Favorite Arabic Foods

I've heard people say they are tired of Arabic food, even hummus, and that's amazing to me. Sometimes it can be too salty and I am guilty of over-doing Arabic bread- but it's so fresh and soft!

Let me share with you some of my favorite things that I pick up regularly from the grocery store.

First, there are tons of really cool, really fresh vegetables. Through a miracle of logistics, and other modern technology, people in the UAE buy and eat lots of fresh veg. The food comes from all over and the vegetables are especially interesting, things are imported from Oman, Saudi Arabia, India, Africa, as well as North and South America. This has to be one of the most difficult places to be a locavore-- so unless you are on a date diet, you will be challenged. I'm not attempting to eat local right now. I will blog another time about the Union Cooperative grocery store and specifically the produce section, because that is a blog entry in itself. 

The prepared foods that I eat everyday are really good, and I want to share it with the world. 

Beet salad is sweet and savory, the crunch makes you think you're eating something really healthy, yet it's doused in dressing... Very pretty eh?

Another food I've only started eating in the past year is Moutabal, which is a roasted eggplant purée. It has a smoky, smooth, nutty flavor, and is one of those dips you load onto bread because you are trying to be dignified by not eating it with a spoon. The pomegranate seeds sprinkled on top are sweet and fun to eat. 

Obviously stuffed grape leaves are a Mediterranean/ Arabic delight, again you would think these are "healthy" but the kind I eat are oily and sodium rich -- but it's probably more nutritious than other fast food. Most stuffed grape leaves I have encountered here are vegetarian, it seems atypical for Arabic grape leaves to have any ground surprises inside, just rice and spices- delicious!

Salads are so nice- they tend to be like a traditional Greek salad, which does not contain lettuce, only chunks of vegetables, and sometimes other goodies like labneh, which is a rich cheese made from yogurt, and it tastes like goat cheese. Fresh basil, mint, parsley and other herby greens are the more common leafy greens to find in a salad, but there are often other lettuces too.

Last but not least hummus! I have always loved hummus and used to eat a ton of Sabra in the US. Here in the UAE it's made fresh in all the restaurants and most grocery stores, so now I'm a snob like Remy. I personally like hummus to taste like garbanzo beans, with a rich beany flavor, not drowned out with the tahini, which is sesame paste. 

Lifco, a Lebanese grocery store near my apartment on Sheikh Zayed Road has the hummus I like the most. Here's the hummus song by Remy, love it!