Cuisine
Arabian Peninsula cooking — spiced rice dishes, whole roasted lamb, dried limes and flatbreads straight off the heat.
Arabian Peninsula cooking — spiced rice dishes, whole roasted lamb, dried limes and flatbreads straight off the heat.
Questions from the pass
While both are spiced rice and meat dishes, the cooking method differs. Kabsa cooks meat directly in the spiced broth before adding rice. Mandi uses a traditional tandoor-style clay oven where the meat is suspended above the rice, letting the fat and juices drip down as it slow-roasts.
Pierce dried black limes twice with a skewer to let cooking liquids penetrate. Add them whole to slow-simmered stews like saloona or rice dishes like machboos. They provide a sour, fermented, slightly bitter acidity. For dry rubs, grind the inner flesh into a fine powder, discarding the bitter seeds.
To bake traditional Arabian khubz, slap the dough directly onto the clay wall of a tandoor-style oven heated to between 350°C and 400°C. At this temperature, the yeast reacts instantly, causing the dough to puff and blister. It cooks fully in 45 to 60 seconds.
Bezar is an Emirati spice mix. It typically contains cumin, coriander seeds, peppercorns, cinnamon, fennel, and dried chillies. Roast the whole spices at 150°C for 10 minutes until fragrant, grind them coarse-to-fine, then mix with ground turmeric. Use a 2:2:1 ratio of cumin, coriander, and turmeric as a base.
Marinate a 12-15kg lamb in a paste of cardamom, saffron, garlic, yoghurt, and bezar for 12 hours. Spit-roast or bake slowly at 140°C for 5 to 6 hours until the meat pulls off the bone. Serve draped over spiced cardamom-cinnamon rice, garnished with toasted almonds, raisins, and hard-boiled eggs.
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