Around the World in 12 Dishes: Exploring Egypt Part 2

Last week we shared our first Egyptian cooking, which was Date Cake. Today we are going to share our Egyptian Dinner recipes. Our dinner recipes came from Foods of Egypt by Barbara Sheen.

The main course is Kofta. Kofta are meatballs on skewers that you grill or broil. They can be made with any kind of ground meat. We used ground beef.

1 lb. ground beef
1 small onion, chopped (we used half a large onion)
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon coriander
salt and pepper to taste

Mix all the ingredients together with your hands. Form small balls and skewer them with three or four on each skewer, but leave room on both ends of the skewer. Press the balls to form a cigar shape. Grill the meat on a grill or broiler. Let the meat brown on one side and then turn skewers over. The meat is done when both sides are browned. Remove meat from skewers and serve with pita bread and yogurt salad.

We made two similar salads for side dishes. Our cucumbers had just started to be ready to pick in the garden, so we made the Yogurt Salad and Chopped Salad. Most of the other vegetables we got at our local farmers' market. We used fresh mint for the yogurt salad since I could not find dried mint. However this did not work. We also used Greek yogurt because it was what we had and again, did not like it.

Yogurt Salad

1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 medium cucumber, peeled and cut into chunks
1/2 tablespoon garlic powder
pinch of salt
1/2 tablespoon dried mint (I could not find dried mint at the store, so we used fresh which was a mistake!)

Combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving.

Chopped Salad
1 large ripe tomato, diced
1 medium cucumber, peeled and diced

1 small sweet onion, diced (we used the other half of the large onion)
1 tablespoon chopped parsley (or cilantro)
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Put the tomato and cucumber in a deep dish and mix. Top with the onions. Mix the garlic powder, olive oil, lemon juice, and salt and pepper together in a separate bowl. Drizzle it on the salad. Top with the chopped parsley.

Some of the other resources we have used are ancient Egyptian stories retold in picture books. We did not get a chance to read all of them yet, but have been enjoying the ones we have read.

To see more about Rimonah of the Flashing Sword check out last week's Fairy Tales in Different Cultures post. 

We also enjoyed some Egyptian music. Hazel seems to like any type of music, so she is happy to explore the countries with music.

Finally we did another craft. We made a Ramadan lantern. I originally saw this in one of the craft books I had from the library, but I returned it before we made it. I found this on-line tutorial and tried to combine my memory with this and what we had. We could not find our star punch and do not have a crescent punch, so we used a heart and butterfly. The base is a cut milk carton that we painted. We used kite paper for the sides that we punched.

Apparently we were not the only ones who liked since Fluffy came over to check it out while I was taking pictures. I stopped when she put her head inside the lantern. I'm glad we had a battery-operated tea light and not a lit one in there.

Here is a great Egypt placemat to color for the younger children. Here is the four page passport for Egypt. Have you made any Egyptian foods? Want to share them at our blog hop? Or check out all these other wonderful ideas so you can explore Egypt as well. And be sure to join us next month when we travel to New Zealand!