The Kitchen

The Meal

1 – Sausages
2 – Lenten okra
3 – Sambousek
4 – Ghraybeh
5 – Genoise cake
6 – Fruit
7 – Coffee.

Cut up the okra; then fry the onion in oil and chop tomatoes over it. Then arrange the okra carefully in the mold with the salt, and set a plate over it so that it keeps its shape; then squeeze over it the juice of about two sour lemons.

Sambousek

Cheese: one uqiyya
Eggs: 2
Ghee: 1 spoonful
Flour — parsley.

Chop the parsley with the cheese and add a little salt to it.

Sambousek dough

Knead two uqiyyas of flour with two eggs, a spoonful of salt, and a spoonful of ghee. After it is ready, leave it for a little while; then roll it out, fill it with the filling you have prepared, and fry.

Ghraybeh

White flour: one uqiyya
A glass of sugar
Milk: 6 uqiyyas
Two uqiyyas of semolina with a little orange-blossom water.

How to knead

Mix the flour with a little water and the salt and knead well; while kneading, beat it against the marble slab so that it becomes smooth. Then coat the dough with oil, cut it into small pieces the size of a walnut, and put them in a vessel containing oil.

Ghraybeh filling

The filling is prepared the day before, or in the morning.

Cook the semolina with a little milk, water, and sugar. After it is done (cooked through), pour it into a vessel and leave it to cool. Then take those small pieces of dough and roll them out until they become very thin; divide

the filling into small square-shaped pieces, fill these thin sheets with them, and fry over the fire.

Genoise cake

Eggs: 9
Butter: one and a half uqiyyas
Flour: one uqiyya
Fine sugar: one uqiyya
Grated lemon peel

Method

Take the whites separately and the yolks separately.

Dissolve the sugar, sprinkle a little grated lemon peel over it, and stir it over a gentle fire. Then beat the whites until they become a white froth. Put a little grated lemon peel and vanilla on top and mix the two together.

Sift the flour over it; melt the butter and beat it with the flour and the eggs; then put the mixture in the mold and bake over a moderate fire.

Mulberries and sugar, in equal proportion.

Half a teaspoon of lemon salt. A little water — about a cup.

Squeeze the mulberries; then boil the sugar, the water, and the lemon salt, stirring constantly until the syrup thickens. Then add the mulberry juice to it and mix it in; then take it off the fire at once and leave it until it is completely cold; afterward keep it in tightly-capped bottles until needed.