27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001
Issue No.553
|
Al-Ahram Weekly Online 27 Sep. - 3 Oct. 2001 Issue No.553 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
What's for lunch?
If you're hungry for a homemade meal, Amira El-Noshokaty finds there are easier ways to feed yourself than cooking from scratch
It was a day that changed my whole attitude about eating at home; as soon as I stepped through the door, I was greeted by the smell of kubeba, sfeiha and sambousak (Lebanese specialties). My first thought was that I had wandered into the wrong apartment -- my mother's repertoire, though tasty, did not include such delicacies. I piled the food onto my plate heartily anyhow, and finally I was told the secret. All this really was home cooking -- just not our home.
Cooking up a business: a full day's work in the Akl Bety kitchen
photo: Amira El-Noshokaty
Where there's a need, someone will find a way. As more mothers enter the workforce and more single-income families seek ways to boost their finances, a good home-cooked meal has become harder to come by and, in fact, a commodity.
Madame Zinat was one of the first pioneers of the so-called home catering business. Although the idea seems all too simple, it has only really caught on recently, as home-catering entrepreneurs grow more savvy in selling their product. I headed over to Madame Zinat's centre of operations -- her family home -- to find out how she got started feeding families other than her own.
Sitting in that salon, filled with old fashioned French-style furniture, a framed painting of her grand-papa in full Turkish uniform staring at us from the wall, Madame Zinat reminded me of my own grandma -- a woman who took great pride in her kitchen and went so far as to make her own jams. Zinat had always been a housewife, but after her family was forced to return to Egypt following the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, she decided it was time to start up a small business.
"At first, I set up a nursery at home. The experience gave me an idea: working mothers barely have time to cook a decent meal for their families. So I thought of cooking meals and selling them to mothers when they came to pick up their children," recounted Zinat. The service was too good to be true for many a working mother. Sahar Gad, a doctor who first tried home catering nine years ago, is a busy working mother with no time to pull together time- intensive meals. She says she was afraid of serving her family fast food, or packaged food, citing its dubious quality. "When I discovered home catering I found I could feed my family things like stuffed pigeon, and rice with nuts at affordable prices," said Gad.
Quality, not quantity, is the pitch that pulls in the customers in this line of business. Bahiga Moqbel is a housewife who doesn't work, but uses similar catering services to help cope with summer entertaining, "I tried home catering two years ago, when a trusted friend told me about a woman whose cooking is really delicious." Moqbel liked the food so much that she would make orders from Cairo to be sent to her summer home in Agami near Alexandria.
"One can rest assured that the food is prepared properly and in a clean environment. After all it is being prepared by another housewife," explained Tahani Zakariya, a housewife who uses the service for parties and on days when there is simply not enough time to make the effort herself.
Akl Bety (literally, home-made food) is a four-person endeavour that has taken the home- cooking idea and given it a little spin -- ordering online. Amal Sabri, Samar Erian, and Sonia Nazim worked together at a software company, but had already managed to develop a clientele for their cooking, which they did in their spare time. Seven months ago, seeing the promising business prospects of home catering, they recruited one of their colleagues, Rami George, and the four quit their jobs to devote all their energies to their kitchens.
To facilitate ordering, the software experts have set up a Web site. Boasts Sabri: "You can order any dish from our menu that is posted on the site." Sabri does the cooking and Erian handles the marketing, while Nazim and George take care of accounting, Web design and home delivery.
"Food is the only sure market in this society," explained Erian, adding that the strength of their project lies in providing ready-made meals that are both tasty and healthy. "Most women nowadays work, and they barely have time to cook. When they think of what to feed their families, they end up seeking the easiest and fastest meals," she said. "Why should they be denied being able to serve their families a good meal?"
Akl Bety's clientele is not limited to tired working women. Many regular clients are men who are either not married, or married, but complain that their wives don't know how to cook.
I followed the smell of rice being baked in the oven in cream (roz mo'amar) and found myself in the Akl Bety kitchen. It is a kitchen like that of any middle class home -- there is no hired help and all four are busy doing everything themselves. With this kind of personal attention, preparation takes time; Akl Bety takes orders no less than 24 hours in advance.
For those who buy and sell home-made food, mass-produced packaged foods are the enemy. Says Zinat: "Frozen food is of a very cheap quality; profit comes first. I cook for my clients the same way I cook for my family -- quality is non- negotiable. Cooking is a real art form, and, with experience, you can be quite creative." As the smell of stuffed vine leaves invaded her living room, Zinat went on to impart some mouth- watering secrets of her trade -- masterful things to do with a potato, and that heavenly pudding dish layered with pineapples that she invented. It is not enough for the food to taste like food, insists Zinat, it must look appealing as well. She gives me a knowing nod and offers a bit of culinary wisdom: "The eyes eat before mouth."
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
Recommend this page