Thai Food in Dubai: Royal Buddha

There are lots of Thai places in Dubai, as in any major cosmopolitan city. We just headed to the new one in the newly revamped Holiday Inn next to the Mall of the Emirates. It's called Royal Buddha and was pretty darn good. Pricey, but what nice place isn't in Dubai? The atmosphere was classy, the service attentive and my vegetable green curry and my husband's duck in a red curry with grapes was excellent.

The music could have been better. Sort of a traditional Thai court music meets the male version of the Andrews sisters.

Sushi in Dubai

If you are looking for some fantastic sushi at a down-to-earth joint where all the Japanese expats chill, go to Bento-Ya. It's on Sheikh Zaied road behind the Sketchers shoes store. It's authentic, inexpensive, and relaxed.
Highly recommend it.

Nutty Haloumi and Sundried Tomato Salad

 

First, throw some walnuts in the oven to toast. Only a few minutes, they burn!
Boil a little water and soak some sundried tomato pieces until tender, slice them longwise.
Tear up some fresh green lettuce, mixed with baby spinach makes it even better…but for all of us dependant of Muscat shopping at its best, the price of the spinach might not be worth it!
Next, mix up a simple vinaigrette. Mix balsamic vinegar and olive oil, about 1 to 2 proportions. Throw in a little fresh ground pepper, diced garlic and basil
Finally, slice up the Haloumi into bit-sized pieces and lightly sauté in olive oil until golden brown.
You’re done! Arrange the toppings on your lettuce and spinach and drizzle on the vinaigrette.
I like to serve this salad on a plate rather than in a bowl because it’s so pretty!

Here's a picture of it served up with some whole wheat pasta and a mushroom-basil tomato sauce!

Simple Lentil Soup

A tall glass jar of bright red Indian lentils has been sitting on my counter, untouched, for ages. I decided that I needed to do something about that, so I whipped up this lentil soup. It turned out surprisingly well for how easy to make it was! It's a very comforting soup to curl up and drink out of mug!

First, saute up some onions and garlic in olive oil, throw in some finely chopped cilantro (or parsley), chili powder, cumin, salt and coriander.
At the same time, boil water and add a cube of vegetable stock. (Or just use vegetable stock from a container...might be hard to get in Oman...)
Cook the lentils in that liquid for 20 minutes. The amount of lentils and water you should use depends on how liquidy you want your soup! Using less will make it more like dhal.

Dice up a can of canned tomatoes and add to the sauteed mix. Add this to the pot of lentils and stir. Next, scoop out about 1/3 of the lentils and puree in the blender, and pour back into the pot. Stir.

You're done!

Wine Review-Bordeaux

"Chevaux des Girondins"
2002
Bordeaux
French

I really liked this bottle. It had deep, smokey fruit flavors. A very nice round taste. Would go well with dark meats or even sipped by itself.

3.0 RO

two thumbs up!

Grilled Kebabs

 

Here's a picture of the grilled veggies and meat from the post below!

Smoked Vegetable Omlette with Sweet Potato Hash Browns

Sounds good doesn't it? And it's so simple to make. This tasty dish (at anytime of the day!) goes great as day 2 after a previous day's kebab grilling. If you have grill, light up the fire and skewer up lots of veggies of your choice. Add some kebabs with chunks of beef, lightly marinated with oil, chili powder, salt, zaatar (a Lebanese spice mix) and curry powder.

Enjoy that with some Arabic bread or whole wheat wraps from the store.

Make sure you leave some left overs to dice up for the next night's dish.

Mix up 5 eggs with some salt, cumin and a pinch of chili powder. Pour the eggs over the sauteed veggies and meat from last night that you diced up. Flip it over and add your favorite cheese. The best for this dish in my opinion is smoked mozzarella, but a mix of mozz and cheddar works well too.

For the side dish of sweet potato hash brown: Grate up a sweet potato, with skin on, and soak it in water for a half hour with brown sugar and salt. Then lightly fry in a patty until golden brown on both sides.

Enjoy!

Wine Review-Sauvignon Blanc

"Sunrise--Concha y Toro"
Sauvignon Blanc
Chile

First sip, this white wine was very metallic, with a strong aftertaste like chewed aluminum. It did improve substantially after leaving it sit for 20 minutes (like it says to do on the bottle). Although I like dry whites, this didn't hit the spot for me. If you're looking for a fruity light wine or a sophisticated, dry one, this might not be either. That said, my husband really liked it.

Around 3.5 R.O.

Wine Reviews

I'm going to start doing wine reviews on this blog as well. Not being a wine expert myself, but always having had it around, I thought it might be helpful to give some hints to brush up on before hitting the Muscat stores.

Here is the first:

"Prince de Gravieres"
Syrah
This is a nice basic red wine, rich with plum compote flavors and roasted dark fruit. Woody and a bit smoky. A good buy for the money.
2.4 R.O.

cooking my way home: a new meaning for comfort food

A few nights ago, my husband George and I enjoyed an succulent grilled ribeye steak, oven roasted potatoes and sauteed spinach with sun-dried tomatoes and garlic, and of course, a few glasses of Shiraz. I tried to upload a picture, but the Omani internet service is having none of it.

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For us expats, food can be a taste of home. Some countries may offer a wide and exciting variety of cuisines, but certainly not Oman. Omani food is chicken, or fish, and rice. They do make different flavors of rice though, to mix it up. So that's exciting. For my demanding international palette, however, even endless variations of chicken and rice just doesn't cut it. Even in Muscat, the international options are extremely expensive and usually not all that great, particularly if you are used to having the choices offered by Chicago or another cosmopolitan environment. The Mexican food isn't very good here, the Thai is better everywhere else I've been, the Indian is good, but all the same: Today....we have chicken masala, chicken masala, chicken masala, and fish masala.

So I cook my way all over the world, which to me, feels like home. It saves my sanity and makes me feel like I belong in my own house here. Some of my favorites that I make weekly are homemade pizza, grilling (anything! Last week it was shrimp and vegetable kabobs), and pasta and a good thick sauce with lots of vegetables, red wine and herbs. Every time I make a ginger and lemon salad dressing, or hear a steak sizzling on our grill, or eat a big slice of whole wheat bread fresh from my oven, I feel like I'm home. It takes away some of the culture shock of being exposed for month on end with no break to a dramatically different culture.

So cook your way home. Or if cooking isn't your thing, don't feel bad about splurging on the hugely inflated items at the store that make you feel a little better. I might be an obsessive cooker, but my husband always has to have chips and salsa, tortillas and refried beans, German wheat beer, massive amounts of peanut butter, and bratwursts (which is insanely expensive because you aren't supposed to eat pork here). I still have to buy my essentials as well: balsamic vinegar, juicy raisins (which means buying SunMaid raisin for $9 a box), sun-dried tomatoes, Bonne Maman cherry jam, dark chocolate, wheat germ, Twinnings tea and Bailey's Irish Cream. At first I felt bad about spending so much on food here, when I could live for almost no money at all on rice, chicken and lentils, but I don't feel bad anymore. It just, though it may seem trite, makes me feel better.