Myths about Emirati food busted
From biryani to camel meat, UAE residents don’t know enough about traditional UAE food, says award-winning chef and author Uwe Micheel
A single bite and I’m warm and fuzzy all over. It may just be a chicken stew, but this is comfort food at its best, and surprisingly, it’s come from an Emirati kitchen. The margougat I’m savouring here at Aseelah restaurant is a classic dish, rich, flavourful and a great advertisement for the nation’s cuisine. Deira, UAE old-timers will tell you, is full of treasures, and the restaurant is clearly one of them.
As a category, Emirati food has exploded over the last couple of years, with nearly two dozen eateries now plating up once hard-to-find classics such as thareed, lamb stew layered onto flat bread, chebab, a breakfast pancake, and machboos, a meat and rice recipe similar to biryani. Many also serve items from across South Asia and Arabia as local food. Emirati chefs, too, have been making their way to the public eye, such as Khulood Atiq and Badr Najeeb, but there’s a long way to go before the cuisine is widely available.
“A samosa isn’t Emirati food, although today’s young generation accept it as theirs,” says Uwe Micheel, the man behind Aseelah, and one of the few bona fide food authorities we have in this country. As president of the Emirates Culinary Guild, he’s committed to the development of the UAE’s chefs. So it’s fitting that his new book,
Flavours of Dubai, beat out thousands of cookbooks from around the world to take second place at the 22nd Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2017 in China this May.
“If you go back about a hundred years ago, Emirati food is Bedouin, with a very limited range of dishes. Even then it was strongly influenced by India, Pakistan, Iran, because traders from these regions brought their foods with them when they settled along Dubai Creek,” he tells Gulf News
tabloid! over lunch at the Radisson Blu Hotel Dubai Deira Creek, where he is also Director of Kitchens.
We’re joined by Amna Al Daheri, an Emirati food expert and Micheel’s colleague on the book. “There are a lot of misconceptions about Emirati food,” she says, having explored them for an academic paper.
We grabbed the opening to quiz them on common beliefs about the nation’s kitchen.
MYTH 1:
Emirati food is the same as Arabic food.
Emirati food has an identity that sets it apart from the region largely because of the emirates were a trading hub down the years, Micheel says. “A lot of people think Lebanese food is Emirati food, because the majority of Arabic restaurants in town serve Lebanese food, with
some Egyptian and Syrian dishes,” Micheel says.
These trading influences gave the UAE some of its staple ingredients, Amna adds. “Emirati food is like any food in the world. We have our own dishes but these are not promoted. For instance, we have special spices and condiments that make our food really tasty. Bezaar spices, for example, and dried limes.”
MYTH 2
There are only five dishes in the Emirati kitchen.
Frequent visitors to Global Village or Heritage Village may well believe that muhala or raqaq, crepe-thin egg pancakes, and luqaimat, a savoury dough ball that could be related to the gulab jamun and the doughnut, are all there is to the Emirati kitchen.
Amna, who’s shocked that I can repeat such a canard, corrects me right away. “Every emirate has its own food,” she says. “Aseeda, for example, is made with pumpkin in Dubai. In RAK, they make it with carrots.” The dessert is a sort of sweet porridge made from roasted flour, vegetables and rose water.
“Emirati recipes differ from house to house,” Micheel says. There are over 70 recipes in Flavours of Dubai.
MYTH 3 All Emiratis eat Bedouin food.
That may have been true several hundred years ago, but not any more. “The basis is definitely Bedouin food,” Micheel says, explaining how nomadic tribes would use dates, goats, camels and local vegetables, which were often cooked underground. Today, though, Emiratis today eat much as everyone else does with easy-to-cook recipes.
Amna explains that Bedouin food has its own niche and is eaten on special occasions. “Bedouins will typically make a saloona or stew with meat, whole onions, whole tomatoes and a little water, cooked on wood for hours. It’s still done this way in the old families, and only few people can make it.”
MYTH 4 Emiratis don’t make de serts or pastries.
There’s a kernel of truth to this one, Micheel says, even as Amna jumps in. “We do have, but we don’t call it pastry,” she says, proceeding to reel off dishes such as chebab, luqaimat and khameer, a yeasty sesame pancake. Many of these use dates or date syrup.
Micheel tells of how he discovered an unusual Emirati pudding during his research. “One local gentleman told me how his family didn’t have desserts growing up — they didn’t have the money and his mother didn’t have the time. When she wanted to do something special, she took day-old harees, a wheat and meat porridge, and cooked it up with sugar,” he said. That inspired Micheel to create a similar dish — by adding cream and mangos to chicken harees, and a caramelising it with brown sugar for a sort of brûlée. When he tested it on a group of Emirati men, it was the only dessert they finished.
MYTH 5 Emirati food is ove cooked and tasteless.
“Another misconception is that Emirati food is tasteless. It’s not spicy,” Micheel groans. “But it’s very tasteful. A lot of people compare it with Asian food, or Indian and Pakistani, which is a lot more spicy. Emirati food has spices but you can taste what you eat. It’s packed with flavour.”
He says the insistence on putting local food on the menus in recent years has led some mediocre dishes being served, leaving diners with poor impressions. “We see this in competitions, ... If you cook margougat properly, it should still have bite, it should be full of flavour.” Based on my own experience, I couldn’t agree more.