Egyptian Fig and Date Bread

In researching more about Egyptian food as I am glued to Al Jezeera on line I came across this Fig and Date bread recipe on touregypt.net

The recipe reminds me of a date bread that my grandmother used to make.  In glancing over the recipe I would suggest that you could use all dates if you didn't have any figs and also to use half orange juice and half water (instead of just water) in addition to the grated peel of one orange.  Pecan could be substituted for Walnuts as could Almonds. 

This is the kind of bread that would be best served with a nice slathering of room temperature butter!

Fig and Date Bread, suitable for the Suhoor, the before sunrise meal of Ramadan.

Ingredients

1 cup chopped pitted dates
1 cup chopped dried figs
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 cup boiling water
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2 eggs
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
  
Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Butter an 8x4 inch loaf pan.

In a medium bowl, combine the dates, figs, butter and baking soda. Pour in the boiling water, stir well and let stand for 15 minutes.

Beat the sugar, walnuts and eggs into the date mixture. Combine the all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder and salt; stir into the date mixture just until blended.

Pour batter into prepared pan.

Bake in preheated oven for 55 to 65 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into center of the loaf comes out clean. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

Distraction

It's hard to focus on anything right now except the news coverage of events in Egypt. I go from AlJazeera on line to Rachel Maddow and the New York Times, instead of being in my kitchen, where I'm (supposedly) working on a goat cheese cheesecake with praline and blood orange syrup recipe, that I've been working on for weeks!

Sometimes the events of the world take priority over the kitchen, even though even in the midst of a revolution we still all need to eat.  Stories of people going from the protest to their homes to get food to give out to the protesters in Tahrir Square in Cairo made me want to know more about Egyptian food, a good overview is here , I feel a need to explore Egyptian food more. All of a sudden a country that I had only thought of as the place with the pyramids has become so much more.

In the mean time Nicholas Kristof of the NYT is in Cairo and sums up my feelings on what is going on in this video from the NYT: