Ful medames

We make ful medames at home every weekend, and often during the week too. It's delicious, healthy and cheap, and good for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It has that staple quality where you really can't get sick of it. I love it.

It's one of those dishes where everyone has their own version. In recent months we've had Egyptian ful and Ethiopian ful at restaurants. While doing this week's grocery shopping a cashier took an interest in our purchases (cans of ful and Lebanese bread, among other things), one thing led to another and she gave us a recipe for Lebanese ful. That's what's in the photo, and please don't tell her we used Turkish bread.

Here are two different versions that we make at home.

Ful medames #1

This one gives you a pile of ful and a side salad.

In a saucepan, add a drained can of ful, a generous sploosh of olive oil, the juice of one lemon and a tablespoon of cumin. Heat it up, mash the beans as you like.

If you want you can also put in minced garlic (fried in oil first to mellow out the flavour. Sometimes we add some garlic powder instead. It's fine to skip the garlic too. Salt and pepper is good too but canned ful is usually salty enough for us.

The salad is made up of diced tomato, diced cucumber, chopped fresh parsley and finely sliced red onions. If you want more salad you could also add baby cos lettuce, red cabbage or raddichio. Add a teaspoon of sumac too (I don't consider the sumac optional).

The salad dressing is about 50 mL olive oil, 30 mL sherry or cider vinegar, and a bit of honey. Shake it all up together so the honey mixes in.

Serve it with bread, like a Turkish roll, a banh mi style roll or whatever you like.

Ful medames #2

This is the one in the photo that the cashier explained to us.

For the ful, gently fry minced garlic in olive oil. Then add the drained can of ful and about the same amount of finely diced tomato. Also the juice of one lemon and a tablespoon of cumin. Cook it for a bit and mash the beans as you like.

Serve it with chopped parsley on top. We also added some finely sliced spring onion and sumac and dressed it with a bit of olive oil and cider vinegar.

As before, serve it with bread.