Daily staple — the peasant's pot (peret, what comes out of the Nile garden)
Red lentil soup with onion and cumin from the silt
EverydayReconstruction🧂 🌶️facile40 min
A thick soup of melting lentils, perfumed with onion, garlic and cumin, bound with a drizzle of oil. The daily dish, simple, filling and cheap, eaten with bread.
Daily staple — the peasant's pot (peret, what comes out of the Nile garden)
A thick soup of melting lentils, perfumed with onion, garlic and cumin, bound with a drizzle of oil. The daily dish, simple, filling and cheap, eaten with bread.
I watch over the Two Lands as the falcon watches over the field. See my people: they do not eat the fat flesh of the goose every day — no — they boil lentils and onion in the earthen pot, and dip their bread in the broth. This is a right food, in accordance with ma'at, that satisfies the worker under the sun I carry. Never despise the humble dish: it raised my pyramids.
Ingredients
- •Lentils — two measures (nourishing base)
- •Onions — several (flavor and base)
- •Garlic — a few cloves (aromatic)
- •Cumin — a pinch (Nile spice)
- •Oil (linseed or sesame) — a drizzle (binding and fat)
- •Salt — to taste (seasoning)
How it was made : Lentils, fava beans, chickpeas and onions were the core of the Egyptian popular diet. Onion and garlic, almost sacred, were so tied to Egypt that the Greeks mocked them. Everything was cooked in earthen pots over a low hearth, and legume broth was eaten by dipping bread.
Sources : Pierre Tallet, La cuisine des pharaons (Actes Sud) · Hilary Wilson, Egyptian Food and Drink (Shire Egyptology)