Week 3 – Egyptian Cuisine
This Week’s Dishes:
Koshary
Recipe
Highlights from Cooking Classes at First St. Andrews United Church
Tuesday Class
Thursday Class
YouTube Cooking Tutorials!
Fried Onion Ingredients:
One (1) Onion sliced in rings
Salt
One third (⅓) cup all-purpose flour
Half (½) cup cooking oil
Fried Onion Instructions:
Slice the onion in rings
Sprinkle salt on top. Toss the onion on the flour and coat them.
In a large skillet, heat up the oil at medium-high heat. Cook the onions, stirring constantly for about 15-20 minutes. Looking for a crispy brown golden exterior.
Remove from the leftover oil, set it aside.
A lot of dishes around the world hold both cultural and national pride around the world as of course, food is mark of the creativity and resourcefulness of a people to create what is essentially an edible form of art. All of the dishes we’ve featured so far count as such, but Egyptian meal of koshary takes this a step further, as it is the official national dish of Egypt! (A little like how the unofficial provincial dish of Quebec is poutine!) Koshary, whether you have it as a street food or make it at home yourself is a combination of lentils, rice, macaroni, tomato sauce, an Egyptian lemon sauce, crispy fried onions, and a couple of spices (like cumin and coriander). The lentils give the dish a good deal of protein while also filling you with grains from the rice and macaroni. And not to mention, this dish features a variety of textures from the soft rice to the crispy onions, which makes koshary a real delight! Now, considering all the variations you can have with koshary, like adding hot sauce, chickpeas, and garlic juice, you can see how koshary can quickly become a comfort food! And while there are koshary vendors here in London, this meal is so easy to make that it’s worth the time to make it for dinner!
Koshary has roots as far back as ancient Egypt as a dish with cultural significance and it’s incredible to see how far koshary has transcended through the shifts in Egyptian culture over the millennia. In today’s Egypt, koshary is nicknamed “the food of the poor” because it’s ingredients are both cheap and filling, and is one of the most accessible meals found all across Egypt. And you’ll notice from the ingredients I listed that there’s not a single mention of animal products, so koshary is completely plant-based! Talk about being perfectly suited for this cooking program, eh?
But nevertheless, the classes are always so stimulating, and not just from our taste buds. Rather, I’m referring to the new experiences and knowledge that each tenant brings with them to class. Discussing topics galore with the tenants is one thing, but hearing them give their advice and ask about things unique or particular to their needs and desires from the classes is another! That’s because you get a chance to appreciate the circumstances that brought each tenant to this class and it’s more then more meaningful when they open up about different subjects on their mind or share their thoughts. It’s with that in mind that I feel this project resonates with me, because I love getting to know people better and engage with them, and that’s exactly what this program provides!
What I find absolutely incredible about this program sometimes is its tendency to attract pleasant surprises. Our Tuesday class size literally doubled in size this week for the first time and we were stunned! While we waited in the Indwell Woodfield Gate lobby for our cooking class participants to meet with us, we saw two additional excited tenants join us, asking about the cooking class. As we are always excited to welcome newcomers to our classes, Lucca and I were ecstatic! It really seemed like word of mouth of our program was spreading far and wide within the Woodfield Gate building and with the Indwell staff describing the buzz of this program to us, we’re quite sure that we’ve been making an impact. Tuesday also featured a visit from Khai, a videographer from the London Environmental Network (LEN), who came to film some shots of the cooking class to document our project as a part of LEN’s larger Incubator Project. I still have yet to see the videos and photos taken during that class, but I’m sure I’ll hear back from Khai about that soon!
Tomato Sauce Ingredients:
One (1) Splash of cooking oil
One (1) Onion
Four (4) Garlic cloves minced
One (1) Teaspoon ground coriander
One (1) Teaspoon Chili flakes
One (1) can (28oz) of tomatoes
Salt and pepper to taste
Tomato Sauce Instructions:
Finely grate the onion. Heat up oil in a saucepan.
Add the onion to the pan and cook them until translucent golden.
Mince and add the garlic, coriander and chili flakes to the pan for 30-45 seconds.
Add the Tomato sauce and salt, bring to a simmer and simmer for 15 minutes.
Ready to add on top.
Koshary Rice Ingredients:
One and a half (1 ½) cups Brown Lentils
One and a half (1 ½) cups Rice
Half (½) teaspoon each Salt and Black pepper
Half (½) teaspoon Coriander
Two (2) cups Elbow Pasta
Cooking Oil
Water
One (1) Can 15oz of Chickpeas, drained and rinsed
Salt and Pepper to taste
Koshary Rice Instructions:
Add 4 cups of water and lentils to a medium pan, bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for 15-17 minutes.
Soak the rice for 15 minutes. Add the rinsed rice to the lentils and turn heat back to medium-high, add the oil, coriander, salt and pepper. After 3 minutes add 3 cups of water, bring to a boil and leave it until the liquid is reduced, about 15-20 minutes.
Fill a big pot with water, bring to a boil, add one tablespoon of salt to the water. Add The pasta for 8-10 minutes. Drain
Heat up the chickpeas in the microwave
Assemble everything. Put the rice on the bottom of a tray, pasta on the center, and tomato sauce. Top everything with onions and the warm chickpeas.
Thursday marks the return of our most enthusiastic participant (and only tenant in our Thursday class) and their dedication to this program is incredible. They maintain their own little garden at Woodfield Gate and my the stuff that comes from it is fantastic! How do I know this? Well, this tenant brings us herbs and vegetables from their garden every week so that we can incorporate it into our dishes and oh does fresh produce pack a punch or what?! We added some fresh coriander and basil to the koshary on Thursday, and that accent of flavour added to the tomato sauce turned the koshary into a fusion between Egyptian and Italian cuisine and it was magnifique!
See Lucca is a great cook, and I feel that the support of the tenants is brought out in the food he cooks. Whether it’s all-round encouragement or some extra fresh ingredients to “spice” things up, it’s great to see that the tenants who join us our classes and have interest in our program are so devoted to extracting the most meaning from this as they can! I mean, we’ll only be around for another three weeks so I think it’s the right mentality to have! And sure, while this program may not last forever, the story behind this project and the impact we’ll have on the tenants will surely last. And that’s the thing about Lucca’s Plant-Based Cooking Adventure, we’re also here to inspire the tenants and give them something to take away from this program, even if it’s not tangible. For those that want to meet new people, we’re helping them do just that. For those that want to learn more about food and cooking as a whole, we’ve got that for them. For those that are interested in climate action, we’re providing for them as well. We’re trying to serve this program and its aspirations to as wide an audience as we can get and hopefully leaving a lasting impression on them at the same time.
