New cookbook by top UAE chef busts Emirati food myths

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 bonafide 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 Dhaheri, 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.” These sundried brown ping-pong-sized balls add a deep citrusy complexity to any recipe. The Bezaar mix is similar to the Indian garam masala — an amalgamation of dried spices, and each family has its own recipe.

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. More intrepid types might venture to talk about thareed or machboos, but that’s where it ends.

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.

Micheel likens it to Italian food. “You go to one village in Italy and you can get 10 minestrone soups. It’s still minestrone, but each one is different,” he says. “Emirati recipes differ from house to house.” 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. That might be pasta one day, biryani another, a Thai curry the third.

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 desserts 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, which are plentiful and native to the UAE.

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 explains. 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 overcooked and tasteless.

This is where Micheel is fighting one of his biggest battles. “Another misconception is that Emirati food is tasteless. It’s not spicy,” he 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, where chefs ruin something because they want to be creative, and it’s horrible. It’s not the dishes themselves, but people don’t know how to do it properly. 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.

PREPARATION TIME: 20 YEARS

There aren’t many cookbooks on Emirati food, and author Uwe Micheel says writing Flavours of Dubai took him nearly two decades.

The idea came from hotel guests who wanted to try local food. "Back then, we’d send them to Lebanese or Arabic restaurants because there was nowhere else,” he tells Table Talk. That got him thinking about cooking Emirati food, he says. At the time, hotels all over Dubai catered for Emirati banquets and weddings by buying in traditional dishes from a little cafeteria on the corniche opposite the Deira Fish Market.

“I always had it in my head to do more, but when I asked around, I found that most cooks in Emirati homes were expatriates. There were no Emirati cooks, except for some ladies. So I gave up.” Although he worked on local food projects for Dubai Tourism, the book only started to take shape when Aseelah became reality. “I dreamt one night of opening an Emirati restaurant. That’s when I really started work on it.”

Research involved meeting with local grandmothers, talking to citizens, and visiting some of the country’s palaces. He says he’s indebted to Zabeel Palace Hospitality’s Ahmed bin Harib, whose firm caters to over 120 royal households every day. Other recipes he had translated from the Arabic, sourced from friends and from hotel chefs.

“I realised I needed to add contemporary recipes when I invited my wife and her friends with a group of local ladies to eat at the hotel. My wife and her friends were reluctant to try the dishes, but the local ladies were delighted because they hadn’t eaten many of those dishes in years,” he says. “So I repeated the experiment with a mix of contemporary and classic recipes — and that worked.” The margougat, for example, he interprets as a chicken roulade with Emirati ingredients.

Flavours of Dubai by Chef Uwe Micheel is available for purchase on Souq.com, bookstores across the UAE, and Aseelah Restaurant at Radisson Blu Hotel Dubai Deira Creek.

RECIPE: CHICKEN MARGOUGAT

Ingredients

Chicken: 800 gms thigh pcs, boneless, skinless
Cinnamon stick: 10gm
Ginger garlic paste: 50gm
Red onion: 200gm peeled and chopped
Turmeric powder: 20gm
Coriander powder: 15gm
Cumin powder: 10gm
Bear: 25gm
Chilli powder: 10gm
Madras curry powder: 10gm
Tomato: 200gm chopped
Tomato paste: 50gm
Fresh coriander: 50gm
Baby marrow: 50gm
Potato: 200gm cut in 4cm cubes
Khaboos bread: 400gm
Carrot: 200gm cut in 4cm cubes
Corn oil: 100ml
Dry lemon: 50gm
Tamarind paste: 80gm
Water: 3 litres
Salt: To taste

Procedure

1. Cut the chicken into 4cm cubes
2. Heat corn oil in a pot. Add chopped onion and saute until they turn translucent. Add ginger garlic paste and saute
3. Next add all the spices and dry lemon. Continue to saute on low flame
4. Add the chicken cubes and simmer for a few minutes
5. Add chopped tomato and tomato paste, pour water and boil for 10 minutes
6. Add carrots and potato, boil for another 10 minutes
7. Add the baby marrow and simmer for about 10 minutes until all the ingredients are cooked
8. Cut the bread in 4cm cubes and put into stew. While mixing take care not to break the boiled vegetables
9. In the end, add tamarind paste
10. Serve in bowl, garnished with coriander