Ayam El Bamia

The days of bamia (cornes grecques)

 

Ah bamia that most delightful vegetable known to Greeks, Turks and Arabs in general.

There are two types of Bamia. One is small and the other long.

The small ones are best because the long ones leave slimy threads and it’s nauseating.

So rather than have that impression it is preferable not to cook the long Bamia.

It is a very long job to prepare Bamia. It has a little hat on top and you have to eliminate it going round and not cutting it off. Then the tip is slightly cut off, not too much because the bamia will open!

Having prepared your vegetables, you wash them and prepare your tomato sauce not forgetting to add lamoun (lemon), felfel (pepper) as much as you can bear, the usual korkum (curcuma), kumein (cumin) and the gracious basal, (onion).

It is to be noted that our tomato sauces were always prepared from Fresh tomatoes therefore giving out all the aroma of tomatoes with the spices.

Then you add your bamia to your sauce and allow simmering for a long time. Be careful not to agitate (!) them, because as soon as they start cooking they become very fragile!

Always accompanied with roz (rice).

Outa ou basal were the main ingredients of peasants. They ate a tomato or an onion with their eish baladi (peasant bread).

And when they went to the army because they did not understand the meaning of left and right, a tomato was put in one hand and an onion in the other.

So the corporal cried out outa, bassala for left and right!

Enjoy this most delightful meal. It will fly you to the stars!  

Halawa: a typical Egyptian depilatory

Halawa: a typical Egyptian depilatory.  
  

There were two halawas in Egypt: one was the depilatory that came to us from Pharaoh’s times and the other one, the halva, which we in Cairo called Halawa.

Hairy legs, arms or armpits, moustachioed upper lip and other secret

parts were very poorly considered. Foreign women were distinctive by

their hairy bodies. Perhaps the most distasteful sight in summer was to see

long armpit hairs waving in the breeze, not mentioning the stale smell they produced.

My halawa today is a candy sugar depilatory of the very old days. The ladies then were very conscious their appeance, taking milk baths and massaging essential oils into their bodies to make them smooth, desirable and caressing!!

We think that today we have invented all the beauty products or essential oils whereas in truth people like Cleopatra or Nefertiti knew them!

When you have cooked your halawa (recipe on demand here) and it has been pulled and twisted adding a spot of saliva to make it malleable, you stretch it out on your forearm and shutting your eyes, pull it off in one decisive movement. You can suffer it out in a solitary session or have a martyrdom-shared one! Armpits were sore spots and the halawa had to be pulled out correctly and swiftly before the pain hit you. Anyone trying to pull off the sugar depilatory and failing was in for intense suffering.

Sometimes the armpits bled, but that was because the sticky halawa had not been pulled out correctly or quickly enough.

The nightmarish part was the inside of the knees. You had to twist your body to spread out the paste and it was practically impossible to pull unless you were a contortionist in a circus.

To look human and not apish, you stuck the halawa on your moustache and after a quick agonising jerk your smooth upper lip was rewarding.

It is not any worse than going to the dentist’s! 

A fool once said that to be beautiful, one must suffer!