UAE recipes

As part of my “Cooking Local” project to learn more about the food and culture of the United Arab Emirates, I am attempting to create as many recipes as possible from Celia Ann Brock-Al Ansari’s “The Complete UAE Cookbook”.

Come and join me through the trials and errors of cooking an unfamiliar cuisine. Cook along yourself as all the recipes are online at fahad.com/dishes

A Taste of Arabic Home-Cooking at an Emirati Home

December 13, 2011

When I started my Emirati cooking project in June 2008, almost three and a half years ago, it was so that I could learn more about the culture of the host country in which I was living. With a dearth of restaurants to choose from at the time (and I wasn’t even sure how authentic they [...]

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Emirati Recipe: Lamb Biryani (La-ham biryani)

October 24, 2011

“Where are the Emirati restaurants in Dubai?” When I first moved here, almost four years ago, I used to ask this question a lot. I soon stopped asking because I would get the same responses over and over. Either, “I don’t know,” or “Emirati food is in Emirati homes,” or “Local House in Bastakia.” There [...]

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Emirati Recipe: Chicken Biryani (Biryani de-jaj)

June 26, 2011

I can’t help but think of biryani as the Indian equivalent of Chinese fried rice. Both dishes are made of, well, rice, and both are ingrained into their respective cultures. Not surprisingly, biryani is quite a popular dish in Dubai and besides the obvious joints, can also be found in many buffet stations of hotels [...]

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Emirati Recipe: Fried Fish (Sa-mak ma-ga-lee)

May 18, 2011

As part of my Cooking Local project to learn more about Emirati food and culture, I am attempting to cook through Celia Ann Brock-Al Ansari’s The Complete UAE Cookbook. I have completed 8 recipes so far out of…oh…73. Crikey, at the rate I’m going, I might be old and withered before I’m finished. Out of the [...]

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Emirati Recipe: Chicken and Rice (Machboos / Fogga Dejaj)

April 3, 2011

I had heard many wonderful things from friends about Chicken Machboos and was very much looking forward to attempting this recipe. I made it for dinner one night and it was so good I had to make it again for lunch the next day as there were no leftovers! A friend of mine who’s husband [...]

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Emirati Recipe: Boiled Crabs (Gab-goo-ba maa-fourd)

March 13, 2011

I just LOVE-LOVE-LOVE crabs so was wonderfully surprised to see a crab recipe in Celia’s The Complete UAE Cookbook. I’m not finicky (like my habibi) about using my fingers to dig out all the crabmeat goodness from the body and then licking my fingers at the very end (although I am mildly shy to do it [...]

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Emirati Recipe: Baked Fish (Sa-mak bil fern)

March 6, 2011

The cooking method of this dish reminds me of a recipe I previously posted: Fish-in-a-Bag – an Easy Peasy Recipe! It is my favorite way of cooking fish as it involves almost no clean up and the fish comes out perfectly cooked every time. For the Emirati version of fish-in-a-bag, I used tilapia bought from [...]

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Emirati Recipe: Fish Cakes (Sa-mak Koufta)

February 20, 2011

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about my Arabic/Emirati cooking attempts. The last recipe (lamb fried with spices / la-ham nashif) was posted back in September 2008. Almost 2 and a half years ago! Yes, I am such the delinquent. Today’s recipe is an Arabic version of something I like very much – fish [...]

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