I no longer blog because I had sold my soul to Frying Pan Adventures when I started food tours of Old Dubai back in 2013. When people ask me whether it’s a full time job, I want to vigorously scrub off my aubergine hair dye and lay bare the white strands sprouting up around the fringes of my forehead. A white halo of sorts, signifying the sort of wisdom that I’d rather project in ways other than wiry white thistles around my face.

But I love it. Most of it. On most days. I’m never going to profess my love for accounting or legal paperwork or fire drill days when the dominoes of common sense collapse in a heap and I’m one step away from self-destructing. My email inbox and I have a very, very toxic marital relationship, but there’s no separating us anytime soon. Despite all that, I love all the bits around meeting people, learning about ingredients and dishes, researching food culture and most of all, sharing stories. And that’s why my sister Farida – my partner at Frying Pan who’s helped me preserve a smidgen of sanity over the past 4 years – and I are starting a food podcast: The Frying Pan Diaries.

Dubai can be your gateway to a myriad of age-old cultures worth learning about, if only you let it. It’s a place that flips out so much more than burgers. I truly believe that. It’s not about professing that Dubai is a melting pot while snacking on gold dust cupcakes, but about having food conversations that feel relevant to the place we live in and not to New York. Nope, not to Paris either.

This is why Farida and I are going to record the bits I love the most. The conversations that our team wants to share, and that would be best heard in first person rather than transcribed into a post that I don’t have time to edit and that you don’t have time to read.

Can you imagine an early morning stroll where a cookbook author’s passionate voice leaves you feeling like a seamstress of sumac – you now know everything there it to know about the ingredient, where to buy the best stash (rather than the saw dust-tasting stuff available commercially) and how to weave it into dishes at home? Or inching through traffic while you’ve virtually joined a desert truffle hunt for that elusive fungus which is a nomadic delicacy? Or riding the metro to the soft clank of a pan as a Moroccan mother in Dubai shares her secret family recipe for shakshouka? Or folding the laundry to the crackle of keema and green chillies in a hot kadai at a Pakistani hideaway that we’re featuring in Sharjah?

We may not change the world with this show, but at least we’ll make you fall in love with traffic and folding laundry. (I actually do think we will change the world with this show, but I’m too humble to say it out loud).

For the three of you who’re reading this blog (mum and dad, I love you), all I ask is that you support this podcast with your ears by subscribing over iTunes or any of the other Android/iPhone/regular old computer channels at Fryingpan.fm so that you get pinged with the latest episode of the week. And share it with friends and family who deserve some delicious distraction through their day. And if you’re based in the UAE and have either a secret family recipe or a restaurant gem that is so tucked away in dusty corners of the city that it doesn’t get the love it deserves – then reach out.  Email us at munch@fryingpanadventures.com. We want you on the show.

But if you do nothing else, just subscribe. For the newfound love of laundry, please subscribe.

Our first teaser episode below, but do jump over to Fryingpan.fm and subscribe over any of iTunes Podcast ; Sound Cloud (available on AppStore and Google play) ; Stitcher (available on AppStore and Google play);  Google Play Music (currently supported only for listeners in US/Canada currently)

Make rolls with meat, if wished, with thin sheets of bread whose ends you need to seal.
Or, a piece of dough, you may use, well kneaded but still soft.
Into thin discs spread it out with a rolling-pin,
And with the fingernail you press the sides to seal.
Into a frying pan pour some good oil and fry them as best you can,
And in a delicate platter put them, where a bowl of pungent mustard in the center sits.
Then eat them with mustard, I’m sure with joy,
For indeed they are the most delicious of all fast food dishes.

– Sanbousa poetry by Ibrahim al-Mosuli, 9th century court singer of Harun al-Rasheed. Recorded in Kitab Al Tabiq, the earliest known Arabic cookbook from the 10th century. Translated by Nawal Nasralluh in Delights from the Garden of Eden (p.378)

Despite being the ”most delicious of all fast food dishes” in medieval Islamic courts, samosas fall into that slim category of savoury snacks that I simply never crave.

I might have been scarred by a few clumsily fried samosas in the past. Whenever someone mentions a samosa, the image that comes to mind is that of a hot and bothered fritter, sweating profusely through its pores, smudging my tongue with uneasy grease. This unpleasant image overrides the many stellar samosa experiences I’ve had in both past and present, and there have been many.

Take my mother’s miniature dal samosas for instance*, their sheer skins stretched taut over a split pigeon pea or mung bean filling. These are reserved for the best of occasions and the best of people, which might be why I’ve not seen one in a painfully long time. But its mum’s Hyderabadi lukmi that makes me weak at the knees. These square sisters of our typical samosas sport a comforting mound of qeema nestled into crust that’s sealed in like ravioli. They make an appearance on special days of Ramadan or Eid or other such occasions that don’t occur frequently enough to have any long-term healing effect on my samosa scars.

Another positive memory has been forged at the 30-year old Mohamadiya cafeteria in the historic district of Sharjah. Vegetable mash arrives wrapped in a shell that blisters up in the oil, leaving behind a fragile lacy skin that crackles at the bite. The cafeteria pulverizes their samosa stash, scatters the rubble across a tender samoon bun (hot dog bun) and splashes them over with a bottled hot sauce of aged red peppers and distilled white vinegar. For a paltry two-dirhams, these perfectly proportioned triangles are worth braving the Dubai-Sharjah traffic for an afternoon snack.

Or a midnight one by the time you get there.

Then there are fritter revelations like Farzi Cafe’s petite duck samosas (pictured below). Plump with moist duck meat and dabbed delicately with plum sauce, these refined treats are worlds apart from the triangular masses of the fryer. Or let’s take Logma’s Chips Oman and salty cream cheese innovation in Box Park. This creative twist is a clever play on old Dubai nostalgia and merits a place alongside nachos and popcorn at local movie theatres. Everything about them, crust to filling, feels right— until you get the bill. A plate of four indulgent triangles leave your wallet feeling skinny at a hefty 32 dirhams. That’s an extortionist 8 dirhams a piece. Or a spirit-crushing 4 dirhams for that last half forcefully wrangled out of your partner’s clutches.

While the filling is important, I truly believe that it boils down – or sizzles up – to the crust. A stuffing destined for stardom can be ruined by a clammy crust. Now one has to be open-minded to the spectrum of options out there: a skinny spring roll skin that snaps, a blistered sheath that shatters, a biscuit-like capsule that cracks, a shortbread shell that flakes. But a soggy shuck that slumps is simply not on that spectrum.

One of my favourite crusts – and one that has redeemed the world of cafeteria samosas for me again – is from a Sindhi cafeteria called Lacchu (don’t try Googling it – I already did. It’s not listed.) While I haven’t found the actual cafeteria, I’ve often intercepted the delivery boy Deepu** as he cycles around Naif hawking Sindhi/Punjabi-style carom-infused potato samosas. His loot has no samosalings – rather, these tawny hulks sport a firm tush that lets them sit tall and unsupported on a plate. The casing is closer to a baked pie-crust (make no mistake, it’s still deep fried) that holds up well even after a severe drowning in chutney.

The last time I snagged twelve of Deepu’s two-dirham samosas, three of the pack mysteriously vanished in a covert family tasting operation.

Another samosa variant worth mentioning are the mini dry-lentil samosas at Chappan Bhog. These are the sort of hard-shell samosas that, by virtue of their dry spiced stuffing, keep well for a long, long time. Maybe even until the fall. Or until Christmas, Or until I write my next post, inshallah.

Many people adore these half-bite samosas, but I’m rarely tempted to try. Something about jamming your jaws against a hard, desert-dry crust to find more desert-dry filling on the inside just doesn’t feel right. It loses the joy of textural contrast, the anticipation of cracking through to a moist tender filling, the thrill of watching bits of the soft fresh stuffing drift away into your chutney.

Sorry dad, I know you love these.

Yet, despite this not insignificant list of samosa successes, my mind keeps harking back to the few samosas that failed with Brexit-like irrationality. The nagging thought of encountering a finger-staining grease bomb has put me on guard against samosas that steer their stuffing in my direction. It might take a few more of Deepu’s, maybe a plate (or two) of mum’s, potentially a Farzi duck samosa thrown in for good measure, to erase my sullied samosa memories forever.

* If you were planning to ask me for mum’s dal samosa recipe, please don’t. These are fiercely guarded secrets, just like her biryani and lukmi.
** Deepu can be caught cycling around Naif. It’s worth hanging around in the backstreets to spot him there.

Is there anything it doesn’t include?

Maybe a teaspoon’s worth of understanding about what Ramadan is all about.

I am sickened by emails about grand wasteful Iftars catering to the elite. Let’s call them everyday-Friday-brunches, shall we? Or stuff-your-face-a-thons?

But please don’t confuse them with Iftars for Ramadan, a month which is about “purification; that it intensifies faith; that the experience of hunger allows one to develop compassion for those who unwillingly have to go hungry; and that it empties the believer of his or her ego, in preparation for receiving the Divine Word, for a cup that is already full cannot receive water.” (edX, Islam Through Its Scriptures)

With the fountain of juices flowing at red carpet buffets, I doubt water is the drink of choice anyway.

Keeping your business financially afloat during Ramadan is important, we all have companies to run and salaries to pay. If you really aspire to capture the essence of Ramadan while staying profitable in Ramadan, push yourself to think outside the banal buffet construct:

1. Plan thoughtful à la carte menus that showcase traditional specialties of the month, not every possible dish crammed on a buffet table. Reduce wastage, reduce cost, serve fresher food.
2. For every guest attending, add an additional AED 50 to his meal price to pay for the meals of fasting workers at a mosque in Old Dubai. Those mosque Iftars incidentally involve 1 to 3 dates, water, laban, an orange, a few apple wedges, 2 samosas and a plate of biryani. Yep, that’s it. It’s one quarter plate equivalent of the 6 plates you’re going to have guests heaping up at the stuff-a-thon buffet tables.
3. Leftover food at the communal mosque Iftar that I typically visit is collected where possible so it may be reused. Food leftover on buffet dining tables should be weighed and charged to the guest. The funds could be donated to the underprivileged or at the nearest mosque.
4. Small touches – print out small table cards with Ramadan facts. E.g. people like to break their fast with an odd number of dates because that was the tradition of the Prophet. Or that the word Ramadan derives its root from the word for ‘scorching.’ Iftar should be about food served with a generous helping of cultural and religious awareness.
5. Hunt down charity and waste management initiatives by other exemplar businesses or individuals. Moti Roti’s Filling the Blues program, Emirates Palace’s food waste management , DWTC’s post-iftar waste management effort with help from the Royati Family Society or the excellent Sharing Fridge community initiative. Get inspired, take action.
6. Continue adding to this list yourself. Get creative. And by that, I don’t mean adding another dish to your lavish line-up.

Food Bloggers who’ve posted about Iftar buffet previews, I’m disappointed and embarrassed to be part of the community this month. It’s your responsibility to understand the true meaning of the season rather than pandering to an inbox of free invites. Many of you have not only condoned – but worse, created awareness – for exactly the kind of experience that runs counter to the purpose of the Holy Month.

Buffet Diners, your money supports this mockery of what Ramadan is meant to be. There’s no excuse for ignorance – shift your time from scanning through a list of potential Iftar buffets to scanning through a list of charities that your buffet budget can support instead. This may not buy you ‘irresistible seafood’ nor a ‘delectable selection of Arabic Sweets,’ but you will feel more fulfilled and blessed than what any buffet can hope to make you feel.

A month ago, I attended that stranger’s wedding.

My first post of 2016 is dedicated to that stranger and now dear friend – Ali and his wife. Their wedding gave me an excuse to visit the rural areas of Gujarat and have food experiences that I may never have had on my own.

Gujarat has the highest proportion of vegetarians in their state. Be ready for a judgmental stare or two if you ask around for meat. In fact, having now had both flavourful and highly memorable all-veggie meals in this green state, I might stare at you if you were to ask for meat in Gujarat. A day or two of eating into your journey, you’ll notice that meat is not necessary at all.

Take for instance dal-baati-churma. Traditionally associated with neighbouring Rajasthan, this village meal is so rich in clarified butter (ghee), hearty lentils and carb-laden flour, that I’d challenge you to miss your meat. True to tradition, tiny globes of wheat flour (baati) were baked over a fire fuelled with cow-dung. The dung is simply bio-fuel – it doesn’t leave any foul traces or smells on the actual food.

Once cooked, the baati are crumbled into your plate, drizzled with melted ghee and then dunked into an earthy soup of five lentils (panchmel dal) – Bengal  gram, black gram, green gram, split pigeon peas and whole red lentils.

We were sitting out on a farm in the middle of rural Gujarat, with the laughter and rhythm of Indian wedding festivities punctuating the chilly evening air. There was a feeling of peace, of contentment, of human connectedness through cyber disconnectedness – all of these intangible sensory memories as palpable as the warm stream of dal coursing through my shivering body.

Dessert was a versatile replay of the savoury meal, with the baati crushed up and fried in copious amounts of melted clarified butter and unrefined sugar (jaggery). Churma is one of the richest and most comforting of rustic Indian crumbles. I reverted to the state I always do when food deserves all my sensory attention, including tactile, by picking each clump of sweet buttery dough with my fingers. Silverware makes the experience all too sterile. You have to touch the toasty warmth of something whose mottled brown appearance is very Instagram-unworthy, but whose sigh-inducing flavour goes unmatched against a prettier chia pudding or raw chocolate-drizzled banana popsicle.

The only thing that topped the dinner act was the groom and his mother, both of whom rolled up their sleeves at the close of the meal, stood behind the food and personally served the village team that had served us. You simply don’t find people like that anymore.

If you’re looking to try dal, baati, churma in Dubai, sadly nothing holds up to the real village experience. Manvaar in Karama is as close as you can possibly get in this cow dung-free city. Kalyan Karkumar whose work and food explorations I hold in high regard has written an insightful article on the potential origins of dal-baati-churma, and has also mentioned that the old school baati’s were made out of bajra.

Ali – Mutual passion for food and discovery often forges the most fantastic of friendships. It’s been such fun getting to know you, eating everything from hot pot to chapli kababs to Taiwanese shaved ice, racing through Deira, and getting sound business advice from you. May your marriage be a wildly fulfilling chapter of flavours and adventures – and I can’t wait to now have not one, but two ever-smiling, good-hearted eating partners across from me on our next food adventure. Congratulations to you and Saanya!

This discovery was at Foodlands (also called Cardamom) in Abu Hail, right next to the NMC Hospital. The restaurant has been around since 1999 but has always been sidelined on my eating agenda because if I’m near that building, I’m most likely preoccupied with rushing into the hospital for some sort of medical situation or the other. A month ago, a private dinner party invitation to Foodlands landed me back at the building, hale and hearty. Without the threat of bloodthirsty needles waiting to suck the life out of my arm, I happily unleashed myself on the food and gobbled just short of the quantity needed to land me in a bed next door. During these moments of unfettered feeding, I stumbled upon a chicken biryani spiked – quite generously might I add – with rosewater.

Now to explain why this is worth spending an entire blog post over, let me put it into context. Biryani is a dish that should stimulate and tease even before it reaches your plate.

The aromatics should be subtle yet discernible enough to coax your nostrils towards the platter of rice and meat as it walks down the aisle towards your table. Mum’s biryani hits you the second you step through the door, making you weak at the knees with the aroma of cow’s milk ghee and crisp fried onions and toasted nuts and slow-cooked mutton in a secret marinade that morphs into patches of exquisite masala running through the hot, fluffy, saffron-scented grains. As you eat the biryani, your air passage is doubly assaulted with the savoury perfume – the internal one now swirling at the back of your mouth as you taste the meat, and the external one that enticingly wafts up to your nose from the remaining grains on your plate. It makes you king and subject both at once, wholly elevated by the luxurious bouquet of whole spices, wholly enslaved by the arresting bouquet of whole spices.

And this is exactly why most restaurant biryanis fail in Dubai. They have no aroma at all.

The twenty-dirham biryani on the street cannot aspire to use saffron or toasted nuts or ghee or the sort of whole spices (such as black cardamom) and other aromatics that make a simple rice and meat dish transcend into biryani territory. So most of the cheap commercial fare out there is really just pulao, a simple pilaf where they’ve cooked the meat under the rice but scrimped on all the key aromatics.

This is where rosewater seeps in. A bottle of rosewater is far cheaper than a tin of saffron, and a drop goes a long, long way in perfuming a dish.

Now rosewater is a controversial aromatic. At first, I didn’t quite know what to make of its application in a biryani. We don’t use it in our Hyderabadi biryani at home, nor have I ever tasted a biryani in Hyderabad with a discernible drizzle of rosewater. Rosewater usually makes sense in a dessert or drink: sherbet, rice pudding, falooda, even ice cream.

But using rosewater in the biryani distracted my mind from the aromatics that I normally would expect and refocused my senses on the delicate flowery fragrance that now lifted the grains from a provincial pulao to a baronial biryani. While you won’t sense the rosewater before you taste Foodland’s biryani – so it still lacks a memorable external aroma – the fragrance is released at that very instant the biryani meets the back of your mouth. It is a throaty aroma that you internalize, question, debate, ponder over and commit to your gastronomic memory such that you are persuaded to return to the restaurant and taste it again.

I have since tasted another biryani scented with rosewater, this one with mutton and served out of Al Qaiem Public Kitchen in Sharjah. There was no controversy around this version – it was simply spot on. It had those tell-tale patches of masala rubbing shoulders with the grains, tender meat and for twenty dirhams, an astonishing quantity of it. The rosewater had been used far more sparingly, and I would say more successfully than the version at Foodlands. Al Qaiem’s biryani also had dried lime or loomi, an incongruous citric choice given the presence of rosewater. But the result had me reaching back to the tub of biryani multiple times, an honour that I rarely bestow on anything short of a homemade biryani.

Should every restaurant who cannot aspire to the expensive aromatics resort to using a touch of rosewater? Maybe. While rosewater is no saffron, it lets the dish dream of being something more kingly than a pedestrian pulao.

Feel free to hunt down Foodlands and Al Qaiem on my Google map of hideouts: http://bit.ly/1kXvYvs

And no, I don’t mean burgers. Even though that seems to be all people are eating these days. Burgers and buns. Buns and burgers. Burgers and black buns. Droves of Dubai diners are jumping on the bunwagon, though I’m not one to complain. At least we’re hearing less of everyone and their aunt harp on about the kale smoothie they regurgitated that morning.

One of the big hitters in the Levantine comfort food list is Fattet Magdous. If made well, this richly layered dish can bang the buns off of most burgers. The new Syrian joint Fateh & Sanobr in Abu Hail does a version which almost lives up to the mental fantasy I’ve harboured after reading about Fattet Magdous in Salma Abdelnour’s book, Jasmine and Fire: “I luxuriate in every bite, no need to share with anyone on this solo lunch.”

Fattet Magdous is a well-calculated play on textures. Plump eggplants stuffed with mince meat line up at centre spot, crisp pita at backfield. As you pass your spoon to the eggplant below, creamy whipped yogurt and tahina dribble through every gap, intercepted ever so often by a crunchy pine nut or pomegranate seed. Fateh & Sanobr adds whole pistachios to their game – not as common, but not unwelcome either. The kicker is melted butter (isn’t it always?), invisible to the eye but scoring tangible points in a dish that scores touchdown after touchdown on a day that you’d almost written off as irredeemable.

Fateh & Sanobr may still be ironing out kinks in their kitchen, but their cool home-churned laban provides instant creamy gratification as you beg for your food to be brought out. The chicken livers in pomegranate sauce are another must-try and far more worthy of your appetite than the bland makanek (sausages) or lacklustre hummus (a crime really, especially at a Syrian restaurant).

Driving advice: Pick a Friday or a weekday lunch, unless you masochistically enjoy reducing yourself to a car-sloth in the Dubai-Sharjah traffic jungle.

Other places with a frighteningly delicious Fatteh: Fattet Hummus at Al Hallab (with chickpeas replacing the eggplant) and Fattet Djaj (with chicken, no eggplant) at Khan Murjan in the Wafi Souk.

References:
Dima Sharif’s blog for the recipe of Fattet Magdous
Salma Abdelnour, Jasmine and Fire, A Bittersweet Year in Beirut

Google map: Click here to see a map with Fateh & Sanobr, along with my other food hideouts in the city.

No, you won’t find linen-covered tables crammed with food nor people sitting around dates poised on silver trays.

What you will find are mosques – mosques at every corner. Mosques where the common man is queuing up for biryani donated by benevolent companies, foundations or families. Mosques whose pavements are lined with plastic so people can sit cross-legged facing their dates, water and biryani, facing each other as they await the call to prayer in silent unison. Mosques where people invite you to share their food – even if you haven’t fasted all day, even if you aren’t Muslim.

What you will find are aromas. The aroma of mutton biryani devilishly taunting the faithful. The aroma of rosewater swishing about the giant green and blue tubs of icy Jam-e-Shirin sherbet. The aroma of batter-fried bhajjias and samosas, hawked at makeshift street-side tables right before Iftar. The aroma of fresh-baked bread religiously pumped out by fasting bakers in their cramped, oppressively hot bakeries.

What you will find are the faces of common men. Faces with the creases of hardship, doubly deepened after a day of parched abstinence. Faces with the hushed passivity of anticipation, doubly intensified in the last hour before sunset. Faces with the distant gaze of he whose family is miles away, doubly remembered during a month of focused spirituality, devotion and appreciation of life.

Faces without the experience of a lavish hotel buffet, doubly grateful for the food on the ground before them. And doubly generous about sharing their humble meal with strangers like you and me.

What you will find is communion. Communion between men who have never met each other, but share the common bond of one focused on total abstinence. Communion between the volunteers who work tirelessly to distribute food across the Iftar mats. Communion between man and God, with the pious praying fervently under the open skies – Oh Allah! I have fasted for You. in You do I believe and with Your provision do I break my fast,.

The only Iftar buffet that captures the spirit of Ramadan is the one found across many humble parts of the old city. This sweeping statement needs to replace every radio ad that boasts of tents and buffets which aspire to capture the spirit of Ramadan, but suck the essence out of it. This is the only Iftar buffet that sates that spiritual appetite of Ramadan – an appetite for prayer, fortitude, generosity and above all, humility and restraint. This is the buffet whose value will forever exceed even the most ambitious of hotel spreads.

This is the humble buffet of the common man.

I feel privileged that I had a chance to sit at the Old Dubai buffet table this Ramadan with friends at Gulf Photo Plus and with the photographers who attended our collaborative #unseenDXB photo & Iftar walks.

Local. Inclusive. Rahash. These three words sum up why I walked away with a truly memorable experience in Qatar, a place that never held any food excitement for me in the past. But with the sparkly Shaima Al Tamimi involved behind-the-scenes for the 6^th edition of the Qatar International Food Festival, it took me all of five seconds to realize that a trip to Doha under her expert food guidance would be right up my alley.

This post is dedicated to the three most impressionable Local or ‘made-in-Qatar’ experiences I savoured during the festival. I’ve already penned a post focused on Rahash. As for the festival being inclusive, suffice it to say that I appreciated being surrounded by a mix of nationalities and people from all backgrounds – it didn’t feel elitist which things often do feel in the Gulf region. What was key is that the festival didn’t charge a lofty entrance fee, which enabled more working class families to attend.

In my very narrow selection of three local places in this post, I will admit that I’ve skipped the high end and mid-tier ‘imported’ experiences that the organizers had generously planned for us. Let’s be honest, I live in an old school hand-me-down frying pan. Not in le schmanzy creuset.

SHAY ALSHOMOUS (Instagram: shay_alshomous)

This was hands down the most authentic, home-style and satisfying experience of the trip. Chef Shamsa is a local Qatari lady whose vibrant, fire-cracker personality holds true to her name: sun.

This is the first time in my near lifetime of living in the GCC region that I’ve witnessed a local lady running a restaurant kitchen and infusing her food with the inimitable taste of a mother’s hand. Her breakfast defined simplicity at its soulful best. Things just kept emerging from her kitchen. Bowls of creamy scramble, my favourite being the one seasoned with fragrant dill. Crackery regag bread smeared with spiced eggs and a swirl of Kraft cheese. Butter-laden sweet pudding (aseeda). Glasses brimming with hot, uplifting chai karak.

The perks of having your morning fix at Shay Alshomous (make sure to get there before 9AM – I’ve heard they run out) is that you can walk it off at Souq Waqif right after. The name of this souq translates to ‘Standing Market,’ a reference to the century-old tradition of hawkers standing by the shore of the Arabian Gulf to sell their wares. The Souq has been tastefully renovated over the past decade and is one of those rare market experiences in the region where the sellers aren’t obnoxious, pushy or gimmicky. (Surely our souks in Dubai can learn something from here!) You see real skills at play in the market, from falcon-rearing at the Bird Souq to sword-making, glass-blowing, halwa-making and agal-shaping (aal is the black headband worn over the white ghuthra worn on the head by most locals in the GCC, except Oman). Every alley has a discovery and a few hours are simply not enough to unravel it all.

But back to Chef Shamsa’s breakfast, I continue to crave her food on many a hungry morning – and even a not so hungry morning – back in Dubai. If there is one and only one breakfast to have in Qatar, you’ve got to have it at the flavour-laden hands of this lady.

SUFRAT MAGADNA

Over a month after the festival, the taste of the lamb machboos from Sufrat Magadna still haunts me. I distinctly remember holding the spoonful of caramelized threads of tender lamb against the festival lights, lusting after the rice pockmarked with lentils, and sighing after relieving the spoon of its burden. I should have eaten more. Even if I didn’t have a millimetre of tummy space left, I should have crammed it in. I failed myself, I failed you all. I ate like a cow when I should have really eaten like two cows.

We also had a wholesome lentil porridge or madhrooba which inspired me to cook up a version of the dish from Sarah Al-Hamad’s book, Cardamom and Lime. A well-composed madhrooba can be soulful, healing, comforting – the thought of it can make you so hungry that you experience writer’s block because every neuron in your brain is sniffing for that invisible but prominent memory of home-cooked spiced lentil aroma.

Sufrat Magadna does not seem to have a presence on Instagram, so I’m not quite sure how one is supposed to order from them during the rest of the year when the festival is not on. But worry you not, I hear that there are stalls in Souq Waqif where you might find this and many more traditional Qatari dishes. And for the rest of us who’re not within walking distance of Souq Waqif in Qatar, well, we’ll just pretend that the bowl of cereal we could feast on five seconds from now would be infinitely better than a pot of homemade madhrooba anyway.

LOCAL REGAG STALLS

The smell of bread is mesmerizing across almost every culture. Seriously, find me a person who’d say, yuck, I hate the smell of fresh bread!

The bread truism holds strong even in the cuisine borne out of the harsh Arabian desert. A whiff of fresh regag on a griddle is a tease to passerbys, hungry or not. The smell of melting cheese, za’atar and chilli sauce on the fresh crackery bread – that’s just nasal mockery. I stood absolutely fixated, letting the intoxicating aroma of toasty wheat and salty cheese play footsie with my nostrils for a good ten minutes until Shaima suddenly appeared out of thin air and dragged me off to the next event. The lady preparing this regag was really something – the aroma of her griddle and her za’atar was unlike any other that I’ve seen, and I’ve observed regag being made at outdoor events a fair number of times in the past. Here she is, for your hypnotic pleasure [youtube=http://wp.me/p10MK2-2ej] (please click here if the video doesn’t show up):

If there’s any lesson to be learnt from my excessive indulgence during the Qatar International Food Festival, it’s that the local fare is the most satisfying and memorable. Hunt it out. The Souq Waqif might be a good place to start looking, and I can see myself easily spending two days there just eating my way through the place.

Disclaimer: While my trip to Qatar for the Qatar International Food Festival 2015 was graciously sponsored by the Qatar Tourism Authority, all opinions in this post are expressly my own.

Rahash is a sweet milky tahini-based halwa which is an addictive form of Middle Eastern nutty fudge. It sticks to your teeth like toffee, scrapes against your tongue like sand and dissolves down your throat like cream. It arrests taste buds at that enticing junction where savoury nut-butter strands cross paths with sweet cream. It is that ingenious play on texture and flavour that never blinked on my radar until my time at the Qatar International Food Festival. And it was at the festival that I found myself absolutely smitten by this newfound flavour, to the point where I ran horribly late photographing a tantalizing rahash cake, nearly had a meltdown when the popcorn stand ran out of rahash popcorn, and strategized with a bakery owner about how to carry her rahash creation back home on the flight to Dubai.

Here is the Rahash trail that I slavishly pursued when I visited Qatar. If you had to prioritize, pick the first one. If you don’t try anything from the list at all, you won’t experience Rahash. And that my friend, is punishment enough.

THE RAHASH BOMB AT FENYAL

This was what awoke the sleeping Rahash hound in me – the Rahash bomb from a homegrown business called Fenyal which specializes in cupcakes and cake balls. This edible bomb is soaked in rahash sauce and covered in more flaky tongue-sticking rahash procured from Kuwait, supposedly a respected source of the best quality rahash. The bomb spurts out luscious cream from within, a cream that I can’t quite describe because the nutty creamy toffee-like fudgy texture of the rahash-soaked sphere short-circuited the analytical food gadgetry in my head.

To make up for my verbal incompetence, here’s an instagram video on the fenyal rahash mind-bombing experience by Aziz Alajail, @zozalajail. Warning, it might leave you curled in up the foetal position and craving something that’s miles away. Thanks for helping me relive this mind-bombing experience Shaima. You just gave me my new desktop screensaver.

Fenyal’s owner Umm Mishaal is a force to reckon with – she baked up a storm for the festival despite being injured AND being on crutches AND having just emerged from another hectic event. I walked away feeling profoundly inspired and deeply incompetent.

Where to find it: Fenyal is an Instagram-based home business: @fenyal. Details on how to order in their Instagram profile.

RAHASH & ROSEWATER POPCORN AT LET’S POPCORN

The second rahash revelation was at a gourmet Kuwaiti-born popcorn brand, Let’s Popcorn. This franchise has wrapped their popcorn kernels in a slew of sweet, salty and spicy flavours that resonate with the region, with my obvious flavour of choice being the sweet creamy rahash and rosewater. I will admit that the tahini renders the popcorn somewhat chewy and even powdery, a big no-no for any popcorn purist. But if you masticate thoughtfully enough, you’ll feel the rush of sweet rosy tahini comfort wash over you and wipe clean any misgivings about chewy popcorn. I’ve taste tested this oddly-textured, comfortingly flavoured popcorn with a few people now – and about 80% have dipped into my bag for seconds. The remaining 20% didn’t deserve my preciously popped rahash stash anyway.

Where to find it: They have two branches in Qatar, the Al Aziziya branch and Souq Waqif. More information here.

RAHASH ICE CREAM AT GHARISSA

While I caved into a more Westernized scoop studded with nibbly bits of cake (pictured below), I did manage to taste the more interesting rahash ice cream from Gharissa, a store founded by Ghanem and his mother Eman. Gharissa is part of a bigger heart-warming story, one where Ghanem was born with caudal regression syndrome (CRS) which left his lower body completely paralyzed. Despite the severe adversity, Ghanem has become a national icon of hope and motivation. Not only has he written inspirational books in English and Arabic, but he is also the youngest entrepreneur in Qatar behind the Gharissa brand. The rahash ice cream tasting left me inspired to try my own version over the summer – maybe sweet tahini cream with sticky swirls of rutab date fudge. You’re instinctively licking my invisible rahash-dates scoop in the air aren’t you? So am I.

Where to find it: The Barwa Village, Al Wakrah, Al Khor Mall and Dar Al Salaam. More information here.

RAHASH CAKE FROM SOUQ WAQIF BOUTIQUE HOTELS

The final rahash creation that has great potential for bakeries in the region was a rahash cake from the Souq Waqif Boutique Hotels. The cake was covered in fairy floss and layered with an unctuous sticky rahash caramel that leaves you licking the spoon long after there’s nothing left on it. The cake itself turned out a tad bit dry, but a mental replay of its rahash filling with a moist buttermilk cake has convinced me that rahash with cake is a combo meant to be. I’ve also heard murmurings of cakes with rahash melted into chocolate sauce, the very thought of which has left me shaking uncontrollably like the bobble heads on sale at the gift store under my apartment.

Where to find it: Café Brouq in Al Mirqab Boutique Hotel at Souq Waqif Boutique Hotels.

If you’re based in Dubai, don’t sob over our rahashless fate in the city – Doha is a mere 45 minute plane ride away. Or alternatively, I’ve managed to lay my hands on pure unadulterated blocks of Iranian-style Rahash in that jungle called Naif behind the Gold Souk. Shameless plug, but join me on a ‘Naif by Night’ photo walk to taste Rahash, buy your own personal stash, and whip it up with some gooey Nutella so you can plaster Instagram with the most outrageously lickable Rahash photos.

Disclaimer: While my trip to Qatar for the Qatar International Food Festival 2015 was graciously sponsored by the Qatar Tourism Authority, all opinions in this post are expressly my own.

All credits to: The gorgeous and generous Shaima Al Tamimi who co-blogs at http://potsandpatterns.com/ . She was the one who kickstarted my ‘RahashRush’ by alerting me to the Rahash bomb at Fenyal. The rest is history.

Locations: On my Google map of hideouts, please select the layer called 003 Trail of Crumbs.

IRANIAN SANGAK

This Iranian bread is made of a gloopy leavened mixture of whole wheat and white flour dough, and ingeniously spread over washed and heated pebbles. Hence it’s been christened Sangak, or ‘little stones.’ The baker perforates the length of the bread with his fingers, which prevents it from rising into a chunky inedible slab. The sangak ovens at Abshar (both their Maktoum and Jumeirah branches) and Pars (their Satwa branch) are recommended if you’re the inquisitive kind who likes to step close and stick your head into the oven. My preference is to have sangak slightly under-baked, so that its stone-crisped skin can unveil moist, tender dough pockets within. I’d recommend a DIY Sangak Sammy with a generous smear of salty feta, crushed pre-soaked walnuts and reyhaan (an aromatic type of basil). Or wrapped around a fat-dripping minced lamb kabab. Or dipped into honey comb and fresh cream. Or eaten with the Gods in the garden of Eden.

LEBANESE MANOUSHE (sing.)

This is not technically a bread but closer to a pizza – but then, one could argue that a pizza is technically bread that’s pre-paired with ingredients. However you chose to interpret it, your life in Dubai simply cannot be complete without copious quantities of za’atar and cheese mana’eesh (pl.) This Lebanese pizza is typically sauceless, with the olive oil serving as the glue for the surface ingredients like herbs and meat (first photo above from Al Mukhtar Bakery). I typically cave in to one, maybe two orders per week, all from a Lebanese chain called Breakfast to Breakfast (BtoB) that serves a thin-stretched, less doughy version (manoushe ‘light’) upon request. And once every few months, I surrender to the grease-dripping power of their cheese and spiced sausage (sujuk) manoushe (second photo above), best enjoyed fresh in the café rather than delivered home. Old timers also swear by the mana’eesh from the classic 2am post-party pit stop, Al Reef bakery, or at Al Mukhtar on Ittihad road (technically in Sharjah) – but when you’ve had the lighter and more flavourful version at BtoB, you’ll find your loyalty lasts no longer than the piping hot manoushe on the plate.

TANDOORI ROTI OR KHUBZ TANOOR

Hoards of bachelors depend on communal roti ovens, usually manned by about two to three skilled Pakistani or Afghani men who roll out the white flour dough, dexterously flip it between their palms till it stretches to a perfect circle, sling it over a cloth cushion and smack it against the sides of a cylindrical, vertically-oriented tandoori oven. Once the roti bubbles up to a crisp, it’s extracted out of the hot burrow with two metal sticks and bagged up for the bargain price of AED 1.00 per roti. These bakers usually bake both a leavened or an unleavened pockmarked roti, and I dare you to not pluck at it before you’ve recruited a suitable curry accomplice. You can spot these ovens across all neighbourhoods where the blue-collar working man resides – be it the alleys of Satwa, Naif (Deira), Hor Al Anz (Deira) and Meena Bazaar (Bur Dubai). Incidentally, this tandoor also makes an appearance in Iraqi and Iranian restaurants, not surprising given that the Middle East (specifically Mesopotamia) was the original birthplace of the ”tanoor” (Arabic) or ”tinuru” (Semitic) oven thousands of years ago.

MORE ROTI FROM THE MASONRY OVENS

Another common type of roti oven, often fired up in the same areas where the Tandoori ovens work, is the pizza-style or masonry oven. I’ve heard bakers call the oven ”baachi” once in Naif, though they reckon that’s a local name rather than one used back home in Afghanistan/Indian/Pakistan. The dough is typically unleavened and I find that roti emerging from these ovens usually remains tender for longer than that out of a tandoor. On my sister’s Little India food trail, she uses the roti as a piping hot canvas over which she smears clarified butter (ghee) and jaggery before rolling it up into a sweet buttery mid-meal snack. Hot, fresh, tender, bubbly, butter-dripping, sugar-laden bread…and you’re telling me room-temperature cupcakes are a thing? Puh-lease.

PARATHA AND PAROTTA

Paratha is that form of shallow-fried bread that makes curries happy across the Indian subcontinent. ‘Paratha’ is the North Indian term for the layered whole wheat flour bread, while ‘Parotta’ refers to its more elastic, fluffy and fair-faced South Indian style cousin (pictured above). Meena Bazaar abounds in shops that serve Paratha for breakfast, ideally paired with lentils, yoghurt and/or chillies fried in mustard oil. This North Indian variant can also be stuffed with everything from potatoes to sprouts, with places like Paratha King offering over a hundred mind-boggling stuffed choices for the chronically indecisive. The always un-stuffed South Indian parotta version is usually found in Keralite cafeterias, where they hand out parotta and omelette rolls for exponentially less than the price of water in most high-end restaurants. It doesn’t take a genius to tell you where I’d invest my money.

SPECIALTY NORTH INDIAN BREADS

Most North Indian restaurants worth their salt – like the Mughali-style Sigdi for instance – will have a selection of at least six breads on their menu if not more. If you trawl through North Indian bread baskets across the city, you will find everything from the flat makki ki roti (maize flour) to the deep-fried puffy puri, which is best deflated over a bowl of curried chana (chickpeas). Worth trying is Ballimaran Dilli‘s Lucknowi sheermal, a chewy amber-coloured flatbread whose milky sweetness amplifies the primal flavour of its molten Gulawati Kababs. (first picture above). I’ve also always had a soft spot for the potato-stuffed kulcha (second picture above) from Kulcha King, a franchise that has grown from a small hole in Bur Dubai into an empire with bulletin boards across Sheikh Zayed Road. Their Punjabi (specifically Amritsari) kulchas are stuffed with a soft mushy layer of potatoes, laced with onions, or injected with cheese if you so desire, and sprinkled with a fine powdery film of tangy chaat masala. Topped with a hunky knob of butter and served alongside chole and a sweet-spicy onion and chilli chutney, this is easily one of the most addictive breads that emerges out of Dubai’s North Indian kitchens.

SOUTH INDIAN APPAMS, DOSAS AND THEIR WHOLE FERMENTED FAMILY

In all the gluten-blasting rhetoric we’ve heard over the past three decades, my only thought (other than, sure, go gluten-free, more bread for me*.) has been, why on earth aren’t we giving some bread cred to the South Indians? Their fermented rice flour and white urad dal concoctions are what gluten-free dreams are made of – and those dreams are realized every day at dirt cheap prices in Dubai. Calicut Paragon’s bowl-shaped appams (pictured above) do an instant disappearing act every time they hit a table – best paired with crab or fish curry. Dosas from Woodlands, Aryaas or Sangeeta are tried and tested by those-in-the-know. And then there are the uttappams and idlis that any South Indian restaurant in Karama that’s worth its sambar will have on its menu. If you don’t know what these strange exotic words mean, please hail a cab and visit Karama. IMMEDIATELY.

**My frivolous gluten-free comment is not aimed at anyone with celiac disease or medically proven gluten-free intolerance/allergy. It’s more for these kinds of people. 

EMIRATI REGAG

Regag is closer to a cracker or crepe than what we typically consider a bread. But similar to bread, it requires a great deal of dexterity in making it. A heavily hydrated ball of unleavened dough is slapped against a griddle and fanned out into a thin film which cooks until crispy. It can be eaten plain or amped up with mahyahwah (anchovy sauce), eggs, cheese or honey. The key to a successful regag is in the texture – the crispier the better. One of my personal favourites is at Labeeb Grocery in Jumeirah, though I’ve also enjoyed a stellar version at the Global Village in past years. This bread can also be crumbled up and added into a meat or chicken stew, making a dish called Thareed that was the favourite of the Prophet Muhammad, thereby making it a revered specialty of the Gulf and broader Middle East region.

MOROCCAN KHUBZ

No Moroccan meal can be complete without plump, crusty loaves of khubz. The best ones have a crisp semolina-dusted shell with soft cottony chambers that are perfect for making love to a slow-cooked tagine. You can grab a fresh-baked round of bread at either Marakesh Bakery or Aghroum Bakery in the less-known Abu Hail neighbourhood. Even if you couldn’t find the right tagine (I am guarding my favourite place with my life – the last two places I wrote about on my blog shut down, so I won’t jinx the third), I find it hard to believe that a home-made lamb stew wouldn’t make a lone khubz feel whole.

Another bread to try at Aghroum Bakery is the Msemen, similar to the North Indian paratha and often stuffed with meat or onions. I’ve yet to find someone who has not incessantly snacked on it whenever it made an appearance. And if I do find that someone, well then, there’s more for me.

ETHIOPIAN INJERA

I once had a guest on one of my food trails mistake the injera at an Ethiopian restaurant for a hand-wiping rag. I couldn’t blame her, the grayish mottled appearance of Injera doesn’t inspire you to leap forth and ravenously tear it off for a taste. But once you’re past its alien appearance, you might begin to appreciate this intriguingly sour scooping tool for your spicy Ethiopian stews. Injera is made with a grain called teff, a super healthy grain that didn’t naturally grow in the rest of the world until the Americans fell in love with it and decided to cultivate it closer to home. The Ethiopians spread this fermented bread like a cloth across the serving plate or mesob and ladle their stews, lentils and vegetables directly over it. This allows the juicy berbere sauce and other gravies to soak irresistibly into the bread, and before you know it, that hand-wiping rag has become the inseparable lining of your tummy. Sara makes two kinds of injera at her extremely popular Habasha restaurants – a regular pale one and a brown one that she claims is healthier.

EGYPTIAN FETEER

The theatrics involved in making Egyptian feteer are only surpassed by the taste of the fresh buttery layers of bread itself. White flour, water and butter are combined to make a stretchy, slippery dough that is flipped in the air till it is stretched out as thin as phyllo. Multiple feteers can be layered one inside the other to make the famed ‘feteer mshaltet’ which goes well with honey, cream or if you want to live dangerously, both. While Al Ammor is the feteer stalwart, I also adore Soarikh’s savoury feteer filled with veggies, basturma (salty dried beef) and two kinds of cheese – a cow’s milk mozzarella and a goat’s milk Turkish cheese. You can go wild with the savoury and sweet variations, with the custard-filled or cheese-honey versions being the perfect remedy for post-sandstorm melancholy.

TURKISH PIDE

It has admittedly been eons since I’ve visited a Turkish restaurant so this may be the worst written paragraph in the rich history of Turkish breads. But once upon a time, I did stumble across a “fresh bouncy pide dotted with sesame seeds” at Yildiz Saray and “baked Turkish naan matted with white sesame and black nigella seeds” at Bosporus (first picture above) – but these distant memories need some serious rechecking to see if the quality of the food still holds up to my prehistoric reviews. I’ve recently read some mixed reviews online for both places, especially around shoddy service standards, so Í’m not suggesting you run out this very second to lure a pide into your tummy. I vaguely remember enjoying the bread at Zurna as well as the one at the newish Mavlana in Deira. And the second seedless pide pictured above is from a restaurant called Kervan Saray that is situated somewhere in Qusais and serves reasonably priced, very forgettable Turkish fare.

And that’s that. Thank you for wading through the worst paragraph written in Turkish bread history.

FILIPINO PANDESAL

The Filipino community hides some of the least celebrated but most soulful Portugese-influenced baking traditions in Dubai. The grocery stores in Filipino-dominated neighbourhoods like Murraggabat usually stock sweet cushiony rolls of Pandesal that are just crying to be dipped into well-seasoned runny egg yolk, alternated with sips of milky cardamom tea, or swiped across a bowl with any sort of gravy that needs mopping up. Honestly, it’s not hard to find a cross-cultural match for these irresistible milky buns, though their submissively soft texture makes them easy to enjoy in isolation as well.

This trail of crumbs is far from complete. I feel somewhat guilty for ending this post, knowing full well that there are a number of other traditional breads out there that I’ve overlooked or not even tasted. Fill in the gaps…what are your favourite breads in the city?