Omani Cuisine

 

Here is a quick recipe for a good sandwich for big gatherings, it should not take you a long time to prepare and it requires a very small number of ingredients. BB, or Black Beautify, is a reference to the balsamic vinegar and Worcestershire sauce   used in it.

Ingredients (for 6 sandwiches): 

• 4 medium chicken breasts (diced into cubes)
• 5 sliced cloves of garlic
• 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 6 buns of white bread
• Salt/black pepper

Method

1. Wash the chicken cubes and then drain them well. Put the chicken cubes in a bowl, add the Worcestershire sauce, the salt and finely crushed black pepper.
2. Mix the chicken with the ingredients well and leave the bowl in the fridge to marinate for 30 minutes minimum. You. Then take them out of the fridge 15 minutes before you use them.
3. Put a frying pan on a medium flame, add the EVOO and the garlic to it, then as soon as the oil starts to sizzle, add the chicken. Sauté the chicken until it turns white and then add the balsamic vinegar. Keep sautéing the chicken until it is done. If the chicken is still not cocked well you can add small amounts of water or chicken stock to help cook it.
4. Slice the buns and fill them with the chicken. You can add cheese or any kind of sauce you like. It can be served with chips or fries.

This recipe is simple easy way for making  a very tasty chicken grilled in the oven. It takes 10 minutes of spices preparation and around an hour of grilling without the need to check it. I consider it a healthy meal as itdoesn’t require any oil for cooking and contains a couple of herbs and spices which are rich with helpful minerals.

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken, 600grams or 800grams
• 2 crushed or thinly sliced green chili
• 1 medium sized onion chopped in cubes
• 2 medium sized tomatoes chopped in cubes
• 5 crushed gloves of garlic
• 1 tea-spoon of black pepper
• A hand-full of chopped coriander
• ¼ tea-spoon of turmeric
• ½ tea-spoon salt
• 2 lemons

Method:

1.  Clean the chicken well and peal the skin off
2. Rub the green chili, garlic, black pepper, turmeric, and salt all  over the chicken.
3. Fill the inside of the chicken with the chopped onion, tomatoes, and coriander.
4. Squeeze the lemons on the outside and inside of the chicken.
5. Wrap the whole chicken with aluminum foil and put it on an oven tray.
6. Put it into the oven for an hour.

If you are using a gas oven switch the down flame at medium to high heat. If using an electric oven use 260‘C.

Optional vegetables could be grilled next to the chicken, but make sure you wrap it with aluminum foil otherwise it will burn for that long.

The chicken could be either eaten with rice or bread. If rice is used its advised to have some sort of curry such as Dal (lentils) as the chicken wouldn’t be very saucy even though the tomatoes is inside it.

Enjoy.

This post is dedicated to one of our favourite English teachers, the one and only, Mr Don Yager. We invited him over to the Omani Cuisine during his visit to Oman this year, he retired three years ago and now lives in Iowa, USA. Chicken 900 is a chicken steak served in an American style with three side dishes, namely, mashed potatoes, garlic bread, and honey green salad. Named Chicken 900 after the legendary English 900 book.

Chicken Steak Ingredients (For Four People):

• 4 tender boneless chicken breasts
• 3 cloves of garlic
• 1 tbsp of honey
• 1 tbsp of red grape vinegar
• 2 tbsp of tomato paste
• 1 tsp freshly crushed black pepper
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Salt

Method

1. Crush the garlic cloves, add half of the black pepper, honey, vinegar, tomato paste, and Worcestershire sauce, mix them well and then put the combination in the fridge for half an hour to allow the flavour to blend.
2. Season the chicken breast with salt and the remaining crushed pepper.
3. Heat a frying pan and drizzle some EVOO. When the pan is screamingly hot place the breasts on it.
4. Get the mix from the fridge and wait for one of the sides of the chicken breast to whiten in colour, when that happens, flip the chicken breast and brush that with the mix. Wait for the other side to whiten, then flip and brush. Repeat the process until the mix finishes.
5. Add water to the pan, wait for the water to evaporate, then check if the chicken is cooked using the knife test. Repeat this stage until the chicken is cooked.
6. Serve with mashed potatoes, garlic bread, and salad.

Optional:

• You can optionally fry slices of zucchini along with the chicken.

Rice in Arabic is called A’ruz, but in the majority of the Gulf states nobody calls it by its proper Arabic name and instead refer to it as Aish (3aish), which literally means “the state of living” or “life”.

Rice is a principal element in the Gulf diet and it has to be served for every-single-lunch-meal. Many nationals in the area will not consider a meal they eat around noon time without rice a ‘lunch meal’.

It is interesting to notice the distinction between the naming convention of rice based meals in Arabic and English. In English, the meal is called ’something and rice’ while in Arabic Khaleeji dialect, the rice always comes first, it is Aish wa Laham (rice and meat), or Aish was Samak (rice and fish). Another interesting fact is the different usage of the word Aish in other Arabic states, such as the Mediterranean Arab states and Egypt, where Aish means bread and not rice, as bread is the principal element of of the majority of the meals served there.

Our dish today is a very basic ‘aish’ meal, check out the ingredients and method on how to make your own ‘aish’.

Ingredients

• 2 mugs of rice (Uncle bens rice)
• 400g of boneless chicken diced into small cubes
• 2 medium onions sliced into short wide strips
• 2 medium capsicums sliced into short wide strips
• 2 medium tomatoes diced into small cubes
• 2 clovers of garlic crushed
• chili crushed
• tomato paste
• mixed chicken spices
• salt and pepper
• 1 lemon

Method

Chicken

1. Put the chicken in an oiled heated pot and stir until it turns white then add salt, pepper, and mixed chicken spices.
2. Add the onion, capsicum, tomato, garlic, and chili to the mix and then stir and leave for 5 minutes.
3. Add the tomato paste and a mug of water. Mix and add the juice of the lemon.
4. Lower the heat and leave for 15 minutes or until the chicken is cooked. You can add more water to the chicken if all the water in the pot evaporates and the chicken is not yet cooked.

Rice

1. Add only a quarter of a mug of rice to an oiled pot and stir until the rice turns brown.
2. Add the rest of the rice to the pot and add 3 mugs of water. Add salt to it, stir well, cover and leave for 20 minutes on low heat.
3. Remove the pot from the cooker and leave on the side for 5 minutes before serving.

This was an experiment for making something different this week, the original idea was to make a club sandwich, but we ended up with the result you see above. The boring chicken sandwich was saved by the creamy sauce we added to it. This is a simple snack that you can make, check out the ingredients and method below.

Ingredients (4 sandwitches)

• 400g of chicken breasts sliced into small strips
• 1 medium sized onion minced finely
• 1 red capsicum sliced into thin strips
• 2 garlic clovers
• 2 green chillies
• Nandos crushed spices mix
• butter 1.5 tbsp
• half a mug of milk
• 1.5 tbsp of flour
• salt and pepper
• brown toasted bread

Method

1. In a small pot over low heat melt the butter.
2. Add the flour immediatly after all the butter melts - make sure to stir the mix while adding.
3. Add the milk gradually while stirring to ensure that the mix blends properly.
4. Add half a mug of water to mix and keep on stirring.
5. Add salt and pepper and stir.
6. keep stirring. (Now you understand why this is boring) Stir from time to time for a period of 10 minutes. You should get a thick white cream. You can adjust the viscosity of the cream by adding more water. Once done leave covered on the side.
7. Crush the garlic clovers with the chillies and the Nandos spices mix.
8. Melt some butter on a fraying pan.
9. Fry the minced onion and capsicum slices on the pan for four minutes.
10. Add the chicken to the mix and fry while stirring until the chicken turns white.
11. Add the crushed spices mix with one tbsp of vinegar to the chicken mix on the pan.
12. Add half a mug of water, cover the pan and leave for 5 minutes.
13. Remove the cover and wait for all the water to evaporate before adding the cream we made at the beginning.
14. Stir the mix until cream is absorbed by the chicken and the mix is creamy.
15. Take out and serve with toast as sandwitches.

I envy you Italians for your beautiful country, your excellent football tournaments, and most of all, your amazing cuisine. As I am the biggest fan of the world’s greatest football club Juventus, you might assume that I dislike supporters of other teams, but I actually enjoy staying in touch with all Italian fans around here, so I invited a fan of the club AS Roma for lunch to have the favorite meal of Italian fans: pasta!
As a token of my Italian love, I named this recipe “Pollo Della Pasta De Roma” or the chicken pasta of Roma in English.

Ingredients: (for 3 persons)

• 300 grams of penne(tube) pasta
• 3 large chicken breasts - chopped into small pieces
• 3 medium sized brown onions
• 4 medium sized capsicums (green, yellow, red, and orange)
• 4 clover of garlic crushed
• some parsley
• 1 tablespoon of wheat
• 100 grams of tomato paste
• salt/pepper
• butter
• Nando’s hot peri peri grind (crushed spiced)
• Nando’s wild her peri-peri souce (hot sauce)

Method:

• Pasta

1. Boil water in a pot. When the water starts boiling add salt, pepper and oil while stirring.
2. Add the pasta to the boiling water and keep for about 10 minutes.
3. Drain the water from the pasta.
4. Chop 3/4 of the 4 kinds of capsicum and an onion into small short strips.
5. Fry the capsicum and the onion in on an oiled frying pan until the onion turns yellow and capsicum softens.
6. Add the pasta to the pan with capsicum and onion while stirring. Add some of the Nando’s crushed spices while stirring. Stir the pasta mix for five minutes and then serve it with the chicken.

• Chicken and Sauce

1. Crush the remaining capsicum and the2 onions into fine little.
2. Put some oil on a hot cooking pot, add some butter. When the butter melts in the oil add the crushed mix of capsicum and onion. Keep stirring the mix until the onion turns to a golden color.
3. Add the chicken pieces to the mix and stir the mix until the chicken turns white.
4. Add salt, pepper, and the Nando’s crushed spices. Keep stirring for a couple of minutes.
5. Add the Nando’s wild herb sauce and some fine chopped parsley. Keep stirring for another couple of minutes.
6. Add the tomato paste and the wheat while stirring.
7. After mixing everything together add a mug of water and stir the mix well. Cover the pot well and keep it on a low heat until the chicken is cooked. If all the water is gone and the chicken is not cooked add little more water and wait until it is cooked.

I hate it when people make cooking sound like a complex job that requires knowledge of specific mysterious formulae. Anybody can cook. As long as you do the very basics right, whatever else you do is optional and rarely anything will severally affect the way your food tastes. This meal is one of those really easy ones to do. The Cardiff Cabsa is what we used to cook all the time during uni days in Cardiff, I learnt how to make it there, the recipe could not be traced to a single Gulf or Indian country because guys from different places in the Gulf chipped in their own additions and twists over the years. Check it out here:

Ingredients (For Four People):

• 2 mugs of basmati rice
• 1 whole large chicken, sliced into 6 or 8 pieces, skin removed optionally
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 tomatoes, chopped into small pieces
• 1 chili, chopped into small rings
• 1 garlic clover, crushed
• tomato paste
• 1 chicken stock (Maggi cubes)
• 1 tablespoon of mixed arabian kabsa spices
• 1 tablespoon of turmeric (kurkum)
• 1 teaspoon dried lemon poweder
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 1 teaspoon of black pepper

Method:

1. In a large oiled pot fry onion until colour turns to redish yellow, add chopped tomoto, chili and crushed garlic and stir until juicy syrup is created.
2. Add chicken, turmeric, spices, and stir to cover all chicken pieces with spices.
3. Add tomato paste and stir.
4. Add 4 mugs of water, wait to boil for a while, add the chicken stock.
5. Heat on high heat for 20 minutes, check using the knife test to see if chicken is cooked.
6. Lower heat, add rice, cover the pot using the lid and wait for 20 minutes. Make sure not to lift the lid so that the steam does not escape.
7. Take out and eat!

Ingredients

• 2 medium white onions
• 4 capsicums (green, red, yellow, and orange)
• 3 garlic clovers
• 4 chicken breasts
• 4 Irani flat bread (or any type of wrap-able flat bread)
• 1 teasp lime
• salt/pepper
• chili powder
• cinnamon powder
• mixed arabian spices
• 1 teasp vinegar

Directions

1. Chop onion and capcicum into rings, crush garlic, and slice breast into long strips.
2. Heat the frying pan and add little of vegetable oil. When the oil is heated up put the onion and keep stirring until it gets golden.
3. Add the chicken to the onion until it whitens. Then add(while stirring) the mixed arabian spices, salt, chili, pepper, and little of cinnamon. Add the vineger and the crushed garlic to the mix and keep stirring for two minutes.
4. Add the chopped capsicum and the lime and stir until the chicken and the capcicum are properly cooked.
5. Once ready, spread the bread and put the chicken in the middle then wrap it well. Get a clean frying pan and dry fry the wraps until they go browny and crispy.
6. Preferred additional fillings with wrap ( sweet onion sauce )

Serve with potato wedges or chips, and marina sauce.