Whatcha Got Cookin

[Khaled]

Last night my wife made koosa bi Laban and it was so good mashaAllaah. Came out perfect for her first attempt of making it all 100% on her own (usually she'd help her mum, or my mum, our one of her of 6 sisters or 15 aunties..you got the jist lol) Now foosiliyah is next! She won't make mlokiyah cause she doesn't like it.. When I found out.. I was like :O but it's ok cause she has an army of females who's husbands love it and we're always invited over when it's done.

It's funny cause her mum calls me and asks me what I feel like for dinner and I always say either sheesh borok or mlokiyah (my MIL and mum are from the same city in Lebanon so they're cooking is identical mashaAllaah! Haram she made mlokiyah, completely forgetting my wife doesn't like the stuff lol I felt bad :/ but the meal took all my sorrow away, cause I made her something special when we go got home.

What are some other Arab foods? I wanna move away from the western and italian foods and concentrate more on Arab so might be hanging more with mum and MIL and her aunties (who mashaAllaah are awesome cooks). For some reason I really like ittayfeh, homemade sfeeha, garlic and lemon baked chicken wings and koosa bi banadoora.

Also want to get into curry in a hurry food inshaAllaah and a bit of Malay. Time to expand from Italian.

[Khaled]

Tonight were making my special recipe for KFC style chicken wings inshaAlaah

[sonsonator]

Maybe your wife would like Egyptian molokhiyyah! Less dense! All this talk of Arab food has me craving a big bowl of koshari, with extra chili! Alhamdulillah my mum is making it for me on family day!

[aussiemu]

I'm not a big fan of molokhiyah - lebo or egyptian style. Koshari on the other hand - yum! definitely with extra chili. An egyptian lady drops some off sometimes to my mum and she also makes fish to eat with it and it is yummy. Usually it is on a Friday with Jumah that she or her husband drops it off so maybe today would be a good day to visit my mum

I made stifry yesterday and will eat that again today. No energy to cook.

[from water]

Oh molokhiyah is the best. Bamyeh is good too but it doesn't compare. These are the kinds of foods I commonly see younger kids not liking, and when I was their age I never liked them either. But when you're older, man this stuff is the way forward. So good for you too!

[UmmNRZ]

Can someone translate and describe all these lebanese/egyptian dishes for me please?

[SuBMiSSioN]

Bamya is ochre. According to this website, Molokhiyeh goes by some different names.

[Najah]

Koosa is marrow/white zucchini stuffed with rice and mince meat, cooked in a yoghurt or tomato soup. I miss koosa, my mum makes it awesomely! I've tried it twice and both times I've overstuffed them and they turned out too yard.

[sonsonator]

Egyptians don't cook the koosa in yoghurt, that's a lebo innovation! The best stuffed vegetable, bar none, is stuffed eggplant! Especially white eggplant. YUM!! Followed by wara enab (stuffed vine leaves). Made by hand, eaten by the handful, but oh so delicious. Unfortunately my husband doesn't eat Egyptian style foods (which is unusual for someone with Egyptian heritage but he's a health nut) so I don't get many opportunities to cook Egyptian dishes, so I always indulge at my mum's house!

[Najah]

I love stuffed eggplants!! But the purple kind.

[Najah]

The best Egyptian food I had was at my husbands friends house who lived in shoubra. Mashallah his wife, cooked this massive buffet of food, and she had a kitchen the size of a small bathroom, there must of been so much barakah in her food, everything came out hot and fresh mashallah.

[ninja_sista]

Oh molokhiyah is the best. Bamyeh is good too but it doesn't compare. These are the kinds of foods I commonly see younger kids not liking, and when I was their age I never liked them either. But when you're older, man this stuff is the way forward. So good for you too!

um....Bamyeh?!! One day my sister told me it looks like octopus....ever since that day i could never look at bamyeh the same way ...

[Sister.]

Dh and my brother are making pizza

[UmmNRZ]

I love stuffed vine leaves, don't know how to make it though

[from water]

um....Bamyeh?!! One day my sister told me it looks like octopus....ever since that day i could never look at bamyeh the same way ...

Lol octopus?? But, it doesn't even have tentacles! Well... I guess one could speculate that the bamyehs look like squid heads maybe, without tentacles, like they were decapitated in a Japanese restaurant for Ikameshi (stuffed squid). And why are the Japanese using the word "meshi" the same way we do in Arabic when we say "mehshi"?

It all happens so suddenly, but one thing is for certain, from this day onward, I don't think I'll ever look at bamyeh the same way ...

[*saRah*]

Don't like bamye or mlokhiye, they have an unpleasant slimy texture :| I didn't mind mlokhiye before but I just don't like it anymore.

Lol @ bamye looking like octopus I do not recognise the resemblance.

[aussiemu]

Bamya is not slimy - it depends how you cook it. I'm one of those kids whose favourite food was bamya. My mum stirfries it with tomato and onion and some spices and it is one of my absolute favourite foods.

UmmNRZ: No idea what molokhiyah is outside of Arabic but its a green thing :P Bamya is bhindi.

Not a big fan of wara enib either. Stuffed eggplant though sounds like something I would like - what do you stuff it with?

I'm a big yoghurt nut though so koosa bi laban is my absolute favourite.

sonsonator: My husband isn't a big lebo food eater either (thankfully as I would hate to cook one kind of food all the time). I make things occasionally but mainly he'd eat it at his mums the things I don't make like fasoliyeh, wara enib etc.

[from water]

I like wara' `inib a lot if it's yabra', not so much if it's yaalungi. The difference being that yabra' has meat in it and yaalungi does not and is more sour.

Stuffed eggplant is very good. It is basically koosa mihshi but with eggplant instead. You can also stuff green peppers (or capsicum as it is referred to at your end), but with that, it's common that after cooking the green exterior is not eaten but only the rice inside is. Usually when my mom makes all of this it's done together. If you're already stuff koosa might as well do everything else since it all uses the same thing. Unless you guys know of different recipes.

[*saRah*]

Okra/bamye not slimy? It's known for its sliminess lol my mum cooks it the same but she adds mince meat. Maybe ur mum cooks it only for a couple of minutes. But it is a slimy plant/veg.

[aussiemu]

Nah it has great potential to be very slimy very easily lol. I mean it doesn't have to be slimy. One thing my mum does is that she half cooks the bamya in some oil for a few minutes before she does the onion / tomato. So it kind of seals the bamya and you have to mix it very carefully as every time you are touching it and poking it you can make it slimy. She takes it out then after she cooks the onion, garlic etc in oil, then the tomato, then add the bamya in and rarely mix it after that so as to avoid the sliminiess.