Hab El Aziz

"Hab El Aziz"  or Cyperus Esculentus

If you traveled through TANTA in Egypt by train, car or otherwise you probably remember buying or seeing a small coloured reeds basket filled with a little fruit resembling dried raisins.

Sweets on display-Tanta

It is called “Hab El Aziz حب العزيز” and was sold together with “Homosia حمصيه” and “Semsemia سمسميه” it is commonly found during the Moulid of :"El-Sayyed El-Baddawi" everywhere in Tanta.

Cyperus Esculentus (also called chufa sedge, nut grass, yellow nut sedge, tiger nut sedge, or earth almond) is a crop of the sedge family widespread across much of the world. It is native to most of the Western Hemisphere as well as southern Europe, Africa, Madagascar, the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent. It has become naturalized in many other regions, including Ukraine, China, Hawaii, Indochina, New Guinea, Java, New South Wales and various oceanic islands.

Cyperus esculentus can be found wild, as a weed, or as a crop. There is evidence for its cultivation in Egypt since the sixth millennium BC, and for several centuries in Southern Europe. In Spain, C. esculentus is cultivated for its edible tubers, called earth almonds or tiger nuts. However, in most other countries, C. esculentus is considered a weed.

HISTORY

Prehistoric tools with traces of C. esculentus tuber starch granules have been recovered from the early archaic period in North America, from about 9,000 years ago, at the Sandy Hill excavation site at the Mashantucket Pequot Reservation in Mashantucket, Connecticut. The tubers are believed to have been a source of food for those Paleo-Indians.

Dr. Zohary and Dr. Hopf estimate that C. esculentus "ranks among the oldest cultivated plants in Ancient Egypt." Although noting that "Chufa was no doubt an important food element in ancient Egypt during dynastic times, its cultivation in ancient times seems to have remained (totally or almost totally) an Egyptian specialty." Its dry tubers have been found in tombs from predynastic times about 6000 years ago. In those times, C. esculentus tubers were consumed either boiled in beer, roasted, or as sweets made of ground tubers with honey. The tubers were also used medicinally, taken orally, as an ointment, or as an enema, and used in fumigants to sweeten the smell of homes or clothing. There are almost no contemporary records of this plant in other parts of the old World.

Besides Egypt, at present C. esculentus is cultivated mainly in Spain, where it is extended for common commercial purposes in mild climate areas. The Arabs introduced the plant, at first in the Valencia region. They are found extensively too in California and were grown by the Paiute in Owens Valley. C. Esculentus is also cultivated in countries like Guatemala, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, USA, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Yemen, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Sudan, South Sudan, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Northern Cameroon and Mali, where they are used primarily as animal feed or uncooked as a side dish, but in Hispanic countries they are used mainly to make horchata, a sweet, milk-like beverage. In Northern Nigeria it is called 'Aya' and it is usually eaten fresh. It is sometimes dried and later rehydrated and eaten. Toasting the nuts makes a snack when sugar coated, it is very popular among the Hausa children of Northern Nigeria, a drink known as 'Kunun Aya' is also made by processing the nuts with dates and later sieved and served chilled.

CHUFA TUBERS

Biology

C. Esculentus is an annual or perennial plant, growing to 90 cm tall, with solitary stems growing from a tuber. The plant is reproduced by seeds, creeping rhizomes, and tubers. The tubers are 0.3 – 1.9 cm in diameter and the colours vary between yellow, brown, and black. One plant can produce several hundred to several thousand tubers during a single growing season. With cool temperatures, the foliage, roots, rhizomes, and basal bulbs die, but the tubers survive and re-sprout the following spring when soil temperatures remain above 6 °C

Use as food

Dried tiger nut has a smooth tender, sweet and nutty taste. It can be consumed raw, roasted, dried, baked or as tiger nut milk or oil.

HORCHATA

Dried tubers sold at the market of Banfora, Burkina Faso. The tubers are edible, with a slightly sweet, nutty flavour, compared to the more bitter-tasting tuber of the related Cyperus rotundus (purple nutsedge). They are quite hard and are generally soaked in water before they can be eaten, thus making them much softer and giving them a better texture. They are a popular snack in West Africa, where they are known as ncɔkɔn in the languages Bamanankan or Dyula.

They have various uses; in particular, they are used in Spain to make horchata. “Horchata” is a nonalcoholic beverage of milky appearance derived from the tubers of the tiger nut plant mixed with sugar and water. It has a great economic impact in the Valencia region of Spain.

CHUFA

Flour of roasted tiger nut is sometimes added to biscuits and other bakery products as well as in making oil, soap, and starch extracts. It is also used for the production of nougat, jam, beer, and as a flavoring agent in ice cream and in the preparation of kunnu (a local beverage in Nigeria). Kunnu is a non-alcoholic beverage prepared mainly from cereals (such as millet or sorghum) by heating and mixing with spices (dandelion, alligator pepper, ginger, liquorices) and sugar. To make up for the poor nutritional value of kunnu prepared from cereals, tiger nut was found to be a good substitute for cereal grains. Tiger nut oil can be used naturally with salads or for deep-frying. It is considered to be a high quality oil. Tiger nut “milk” has been tried as an alternative source of milk in fermented products, such as yogurt production, and other fermented products common in some African countries and can thus be useful replacing milk in the diet of people intolerant to lactose to a certain extent

KUNNU

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Tiger nuts should be eaten in only moderate amounts at any one time. Ingestion of 300 Gm of the fibrous dehydrated nuts, chewed without being rehydrated has been known to cause rectal impaction.

Use in medicine and cosmetic industry

As a source of oils, the tubers were used in pharmacy under the Latin name bulbuli thrasi beginning no later than the end of 18th century. In medicine tiger nuts are used in the treatment of flatulence, diarrhea, dysentery, debility and indigestion.

Tiger nut oil can be used in the cosmetic industry. As it is antioxidant (because of its high content in vitamin E) it helps slow down the ageing of the body cells. It favours the elasticity of the skin and reduces skin wrinkles.

Lupin bean

Lupin "tremoços" or lupini beans are the yellow legume seeds of Lupinus genus. They are a traditional food in the Mediterranean basin (L. albus) and Latin America (L. mutabilis). They are traditionally eaten as a pickled snack food, primarily in the Mediterranean and South America. The bitter variety of the beans are high in alkaloids and are extremely bitter unless rinsed for a long time.

History and distribution

Termes (Lupini) cart in Cairo

The earliest archaeological reports on lupins are referred to the Twelfth Dynasty of Egyptian Pharaohs (over 2 thousand years BCE). In their tombs, seeds of Lupinus digitatus Forsk., already domesticated in those times, were discovered. Seven seeds of this species were also retrieved in the tombs of this dynasty dated back to the 22nd century BCE. They are the most ancient evidence of lupin in the Mediterranean.

Lupini were popular with the Romans, who spread their cultivation throughout the Roman Empire. Today, lupini are most commonly found in Mediterranean countries and their former colonies, especially in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Brazil, as across the Middle East (where it is part of Sham El Nessim holiday meals).

The Andean American variety of this bean, Lupinus mutabilis, was domesticated by pre-Incan inhabitants of present-day Peru. Rock imprints of seeds and leaves, dated around 6th and 7th century BCE, are exhibited in the National Museum of Lima. It was a food widespread during the Incan Empire. Lupins were also used by Native Americans in North America, e.g. the Yavapai people.

Varieties

Lupini Flowering Plant

Some varieties are referred to as "sweet lupins" because they contain much smaller amounts of toxic alkaloids than the "bitter lupin" varieties. Newly bred variants of the narrow-leafed or 'Australian Sweet Lupin' (L. angustifolius) lupins are grown in Australia, Germany and Poland; they lack any bitter taste and require no soaking in salt solution. The seeds are used for different foods from lupin flake, vegan sausages, lupin-tofu, and lupin flour. Given that lupin seeds have the full range of essential amino acids and that they, contrary to soy, can be grown in more temperate to cool climates, lupins are becoming increasingly recognized as a cash crop alternative to soy.

Three Mediterranean species of lupin (blue lupin, white lupin and yellow lupin) are widely cultivated for livestock and poultry feed. Bitter lupins in feed can cause livestock poisoning.

Lupini dry

Lupins are currently under widespread cultivation in Australia, Europe, Russia, and the Americas as a green manure, livestock fodder and grazing plant, and high-protein additive for animal and human foods.^[2] In Australia, the danger of cross-pollination of the wild bitter and cultivated sweet low-alkaloid variety is understood to be unacceptable when testing reveals the presence of one bitter bean per hundred sweet beans, and a wide quarantine zone is maintained around lupin-growing croplands to prevent wind-blown wild pollen from having a large influence on crop toxicity.

Cuisine

The Andean lupin L. mutabilis, the Mediterranean Lupinus albus (white lupin), and Lupinus hirsutus are only edible after soaking the seeds for some days in salted water.

Lupini beans are commonly sold in a brine in jars (like olives and pickles). They can be eaten by making a small tear in the skin with one's teeth and "popping" the seed directly into one's mouth, but can also be eaten with the skin on. Highly skilled lupini eaters learn to fissure the skin by rubbing the bean between forefinger and thumb. In countries like Portugal, "tremoços", are very popular in bars as a snack while drinking beer.

Lupini after preparatiom

In Egypt, lupin is known by its Arabic name, "termes" (ترمس), and it has been sold by street vendors, as a very popular snack.

Lupin beans can be ground into a flour, and this is widely used in parts of Europe and in Australia as an additive to wheat flour, enhancing the flavour and lending a rich, creamy colour to the resulting foods.

Nutrition

Lipini Plant

The lupin is devoid of starch, which is very unusual for a species of edible bean. Lupins have a thick seed coat (25%) which consists mainly of cellulose (insoluble fibre-bran) and its removal is the first step in lupin processing. The kernel (split) of lupin is rich in protein (40%), fibre (40%) and moderate in fat (8%) made up largely of unsaturated fatty acids. Intensive plant breeding programs have ensured that modern lupin varieties have relatively low levels of the alkaloids found in their ancestral genotypes. Lupins also contain moderate amounts of carotenoids; beta carotene, lutein, zeaxanthin and tocopherols (Vitamin E).

Australian sweet lupin features a higher calcium and phosphate content than cereals, with trace element content varying in line with the mineral content of the soil in which the lupin is grown.

Lupin oils have high antioxidant capacities due in part to the presence of tocopherol (Vitamin E – the total vitamin E content is about 2.3-4.6 mg/kg of oil).

Health benefits

Lupins are:
*One of the highest sources of plant proteins available (40%), roughly 4 times higher than whole grain wheat;
*One of the highest sources of dietary fibers(36%);
*Easily digestible with high bio-availability of essential nutrients and minerals;
*Cholesterol free and contain negligible amounts of trypsin inhibitors (known to interfere with digestion) often found in other legumes;
*Very low in lectins and saponins (two known gastric irritants), the latter of which afflicts the soybean even after extensive baking and processing;
*Convenient, healthy and do not require chemical treatment;
*Are probiotic promoting the growth of good bacteria;
*Are very high sources of essential amino acids and;
*Gluten free

Studies have revealed that Australian sweet Lupins:

  *Suppress appetite;

 *Reduce the glycaemic load of carbohydrate based foods;

 *Reduce blood pressure; Improve glucose metabolism (diabetes);
*Improve bowel health.

Toxicity

Lupin poisoning is a nervous syndrome caused by alkaloids in bitter lupins, similar to neurolathyrism. Lupin poisoning affects people that eat incorrectly prepared lupin beans. Mediterranean cultures prefer the historic bitter lupin beans with the required toxin-removal by traditional leaching in water preparation methods due to the better flavour that results. Improper preparation of bitter lupins with insufficient soaking allows pharmacologically significant amounts of the anticholinergic alkaloids to remain in the beans, and poisoning symptoms result.

While the alkaloids found in raw and dried beans are bitter and unpalatable to many, with merely insufficient soaking the level is reduced. There are several references in medical literature to poisoning caused by errors in lupini preparation.

Lupin allergy

Lupin allergy may cause life-threatening anaphylaxis in sensitive individuals. 

There is some cross-reactivity with peanut allergy, so nut allergy sufferers should exercise extreme caution with lupin-containing food. In the EU, lupin must be listed as an allergen in pre-packed foods where it has been used, but may still be hidden in over-the-counter products. This can be a significant problem for allergy sufferers since breads, pastries, pizzas, pasta, cakes and ice cream are all commonly sold over-the-counter, and all may contain lupin. Lupin has even been found in some tomato ketchup sauces. At present, no desensitization treatments are available, so avoidance is the only advice offered, alongside carrying an epi-pen and anti-histamine/anti-inflammatory medication.

Wine of Egypt's Golden Age

LABELS

While we may still need to decode a wine label in order to understand all of the vital information it’s imparting, we have to admit that the label is a very convenient invention. It’s quite hard to imagine what we’d do if we were uninformed about the wine inside the bottle. Without the label, there’d be no way to identify the grapes used to make the wine, where the wine was made, who made it, or it’s vintage. It would also be difficult to determine which wine was worth more than another, making trade nearly impossible. Which is exactly why, the ancient Egyptians invented the wine label.

From 1550 to 1070 BC Egypt dominated the wine trade. While wine did not originally exist in the region, it made its way to Egypt via trade, and the Egyptians wholeheartedly embraced and improved it. They first introduced standardized amphorae to make the transportation of the wine easier, creating seals of reeds and clay that protected the wine as it traveled across the world.

WINE MAKING ON WALL PAINTINGS - LUXOR

As Egypt became the center of the wine world, wine became the prestige beverage among nobility. High priests and kings fell in love with wine and took to collecting it by the thousands, building massive cellars to store the various wines they had procured. They even brought the wines with them to the afterlife – King Tutankhamen was buried with over 26 amphorae filled with different wines – and they surrounded tombs with highly sought after wines that many thought would benefit them in the next world.

But with so much collecting and trading of wine, there was a small problem: no one knew exactly what wine was inside each amphora, so a labeling system was adopted. The system was incredibly specific; recording the year the wine was made, where it was made, who made it, and even the style of the wine. All of this information was imprinted on the clay amphorae as they dried. On top of these essential facts, the Egyptians would often include notes on the amphorae that included how much wine was inside and whether the wine was good, great or excellent – basically creating the first wine ratings.

Wine amphoras in King Tutankhamun’s tomb,
 Valley of the Kings, Thebes, Egypt, c. 1330 BC Labeled
 “Year Four. Wine of very good quality of the House-of-Aton of the Western River. Chief vintner Khay.”

Based on excavations of Tutankhamen’s tomb, researchers uncovered that only wines from certain years were buried with the king, leading them to believe that even centuries ago, these ancient wine lovers were paying attention to which years were good and which were bad.

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EGYPT & THE DOG

Dogs on a leash

The dog connection with the gods and the dog’s loyalty to human beings is further explored in other cultures.  In ancient Egypt the dog was linked to the jackal god, Anubis, who guided the soul of the deceased to the Hall of Truth where the soul would be judged by the great god Osiris. Domesticated dogs were buried with great ceremony in the temple of Anubis at Saqqara and the idea behind this seemed to be to help the deceased dogs pass on easily to the afterlife (known in Egypt as the Field of Reeds) where they could continue to enjoy their lives as they had on earth.

DOGS WERE HIGHLY VALUED IN EGYPT AS PART OF THE FAMILY AND, WHEN A DOG WOULD DIE, THE FAMILY, IF THEY COULD AFFORD TO, WOULD HAVE THE DOG MUMMIFIED.

Dogs were highly valued in Egypt as part of the family and, when a dog would die, the family, if they could afford to, would have the dog mummified with as much care as they would pay for a human member of the family. Great grief was displayed over the death of a family dog and the family would shave their eyebrows as a sign of this grief (as they also did with their cats). Tomb paintings of the pharaoh Rameses the Great depict him with his hunting dogs (presumably in the Field of Reeds) and dogs were often buried with their masters to provide this kind of companionship in the afterlife. The intimate relationship between dogs and their masters in Egypt is made clear through inscriptions which have been preserved:

We even know many ancient Egyptian dog's names from leather collars as well as stelae and reliefs.  They included names such as Brave One, Reliable, Good Herdsman, North-Wind, Antelope and even "Useless".  Other names come from the dogs color, such as Blacky, while still other dogs were given numbers for names, such as "the Fifth". Many of the names seem to represent endearment, while others convey merely the dogs abilities or capabilities.  However, even as in modern times, there could be negative connotations to dogs due to their nature as servants of man. Some texts include references to prisoners as `the king’s dog’ 

The Basenji. (the common dog of Egypt – Kalb Baladi) 

The Basenji have short fur, ranging from red/yellow & white, black & white to tri-colored. Recent imports from Africa have been brindle. A mixture of red and black hairs that often resemble a tiger's stripes. This short fur is kept clean by continued grooming.

Berlin Museem

Basenjis are extremely intelligent dogs. A recent book concerning dog intelligence placed the basenji near the bottom of the list. Anyone who knows basenjis, knows that this is false. The listing was based on how easily different breeds can be trained and how well they obey commands. Basenjis can be trained (make that must), but if they find something of greater interest to them, they may ignore the command and continue on their way. Being that basenjis are direct descendants of the first dogs, and that dogs of their type are still found in the wild world wide, it is doubtful that they could survive thousands of years and not be intelligent.

The breed basenji is known as the barkless dog. Their vocal folds are not shaped for barking. This additional fact brings them one step closer to all dogs closest relative, the wolf. Wolves, as you may or may not know, cannot bark either. 

Background Notes.

The Basenji is one of the oldest breeds known to man. Ancient Egyptian art works show very clearly, dogs of the basenji's size and shape. Of course, other breeds are also depicted, namely Pharaoh Hounds and Izban Hounds. The Great Pyramid of Khufu (also known as Cheops) has paintings of basenji type dogs seated at the feet of their owners. This pyramid was constructed about 2700 BCE. There are also cave and rock drawings dating from about 6000 BCE in what is now Libya. These paintings show hunting scenes that contain pariah dogs looking very similar to basenjis.

Parts of this Article and pictures copied from internet with no intend to infringe on copyright of respective authors