Welcome to my local government supermarket. It's really a wholesale outlet because the itinerant retailers pull up on their donkey carts and stock up before they go trotting along the country roads calling out their wares. However, I'm often at the counter in the company of five others buying groceries for the home. No aisle browsing here. Customers stand behind the counter and a clerk brings out the requested goods -- if in stock.
My trip this morning arose out of a need for ketchup. I wanted to try a recipe for a chuck roast found on one of my favourite blogs, Food for a Hungry Soul. Katy raved about the flavour and I figured that a good marinade might overcome the problems we have with beef here.
Egyptian beef is extremely tough, it's not aged, and it's not butchered in any way that resembles cuts that I'm familiar with. Local beef has also become very expensive lately -- so expensive that it is a political problem for the government as people protest against perceived corruption in their food chain.
So off I went to buy ketchup for the marinade, but the clerk had no idea what I was talking about. Although it's almost as common on middle class Egyptian tables as it is in America, it is unknown among my poor neighbours.
Not to be thwarted, I 'goggled' ketchup, learned that it's not an invention of the 1950s but centuries old and that it was first made with eggplant or mushrooms. I also found a substitution for my marinade. However, I'll have to report on how good the roast tastes tomorrow because it's still frozen solid in the frig. ;-)
Bokra, insha'Allah.
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