On the streets of Cairo, I fed my love for nourishing bowls of koshari
CAIRO — My obsession with koshari, a bowl of rice, lentils, pasta, and crisp, fried onions, widely considered to be Egypt’s national dish, became all-consuming when I discovered that it originated in my native India, where it is called “kichari,” which literally means “all mixed up.”
When I was growing up, kichari was comfort food (typically the mixture was rice and lentils, spiced differently as you travel across India). When the British used Indian troops in the 1800s to occupy Egypt, they fed the soldiers kichari, a cheap and nutritious meal. Egyptians gave the dish their own twist, adding fried onions, and eventually it became known as koshari. By the 1940s, there was pasta in every household, courtesy of Italian immigrants, and pasta, too, went into koshari, as did a spicy tomato sauce, called shatta, which uses the Middle Eastern spice mix baharat. The last addition is a vinegar-based garlic sauce called da-ah. The dish became popular among laborers and women even fed it to protesters during the Arab Spring of 2010.
I am here with my husband, two teenagers, and a friend. After a jet-lagged sleep (Egypt is seven hours ahead of Boston), we hit the streets, exploring this ancient city with its kaleidoscope of colors and smells. We are looking for a nourishing bowl of koshari.
Turning into a side street, we find Koshary El-Tahrir, a restaurant that specializes in the dish, along with the traditional rice pudding dessert, roz bil laban. My 15-year-old daughter, Anya, and I are thrilled because we’re both vegetarian, and koshari is the perfect vegetarian meal.
We settle into Koshary ElTahrir and after the first delicious spoonful, Anya and I are hooked. After that lunch, we order it everywhere we go — off menus in fancy restaurants and from street vendors. At Koshary El-Tahrir, a family meal, enough for five, costs about 160 Egyptian pounds (less than $6).
After my visit to Egypt, I sought out Sahar Ahmed, who owns the Egyptian vegan restaurant Koshari Mama in Somerville, to learn more about koshari. “If you are adventurous, add the shatta and da-ah,” she tells me. I love Ahmed’s koshari, but the same dish, prepared the same way, tastes different when eaten on the streets of bright, bustling Cairo.
Almost every street in Egypt has its own “koshari man,” a vendor who sometimes sells the dish in plastic bags. “School children shake the bags to mix the ingredients, then make a hole in it and basically ‘drink’ the mixture,” Ahmed says.
Koshari is not an easy dish to make; every ingredient is cooked separately. In Egypt, just like in India, there are regional variations. Sometimes, rice is cooked with cumin; sometimes rolled, boiled, or fried eggs are added to the grains. Some places serve pickles and fries on the side. It is surprising how all the ingredients work together, perhaps because the spicy tomato sauce and garlic vinegar blend so well with the pasta, rice, and lentils.
In Luxor, we visit Koshary Alexandria, a two-story restaurant on a bustling road shared by cars, buses, horse carts, camels, and throngs. We are the only foreigners at the restaurant.
Almost every street in Egypt has its own ‘koshari man,’ a vendor who sometimes sells the dish in plastic bags.
At modest eateries like this, if a bowl of koshari doesn’t fill you up and you don’t want to order another one, you can ask for “kemala,” or just a few spoonfuls more.
We order steaming bowls of koshari, mix it with shatta and da-ah and dig in. By now, we are koshari experts, having sampled it everywhere for a week. I know exactly how much of the shatta, da-ah, and fried onions to put on my bowl.
That’s the beauty of koshari: You take these simple ingredients and make it what you want. Anya, our friend, and I add just a little bit of the sauces while my husband and son, Surya, douse theirs in sauces because they love spicy foods. I also get extra fried onions.
Street noises drift in — cars, mopeds, vendors shouting their wares, chattering children returning home from school for lunch. Small groups of people stop by, treating themselves to this treasured dish on a weekday afternoon.
If I spent more time in Cairo, I would have sampled koshari as often as I could. I found superb versions but haven’t yet found the perfect one. It’s probably being sold by a vendor from a food cart or at a street corner in an Egyptian village. And except for the locals, no outsiders know about it.