Country 50: Egypt - Ful mudammas & saboob

 Country 50!!! 

It doesn't sound like a lot BUT there are 195 countries and that means I'm over a quarter of the way through! 

I was originally thinking of making kashiri but there were soooo many ingredients and it was sitting open on my list of tabs for so so long and I really couldn't be bothered. And it's been a while since I did a Cook The World and I was super keen to get one done again, especially Egypt because of the fact it had been open for so long. 

PLUS Nick and I went to Egypt back in 2019 and it was cool to cook another meal from a country that I've actually been to (although looking back through the list I've cooked I am now happy to say that I have been to Austria, Belgium, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, and Denmark, as well as Egypt). 

This meal was bloody great. I was a bit nervous because it's vegan and Nick isn't at all interested in vegetarian food, let alone vegan food, BUT it was really good and he enjoyed it too. The only thing that could have made some improvement was a little more spice. In fact, any spice at all. I did get some green chillis from the corner shop to smash up into it but they didn't actually add any heat whatsoever (despite me asking the shopkeeper if they were spicy).  

Anyway, here are the recipes I followed!

First I made ful mudammas which is Egyptian fava beans. Apparently this is a super common meal to have in Egypt although I don't know if I remember having it myself when we were there. It's often served falafel which I did consider making but then decided I really couldn't be bothered, so instead I served it with saboob which is an Egyptian flatbread which is cooked in the oven. 

The ful mudammas were bloody delicious. 

• I added quite a lot of cumin (probably 1.5 teaspoons) rather than the 1 teaspoon that was suggested, and that bubbled away on the stove for a wee while. 
• The instructions also didn't say whether or not to drain the cans of fava beans so I DID drain mine and then I added half a cup of water like it said, and I think this was the right choice in the end because it was super tasty. 
• I used lime instead of lemon because it's what I had on hand
• Smashing the garlic and chilli in the mortar and pestle didn't work so well, it was quite lumpy at the end so I was a bit nervous that the chilli was going to be super hot but like I said earlier it wasn't hot at all
• I found actual fava beans rather than broad beans - there are a few international shops around me but I actually found them in a Phoenician shop up near Kentish Town which I was stoked about
• I didn't use a full cup of parsley as it seemed like a LOT of parsley. Although, when I was putting all the parsley into the cup measurement I did compact it down quite a lot so maybe it was a cupful? 
• I added chopped cherry tomatoes to the top of mine, followed by chopped black olives

The saboob was also super good

• I followed the recipe exactly, but I halved the quantities so I only ended up making 2 flatbreads. I think this was a good shout in the end because I find that if I make flatbreads they never last if I keep them for more than day, it's definitely better to eat them while they're fresh otherwise they go a bit stale overnight
• I also added a bit of olive oil over them after they were finished cooking

Overall I was really happy with this meal and I'll definitely make it again.