Carbo Loading

A few weeks ago, a friend took Hubby and I to a local eatery where, we were promised, we would enter famished but leave full enough that we wouldn’t eat for a day. The menu at this restaurant was three items long: small, medium, or large Koshari. (Incidentally, I found no less than five spellings online for Koshari, so I simply chose one at random.) The small plastic tables held bottles of lovely, spicy looking oils and our bowls of food were accompanied with smaller bowls of tomato sauce, and fried onions and garlic.

Koshari, for the uninitiated, is Egypt’s “in your face” to the whole no carbs idea. This vegetarian meal contains macaroni shaped pasta, chickpeas, lentils, rice, and vermicelli noodles. The best part is that it is insanely inexpensive running only LE4 for a small. To put that into perspective, a small bowl of this local delicacy is, in my opinion, enough food for an entire day and costs less than a can of Coke.

The other day, in a fit of laziness and as a consequence of working late, Hubby introduced our household to “take away Koshari.” For LE10, he brought home enough food to feed a small army. While the condiments weren’t as plentiful as they were at the restaurant, the oil was still super spicy and the tasty meal was still more than enough to bloat me and force me to hand Hubby ¾ of my portion to finish.

I’m not ready to say that this is my favourite meal ever, but as traditional foods go it’s pretty tasty. Carbs, carbs, and then more carbs for good measure, all flavoured with yummy spicy goodness. We literally couldn’t make this at home as inexpensively as they sell it. And I’m even thinking of asking Hubby to get extra spicy oil next time so I can use it to make salad dressing. For pasta salad, naturally!