| Egypt Month: Cooking with Tour Egypt - Egypt Recipes and Egyptian Food |
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| Tour Egypt Magazine |
Melokiyah Madness
Mary Kay Radnich
Our melokiyah feature this month has extolled the virtues of melokiyah. Here in the Cooking with Tour Egypt department, we will look at an alternative recipe to traditional melokiyah. My mother in law, Gayle Radnich, is an excellent, creative cook and is the person most responsible for the development of my culinary talents. Recipes, cookbooks and food magazines are all intense topics of conversation when we are together. During a recent visit, she handed me the recipe pages from the May 2001 issue of Cooking Light magazine. "Look! Middle Eastern recipes!" she exclaimed.
Tagine, stuffed dates, mint tea, couscous.. pretty standard fare I think to myself as I peruse the pages. "What’s This??? Egyptian Greens-and-Chicken Stew??" I was very excited when I saw this title, and even more excited when I saw that the very first word in the recipe was… Melokiyah !! This recipe substitutes spinach for the melokiyah, because melokiyah, fresh, frozen or dried, can be very difficult to find. I have purchased it in the US frozen and have had it sent to me in dried form straight from Egypt. Probably the only characteristic missing from spinach is the quality of Melokiyah that acts as a natural thickener. Otherwise, the seasonings give this dish a great Middle Eastern flavor. I served it al fresco at a luncheon for a few close friends and they loved it. Egyptian Greens-and-Chicken Stew
Combine first 5 ingredients in an 8-quart stock pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook, uncovered, for one hour. Remove from heat and remove the chicken and let cool. Strain the chicken broth through cheesecloth or fine sieve, into a bowl. Discard the remaining solids. Return the broth to the pan. Remove the chicken bones, discard bones and shred the chicken into bite-sized pieces.
Keep warm. (Note: I cooked my chicken a day ahead and cooled the broth in the refrigerator, so that I could remove the excess fat from the top.) Place onion in a bowl and mash with a fork or potato masher. Add onion to broth and bring to a boil. Add spinach to broth in batches, cooking until wilted. Heat the oil in a small, non-stick skillet over medium-heat. Add the coriander, salt and garlic, sauté’ 30 seconds or until garlic begins to brown. (This garlic-salt-coriander mixture is called Ta’liya). Add to spinach mixture and stir in lemon juice. Serve chicken and spinach mixture over rice. 4 servings.
The ancient Egyptians hated gray hair and would use a variety of methods to eliminate it. Sometimes the hair would be dyed after death. The dye of choice was vegetable henna, which, five thousand years later is still used by many native Egyptians (and people abroad) for the same purpose. In one mummy, the henna dyed the natural dark brown hair an auburn color, while turning the unpigmented white hairs a bright orange. Art was a part of everyday life of the ancient Egyptians. And it is clear that they considered their hair as a supreme form of self-art which had endless possibilities. Again, we can thank the skill of these ancient artisans and the climate for allowing us to still enjoy what they did thousands of years ago. ### Ilene Springer writes on ancient Egypt. She is a student of museum studies at Harvard University in Boston.
The Mysteries of Qurna By Sonny Stengle Prior Issues |
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