Egypt
As old as the pharaohs, served loud from the street — beans at dawn, a carb-on-carb bowl by noon.
Breakfast in Cairo is a bowl of ful medames — fava beans stewed overnight, mashed at the cart with oil, cumin and a squeeze of lemon, scooped up with warm flatbread the locals simply call aish, the word for life. By midday the koshari shops are roaring: a great carb-on-carb heap of rice, lentils, macaroni and chickpeas under a slick of spiced tomato sauce, crowned with crisp fried onions and as much chilli-vinegar as you dare.
This is some of the oldest cooking on earth, and still the most democratic — fed to everyone, cheaply, from a hatch in the wall. Around it turns the rest of the table: ta'ameya, the fava-bean falafel Egypt swears it invented; slippery green molokhia soup; pigeon stuffed with spiced rice; and sticky, honey-soaked pastries with a tiny cup of cardamom coffee. Eat where the queue is longest and you won't go wrong.
- koshari (rice
- lentils
- pasta & fried onions)
- ful medames (stewed fava beans)
- ta'ameya (Egyptian falafel)
- molokhia (jute-leaf soup)
- hamam mahshi (stuffed pigeon)
- om ali (bread pudding)
