The Heat is On!

Wow, the heat is on here, are you having a heatwave? We certainly are but we're at least a bit prepared after the heat of Abu Dhabi! One of the pleasures of travel for me is trying new food, and I love having someone to cook for me and the dishes being done too.

Here are a couple of wee sketches done of some of the dishes I tried; Tabouleh (parsley salad), I have eaten this before but Fattoush was a new salad, it’s eaten all over in Arabic countries and was crisp tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, onions, pomegranate seeds and pita bread cut into squares and put on top with an aromatic dressing with sumac. Fatteh was unusual too, cooked chickpeas with a hot yoghurt sauce, squares of pita, then topped with sumac and pomegranate molasses. As  a dessert I tried Umali, this again is eaten all over but with different variations and I love the story behind it; the name translated means Ali's mum, and as the recipe comes from the 12th C, Ali's mum's dessert has made her a legend. Obviously a canny housewife, she had Pita bread left over, so she soaked it in sweetened, heated milk added spices, almonds and pistachios and boom a legendary dessert was born. If you’re looking for something a bit more decadent then pop into the Emirate’s Palace hotel (tourists are allowed to enter the hallowed golden halls) they serve their signature cappuccino there ….. and as you would expect from a place gilded in 24 Carat gold leaf, the coffee is decorated with flakes of gold! At 26$ a pop, we didn’t indulge but we did see it; the foam on the coffee was decorated with an oriental dome, minarets above a sea of golden flakes (apparently they tend to blow around when you’re trying to drink). We have tried gold leaf on desserts before so we skipped the coffee, that said the cookies in those glass containers looked very yummy. Our hotel had a super dessert buffet at every meal, so I didn’t feel I had missed out on anything but when I got home and made the mistake of stepping on the scales, I really wished I had missed out on a couple of desserts!