Fada Finds Fondue…fabulous!

This has been a busy year! I moved house in February and suddenly found that I had nothing to cook with as Egyptians take everything from a place when they leave: the kitchen was bare, with just an outlet to attach a gas cooker and a pipe in the wall where a sink should be. Deciding that this was an opportunity to be inventive rather than an excuse to simply order take-aways, I invested in a trivet and began making chocolate fondue. I could have made savoury versions but grilled chicken and fish are cheap and available five minutes from my apartment so it was the sweet course that was missing when I had guests.

Chocolate fondue is just so easy and so delicious! It’s also wonderfully sociable – everyone loves it because they get a chance to join in the ‘cooking’. Because everyone chooses what to dip (and what size and in what order and with how much chocolate) no one is disappointed. And, it’s fun! There are cries of,’Oh no, I’ve lost my mango…mmm, but I’ve found a marshmallow!’ ‘Hey! That’s mine!’.

Chocolate Fondue

About 200 ml of runny cream (whipping or single)

About 200 grams of chocolate broken into pieces (can be any kind, dark or milk)

Some drops of vanilla essence or a small sachet of powder

Slowly heat the cream in a sturdy saucepan and add the chocolate pieces and vanilla. You can start this off on your stove if you like (using a ‘bain marie’ to heat even more slowly if you prefer – big pan of simmering water with a smaller pan inside it with the ingredients).

Serve with marshmallows and any kind of fruit – it’s all delicious!

Saronic Cheese Melt

Heba here! I've been off the blog a while, creating food memories all over the world - Thailand, Italy, America; and now Greece. Many restaurants, textures, flavors and memories to write about when, and if, I find the time.

I am currently sitting on the balcony of a picturesque hotel on the isle of Hydra in the Saronic Islands of Greece. The dark clouds of early morning are breaking to a beautiful blue sky. Last night's appetizer so enthralled me that I have to write about it before I set off this morning, as there is no photograph, only the imprint of flavors and textures left behind on my palate.

The reason there is no photograph is the plate looked like an unappetizing hot mess.

First, let me set the scene. A quiet, nearly deserted alleyway (tourist season ends this week, and few people beyond the locals are about) mom-and-pop restaurant with dark blue painted furniture on a raised stone porch. Much of the menu is unavailable because, as I mentioned, the tourists are all gone and only one other family would sit down at the restaurant in the hour or so we were there.

The menu plied me with a description of "Feta with peppers and tomatoes." I've had feta with peppers and tomatoes in Greece before. It was perfectly delicious and looked like this:




When my feta was delivered, what I got was so much more than a block of feta in tinfoil.

Presented me was a round baking dish fresh out of the oven, brimming with bubbling creamy tomato sauce. In the center, I could see a mound of melted cheese with just the tip of a roasted red pepper sticking out.

It did not look like feta. In fact, it looked like rustic lasagna, the kind I like to order from my neighborhood Italian place in Cairo.

The layer of flavors and textures emerged when I first dug my fork in. On the very top of the dish was a sprinkling of parmesan that I hadn't seen in the dim porch lighting. It was sprinkled on mozzarella, which was hiding a quarter of a roasted red pepper that was draped across a large block of hot feta that had still some of it's feta-y texture, despite having been baked in tomato sauce.

The rich creaminess of the sauce, the surprise bite-sized pieces of green pepper that hid deep within it, and the mixture of parm, molten mozzarella, and feta created a flavor sensation of that a cheese lover like me cannot describe without getting a bit weepy.

I may never get back to Hydra, I may never get back to that little mom-and-pop (which if you are here and looking, is next to Amalour bar, though I couldn't read the name of the restaurant as it was in Greek), but I'll remember the layers of cheeses I never thought would go together and try to recreate it for years. I know I'll never succeed, however I try, because it wasn't just the meal, it was the journey.

More of Fada's Veggie Love: Artichokes

Vegetables are like people. Some are friendly and familiar: like potatoes and carrots, you always feel comfortable around them and know what to do with them. Some you can only take in small doses, like chili peppers and horseradish. Some are essential for your well being and are with you all the time, like onions and garlic. There are the ones you don't get on with at all: beetroot for me. Then there are the awkward ones: artichokes are like that, but don't be afraid of them! They're delicious characters once you get to know them! I love them because they have a nuttiness of flavour and seem a vegetable of substance (like aubergines, potatoes or avocados).

Unfamiliar and strange looking vegetables can be daunting when you don't know anything about them: artichokes fall into that category for me as I don't think I even knew they existed till I was about 25. How do you cook them? How exactly do you eat them and which bits?


Firstly, you choose as many artichokes as will fit in a pot standing upright as this is how they will be boiled. Soak the artichokes in salt water before cooking as I've been told that sometimes insects hide in between the leaves though I can't remember ever finding any. Give them a good rinse and add, standing up, to boiling water. They take about 20-25 minutes to cook and you can tell when they're done by sticking a knife into them - the knife will go in easily. You can eat them hot in which case you serve them with melted butter and salt (added to the butter) or, you can let them go cold, and serve with a vinaigrette or add to other salads.

So, how do you eat them? Well, from the outside in...tear off the leaves, dip the tips into a salted butter sauce and scrape off the fleshy ends of leaves with your teeth. Delicious! Once all the leaves are off, you'll be faced with the 'choke' - a fibrous, hairy mass protecting the 'heart' - the tender, delicious base of the plant. Very young artichokes have no 'heart' and so you can eat all the middle bit. Older ones have a lot of 'heart' so you have to take it out with a teaspoon/fingers/a knife. Something here seems metaphorical...

Heba's Meat Sauce

A little contrast to Fada's Ode to Veg...

As a child, my mother was a big believer in the power of the grill. London Broil, the occasional Filet Mignon, BBQ Chicken, Rockfish - nary a week went by during the warmer months that one of these tasty treats was not served up direct from the grill. The charred-on-the-edges piece of meat was typically delicious with a slight crunch on the outside and a delicate pinkness to the middle (I was a big fan of ‘medium rare’ as a kid) and was welcome even in my years of dedication to and worship of Chinese take-out and pizza delivery.

After I left the nest, however, I couldn’t quite get red meat to do that; mostly because I didn’t have a grill. But even when a grilling option presented itself, I still just didn’t enjoy red meat as much. A rare prime rib at Nye’s Polonaise in St. Paul, Minnesota was a nostalgic treat from my days tagging along to grown-up functions at rental halls with my grandmother and great aunt. It was juicy, savory, and the kitsch factor was fantastic - but it wasn’t what I wanted from red meat, exactly. (BTW, if you are EVER in Minnesota - you MUST go to Nye’s - best night out of polka/kareoke/vintage-style dinner/tiki-ness I’ve ever had!) In Paris, I ordered a lovely something-meaty-in-peppercorn-sauce but felt that the meal just tasted like...well, peppercorn. In fact, even the frites that came with the meal ended up tasting of peppercorn (not exactly what I was hoping for after a day spent scaling the narrow stairwell of the Sacre Coeur). In Mainz, Germany, I enjoyed the garlic-butter concoction that was served with every kind of meat - it was tasty and artery clogging just like meat should be; but couldn’t meat be better than this?

My home experiments with red meat were even worse. Beyond adding a packet of Old El Paso taco seasoning (still my taco seasoning of choice) to ground beef - I couldn’t seem to get any flavor into my steak. Kebabs, stir fry, teriyaki, glazes, marinades, sauces...the meat either stopped tasting like meat or just seemed like a waste of money - all I was doing was murdering this poor animal for a second time by drowning it in preservatives and processes.

For me, the best red meat restaurant dining experiences always involved some sort of thick, dark sauce on the meat that stuck to the steak as if it had oozed from it. Surely there was some sort of soy-teriaki-marshmallow-molasses base to these sauces? Surely there was some deep dark secret that no one was sharing with me.

Leave it to Julia Child to show me the light. Her basic red-wine reduction recipe for steak was my first attempt ever at a reduction of any kind. Just a bit of the steak juice mixed with some butter, garlic, onion (I was plum out of scallions) and red wine was all it took to get amazing flavor OUT of the steak. Instead of trying to mask the steak with some processed flavor, the red wine reduction actually brought the flavor of the steak center stage and highlighted it. I felt as if I had been saved...from a lifetime of badly prepared meat dishes.

I even got creative with the leftovers. I sliced the cold leftover steak into 1/4” thick strips and pan seared them in the very-hot left-over red wine reduction (there wasn’t much left to be honest). I also pan ‘fried’ some shrimp in olive oil, rosemary, basil and garlic and served it to myself with asparagus and goat cheese (pictured). The perfect bite (a bit of shrimp, a bit of the seared off, red wine soaked steak, and a daub of goat cheese) was possibly the best flavor combination I’ve ever cooked myself.

Now, as a rule I don’t order a lot of beef when I go to restaurants. I prefer to order things that don’t make me sleepy or too full. However, reeling from my revelation that GOOD SAUCE can make beef into something extraordinary, I tossed caution to the wind last night at a local Egyptian restaurant called Abou El-Sid. Last night I ordered the Abou El-Sid Beef Tournedo.

This was, again, well sauced beef. I seem to be on a roll. The sauce was creamy and rich, with chicken liver and green peppers used to flavor it.

I ended up almost eating my finger as I ran it around the plate trying to get every last drop of the delicious sauce to hit my every taste bud - lest I waste a single droplet.

I don’t think I’ll be eating any more beef than I used to. I think it will still be only once a month or so - for the sake of my ever-expanding mid-section and ever-thinning wallet. But now I know that when I do crave the indulgence of red meat, I can give in and not be disappointed.

Fada's Vegetable Addiction

Veggie Basics

Although I always liked vegetables, I don't think I really appreciated the variety, versatility or how delicious they could really be until I lived in France. I remember being surprised at how wonderful just a plain green salad could be with the right dressing and made sure I watched carefully when dressings were made. Of course there are all sorts of recipes for dressings but I love this simple one.

Just take a bowl and add a teaspoon of French mustard, salt, a teaspoon of wine vinegar and mix well. Then add olive oil bit by bit. Somehow adding the oil slowly means that the dressing ends up like a sauce and it's delicious. Then add your salad leaves and turn the leaves when you are ready to serve. I guarantee it's delicious! I've seen my children just wiping up the sauce with French bread to eat just like that. It does have a lot of olive oil, but what's wrong with that? It's the right kind of fat and helps the food slide down!

Easy Labor Endives

About two hours before my last child was born, I found myself sitting in a restaurant with my husband. My labours tend to be long and not really bothersome until the last half hour or so and having had three children before I knew the score. Yes, I was going to give birth but just didn't want to sit in a hospital for hours waiting for it to happen. So, we went to a restaurant just around the corner which was filled with French people lunching so no one really noticed my state. I did manage to eat a little bit of endive wrapped in ham and covered in cheese sauce, but found I wasn't really in the mood! Instead I watched the husband eat and exclaim how delicious it was. At a certain point I turned to him and said,'I really think I need to get to the hospital now.' He was a bit miffed at having to hurry his food but realised too that sometimes other things take priority! About an hour later (at 3.45) my son was born. He was my last child but I've always felt that with a fifth I could have got the timing down to a tee and arrived maybe a half hour before the birth. I let it go though. The idea of having to be pregnant and all the work involved in child rearing didn't really seem a good trade off. A few days later when I came back from the hospital guess what the first meal was that the husband cooked for me?

A pound of endives (or about six)
Slices of ham to wrap around the endive
1 oz Butter
1 oz Flour
2 pints of milk
A lot of cheese

Cook the endives in boiling water until semi cooked. Place in an oven dish and wrap the ham around them. While the endives are cooking, make the sauce. Melt the butter in a sauce pan and add the flour. Cook gently and it will thicken after a couple of minutes. Then add the milk really slowly so as to incorporate it into the butter/flour mixture. When you feel you have enough sauce for the endive, add lots of cheese. Pour the sauce over the endives and ham, add more cheese on the top and bake in a hot oven for about 20 minutes until the cheese topping is browned.

Egyptian Veggie Love

The vegetables in Egypt are so pleasing - they practically beg you to buy them! They are healthy looking, shiny and often huge. They are also really cheap! A meal that I have every week is ratatouille and here's the recipe. Don't worry though about how much of any vegetable you put in - it always works when you have enough tomatoes - all weights are approximate.

A few cloves of garlic peeled and chopped
One onion peeled and chopped
A pound of courgettes (zucchini)
A pound of aubergines
Two red peppers
Two pounds of fresh tomatoes
Fresh herbs: basil, thyme, rosemary
Salt and pepper

Fry the garlic in olive oil and then add the onion. Fry both for a few minutes until softened. Add courgettes and fry for a couple of minutes, then peppers, then aubergines, herbs and salt and pepper. Finally add the tomatoes, put a lid on the pot and leave to simmer for about 45 minutes. You don't need to add water as the vegetables create a delicious sauce. I usually make a big pot that lasts several meals. In fact, I've made myself hungry with all this talk of food so I'm going to have some now that I prepared yesterday. Fada

Flash Back to the BEGINNING of the decade

Hey there, reader(s), Heba here, live from the very crowded Cairo Airport where I prepare to return to the states to ring in the New Year (and from where I will be collaborating on the New Years Eve blog virtually with Fada who will, by then, have returned to Cairo from snowy England).

As we prepare to begin a new decade, we leave behind memories of Y2K, hanging chads, and, if we are lucky, the over-use of the term "aoli" to describe a side of mayonnaise.

But something I'll never forget - wooing my first boyfriend as a "grown-up" single gal living in the big city...and so I bring you:

Food Memory Circa 2001 - The First Meal I Ever Cooked for a Boy

I was never much of a cook, not until recently that is; it was too easy to have Chinese delivered, pick up some sushi on the way home, pop in to the Mexican restaurant around the corner, or use a mixture of morse code and flashing mirrors to order a pizza (or, you know, the phone). In 2001 that all changed, I was on the cusp of having my first real, life-as-a-grownup boyfriend who I was intent on wooing. A hipster before it was hip, a foodie before I knew such a thing existed; he was always making guacamole (with cilantro, the way I now make it), stews and chowders from frozen fish he’d stocked up on, or various meats on his bbq. I was terrified; the wooing would have to involve me cooking, there was no question about it. Future-boyfriend was looking for a future-girlfriend who knew her way around the kitchen.

The day of The Wooing, I called my mother. I had described my favorite meal (Chicken Divan) to my future-boyfriend and he had been intrigued by its homey casserole-ness. I was intrigued by the fact that, despite having eaten this meal at least 10 times a year for my entire life, I hadn’t a clue what was in it besides Chicken and Cheese. Mom had to set me straight. She had to explain to me how you had to PRE-COOK the chicken and broccoli, not just throw it all in the dish and then into the oven. She had to guide me through the super-market, via old-school giant cell phone with bad reception, to help me find the canned mushrooms and relay to me just which particular Campbell’s soup made the casserole-ness come out just right; she had to explain to me what curry was. I got home just in time to start cooking.

I had cleaned the tiny studio apartment top-to-bottom and placed the tiny dining table right in front of the sliding glass doors so we could gaze out on the magnificent view of ... er ... the people in the next apartment building. I even had candles out because, in my mind, that’s what grownups used for wooing.

But what really did the wooing was the casserole, with it’s crust of melted cheese on top browning ever-so-slightly, and it’s delicious scent filling my tiny galley kitchen-hallway-closet.

The future-boyfriend arrived with a few wildflowers he’d plucked from the obliging road divide in front of my high-rise apartment and immediately began sniffing the air. Rubbing his hands together in excitement, his eyes growing ever wide, future-boyfriend said with great hope and excitement, “Ooooo, is that curry I smell?”

Yes, it was INDEED curry, and, luckily, one of his favorite spices. Wooing accomplished. Future-boyfriend was boyfriend before the meal was through.

You, Me, and Omar

So, how do you go from being in France and loving the range and quality of wine, to Egypt, where the range is limited and quality is, at best, mediocre, but feel happy about it? I think the answer lies somewhere between the infinite human capacity to adapt and having good friends to share with.

OK, let's start somewhere. One Egyptian friend told me that alcohol is the root of all evil - he commented, as he sipped his beer, that Allah considers it the worst sin as it leads to all others. I can understand that. Especially given my Brit background and seeing all the things that go on when people are drunk. You only have to read 'The Sun' (tabloid) or watch one of those reality TV programmes that show police dealing with the aftermath of Friday nights in towns up and down the country.

I'm not that extreme - I just like a nice glass of wine, maybe a couple of times a week which is easy to arrange in the UK.Things are different here though. There are not that many shops that sell alcohol, there is not much of a range that it is locally made and imports are restricted to duty free outlets. As this is a mainly Muslim country, you don't feel that people put their hearts and souls into making a wine as they would, say, in France. For instance, I do wonder who gets to do the tasting? I suspect no one...it's just bottled and shoved on the shelves for the minority alcohol drinking community. That would certainly go some way to explaining the poor and patchy quality of the products on offer. When we first arrived here we were warned off the local alcohol - the spirits claiming to be the genuine stuff, but obviously not, such as those in my photo. Appealing as a drink called 'Cin' might seem, it's definitely off putting to read 'mad in Egypt' on a label!

So, what do you do when your duty free booze runs out? And, speaking as a wine drinker, it does run out pretty quickly when you can only get three bottles. Well, you have to turn to the local stuff. Everyone warns you how bad the wine is - and it's true, it can strike you as harsh when you glug the first mouthful. If you drink in a hotel or restaurant the waiters have all been trained to open the bottle and offer a first sip tasting so you can check that the wine is good. When Heba and I are out and about this event dissolves into giggling as we know full well what the taste will be like - and better that you begin with a good swig (rather than a dainty sip) to get your tastebuds overwhelmed before they have time to take stock! French wine experts spend a lot of time discussing the nuances, the subtlety, the variation of flavours and smells in wines. Well, in Egypt, you just get used to a kind of single flavoured, single smell wine...sometimes I can taste a bit of fruit, I can't smell it though...but maybe that is my imagination after all this time!

You don't just have to consider what you're drinking, but also where you're drinking it. You can drink alcohol at expensive hotels and in some restaurants, but it's not routinely available in almost any eating place and there aren't pubs on every corner as in the UK. Both restaurants and hotels charge for the privilege so the cheapest option is to drink at home. You find yourself going to THE shop that sells alcohol and coming away with a couple of bottles wrapped in two black plastic bags as if you've just bought some porno magazine. You invite a friend or two or they invite you and there you are...on the first floor balcony, the sun setting, with a glass of Omar Khayyam (red, white or rose) and somehow, you feel content and that all is as right as it can be with the world. OK, there may be an Egyptian wedding taking place at the end of the road (rather common at Heba’s place), with very loud music, ulalating, horses and dancing, while, at the same time, groups of young boys mill about kicking a football one the corner. There are invariably cars beeping, cars passing and a white owl flying overhead as he does each evening just as the very last glow of sunset subsides (side note: his name is David Bowie), but it feels very peaceful and just everyday stuff by now. Then there are the friends that you share with...the ones who you can laugh with, who you can talk to about your worries and frustrations, everything. This, and the fact that you have adapted to the wine just by being here, somehow make it a very good experience. So, here's to you, me and Omar on the balcony. -- Fada