Qolqas bel Silq

Egypt's winter stew of taro simmered with chard, coriander and lemon until the corm thickens the pot on its own account

Origin: The Nile Delta & Egypt

From the journey of Taro.

Qolqas arrives in the Cairo markets in November in enormous muddy corms, is sold by the kilo off the back of carts, and disappears again in early spring. It is a winter vegetable, an Epiphany dish in Coptic households, and one of the very few plants in the Egyptian repertoire that has been growing in the Delta since antiquity without ever becoming a headline crop. The name carries a warning for anyone reading the classical sources. Greek kolokasion, from which Arabic qulqās descends, did not originally mean this plant: in Dioscorides and in Pliny it names the root of the Egyptian lotus, Nelumbo nucifera, and only later slid across to the aroid growing in the same wet fields. Linnaeus inherited the shifted sense, which is why the genus is Colocasia. An ancient reference to colocasia in Egypt is therefore not automatically a reference to taro, and the plant's arrival date is less firmly fixed than the vocabulary suggests. What the Egyptian kitchen does with it is govern its texture. Qolqas is slippery when wet and Egyptians dislike that intensely, so the corm is peeled dry, cut into large chunks, and specifically not rinsed afterwards; the pieces are then browned or added straight to a simmering broth. Wash it and the surface starch turns to mucilage, and the stew becomes what Cairene cooks call dabik, sticky, which is a fault. The chard is the other half. Silq is cheap, abundant, and slightly bitter, and it cuts the flat starchiness of the corm; the coriander and garlic taqliya stirred in at the end, and the lemon squeezed over at the table, do the rest. Between them they turn a heavy root into something that tastes light, which is the whole trick of the dish.

Ingredients

Stew

  • 1 kg taro (qolqas), peeled and cut into large 5cm chunks
  • 500 g chard, leaves and stems separated, both roughly chopped
  • 1.2 litres beef, chicken, or vegetable stock
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 3 tbsp olive oil or ghee
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 0.5 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Taqliya

  • 8 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste
  • 30 g fresh coriander leaf, very finely chopped
  • 2 tbsp ghee or oil
  • 1 tsp ground coriander

To serve

  • 2 lemons, cut into wedges

Method

  1. Peel the taro dry and do not rinse it afterwards. Wet qolqas goes slimy, and the whole Egyptian technique is built on avoiding that.
  2. Wear gloves. Raw taro sap causes fierce itching that can last most of a day.
  3. Cut the corms into large chunks rather than small ones. Small pieces disintegrate and thicken the pot too far.
  4. Soften the onion in the oil in a wide heavy pot for eight minutes, then add the chard stems and cook for five minutes more.
  5. Add the taro chunks and turn them through the oil for two or three minutes without letting them break up.
  6. Pour in the stock, add the salt, cumin, and pepper, bring to a simmer, and cook uncovered for twenty-five minutes.
  7. Test a chunk with a skewer. It should be entirely soft through with no firm centre whatever; undercooked taro will burn the mouth.
  8. Stir in the chard leaves and simmer for a further eight minutes until they have wilted right down.
  9. Make the taqliya: fry the crushed garlic and ground coriander in the ghee over a medium heat for barely a minute, until it smells sharp and the garlic is just turning colour but not brown, then throw in the fresh coriander leaf and take it straight off the heat.
  10. Stir the taqliya into the stew and put the lid on for two minutes so it perfumes the pot. This goes in at the end and never at the beginning.
  11. Serve hot with plenty of lemon to squeeze over, and with bread or rice alongside.

Notes

Peel the taro dry and keep it dry: rinsing washes surface starch into a mucilage and the stew turns sticky, which Egyptians count as a spoiled dish. If your corms are muddy, wipe them with a cloth rather than washing them. The taqliya is a finishing tempering and loses everything if it is cooked at the start or allowed to brown, so make it in the last two minutes. Frozen peeled taro from a Middle Eastern grocer works well and saves the handling, though it is wetter and wants a slightly shorter simmer. The dish is made with beef shin in many households, added at the start and simmered until tender before the taro goes in; without meat it is a straightforward Coptic fasting dish.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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