That lovely name was one I hated. You will say “what a difficult person to please”.
That was my mom’s opinion too!
What was a shakshouka? First and above all you prepared the spiciest tomato sauce possible.
Not just a drop but a
pan full of it. It was so spicy.
you could light a
cigarette with it or fly off in a rocket!
When it was
ready and boiling, you broke fresh eggs in it one after the other.
Immediately
the eggs consolidated except the centre, which remained soft.
The usual roz
be senebar (rice with kernels) was prepared because shakshouka without rice
was not shakshouka.
Each person
helped himself to rice and added an egg with its very spicy sauce. Mmmm.
What a
delight!
But not for
yours truly.
When finally
to please my mom I did eat shakshouka, my lips were chapped, torn and hurt by
that sauce not to talk of the egg that had become red in the process!!!
Was I
really too difficult to please?
Considering things today: yes I think I was
difficult to please!
Though I am considered a good cook, I have never managed to obtain the taste of those Mahshis of my past!
IT IS PROBABLY DUE TO THE KOSSA ITSELF; here we have fat and watery courgettes not at all convenient for el mashi. In Italy they have those delicious zucchini almost as good as the Egyptian ones.
To prepare kossa mashi you need above all a NAKHWARA. It’s an instrument to void the insides of the courgettes without making a hole at the other end.
You insert the Nakhwara and turn it delicately till you have only the outer skin left.
Your stuffing will need to be prepared as well. As no minced meat was found, you had to mince it with that old-fashioned machine. You needed good arms for that.
Then roz (rice) was added to the minced meat, basal(onions), malh (salt) lamoun (lemon) korkom (curcuma), kamoun (cumin), ou zeit (and oil), karafs ( minced parsley) that gives it a cheerful colouring.
Mix all this with CLEAN hands and stuff your courgettes one by one without breaking the courgettes.
In a very large pan quickly fry the stuffed courgettes and then put them in a spicy tomato sauce you have prepared yourself. And don’t forget to add the inside of the courgettes you have cleaned out with the nakhwara.
The secret of success is to let your mahshi cook gently and for a long time.
The ones I prefer are the slightly burned ones!!!
This delight will take you to the top of the world!
When my mother prepared Baccala, I went on strike. For her and my father it was a real delight, not for Sultana.
« Mais mange un bout, c’est délicieux !’
« Non ! »
Baccala at the outset is dried cod in salt. It is hung out in the air to dry.
It has a strange aspect, like a greyish dead leaf. Of course the smell is tremendous;
So you bought your baccala at the market and put it in a basin with water overnight.
This way it lost a good part of its salt.
As it could not be cooked in that state, the old-fashioned mincing machine was attached to a table and the baccala, cut into smaller pieces, was introduced one after the other into the horn-like opening and the handle twisted. That was how meat and baccala were minced.
The operation was repeated as many times as was necessary using strength and patience!
Finally when all the baccala was minced, my mother added a boiled potato and an egg and
kneaded it till it became a unified paste. Then one after the other she formed balls the size of a golf ball. When all the paste had been turned into balls, it was time to fry them. There were no deep fryers so it was a slow job to fry all these balls.
After that a very spicy tomato sauce was prepared from fresh tomatoes tabaan (of course) and one by one the baccala balls were put into the sauce to absorb part of it. It was served with rice greatly appreciated with every meal!
I do not know if I could ever eat baccala even now! But I keep baccala day in my mind and I remember what an extraordinary cook my mother was!
Can it mean that we Jews have been eating it from time immemorial?
What is it and how was it prepared in Egypt?
Foremost and above all it was a fresh long stem with leaves on it of a deep green colour bought on the local market.
It was washed in running water and shaken out.
Put on a newspaper and spread out on our balcony in the sun, it was put to dry.
This was an important stage because when it was not dried properly it produced long slimy threads, which were disgusting.
Once the molokeya was dry, it went back to the kitchen on our marble working table and all the leaves picked out one by one from the stem.
These leaves were shredded with a half-moon, till they became a paste.
Do you think that was the end of the job? Not at all!
Previously, a chicken was cooked whole and the broth was ready waiting for “the making of” that dish.
The molo was added to the chicken broth and brought to boil.
Meanwhile you cleaned out several garlic cloves and you started crushing them in an eed hon
(Mortar and pestle).
Ding ding ding. The whole building heard this lovely sound.
The ta-leya was the name for the frying part:
You poured oil in a pan, added the shredded garlic generously, then the kosbara (coriander) that had been ground beforehand.
Threw all this in a pan, fried it then added it to the broth containing your molo.
Et voila! A hard half day’s work but what a delight.
It was always shared with the neighbours!
How we ate it: first you put grilled bread in your dish.
Then with the second helping you put white rice and chicken (or vice versa!).
Every one loved molokeya except my uncle Marco from Salonica who refused to eat it.
As a matter of fact his wife, my aunt Judith had to come to us to eat it. Marco refused to kiss his wife when she had eaten molokeya!!!
Molokeya today
Having left Egypt does not mean we no longer eat molokeya. But what a difference!
You buy the dried leaves at an Egyptian grocery. My dried leaves come all the way from Milan from my sister who lives there, leaves brought over from Egypt. These dried leaves are added to your homemade broth thickened with spinach.
The rest is pretty much the same. You go about your ta-leya but instead of cleaning garlic cloves there is now garlic paste. You add two good spoons of your paste and put it with the coriander for a fry-up.
I go all the way to Holland to buy my ground coriander, that’s how much we still love our molo.
Even my children who are Europeans are crazy about it.
When they were young they called molokeya “mokoleya”.
The molo day is not the one to start a diet because no one will stop at two helpings! I don’t!
It is now an international dish!
Molo from Milan bought from an Egyptian grocer, coriander from Holland, rice from Italy or china, eaten in Europe!
Today i may be looking for my keys or eyeglasses or anything else but my nonna's high blood pressure treatment I remember clearly. And that was around 1948!
The leech (sangsues) doctor regularly came to my grandparents. When my nonna said she had a babour (réchaud) in her head, it meant that it was time to apply those leeches.
Was he a doctor?
i do not know. but he knew his job.
My nonna sat on a sofa in her darkened room and he took one worm after another and pressing its jaw gripped my nonna's white skin on her temple. He put three or four worms on each side and nonna sat there with a basin full of water waiting for the worm to have drunk her blood and fall off.
As a child I sat on one of the stools and watched fascinated. From thin little things they grew and grew till they became fat and dropped in the basin.
They left little holes in my nonna's white skin (she came from Smyrna).
She would rest in her darkened room and feel better till it was time again to stop "el babour" with the visit of the "leech doctor."
For breathing difficulties or bronchitis, those precious kassat el hawa were applied to your back. Kassat el hawa were similar to drinking glasses except they had a rounded bottom and smaller neck.
You prepared a torch and soaked it in alcohol then put a match to it. The patient outsetched on his abdomen, you turned the torch in the kassat and quickly applied them to the back. You looked like a tortoise with a glass roof.
The patient had to keep still till the skin inside the kassat turned bluish and looked as though ready to explode.
What a relief when those kassat made that kissing noise and your back was liberated!
However there were marks on your back: black and blue moons or half moons. These remained for a few months. When summer came along and the marks had not faded out, it was embarrassing in a swimsuit. But then you knew who had been ill that winter.
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