Revisiting Egyptian Fish

Celery-scallion sole en papillote served with a side of Egyptian dukkah.
By Sarah Khanna

Eating fish in Egypt is a celebrated event. Being a costlier dish than most and considered to be a treat by many who cannot afford it on a regular basis, seafood, when offered, will never be turned down. Being revered as an aphrodisiac, seafood sells.

For a long time, Cairenes waited for the summer to finally get a taste of fresh-caught fish when they’d bid farewell to the dusty capital for a couple of months to head to the pearl of the Mediterranean, Alexandria, once the capital of Greco-Roman Egypt, to lounge all day long on its beloved sunny beaches.

Once there, these bronzed tourists with sand in their hair would hop into moored boats that by night would serve as makeshift restaurants. These little seafood spots would prepare different kinds of white fish, all equally spiced – with ground cumin and coriander, packed with garlic, drizzled with lemon and sprinkled with salt; never changing and passed on from one generation to the next.

After the initial preparation, the fish would either be dipped in flour and deep fried to a crispy golden brown or coated in bran and grilled to result in a moist and delicate smoky fish. Sometimes, it would also be butterflied and stuffed with onions, carrots, tomatoes, celery and coriander then oven-baked. Next to these fish dishes, a medley of salads would be laid out along with the traditional tahini sauce, fresh wedges of lime and some hot puffy flat bread. Always served with a side of fried onion rice, fish, made using any of the similar Egyptian recipes, comes along with some fried calamari and grilled shrimp, also pre-marinated in a salty garlic-cumin-lime mixture.

Getting tired of these authentic albeit overdone recipes, younger and more affluent Egyptians are finding refuge in sushi and sashimi – cleaner, sleeker versions of seafood that play on subtlety instead of overpowering you with heady aromatics.

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But maybe running to the other side of our food planet and disregarding our own culture is not the solution. Maybe it’s about time we start taking our own local dishes and transforming them into something a little lighter, a little prettier and a lot more dramatic. Maybe it’s time we combine elements of our food culture that, for the most part, do not come together to build on those world cuisines we are slowly losing.

This recipe brings a little bit of variety to the Egyptian kitchen. Inspired by the French though utilizing ingredients readily available in most Egyptian homes, this simple sole en papillote is characterized by the freshness of your fish, the aromatic scents of your ingredients, the spicy zing of the chili and the sweetness of fresh tomatoes sprinkled with dukkah, a spice mix usually used to dip bread in. The pleasantly scented steam that hits you upon opening your little package is maybe a little ceremonious, perhaps a little more humbling; and smell will always remind you of where you come from.