Phantom’s mesa: flipping through yellowed pages and evergreen memories

Black-eyed beans and rice in Harissa sauce

I am helping mum clean up - long forgotten insides of the cupboards and caverns of old tin trunks in the attic.

Or is it the recesses of our minds and hearts?

A report card from school, a hand written term paper from my post - grad days. Remnants of old photos, books- leather bound and gold embossed classics that Baba had bought so indulgently for me. I now realise how he must have scraped and scrounged his tight salaried budget to buy me those jewels.

Cheaper, but equally dear Enid Blyton and abridged Dickens, Bronte sisters, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Anna Sewell pop up to say hello. The bound selections of Reader’s Digest features that were our project one summer when Mother had got us to tear out sections of “It pays to enrich your word power” “Book Choice” and “ Drama in real life”, collate them and get them bound in marble grey marble print covers and maroon cloth stems remind me of the reluctance with which Dada and I did this task. But once we took these sorted collection of pages to the bookbinders near the Hanuman Vyamashala , we were fascinated by the craft and the process. We sat in the book binding shop watching the workers skillfully stitch the pages together and glue it all together with home made “lay” or glue made by cooking flour in water! Most of the workers seemed semi- illiterate or educationally underprivileged for book binding was considered a vocational trade taught to those who did not have the aptitude for “higher skills and education”.

Little did those binders from socially or economically disadvantaged strata realise their contribution to education, reading, inculcating a love for reading and to a rich literary culture!

It’s sad to see those bound volumes gone to seed- such a fall from glory…

And equally saddening is the plight of the colouring books and comics Mother has carefully preserved, in remembrance of our childhood…

I brush aside the cobwebs and impatiently swipe at the silver fish scampering across the pages. Flipping the dog-eared and yellowing stacks of the comics, I spy our favourite Phantom comics. I finally realise (and a quick Google search helped!) that the comic strip creator’s name is certainly Lee Falk- for the life of me I couldn’t figure out as a child if it was Talk or Falk- due to the stylized lettering!

The ghost –who-walks, Kit Walker, Diana Palmer, Uncle Dave, Devil the Dog and Hero the white stallion, the wise pygmy Guran … I laugh suddenly when I see Mrs. Palmer- Phantom’s MIL saying “Tsk, tsk…” that’s how we learnt to spell this onomatopoeic expression!

The clock is ticking away, Mother is asking me when I am going to finish and come for lunch… yes, yes, coming soon… I know now why my kids dawdle over books when they have to finish their chores…

Oh look! This one is with the mesa- the tableland surrounded by the tall cacti in the arid desert. How did the Mexican desert end up in Africa?!

But a more serious question used to torment me. In my little mind I used to be at a loss – how does Phantom end up atop the mesa?!

The mesa reminds me of a dish waiting to see the light of the day in my I-photo library… a mesa of rice with black-eyed beans in harissa sauce!

Black-eyed beans and rice in harissa sauce

For the harissa sauce

1-2 (or more) dry red chillies, seeds removed and soaked for 30 minutes
1 small red capsicum, roasted and skins and seeds removed

2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon garlic paste
1 teaspoons ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground caraway

¼ teaspoon black pepper

Method

Blitz all the ingredients together into a paste.

For the rice

2 cups basmati or short grained rice, soaked for 30 minutes

½ to 1 cup soaked black-eyed beans - sprouted is better (I don’t normally use tinned beans/ legumes)

1 small onion chopped

1 teaspoon lemon juice

Salt to taste

A pinch of sugar

2-3 tablespoon olive oil 

4-5 tablespoons crisp fried onions

Chopped coriander/ parsley to garnish

In a thick bottomed sauce pan heat the olive oil and fry the chopped onion. Add the soaked black-eyed beans and sauté for a few minutes. Add the prepared harissa sauce and cook a little more. Add the soaked rice and mix well. Pour 2 cups of boiling water into the mixture, salt and sugar and lemon juice and cook the rice as you would a pulao.  You could cook it in a slow cooker as well.

Allow the rice to rest for a while and then serve in moulded tabletops garnished with chopped coriander or parsley and fried onions.

P.S – use any legumes- red lentils, mung beans or chickpeas. Add some pasta to the rice and serve it koshari style!

The Pyramids of Koshari

Koshari on the streets of Melbourne!

Walking in search of a quick bite to eat in downtown Melbourne one lunch time, we  found ourselves being led by the nose into a newly opened Egyptian eatery. We were greeted by the owner, an effusive gentleman speaking with a very strong yet attractive Arabic rhotic accent. The deep baritone rolling the Rs added to the ambience of the little place that replicated a roadside Cairo restaurant, as did the plastic flowers, vinyl table covers and hubbly bubbly sheesha hookas.

Nodding enthusiastically at my rather timid but hopeful query,” What’s that aroma? Is it something vegetarian?” he proceeded to describe the dish that was giving out the tantalising aroma.

“ This is Kosharrri…the national dish of Egypt… it is rrrice and macarrrroni and chickpeas and lentils and tomato sauce with cumin and garlic and maybe a hot hot sauce with more garrrlic and chilli…you like chilli, eh-  you Indian? Raj Kapoor? Amitabacchan? Hahhaa! I know, see?… and frried onions... I make frrresh frrresh for you!” The singsong intonation continued, but I suddenly started worrying about what kind of a dish he was talking about. Even in my most zealous ‘let’s clean the fridge and finish all leftovers, there are starving people in India and here we are wasting so much food’ I had not dared to mix such disparate things together and present them with so much aplomb!

But hunger and curiosity both fuelled by the appetising smells, got the better of us and after my routine tick and flick check on ‘no meat or chicken stock, no fish sauce, use fresh pan, no contamination for religious reasons (this one works for sure)’, we succumbed to his very hospitable offer to sit down and wait for him to fix us a portion each of the mysterious dish that smelt so good.  

Bursting with curiosity and as is our wont with anything new, we googled ‘Koshari’ on our phones to discover that it was a national dish of Egypt, very traditional and popular, that is was a fast food, a street food, very cheap and filling and even read a theory that the Koshari could possibly be a cousin of the Indian khichdi introduced to Egypt by British troops in the early 20^th century - that makes sense, khichdi= hotchpotch= koshari! ………but then where does it leave the claim that the Koshari is a traditional Egyptian dish?

When the plates arrived, heaped like little pyramids with stuff covered with tomato sauce and crispy onions, the mystery (and apprehension) deepened… but once we began our dig and excavated the mound, we realised it tasted every bit as delicious as it smelt! The variety of textures, the chewy pasta, the fluffy rice, the perfectly salted and floury chickpeas and the thick skinned soft centred lentils set teeth and tongue to task. The tangy and garlicky tomato sauce drugged with cumin facilitated the movement of the hotchpotch around the mouth and the crunchy fried onion sent star bursts of taste in between. The hot sauce, of which we had dared take only a little, was most remarkable in its taste and heat of capsaicin.  

We just loved this dish koshari! And like all the dishes we love, I had to make this at home. So here it is…

Koshari is served as a mixture of the cooked ingredients smothered in the tomato sauce and topped with crispy fried onions. I have assembled the ingredients in this fashion to show them (off!)   :)

Ingredients

1 cup brown lentils (sabut or whole masoor) (soaked for 5-6 hours, cooked with salt until soft, excess liquid drained)

1 cup chickpeas soaked and cooked as above or 2 cans chicpeas (drain the brine)

1 cup long grain rice (cooked with a little salt)
1 cup macaroni (or any short pasta) cooked al dente as per package instructions
3 large onions, sliced into thin rings and fried in oil until crisp and brown

For the sauce

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 teaspoons white vinegar

5-6 large cloves garlic (or more), crushed

1 heaped teaspoon roasted and ground cumin

1 teaspoon roasted and ground coriander (optional)

2 cups tomato paste (I used crushed tomatoes with seeds and blitzed them, so the colour wasn’t that great!)

Water to cook/dilute

5-6 dry red chilies (or more), seeds removed, roasted and ground into a powder

1 teaspoon black pepper

1-2 teaspoons sugar to taste (optional)
Salt to taste

Chopped coriander or flat leaf parsley to garnish

Method

Sauté the chopped onions in the olive oil and add the vinegar to keep the onions crunchy. Add the garlic and sauté more. Add tomato paste or pureed tomatoes and some water to adjust to a flowing consistency and allowing for some reduction. Add the cumin powder, coriander powder (optional), prepared chili powder, pepper, salt and sugar (optional). Adjust the taste to your liking. The sauce should be really spicy and served hot.

Combine the cooked rice, lentils, chickpeas and macaroni in a large pot or in individual portions. Cover with the hot sauce and sprinkle generously with the crunchy fried onions and chopped coriander.

Serve as a snack, a main meal or even as breakfast as the Egyptians do!

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