A few nights after the Little India on a Plate tour, we embarked on another Frying Pan Adventure, www.fryingpanadventures.com. Arva Ahmed, Farida Ahmed’s sister, took us on the five-hour Middle Eastern Pilgrimage Food Trail through the streets and alleys of the Al Riqqa section of old Dubai to savor assorted Arabic dishes brought to Dubai by immigrants from other middle eastern countries.
We started off at a Palestinian restaurant with a hearty meal of falafel mahshi — chickpea patties stuffed with chili paste called ‘shatta,’ sumac and onions. We learned that falafel, perhaps the most ubiquitous of middle eastern streetfoods, is sometimes claimed to be the national dish of Israel, but also of Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and probably other countries as well. Historically, however, the evidence shows that falafel was created by Copts in Egypt as a replacement for meat during Lent and spread throughout the region.
Our falafel was accompanied by hummus, another ubiquitous middle eastern dish, with a coriander-parsley- pepper-lemon sauce called tatbeela and assorted pickles and olives. But rather than eat the falafel with a knife and fork, we were each given a large flatbread to assemble wraps, the traditional mode of eating this street food. This enormous wrap of falafel, garnishes and sauces was incredibly delicious with a surprising blend of crispy, creamy, salty, sour and garlicky flavors. After consuming this lovely creation, I was ready to end the food tour, thinking that this meal would be hard to beat. But I was wrong, there was much more to come.
Next out of the same Palestinian kitchen came a platter of musakhan, a chicken pie presented as a pizza-like flatbread layered with caramelized onions, sumac, pine nuts and pieces of roasted chicken in the middle. Again this was hand food. We rolled the dough from the outer edge to the center around the onion, sumac and chicken filling and ate it like a sweet and tart chicken roll. Wonderful!
This first stop on the trail concluded with kunafa, an unusual Levantine dessert. We were invited to the kitchen to watch the chef spread a layer of kataifi noodles, which look like thinly shredded phyllo, over melted orange-colored ghee (clarified butter), topped with fresh cheese curds and heavy sugar syrup flavored with orange flower water and then baked on a large round griddle to melt the cheese. The resulting creamy and very sweet cheese pie was decorated with chopped pistachios and served warm in small wedges to be eaten out of hand. The presentation of this 20-inch diameter orange pie was dramatic and its sweetness overwhelming.
After this very hearty opening meal, we walked several blocks to a Syrian bakery where display cases were filled with mounds of assorted and beautifully made baklava. But here we enjoyed gahwa, Arabic coffee with cardamom and karabij –pistachio cookies with soapwort cream. The Arabic coffee was unsweetened with a rich, roasted flavor and the pistachio cookies were barely sweet. The combination acted as a palate cleanser after the too sweet kunafa we sampled at the previous stop. As we parted, we received a gift of more sweets — ma’amoul (spiced date cookie) and bukaj (a baklava shaped like a cloth knapsack) to be saved for a late night snack or for the after the tour morning.
Our next stop was an Egyptian bakery that prepared savory feteer, a thin dough wrapped pastry. We watched the baker stretch a small ball of flour dough thickly spread with clarified butter into a meter-long sheet, fold it several times over basturma (beef pastrami), roasted peppers and cheese, and neatly tuck the ends to form a compact package baked in a brick oven. The resulting savory pastry had crisp layers of salty, dried meat, oozy cheese and vegetables served with spicy ‘shatta’ sauce of fresh ground chili peppers mixed with olive oil, vinegar and garlic and was a welcome taste departure after the prior dessert samplings
It was then time for another palate cleanser, a taste of Syrian pistachio boozah ice cream which was pleasantly nutty, creamy and cool, but not very sweet.
So far, we had sampled dishes from several countries surrounding United Arab Emirates. Finally, we stopped to enjoy a typical Emirati/Bedouin meal. Leaving our footware at the entrance to the tent, we sat on cushions around the perimeter. Because the seven persons in our group (two Swiss, a Brazilian, two New Zealanders and two Americans) were not Arab, Arva provided a primer on table manners — how to eat Bedouin style without utensils, only with three fingers of the right hand from a communal dish.
We sipped a lightly seasoned shorbat adas (lentil soup) and scooped Emirati chicken machboos (chicken cooked in a blend of spices called bezar, dried limes, rosewater and simmered with the rice) and laham salona (lamb curry with a traditional blend of Emirati spices) served over rice paired with daqoos (spicy tomato and green chili sauce) and laban (drinking yogurt). Although tasty, compared with other food we sampled, this meal was probably least inspiring because of its relative blandness. Arva explained that Bedouin dishes are traditionally cooked long and slow over braziers in the desert, and cooks are limited to simple recipes with a handful of spices.
We continued to meander for another hour or so along Al Riqqa streets, observing the active nightly street life, window shopping and stopping at a shop selling assorted nuts and dates, both important elements of local hospitality.
We were moving more slowly by now, but there was one more tasting stop. We finished the evening with an Iranian (Persian) meal. I was excited about the opportunity to taste Persian cooking, reputed to be one of the most ancient, varied and cosmopolitan cuisines in the world. We learned that unlike other cuisines developed by male chefs, Persian cuisine was developed by women and continues to be the province of women chefs and home cooks. It is said that Iranians believe that the best Persian dishes are homemade.
At this last stop, we sampled sangak, which translates as stone bread, a large flatbread baked on small stones in a wood-burning oven so that the finished bread has small holes and scorch marks. Once the bread was removed from the oven, Arva showed us how to eat it with cheese and basil leaves.
Next, we tried kabab koobideh (twice minced lamb kabab skewers) accompanied byzereshk polo ( a mixture of white and saffron rice pilaf with barberries) and kashk bademjan (eggplant and preserved whey dip). All this was followed by dessert of makhloot faloodeh (frozen rice vermicelli doused with sugar syrup and rose water, topped with saffron ice cream with pistachios and clotted cream) and Iranian black tea with mint and sweets. This glimpse of Persian cooking peaked my curiosity, and I will search for cookbooks to further explore this ancient cuisine.
As we concluded another memorable evening of wonderful tastes, anecdotes and tales about middle eastern cuisine, we were struck with the variety of dishes prepared with essentially similar ingredients. From country to country, subtle spicing and somewhat different cooking methods produced different results. Arva explained that because of tribal migration and cross-border commerce, food practices and recipes traveled from country to country, but cooks in each country often added their particular twist to the recipe. So much so that each country now lays a claim to originating a particular dish. Arva cautioned that when a Middle Easterner asks whether you know the origin of a particular dish, it is safest to say “why your country, of course!”
Photo credits: Slava Johnson