Vegan Rozz Mefalfel

A longer and more detailed description

I make rice as a side all the time. I make a wide variety of rices, with what rice I choose to make varying depending on what it is I’m cooking that evening. However, I rarely make the rice the star attraction. It’s usually partnered with something else.

Well, tonight is rice’s night. Tonight, we’re making ourselves some fantabulous rice.

Start by melting butter (which, honestly, is always a sign you’re about to have a good time). Once it’s melted, add some oil, then half your rice. Patiently toast the rice, with an emphasis on patience, because it will take a little bit. Personally, I loaded up Balatro and played that so I wouldn’t keep poking at the rice with an “are you done yet” face, but you do whatever works for you.

Once your rice is toasted, add the rest of the rice, then your spices, and your water. Bring the water to a boil, then lower to a simmer, making sure to cover the pot. Go back to your game of Balatro and lose a couple of rounds. You know, just for the fun of it.

Once the rice is fully cooked, you’re all set to go! I served my rice with falafel and naan, but you can serve it with whatever you like. Or nothing at all, if you’re feeling bold. بالهنا والشفا!

Suggestions and substitutions

For the rice: Egyptian rice is a short-grained, somewhat sticky rice. The best substitute is calrose, but I couldn’t find that, so I went with sushi rice.

What I changed to make it vegan

Rozz mefalfel can be prepared with meat stock instead of water, and with regular butter instead of vegan butter. I didn’t do those things.

What to listen to while you make this

I’m going to fully admit that Egyptian pop music is not my favourite. However, I did enjoy this song, and you might too!

A brief context for this dish

Egyptian cuisine as a whole is a fairly vegetarian-friendly cuisine. Part of this is the reality of Egypt’s location - a life centred around the Nile leads to harvesting consistent grains and legumes. Part of it is cultural, with cultures like Coptic Christians having dietary requirements that are nearly vegan in and of themselves. And part of it is the economic realities of meat and fish, and the recognition that it’s possible to have a healthy and sustainable diet without having to invest in the expense of meat and fish.

Much of modern Egyptian cuisine reflects ancient Egyptian cuisine, with that reliance on bread, grains, and vegetables absolutely being a product of ancient agriculture. Much like with our discussion of laxoox, describing some of these dishes as ancient doesn’t begin to capture just how long they’ve been part of the culinary landscape of Egypt. Bread, watermelons, dates, and pears were staples of Ancient Egyptian cuisine, and still feature prominently in modern Egypt. This is a tradition that traces its history across millennia, and we are once again engaging with that vast history.

A mural from the 12th century BCE depicting a couple harvesting grain

Rozz mefalfel is not one of these ancient dishes. While I won’t go into the domestication history of rice in this post - for your sake, not mine, promise - I chose this dish because of the interesting narrative it’s part of, and the story that narrative tells about Egypt and its place in the Arab world.

Egypt has long been massively important in the story of the Middle East. It is one of the cradles of civilisation, with its ancient empire dominating the politics of the surrounding area for millennia. Even after its conquest by Rome, Egypt continued to powerful within the Roman, then Byzantine Empires, and was a seat of power for both the Sassanids and the Arab Caliphates that followed (Rashidun, Abbassid, Fatimid, and many other names that will evoke terror in the hearts of any long time Crusader Kings players), its power only really waning with the Black Death and the invasion of the Ottomans. While it may not necessarily seem like a major world power today, it continues to wield huge influence in the Middle East, particularly in a cultural sense. Egyptian Arabic is the lingua franca of the Arabic-speaking world, with Egypt producing a huge amount of the media consumed by Arabic speakers. When I link an Egyptian singer in this week’s post, I’m not just linking an Egyptian singer. I’m linking a singer who is known throughout the Arabic-speaking world in a way that wouldn’t necessarily be true of a singer from Morocco, Oman, or Lebanon. Egypt has been at the centre of the world, and it remains so, for a certain definition of the world.

As an aside here because certain elements of the above-paragraph may not make sense to non-Arabic speakers, Arabic as a language is a deeply complex thing. While every language has regional differences - think “lift” vs. “elevator” or the hilarity or lack thereof of “fannypack” in British vs. American English - these regional differences are generally mutually intelligible within the same language. The same is not true of Arabic. Arabic has a formal register (اَلْفُصْحَىٰ, or “fusha”), but this is generally used in formal contexts, like newspapers or political speeches. Arabic speakers generally speak one (or several) of roughly thirty vernaculars or creoles, many of which are not remotely mutually intelligible with each other. To say that Egyptian Arabic (or مَصرى, “masri”) is the lingua franca, then, is not just to draw an analogy to something like American English as a universal English dialect. Rather, the analogy would be to something like American English as the world’s lingua franca. When they teach you Arabic in school, they teach you مَصرى, and this is why. Source: لقد درست اللغة العربية لمدة ثلاث سنوات، لذا أستطيع أن أضع هذا السطر لكم هنا. احتفلوا بي.

Anyway, back to rozz mefalfel.

Map of Arabic dialects, because I cannot emphasise enough how bonkers it is that Dutch, Frisian, Limburgish, and German are different languages, but Arabic is all one thing.

One example of Egypt’s centrality in the development of modern Middle Eastern culture (and I know the problematic nature of that statement, تعال وقاتلني يا أخي) lies in why I chose to make rozz mefalfel in the first place. When we think of Arabic folktales and mythos, one of the first examples we might think of is stories like Sinbad or Aladdin, tales of heroes and djinn and mythical journeys. These stories are drawn directly from one of the most famous pieces of literature, One Thousand and One Nights. Rozz mefalfel, while not a star of these stories, is nevertheless found within them, in the tale of Judar and his Brothers.

The story of Judar is as follows: Judar lived with his two brothers and their mother. After their father’s death, his brothers squander their family’s wealth, and Judar becomes a destitute fisherman. Each day, he goes out to catch fish to feed his family. After seven days of not catching anything, he becomes desperate. When he goes out to the lake, he finds a Maghrebi there. “Tie my elbows together and throw me in the lake,” the Maghrebi says. “If I make it out, you can have the fish I catch. If I drown, you can sell my donkey and keep the money.” Judar does so, and the man drowns.

The next day, Judar returns to the lake again to find another Maghrebi. This man tells him the same thing: “Tie my elbows together. If I come back, you get the fish. If I drown, you can sell my donkey.” Judar again does what he’s told, and again, the man drowns.

On the third day, Judar meets another man who tells him to do the same thing, and again, Judar does what he’s asked. This time, though, the man comes back, two wriggling, writhing fish clutched in his hands. “The men who drowned were my brothers,” he says. “This was all a test. We wanted to see if you would be able to help us recover a lost treasure, and it seems to me like you are.”

Judar is elated. This treasure hunt is an opportunity to escape his poverty and his cruel brothers, and it’s a chance to get out and see the world. He immediately accepts, accompanying the man through many trials, but making it to the treasure. He receives gold, gems, swords, and saddlebags that overflow with a never-ending supply of food, including bread and rozz mefalfel. Judar gets everything he could have wanted, and for a moment, everything is perfect.

However, his brothers are evil men. When they find out where Judar is getting all the food, they steal his saddlebags, trap him, and sell him off to be a galley slave. The brothers, however, can’t get over their own greed. They fight between themselves over the bags, escalating and escalating, until finally, they attract the attention of the sultan. He seizes them both, throwing them in the dungeon, and taking the magic saddlebags for himself.

Judar’s ship, meanwhile, wrecks upon the Arabian shores, and he ends up in Mecca. There, he meets a djinn. “You have three wishes,” the djinn tells him. “Anything you desire.”

Judar is a good man, and, after a moment, answers the djinn. “First,” he says. “I wish to go home.” “Done,” the djinn says, and Judar is transported back to his hovel by the lake.

“Second,” he says. “I want my brothers to be freed from the king’s dungeon.” “Done,” the djinn says, and his brother appear beside him.

“Third,” Judar says, then pauses. “Anything my heart desires? I can wish for anything?” “Anything,” the djinn tells him. “Your wish is my command.” “In that case, then,” Judar says. “I wish my saddlebags and all my treasure back, and for a castle to keep them in.” The djinn doesn’t argue that this sounds suspiciously like two wishes smashed into one. Instead, he simply says “done,” and a castle springs up around Judar.

For a time, Judar is happy once again. He has everything he could ever want, and is safe and happy. However, the sultan notices that the treasure, brothers, and saddlebags are missing, and sends guards to recover them. Judar and his brothers defeat the guards, and the sultan realises he needs to negotiate.

“Okay,” he says. “I don’t want us to be rivals, so why don’t you marry my daughter? That way, we’re bound together, and what’s mine will one day be yours.” Judar, never one to turn away from a good opportunity, agrees. He marries the daughter, and he and the sultan become friends.

At least until the sultan up and dies, and then Judar’s brothers poison him, and Judar’s wife kills the brothers and burns the saddlebags and all the treasure and tells everyone to sort out their own messes. The End.

I think the moral is not to trust your brothers if they sell you into slavery, but I don’t know. I think there’s some ambiguities here.

Another valid moral is "Don't trust strange men who tell you to throw them into a lake." (Source: 1001recaps.org)

On the one hand, me making rozz mefalfel because it’s reference in 1001 Nights is a cute little nod to literature. On the other hand, when one looks at the story of this collection, it’s valid to consider how much of it is shaped by Egypt and Egyptian traditions.

1001 Nights likely originated in Persia, though there are some decidedly Indian influences as well, especially with its more animal-based stories and the framing device of a woman telling stories to get herself out of danger. It is, at its heart, a collection of stories that has been added on to over the course of centuries. The earliest references to it come from Arabic sources in Baghdad, referring to it as Hezar Afsan, Persian for “Thousand Tales.” The Hezar Afsan was included in Ibn al-Nadim’s catalogue of books, where he derisively referred to it as “a coarse book, without warmth in the telling.” He was also upset that it only had two hundred stories rather than the promised thousand. He was evidently not a fan.

That he wasn’t a fan, though, didn’t stop the book from spreading and being translated into Arabic. Scholar Nadia Abbott discovered a 9th century Arabic fragment with the familiar title of The Book of the Tale of a Thousand Nights in Syria, showing that the book had made its way into the Arabic-speaking world. By the 12th century, the book had appeared in Cairo under its now familiar title. Over the course of the next few centuries, 1001 Nights would be expanded into its modern and recognisable form, with both Syrian and Egyptian storytellers working to expand the story.

The Galland Manuscript, a 14th century version of the 1001 Nights, containing 282 nights, and originating in Syria

It’s possible to distinguish the stories that were likely part of the original Persian version, what was added on in Syria, and what was added by Egyptians. While the Syrian stories tend to be shorter and more grounded, it’s the Egyptian storytellers that added stories of magic, sex, peasants, and djinn. Many of the most famous stories we know from 1001 Nights are the Egyptian ones, including the story of Judar and his brothers.

Most of these stories are not ancient, with many of them being crafted in response to demands by the public - both Arab and European - for a complete collection of all the stories. The earliest version of what we now think of as the complete 1001 Nights was printed in Egypt in 1775, although there had been a French translation of an “incomplete” version in 1704. In 1825, it was translated into German, and the stories spread from there.

The stories are not solely an Egyptian product, though the bulk of the modern collection does come from Egyptian storytellers. Rather, 1001 Nights captures a blend of storytelling traditions and the folklore of multiple regions and cultures. It is a blend of ancient, medieval, and modern, of trade routes crossing with stories told around a campfire, and of writers, both ancient and modern, struggling to keep up with the demands of their audience. It is an old set of stories, and it is so incredibly modern.

Making a dish from 1001 Nights is engaging with Egypt not just in a culinary sense, but in the greater sense of what it is and what it represents. Egypt is ancient, with that tradition stretching into the present. It is a cultural juggernaut that looms large in the history of humanity, and that status remains through the repetition of stories and folklore that stem from medieval Egyptian styluses.

Perhaps Egypt is, in its own way, a saddlebag overflowing with rice. We all benefit from it, and delight in the shared stories of humanity.