An ode to Oman

The astonishingly varied landscape and sheer warmth of its people makes Oman a very special country. Mike Harrison, the nomadic foodie, lives in Oman and this week, brings you the flavours and sights of this beautiful country.

It is pomegranate season in Jabal Akhdhar and the gentle aroma of the fruit assails your senses as you walk through the cool mountain villages on the escarpment.

On the plateau, at almost 2,000 m, the orchards are overflowing and at every couple of hundred metres on the road, young boys and girls are selling their wares from the back of stationary pickups.

As we make our way through the village of Saiq, a local man asks us to stop and hands each person in our group a bright red fruit.

A few minutes later, while gazing down at the abandoned stone houses next to the terraces of Wadi Beni Habib, a young boy walks shyly round to the passenger side of my car and wordlessly hands another pomegranate to my friend Sue, who coos with delight as she thanks him profusely.

In another village, a youth walks towards us, struggling under the weight of a whole crate of the bulbous fruit. 'Please help,' he murmurs, and leans over so that the crate is at the level of my face.

'Take one. A big, heavy one.' Bemused, I remove a large glistening fruit and he feigns a great sigh of relief. 'Thank you', he beams, straightening himself up and walking away with a wink.

Ask any of the long-term foreign residents in Oman what they think of the country and the answer is usually the same: the Sultanate is much loved for its natural beauty and the kindness and hospitality of its inhabitants. It is rare that you hear a bad word spoken about the country or the people.

With 1,700 km of pristine coastline, beautiful, stark and imposing mountain ranges and unspoilt desert, the country has nevertheless been reluctant until recently to tap into the touristic appeal that it is able to offer in abundance.

However, for the expatriate resident like myself, it is something of an unspoilt paradise. The pace of life is leisurely, the atmosphere is tranquil, and yet Dubai is only a morning's drive away if you feel the urge for a bit of serious gastronomic or retail therapy.

While stories abound of Omani hospitality, less seems to be known of the local cuisine. As elsewhere in the Gulf, the Asian influence has traditionally been very strong.

Omani traders, like their Yemeni neighbours, have long plied the waters of the Indian Ocean, importing chillies, ginger and turmeric from India and cloves and cinnamon from the spice island of Zanzibar.

Fish markets abound all along the coast, and a nice-sized tuna can be had for a few riyals, fresh from the water's edge where it had been happily swimming until a couple of hours earlier.

Customers stand by the boats, watch the catches being sorted, and bargain over the hammour, kingfish, crabs and other maritime delicacies. Mountains of qash'a - local sprats - are sifted and left to dry on sheets next to the beach before being bagged up and taken to the souqs of the interior.

Awal or dried shark meat is another traditional popular favourite which I developed a taste for when I lived in the small town of Nakhal in the early 1990s.

After a trip down to Muscat to pick up a couple of videos, I would return home, buy a few strips of awal in the local souq, add some rings of chopped onion, drizzle some freshly squeezed lime juice over it, and then tuck in while watching the latest movie. Who needs popcorn?!

A visitor to the country today might be puzzled not to find many local dishes readily available in the local restaurants and hotels of the capital.

It would be difficult to pinpoint the exact reason for this, but perhaps it lies in the fact that much of Omani cuisine has always been fairly labour-intensive, and prepared traditionally in the villages, where the best specialities are reserved for festive and religious occasions such as Eid.

To try and gain an insight into local culinary traditions, I asked a number of Omanis about their favourite food. Harees, the thick, porridge-like dish made with wheat and chicken, or other meat, seemed to be the most popular.

A number of people mentioned biryani, which may seem slightly surprising, as the origin of the dish is more usually associated with Pakistan, but if chicken tikka masala can be voted the most popular British dish in a recent survey, there's no reason why biryani cannot be a favourite Omani dish!

Flippancy aside, many people mentioned the delight in eating food prepared within the family and communally. Ramadan, when dishes are carried from home to home, is also a time for giving hospitality to extended family and neighbours.

Rice in various guises features prominently in Omani cuisine. The favourite of my director at the university is madhrooba, a dish made with rice pounded with meat to form a porridge-like consistency.

Machboos, the preferred rice dish of Bahrain, is also popular, as well as qabuli, another rice dish in which the meat - usually chicken pieces - were originally covered with spiced rice and then turned out of the dish upside down, similar to Syrian magluba.

Sameera Al Kindi, Arabic chef at the Shangri-La's Barr al Jissah Resort and Spa, prepared the dishes featured, and while talking me through the recipes, gave a little background to some of them.

While harees is frequently prepared for the first day of Eid, yet another rice dish, orsiya, is eaten after Eid prayers or on the first birthday of a child, an occasion known as hol hol.

Chicken qabuli, a delicacy with a more elaborate appearance, is often made at weddings and other large gatherings, and is enhanced with a decorative scattering of fried onions, cashew nuts and chickpeas, or local loomi - whole, dried, blackened limes.

A fish qabuli will use a different blend of bizar - or spices, and is often perked up with a generous addition of chilli to the spice mix used.

In the way that Aussie and South African men get to grips with the charcoal and the preparation for the outdoor 'barbie', Omani shuwa is also a male preserve. Meaning literally 'on the fire', shuwa consists of a whole goat or leg of lamb, marinated in spices and slow-roasted underground.

To prepare the dish, a special hole is dug in the ground, in which smouldering wood and embers are scattered in order to create a tandoor oven. The meat is then wrapped in banana or palm leaves, sewn up in a sack and left for up to two days, after which the delicious cooked result slides off the bone like butter off a hot knife.

But of course, no Omani meal would be complete without the obligatory qahwa and halwa. Unsweetened Omani coffee flavoured with ground cardamom provides the perfect contrast to the famous local halwa, an eye-poppingly sweet delicacy best taken in small doses if you want to keep your blood sugar levels within acceptable boundaries!

People from all over the Sultanate argue vociferously over where the best halwa is produced, although it is generally accepted that one of the better varieties comes from Barka, to the north of the capital, where different versions of halwa will contain any combination of rose water, saffron, nutmeg, almonds and pistachio nuts.

Like so many other things in a country so proud of its cultural heritage, the qahwa ceremony is symbolic of Oman's timeless traditions.

As I wiggle my little coffee cup from right to left, indicating that I have drunk sufficient, I realise that the same formulaic gesture has probably been used ever since the first arrival of coffee in the region. Some things will, hopefully, never change.