Ask the average Londoner about Lebanese, Moroccan or Iranian food and they can probably throw the names of a few spices and dishes at you – but ask about the traditional cuisine of the Arabian Peninsula and you’re likely to get a blank look.
Two chefs aim to change that when they appear at the Nour Festival of Arts in London. Tonight, they will host a supper club showcasing updated versions of Khaleeji cooking.
Adla Al Sharhan, a veteran of the Gulf’s culinary scene, has consulted on restaurant openings, prepared dishes for royalty, presented two culinary shows, published a Ramadan recipe book and runs a cooking school.
She will be creating and talking about her own twists on Khaleeji cooking alongside Nadeen Aujan. A freelance chef who splits her time between Dubai and London, Aujan graduated from the prestigious Leiths School of Food and Wine.
Traditional Gulf cooking, says Aujan, is based around a big spread, with rice, meat or fish and spiced sauces forming the centrepiece of the meal. The spices used aren’t indigenous to the area, says Al Sharhan, but can be traced back to ancient trade routes linking China, India and Arabia. Ingredients such as coriander seeds, cumin, turmeric, cinnamon and star anise are used and often combined with seafood that has historically been plentiful off the Arabian coast.
Aujan grew up in Al Khobar, in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, and associates Gulf cuisine with a domestic setting. When she goes out to a restaurant in Dubai, she takes advantage of the array of international options rather than eating traditional food – she’s a particular fan of Peruvian food, and of the sushi restaurant Zuma. But as the supper club in London will show, that doesn’t have to be the case.
“At the end of the day the flavours are there, there are beautiful dishes – I don’t see why [Khaleeji cooking] couldn’t become the next big thing,” she says. Al Sharhan, who grew up in Kuwait cooking in the open air with her grandmother for her huge extended family, agrees that “modernising Khaleeji food has big potential”.
Having fallen in love with cooking as a child – “being a chef saved my life, it gave me purpose”, she says – she travelled and cooked her way across the United States and South-East Asia before returning to Kuwait, which she says has a particularly exciting food scene.
While she says the UAE has several A-list places to eat – “Zuma, La Petite Maison, Marco Pierre White: to me they’re the greatest – they’re like The Beatles” – she thinks of Kuwait as more experimental.
With its big youth population, there is a vibrant pop-up and food-truck scene. There’s one truck in particular, she says, that posts its location on Instagram, drives out to the desert, and is always mobbed by younger Kuwaitis, who go for “the best sliders you’ve ever had” – but also to “hang out and exchange ideas and dream”. While both chefs will be taking inspiration from traditional Gulf cuisine for the dishes they serve to Londoners on Wednesday, October 21, they will be updating the dishes to give them a contemporary feel and adding their own creativity into the mix.
The exact line-up of tasting dishes will remain a surprise for guests, but Aujan drops some hints about one of the offerings: a twist on chicken machboos that involves making croquette-style bites from rice dough.
Anyone who has attended one of the supper clubs Al Sharhan has been running in Kuwait for the past 15 years will be familiar with her inventive use of scientific techniques to create foams, gels and purifications – and she promises that her contribution to the dinner will “have a modern look and technique, but a totally traditional burst of flavour”.
London is a place with high standards when it comes to gastronomy, so the pressure is on to showcase Khaleeji cooking in the best possible light, but Al Sharhan doesn’t sound fazed in the slightest by the challenge. In fact, she has hopes of opening her own restaurant there at some point.
“It’s considered the most competitive market,” she says, “but you know what? They haven’t met me yet. I want to do this until I die and I want to be one of the best.”
London's Nour Festival of Arts begins on October 20 and continues until November 8
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