creative. I enjoy birthdays. Bakeries offer a wide variety of pastries and breads, even the really odd cracker bread I stumbled upon one day, as seen in the following video (filmed by Hany with a guest appearance of Menna).
The moral of the story is that I started out not-so-thrilled with Egyptian food, but after half a year it's grown on me. Now when I go out to eat, I don't think I'm going out to get "Egyptian food," I'm just going to get some food. It doesn't make sense to make a huge effort to find foreign food. It's so much easier to just eat what's around me. I like that method more, because it makes more sense and I feel more like I belong. People get very happy when they realize I know my way around Egyptian cuisine. Especially when they hear I had shakshooka for breakfast (scrambled eggs and tomato juice), because that is so local I've even had to introduce some Egyptians to it.
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