Egypt - Ful Midamess

Background
The menu for this meal was taken from Egyptian Cooking by Samia Abdennour. This book provided a long list of dishes. Most of the dishes involved fava beans, eggs, and bread. We chose to make the dish ful midamess as it is a national dish in a nation whose cuisine has been influenced by being the center of trade routes since time immemorial.

Abdennour also describes a bread called aish baladi, which simply means local bread. A simple description of the bread was given in the cookbook but no actual recipe was given. Some further research showed that local bread changes with location so a list of comprehensive recipes could not be put in a small cookbook. Fortunately someone had gathered many recipes and created a website that lists them.  A major consideration when making this bread is a 1 to 3 hour rising period. We made our bread the night before and it kept fine overnight.

Ful Midamess

• 1 cup fava beans
• 1/4 cup split lentils
• 1 tomato, chopped
• 1 medium onion, coarsely grated
• 1 medium carrot, finely grated
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• Olive oil
• Lemon juice
• Salt

1. Cook fava beans in pressure cooker for 10 minutes at 10 lbs of pressure.
2. Boil lentils until they are soft.
3. Mash the fava beans and lentils together until they are a paste.
4. Mix in the carrot, tomato and onion, then add salt, olive oil, and lemon to taste.
5. Serve on top of bread.

Results and Discussion
This breakfast was a simple and hardy.  My only major complaint with this meal was that was bland. In the future I would look for variations with more flavor.
For our readers without pressure cookers the same recipe can be repeated with a slow cooker and simply cook overnight.