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I shoulda said that the eggs were actually brunch. We didn’t have anything else until dinner except for some banana bars. I decided you couldn’t visit me in The City of Gold without actually going to the gold souk, so that’s where we’ve taken you tonight. We grabbed some shwarma from a shop near the souk. I had a chicken one and hubby had lamb. Also had my fave juice, mango. The shwarma were absolutely yumdiddlyumptius! Not very big, but sublime. This is how they cook the meat. My shwarma had chicken, lettuce, tomato and some sauce that seemed like a thin hummus. Though we didn’t get any of these coconuts to drink I thought that they were blog worthy. On the way back home tonight I made hubby detour so that I could take you for some Happy Corn. There are also some Magic Corn stands around here too. Don't know exactly what makes the corn "happy" or "magic" but it's a nice snack and it can be healthy if you have them reduce the amount of butter they put into it. You tell them the size of container and you have a choice of. Among the flavours are chile, garlic, chicken, salt, pepper, cheese, and lemon (I’m sure there were more, I just can’t recall them all!). I had chile, garlic, salt and pepper with some lemon dashed into the mix. Hubby just went with garlic and salt. Mmmm! When we got home that significant other of mine decided he was still hungry so I grilled up a ricotta and chile paste sandwich for him. And we both had some more of that luscious Ben and Jerry's for dessert.

So, here's what the Baghdad eggs looked like.

Actually, I liked the pistachio nougat fine it was the rose petals I didn't really enjoy eating (sorry, I wasn't clear!). But the pistachio nougat did indeed have some sort of different flavour to it, kinda floral. I don't think it was mastic since, if I understand correctly, mastic has an aniseed taste. (I HATE aniseed!)

Oooh, yeah, great idea to put it on puff pastry before baking! I gotta try that and what a wonderful easy nibbly to serve to guests! Thank you, zeitoun.

Ya gotta love zaatar, huh? So do you buy the croissants, slice them open and sprinkle zaatar inside or do you put zaatar in during the making of the croissants?

I haven't seen manousha but that's not to say it's not around. I'll keep an eye out for it 'cause it's definitely something I'd like.

For breakfast today I thought I'd do "Baghdad Eggs". I had these in a cafe (Richmond Hill Cafe and Larder) in Melbourne just before I moved. The person that owns the cafe is Stephanie Alexander, a famous chef in Australia. I was given her latest issue of The Cooks Companion, which is a cook's essential in Oz. I was pleased to see the dish listed in the cookbook the other day. (Here's her website and her book.) It's really easy and oh, so yummy! First melt some butter in a pan. When it's foamy throw in some garlic to cook for a few seconds, add a dash of lemon juice (I used lime juice since I had 'em) then gently fry eggs in the pan. When cooked, serve them atop flat bread, sprinkle with zaatar (she calls for cumin), fresh mint, salt and pepper. Give it a try! (I'll post a picture later.) [edited to fix link]

Last night we had a birthday party to go to at the pretty Ritz Carlton. (It's pretty except for the canyon of construction going on around it, poor thing!) The setting of the restaurant we went to is wonderful. It's in the pool area, steps from the beach, but that's not the best part. For larger parties you can eat in one of these open air tents: (There's a better picture here at their website.) The food is buffet and you can choose from an appetiser buffet or full buffet. This is a portion of the appetisers section which included dips and stuffed grape leaves, as per usual. The one item in this picture that I wanted to make note of is dish just to the left of the grape vine rolls. Those are Syrian magdus. I think they look awful, especially when they're whole but I like the taste. They're eggplants stuffed with nuts and chiles and preserved in oil. I found this interesting story about someone's experience making them with a Syrian family. This man was making fresh breads filled with cheese and zaatar. Yum! The delicious lentil soup with bowls of muslin wrapped lemons and croutons. And some of the dessert selection. There was also fresh fruit and some bread and butter pudding concoction. We also got some wonderful chocolate mousse birthday cake! This picture is hard to see much in. It's a tent that they had there where you could buy sheesha pipes and boxes of the flavoured tobacco to go with. You can sort of make out the "flavours" by the fruits pictured on the boxes. As you can see I neglected to take pictures of a few things. There was also plenty more dips and about half a dozen giant bowls of different types of olives. The mains were lamb chops, skewers of meats (like those in my Goodies photo), fish and more stuff I've forgotten by now.

here's what they looked like:

here's what my potato bread from yesterday looked like. I love this recipe because it's a 30 minute initial rise and the second rise is about the same. Plus you don't even have to peel the potatoes!

jhlurie Simpson, yes, it's beautifully constructed! bongo, thanks so much for the information. I'm learning a ton this week! percyn, you know, I'm unsure as to the types of mangos. I do see several different kinds of mangos at the shops but they're only labelled as to where they come from. And I don't know which of those mangos they normally use for juices. Where are alphonsos from?

Yep, that's it. Delicious. ← Me likey! Thanks for blogging about it.

Ooh, thanks for identifying that fish. I wondered what it is. I haven't bought much fish that hasn't already been hacked up (ie filleted ) and fish names are rarely consistent. That deep fried fish sounds heavenly!

We had a discount. It was 450dirhams before the discount, so I suppose it wasn't outrageous. It's just that the prices there were at the high end for what we've seen in Dubai.

Some of my grazing for today: a pear, the last couple of pieces of baklava, and since I've neglected my chocolate intake this week, 3 pieces of chocolate from a box of cadbury assortment. Baked some bread too. The Potato Loaves from Baking with Julia. I love the recipe because it's so fast but I never can shape them to look like the picture, so hopefully none, or few, of you have the book so you can't compare mine! Will post pic later.

Oooh, beautiful. Can I have a bite? I made the potato loaves but I can never get them shaped right. This time they "unrolled" when baking. Just wrote myself a note in the margin of my book to make sure that I pinch the seam. I'll post a picture in my foodblog and add a link here when I have it in imagegullet. [fixed typo]

Oooh, just doing some research on the web to learn more about some flours I bought. Found out that Chapati Atta, which is sold here all over the place because it's used in Indian flat breads, for instance, is a low gluten flour. Excellent to know for future bread making reference. I also bought some bajra flour atta and ragi flour atta (spelled bajira and raggi, respectively, on the packets, no wonder I had trouble finding out what they were! ). Those of you that do Indain cooking apparently will already know about them. Millet, flour, huh? Guess I should make some Indian breads with the flours. Since we've been talking about dates, I thought you might like this story from the Gulf News.

Aaah, Thursday, the weekend. (Forgot to mention the working week is Saturday through Wednesday here) I call Thursday "the new Saturday"! I'll probably be grazing throughout the day but for starters I had some toasted fake ciabatta with French butter. (no picture since I didn't want to embarass the ciabatta any further) Last week in therese's blog there was some comment about cultured butter. I think I picked some up at Carrefour the other day. My butter is made with lactic culture, does that mean it's cultured butter? Whatever...it's divine! Also had some toast with labna again.

Hey, there, PCL, thanks! I've been to that restaurant and it's wonderful, I agree. Looking forward to you doing a Melbourne blog some day.

Found a picture of what a small portion of the fish selection at Carrefour's looks like: They will, of course, fillet the fish or whatever you want (ie they cleaned some prawns and some squid for me not long ago). The fish market looks like this times about 100. Every few feet is a new display with a different vendor!

Well, in contrast to the bargain lunch of yesterday, last night we went to a pricey place. I chose it mostly because of it's location (hadn't been there before and I'm still interested in trying new places rather than going back to ones I've been to already). I wanted to take you all to the Burj Al Arab's Sky Bar on Friday night but I couldn't get in (you have to make a reservation!), so I wanted to work my fave building into this somehow. I did that by going to a restaurant where we could see it! We went to a restaurant called Al Hambra which serves "Spanish/Moorish" food. It's at one of my other favourite buildings here that consists of 2 hotels and some shopping. The Madinat Jumeirah has been created to look like an old Arabian village complete with wind towers (an old non mechanical way of air conditioning, and quite brilliant too). This place could be tacky but it's not, well except for the dozens of giant gold horses that line the drive to the hotel. When we arrived, 7:30pm, there was hardly anyone there, as usual. People seem to generally go out to dinner here rather late. The place looked busy at about 10pm! I'd asked for a place on the veranda so I was disappointed when we were taken to an inside table. They'd expected some bad weather or something. I asked if we could sit outside and they set up a place for us. (Service was excellent the entire night.) In fact we started a trend. They then started to seat other diners out there as the night went on, but for a while we had our own private dining area! There are canals running throughout the Madinat and you can take rides on abras (small boats) around the canals. We sat overlooking a part of the canal so we got to see the boats motor by all evening. I just think that the Madinat at night is pure magic: The Burj Al Arab changes colours throughout the night. As soon as we sat down with that view, hubby commented on having to hear me mention the Burj all night long. I was thinkin, "naa, I'm not THAT bad". Sadly he was right! Could help it, the building is so amazing to me! Oh, and this is a smidge of a snap of the inside of the restaurant. Very moody. Right...onto the food. When we sat down we got this nice plate of bread, with great olive oil, aoili and a couple of tasty olives. We decided to order some tapas. From left, fried peppers stuffed with brandada (ie peppers stuffed with a salt cod mix), calamari, and a sampler plate of Spanish meats (with the triangular dish of garlic smashed in olive oil, chopped tomatoes and pickled onions, plus a plate of crisped bread). Oh, and hubby had a glass of Spanish Tempranillo wine. Take a look at their massive salt and pepper grinders. The pepper one (the tall one) is about foot high! Before our main course they provided a break with sweet melon sorbet: I had San Sebastian cod with white asparagus, prawns and clams. Hubby had their interpretation of a tagine. All the bits were served separately. The lamb just fell off of the bone and that's a pile of couscous there. Couldn't fit in dessert so we just had coffee (medium Turkish for him and latte for me). They arrived with little cake creations with a dollop of apricot jam in them middle and a sprinkle of pistachio. We thought that the main courses needed a bit of pizzazz added to the taste. The tapas were very good and unexpectedly generous. If we went back we'd probably just graze on tapas. And, you just can't beat the setting.

I know, amazing! And it was far too much for me to eat. I could have shared it with someone.

I agree with your "Vegas" of the area comment. Definitely! While I haven't taken a picture of the fish market (and won't get the chance to get one this week) I do have one of the fish selection just at Carrefour. It's great! I'll post it later. Very funny about the beef made to look like pork! I haven't really noticed much of that here but maybe I haven't been paying attention! I had to go searching for the answer to your date question. I can't seem to find much mention of Dubai and date farming and I haven't really seen any Dubai dates at the supermarket (Saudi, Jordan and Oman, I think I've seen), though I wasn't looking. I did find this date company website that seems to indicate that the dates are mostly grown in the Emirates of Al Ain and Ras Al Khaimah.

Excellent question. Yes I'm far more conscious of using water. In Melbourne we had water restrictions and lots of adverts telling you to be careful with water. Yesterday on the radio here I heard one here for the first time. I now cringe if I even see water running for a long time from a tap on TV! What I've changed in regard to the kitchen water use that I can think of is that when I rinse things off (ie getting all that sand off of the bunches herbs I buy!) I tend to put some water in the sink and swirl the herbs around in it instead of running a lot of water over them. And I turn the tap off immediately after I'm done using it even if I still have things in my hands!

After my meeting I felt I should have something to eat. I had to go to the Safestway Supermarket (yes, Safestway!) centre for an errand. I thought I'd try out their Lebanese restaurant for ya. I decided to have one of their lunch specials, a kofta (baked lamb mince). The special consisted of soup (lentil), salad (lettuce with cucumber and green pepper/capsicum), rice, kofta, drink and sheesha. Since I don’t smoke I just took a picture of the sheesha menu so you could see what “flavours” you can get. The soup was very tasty, salad was basic. The kofta looked like it was gonna be a horrible dry disgusting thing (yes this definitely is the blog of ugly food!) but was pretty good but nuttin’ special. Rice was perfectly cooked. Oh, and I ordered a mango juice. The lunch was a whole 25 dirhams but the mango juice cost me 10 dirhams, outrageous! (Not that I'd go back; food wasn't that great but for the experience it was fine!) I also saw on their menu "arabic champagne" which, of course is a non alcoholic drink consisting of: apple juice, perrier, 7up and honey. I went into Safestway supermarket just so I could buy Cabots Habanero cheese which I got to try for the first time a few weeks ago. Yum! Sheesha menu (and before you ask, I don't know what the first 2 items are (but they must be good judging from the price) nor the last 4, nor shamam ): lunch specials menu (I love when they translate to English and spell things differently. The other day I saw "cream of green peace" soup! LOL! Oh, and Hammour/hammur is the local fish here.): soup and salad: mango juice, rice and kofta: