Egypt

Egyptian food has fed people along the Nile for five thousand years, centered on humble, filling staples like ful medames (stewed fava beans), koshari (a carb-loaded street classic), and molokhia greens. Bread, aish, meaning 'life', sits at the heart of every meal.

Koshari's origins are argued rather than settled. The rice and lentils resemble both Indian khichri, which one account has arriving with soldiers under the British, and Levantine mujaddara, while the macaroni is usually put down to Egypt's Italian community. A traveller's account published in 1855 already describes a Suez breakfast of lentils, rice, ghee and onions under that name.

Egyptian cooking is Nile cooking, which in practice means beans, greens and bread far more often than meat. Ful medames sits over low heat overnight and is eaten at breakfast; molokhia, the jute leaf, is chopped to a fine green slick and stirred into broth; and flatbread comes hot from communal ovens to be torn and used to pinch up everything else.

Slow-cooked fava beans mashed with cumin, lemon, and olive oil, the breakfast that has powered Egypt for millennia.