Around the World in 12 Dishes: Egypt

 

This month as we cook our way around the world, we’re finishing up Africa (which has my family excited because Kenya didn’t go well, very not well), but we ended well in Egypt.  With school starting we didn’t study too much about Egypt, because we’re going to be covering them in history this year as we cycle back to ancient history!

{This post contains affiliate links.  See my full Disclosure statement for more information}

I found two recipes to try out for our Egyptian meal.  First the beef:

Egyptian Beef Stew

Ingredients:

• olive oil
• 1-2 pounds stew meat
• 3 Tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 2 cups water
• 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 onions chopped (I used 3/4 of a HUGE onion)
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 ground cloves
• 2 teaspoons salt

First I scoured my shelves to make sure I had EVERYTHING.  No repeats of last time and randomly substituting ingredients.  Note taken, and fixed. I had a moment of panic while cooking that we were out of ground cloves.  I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do if we were.

Then I set the kids to chopping onions, browning meat, and what have you.  They quite happily cooked away.  {Note to self make sure to let kids cook more often, they LOVE it}

• Side note, I highly recommend if you’re cooking with kids, especially young ones, getting prep bowls {affiliate link} and pre-measuring so your kids can just add and go.  It seriously cuts down on fights if you’re cooking with multiple kids.

Egyptian Lentils (Koshari)

Ingredients:

• 1 cup brown lentils
• 1 cup rice
• 1 cup uncooked pasta (never saw where to add this)
• 1 large onion minced (we practically pureed it)
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

As a side note, I don’t think the recipe I linked is the one I printed off.  There’s a lot less ingredients than what I remember there being, and most of them didn’t get used in the steps.

{No pictures because the kids were done cooking, and wanted to play}

1. Cook lentils and onion until 3/4 done in about 2 cups of water (about 15 minutes)
2. Add rice, they said add 3 more cups of water, but I added slightly less than 2 (about 15 minutes).
3. At some point you should add other stuff in there, but my recipe never said to.  I read that thing 10 times, and had no clue when you added the tomatoes or other spices.  So I didn’t add them in, thinking it was a typo.  Having looked at 5 more variations of this recipe it looks like you add the garlic in while cooking the rice, and the tomatoes go on top of the cooked lentils and rice.

Just to try lentils, because I couldn’t remember having them before I tried a bite alone, and I think I must have overcooked them.  After that I mixed the whole mess together, and they worked together quite well.

Side note, whenever I hear the word lentils I think of “Into the Woods,”

“I have emptied a pot of lentils into the ashes if you can get them out in two hours time you shall go to the festival”  Bwa ha ha ha ha, now you’ll have the song stuck in your head.

 

Come back next month as we head to New Zealand (hint, this recipe is super awesome)!

 

Adventures In Mommydom, All Done Monkey, Crafty Moms Share, Creative Family Fun, Creative World of Varya, Glittering Muffins, Here Come The Girls, Juggling with Kids, Kid World Citizen, Kitchen Counter Chronicles, Mermaids’ Makings, The Educators’ Spin On It and The Hands-On Homeschooler have come together to help you on your food journey and will each cook a dish with our children and post about it – to help inspire you to have a go! Then go out there, cook, blog, and join in the linky fun!