Taysir Ghazi’s Ful Medames 4 Ways is a Ramadan Suhoor stress-buster and perfect comfort food at any other time of year.
Some years back the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Weekend magazine ran a recipe column called ‘Any Fool Can Cook’. It featured easy to make recipes which were a God-send in a busy life. I found myself thinking of it after I tried Taysir Ghazi’s Ful Medames, wondering why the dish hadn’t until now been part of my own repertoire. I loved making it – soaking and simmering dried beans or simply using tinned beans – and even more I love the end result and Taysir’s suggestions for eating it four ways.
Ful Medames 4 Ways was Taysir’s contribution to Recipes for Ramadan last year. We cooked it together in a Penny Appeal Iftar Kitchen run out of Gallipoli Mosque in Auburn, multiplying the quantities and cooking up 200 portions – 100 with tomato and onions and 100 with olive oil, garlic and lemon. The food was then distributed by Penny Appeal’s Team Orange volunteers to local people who are homeless or suffering food shortages.
Taysir Ghazi and her traditional Fawla pot used by the ful seller when she was a child in Cairo
A week or so later we found ourselves guesting on Simon Marnie’s Sunday morning show on ABC Radio in New South Wales. Taysir reminisced about growing up in Cairo and Sudan, having to flee the family home on the outskirts of Cairo to escape the bombs that fell during the Six Day War between Egypt and Israel and she shared a favourite childhood memory of the ful seller coming to their street in the early morning and ahead of sunrise in Ramadan.
I discovered that ful medames is Egypt’s official national dish, street food, comfort food, breakfast food and in Ramadan eaten before sunrise at Suhoor to provide long-lasting sustenance through the day’s fast.
Fava beans (or broad beans) have a colourful history going back to the Pharaohs with the story then being that Ful Medames was created by a Greek Khawaja (foreigner) by the name of Demos which is how it got the name Medames.
For the full story and recipe visit www.recipesforramadan.com. Check out Recipes & Stories and scroll through the countries laid out in alphabetical order to find Egypt.
There are several other recipes from Egypt, including Amina el Shafei’s Taamiyah, a truly delicious version of falafel full of fresh green herbs which give a beautiful colour and a moist texture which can so often be lacking. Other Suhoor ideas, see Yasser Zaki’s Suhoor, Moodi Dennaoui’s Suhoor Smoothie, Mustafa Allawi’s Dried Fruit Compote and follow @recipesforramadan for an alert for Nur Salimah’s Fijian Maleeda. All accompanied by family histories that take us back to the lands of our ancestors.
Ful Medames 4 Ways made with dried fava beans
A cut-down version of Taysir Ghazi’s story and her recipe will also be featured in the Lifestyle section of this Saturday’s Guardian Australia, the first part of a special five part series featuring recipes and stories from ‘Recipes for Ramadan’.
AMUST is a founding partner and community media partner in Recipes For Ramadan.
Stay tuned for more.
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