Fattah
A layered Egyptian dish traditionally made for Eid al-Adha, built from crispy toasted bread, rice, and a garlic-vinegar sauce, usually finished with meat and its broth on top. Popular tradition traces it back to a Pharaonic dish called 'fotat,' bread soaked in broth, but that link isn't rigorously documented and is better treated as folklore; the dish's real, better-sourced history is its popularization as a mass Eid feast under the Fatimid Dynasty (969-1171 CE), when rulers distributed it to the public during the Eid sacrifice. The garlic-vinegar-tomato sauce is a structural layer, not a topping, and is what really defines the dish's flavor.
⚠ Contains: Gluten. Always check your own ingredients — this isn't a guarantee for severe allergies.
Ingredients
- 4 pieces baladi (pita) bread, torn and toasted or fried until crisp
- 2 cups rice, cooked
- 500g beef or lamb, with its cooking broth
- 6 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/3 cup white vinegar
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 2 tbsp ghee or oil
- Salt and pepper
Steps
- Simmer the meat in water with salt until very tender, reserving the broth.
- Fry or toast the torn bread until deeply crisp.
- Fry the garlic in ghee until fragrant, then stir in the tomato paste, vinegar, and a few ladles of the meat broth to make the sauce.
- Layer the crisp bread on a platter, top with the rice, and pour the hot garlic-vinegar sauce over both.
- Top with the cooked meat and serve immediately while the bread is still crisp.