I drew this diagram for you so you know where everything goes.

Fetta is my favorite Egyptian food. Like most Egyptian dishes, it’s economical and makes use of a lot of extra leftover ingredients laying around the house. You basically layer bread, rice and meat in a casserole dish and smother the whole thing with a tangy, garlicky tomato sauce. It takes a bit of time to make, but the results are fabulous.

There are two kinds of fetta you can make: fetta hamra or fetta abyad. “Hamra” means red in Arabic, and “abyad” means white — so one version has a tomato based sauce on top and the white one well, doesn’t.

Recipe after the jump.

Recipe:

Meat:
1 pot of water
1 1/2 chuck roast, cut into large pieces
LOTS of salt (remember, you’re flavoring the water, too)..about 1-1/2 TBS
2 bay leaves
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp peppercorns
1 1/2 tsp anise seeds
1 large onion, quartered

Bring to a boil and simmer on low heat for 3 hours. Do this the night before so you’re not waiting forever to CHOW DOWNNNAH. Reheat before assembling the dish the next day. Take out the bay leaves — if you eat that shit, it will cut your throat.

Rice
Cook two cups of rice. Bonus: toast the rice in half a stick of butter before you add the water to it. It will give the rice a really nutty lovely flavor. Make sure you add salt!

Bread
Toast five pieces of pita bread in the oven at 210 degrees for about an hour — the point of this is to dry it out, not toast it. Crack it up into nice-sized pieces and put it in a shallow baking dish.

Sauce “Salsa”
1 can of tomato sauce
1/2 c of vinegar
8 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tbs olive oil
1 tsp red pepper flakes (my personal touch — I like to keep things spicy)

Heat the oil on medium heat and toss the red pepper and garlic in there. Stir it around until it gets golden brown, then add the vinegar. Simmer it together for about 5 minutes. Pour in the tomato sauce, reduce to a simmer and cook for another 5-10 minutes on low heat.

Directions:

Ladle stock into the baking dish (the one with the bread in it, duh!) until it just covers the bread. Then arrange the pieces of meat on top of it. Pour all the rice in and flatten the top out. Then, ladle on enough sauce to cover, and voila! Fetta!

PS be sure to wear your magic cooking hijab