Mission: Egypt ( Food And Recipes)

As soon as I have succeeded in getting rid of Shekhar Bhergava and send him back to India with a genius trick of mine ,another International Crisis occurred.
"Shakespeare's Love Potion " the very one that made Titania in " Midnight Summer Dream" to kiss a donkey, has been stolen!
The scientific community was upset
The World of chefs was upset as well. Many of them were waiting for this potion to uses it in their creations...
Who would be able and capable for such a criminal act?
Do I need to answer to that question?
For once more, I had to quit my vocation in Copa Cabana, where I was enjoying the Brazilian Carnival with 10 Brazilian beauties in order to stop the evil schemes of lunatic Agent Q?

But where to find this lunatic creature?

As you remember, she escaped Morocco with the help of Shekhar Bhergava's gene who transformed her into a cat. Where a cat would go to hide?
In Egypt of course!!! Cat is the Holly animal of Egyptians
(My little agent Q you are so young to predict Old big nose's next move )

I was thinking about Q while I was flying to Cairo. During my long flight I was trying to collect as many infos as possible for Egypt and it's kitchen.
A cat with no pedigree as agent Q would hide in a kitchen for sure...
Things wouldn't be easy for me.

Another culinary adventure for Bond, the gorgeous agent was dawning simultaneously with the Sun above the Sahara desert...

This infos are posted exclusively for Chef Talk not even Athenaeus knows all these things on Egyptian Food...

Everybody knows that the ancient Egyptians were superb mathematicians and engineers. This was the land in which geometry was born and where the pyramids were built. However, not nearly as many are aware of the enormous contribution to modern dining habits made by these same people.

About 5,000 years ago, Egyptians bakers discovered the secret of leavening. Not too many years later, other cooks, probably in the area of Alexandria, invented the first ovens that were small enough to fit into the average home.

The Egyptians also had the wisdom to realize that by combining olive oil, lemon juice and egg yolks you could produce the wonderful condiment known today as "mayonnaise". And, much to the dismay of people who love Marco Polo and all of the myths surrounding his trip to the Orient, it was the Egyptians who invented pasta.

The variety of Egyptian recipes is endless. They go back a very long way. Because of subsequent colonization, foreign influence is somewhat present, specially from the Turkish cuisine (it is understandable after more than 300 years of Turkish presence in Egypt). The "Pashas" living in Cairo mainly employed the natives as help and cooks. Their kitchen doors opened to Egyptians with their culinary secrets and, hence, Turkish food became part of theirs.

Due to a history of foreign trade with, invasions and dominations by other cultures, Egypt has borrowed lots of food from other people as well. These are mostly from Syria, Lebanon and other Mediterranean countries. However, even those were modified in Egypt largely, making them uniquely Egyptian.

[cape chef]

I sit eating my basbusa with biram ruz, and ponder the proverb"In water you see your own face, But in wine the hearts of it's garden"

Off to study now.
cc

[Suzanne]

Always the gentleman, Bond sent a covert message to Z, one of the ladies he knew would assist him -- not because they loved him (although who could not love such a suave, debonair, intelligent, sneaky man?), but because he always appealed to their higher nature. Perhaps, thought Z, Bond knows that while I eschew lipstick, for the next few days my fingertips are as scarlet as if dipped in blood, or maybe pomegranate juice. But if Bond wishes my assistance, he shall have it, for while he might be simple, he is nobody's ful. Just like this recipe:

FUL MEDAMIS (from: The Complete Middle East Cookbook by Tess Mallos)

Serves 6.

2 cups dried ful (fava or small broad beans)
4 cups cold water
1/4 cup ads asfar (red lentils), optional
salt
3 cloves garlic
pinch of ground cumin

For serving:
6 hard-bioled eggs, optional
finely chopped parsley
lemon wedges
olive oil
freshley ground black pepper
[list=1][*]Wash beans well, then cover with the cold water. Leave to soak overnight, in a cool place if weather is warm.[*]Place beans and their soaking water in a heavy pan, add lentils if used, cover tightly and simmer very gently for 5 - 6 hours. Alternatively place beans and water with lentils in a casserole dish with tapering sides, cover tightly and place in a very slow oven, 120 degrees C (250 degrees F) and cook for 6 hours.[*]Check beans occasionally, and add a little water if they look dry. Do not stir while cooking, as doing so will cause them to stick to utensil.[*]Crush garlic with a little salt and add to beans with additional salt to taste and a pinch of ground cumin. If desired, beans may be passed through a sieve to puree, otherwise serve them as they are.[*]Serve in soup bowls, adding a quartered hard-boiled egg if used, and a sprinkling of chopped parsely to each. Each diner squeezes on lemon juice and adds olive oil and pepper to individual tste. The beans and egg are usually crushed with a bord and bowl contents blended. Serve with flat or crusty bread, crisp salads, and tahini sauce.[/list=1]

[Athenaeus]

Egypt?

Where they kept a " Book of Deads"?
Athenaeus country?

Alexandria? Where two of the 7 Wonders were situated?Where the largest Greek community used to live nad prosper until the early 70ies?

Alexandria? Where Laurence Durell wrote his " Alexandrian Quartet" with his jewish heroine Justine?

I have to think about that...

[cape chef]

I thought before the plot thickens, I would offer what I no best. "FOOD"

2 recipes.

The first one is a light refreashing Orange and olive salsd with cumin.

8 navel oranges, peeled and pith removed, Sliced
3/4 cup black olives, pitted and cut in half
1 red onion very thinly sliced
juice of a lemon
1/2 teaspoon groung cumin
kosher salt and fresh milled black pepper
1 tb olive oil
**********
Toss together the oranges, olives and onions. Mix the lemon juice, cumin, S&P..then whisk in the olive oil. Toss and serve.
Pretty simple eh?

The next recipe is called Omm' Ali (Egyptian bread and butter pudding)
1 packet of roqaq ( type of cracker bread)
1 cup mixed nuts
1 T grated coconut
1 T unsalted butter and fresh cream
1 cup rich, well sweetened milk
*******************
Dry the roqaq, 1/2 sheets at a time, for 1/2 minutes in a hot oven, enough to make them dry and crisp.
Crush with fingers and place in a lightly greased oven dish. Mix nuts and coconut, and scatter on top.
Warm the sweetened milk and pour in over the dessert
dab with butter and cream and bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

[Athenaeus]

Everybody was talking about the News.

George-Giorgis, in the local dialect- was reading the paper sitting on the Bar of his popular and trendy restaurant in Crete( Greece)

"Shakespeare's Love Potion was stolen" was printed -in Greek- with capital, bold letters on the paper.

Giorgis smiled pleased.

" God, bless Q" whispered under his big , typical Cretan moustache, this very moustache that driving the Skandinavian tourist girls crazy about him.

" Some of my fellow cooks take themselves so seriously that they would start using this potion in their dishes. Soon we would see " Original Shakespeare's Love Potion Recipes"

For the people of Crete. Giorgis was a local guy who went to a fancy culinary school, came back to Crete and he made a fortune.

But very few people knew the truth on the identity of Giorgis.
This shocking truth was revealed even to Giorgis himself, 5 yeras ago, by a psyhic reader, a scotish lady that knew how to read the Runes.

According to this lady, Giorgis had lived again in the past as a man called Athenaeus of Nafkratis of Egypt.

Giorgis after trying hard he has remembered EVERYTHING:

The 14 books he was written, his parties, the food he has tasted, the women he had met, the wine he has drunk in his travels in Time.

According to the reporter, Agent Q was hiding in Egypt and the famous agent Bond was after her to take her .

"Maybe this Q needs my help. I know Egypt like the palm of my right hand and I have missed so much the dawn in Nile"

He opened a frozen bottle of beer , perfect choice for the burning summer of Crete, and he was starring at the bubbles dancing in his glass, smiling at himself and trying to put together a plan

"What are you thinking Giorgis?" asked him a friend of his that he has just arrived to the restaurant.
" Do you examine your beer" ?

Georgis, still lost in his thoughts replied.

"Did you know that Beer was invented by ancient Egyptians"?

"Really" ?

[Athenaeus]

" Egyptians? I thought that Summerians were first that they have invented beer. At least this is what scientists say"

" And how they can be so sure? Were they there" ? replied Giorgis angrily but he was not as angry as he was 2000 years earlier that he used to throw full glasses of wine on the heads of people...

Listen my friend to what I have found

"Beer was a beverage scarcely ever drunk by the ancient Greeks and Romans, although it was very generally used by the surrounding nations, whose soil and climate were less favourable to the growth of vines "

" You are right!Herodotus in his " Hitsory" narrates that he saw Egyptians drinking beer"

" Correct! Replied Giorgis.

Herodotus's statement that the Egyptians drank “barley-wine” is supported by the inscriptions, in which it is called hak, hank, or henk, and by Strabo (xvii. 1Strab., 14), and Diodorus (.i. 34), who describes it as a beverage almost as fragrant as wine, and calls it zuthos.

Columella (x. 114) tells us that the radix Assyria and lupine entered into its composition, the former doubtless to give it fragrance, the latter to serve the same purpose as the modern hop. But the methods of its preparation varied.

A similar drink was made by the Ethiopians from millet and barley (Strabo xvii. 2, 2).

Ancient Cretans were , among Greeks those who had strong relationships with the Egyptians.
The beer or barley-wine of Crete was known as korma or kourmi.

A similar beverage passed under the name of bruton in the north of Greece and Asia Minor, being made of barley

Of the barley drink called pinon, Aristotle tells us that those inebriated by it fall on the back and on no other part of the body

At least, this what Athenaeus of Nafkratis claims(Athen. x. 447).

We are told by Xenophon that the Armenians, instead of drinking their ale or beer out of cups, placed it before them in a large bowl. This being full to the brim with the grains as well as the fermented liquor, the guests, when they pledged one another, drank together out of the same bowl by stooping down to it, although, when this token of friendship was not intended, they adopted the more refined method of sucking up the fluid through tubes of cane ( Xen. Anab.v. 5Xen. Anab., 26).
Such images we have in wall painting from Egypt that date back to 2700BC

Athenaeus, says that while the richer classes in Gaul import wine from Italy and the district of Marseilles, the poor drink a beer made from wheat, with or without the addition of honey, which is called korma.

This Gallic use of beer is illustrated by a curious circular bottle found in Gaul and preserved in the Musée Carnavalet at Paris: it bears the legend, “Ospita reple lagona cervesa” (Revue Archéologique, 1868, xviii. 226).

" so many stories hiding in a glass of beer" said Giorgis friend impressed!!
" So many? " smiled Giorgis broadly. " This was just AN INTRODUCTION"

I am speechless <A>, where did you find all this?

[Athenaeus]

I have said many times that I use the TLG ( Thesaurus Linguae Greciae) program. Youneed to know ancient Greek to use it though.

[cape chef]

I second that, Your library must be incredible.

I was able to come up with some imformation as well, There is a great book by HPB, it's called isis unvieled. Most public libraries have it.

HPB says " Egypt pressed there own grapes and made wine, nothing remarkable in that , so far, but she brewed her own beer, and in great quinity-our egyptolgist goes on to say. The ebers manuscript proves know, beyond a dought that the egyptians used beer 2.000 years B.C Thier beer must have been strong and excellent-like everything they did (isis p.543)

Long ago i was interested in microbioligy and gained a diploma in zymurgy from a reputable british institution. The more I learned about the chemistry and bioligy of winemaking and brewing, the more I was amazed at thier history.making wine in fact is easy, even inevitable. Out a bunch of grapes in a container and, chances are, some yeast cells will settle in and you'll wind up with wine.The same for mead made with honey water.

Beer is another matter.To make beer you moisten barley (or some other grain)keep it moist until it germinates, then heat the grain to stop the germination (the result is called malt) and finally add water and yeast so the malt sugars fement. At first blush this procedure dosen't appear to be the kind of thing one would stumble on by accident(natural history p.24)

In ancient Egypt, the beer of kings was a sophisticated brew
By John Noble Wilford.

No temple friezes and certainly no billboards proclaimed it the king of beers, but it was the beer of pharohs, and of thier own workers whose labors on pyramids and statly tombs were rewarded with a generous flow of the brews that made ancient memphis or thebes famous.

Artistic depictions and written sourses attest to beer's popularity in early egypt. The elite and hoi polloi alike enjoyed beers with names likeJoy bringer, The baeutiful and heavely They drank through tubes from ceramic cups and sometimes did not know when to say when. An Egyptian papyrus of 1400 bc warned of dangers of loose talk in the taverns in witch they drank beer.

Scholors have not been sure how the egyptian brewed there beer In some temple art it appeared that beer was made by crumbling bread into water and letting it ferment by yeast from the bread. yielding a coarse liquid swimming with chatt.But a researcher at cambridge University in England has now examined beer residues and desiccated bread loaves from Egyptian tombs and found evidence of much more sophisticated brewing techniques in the second millennium B.C.

In a report published by Dr Delwen Samual in the Joural of science ( He is a research associate of archeology at Cambridge) said" The current conceptions about ancient Egptian bread and beer making should be modified" A microscopic analysis of beer residues, she said, indicated a more elabrate brewing process, Blending cooked and uncooked malt with water and producing a refined liquid free from husk.

The Microstructure of the residues Dr, Samual concluded, " Is remarkably similar to that of modern cereal foods"

In an accompanying article by, Dr Glnnis Jones, a researcher at the University of Sheffield in England, Who studies cereal- processing methodes, said the findings were," The first real scientific evidence for the ancient brewing techniques."

The study was made possible because it was a practice of ancient Egyptians to leave food and beer in thier tombs for the sustenence in the afterlife and the arid climate preserved those remains. Dr. Samual examined with optical and electron microscopes nearly 70 loaves of bread from several sites and beer residues from more than 200 pottery vessels found amoung the ruins of workers villages.

Almost all the bread was made from a wheat called emmer, sometimes flavored with coriander and fig. Both emmer and barley- not barley alone, as previoasly thought- were used for brewing. No flavorings have been detected in there residues.

An Analysis of starch granuals , in particular, showed that the Egyptian did not use lightly baked bread as the main ingredient in brewing. Instead, they seemed to use a two part process. The grains were deliberatly sprouted and heated to provide sugar and flavor. The cooking made the grain more susceptible to attack by the enzymes that convert starch into sugars. This batch was then mixed with sprouted but unheated grains in water. Yeast was added to the combination of sugar and starch in solution, and this fermented to make beer.

Eariler this year, Dr Samual and Dr barry kemp, a Cambridge Egpytologist, in collaboration with a british brewery, brewed an ale according to the recipe inferred from this recent research. The beverage was slightly cloudy with a golden hue." It does not taste like any beer I have ever had before, "Dr Samual siaid" It's very rich, very malty and has a flavor that reminds you a little of Chardonnay.

[Athenaeus]

Cape Chef

You know very well how much I hate the exchange of public compliments but this was great, thank you very much

There is a mystery on the Egyptian Breads I am working on this now

[Suzanne]

AHA! though Z: that's how I will help Bond subdue Agent Q: ply her with beer and Egyptian pretzels, otherwise known as Semit; after all, Agent Q surely cannot be anti-semit!

SEMIT from Memories of a Lost Egypt by Colette Rossant

Semits are soft pretzels with a crispy crust covered with sesame seeds. They are piled high in baskets and sold in the streets of Cairo.

Heat 1 1/4 cups milk in a saucepan, but do not boil it. Add 3/4 cup water, 2 tablespoons each lard and butter, 2 1/2 tablespoons sugar, and 1 tablespoon salt. Mix well and cool until the mixture is tepid.

Dissolve 3/4 ounce dried yeast in 1/2 cup water with a pinch of sugar. Wait until the yeast is frothy, then pour it into a bowl with the milk mixture. Add 7 cups of flour, mixing gently with a wooden spoon until you have a soft dough that detaches itself from the sides of the bowl. Form into a ball, wrap in foil, and allow to rest for 10 minutes.

Knead the dough on a floured board until smooth and elastic, about 15 minutes. Divide the dough into 4 pieces. Shape each piece into a ring about 4 inches in diameter and 3/4 inch thick. Dip into an egg beaten with 2 tablespoons water, then dip into a bowl filled with 2 cups sesame seeds.

Oil a baking sheet. Place the rings on the sheet, cover lightly, and set aside in a warm, draft-free place until they double in size.

Bake in a preheated 450-degree [F] oven for 10 minutes. Reduce the theat to 350 degrees and bake for 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

------------------------------------------------

Z realized that this was a dangerous recipe -- what if the enemies of The Shrub tried it? The main proponent of western democracy (HAH!) could be in danger. Hey, that's his problem. Let's just worry about Shakespeare's Love Potion for now.

[cape chef]

<A>

Thank you for your kind words, coming from you knowing your studies is quite the compliment.

I just want to clarify a little on what I posted and read,

Still to this day scientist debate how the beers of the Egyptians where fermented.

In addition to the soaking of bread to create the vessel to ferment, I also mentianed that Emmer wheat or barley where used to create the malt.

<A>
I read that dates may have been the principle flavoring agent.
Some say figs.
Any thoughts?
cc

[Pete]

The oldest known recipe for beer (and the oldest recipe period) comes from the Summerians. I believe that it is over 4000 years old (I will go check on that when I get home after work today). A few years ago a number of scientists and brewers got together to recreate this summerian beer. Charlie Paparizan (sp?) brewer and author of a number of homebrewing books was on hand. The recipe called for making a bread out of the barley and wheats, and using that bread as the base for the beer.

A new debate has now arisen among historians as to the role beer played in mankind settling down into an agricultural society. It is theorized that humans settled down and started farming to produce crops for the making of beer, as food was in abunance for the small groups (clans) who first settled down. Beermaking pre-dates winemaking, but it is these two things together that may have been the most important factor in human's transformation from hunter/gather to farmer. Of course this is only theory, though we know when humans started farming it is much more difficult to figure out what was done with the crops that were gathered.