Our fearless leader, Madame Mumtaz, loved to take us on "discoveries," to increase our understanding of how the other half (or the other 99 percent) lives. One such discovery was a restaurant in Aswan favored by locals where we dined on koushari.
The modest two-story restaurant had the square footage -- and the ambience -- of some of my favorite New York destinations such as Sirtaj, Margon and Tajin. Same decorator, too: Formica tables, fluorescent lights, scarred vinyl tile floors. Like the meals served by the aforementioned faves, koushari is starchy, served in abundant portions and reasonably priced (I'm guessing about the last -- Madame Mumtaz treated).
Koushari is mainly pasta tossed with beans, lentils, chickpeas and other legumes. I suspect the variety and proportions vary according to what the cook has on hand. It's as spicy as you want to make it -- the food is served with lime and garlic sauce and a snappy red-pepper sauce on the side.
There's something about the multiple starches that had a comforting effect. A lot of the food in Egypt somehow brought to mind the cozy food mom used to make, though I doubt that my mother -- excellent cook that she was -- ever heard of baba ganoush or could have gotten away with serving eggplant at virtually every meal.
Rice pudding was offered for dessert. There's an extremely short list of foods I don't eat. I regret to say that rice pudding is on that list. I hated to offend the honor of the chef, but I was so overserved, foodwise, for so many days, I just couldn't go for it. However, the rice-pudding aficionados in the group gave it their stamp of approval.
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