Supremo French Toast

December 22, 2009 4 Comments

Lasted all of 3 minutes.

One of my all-time favorites is French Toast. Perfumed with cinnamon and maple syrup, I can’d enough superlatives to describe exactly how I feel about it. The mouth-feel as it slides down my throat, and the distinct clear flavors it has – Sugary egginess giving way to maple syrup and all the while, cinnamon watches from the sidelines, clapping loudly.

And you thought this site wasn’t about food porn. Give me a heaping plate of french toast, put on the porn groove music, and let the cameras roll.

French toast is also known by the Brits as Eggy Bread. So what. I like French Toast better. Essentially, we place the bread in an eggy batter, then griddle it until golden brown. It’s a great way to salvage stale bread, too; so if you’re not in the mood for Bread and Butter Pudding, then go ahead and rustle up a short stack.

But you’re not here for a regular boring recipe, are you? I wouldn’t have it any other way. Let’s look at the flavor profile of French Toast. There is the light perfume of cinnamon, contributing color and smell. Maple syrup is one of the most dominant flavors. That’s it, really. Not many people can taste the egginess, because most recipes seek to suppress it, and don’t allow it to come out in a pleasant way. An undercooked French toast can taste like a cinnamon omelet with little or no seasoning.

How did I change it up? I treated the egg mixture like a custard; adding powdered sugar and whipping cream to give it body. At the very end, I smear some creamy peanut butter on the french toast after it’s been flipped once. Not a lot, but enough to provide a grounded peanut flavor to the levity of the cinnamon and maple. And finally, I’ve added some fruit that would compliment everything already on the plate: Bananas and Apples. layer the sliced apple over the peanut butter side, and serve the apple alongside the toast on the plate. Drizzle lightly with Maple Syrup – you should treat it like a sauce, so don’t drown your plate in its sticky glory.

In the version I made this morning (pictured) I didn’t have any bananas and used an apple compote I make for apple turnovers and pies etc. I’ll include the recipe in a later post. If you can’t be bothered to make the apple compote, then fresh apple slices will do. Serve with a hearty mug of coffee or a glass of cool milk.

Enjoy the recipe after the jump.

Cooking Time 20 Minutes

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The Dude’s Shrimp Cocktail

December 3, 2009 1 Comment

Rye Bread Wedge? Interesting...

<First Published in CAMPUS Magazine, June 2009>

I don’t know about you, but I love a good shrimp cocktail. It could just be Jumbo Prawns in a cocktail sauce, or an elaborate affair with avocado and a whole assortment of other ingredients. Either way, it’s one of those things that brings a super-sized smile to my face. A great shrimp cocktail is a refined indulgence, best eaten when you want to be cool – both gustatorily and mentally.

A recipe I use incorporates many different elements, and is meant to be layered. I’ve eschewed the use of jumbo shrimp in favor of those beautiful little shrimps.  Since I live in Cairo, getting fresh seafood is not really an option, so I go for the frozen prepackaged (and cleaned) shrimp found at your local Hypermarket. The quantities can be scaled to your taste, the recipe serves one.

The recipe follows after the jump:

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Engineering the Burger

November 22, 2009 1 Comment

First Published in CAMPUS magazine, May 2009

We all love a good burger. As the (self proclaimed) King of Burgers so insightfully points out, we each like to have it our own way. I’ve known people who like to add peanut butter and bacon to their burgers; others go for exotic flavors, like Thai-flavored oysters or top off their patty with a gratin of blue cheese, Porcini and wild mushrooms. There are stuffed burgers, too; and that just opens up a whole new can of whoop-ass, so I’ll leave you to your imagination about what could possibly be stuffed into a burger patty.

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Food Memories: Beef Fillet in Tramezzini wrap with Balsamic Jus

September 4, 2009 2 Comments

About 18 months ago, I was in Frankfurt for business and stayed at the Sheraton Frankfurt Hotel and Towers. Deciding to forego the cheaper option of the airport fast food fare, I instead took a look at the Room Service menu. I Decided to order a Lamb Fillet in Tramezzini wrap served with a balsamic Jus. What I was served was beyond my wildest imagination.

It was probably the best thing I've ever eaten

It was probably the best thing I've ever eaten

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Tamarai Egypt: Now serving BS!

August 15, 2009 4 Comments

I reviewed Tamarai at the Nile Towers earlier this year and did not enjoy it. I will tell anyone who is generous enough to listen that Tamarai is the embodiment of pretentiousness and should be avoided if you are going there for the food. I still maintain that the Bar is quite good, but by no means should it be considered as a Restaurant that serves good food.

The Daily News Egypt has seen it fit to interview the Managing Partner of Tamarai, Mr. Vincent Guillou. The man is not a Chef; he is a restauranteur – it is very clear in the way he talks about Tamarai. He seemed more passionate about the misguided decor than about the food he allows to leave his kitchen. Especially galling is his claim that he wants to bring food to “the people”. Last time I checked, Tamarai was not hosting a Ma2edat Rahman (free dinners for the underprivileged). Mr. Guillou even has the audacity to refer to himself as Egyptian – nay, Egyptian-French – yet nowhere in his food do I see an Egyptian influence.

I’ll let the video do the talking. I’m going to sit back in disgust and watch the comments roll in.

Cooking Time: 4 minutes

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Making Pastrami

January 16, 2009 1 Comment


Around New Year’s, a friend and I were discussing the finer points of sandwich meats, and we found ourselves extolling the virtues of a well made Pastrami sandwich – which neither of us have had for many years. With nostalgia in our hearts and adventure in our spirits, we set out to recreate those oh-so-wonderful pastrami Reuben sandwiches now sitting tantalizingly in our minds.

A quick web search revealed a series of immensely informative articles on About.com on exactly how to make your own corned beef and pastrami. So now I was armed with the process of Brine, Dry Rub and Smoke, I needed to prepare the meat itself.

My Excellent Butcher, Samara on Hassanein Heikel Street in Nasr City, is a highly educated man. I love going there, because all I need to do is tell him the English name of the cut I want, and he fills me in on the cut’s name in Arabic, and adds a little culinary infoas well. The cut I was looking for was Brisket, which in Arabic is called “Dosh”. The same cut has a different name in Arabic, depending on the animal: the more familiar name of “Neefa” is the brisket from a sheep or goat.

In an Egyptian kitchen, “Neefa” is braised slowly after spending a day or two marinading in grated tomatoes, onions, green peppers and seasoning. The marinade tenderizes the meat and gets it ready for the slow braising. I’ve had barbecued “Neefa” before, and I did not enjoy it – it was too tough. The Butcher confirmed my judgment by telling me that any self respecting Kebabgy (read: BBQ Pit-master) would never offer broiled/barbecued Neefa, precisely because of its toughness. The Brisket corresponds to the Pectoral (read: Chest) muscles of the animal, near the forelegs. Those muscles may be big, but they’re also notoriously fatty and tough, since they do so much work.

That’s why we’re brining this bad boy; it loosens it up and in our case, can be used to impart some extra flavor as well. My butcher prepared a nice 2Kg slab of brisket for me, with the flat and the point still attached per my request. If anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing right, and I wanted the satisfaction of preparing the Pastrami from start to finish. I took the meat home and began work trimming and preparing the flat for pastrami. Another websearch yielded this very informative page on how to trim brisket.

Once the flat was prepared, I got my brine on. Cloves, Nutmeg, Cinnamon, Beef Stock cubes, Cardamom, Salt, Pepper, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder and Red Hot Chilli Powder went into about 4 liters of hot water.

It smelled of ambrosia.

I set the flat into the brine, covered it and let it sit in a dark corner of my fridge for 4 days. Thankfully, a trip to warmer climes eased the anticipation anxiety.

Taking the flat out, patting it dry and preparing a dry rub was pure joy, since I could already taste the goodness. The rub was the same as the brine mixture, sans cardamom and water. the final step was then to wrap it in mutiple layers of foil and placing it in a 350 degree oven for an hour and a half.

The result?

Not exactly what I expected, but not a total disaster. The meat had shrunk to about half its original size, and I overcooked it in the oven. In hindsight, I skipped a crucial step – soaking the beef in fresh water overnight to draw out the excess salt and rehydrate the beef a bit. Also, I skipped smoking the meat since #1 I do not have a smoker at home and #2 I could not find wood chips to smoke the meat with. Next time, I’m gonna try smoking it while its roasting in the oven – at a much lower temperature.

All in all, it was a proof of concept, and as a good friend of mine said – the 2nd time is always better than the first. I wonder now if she was talking about food…

Cooking Time 1 Week. Ouch.

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Not Hungry Cuz I Ate. Yesterday!

December 9, 2008 1 Comment

I rolled out of bed this morning and landed with a thud. Rolled is an apt word, because after the copious amounts of beef, veg and chocolate I consumed last night, my trunkal area has morphed into a $200 barrel of oil. As I opened my eyes the scent of the fantastic marinade my comrade made lingered still in these hairy nostrils of mine.

I’d eaten my fill, and I knew it. Total Serum Triglycerides – 250 and rising.

You see, its Eid. The Big One. The Greater Feast. And a few of my friends and I decided to make our celebration meal a Great Feast. I came a bit late to the shindig, and brought my own beef purchased from my excellent Butcher “Samara” on Hassanein Haikel Road in Nasr City. Seriously, as an aside, having a good relationship (or any at all) with your butcher is key.

I got a rib eye steak and a Sirloin Steak; each weighing about 350 grams. I marinated the sirloin for 40 minutes; the Rib Eye was heavily seasoned with salt and pepper and painted with olive oil and rosemary. A good barbecue does not rest on the seared flesh alone – we had sides galore: caramelized onions, beef and onion gravy, nutmeg and cheese pureed potatoes, and rosemary roasted potatoes.

There was a lot to go around, and we finished it all.

The thought to take pictures occurred after the fact, so I can only show you shaky cell phone pictures of the empty plates and pans. We did, however, have the presence of mind to photograph the dessert – a great construct of Brownie, Vanilla and Caramel ice cream, topped with fresh spearmint, grated mint chocolate and a chocolate fudge sauce. We also added a Roasted Marshmallow Kebab to round out the decadence.

Props to the hosts for the good music, good cheer and good spirits! It was Good. We ate much food. Happy Eid, Lads.

Cooking Time: 17 minutes.

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Cairo’s Best Burger: The Method behind the Madness.

October 30, 2008 7 Comments

I’ve turned into a culinary Kane. I walk the earth alone and sample the fare on offer by the countless vendors in our fair city. This self imposed quest was to find a hamburger worthy of being called Cairo’s Best.

But first, a little background on why.

About a year ago, an unfortunate journalist walked into Lucille’s one afternoon for the first time. Nostalgic and homesick, he was enthralled by the thinly veiled greasy spoon diner that is Lucille’s. He ordered a Hamburger, and it may have been good. However, a hungry and homesick judge is a judge easily bribed and swayed; and this man was no different. Desperate for some work, he mined his mind for a sensational claim that would turn a run-of-the-mill afternoon lunch into a Time-worthy article – The World’s Best Hamburger is in Cairo.

His plan worked, and unfortunately gave credibility to the argument that some poor misguided souls have been making that Lucille’s burgers are actually good. I refer you back to my original rant for some more vitriol.

Then, a jumpy young man over at Daily News Egypt started looking for the best burger in Cairo, and although he painted his search as “comprehesive” I have my doubts.Judging only by the location of restaurants that made it into his article, he seems to have put himself on a taxi budget of no more than 10 pounds; limiting his search to the expat-rich neighborhoods of Zamalek and Maadi. So although it was a nice try – it feels undercooked.

Now onto the task at hand:

When trying to determine the best of anything, a strict set of criteria needs to be followed. I decided that only plain hamburgers/cheeseburgers will be considered – no mushroom burgers, no bacon barbecue burgers need apply. I am not going to speak to the quality of the restaurant itself: I am focusing solely on the Hamburger, and its quality.

I also limited the candidates based on their popularity among Cairenes as a whole. This means that one-off restaurants like Crave or Spectra are not considered for this list, although they may be considered later on in a follow up article. The exceptions to this rule are Hotel restaurants. Special emphasis is placed on establishments that claim to have “the world’s best burger” or other iteration claiming their global uniqueness.

If you, my phantom reader, have a recommendation drop me a line. Give me a good reason why it should be added to my list, and why I should even be listening to you.

Otherwise, go boil an egg.

Preparation Time: 25 minutes

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The Koshary Quandary, Revisited

June 22, 2008 4 Comments

I mentioned very early on that finding the greatest plate of koshary out there was one of my purposes in writing this blog. To chronicle the Hunt. To search High and Low for that perfect plate of pure Egyptian goodness. And after I’ve found it, devise a way to bring it into the 21st century.

To understand Koshary is to understand the Egyptian psyche. We need a feast for the eyes, and also a feast for the stomach. This is evident when we sit down at a family dinner: the table is covered end to end in different varieties of food – mountains of rice, Penne and béchamel casserole, Molokheyya soup, plates of chicken and beef and okra stew in a bright red tomato sauce – all vying for valuable real estate in our stomachs, hearts and memories.

Koshary is like a huge dinner table, except its all in one plate. We’ve got the pasta. We’ve got the Rice. We’ve got the bright red tomato sauce. Koshary is a poor man’s dish, so there is no meat or vegetables, but to make things interesting, we’ve added lentils and chickpeas, and topped it with inexpensive fried onions, and drizzled a garlic vinaigrette on top for that extra “kick”

Meanwhile, the French are using soy sauce (!), Italians are making bolognaise ragù with Kobe beef and the Americans sit somewhere between continental and oriental cuisine; the culinary equivalent of an identity crises. One thing all American food has in common, however is that it’s all invariable fatty. Kind of like the American people. You are what you eat after all.

But I digress.

I decided to begin the hunt at Abu El Seed, ostensibly a monument to Egyptian cuisine. Since I had never been there, I spent these past few months asking around, and the feedback I received was generally positive, notable for the fact that while everyone recommended the Sherkasseyya (Chicken with walnut sauce) no one had actually ordered the Koshary. “Why not?” I asked. Responses ranged from “I don’t like koshary” to “why would I pay so much for such a cheap dish?”

I thought to myself: if Abu El Seed was making koshary using the exact same ingredients as Sheikh El Balad or Koshary el Tahrir, then we’ve got problems.

At long last, after enjoying sushi, raving about C+G’s and a thinly veiled rant about the sexuality of beef, I have finally gotten around to telling you, my nonexistent reader, what the Koshary in Abu El Seed is all about.

In a word? Disappointment. Much like Lucille’s “world’s greatest hamburger” moniker, I was promised so much by the hype surrounding the restaurant itself and let down.

It didn’t taste nearly half as good as the cheaper alternatives at KT’s or Abu Tarek. The plate had very little rice, very little lentils and was little more than a bowl of slimy spaghetti strands swimming in a sea of garlicky water. There were so many transgressions committed against this venerable dish:
- The use of spaghetti pasta – cooked al dente, no less! (Koshary is the exception to the Al Dente rule).
- Incorrect proportions of fried onions, lentils, chickpeas, rice and pasta.
- drowning the plate in Garlic water: I’m sure we all agree that the application of the hot red pepper sauce, garlic vinaigrette, and tomato sauce should *always* be left upto the consumer.

In the end, I realized I need to be more selective of whom I ask for restaurant recommendations. Unfailingly, the first thing mentioned is the dessert they “loved”, the fact they were starving when they got there and that the decor is “really cool”. Well, it turns out the dessert they loved was a 2 day old apple tart bought in from the Marriot Bakery and the decor is a cross between a suburban coffee outlet and a sheesha joint, complete with Bamboo chairs.

For Koshary, Abu Seed fails miserablty. And the search continues..

Cooking Time: 45 Minutes.

Filed under Egyptian Food, NHCIA Test Kitchen Tagged with ,

Using Pastirma

April 2, 2007 Leave a comment

What the hell is Pastirma anyway? And shouldn’t I be saying Pastrami?

While both share a very similar origin, and actually taste very similar; they are two seperate types of salted red meat. Pastirma, available in all former Ottoman countries, is stronger tasting and darker in color than the western Pastrami. These former Ottoman countries are for the most part Muslim, and share with the Jewish faith the tenent of eating only Kosher/Halal food – with a special ban on eating Pork products. Muslims also do not drink alchohol, so for a gourmand like myself, cooking with wine is out of the question – more on that later.

Here in Egypt, Pastirma is used in a similar fashion to Bacon – as a breakfast meat, and is commonly seen mixed in with scrambled eggs. But it has almost no use in an egyptian kitchen otherwise.

I’ve been thinking – why dont we use Pastirma as a substitute for Pork Bacon? The fat content in Pastirma is actually high enough to provide its own cooking oil, and yet it still retains a distinctly beef flavor. It is certainly alot more flavorful than the Breakfast Beef strips available at your local Stop and Shop.

To that end, I’ve started using Pastirma in my own modified recipe for Chateubriand, as well as using locally made cheese and mint as a stuffing for chicken breasts wrapped in Pastirma. It has worked beautifully. But the fun doesn’t stop there: do you want to elevate your mashed potatoes to a new level? Take a few strips of pastrami and put them on a tray in a 350F oven for about 7 minutes. when they come out, just break them into pieces and mix them in with sour cream, butter and chives. Viola! Heavenly creamy mashed potatoes.

Here are some tips for buying Pastirma here in cairo:

1- Make sure your Deli is clean – ideally, the pastirma should be a deep red color, not brown. If possible, ask the man to wipe down the cutting machine before preparing your order.
2- Tell him to cut it thinly. I mean THIN. Paper thin. there’s alot of flavor in there, so having a thick slab of pastrami even 3mm thick will overpower anything you wrap it in. Also, cutting it thinly makes it easier to use as a wrap, since thick slices tend to break up along the lines of fat in the meat.
3- If possible, ask for Garlic free pastirma – or just buy the Al-Marai brand. This brand tastes perfect – mild, yet still distinctly pastirma, and without leaving that lingering smell on your fingers. Its texture is also perfect, very smooth. Plus, it actually cuts alot better than the other brands; so the Deli man won’t have a problem cutting it thinly.
4- If you live in Nasr City/Heliopolis, just go to Spinney’s. The Deli there is fantastic. Tell the man you want Al-Marai Pastirma sliced “like paper”, and make sure he shows you a sample. It’s not being mean – it’s being assertive. While you’re there, pick up their Beef Filets cut conveniently into round steaks. They will come in handy very soon!

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