Egyptian fried pastries

Polish: Ramadan
Albanian: Ramazani
Lithuanian: Ramadanas
Greek: Ραμαζάνι
Kazakh: Рамазан
Arabic: رمضان
Persian: ماه رمضان
Portuguese: Ramadão
Wolof: Koor
Telugu: రంజాన్

The Muslim Holy Month begins. Every laic knows it is about fasting. Of course fasting is only one of the exterior manifestations and Ramadan means much more than fasting only. And, fasting doesn't mean abnegation of all delicacies, quite to the contrary, after the sunset, delicious sweets are, well, maybe not obligatory but more than welcome. One of them is called dates from Siria, balah el Sham, Egyptian sweet fried cakes.

dough
1/2 cup oil (you can give less!)
1 cup water
1 1/2 cup flour*
4 eggs
vanilla sugar (1 pack)
a pinch of salt

sirup
1 cup sugar
172 cup water
lemon juice (about 1 tablespoon or to taste)
+ coconut flakes (1/2 - 1 cup)

1. Pour oil and water in a saucepan, add salt and bring to boil. Sift flour and stir until you obtain a plain dough which doesn't stick to the pan. Set aside to cool a bit.

2. Prepare syrup by cooking the ingredients (sugar, water and lemon juice) together. When thick, set aside to cool.

3. Whisk eggs with vanilla sugar. When oil dough is template, you can start adding egg mass little by litte while stirring constantly. Check the consistency; the dough has to be quite thick. If needed, *add some more flour.

4. Place the dough into a pastry bag with a star shape tip. Press the dough into frying oil and fry until golden brown but on a low heat. Otherwise your dates will be crispy outside and raw inside! When ready, put them on a paper kitchen towel to avoid excessive oil contain. When still warm, deep them into the syrup for some minutes. You can deep warm dates in cold sirup or cold dates in warm sirup. Then roll in coconut flakes.

My balah el sham are a bit long, almost like Spanish churros. They are traditionally about 3 cm long.

Pictures will be available very soon. I just have to find them on my pendrive :)

Edit: I have the pics now. The quality is not the best but the pics are just to give you the idea about this dish :)

Egyptian lentil soup

Polish: soczewica
Chuvash: Ясмăк
Mokshan: babanjsnavnae
Gujarati: દાળ
Arabic: عدس
Swahili: dengu
Guarani: kumanda mirĩ
Malagasy: voa
Kurdish: nîsk
Albanian: thjerrëz

Lentil soup is eaten worldwide, hence it has many, many variants. In my family we rather eat lentils as a filling to differrent dumplings and fritters while pulse soup contains rather yellow peas or big white beans, so I was very excited to learn this Egyptian way of preparing other pulse, protein-reach and vegetarian soup, شربة عدس, which makes your body warm in the wintertime.

1/2 kg lentils (red or yellow)
1 mediom potato
2 medium tomatoes
a medium bunch of carrots
some garlic cloves, depending on your personal taste (I take 5-6 cloves)
1 medium onion + 2 more
salt + cumin
lemon (chunks)

1. Wash lentils and put them in a saucepan with 1/2-3/4 l water. Start cooking and in the meantime peel and dice or grate carrots, onion, potato and garlic, cut each tomato into 4 chunks and add those vegetables to cooking lentils. After several minutes, take tomatoes off and peel them (it will come very easily to peel them now). Add salt and cumin o taste. Cook on a low heat until the lentils are disintegrated and vegetable chunks soft (about 1/2 hour)

2. Cut finely the rest of the onions and fry until golden brown. Rub already cooked soup rub through a sieve or blend in a food processor. Pour back into the saucepan, add fried onions and cook again.

3. Serve with lemon chunks (so that each person can pour lemon juice) and bread

Egyptian-style fish

Polish: ryba
Erzya: калт
Abkhazian: аҧсыӡ
Tatar: balık
Somali: kaluun
Navajo: Łóó'
Uyghur: بېلىق
Bashkir: балыҡ
Tajik: моҳӣ
Burmese: ငါး

-> fish (I used Lachsforelle - a kind of trout with pink, salmon-like meat)
-> marinade: salt, cumin, garlic, lemon juice, flour
-> rice, onions
-> tahina, vinegar, parsley, grlic

1. Clean the fish and throw away everything that has to be thrown. Clean the skin of the fish with a knife. Cut the fish into portions and cut the skin of each portion.

2. Prepare spices: mix about 2 teaspoons salt with same amount of cumin, add 5-6 minced garlic cloves and so much lemon juice until you obtain a spreadable cream. Spread it on the fish skin and put into the holes you cut on the skin same as inside the fish. The best would be to put the fish to the fridge overnight, but if not, some hours are enough.





3. You should not eat fish with other rice than onion rice :) So cut onions finely into chunks and fry until slightly brown. Put in a saucepan and cook with 1 cup water. When boiling, add washed rice (as much as you want but let's say 2 cups of rice + 2 medium onions) and so much water so that there are about 2 cm water over the rice surface. When it starts boiling, simmer on a low heat until ready.

4. Sprinkle fish chunks with flour and fry. Serve with onions rice and tahina cream mixed with vinegar, water, chopped parsley and minced garlic.

Egyptian vermicelli with sugar

Polish: krajanka / nitki
German: Fadennudeln
Portuguese: aletria
Turkish: tel şehriye
Spanish: fideos
Estonian: niitnuudlid
Bresciano: formentì
Greek: φιδές
Persian: ورمیشل
Czech: vlasové nudle

I am not a big fan of pasta; actually, I prepare them sparsely at home. Once a month or less. But Egyptian-style sugar vermicelli is something I really like, depsite of being pasta :) It was the first Egyptian dish I actually tried. Cheap, easy and sweet, is a good alternative if you wanna eat something sweet but your fridge is empty. I hope you will enjoy شعرية بالسكر, Egyptian vermicelli with sugar recipe, as well!

vermicelli (let's say, 1/2 pack / about 1 cup)
ghee, 1 tablespoon or more
water (about 1/2 liter)
sugar to taste, about 5 tablespoons

1. Fry vermicelli in ghee until golden brown, stirring all the time. Do not burn them!



2. In a saucepan, dissolve sugar in water. Add golden vermicelli (together with ghee in which it was fried). Cook on a medium heat until vermicelli are soft

3. You can serve it hot or cooled (my idea is to sprinkle the dish with cinnamon and serve with vanilla quark)

Egyptian fried eggplant

Polish: bakłażan
Maldivian: ބަށި
Ilokano: tarong
Vietnamese: CPà tيm
Armenian: րադենջան
Slovenian: jajčevec
Romanian: vânătă
Malagasy: baranjely
Georgian: ბადრიჯანი
Corsican: malinzana

Did you ever wonder why is eggplant actually called... eggplant? Well, the ancient eggplants were not violet and long, but white and egg-shaped. You can find white eggy aubergines until today, but not here in the heart of Europe. In Poland, until XIX century, eggplants and tomatoes were considered nothing but decorative garden plants! My poor grand-grand-grand-grandparents, they never tried delicious fried aubergines! I spied on this recipe from an Egyptian so I consider it Egyptian, but I guess باذنجان مقلي can be served anywhere where eggplants popular are. Egyptians serve them with koshary and fried yellow peppers. Recipes for those dishes will appear soon, I promise!

aubergine (-s)
salt
cumin
lemon juice (vinegar)
garlic cloves

1. Cut eggplants in 0,5cm - 1cm slices. Sprinkle with salt and leave for 30 minutes

2. They are ready when drops of water appears on its surface



3. Fry eggplants (oil has to be really hot) from both sides until golden

4. Prepare the sauce: combine lemon juice (vinegar) with salt, kammun and chopped garlic cloves (proportions to taste)

5. Deep each slice in lemon juice sauce and leave on a plate.

Egyptian zucchini pudding

Polish: cukinia
Azeri: kədü
Suahili: boga dogo
Kurdish: kundir
Slovenian: bučka
Arabic: كوسه
Bulgarian: тиквичка
Valencian: carabassi
Sicilian: cucuzzedda
Afrikaans: murgpampoentjie
Malagasy: korizety
Hindi: तुरई

Courgette is a funny vegetable. Actually, you don't even realize that botanically this lovely green vegetable is just a swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower. Unlike pumpkin, we eat it immature, before it grows really long and gets a pumpkin-like, hard shell. Its delicate taste makes this vegetable so universal that you can prepare it mild, spicy or even sweet. Just like this Egyptian courgette pudding; مهلبيه بالكوسه : Believe me that it tastes delicious!

see also: Brasilian corn pudding

1 medium courgette
4 tablespoons sugar
1/3 cup water
1 1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons potato flour (or ground rice)

1. Wash the courgette carefully; it will be eaten unpeeled (to give a bit crunchy texture). Cut it into very very thin slices.

2. Cook the vegetable slices with sugar and water until soft.

3. Combine 1/2 cup milk with starch. The rest of the milk should be added to courgette.

4. When milk with courgette boils, take it off from the heat, add the lasting milk with starch and stir. When homogeneous, cook again until you see bubbles. Decorate and serve!

Egyptian rice

Polish: ryż
Aymara: arusa
Turkish: pirinç
Wolof: maalo
Thai: ข้าว
Tagalog: palay
Caló: corpiche
Samoan: alaisa
Mongolian: тутрага
Maori: raihi
Malay: padi
Chechen: дуга
Arabic: أرز
Icelandic: hrísgrjón

This Egyptian method of cooking rice is one of many Egyptian ways, since they eat a lot of rice. If you use yasmin rice, the savour will be magic. First you have to wash the rice several times, until the water from washing is clean and not milky. You should not break the rice grains, so wash it carefully.

1 cup washed rice
1 spoon clarified butter (ghee or Butterschmalz, you can do it at home, I will show you how but not today)
salt

1. Ghee has to be melted and hot in the pot. Drain two spoons of rice and fry them until light brown. If ghee was really hot, your rice may puff but that is not a problem



2. When ready, add the rest of rice and water. How much? Just to cover the rice and 1 cm more. Add salt (usually half spoon) and try if the water tastes good. Add more salt if needed.

3. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes without mixing. When rice absorbs all the water, let it rest on a very low heat some minutes more. It should be loose and shouldn't stick to the bottom of the pot.