Prickly pear. The delicious but risky fruit of a cactus. The sweet, juicy flesh ripens from green to a deep apricot-pink colour. It is sensible to use leather gloves when dealing with these fruit as they are covered in fine, penetrating prickles. They are normally eaten raw but can be cooked, with the edible seeds becoming hard with cooking.
Thin-lipped grey mullet (US: striped mullet). It has a pointed snout giving it the appearance of thin lips, hence its name. It has a golden sheen.
A sort of Egyptian equivalent of a tagine - a deep clay pot into which ingredients are place for long, slow cooking. It is also the name of the dishes cooked in it.
"Pickled." From the Turkish, this word describes pickles, or any food that is pickled. These might include onions, radishes. cucumbers, any root vegetables, or olives flavoured with chillis.
A warm dessert made with pastry with milk, sugar and raisins, coconut and cinnamon. Someone in Egypt told me that there was a 'nice' story about this. A Sultan took a wife whom he loved very greatly and she made him promise that he would never marry another. Of course, he did, some time later. Here the story got a little confused. The son of the first wife, who was called Ali, murdered the second wife, after the Sultan had died, and his mother (Umm Ali or 'Mother of Ali') made this sweet and handed it out to all the people, so great was her joy. Not such a nice story.
