Eid-Ul-Fitr

I'm not Muslim nor have I partaken in Ramadan before. For those of you who know me, I can't stop eating and I'm afraid I wouldn't last long with fasting! However, since I do love to cook I will find any reason to try something new and I thought the end of Ramadan, otherwise known as Eid-Ul-Fitr, would be a perfect opportunity to try out (or horribly botch up) some traditional foods eaten during good ol' Eid!

I outsourced some brainstorming and recipe searching to my good friend N who is Egyptian and who's mom makes the BEST homemade Egyptian food! I was able to get my hands on a recipe for Fattah, yummy layers of lamb, rice, and bread... only one problem....

The recipe was in German!

You see, my friend is from Switzerland and so her mom e-mailed her the recipe in German. Equipped with basic German skills, I told my friend that I will translate the recipe myself and try it out. Well let's just say I couldn't translate it all so I looked up another recipe for Fattah creating a strange hybrid of both recipes. I wanted to also make some thing sweet so I found two more recipes. One is called Arcia Mahshia-Bil-Goz (for simplicity sake let's call this Walnut stuffed prunes) and Sheer Korma, which is typically eaten in the Asian-Muslim countries like India.

Want to hear something amusing? I was telling someone about my cooking obsession which eventually translated into this blog. He asked me who I eat all my meals with and I just paused and laughed because I make these big feasts, but I'm the only one that eats them!! Of course I don't make tons of food, but I'm definitely selfish and need to share the wealth! So how did the food turn out??!? Since there are three different recipes I will post the ingredients and cooking steps in other posts. But here are my reviews:


1. Fattah - A little bland but yummy! The rice was really good since it was cooked in broth of the lamb-cardamon-onion stew. I'm pretty sure the recipe was nothing like how my friend's mom makes it so once I get the correct recipe I will definitely try this one again!!

2. Walnut Stuffed Prunes - MMMMMMM!!! I was worried that soaking the prunes in strong black tea would take away the sweetness, but with the combination of nut flavor and the cream to dip it in... Mmm Mmmm Mmmm!

3. Sheer Korma - Three words...
DI... SA.... STER! Let me throw in another word.... gross!!
Ok it is not the fault of the recipe, but more the cook! For some reason the recipe didn't say how much vermicelli to use. Thinking I'm the best chef ever I decided to eyeball it... unfortunately this sweet soup like dessert basically turned into mush... like when you cook pasta too long... like that mush. And the flavor not sweet and I could only taste the vermicelli instead of all the yummy things I put inside. I'm actually not even going to post the recipe for this because I would never want anyone to mimic this monstrosity I created!! In order to hide the grossness I placed cardamon seeds in the shape of a cute star :)


And what's Ramadan without some Arabic music?!?! Here is a video from Nancy Ajram. When I was in Egypt I saw lots of her music videos and here is one of my fave songs! Enjoy and kudos to all you faithful Ramadaners out there!!!


DPM