STIR IT UP NOW HAS ITS OWN E-MAIL ADDRESS: wrsfood@gmail.com. Send Anne your gustatory comments, culinary complaints, and cooking queries. Suggestions, puzzles and hot tips all very welcome.
Normally staid Baselers bid adieu to winter and usher in spring with a bacchanal that traces its roots back to pagan times. Swiss cooking expert Sue Style explains how the fun begins with Morganstreich, when all the lights in the city go out on the exact stroke of 4 a.m. Monday morning (this year, March 2). For details on activities, go to www.basel.ch or www.fasnacht.ch. And to try to book a last minute room, visit www.bnb.ch (word to the wise: if you contact someone and they don’t have a room, ask if they have a friend who might). For more information on Basel, Fasnacht, and Swiss food in general, go to www.suestyle.com.
For information on Egyptian food and loads of recipes, including the yummy semolina cake with lemon syrup that Anne made, visit this site. You can eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner like an Egyptian simply by learning how to prepare what amounts to the national dish, ful (mashed fava beans). Add some chili powder, a sprinkle of coarse-grained salt, and a squeeze of lime, and you’re good to go.
And to learn more about Egyptian culture in general, take a look at Andre Aciman’s wonderful memoir, ’Out of Egypt’ or the Cairo chapters in Tony Horwitz’s often-droll ’Baghdad without a Map.’