A Blog by the Editor of The Middle East Journal

Putting Middle Eastern Events in Cultural and Historical Context

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Egypt Makes World's Record Koshary Dish; Well, They Did Warn Us It Was Coming

This blog has often dealt with the curious phenomenon of Middle Eastern food fights: Lebanon and Israeli Arabs competing to make the world's largest hummus, or Jordan's 75 kilogram falafel. The link will take you to the previous stories, and they did warn us this was coming last fall.

Now Egypt claims to have produced the world's largest plate of koshary. Since all of Egypt's other problems are presumably now solved, they're putting their effort into massive carbohydrates.

The traditional street dish of macaroni, rice, lentils and other ingredients reportedly weighed in at somewhere in the range of 7,000 to 8,000 kilograms, not recommended for those on a low-starch diet. (Would you like fries with that?)

While they say it breaks the Guinness Book record, no one says what the previous record was. Was there one? I've never seen koshary anywhere but in Egypt or in Egyptian restaurants serving expatriate workers in the Gulf or in he West.

Try to fit this on a street cart. Dig in:

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I don't see a problem with the idea, after all.

If we are going to wait till we solve our problems to think about food, nothing will ever get done.

I see it as a nice way to raise awareness about Egyptian cuisine or maybe encourage people to come visit and try local restaurants. Not everyone knows about Koshari!