Winter season is upon us and it makes us feel colder every year than the previous year, and we must adhere to the temperature of winter each year, whether in clothing, at home, or in eating and drinking, and since Foodys searches for you every day for everything that interests you and is searching for, we have come to you today with a useful and very popular dish. It is important in the winter to provide you with warmth when you eat it, which is the “Koshari Dish”.
Food plays a major role in the lives of people and their cultures, because it reflects their general taste, tells history, and sheds light on missing parts of it. Today we will talk about the most famous Egyptian cuisine, which is a mixture of several cuisines with diverse cultural roots. Do you want to know the origin of “Egyptian” Koshari?
Koshari origins: Koshari is an authentic Egyptian dish, but there are stories that say that Koshari is not an Egyptian dish as Egyptians think.
The origin of Koshari as an Egyptian dish is due to the fact that the Egyptians knew Koshari at the outbreak of World War I, at the time when Indian soldiers came with the British forces in 1914. Indian Koshari was a mixture of rice and brown lentils and was called “Koshari.” At that time, its ingredients were rice, brown lentils, vermicelli, onions, and garlic.
The dish spread throughout various Egyptian neighborhoods until it reached a neighborhood inhabited by some Italian minorities, so they added pasta to the koshari, but the Egyptians have the credit for adding “dukkah” with vinegar and garlic to it, and since then koshari has become one of the basics of the Egyptian table.
Then the meal became what it is now, through the creativity of the Egyptians to complete it, as they added the Egyptian flavor, such as: “hot red sauce, dakkah, fried onions, and chickpeas.”
Koshari varies from one country to another. Egyptian Koshari, which is prepared in restaurants or in homes, consists of rice, pasta, vermicelli, and lentils, which are boiled separately. Likewise, chickpeas from the Levant must be soaked 5 hours before cooking, then arranged in plates, the sauce and “frying” are added to them, and served. As a main dish, there is nothing with it.
As for Koshari in Lebanon and Jordan, which is called “Mujaddara,” it is served hot or cold with olive oil added to it. The people of the Levant prefer to eat it with yogurt. The people of Iraq cook rice and yellow lentils “without the peel” and serve it with an Iraqi dish called “Kibbeh,” which is considered a complement. she has.
How to prepare Kshari dish:
After we learned about the history and origin of koshari, we have to know how to prepare the original Egyptian Koshari in your home, so let’s find out the method:
Ingredients of Koshari:
A cup of white rice
A cup of brown or brown lentils
A small bag of pasta or spaghetti (about 400g)
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
12 garlic cloves
3 chopped onions
One and a half teaspoon of cumin powder
4 grated tomatoes
3 tablespoons tomato sauce
Half a cup of boiled chickpeas
salt and pepper as needed
3 tablespoons white vinegar
How to prepare a delicious Koshari dish:
1- Soak the rice for twenty minutes in warm water, then wash and drain it.
2- Put a little vegetable oil in a pot, add the rice and a little salt to it, stir a little, then put hot water on it, cover it, and leave it to cook completely, stirring from time to time.
3- Cut the onions into slices (wings), put the full amount of vegetable oil in a large frying pan, and fry the onions, stirring constantly, until they turn golden, then remove them from the oil, drain them well, and place them in a dish covered with drying paper to get rid of the remaining amount of oil.
4- We boil the lentils until they are well cooked, add cumin to them, add salt after making sure they are cooked, then drain the water and put a little oil on them in which the onions were fried and stir.
5- Boil the pasta, wash it with cold water, drain it, put a little oil on it in which the onions were fried, and stir it.
6- Fry the noodles with a little onion oil until they turn golden, then add the ripe rice to it, and then add salt and cumin.
7- Chop the garlic into small pieces.
8- Squeeze the tomatoes using an electric blender, and filter them through a strainer.
9- We prepare the koshari sauce, where we take part of the garlic, brown it in a pot with a little onion oil, then add to it the tomato sauce (tomato juice), salt, and the rest of the chopped garlic, put it on medium heat, and leave it until it boils and becomes thick. . We put a large amount of water in a deep pot, put the chickpeas, chopped garlic, and cumin in it, and boil them until they are well done, then we add salt to it, and reserve the boiling water. We prepare dukkah koshari, by taking a little water from the boiled chickpeas, adding chopped garlic and lemon juice to it, and stirring it with a spoon.
10- Prepare the chili sauce for the koshari, add the hot sauce to it and stir it well with a spoon.
11- To serve: Place in order in a deep serving dish two tablespoons of rice, add the pasta, lentils, crispy onions, and chickpeas, then pour the desired amount of dukkah koshari sauce, put the hot chili sauce next to the koshari dish and serve, and add the hot chili sauce as desired. .
How to prepare hot Dakkah sauce, The Ingredients:
- Two tablespoons of tomato paste.
- Two tablespoons of oil.
- Two cloves of garlic, finely crushed
– A cube of chicken broth
– Hot pepper, as desired
– ¼ teaspoon of black pepper.
- A tablespoon of white vinegar.
How to prepare it:
1- Place all the ingredients in a pot on the fire and leave them until mixed.
2- Add an amount of half to three-quarters of a cup of water.
3- Reduce the heat until the ingredients thicken and serve them hot.