Luxor4u

Hi,

Can anyone tell me of any Egyptian food that it easy to cook?! My Egyptian partner is constantly moaning at the 'English' food that I cook him ( it can be Italian, Chinese, Thai etc and he still calls it that horrible English food!). Don't get me wrong, it suits me that he doesn't like my cooking as i don't have to slave away cooking everyday but i would like to be able to cook one Egyptian meal ... especially as he is now saying that i should go to his mothers and she can teach me to cook!

Does anyone have any ideas on what to cook? The only thing that i can cook 'Egyptian Style' is the rice with the little bits of pasta in! (Sharia I think?). Also, what shops in Luxor should i get the ingredients from? (I'm also a hopeless shopper!! lol).

Thanx

E

OH Dear, your cooking must be BAD Only Joking

After ive cooked English, Indian, Chinese food etc for my Egyptian friends they seem to go off Egyptian food, and cant wait for me to cook again

lol that's sorted then Keefy, you can come round and cook for us!!

Actually Emma, going round to your mil's house to learn to cook Egyptian food might be a very good idea!! Seriously, by booking 'cookery lessons' with my sil is how I learned to cook everything from tagines to mahshi!!

Cooking Egyptian food does tend to be a labour of love though, as everything is made from scratch. But once you learn the basics, it's really straightforward - trust me, before coming here, my idea of cooking was to chuck a ready meal in the microwave!

Anyway, probably the simplest Egyptian recipe has to be kebab halla or waragat lahma - both meat dishes with onions & garlic.

All you do is cube about a of meat. Slice 8 medium onions and a bulb of garlic.

For the halla, fill a pot about 1/3 full with water and add all your ingredients with some salt. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 1½ hours until the meat is tender and the onions and garlic have made a nice sauce.

For the waraga; mix the meat & veg together with a spoon of simna and some salt & pepper. Lay them on a sheet of lightly greased tinfoil and roll it up to make a parcel. Pop it into a medium-hot oven for about 2 hours or so until the meat is tender.

Serve with rice, tahina salad, mixed green salad and some fresh balada or misry bread

[face=Comic Sans MS]Have you had a trawl through the recipes here in Kitchen Corner. There are quite a lot of fairly simple things to cook. I think one of the problems for we Europeans though is that often we have forgetten how time consuming cooking can be as we have got used to, if not instant food, many shortcuts.[/face]

Have you seen the book "My Egyptian Grandmothers Kitchen"?? It is a thick book with everything imaginable in it, it also tells you what basics you need to keep in your kitchen and so on

In addition to the Kitchen Corner and MK's book suggestion, you'll also find some very good recipes here: www.dinasarhan.com

I thought I'd read somewhere not too long ago, that Glyphdoctor had written, or was writing a book called 'A Simple ABC of all Egyptian Dishes' that was full of recipes she'd picked up from her Egyptian Mother-in Law over on the West Bank.

No, I never said that. I taught myself to cook long before I was married using cookbooks. Not from my mother-in-law! She's a good cook and I have taken some ideas from what she does and what my other in-laws do but I don't follow them exactly. I might remove ingredients, add ingredients, use a different method of cooking, etc. I make my food my own, rather than try to replicate someone else's cooking.

Because of the availability of things varying in Egypt too, over time you will find it easier to not rely on recipes but rather to rely on your experience when putting dishes together. Otherwise, you will find yourself unable to cook things you want because of missing ingredients. It really does force you to be good at improvising and preparing food without precise measurements. I have to admit sometimes I will start to prepare a few ingredients and only as I start working on it do I actually decide what the finished dish is going to be!

My advice would be to figure out what it is that your husband actually likes about Egyptian food. Is it salt, is it certain spices, is it fried things, is it meat on the bone etc.? Then try to find foods in other cuisines that are similar that you already know how to cook and start to introduce those. In the beginning it can be very difficult as people in Luxor are raised on a very limited range of dishes so introducing something too different can be hard, but over time you will find his tastes broadening.

Another way to learn to cook is during Ramadan keep yourself glued to the TV for the cooking programs. You can get a lot of good ideas that way.

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to say a big thank you for all of your ideas - im going to attempt to cook something 'egyptian' tomorrow night so i will let you all know how i get on. wish me luck - i think im going to need it!