Cow and Sugar Cane Adventure My birthday was the other day and I made myself a delicious salad for dinner. This is the story of how I procured the ingredients. I bought them in Old Damietta on an excursion with Driver Mohammed on Friday, my day off. I am practicing my Egyptian driving a little at a time - learning the local here-to-there routes and local roadway etiquette. This trip was a good opportunity to drive in daylight with M as navigator and trainer. We both survived, but he admitted that it was a lot harder for him to be on the passenger side. I think he probably went home and took a nap afterward. So anyway, here is the Cow and Sugar Cane Adventure thanks to my friend and guide, the irreplaceable Driver Mohammed.
I am originally in search of lamb. M and I stop at about five butcher shops in the heart of Old Damietta. These places make the Italian Market in Philadelphia look like a contemporary American supermarket. M has a chat with each proprietor and we get the same "la la la" (no, no, no in Arabic.) At the fifth stall/storefront the man has a short beard, contemporary-style eyeglasses and an Addidas running suit, blue with white racing stripes on the side of the jacket and trousers. I get the impression that we are at mutton shops and they don't want to spoil my day with surprise meat - very considerate of them. Of course, I have to make up my own explanations sometimes because I have trouble understanding the nuance from M's limited english explanations.
We end up wandering a lot of the market/retail sector of Old D, so that is a treat for me. In the end we go to a "restaurant" that grills meals for eat-in customers. M knows the proprietor and rings ahead on his mobile and confirms that they have "cow" that they are willing to sell to me. The whole place is open to the street. It faces on one of the "main" thoroughfares. ("Main" meaning two travel lanes plus car/donkey cart/bicycle parking lane.) We stand on the narrow sidewalk next to the man cutting meat on an old wooden butcher block with flies everywhere, three feet from the trash-lined curb. The meat is visually very promising. I buy a kilo (2 1/4 lb) of what might be tenderloin from the look of it.
The treat of the trip is an impulse learning experience. We pass a corner shop at the busiest intersection-ish part of the thoroughfare. It is mostly open to the street (yes, like all the rest) and I see a 5 foot high pile of green sticks. I think they looked like to the sugar cane I have seen piled high on donkey carts in Kafr El Bateekh. I ask M, as I am continually doing, what that is all about. Sometimes I get a sputter of attempted and failed explaination, but this time I get the full and enthusiastic demonstration. M pulls out his wallet and hands over a couple small bills to a young man sitting behind a sidewalk-side counter window of the shop. The young clerk hands M two postage-stamp size pieces of paper. We step four feet around the corner and M hands the tickets over another counter to an old man with a white stubble beard and dirt-filthy hands and clothes who seems to be missing all his teeth. The old man walks over to the pile of sticks in the dark shop brings two sticks back with him. He then feeds them, one at a time, into a six inch by two inch slot in a stainless steel box. He then holds a small, clear plastic bag under a spout below the slot. Yellowish-amber fluid pours slowly into the bag. The old man puts a small plastic straw in and deftly ties a knot in the bag with the straw sticking out of the top. He hands it to M. The second bag goes to me. I say my shukron (thanks) and try it. It is a sweet drink, and very refreshing. Pure sugar cane juice. I walk the rest of the way back to the parked car sipping syrup and wondering at the sights. Back at the house that evening, JF will be coming by for dinner. I cut the fuller part of the meat into steaks and the more flat part I leave in a larger piece. I marinate it in a heavy marinade of Worcestershire, soy, olive oil, garlic and rosemary. We grill-up the whole thing and eat most of the steaks that night. They are very tasty with blue-cheese-smashed potatoes and grilled veggies and South African red wine. The leftovers are one steak and the whole, big flatter part.
On my birthday, I slice the meat diagonally and lay the finger-size slices over the bed of lettuce and tomato. I make a lemon juice, olive oil, basil and garlic dressing and pour it on. The steak is pink in the middle and darker around the edges - I'd say it is about medium done. A yummy birthday dinner and an adventure of cow and sugar cane.
All images and text copyright Marsha Bailey 2005-2009. All rights reserved.
