We had two main meetings in the fall: the first one was devoted to Egyptian food. We made fried cauliflower patties, ful (beans that are a staple in Egypt), a meat/veggie layered dish (can't remember its name right now!) with Nutella kunafa for dessert. This was actually my first time tasting kunafa and I loved it! In turn, the second meeting was all about Moroccan food. We cooked bisara (a split pea, creamy soup), zaalouk (a saucy eggplant dish which is probably my favorite Moroccan meal), carrots with sharmoula (sharmoula = spice mixture), stuffed miloui (miloui = thick slabs of bread, and stuffed here means filled with veggies and meat - tasted kind of like pizza!), and apple cake. I was on cake duty for this round, and helped a little with prepping the other dishes as well. Even though the dough was made beforehand, the miloui still took the longest since we could only cook a few at a time via stovetop or toaster oven!
Our apartment did an informal cooking club with our teachers Hayat and Karima before the end of the fall semester in order to learn a shortcut for making couscous! Moroccan couscous is usually eaten by families on Fridays - cooking it is an all-morning process, and special pots are used to steam the vegetables and couscous itself. Hayat showed us an abbreviated method though through which the couscous is steamed in the microwave! We cooked vegetables in lots of spices to go on top as well as some chicken on the side before arranging everything to be picture perfect. Hayat and I also recreated her apple cake from the previous Cooking Club, and Karima taught me how to make tea Moroccan style for my parents. It was a fun and delicious evening!
Unfortunately I missed the first official meeting this spring because I was preparing to travel that weekend. This past Wednesday though, as a substitute for Darija Club at the center, we invited Hayat (unfortunately she couldn't come at the last minute) and Karima over again as well as Aicha (who was teaching in Oklahoma last semester!) in order to cook Mexican food. All of them have lived in the States before in order to get more experience teaching Arabic at our universities, so they have all tried Mexican food and especially love guacamole! Cat showed them how to make it, and in addition to that we cooked homemade tortillas, veggies, and chicken for fajitas. A last-minute Moroccan side dish that we prepped was zaalouk since Cat missed the first time we made it!
Karima's birthday was at the beginning of January, and we didn't get a chance to celebrate at the time since we were coming back from the States around then. We decided to make her a huge, double dark chocolate cake to share with her because she loves chocolate as a surprise - but she stumbled upon me decorating it with strawberries as we were still preparing dinner and I spilled the beans! I was completely unprepared for her reaction - she started crying because it was apparently the first birthday cake anyone has ever made for her. Karima is on the edge of an older generation (she's in her early 30's) that doesn't really celebrate birthdays (there's debate as to whether it's permitted in Islam, which may be part of the reason why). She was so happy and I'm glad we got to share the memory of her first cake with her - it turned out to be delicious! Her and Aicha also surprised me with baked goods for my birthday, which was very sweet. Needless to say we were stuffed by the end of the night!
The next meeting with the whole program will be this Friday and we'll be making Egyptian koshary (a combo of rice, macaroni, lentils, fried onions, and chickpeas) - which I've had before and loved! I'm looking forward to cooking even more this spring as well as sharing these recipes with family and friends back home!