Discover the Toum of the Pharaohs on the Red Sea Coast

Intrepid reporters Gary and Lorraine take No Crowds to new heights - this time adding a great recipe to their travel advice.

Most of us have heard of Sharm el-Sheikh, on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula by now—home of exquisite diving and less than successful Middle East peace talks.  Less well known is a former fishing village that sits just across the Red Sea from Sharm, known as Hurghada.  A charmingly run down quasi resort, Hurghada has clearly spent much of the last 30 years catering to those from the northern climes.  From the Air Berlin plane on the runway of the local airport, to the Finnish newlyweds who just got off the charter from Helsinki, to the billboards and shop ads in Russian, German and Arabic—the signs are everywhere.

At a fraction of the cost of Sharm, Hurghada also has some of the most spectacular diving and snorkelling in the world.  The Red Sea is as deep as the Atlantic, and as crystal clear as the Caribbean on a fine day.  The fish that inhabit the plentiful coral reefs are not to be believed.  Simple snorkelers, we saw butterflyfish, trumpetfish, Napoleon fish, tigerfish and others we couldn’t hope to identify, all in riotous colours.  Frankly, our heretofore favourite spot, the reef wall in Providenciales, (in the Turks & Caicos Islands) paled by comparison.  Hurghada is also the center of a growing region that includes el Gouna (20 km to the north), a made-for-tourists town including several resorts built across multiple islands with gorgeous lagoons in place  of swimming pools.  And 20 km south is Sharm el Naga, a bend in the road that has no infrastructure but a glorious beach with arguably the best snorkelling directly off the beach of any place in the world.

But what we want to talk about is a restaurant.  It’s called the Nubian Egyptian, a simple open air collection of tables in the midst of Hurghada’s New Marina, and it’s quite an experience.  Most main dishes are grilled, but that means something different here.  Order the red snapper, for example, and it arrives still cooking on a small charcoal grill the size of a shoebox, carefully placed on your table so you can help yourself as the spirit moves you.  Likewise the lamb kofta and most of the other mains.  Each piece was superbly done—best snapper I have ever eaten anywhere, (including rougets done in butter at our favourite Parisian cafe).  And the piece de resistance was the garlic sauce (toum, in Arabic).  It was close enough to a good garlic aioli to convince you that traders must have taken these recipes on all their Mediterranean trade routes for many years...but oh, the garlic!  

We asked the proprietor for his recipe and he feigned shock—“you ask me for my secrets?”  In the end, he gave us enough clues about garlic, lemons, sea salt and a good mortar and pestle that Lorraine immediately set to work to reverse engineer the sauce when we returned home, with excellent results.  The recipe, my friends, follows below.  I recommend it to you with two warnings:  First, make sure you will be spending the rest of the evening with people who also like garlic and have sampled the sauce, otherwise the outcomes could be unpredictable.  Second, should you make your way to Hurghada, keep in mind that a strange bureaucratic glitch in Egyptian law makes it nearly impossible to import wine, and the local red or white wine (with colourful names like Scheherazade, or Omar Khayyam) is generally undrinkable.  Happily, the rosé is not at all bad, and makes a perfect accompaniment for everything you can find at the Nubian. 

Enjoy!

Lorraine’s Knock-Your-Keffiyah-Off Egyptian Toum

Garlic, lemon and olive oil whipped into a pungent creamy sauce and slathered on fish, meat and vegetables is a revered and ancient Mediterranean treat.  France, Spain, Italy, and Greece have all claimed to be the originators of this savoury concoction, calling it aioli, alioli, and ali-oli. I, on the other hand, am sure that along with all that gold, King Tut was smart enough to pack away several man sized jars of toum to ease the transition to the afterlife.  So I’m betting that Egypt can safely claim to be the originator of this sublime sauce.

  

My attempts at reverse engineering always have two objectives: (1) How can I make this quicker and easier and useful for a week night meal, and (2) How is this dish like something I’ve cooked before, so I can beg, borrow and outright steal from the best with pride?  Therefore thanks for this recipes go to, in no particular order: Julia Child (because before cooking any recipe I check to see what Julia says about it); Cooks Illustrated without whom I would have no idea of why mustard makes it easier to emulsify sauces; and finally, the unnamed chef at the Nubian Egyptian Restaurant on the edge of the Red Sea, because great recipes always conjure up great memories.

 

Ingredients

Juice from two lemons

3 – 8 medium size garlic cloves (3 cloves = mild, 8 cloves insures your safety from even Twilight vampires for at least 24 hours)

Coarse sea salt

2 eggs yolks plus 1 whole egg  (leave out for an hour to get to room temp)

1 Tbl Dijon or other French style mustard (leave out for a while so it’s at room temp)

2 cups olive oil (vegetable or peanut oil will also work, though olive oil is traditional)

Equipment (here’s how I’ve adapted to make this quick and easy)

1.     Food Processor with steel blade

2.     Garlic press

3.     Mortar and Pestle (some traditions must be maintained)

Preparation

1.     

Pr  Press peeled garlic cloves (3 – 8) through garlic press and add to mortar with 1 tsp coarse sea salt.  Grind until smooth paste.

2.     Add juice of one lemon to garlic paste mixture,  stir and set aside

3.     For the mayonnaise base:

·      Into Food Processor bowl fitted with steel blade: Toss 2 egg yolks plus 1 whole egg, 1 Tbs Dijon mustard, grind of black pepper, and juice of the second lemon.

·      Turn on processor and let run for 15 seconds, then add oil drop by drop for first ¼ cup or so, a thin drizzle for remainder.  (at this point you have a nice home made mayonnaise) – Julia says to be sure and not turn off machine till done.

4.    Remove mayonnaise to a bowl, stir in garlic/lemon paste using wooden spoon; adjust S+P to taste.

     Can be eaten immediately, but sitting in the fridge for 4 hours enhances flavour.  

     Keeps for about 5 days. 

     

     Photo of Toum from Wikimedia

The Egyptian Museum - And a 3000 Year Old Scandal

In Part 2 of Cairo: Crowds and All, Lorraine provides a game plan for tackling the Egyptian Museum and reveals a 3000 year old scandal.

A highlight of our visit was a trip to the Egyptian Museum.  

Gird your courage to the sticking point and brave the scrum at the ticket window to gain entry.  You won’t regret the effort, and you’ll feel a great sense of accomplishment when you finally walk away with your tickets in hand. 

A word of advice, hide your camera in your pocket or underwear (and yes, the image does defy the imagination).  A young woman inside inspects your bag and sends you back out to check your camera if she finds one.  However, once inside, people were snapping pictures happily with no apparent repercussions.

The museum itself is a large, somewhat gritty warehouse,  albeit a warehouse filled with priceless artifacts – a rare opportunity to walk 5000 years into the past.  We walked down aisles past hundreds of sarchophagi, jewelry displays, and death masks; we admired a written tablet that we suspected was the  Rosetta Stone  till I recalled that the Rosetta Stone had been shipped to England and resided in a museum there. And therein lies the challenge of the Museum. Signs in English are rare, and we often found ourselves speculating about the meaning of the exhibits.  While there are numerous ‘guides’ offering services before you enter the Museum, I can’t vouch for how knowledgeable they really are and would recommend that true history buffs check with Viator to find a guide, or the hotel concierge (if he’s more helpful than the one at the Sheraton).

Moving upstairs, we reach the King Tutankhamun exhibit. [Note to English speakers with limited knowledge of Egyptian history: The name is pronounced Tut (rhymes with hut) + ankhamun (rhymes with uncommon). Apparently, calling him Two Tank Haymen is the kind of error that embarrasses your partner and amuses other more erudite tourists.]   King Tut (this is the safe pronunciation option) burial chambers reminded us  of those Russian figures, where  you opened one to find a smaller identical figure inside, and so on till you reached the final, tiny figure. King Tut was the littlest doll in the center.  He was buried inside three gold covered box tombs,  sized so that they fit inside each other. And inside the three layers of gilded tombs,  was a solid gold king shaped sarcophagus (not on display)  and inside of all of this was the mummified body of King Tut,  the boy king,  wearing the well publicized and exquisite golden death mask that is on display at the museum.

The 3000 Year Old Just Revealed Scandal

We learned that King Tut was a rather unremarkable pharaoh, understandable since he ruled from the age of 9 till his death at 19.  His fame is all due to the grandeur of his tomb. In addition to youth, we’ve just learned that there was another good reason for little Tut’s less than distinguished rule. While we were there the Egyptians announced the results of DNA tests conducted on tissues from the Tut mummy (how wild is that – 3000 year old DNA?).  It seems he suffered from a number of nasty genetic diseases. This is not surprising since the DNA results revealed his parents were brother and sister. Compounding the problem, the boy was then married to his sister. A sad, but perhaps predictable discovery in his tomb were two of his progeny - mummified stillborn fetuses – products of that unfortunate union.  All that gold, and all that power, and no one seemed to have figured out the hazards of inbreeding. 

A final suggestion for those who like to read books about places they visit:  Egypt’s ancient and crumbling monuments are the tangible remnants of an ancient civilization; and modern Cairo, splendid, infuriating, and complex beyond all western understanding, is the proud  recipient of a 5000 year old legacy.  I often find that a good book can shine a light into the mysterious and exotic world of foreign travel.  My favorite fiction  books about Cairo are The Cairo Trilogy, by Naguib Mahfouz.  In the period between WWI and II, we follow three generations of a family .  For those who would like to browse even further I recommend www.bibliotravel.com, a website that allows you to type in the name of your city or country of choice, and then displays a wide range of books about the area. 

Photo of King Tut and Queen (sister) from the Egyptian Museum

Cairo - Crowds and All

If you are crowd-phobic like me, you might think that Cairo's not for you. That's not the case and No Crowds reporter, Lorraine leads the way on surviving and thriving in one of the world's most crowded cities.


The best time to visit is between November and March when the average daily temperature is 25C/77F. Right now the average temperature is 38C/100F so plan now and go later.

Egypt in winter so inspired Gustave  Flaubert that he recalls it started his  ‘literary pot boiling’, and shortly after returning to France he began work on Madame Bovary.  Florence Nightingale, was sent to winter in Egypt by her desperate parents, who hoped  that, seduced by the magic of the Nile, she would abandon her perverse interest in hospitals and find a nice young man to marry.  The magic of Egypt did indeed inspire her, but not in the way that her parents hoped.  She departed for the Crimean War after her return, and into history books as the Lady with the Lamp. (See Winter on the Nile: Florence Nightingale, Gustave Flaubert and the Temptations of Egypt. By Anthony Sattin.)

So it happened that last February, when Gary had work in Cairo, I happily made plans to accompany him, humming “see the pyramids along the Nile, dum de dum” while I hunted for bargain flights from Dubai to Cairo.  

Egypt Air did the trick and we found it to be an efficient if not luxurious airline option. We spent a long week end exploring the city, visiting the Giza pyramids (who knew they were just 45 minutes outside Cairo?), and eating our meals overlooking the Nile. While I didn’t return to Dubai and begin writing a masterpiece, or head off to war,  I do have some advice for anyone who would like to  enjoy this hyperkinetic city that teeters on the brink of chaos and somehow always manages to survive.

Cairo is the second largest city in the world and second in population only to Mexico City; according to the cab driver who picked us up at the Cairo airport and drove us to the Sheraton Hotel, Towers and Casino. As always, we found that cab drivers are the very best source of local mythology when visiting any city, except New York, where language barriers or attitude seems to prevent any communication.  With help from cab drivers, a group of enthusiastic school girls we met along the way, tour guides, and our own always fallible trial and error method, we learned a little about how to enjoy Cairo. 

#1: To reduce crowds in Cairo, get up early and visit sites in the morning.  You’ll never be alone in Cairo, but early mornings (from 9 a.m. – 11) are somewhat quieter, plus it’s cooler.  Alternatively, the guide books suggest that late afternoon is less crowded, but the infamous daily Cairo traffic build up may well cancel out that advantage.

#2:  Learn to say ‘Halass’ (emphasis on second syllable) which seems to translate as a combination of ‘enough’  and ‘ it’s finished’. This phrase is important, especially at the Giza Pyramids, where raucous vendors pitch camel, horse and buggy rides, and guided tours. If you don’t want to be besieged by would-be guides and other vendors, pretend you are deaf and dumb.  We learned that smiling and nodding ‘No’ just encouraged a renewed, more emphatic sales pitch.

The 4500 year old Sphinx guards the entrance to the Giza Pyramids, and is also known as ‘The Father of Terror’.  It may have been because we approached  the sphinx from behind and from the elevated level of the Great Pyramid, or because of  the oddly peaceful expression on its face, but we both found the sphinx less terrifying and somehow smaller than we had imagined.  However, a ‘sound and light’ show is conducted several evenings a week, and I’m told that the booming voice of the sphinx does the narration.  Though we didn’t make the show, it did occur to me that for those seeking true horror, the show might be just the ticket.

 

As an alternative, we suggest that if the sun is not too hot, and your shoes are comfortable;  take a walk a little ways into the desert, feel the dry desert wind on your face, and  sense the silence that dominated this Necropolis for the 3800 years during which the Great Pyramid was the tallest man made structure in the world.

 

#3: Hot, sun baked, hungry and thirsty, we adjourned for lunch at the 100 year old Mena House Hotel at the Giza pyramids. The food is good and the view over lawns and Palm trees to the Great Pyramid is spectacular.  Don’t miss it. 

#4: Stay at a hotel with a room overlooking the Nile – it’s an endless source of fascination though most of the river traffic appears to be recreational, with no sign of the original commercial importance of the river in evidence. We stayed at the Sheraton Cairo Hotel, Towers and Casino, where, despite their advertised 5 restaurants, had only one lobby restaurant open for lunch.  However, our room had a spacious balcony overlooking the Nile and we developed the habit of ordering  room service lunch, which we ate leisurely sitting on our balcony gazing out at the river and listening to the car horns of Cairo.  Our taxi driver described this sound as the ‘song of the city’, and after a while it became a rather pleasant backdrop to our activities.

 

#5: Unimpressed with the tours (or lack of same) suggested by our hotel concierge, we discovered a web site www.viator.com which offers all kinds of tours and events, world-wide, ideal for the independent traveler who prefers to design their own itinerary as they go, but might need some help.  We used them to book a Nile dinner cruise, which was touristy but fun.  Viator provided an English speaking guide who met us at our hotel, drove us to the cruise ship and escorted us to our table.  At the end of the evening, we were met and driven back to our hotel.  Given the exuberant anarchy of Cairo driving, we deeply appreciated this level of attention.  We’ll definitely consult with Viator again when we’re in an exotic location. 

Our  dinner show consisted of the usual belly dancer, which is not part of Arabic tradition but somehow has become associated with the middle east, and is therefore essential to every tourist floor show. We were pleased to note that Size Zero body type is not much sought after among Egyptian belly dancers; when these ladies twirled, the boat swayed.  We did find the whirling dervish dancer to be terrific, if a trifle dizzying to watch. 

At night the river filled with small brightly lit party boats, festooned with flashing colored lights, each capable of holding up to about twenty people.  On Valentine’s night the boats were gaily tricked out in red flashing neon hearts, each boat occupied  by a couple, who sat together while the boat pilot squired them along the dark river.  Gary and I imagined that it was a big night for proposals, or at least (my cynical nature intrudes here), propositions .

#6: A word about Egyptian wine.  Don’t drink it!  Insipid is the best we can say about it, and unfortunately, it was the only wine we could find on any menu.  While just about any kind of hard liquor can be found in any restaurant or bar, the only wine served was Egyptian, with quaint names like Scheherazade or Omar Khayyam.  If you’re a serious wine drinker, bring your own (I know from grim experience that this weighs down a suitcase and always requires checking it but sometimes it’s the only option). Alternatively, you could try duty free at the airport when you arrive – though we didn’t think to check it out, you might find some marginally better choices.

 

#7: Finally, get lots of Egyptian small bills, since baksheesh (Arabic for tip) is expected as part of all exchanges.  10% was the recommended amount, and if anyone argues and asks for more, just remember to say ‘Halass’.  A good quick estimate to help get a sense of the currency, is to ask how much a Big Mac, coke and fries cost in the local currency.  Everybody knows the answer to that question.  

Next installment: The Egyptian Museum + The Unfolding Two Tank Scandal

Photo Credit: Gary Ransom