Full Medames - The Favorite Dish Of The Pharaohs

2024 Author: Jasmine Walkman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 08:29

From ancient times in Egypt, and in some other Arab countries for breakfast prefer to eat something solid and filling and this is the national dish Full Medames. It is prepared from several types of legumes, cooked over low heat and seasoned with garlic, lemon juice and olive oil, often garnished with boiled eggs, tomato sauce and onions.

Due to the large amount of protein in beans, it is considered difficult to digest. That is why they eat it for breakfast and, in extreme cases, for lunch. There is even a Syrian saying that Full is breakfast for the prince, lunch for the poor man and dinner for the donkey.

Legend has it that in the Middle Ages, Cairo cooked Ful near the city baths, where huge water boilers were heated throughout the day. There was little wood, so even waste burned. In the evening, when the visitors of the baths left and the fires continued to smolder, they used their precious heat to cook their favorite breakfast: they filled the cauldrons with beans and left it to boil all night. In the morning, envoys from wealthy homes arrived from all over Cairo to take the cooked Full.

The dish was so revered that the pharaohs did not go to the afterlife without it - they buried them with solid amounts of small grains of dried beans, which was known as Fl Hamam, as well as larger - Full rum.

Interestingly, they are even mentioned in the Bible and some Hittite texts. It is also known that Pharaoh Ramses III offered the god of the Nile several thousand jugs of fava beans (beans).

Ingredients for the dish:

- 500 g of brown ripe beans

- 1/2 tsp. Red lentil

- 1/2 tsp. chopped tomatoes

- 3-4 cloves of garlic

- 3 small onions

- 1 tsp. thyme

- 1 lemon

- salt to taste

- 3 tbsp. butter

- 1/2 tsp. chopped parsley

- 1 hot green pepper

- 6 boiled eggs

Method of preparation:

Photo: ANONYM

Soak beans for 12 hours in about 6 tsp. water. Pour it, pour a new one and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and cook for 1 hour.

Pour out the water. In a large saucepan, place the beans, lentils, tomatoes, garlic, chopped onion and thyme.

Pour enough water to be 5 cm above the products. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat, cover and cook until done, occasionally scraping off the foam.

Drain the water and finely chop the products, add the lemon juice and salt. Stir.

Pour into a plate, pour with melted butter and garnish with parsley, chopped pepper, lemon slices and boiled eggs.