Sweet heaven: Al Samadi Sweets

I must share this little heavenly gem that I found out about a great little on this great little blog, called Little Majlis the other day. It’s called Al Samadi Sweets. And it’s a great place to go if you want to buy some delectable arabian pastries.

Living in Umm Suqeim, I have access to a lot of little sweet shops but most of them sell chocolates (hum…being half-Belgian, I don’t go near local chocolate), dates and nuts. When I left for summer holiday I went throughout all of the Jumeirah/Umm Suqeim area and the best pastries I found were at Abshar, the iranian restaurant. Granted, being half-Iranian, that suited me fine as I consider Persian pastries absolutely divine.

However, when I heard about Al Samadi, I asked my sweet-loving Indian colleague about it, and he told me it was worth a visit – at least once and on an empty stomach.

So off I went and I was not disappointed – the guys there even insisted I taste a few with some cardamom coffee, which I adore. 200 aed and 2 kilos of sweets later, I can’t say enough good things about this place.

The below pistachio cookie pan covered with nougat and dripping with honey tastes even better (and richer) than it looks.

Al Samadi Sweets
Opposite Coral Deira Hotel, Al Muraqqabat Street, Al Rigga, Dubai

(Me being me and Dubai being Dubai, I of course got lost going there, but you’ll find it, it’s right after al Makhtoum bridge if that helps)

So what kind of ingredients do you find in the UAE?

The great thing about Dubai’s supermarket scene is that one can find all the wonderful ingredients that can be found in France, Italy, India, the rest of Asia and of course the Middle East. In fact I am slowly discovering some local food, which is really interesting.

A lot of the local vegetables are grown in the UAE and Oman. They have wonderful little light green courgettes, much like the ones you find in Italy and the French Riviera. They also have this wonderful rocket that they often eat in salads and all sorts of fresh herbs like fenugreek, coriander, mint, parsley and the list goes on. As far as the fruits, they come from all over and include pomegranates, pineapple, luscious mangoes, limes, dates and strange exotic looking fruits but also more “European” fruits like apples, pears, berries, and grapes.  Where fish is concerned, I am pleasantly surprised. Whem I came here, for some reason, I thought all we would be eating was meat as I didn’t really picture Arabs eating loads of things from the sea. Luckily I was wrong, and the fish here is great : often local, fresh and bountiful. The varieties you find here include pomfret, kingfish, sultan ibrahim, and you also do get the typical salmon and tuna which I suspect are not so local. Meat is readily available and one finds a lot of lamb from NZ, Australia and surroundings. Poultry is a tad disappointing in comparison to Europe, but perhaps I have not looked hard enough.

As I progress in the blog entries, I will do my best to serve all these ingredients justice and provide you with recipes and dinner menus that I have tested…