NATIVE FOODS

Egyptian food reflects the country's melting-pot history; native cooks using local ingredients have modified Greek, Turkish, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Syrian traditions to suit Egyptian budgets, customs, and tastes. The dishes are simple; made with naturally ripened fruits and vegetables and seasoned with fresh spices, they're good and hearty. Food in the south, closely linked to North African cuisine, is tastier than that found in the north, but neither is especially hot. The best cooking is often found in the smaller towns. Although Egyptian cooking can be bland and oily when poorly done, most of the cuisine is delicious. Enjoy!

Bread

The mainstay of Egyptian diets, aysh (bread) comes in several forms. The most common is a pita type made either with refined white flour called aysh shami, or with coarse, whole wheat, aysh baladi. Stuffed with any of several fillings, it becomes the Egyptian sandwich. Aysh shams is bread made from leavened dough allowed to rise in the sun, while plain aysh comes in long, skinny, French-style loaves. If you find yourself faced with hard, dry aysh, do like the Egyptians: soften it in water, and if you have a fire available, warm it over the open flame.

Beans

Along with aysh, the native bean supplies most of Egypt's people with their daily rations. Ful can be cooked several ways: in ful midamess, the whole beans are boiled, with vegetables if desired, and then mashed with onions, tomatoes, and spices. This mixture is often served with an egg for breakfast, without the egg for other meals . A similar sauce, cooked down into a paste and stuffed into aysh baladi, is the filling for the sandwiches sold on the street. Alternatively, ful beans are soaked, minced, mixed with spices, formed into patties (called ta'miyya in Cairo and falaafil in Alexandria), and deep-fried. These patties, garnished with tomatoes, lettuce, and tihina sauce, are stuffed into aysh and sold on the street.

Molokhiyya

A leafy, green, summer vegetable, molokhiyya is distinctively Egyptian, and locals will proudly serve you their traditional thick soup made from it. The chopped leaves are generally stewed in chicken stock, and served with or without pieces of chicken, rabbit, or lamb. This soup can also be served with crushed bread or over rice. If you're served it straight, it's polite to dunk your aysh.

Mezze

These small dishes of various forms are usually served with drinks. Those resembling dips are made with tihina, an oil paste of sesame seeds. Tihina mixed with oil and seasoned with garlic or chili and lemon can be served alone, but when combined with mashed eggplant and served as a dip or sauce for salads, its called baba-ghanoug. In Alexandria, chickpeas are added to the tihina to make hummus bi tihina. Tihina also forms the base for many general-purpose sauces served with fish and meats and replaces mayonnaise on Egyptian sandwiches. Turshi includes a variety of vegetables soaked in spicy brine--it's always good with beer.

Soups And Salads

In addition to molokhiyya, the Egyptians make a variety of meat (lahhma), vegetable (khudaar), and fish (samak) soups known collectively as shurbah, and all are delicious. Salads (salata) can be made of greens, tomatoes, potatoes, or eggs, as well as with beans and yogurt. Western-type salad bars have come into vogue in larger cities, and here, for a few pounds, you can make a whole meal of the fresh produce. Yogurt (laban zabadi) is fresh and unflavored; you can sweeten if you wish with honey, jams, preserves, or mint. It rests easy on an upset stomach.

Main Courses

Rice and bread form the bulk of Egyptian main courses, which may be served either as lunch or dinner. For most Egyptians, meat is a luxury used in small amounts, cooked with vegetables, and served with or over rice, but meat dishes comprise most restaurant fare.

Torly, a mixed-vegetable casserole or stew, is usually made with lamb, or occasionally with beef, onions, potatoes, beans, and peas. To make Egyptian-style kebab, cooks season chunks of lamb in onion, marjoram, and lemon juice and then roast them on a spit over an open fire. Kufta is ground lamb flavored with spices and onions which is rolled into long narrow "meatballs" and roasted like kebab, with which it's often served. Pork is considered unclean by Muslims, but is readily available, as is beef.

Although native chickens (firaakh) are often scrawny and tough, imported fowl are plump, tender, and tasty. You can order grilled chicken (firaakh mashwi) in a restaurant or buy one already cooked at the street-side rotisseries and fix your own meal. Hamaam (pigeons) are raised throughout Egypt, and when stuffed with seasoned rice and grilled, constitute a national delicacy. They are small, so you will need to order several; the best are usually served in small, local restaurants where you may even have to give the cook a day's notice (a good sign), but beware--hamaam are occasionally served with their heads buried in the stuffing.

Egyptians serve both freshwater and seagoing fish under the general term of samak. The best fish seem to be near the coasts (ocean variety) or in Aswan, where they are caught from Lake Nasser. As well as the common bass and sole, try gambari (shrimp), calamari (squid), gandofli (scallops), and ti'baan (eel). The latter, a white meat with a delicate salmon flavoring, can be bought on the street already deep-fried.

Vegetables

Ruzz (rice) is often varied by cooking it with nuts, onions, vegetables, or small amounts of meat. Bataatis (potatoes) are usually fried but can also be boiled or stuffed. Egyptians stuff green vegetables with mixtures of rice; wara' enab, for example, is made form boiled grape leaves filled with small amounts of spiced rice with or without ground meat. Westerners often know them by the Greek name of dolmadas or dolmas, but beware ordering them by that name; in Egypt, doma refers to a mixture of stuffed vegetables.

Cheese

Native cheese (gibna) comes in two varieties: gibna beida, similar to feta, and gibna rumy, a sharp, hard, pale yellow cheese. These are the ones normally used in salads and sandwiches, but gouda, cheddar, bleu, and other Western types are becoming available. Mish is a spiced, dry cheese made into a paste and served as an hors d'oeuvre.

Fruit

In Egypt a multitude of fresh fruits are available year-round, but since all are tree- or vine-ripened, only those in season appear in suqs (markets) or on vendors' stands. In the winter, mohz (bananas), balah (dates), and burtu'aan (any of several varieties of oranges) appear. Special treats are burtu'aan bedammoh (pink oranges), whose skin looks like most oranges, but their pulp is red and sweet. The Egyptian summer is blessed with battiikh (melon), khukh (peach), berkuk (plum), and 'anub (grapes). Tin shawki is a cactus fruit that appears in August or September.

Nuts

Goz (nuts) and mohamas (dried seeds) are popular snack foods in Egypt, and vendors can be found selling them nearly anywhere. All are tasty; try bundok (hazelnuts), loz (almonds), or fuzdo (pistachios). If you like peanuts, the ful sudani are especially tasty in Aswan.

Desserts

Egyptian desserts of pastry or puddings are usually drenched in honey syrup. Baklava (filo dough, honey, and nuts) is one of the less sweet; fatir are pancakes stuffed with everything from eggs to apricots; and basbousa, quite sweet, is made of semolina pastry soaked in honey and topped with hazelnuts. Umm ali, a delight named for Mamluk queen, is raisin cake soaked in milk and served hot. Kanafa is a dish of batter "strings" fried on a hot grill and stuffed with nuts, meats, or sweets. Egyptian rice pudding is called mahallabiyya and is served topped with pistachios. French-style pastries are called gatoux. Good chocolate candies are likewise difficult to find, though Western-style candy bars are beginning to make their appearance. The Egyptian ice cream runs closer to ice milk or sherbet than cream. Most restaurants and many homes serve fresh fruits for desserts, and it makes a perfect, light conclusion to most meals.

Shopping For Food

The easiest way to stretch your food budget is to patronize the local stands and suqs, buying fresh fruit and vegetables you can eat raw. The prices are normally posted in Arabic and are fixed. Since there is no bargaining involved, you can just point to what you want, indicate how many or how much, and hold out your money; most vendors and small storekeepers are scrupulously honest. Small, local grocery stores occupy nearly every street corner and sell canned goods, preserves, bread, cheese, and soda pop as well as staples at government fixed prices. If the local grocery doesn't stock beer, there is probably a store nearby that does; ask. Here or at the brewery you can buy Stella by the case. Bakeries supply various types of bread and pastries at fixed prices.