Secrets of Abu Dhabi’s ‘global nomad cuisine’ revealed
NEW BOOK TRACES CAPITAL’S CULINARY JOURNEY SINCE THE SIXTIES
‘I honestly think our love for Thanksgiving is just an excuse to make turkey and all its trimmings. The pleasure is not just in making the food but in having others eat and enjoy your labour of love,” Emirati foodie and football fanatic Fatima Al Shamsi is quoted as saying in Table Tales: The Global Nomad Cuisine of Abu Dhabi ,a cultural and culinary book released in the capital recently.
Back in the UAE from New York, Fatima and her sister Alyazyah represent the present-day voices (2010s) in the book, which tells of the capital’s growth through its people’s experiences with food over the decades.
Hanan Sayed Worrell, a longtime resident of Abu Dhabi who has written the book, begins her journey in the 1960s with a chapter titled Start to Savour, a metaphor almost for how things began to simmer with the discovery of oil.
She said: “The local diet at the time included dates, goat milk yogurt and fish. Imported food was mostly canned. Bully beef [minced corned beef in gelatine served fried with onions and spices] was a main field ration of the British Army. The British Club, with its Friday curry lunches prepared by expat wives and the Al Ain Palace Hotel, with its two F&B outlets, provided social activities for expat families.”
Hanan said “things came to a boil” in the 1970s with an influx of foreigners. She shares the ■ ■ recollections of residents Mary and Martin Corrado about how grocery shopping in the seventies was always a surprise.
According to Mary, “planning for dinner parties was impossible. I would go armed with five recipes and end up improvising with what I could find”.
For Martin, who is of Italian American origin, sourcing Pecorino cheese was a concern.
Hanan said: “After much searching, Martin found a small shop Greenhouse in the then Tourist Club area. It was run by a Cypriot contractor who would bring Mediterranean products like feta cheese and Kalamata olives for his workforce. Martin would a buy an entire wheel of Pecorino cheese from him and store it in his refrigerator.”
The eighties, nineties and the 2000s are also flush with anecdotes. Recipe hunter Hanan has also provided recipes with the narrations. “Abu Dhabi is where I realised the power of food to nurture a family ... The Arab world has long cherished hospitality as a central value of its culture,” she said.