Culinary Concoctions of Cairo

As a foodie who likes to proudly boast of my latest culinary concoction - earlier this week it was baked trout in a bed of potatoes and chorizo with a marinade of lime juice, garlic and green onions and a salad of arugula, blood oranges and camembert - I found the food in Cairo to be just as much of an adventure as the city.

Initially, I had thought that Egyptian food would lie somewhere between Lebanese and Persian. Wrong, wrong, wrong. As my half-Jordanian flatmate later said, 'Egypt is like the Wales of the Middle East'. The food was not exactly bad, but it was far from the land of pita and hummus. It was not the worst regional cuisine I've had yet - England still wins that one, with Poland being a close second. I will make a distinction between English and Scottish food, one in which I will proudly admit that I adore haggis. That's already on the list of things I will miss.

Back to Egyptian food. The majority of the food I tried was street food. None of it was necessarily bad, as it was all edible and initially I enjoyed it a lot. It's just very boring. For breakfast, Duso and I would normally go to the little sandwich-esque shop and buy a pita-like sandwich that had falafel (or the Egyptian equivalent) and hard-boiled egg. Then for lunch it would be shwarma (or doner, in Turkish, or gyros, in Greek), the roasted meat on a spit in a sandwich. Traditionally, koushari is eaten for lunch. Duso called it the 'poor man's food' and for about $0.20, you get a giant tub of pasta mixed with chickpeas, tomato paste, and spicy sauces.

My personal favorite of all the Eygptian dishes was ful mudammas (pronounced fool), which is traditionally ate at breakfast, although we had it for dinner. Made from broad beans, it was most akin to a bean stew. We asked for spicy, although in Egypt and what seems like most European countries, they have no true notion of the word 'spicy'. The restaurant we went to for the ful was one of the most picturesque places I ate at. Duso's friend, Morgan took us down the strange maze of streets that make of the Garden District where she lives. It is also one of the most colonial areas of the city housing the British and American embassies. When we got to the restaurant, it was little more than a built up stove, several shelves, and a wealth of plastic patio furniture. Lights were strung from every which way and among the variety of plants, it felt like our own personal oasis.

Setting aside, the ful was very good, worth eating again. They served the ful with tomatoes and onions and brought an omelette and bread to eat with it. The other notable items I found were the pastries, although not quite as good as the ones from the Armenian bakeries in Pasadena, and the Turkish coffee. But coffee deserves it's own post.