Egyptian Koshari
Egypt's national street dish: layers of rice, lentils and pasta under a spiced tomato sauce, garlic vinegar and a…
Street food built on lentils, rice and crisp onions. 44 tested Egyptian recipes, from the everyday to the ambitious.
Egypt's national street dish: layers of rice, lentils and pasta under a spiced tomato sauce, garlic vinegar and a…
Jute leaves cooked to a green, silky stew with garlic and coriander fried in ghee and stirred in at the last second…
Slow-cooked fava beans crushed with garlic, lemon, cumin and a great deal of olive oil — Egypt eats it for…
Egypt's falafel, and a genuinely different thing from the Levantine one: split broad beans rather than chickpeas, a…
Broad beans cooked to a purée with an enormous quantity of green herbs, poured out flat and topped with fried onion…
Red lentil soup finished with cumin, lemon and fried bread. The default first course at every Egyptian table in…
The chopped country salad that arrives with everything: tomato, cucumber, onion and pepper cut small, dressed with…
The Egyptian tahini sauce, thinner and sharper than the Levantine one, cut with vinegar as well as lemon and always…
The Egyptian version, which is a salad rather than a purée: charred aubergine chopped rough and mixed with tomato…
The pink pickled turnips that come free with every plate of ta'ameya in Egypt. Beetroot does the colouring; the…
Small aubergines boiled, stuffed with garlic, chilli and pepper, and kept under oil and vinegar. Sharper and hotter…
Potatoes roasted hard with cumin, coriander and a lot of garlic until the edges go almost black. Sold from carts by…
Toasted nuts, seeds and spices pounded to a dry rubble, eaten by dipping bread in oil and then in the dukkah. Every…
The Egyptian okra stew: smaller pods than the Levantine version, more tomato, and finished with a hit of fried…
Vegetables cut large and roasted together in a tomato sauce until everything is soft enough to eat with a spoon…
Egyptian rice, which is short-grain and cooked with broken vermicelli browned in butter first. The default starch…
A thick soup of yogurt and flour cooked out slowly and poured over fried bread and onions. Sour, savoury and…
Flatbread stuffed with spiced minced beef and baked hard until the bread crisps and the fat soaks into it…
Penne bound in béchamel over a layer of spiced mince, baked until the top sets into a sliceable crust. Egypt by way…
Layers of fried bread, rice and slow-cooked lamb under a sharp garlic and vinegar tomato sauce. The dish of Eid and…
Cabbage leaves rolled thin around a herb-heavy rice filling with no meat in it, packed flat and cooked in tomato…
Minced beef and lamb on skewers with onion, parsley and a lot of black pepper, grilled hard over coals or under a…
Alexandrian liver: beef liver cut into strips and cooked in seconds with chilli, garlic and cumin. The whole dish…
The Egyptian fisherman’s rice: fish fried rather than poached, rice cooked in the frying oil and stock, and the…
Pigeon stuffed with freekeh and roasted, the most special-occasion dish in the Egyptian repertoire. Small birds…
Chicken spatchcocked and grilled under a cumin, garlic and lemon paste until the skin blackens in patches. The…
Sausage casings filled with spiced rice and mince, boiled and then fried until they blister. Fiddly, cheap, and one…
Smoked herring flaked and dressed with lemon, oil and raw onion, eaten at Sham el-Nessim with spring onions and…
Filo layered over spiced mince and baked in a tray, cut into squares. Nothing to do with Hungarian goulash — the…
The wholemeal country loaf, baked on a bed of bran at a ferocious heat so it puffs into a hollow disc. The bread the…
A flat wholemeal loaf enriched with ground fenugreek and maize, from the villages of Upper Egypt. Bitter, nutty and…
Layered pastry stretched paper-thin, folded with ghee over and over, and baked into something between a pancake and…
The soft white brined cheese of Damietta, cubed with tomato, cucumber and oil into a breakfast salad. Salty enough…
Grey mullet roe, salted and pressed and dried into a hard amber block, sliced paper-thin with oil and lemon. Egypt…
Ridged fingers of choux fried rather than baked, dropped hot into cold syrup. The name means dates of Damascus…
Torn pastry baked in sweetened milk with nuts and coconut until the top blisters and the bottom turns to custard…
Rice pudding cooked on the hob until it thickens by itself, with no eggs and no oven. Served cold in glasses with…
One-sided pancakes stuffed with nuts and cinnamon, pinched shut and fried, then dropped into syrup. The Ramadan…
Yeasted batter dropped in spoonfuls into hot oil, fried into irregular golden balls and rolled in syrup or sugar…
Shredded kunafa pastry baked crisp and layered with cream and fresh mango. A modern Cairo dessert, everywhere since…
Dried hibiscus steeped into a drink the colour of ink and served either scalding or over ice. Sour, tannic and the…
A cold white drink of soaked rice and coconut blended with milk and sugar, sold from urns in Ramadan. Cloudy, sweet…
Sugarcane juice, pressed and drunk within minutes. Nothing is added and nothing can be — it oxidises so fast that…
Yellow lentil soup, smooth as cream, with a hard squeeze of lemon at the end. The first thing you are given in Egypt.