Monday, March 26, 2007

"This is a Chronicling..."

I'm sick of deep fried crap. I want food that excites me - visually, gustatorily and emotionally. Eating is more than just fuel for your body - there's a whole sensory system we neglect. It's called Taste. To quote Gordon Ramsay, our palates "are like cow's backsides." So I've been learning to appreciate tastes, to think about what goes well with what; and when to hold back and realise that 3 or 4 flavors are enough on a dish.

My dilemma here in cairo is that alot of the restaurants here are pretentious and serve absolute shite food - but charge me an arm and a leg for it. I can cook better.

And I have.

So the task I've set myself is as follows: to design a simple menu. 3 starters, 3 mains, 3 puddings. I've also added a curveball: to use egyptian ingredients in new and novel ways. So far, this has led to recent experiments with istambulli cheese and "basturma". I'm glad to say they have been a success; with only minor tweaking needed to get the dishes upto a consistently excellent standard.

We've got some great fresh ingredients here; from the produce down to the spices. It took a bit of doing, but I managed to decipher alot of the arabic names [Guzt el teeb is nutmeg!].

So now the plan is to chronicle my own cooking experiences and ideas, and also get out there and see what Cairo has to offer a 27-year old Male in search of the perfect 3 course meal. I'm not going to try and post recipes here - you can goto AllRecipes for those - I'm just gonna talk food. Comment or don't; read or don't - this site is more for me than it is for you - kind of like my living room :D

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hello!


I'm afraid that there is no such thing as fine Egyptian Food in restraunts....

Egyptian food is best eaten in an Egyptian home...rarely is it served in restaurants and, on the rare occasion that it is, is usually rubbish...the only exceptions I know of have closed down...

Egyptian Street food, Kushari very much included, is another category altogether. That kind of food though, is not usually served in restaurants and, again, if it is it's rubbish (the ridiculous over charging goes without saying...in Egypt, good food is usually cheap)

For street food you need a recomendation or to see masses of people continually attacking the place....that's the most reliable sign...Arzak in the Grand mall does surprisingly excellent Kushari...the Salsa will not eat away jailbars!...another excellent kushari place has recently changed management so I hestitate to reccomend it without trying


A Fellow Cairo Kook

 
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Not Hungry Cuz I Ate by Wesam Masoud is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at nothungrycuziate.wordpress.com.