A few words on a favorite topic: food! One of the ways I love to
interact with different cultures is to try local and traditional meals
and ingredients. The manti (tiny lamb ravioli in a slightly spiced
yoghurt sauce) at the Panorama Cafe in Cappadocia, Turkey lives large in
my memory of the place. Or the very tender but disturbingly bony guinea
pig enjoyed in Cuzco, Peru before hiking the Inca trail! The limoncello
of the Amalfi coast, melon from Green River, UT, the polsen (hot dogs)
with snappy casings and smart pocket shaped buns bought late at night
from street vendors in Copenhagen. Food and place become intimately
connected.
So what am I eating here? Subway. Pizza. Quesadillas.
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| At the culture lunch before everyone dived in |
OK, it's not quite so consistently sad as that, but it is actually a bit
of a challenge to identify and enjoy the local cuisine. When Andrea visited we
went to the Sheik Mohammed Center for Cultural Understanding to a "culture
lunch" with traditional foods and the chance to ask questions and have an
open dialogue with the staff about all things related to the Emirates.
(It was a must-do introduction, very nice experience.) We had dishes of
rice and chicken, rice and lamb, a layered veggie dish in what was
essentially a bechamel sauce. Rice was introduced to the emirates,
possibly from India, certainly the spices and flavors of the rice-meat
dishes are reminiscent of Indian biryanis. We had deep fried dough balls in
date syrup for dessert. I think every culture has come upon the bright idea of frying dough! At work one of the staff brought a kind of crepe/ pancake
that is considered a traditional breakfast food and I've enjoyed a camel meat burger and camel's milk chocolate and a
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| camel's milk shake |
camel's milk shake. But essentially, the
UAE, and especially Dubai, is, has been for most of its history,
a place of international trade and culture swapping. A large variety of
familiar and unfamiliar food is on offer at restaurants and in the
grocery store. The international-ness of my diet is determined by my
choices.
When I was living in the temp housing, the nearest
grocery store was a big French chain called Carrefour. This particular
branch always had tubs of moutabal in the deli. Moutabal is what we might
call babaganoush, a smoky smashed eggplant dip. Babaganoush is also on
menus here but it usually means a chunkier eggplant and tomato dish,
more along the lines of a ratatouille. So I developed a slight addiction
to moutabal with soft Lebanese bread. That was my dinner a few nights
every week. Now the closest grocers don't seem to carry it so I'm at a
loss.
I am having some fun trying to incorporate some of the
interesting grocery options into my diet. I was planning to make
tortilla roll ups for a potluck when I discovered that Philly cream
cheese here comes in a sweet Thai chili flavor that is out of this
world. I made tomato soup one day but was out of bread or croutons or
crackers but I had some Indian snack mix on hand to make bhel puri and
so I sprinkled these little crunchy lightly spicy rice puffs and potato
crispies in the soup and it was awesome. I wanted to make the Italian
sausage and tortellini soup recipe that Andrea gave me but Italian style
sausage isn't super easy to find. A friend suggested I try this butcher
shop near the bank metro stop (Prime Gourmet) and sure enough, they had
Italian beef sausage AND they had a lamb rosemary sausage too so I went
with half and half and it was amazing. Plus I found basil and pine nut
tortellini which I haven't seen in the US before.
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| pizza hut delivery not so unusual, but dunkin donuts delivers too! |
As for going
out to eat, there is every chain restaurant known to man in town and
they'll all deliver. I saw a Hardee's delivery guy in the elevator
yesterday, a McDonald's delivery motorbike cut me off in traffic last
week, there's a Subway at the Dubai campus of ZU and a Starbucks at the
Abu Dhabi campus. I've eaten at celebrity chef Jaime Oliver's restaurant
and had my birthday dinner at a Cuban/ Mexican place whose flagship
location is in NYC. There's a Garrett's of Chicago popcorn shop at the
Dubai Mall- I don't think you can get Garrett's outside of Chicago In
the US, can you?
I got away from the chains and franchises last
night though with a trip to Buq Tair aka the Jumeira fish place. Some
guys from Kerala India go fish in the morning, rub the fresh catch with a
lightly spicy rub/ sauce and then in the evening, fry up your choice in a
converted shipping container and serve it to you on plastic picnic
tables in the sand/ dirt outside. It's got quite the following these
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| we picked from the pile |
days so there's a line out the door. You wait for your chance to get up
to the counter and look at the tub of spice rubbed fish, heads on, tails
on, the works. We went with a hamour and a sherri and half a kilo of
shrimp. Then you go sit on some plastic stools and wait for them to call
your name. When your fish and prawns are ready, they grab you a table, offer you some paratha (flat bread), some curry sauce, rice, drinks... that's about it for your "sides" options and then you dig in. Using fingers and bread. I
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| the orders go into a pan |
found the shrimp to be especially addictive. We didn't eat the head but apparently the hardcore fans and Kerala locals do. So fresh and tasty! One of my favorite Dubai dining experiences so far.
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| they lightly fry it up in one of these wok-like things |
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| our dinner- ready to dig in! |
