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http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/mar/22/ghalia-mahmoud-cairos-celebrity-chef
Ghalia Ali Mahmoud: 'We are people from poor neighbourhoods'. Photograph: Washington Post
In Cairo, she is known as el Set (the Lady) Ghalia. In Egypt, this honorary title usually means a working-class woman who is known and loved in her neighbourhood. And loved she most certainly is. Ghalia Mahmoud has become an unlikely celebrity chef in Egypt. Her television show is broadcast on the 25 January satellite channel, created in the wake of the 2011 uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak.
"Under the previous regime, you wouldn't see anyone like me on television," she says. "The chefs on TV were bigger than movie stars and spoke English and French. - who would appreciate me?"
The Mubarak regime preferred to present a veneer of sophistication (read westernisation) to gloss over the hardships to which it subjected many of its people. In reality, Cairo is immense, overcrowded and mired in poverty, and Mahmoud hails from a neighbourhood that exemplifies all these things.
"We are people from poor neighbourhoods. If my husband left me 10 Egyptian pounds (£1) and we then watched someone cooking a rack of lamb on TV, my children and I would dream about it for a month. With my show, what my children watch, they can then eat," she says.
Ghalia Ali Mahmoud: 'We are people from poor neighbourhoods'. Photograph: Washington Post
In Cairo, she is known as el Set (the Lady) Ghalia. In Egypt, this honorary title usually means a working-class woman who is known and loved in her neighbourhood. And loved she most certainly is. Ghalia Mahmoud has become an unlikely celebrity chef in Egypt. Her television show is broadcast on the 25 January satellite channel, created in the wake of the 2011 uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak.
"Under the previous regime, you wouldn't see anyone like me on television," she says. "The chefs on TV were bigger than movie stars and spoke English and French. - who would appreciate me?"
The Mubarak regime preferred to present a veneer of sophistication (read westernisation) to gloss over the hardships to which it subjected many of its people. In reality, Cairo is immense, overcrowded and mired in poverty, and Mahmoud hails from a neighbourhood that exemplifies all these things.
"We are people from poor neighbourhoods. If my husband left me 10 Egyptian pounds (£1) and we then watched someone cooking a rack of lamb on TV, my children and I would dream about it for a month. With my show, what my children watch, they can then eat," she says.
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