Dubai goes organic with celeb chef Silvena Rowe

Dubai: Chef Silvena Rowe, who cooked for none other than tennis champion Serena Williams this Monday in Dubai, has been in the city for six months. In that time, she’s made it her mission to plan a few restaurants of her own and support local produce by increasing organic ingredients and, perhaps in the long run, reducing the need for imported foods.

On February 21 and 22 at Dubai Festival City, she will bring a ‘Carnival Rowe’ lunch and dinner special to the Dubai Food Carnival. tabloid! caught up with her on Monday to find out exactly what people can expect when buying a Dh225 ticket.

Q: What is your speciality?

A: The cuisine I do is a very modern Middle Eastern cuisine. All my books have been on the subject — I have eight cookbooks in total. I’ve been in Dubai for six months and it’s such a great opportunity to do amazing, light, alluring, crispy, delicious, really inviting and sexed-up Middle Eastern food.

Q: Tell us about your pop-up at the food carnival.

A: I was horrified — I mean, I knew that most of the food in Dubai was imported, but I didn’t know it was 98 per cent of food being imported. So, I shockingly decided that I would reverse that figure for the food carnival for my pop-up restaurant, which is going to be there for two days, and I’m going to do 98 per cent of only local, organic food. Two per cent is only imported, and that is the truffles and the rice, everything else is locally sourced. I just wanted to show it is possible, it is a lot more delicious, it is a lot more environmentally friendly, that we are not loading the carbon footprint by doing that. At the same time, we are supporting the local farmers.

Q: Where are you sourcing your organic foods from?

A: There are an awful lot of farms here. I have very good relationships with a lot of farms. All the food that I’m sourcing is 40 kilometres out of Dubai only. It’s very exciting. I have an association with Green Heart Organic Farms, a woman called Helena, and she has farms and she produces delicious vegetables and fruits.

Q: What foods can people expect?

A: The starter is going to be a desert-farmed baby vegetables with truffle-infused sabayon [a light egg sauce] made with pure black truffle, so it’s very delicious. The main course is very Emirati. It’s a bezar-scented kharrouf or baby lamb with moukhamar rice, which is the Emirati, local rice, but only I’m preparing my own with Lulu dates, so the organic and local theme continues. We don’t have one, but two desserts: we have one of my signature dishes, which is my gluten-free, dairy-free and fat-free cake, which is phenomenal, almond and orange cake. And then we have mouhallabeya like you’ve never had it before, with pistachio and cherry — it’s really stunning.