Feeling Ful-ish

Yes, I know, bad pun. I am not even a fan of puns but I just couldn’t resist.

Tonight’s recipe:

Ful (pronounced “fool” and translated by Extending the Table as “spicy main dish bean dip”)  Sudan….page 158

As many readers may be aware, the first place Mateo and I lived once we were married, was Southern Sudan. We were living in Juba, sharing a living space (really space is the only word one could use to describe it as it really could not qualify as an apartment or house or even indoor structure) with another North American, a Sudanese man and a couple of very large and stinky rats. Yes, we know the reasoning behind the phrase “I smell a rat”.

In retrospect, having this as our first married housing situation was a stroke of brilliance as really, anywhere we lived after that was bound to be an improvement.

I don’t remember much about Sudanese cooking since all of our meals consisted of one of two options:

1) Injera and vegetables at an Eritrean place in the area

2) packets of macaroni and cheese powder that I had cleverly imported from the States and that we cooked using a paraffin stove that seemed rather lethal.

Mateo demonstrating the latter option...

 

Therefore, I was excited to cook something Sudanese in the comfort of my London kitchen and this excitement may have contributed to a slight misreading of the recipe. Specifically the part that notes that one should add any of the following: hard-cooked eggs, feta cheese, tomato, falafels, onion. In my grocery shopping zeal, I purchased ALL of these ingredients and added ALL of them to the ful. This, was perhaps not what the contributor intended and while it was very delicious, I think it was more of a Sudanese mishmash than a proper ful. It was most certainly NOT a dip-like – more the consistency of a salad probably owing to all of the ingredients I added!

Ful - with PLENTY of ingredients!

 I see that the book notes that ful is a “Sudanese breakfast dish”. I certainly did not have this for breakfast nor could I recommend it as a breakfast food but it was quite nice.