Confessions of a City Slicker

My exposure to Arabian cuisine is limited to kebabs and dates. Well, it’s not like there are a lot of Middle Eastern restaurants in this tiny island, are there?

But I think the food will certainly be as colorful and variant as their culture. The best part is most definitely the many spices that they use.

Coach introduced me to Dorma the other day. It’s basically minced beef marinated with some sort of spice she brought back from Baghdad (very authentic, eh?) and mixed with rice, onion and I think I smell coriander in there as well. The whole concoction is then wrapped in a leaf like a pohpiah and stewed in a pot for a few hours. The rice goes in uncooked, by the way.

Being a canivore, I can’t identify the leaf she used and she doesn’t know how to tell me either.

She added promoganate juice to the stew to give it a sourish flavor.

Although I never liked coriander because the smell is too strong, I can definitely detect a hint of that mysterious spice she used for the meat. She marinated the beef overnight so the spices have seeped into the meat well.

Oh well, when I have the time, I’ll go search around for the recipes. After all, that’s what the Net is for, no? Meanwhile, I’ll just be content with kebabs. I saw an Arabic food stall at the hawker center near her apartment but haven’t had the time to check it out yet.

Next appointment, maybe…