Fattah
Layers of fried bread, rice and slow-cooked lamb under a sharp garlic and vinegar tomato sauce. The dish of Eid and of every celebration that involves a whole animal.
Photograph credit: Egyptian Fattah by Oh127 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
What to Put on the Table With Fattah
- Torshi
- Salata baladi
- Green chillies
Sides from the same cuisine on this site: Eish Merahrah.
How to Cook Fattah
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Simmer the lamb with the onions, bay, peppercorns, cardamom, salt and water for 120 minutes, skimming the foam, until it falls from the bone. Lift the meat out and strain the broth.
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Fry the torn bread in 4 tbsp oil until crisp and deep gold, about 6 minutes, and drain.
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For the sauce, fry the garlic in 4 tbsp oil for 40 seconds until fragrant but not coloured.
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Add the tomato purée and cook 2 minutes, then the tomatoes, salt and chilli. Simmer 10 minutes.
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Take the sauce off the heat and stir in the vinegar. Taste — it should be assertively sharp.
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Layer a wide dish: fried bread first, moistened with a ladle of hot broth, then the rice, then the lamb.
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Pour the sauce over at the table, so the bread keeps some of its crispness under it.
Related guide: Choosing rice.
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A Few Notes
Vinegar off the heat. Cooked in, it disappears.
Moisten the bread with broth, not sauce, or it collapses.
Assemble at the last moment.
Common Substitutions & Variations
- An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
- A dry vermouth keeps for longer than an open bottle of white wine and is the closer swap than a random white left in the fridge; for an alcohol-free version, use the same amount of stock with a squeeze of lemon.
Keeping What's Left
Keep the components separate; they last 3 days refrigerated. Assembled fattah does not keep.
The Numbers per Serving
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
Cooked this? Keep a note for next time
Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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