The highlight of any Middle-Eastern meal is the lavish spread of fresh bite-sized starters and salads known as ‘mezze’. Almost a meal in itself, the mezze consists of a variety of dips such as the creamy hummus garnished with pomegranate seeds and olive oil, baba ganoush made of roasted eggplant, tahina and garlic or walnut, red-pepper and pomegranate mouhamara and is best enjoyed with piping hot Arabic bread. Add to this exotic fare a generous serving of green and black olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, pickled beets, carrots, turnips and you have a feast fit for a king!
Some popular Arabian specialties are:
Arabic bread: Unique to this region is the oval flat bread served with just about every meal. Best enjoyed piping hot it lends itself to a variety of eating options: toasted and stuffed with silvers of roasted lamb and crunchy vegetables, dipped in hummus and baba ganoush or even opened to form a pocket for meat, salad and falafel.
Baba Ganoush: Grilled aubergines, garlic, tahina, lemon juice and olive oil are mixed to form a coarse dip
Falafel: Made of ground chickpeas, onions and spices, falafel patties are deep fried and can be served with a variety of dips or rolled into bread.
Fattoush: Lettuce, cucumber and other greens dressed in mint, lemon and olive oil, served with toasted flakes of Arabic bread.
Tabouleh: A great alternative to traditional salads, this is a tasty mix of cracked wheat and chopped mint and parsley.
Healthy and wholesome, some of the popular main courses of a local Emirati meal are:
Asseda: Local dessert made from semolina and spiced with saffron
Batheeth: Freshly ripened dates served with a sauce
Fareed: Carrots, potatoes, marrow, chicken or lamb are combined to form a stew that is then poured over a bed of regarg or pieces of very thin bread. Best when served piping hot, this is a Ramadan special.
Harees: Cubes of meat, cracked wheat and water are placed in a large mud pot and cooked on a slow flame till the meat is tender. The ingredients are then blended together till a thick porridge-like consistency is achieved.
Machboos: One of the most popular lunch dishes, machboos is an elaborate preparation of slow-cooked lamb or chicken with spices, dried lemon, rice and onion. The meat is boiled with all the ingredients except rice and cooked until tender. The meat is then taken out and rice is added to the ingredients and cooked. Once the rice is done, the meat is returned to the pot and simmered for another two hours.
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