Ikea Meatballs, North Indian Thali, Banana Muffins, and Brunch at mOre

This post basically encompasses the last couple weeks, during which Ankit (my first cousin on my mom's side, currently in uni in India) has been staying as a guest. Naturally, mom has felt the need to take him to nearly every mall in Dubai, bring him along wherever she goes (grocery shopping included), go out to eat every weekend, and just offer him all sorts of food in general to keep him busy and entertained. It doesn't help much that he isn't very vocal about his wants and needs, so she feels she needs to offer everything to him since he would never ask. Of course, I don't have any problems with getting to go out to loads of places, but I admit I get antsy when I feel there's too much food or we're indulging ourselves too much.

The first outing I went along with them for was to Festival City, which is yet another mall in Dubai. This mall visit was more exciting thanks to the fact that we'd never been there, and that there is a massive Ikea complete with a restaurant and their famous? imported Swedish Meatballs- which I had to take home and try. The photo is a bit blurry cause I haven't quite mastered using our crappy digital camera's macro setting.

My next go-along outing was in Karama. We were planning to go to our usual thali/dosa place- Sarvana Bhavan- but mom wanted to try out Venus Restaurant (which we went to for thali last summer). Mom and Dad got the South Indian Thali while Ankit and I got the North Indian, because I often find the South Indian has too much coconut for my taste. I though it was just all right, the tandoori rotis were wonderfully puffy and soft, the palak daal was good, the bindi was okay (I like mom's better), the dahi and yogurt were yummy (freshly cultured!), and the oily gobi subzi was good but seemed really unhealthy. There was also some sort of curry that was sort of sweet and didn't really appeal to me. It also came with some mithai, which was very good- probably cause they made it with lots of ghee. Overall I regretted overeating cause I didn't feel it was worth it.

I somehow found time to make (low-fat) banana muffins at 8 PM to bring in for 1st period girls' choir. I didn't bother with experimenting with whole wheat flour (I only did 1/2 cup I think) or whipping egg whites, but I did reduce the butter even more than written in the recipe (last time I put only a little less than the recipe called for, and the bread was TOO moist!). I made special walnut ones for mom, and they turned out looking good! (According to mom they tasted good too.)

Finally, today we went for Friday Brunch (a huge thing in Dubai) at mOre cafe, one of our favorite breakfast spots. We initially looked in to brunch at Certo, an Italian restaurant with great reviews, but that was only set-menu (for which we had no guarantee of vegetarian options and we knew would be too much food), and at Pergolas in the Murooj Rotana hotel, which mom and dad had taken Julie to while I was in Boston, but that was somewhat pricey (about 180 dhs) and overwhelmingly excessive (according to mom and dad), as per the usual Dubai style. I can only imagine what the 500 dhs brunches are like. The mOre brunch had plenty of variety, but it was nicely manageable. I tried everything that looked appealing to me (spread out over about 5 "courses" punctuated by digesting breaks- walks around the cafe and Gold & Diamond Park), and didn't feel completely disgusting and overly full at the end. The stand-outs were the pineapple-mint salad (with tomato and onion, a seemingly strange combo that was really refreshing), gloriously flaky croissants with jam, fresh orange juice, eggs cooked-to-order with brown bread, sausages, ravioli pasta, tender lamb in some sort of gravy, and carrot cake. The umm ali was also good, but it lost points for being guilt-inducingly rich and heavy, expected seeing as it was made with croissants and swirled with chocolate.

Spinach & Tomato Pasta and Surviving Without Mommy

Mommy has been gone on her visit to Bombay for 4 days now, and Daddy and I are getting by fine, though I do miss her and I'm realizing just how much she keeps everything together. Up till today Daddy and I have been getting by on all the leftover Indian food she cooked up to make sure we don't starve (my favorite yellow daal, cabbage subzi, methi...) but seeing as today was Thursday and so I would actually have nothing to do after school, I decided to make pasta. I looked at recipes for some guidelines and ideas but in the end I decided to just throw together a bunch of ingredients and trust it would taste good.

While I boiled some whole wheat penne (about 250g), I heated some olive oil (1-2 tbsp) on low heat, threw in some minced garlic and chopped onions, sprinkled in some red pepper flakes, and plopped down a spoon (1 or 2 tsp) of sun-dried tomato paste just as the onions began turning translucent. By then it was all giving off such a lovely smell (in my opinion, the smell of frying onions and garlic is simply irresistible) and I tossed in some frozen spinach (about 8 "nuggets"). I mushed and mixed when the spinach got soft, then added 1 can chopped tomatoes (next time I'd go for fresh- canned tomatoes taste awfully acidic and tinny), a few splashes of balsamic vinegar, and some salt & pepper. I stirred in the pasta not long after (I don't like the taste of over-cooked-down tomato), plopped some in a bowl, grated some fresh parmigiano-reggiano (bought from Spinney's after school- I spent nearly an hour there and only bought about 5 things) on top, then topped with salt and plenty of pepper. Made about 3 servings.

Brandied Apple Cake

• 4 cups baking apples (4-5 apples)- MacIntosh, Golden Delicious, or Empire
  
• 1 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup brown sugar (approx)

• 1/2 cup brown sugar
  
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
  
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
  
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
  
• 1 tsp salt
  
• 2 tsp cinnamon
  
• 1/2 tsp ginger powder (optional)

• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup applesauce
  
• 2 eggs
  
• 1 tsp vanilla
  
• 2 tsp bourbon/brandy OR 3 tbsp rum
  
• 1 cup walnuts (optional)
  

Peel & slice apples about 1/8 inch thick into large bowl. Cover with sugar and stir to coat. 
Mix dry ingredients & sift over apples, stirring often.
Beat wet ingredients (& add nuts).
Mix wet ingredients into apples.
Spread into greased/lined pan(s) and bake at 350 F for about 1 hr 15 minutes (50 min for muffins) for a nice crunchy crust.
Let cool (upside down/sideways on metal rack) then remove from pan.

Makes 1 bundt cake OR 2 loaves OR 1 loaf plus 8 muffins OR 18-20 muffins.

approx nutrition per 1/18 of recipe (without nuts): 215 calories, 7.5 g (12%) fat, 1.5 g (7%) saturated fat, 34 g (11%) carbohydrates, 1.6 g (6%) fiber, 22.3 g sugar, 2.2 g protein

Visiting the Temple and Cheap Indian Lunch

Because today is the death-day anniversary of my grandfather (dada-ji in Hindi), we went to the temple to make an offering and receive a blessing of some sort. I don't get really into it because 1) I'm not very religious and 2) I remember very little of my dada-ji, aside from one strangely clear memory of eating kitchari (a sort of Indian comfort food made with yellow lentils) for lunch at his house in India. Anyways, I agreed to go along with Mommy and Daddy because I didn't have any big plans for the day. After finding an open temple in Bur Dubai (think dirty, crowded, with narrow alleys and vendor stalls, yet still lively and exciting), going through the ordeal of walking around the dirty streets barefoot (you cannot wear shoes when entering a temple) before finding the actual temple entrance, and finally making our offering and receiving blessing and parshad (including yummy suji halwa), we decided to grab lunch at one of the many cheap Indian restaurants in the area.

We headed for Karachi Darbar, a North Indian/Pakistani, Muslim-run restaurant with vegetarian and non-veg food. I wanted to avoid eating lots of unhealthy oily food, so I was a bit reluctant, but the food turned out to be pretty healthy and delicious, and I didn't overeat! The three of us shared a stack of tandoori rotis (wonderfully puffy, soft, and HUGE- about 1 foot in diameter!), some kind of vegetable kofta, daal fry, and a paneer dish. Unfortunately I have no photos because our current camera is outdated and chunky, but fear not! After some research and shopping, I'll have a shiny new camera by the end of vacation.

Rainy Day Breakfast

This morning I woke to my second full day of vacation...to be greeted by RAIN. Now, rain isn't very common in Dubai, so I welcome a nice exciting change of weather. Any change from the usual (BORING!) sunny blue Dubai skies reminds me in the slightest way of Boston and New England, which is good because I miss Boston! I know it's strange to actually ENJOY crummy rainy weather when in Boston I'd be complaining about it, but things change when you move to the other side of the world.Like I said, it was raining, and rain always makes me think warm, cozy, comforting food like soup and hot chocolate. I wasn't exactly eager to have soup at 9 in the morning, so I decided on oatmeal, especially because the bunch of bananas sitting in the fruit bowl were at that perfect ripe-but-not-too-mushy-yet-still-sweet-and-tasty stage. Topped with a drizzle of honey to add a bit more sweetness, my oatmeal (nuked to exactly how I like it: moist but not the least bit gummy) was ready to be devoured.

Thursday Waitrose Visits and Bruschetta

Every Thursday afternoon, after getting picked up from school by Tilana (the driver...it still feels weird to say that I have a driver), we pick up Mommy after her daily gym workout and go to Waitrose! Waitrose is kind of serving as my Trader Joe's and Idylwilde Farms (my favorite grocery stores in Mass) substitute in Dubai, so I always get excited to go. We returned one particular Thursday with a bunch of on-the-vine tomatoes from Holland, goat cheese (I had been wanting to get some ever since I had a lovely bagel breakfast served with salmon, poached eggs, goat cheese, and veggies at Circle in Dubai Media City), onions in balsamic vinegar, soft fresh white farmers' bread that makes heavenly toast, and our usual rustic olive bread loaf. Inspiration struck when I was thinking about what to have for dinner, as I suddenly remembered a pizza we had at Jumeirah Beach Residence with tomato, rosemary, and globs of goat cheese. The pizza was decent, compared to the otherwise not-so-great dinner experience (bad service, crowded, trying too hard to be authentic... and failing). As an added bonus, we had just bought a rosemary plant from a family on the Palm that was moving, and I was excited to try rosemary in EVERYTHING. And so dinner was born... (I gave it a nice fancy-sounding name)

Balsamic Tomato Bruschetta with Goat Cheese and Rosemary

Ingredients

• 2 tomatoes, thinly sliced (about 1/2 cm thick) & sprinkled with salt
  
• 4 pickled onions in balsamic vinegar, sliced into thin wedges (Waitrose)
• balsamic vinegar to taste
• sea salt & pepper to taste
• 4 cloves garlic, unpeeled
• 2 tbsp rosemary, chopped
• 4 slices farmhouse bread (Waitrose)
• 2 oz/28 g soft goat cheese (Soignon un-ripened, 4 peppers), crumbled
• extra-virgin olive oil to taste (optional)

Preheat oven to about 325 F/160 C.

Wrap garlic cloves in foil and place in oven.

Arrange tomatoes in single layer on baking sheet, top with balsamic onions. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, 1 tbsp rosemary, drizzle with balsamic vinegar.

Broil onion-tomatoes (leave oven on & garlic in) about 10 min, until slightly wrinkled and bubbling.

Meanwhile, toast bread until crunchy and golden. Remove onion-tomatoes & garlic from oven, peel garlic cloves (should be squishy), squash with knife and finely chop. Top toast with tomatoes, onions, garlic, remaining rosemary, goat cheese, salt & pepper if desired, and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. If you want the goat cheese a bit more melted, throw it back in the oven for 2 minutes.

Variations: use mini bread rounds, crostini, or pizza dough as base