Aisha’s Egyptian Ramadan Kunefa
Egypt 
Ramadan Mubarak Everyone!
You might have read my sister Ameena’s story and tried her favourite Koussa recipe. In Australia it’s called stuffed zucchini or courgette and really it’s my Teta’s recipe but this year because of the coronavirus, we can’t spend the evening at our grandparents’ and so Teta has told us how to cook some of her recipes ourselves to make Iftar at home and help our mum.
For Ramadan, we always like to decorate our house with banners and lights and we have a Ramadan countdown calendar on the wall. Every night we do a Ramadan activity with our mum which could be colouring-in or a word search or reading.
For Eid, at the end of Ramadan, we wake up and open our presents, and then we get dressed in a new outfit and go with our dad to pray at the park. After that we go and have breakfast with The Grand Mufti Dr Ibrahim and his wife and our family. After breakfast has finished, we meet up with more of our extended family at another park, eat more food and see all our cousins. Then finally at the end of the day, we go out to dinner with just our family, my mum and dad, Ameena and me, and that’s how we celebrate Eid.
This year because we can’t go to my grandparents, we’ve been talking more on the phone and on Zoom calls. Teta has told us how when she was growing up they would be woken up before dawn not by the sound of the call to prayer coming from a mosque as my sister and I imagined but by the sound of a canon which made them all nearly jump out of their skins, especially because it was still dark. We also tried to make a video with my Teta but she couldn’t stop giggling and my grandfather said he’d never heard her laugh so much! Maybe we’ll try again!
If I could invite you to Iftar at my house, I would choose to make my favourite dessert, Kunefa. My Teta makes it with a cream filling and it is so good. Here is the recipe.
Aisha
2020
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Mix 3/4 cup of semolina with one pot of cream and add milk until thickened. Boil on low heat until creamy.
Use 1 bag of Kataifi pastry and cut it into strips.
Melt 1 cup of butter and mix into the Kataifi pastry.
Line your baking tray with half the pastry mixture. Make sure the base is covered.
Pour your semolina mixture over the base and use the remaining pastry to cover the top.
Put in the oven at 170 degrees and cook until the top is golden brown.
To make your syrup add 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of water, boil on low heat until sugar is dissolved and the syrup has thickened.
Once cooked, flip the kunefa over onto another tray and cover with syrup.
Enjoy!
