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12 recipes

Egyptian fayeshSweet sesame rusks

Fayesh belongs to the Sa'id, Upper Egypt, where village women bake it in big batches in mud-brick ovens so the family has something crunchy for breakfast tea for weeks, and travellers from Luxor and Aswan carry bags of it north as a gift. A lightly sweet, aniseed-scented bread is baked, sliced, then dried slowly into hard, golden rusks crusted with sesame. They are dunked in black tea with plenty of sugar or in hot milk, and they never go stale. The common error is drying them too fast at a high heat: the outside browns while the middle stays soft, and that softness turns mouldy in the tin. Chef's tip: slice the loaves the next morning, not while warm; a rested loaf cuts into clean, even slices that dry at the same rate.

210 minEgyptianBaking
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Betefour (Egyptian piped butter biscuits)

Egyptians took the French name petit four and made it their own: betefour are crumbly piped butter biscuits sold by the kilo at Cairo patisseries and baked at home by the tray before Eid and family visits. The dough is soft enough to pipe into rosettes and fingers, then they are sandwiched with apricot jam or half-dipped in dark chocolate. Serve with tea. The mistake that ruins them is cold butter: it won't pipe, and the bag splits; beat it until it's as soft as mayonnaise. Chef's tip: chill the piped trays for 15 minutes before baking so the ridges stay sharp. Contains milk, egg and wheat.

47 minEgyptianBaking
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Biskoweet (Egyptian Eid vanilla biscuits)

In the last nights of Ramadan, Egyptian families bake kahk, ghorayeba and biskoweet together, sending trays to the neighbourhood bakery in Shubra or Imbaba if the home oven is too small. Biskoweet is the crisp, lightly sweet one: a vanilla and milk dough pushed through a biscuit press or a meat-mincer attachment into ridged ribbons, glazed with egg and baked golden, perfect for dunking in Eid-morning tea. The common mistake is baking them too pale; they should snap, not bend, so take them to a full honey colour. Chef's tip: a pinch of mahlab in the dough gives the subtle almond-cherry scent of the bakery biscuits. Contains milk, egg and wheat.

45 minEgyptianBaking
by KrazyBadal 0 views

GundrukFermented leafy greens

After the rice harvest in October and November, hill families from Ilam to Gorkha cut the leaves of mustard greens, radish and cauliflower, leave them to wilt in the yard, then pound them into clay pots or pits to ferment. A week later the greens come out olive-brown and sour, and they are dried on bamboo mats in the bright Dashain-Tihar sun. That dried gundruk carries families through the lean winter: soaked and simmered into gundruk ko jhol with tomato and soybeans beside dal-bhat, or tossed into gundruk sadeko with onion, chilli and mustard oil to eat with chiura. The flavour is deeply sour, earthy and a little smoky, the dried leaves chewy-crisp, softening when cooked. Common mistake: packing the leaves loosely; air left in the jar lets mould grow instead of the sour lactic ferment, so press until juice rises over the greens. It is ready to dry when it smells sharply sour like good sauerkraut and the leaves have lost all their green. Chef's tip: if your greens are from a supermarket, mix mustard greens with radish tops or kale for the closest flavour, and ferment in a big jar with a weight.

45 minNepaliBasicsVeganGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Postre MassiniCustard sponge with burnt sugar top

Montevideo's birthday cake of choice since the early twentieth century, the Massini is two thin layers of sponge sandwiching a thick filling of whipped cream folded with egg-yolk custard, crowned with a thin glassy crust of torched yolk and sugar. Bakeries across Uruguay sell it on Sundays. Traditional versions sometimes add a sweet fortified wine to the custard; this one is alcohol-free. The custard is cooked to a safe 71 °C. The common mistake is assembling with warm custard, which melts the cream into a puddle. Chef's tip: if you don't have a blowtorch, put the sugared top under a very hot grill for a minute and watch it closely.

80 minParaguayanBaking
by KrazyBadal 0 views

MishAged chilli cheese

Traditionally made in clay jars that are kept going for years, mish is the strong, salty aged cheese that farmers in Upper Egypt and the Delta eat with bread, onions and tomatoes in the fields. It is sharp, creamy and very pungent, with chilli heat and a bitter-sweet note from fenugreek, and a little goes a long way beside bettaw, roz me'ammar or ful. This safer home version starts from pasteurised white cheese and ages in the fridge for 4 to 8 weeks instead of months on a shelf. White cheeses are often set with animal rennet, so choose one labelled vegetarian. As a home-fermented food it is best skipped by pregnant women, young children and anyone with a weakened immune system. Chef's tip: always use a clean, dry spoon; one wet spoon is the mistake that lets mould in.

25 minEgyptianBasicsGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Gollash meat pie (filo and spiced beef)

Egyptian bakeries sell sweet and savoury gollash, but the minced-beef version is the one home cooks make for Ramadan iftar, Eid visits and big family lunches, cut into neat diamonds on a large round tray. Thin sheets of filo are brushed with melted butter and stacked around a filling of beef cooked dry with onion, pepper and a little allspice, then soaked with a splash of milk and egg so the top layers bake puffed and shatteringly crisp while the middle stays tender. Serve warm with a salad and yoghurt or as part of a spread of mezze. Avoid skimping on butter between the sheets; unbuttered layers bake dry and papery instead of crisp and golden. Chef's tip: let the cooked filling cool completely before layering; hot, steamy mince turns the bottom sheets soggy, which is the most common gollash disappointment.

80 minEgyptianBaking
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Rokak bel lahma (Eid meat pie)

When Eid comes round, Egyptian shops stack up rounds of rokak, a very thin, brittle unleavened pastry baked on a hot dome, and cooks turn them into this layered pie for the family lunch. Each sheet is moistened with hot meat broth and a little ghee, layered with beef mince fried with onion, then baked until the top crackles and the inside turns tender and savoury, somewhere between a pie and a lasagne. It is cut into squares and served with rice, salad and pickles. If you cannot find rokak, sheets of filo baked dry for a few minutes are the nearest substitute. Chef's tip: soak each layer just enough to soften it; too much broth makes a heavy, soggy pie, and too little leaves dry shards, the mistake most people make the first time.

90 minEgyptianBaking
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Fini rotiLayered fried sugar bread

During Tihar, the five-day festival of lights in late autumn, sisters in Kathmandu and Pokhara prepare a basket of treats for Bhai Tika, and fini roti, a crisp round of fried bread made of dozens of paper-thin layers, sits in it beside sel roti, nuts and sweets. A simple dough of flour and ghee is rolled very thin, spread with a paste of ghee and rice flour, rolled into a log and cut, so that each piece fans out in the hot oil into a flaky spiral that shatters at the first bite. It is lightly dusted with sugar, lasts for days in a tin, and is eaten with tea or given to visiting relatives. The layers vanish if you make the paste with melted ghee, which seeps out instead of staying put. Chef's tip: beat the ghee and rice flour together until fluffy and pale like soft butter, and keep the dough cool so the layers stay distinct.

60 minNepaliBaking
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Gebna areeshSoft fresh cheese

Farm families in the Delta have long made areesh from the skimmed, soured milk left after churning butter, draining the curds in reed mats until they are soft and crumbly. The cheese is pale, light and mildly tangy, with almost no fat, and is eaten at breakfast and supper with tomatoes, cucumbers, spring onions, herbs and a thread of olive oil, or crumbled into salads and pies. This home version starts with pasteurised skimmed milk and cultured buttermilk; the milk then needs 18 to 24 hours to sour at room temperature before the short cooking and draining. No rennet is used: the curd is set by souring alone, so it suits vegetarians. Don't boil the soured milk hard: rapid heat makes tough, rubbery curds instead of soft, delicate ones. Chef's tip: heat the soured milk very gently; boiling it makes the curd tough and squeaky.

60 minEgyptianBasicsGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

KahkEid ghee cookies

In the last nights of Ramadan, Egyptian kitchens fill with flour dust, trays and relatives as families bake kahk for Eid al-Fitr, and many still send them to the neighbourhood bakery's big oven. Hot ghee is rubbed into the flour so the cookies bake up crumbly and melting, fragrant with sesame and kahk spice, and each one is pinched with a patterned tweezer or pressed in a wooden mould before baking. They are filled with agameya, a sticky honey, nut and sesame paste, and buried under icing sugar, then served to every Eid visitor with tea or coffee. Overbaking is the mistake to avoid; kahk should be pale on top and only golden underneath. Chef's tip: the dough is ready to shape once a ball holds firm but crumbles if you squeeze it hard; it should never feel stretchy.

110 minEgyptianBaking
by KrazyBadal 0 views

ChajáSponge, peach and cream cake

Chajá was created in 1927 at a bakery in Paysandú, a city on the Uruguay River, and named after a local bird whose feathers look as fluffy as its crumbly meringue coat. Today it's Uruguay's birthday and celebration cake: layers of light sponge soaked in peach syrup, filled with whipped cream, peaches and dulce de leche, then covered in crushed meringue. It's sweet, soft and crunchy at once, best on the day it's assembled. Chef's tip: soak the sponge but not too much; it should feel moist, not wet, or the layers slide.

90 minParaguayanBaking
by KrazyBadal 0 views