Egyptian Spaghetti

Dear Olivia,

I know how much you and your brothers love to eat spaghetti. And what a mess you and Lucas make when you eat it! While Robert continues to exercise his skills with a fork, the two of you have decided the best way to eat spaghetti is to dig in directly with your bare, should-have-recently-been-washed, hands. For you, I'd often cut the long noodles into smaller pieces, allowing you to grab fistfuls of the slippery, saucy strands and stuff them into your mouth--or, at least, get them close to your mouth, but mostly on your nose and cheeks. Lucas, sitting across from you, eats his spaghetti noodle by noodle. After finding the end of a single spaghetti strand, he plucks it up between his finger and thumb, tilts his head back as far as he possibly can and dangles the line until it hovers directly over his wide, open mouth. Like a fish eyeing bait, he waits for the precise moment of stillness before closing his jaws, simultaneously returning his head to it's normal, forward looking position, and slurps the worm until it is completely in his mouth (and all of the tangy, red sauce is splattered across his shirt, his chin, the table, the walls, and sometimes even you!). I'll admit it: when I was little I also preferred to eat my spaghetti this way, begging my parents to take me to that one restaurant with "sucky spaghetti" (which may or may not have been Bob Evan's).

There is something about spaghetti that appeals to everyone. For one thing, not much is cheaper than a pound of angel hair pasta and a jar of your standard tomato sauce. It's also so simple to make, and essentially takes no time at all to prepare. It's also quite yummy and filling.

In Cairo, I can buy noodles and sauce at any market. But unless I go to a more westernized, fancy-ish restaurant, I will never find our beloved spaghetti and sauce on a menu. Instead, I'll find koshry.

What is koshry, you wonder? It's like spaghetti and sauce, but it's so much more! Instead of just one type of noodles, koshry is a mix of many different shapes of pasta--spaghetti, macaroni, vermicelli, and rigatoni, just to name a few--in addition to brown lentils and white rice. The pastas, pulses, and grains are each cooked separately in huge, drum-like metal steamers, then scooped into one bowl and mixed together. It is served with a mild, universally appealing tomato sauce (sometimes on the side and sometimes poured on top), and topped with tiny fried onions to give it a perfect crunch. If you like (and I like!), you can season your own personal bowl with the chili oil and garlic vinegar found on your table.

Koshry is certainly different than spaghetti. For one thing, it combines different shapes and textures that we often have in America, but always eat separately. And unlike spaghetti and sauce, it is rarely made at home! You of course, could make it, but it would take a lot of time, patience, and skill (and many, many pots and pans). I have seen women, however, stop by a restaurant and buy the noodles and lentils and rice to be served with their homemade, secret-recipe tomato sauce.

But the biggest difference of all is that there are restaurants that serve only koshry. There is even one famous place downtown, Abu Tarak's, that is five stories tall! Imagine going to a huge building in downtown Austin, illuminated with neon blue and red lights, packed with families from all around town, and ordering only spaghetti! Some koshry joints are fancier than others: some have more varieties of pasta to serve; some have sodas; others have your standard Egyptian desserts, like Umm Ali and rice pudding. But, recently, Maurice and I went to a place that served only koshry. It was the only item on the menu. That's it. Nothing more to choose, except the size of your bowl: regular, medium, and large. We both ordered regular--though with extra sauce--and were stuffed a mere 8 Egyptian Pounds later (about $1.30). So yummy, so cheap, and so filling. I bet you'd love it.

Love,

Miss Emily