Abu Dhabi GP food

[lostkat]

The last of my GP themed meals Boooo!!!

I was in a bit of a quandary over what to cook for this GP as I couldn't find a huge amount on the food of the United Arab Emirates. They don't really have their own unique national cuisine; it's more a blend of Middle Eastern & Asian cuisines. They don't really eat much veg because of the lack of places to grow it (veg doesn't do too well in the desert), so their diet consists mainly of meat, cereals & dairy.

Anyway, I had a look around and decided to cook Kibbeh, Kafta & Khubz'arabi (which is pita bread ) and serve it with some yoghurt and slices of tomato just for a bit of non-animal goodness.

Kibbeh is an Arab dish consisting of a crispy outer coating of bulgar wheat, minced lamb, onion & spices. It has a filling of more lamb, onion, toasted pine nuts and some other spices. It's sort of like their version of our scotch egg... only with more meat in the middle instead of egg They are very crisp on the outside and soft in the middle. Really quite easy to make and very yummy indeed!!!

The outer coating, having been whizzed in the food processor to form a dough:



The filling being fried off:



The outer coating dough is shaped into a ball. A hole is then made with your finger to make room for the filling. The filling is spooned in and the dough closed up around it before shaping into a rugby ball.



These are then fried in the deep fat fryer for around 6 mins until crispy on the outside and hot in the middle



Yum!


Next the kafta, which is just another name for kofta (it has dozens of spellings depending upon where you eat it). It's minced lamb, finely chopped onions, parsley, mint, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg & seasoning. You squeeze it together to make a lovely doughy lump and then you roll it into sausages and skewer it on some wooden skewers before grilling (or even better, BBQ'ing). Absolutely delicious!







The pitas were fairly easy, but the dough needs a fairly long time to rise before you cook them for 10 mins or so in the oven



And the finished result??

YUM!