Cardamom and Lime. Sarah Al-Hamad

      No dish typifies Gulf cuisine better than the machbous. Inspired by the magnificent Persian and Indian biryanis, the machbous derives its name from the Arabic for compressed, kabs. It is a cooking method which re-uses the spiced water used to cook meat or fish to suffuse the rice, marrying the ingredients and spices together. The resulting dish is a celebration of robust perfumes and ingredients, scented with cardamom, cloves and cinnamon. There are many types of machbous (pl. michabees) – lamb, chicken, prawn and fish machbous are weekly menu fixtures, while truffle machbous and duck machbous are seasonal delicacies. Once learned machbous-making can be adapted to include a variety of ingredients.

      The Arabic for rice is riz/ruz, but in the Gulf it is ‘aish – or Living – evidence of its elevated status. Here lunch is the main meal of the day. Because of the heat, the working day starts early, usually around 7am, and ends at about 2pm. People lunch late and heartily and dinner is a meagre affair by comparison. In our home and wherever I have lunched over the years, it is inconceivable for lunch to be served without rice. The same applies to practically every household in the Gulf; rice is bought by the sackful.

      Rice may be the unrivalled staple food today but it wasn’t always so. Before trade introduced it to the peoples of the coast and at times of scarcity, locally farmed grains like barley, jareesh (coarse wheat) and lentils were used. These would be cooked with whatever vegetables were in season (rarer still with meat) for several hours, then beaten to a savoury porridge that was nutritious and filling. Wholesome grain-based dishes are still very popular, especially at Ramadhan and in winter.

      Combining sweet and savoury is also characteristic of Gulf cuisine. Raisins and crispy onions are sprinkled over rice and savoury porridges, fish is served with date-sweetened rice, eggs accompany some puddings and desserts. Eating dates throughout the meal, in between morsels of machbous or rice is common; bowls of dates always accompany the main meal.

      The most important regional food – and my great weakness – is the date fruit, tamr. Its value as a cultural player transcends its significant culinary worth. As a child I would hear my father say that a man could live on dates and yoghurt alone, so complete and nutritious is the combination. Date palms are highly prized, their ownership a source of pride and prestige; I have never seen an unkempt, neglected palm tree – the mere idea seems subversive, even unreligious (date palms are the most frequently mentioned fruit-bearing tree in the Quran). Each year the palms are pollinated and pruned. Only female trees bear fruit (the male ones pollinate), their fruits patiently awaited. The yield is stored for eating and cooking and any extra divided up among family and friends. The best-known kinds are the khlass and the birhi, but there are myriad varieties, each with a distinctive shape, sweetness, texture and colour. Most of the dessert dishes in this book are made with dates, their high-energy, nourishing flesh perfectly suited to the region’s arid, austere climate.

      In addition to its valuable fruit, the palm’s juice (dibs) is used for baking and cooking and its branches for weaving baskets and mats.

      Another important local produce is the dried lime, lumi, widely used to add sourness to stews and soups. Also popular in Persian cooking but originally from Oman, along with dates they are the two locally cultivated ingredients.

      Probably because alcohol is forbidden and mostly avoided in the Gulf, food is Big. It occupies a central position in local life and culture. It is a means of communication and a social marker, a peace-offering, a way of demonstrating largesse and hospitality to friends and family, a form of one-upmanship, an everyday conversation starter, a boredom buster and an arena for female competitiveness. Recipes are coveted and secretly exchanged; specialities are shown off at gatherings – cooking and eating are a big part of everyday life.

      What astounds is the sheer expanse of the food industry, in evidence everywhere – the heaving, crumbling old souks rubbing shoulders with gleaming megamarkets, price-controlled local cooperatives and neighbourhood corner shops; fastfood giants like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut wooing customers with scintillating highway billboards; smaller, Middle-Eastern shawarma and kushari kiosks and the speciality restaurants catering to migrant workers from the Philippines, India and Egypt; the sweet factories, flour mills, fruit and vegetable wholesalers, livestock importers, date merchants, fish markets, spice shops, and the plethora of stylish, high-end, world-food restaurants.

      When I embarked on this project I had no idea what treasures awaited me. Not only how much fun I would have recording these recipes, photographing streetfood and souks and cooks at work, and savouring the results, but the people I would meet: fishermen fresh off the dhows, effervescent housewives, Indian and Bangladeshi cooks and pastry chefs fluent in Khaleeji Arabic, tea-sipping grocers, butchers, caterers, shawarma carvers, date and spice merchants, bakers, and legions of eaters.

       A colourful kiosk in Muharraq, Bahrain

       Giant pots used for cooking rice and stews in the Gulf

      The bulk of recipes in this book I collected from family and friends and friends of family and friends of friends. One cook led me to another and wherever I went there was great generosity in discussions about food and sharing of culinary titbits and recipes. I did not encounter ambivalent foodies; over-whelmingly, I found food associated with good things – pleasure, companionship and tradition. In conceiving this book, my intention had been to introduce the Arabian Gulf through its cuisine and the diverse culinary traditions that have shaped it; I also wanted to preserve, in words and images, the ‘traditional’ markets and foods of the Gulf vis-à-vis an encroaching fastfood culture.

      The recipes in this book were recorded while each dish was being cooked. My camera transformed kitchens into studios and cooks into chefs and at the end of every day we all gathered around my laptop screen. Months later and thousands of miles away, the images would jog my memory when gaps appeared in the notes. Once the recipes were on paper I tested them on eager friends. That was fun, and enabled me to understand the characteristic nature of Gulf cuisine, how varied and individual it is, and that the proof is in the spicing – how much is used and which spices with which foods is where the difference lies. There are as many ways of spicing a dal soup as there are dal recipes (and there are a few!). Invariably, the distinction lies with the cooks, their culinary background and each household’s preferences. The recipes were somewhat modified to suit my taste; you should adapt them to yours. The quantities of spices used are guidelines only. Gulf cuisine is rarely available at restaurants (I know of only two restaurants in the world) because every household has a set of signature dishes and its own way of making flavoursome food. I have tried to collect the recipes most common to all six Gulf countries, and by and large these are. But no region is monolithic and cultural differences are what add spice to life, the stuff of enriching and complex experiences – culinary and other.

       Shomali Sweets Factory in Shuweikh, Kuwait City