Holidays... : Gastronomic Delights

Malaysians, in general, are a food loving nation. Everything about us revolves around food. We pride ourselves on having multi-cultural cuisine, even though it's an Islamic country. We offer chocolates, biscuits and fruit juices to guests when they visit our homes. When we meet, it's often our meals. When we begin a conversation, it almost often always begins with the question, "Have you had your dinner/breakfast/lunch?"

Hence, since I moved here, I have been bugged with the question by family and friends, "So, what do you eat over there?"

Let's see... so far, I've had bread, meat, cheese and on a few rare occasions, salad.

Do I like it?

Well, let's just say, when you're running out of choices, you just take whatever's on the plate, and gobble it all up. Beggars can't be choosers. Especially if you don't have a car, and running short on cash.

Arabic bread are mostly dry and hard. Unlike European bakeries, which sell piping hot buns and rolls, the shops here sell bread which look like they're three days old. If you ordered a sandwich (in Arabic names of course), which doesn't ring a bell the first time you struggle to pronounce it, but when you look at the picture, you'll realize that it's just pieces of meat/fish/vegetables clipped between pieces of bread sliced into half. Despite their different shapes (triangles, squares or circles) and colours (black, brown, burnt or white), they taste the same, with an equally hard texture.

The meat is equally dry. Chicken definitely does not taste as good here. Fish though, are extremely fresh and tasty! It is a wonder that it even tastes much better than meat! The first time I bit into a Dubai fish fillet, I could almost imagine myself in heaven. Wow! The fish is authentic. It's real! It has those little white flesh that you could peel off and separate, and immediately identify as fish. Unlike the ones we have back home, where the fish fillet looked like they're pounded and mixed with 99% of corn flour. Here, the moment you bite into something fishy, you could almost imagine the chef, slicing off the fish in the kitchen, bit by bit, putting it into the wok, frying it, clip it between lettuces and tomatoes, before adding some tartar sauces and finally sandwiching it in your favourite choice of bread. Mmmm.. Yummy!

Apart from that, I also love the Basmati rice. Those long, slender grains don't stick together when they're fried. (I wonder if they could be steamed too). If I dug into a large pot of rice, none of them would stick to the ladle. That makes cleaning much easier too.

I had begun to psych myself into loving Basmati rice, until I had dinner with a Japanese friend at a Chinese restaurant. When the bowl of steamed white rice was served, I looked at it with such awe and reverence that I couldn't believe I was actually savouring Chinese food in this part of the country. The rice was warm and sticky. It reminded me so much of home and the things that I had given up to be here. I realized then, if nothing could make me home-sick, food definitely will.

Hence, the saying, 'The way to a man's heart is food'.

As we travel across the 7 Emirates, we are exposed to several types of colourful and a wide variety of dishes. Some hot, some cold, some bland, some colourful. Among all these, Lebanese food seem to stand out in every other way.

Oh! Did I mention that cheese seems to be on offer every day here? Oh my gosh! You can't imagine the generous helpings of cheese that is present in every dish! Maybe cheese is a substitute for salt. Or maybe a substitute for cream or coconut milk. Whatever the reason, here, cheese seems to be abundant. It is melted in Indian curry, under Latino Tacos , between Lebanese sandwiches, on top of Italian pizzas, and hidden in Arabic salads.

As such, I have come to identify various types of cheese. I learnt that cheddar cheese is orange, mozarella cheese is slightly yellowish and melts easily, goat cheese is white, and some cheese can even be mixed with sesame seeds and churned into rolls! They spread like Swiss rolls, soaked in probably water or some kind of fluid, like fresh olives preserved in oil. The strangest thing is, in this part of the world, yoghurt is eaten together with curry and rice too!

By now, I am deeply enlightened by the fact that food here is abundant in calories. If you were counting calories, it would leave you no choice except to have salad for three square meals a day. Or... if one loved cooking, you'd rather prepare what would presumably be the most sumptious dinner in the whole of Dubai, throughout the duration of your stay here.

Exercise then, is a must. Gyms are present at every corner of the street. After all the calories consumed, it's best to jog and run, and sweat it all out just to have another round of equally rich food the next day.

All in all, food here still leaves much to be desired. I still prefer Asian food. Hot - sprinkled with spices and made with love.