Another Cooking Disaster!!!!

After two years in Belgium, in the heart of the best cuisine in Europe, I have mastered the art of cooking and of feeding myself with meals that don't consist of frozen pizza or packets of crisps!!!!

..... until I came to Egypt, where Mc Donald's, KFC and any other restaurants in Egypt for this matter, delivers to your door. So who can be bothered with cooking when you have places such as Mohammed Ahmed which costs nothing, and La Casetta or KFC which come to your door????

Thus after 7months of no cooking (only maybe a plate of pasta here a there - with ready made sauce) I had my doubts whether I still had the hang of cooking!!!

Emily sent me an e-mail lately saying that she has finally managed to cook specialties such as Thai and Chinese, so if she managed then I definitely could try out Egyptian Cuisine!!!! (no offence Emily! ;))

And what best to start with than my favorite dish in the whole world - Baba Ganoush!!!!! For those who don't know this is a Middle Eastern dip made out of eggplant and Tehina. My eggplants roasted beautifully and filled the house with the wonderful smell!!!!! But I don't know what went wrong after that and my attempt at making my lovely Baba Ganoush failed miserably!!!!! I guess as a non-Egyptian I could not master Tehina very well!!!!

Anyway as you can imagine that was not very good on my morale, so I decided to attempt making the Maltese Qassata or you could call them little pies - so the first ingredient was the short crust pastry - not too bad considering I did not have any weighing scales to know how much butter, flour or water - the texture was satisfactory - though I still prefer the ready made ones - considering that as well as flour in the pastry I got flour all over myself and the kitchen floor!!!! He he I was quite a sight when the landlord knocked on the door and found a weird foreigner covered in white from head to toe!!!!

Nevertheless the pastry looked fine, and now the filling was left!!!! I had no meat for a meat pie, and no cheese for a qassata, so I decided to make a vegetable pie, so I boiled and fried all the vegetables I had in the house, and turned it into what I thought was the perfect mixture for my pies!!!!

Then the final thing was left!!! Rolling out the pastry and turning them into pies!!! I had no rolling pin, so I turned an old jam jar into a rolling pin, and rolled out the pastry on a chopping board - the result was - the chopping board, the jam jar, the kitchen table, the kitchen floor, some plates and Thea where full of pastry and flour!!!!!

Eventually I managed to make 6 funny looking vegetable pies!!!!!! Which after all the effort I could not eat, so I put into the freezer for the weekend!!! If I do not survive the weekend, you might know the reason why!!!

So this is the end of my 4 hour cooking experience yesterday night!!!! I am now totally exhausted with a
really low morale!!!!!! - I can't cook!!!!!!

Ps. Kull sena u inti tajjba (happy new year!!) for all the Muslims and Happy St Paul's day for all the Maltese!!!