Wannabe Ful Mudammas

Originally, we had planned to make ful mudammas--an Egyptian fava bean stew--for dinner tonight.  Unfortunately, we had trouble finding fava beans at the grocery store.  Such is life.  We settled on a bastardized version of the dish made with a variety of beans and served with pita bread.  While I'm not sure how close this tastes to the real thing, it was still a good dinner. 

"Foule Mudammes" with pita bread

Recipe:
Wannabe Ful Mudammas

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, seeded and diced
• 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
• 1 - 15 ounce can lima beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 - 15 ounce can butter beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 - 15 ounce cans Roman beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 tomatoes, diced
• 1 heaping teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon ground corriander
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeri
• 3 green onions, chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• more olive oil to drizzle (optional)

First, heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Once the oil is hot, add the onions and sauté for about 5 minutes.  Add the bell and jalapeno peppers and cook for another 4 minutes.  Then add the beans, tomatoes, and spices and cook, stirring occasionally, for a few more minutes (the mixture should become thick)--as you stir, mash up the beans a little bit.  Finally, add the green onions, cilantro, and garlic and cook for a final 2 minutes.  Remove from heat and drizzle with olive oil, if desired.

Serve with pita bread or rice.  Yields 4-6 servings. 

Comments:
Taste:      

I really enjoyed this dish.  None of the flavors were overpowering: it was neither too spicy nor too cinnamon-y.  Again, I'm not sure if this dish had any sort of authentic flavor to it, but it was good nonetheless.  The turmeric gave the dish a nice color, adding to the already colorful array of veggies involved, and it was also a nice change of pace to eat with pita bread rather than rice. 

Accessibility:       

The ingredients we ended up using for this dish are all pretty easy to find (it's funny how that happened).  There are only two drawbacks to this recipe in terms of accessibility.  First, it involves several spices, and second, it calls for a small amount of cilantro compared to the amount of cilantro that comes in a bunch.  If you don't have cilantro, you could also use parsley.      

 Ease of Preparation:   

Even though a fair amount of chopping goes into the preparation of this dish, it's a simple recipe to follow.    

Non-vegan friendliness:   

As Simon put it, it wouldn't make much sense for meat to go anywhere in the dish--and as far as I know, the traditional Egyptian dish lacks meat as well.  That said, Simon did put feta cheese on his.  I thought the pita bread went really well with the ful, adding something to bite on.  I would make this dish again!