On the Road: Traditional Omani Food

One aspect of travelling I particularly enjoy is the opportunity to try a plethora of new foods, especially of local cuisines and traditional foods. Oman being a very diverse nation-state offers the traveller many different cultural foods from Arab to Indian to East African and beyond. I have located some literature on Omani food which is pasted below. Much of it seems enticing and sounds delicious, especially the Maqboos and Laban. Yallah!!!

The Omani people are well known for their hospitality and offers of refreshment. To be invited into someone's home will mean coffee (kahwa), a strong, bitter drink flavoured with cardamom, and dates or halwa, a sticky sweet gelatinous substance which is made from brown sugar, eggs, honey and spices. It can be flavoured with many different ingredients, such as nuts, rosewater or even chocolate. Lokhemat is another accompaniment to coffee, which are balls of flour and yeast flavoured with cardamom and deep fried until golden then served with a sweet lime and cardamom syrup. The sweetness of this dish often counteracts the bitterness of the kahwa.
The Omani people are well known for their hospitality and offers of refreshment. To be invited into someone's home will mean coffee (kahwa), a strong, bitter drink flavoured with cardamom, and dates or halwa, a sticky sweet gelatinous substance which is made from brown sugar, eggs, honey and spices. It can be flavoured with many different ingredients, such as nuts, rosewater or even chocolate. Lokhemat is another accompaniment to coffee, which are balls of flour and yeast flavoured with cardamom and deep fried until golden then served with a sweet lime and cardamom syrup. The sweetness of this dish often counteracts the bitterness of the kahwa.
It is fairly simple, but by using various marinades and impregnating meat with spices, the result is a mouth-watering concoction which stimulates the tastebuds. Chicken, fish and mutton are regularly used in dishes. A favourite drink is laban, a salty buttermilk. Yoghurt drinks, flavoured with cardamom and pistachio nuts are also very popular.
Although spices, herbs, onion, garlic and lime are liberally used in traditional Omani cuisine, unlike similar Asian food, it is not hot. Omani cuisine is also distinct from the indigenous foods of other Gulf states and even varies within the Sultanate's different regions. The differences between some of the dishes prepared in Salalah, in the south, and those prepared in Muscat, in the north, are so market that it is difficult to find anything common between them. However, one delight that remains a symbol of Omani hospitality throughout the country are the ubiquitous dates, served with khawa, or Omani coffee. Khawa is prepared from freshly roasted ground coffee mixed with cardamom powder.
Special dishes are prepared for festive occasions. The Islamic world celebrates two main religious festivals - Eid Al Fitr and Eid Al Adha. Eid Al Fitr is celebrated following the Holy Month of Ramadan when people complete their obligatory fasting for 30 days. Eid Al Adha is celebrated on completing the Haj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca, commemorating the sacrifice of Abraham. Dishes prepared during Ramadan are very seldom cooked on other occasions.
Food cooked on important occasions, such as Eid, is of an infinite variety. Omanis across the country serve an array of dishes. In Dhofar and Wusta, the festivities start with ruz al mudhroub, a dish made of cooked rice and served with fried fish, and maqdeed, special dried meat. In Muscat, Al Batinah, Dahira and Sharqiya regions, muqalab, a dish of tripe and pluck cooked with crushed or ground spices (cinnamon, cardamom, clove, back pepper, ginger, garlic and nutmeg), dominates the menu. Other dishes served during Eid festivities include arsia, a dish of lamb meat cooked with rice, and mishkak, skewered meat grilled on charcoal.
Lunch on the first day of Eid is usually harees, which is made from wheat mixed with meat. Lunch on the second day is mishkak, while on the third and last day, shuwa forms the whole day's meal.
However, it is during Ramadan that one can experience Omani food at its best and two of the most popular traditional dishes served at Iftar, the breaking of the fast include sakhana, a thick, sweet soup made of wheat, date, molasses and milk and fatta, a meat and vegetable dish, mixed with khubz rakhal, thin Omani bread, made out of unleavened dough.
Shuwa is a typically Omani delicacy prepared only on very special occasions. Whole villages participate in the cooking of the dish which consists of a whole cow or goat roasted for up to two days in an special oven prepared in a pit dug in the ground.
The method of preparing shuwa is elaborate. The meat is marinated with red pepper, turmeric, coriander, cumin, cardamom, garlic and vinegar and then wrapped in sacks made of dry banana or palm leaves. These sacks are then thrown into the smoldering oven, which is covered with a lid and sealed so that no smoke escapes. In some villages, the meat is cooked for 24 hours while in others it is believed that meat tastes better after 48 hours.
Everyday Omani cuisine includes a wide variety of soups - vegetable, lentil, lamb and chicken. Salads are also popular and are usually based around fresh vegetables, smoked eggplant, tuna fish, dried fish or watercress. Main course dishes are extensive and range from marak, a vegetable curry, to assorted kebabs, barbecued, grilled and curried meat, chicken and fish dishes.
Rice is used widely and is served in a variety of ways, from steamed to elaborate concoctions bursting with meat and vegetables. Breads rage from the plain to those flavoured with dates, sesame, thyme and garlic. For desert, Omani halwa, or sweatmeat, is a traditional favourite.

Source: www.omanet.om

This is the tavern...Ali Mehdi

I received an email with a beautiful poem by a late Omani poet, Ali Mehdi. He was a well known poet and a prolific blogger under the pen name of Sleepless in Muscat. The poem below I translated with additional clarification provided by a dear friend. The poem is six stanzas in length, although I only translated the first. The remaining five stanzas, and the poem in its entirety may be read at Diwan al Arab.

حانة

هذه الحانة ُ والليلُ وأصنافُ الهموم
رحلة ٌ تفتحُ لي بابا ً..
لكي أغفو على خدّ النجوم
طائرا ً ما بين أرض ٍ و سماءِ
وليكن تحت حذائي
كلّ ما كانَ ..
فلا شىء مع الوقت يدوم
أيّها النادلُ كأسا ً ..
وليكن للثلج فيها ما يكون
قطعة ٌ تكفي .. أو اجعلها اثنتين ِ
الآنَ ناولني الثريّا
واتركِ الأرضَ لمن يسكنها منذ قرون ..
إنّني أسكنُ وحدي الآنَ أضواءَ (النيون) .



Tavern: Ali Mehdi, Oman


This is the tavern, and the night, and the kinds of concerns;
A journey that opens for me a door…
So that I fall asleep on the cheek of the stars,
Flying between the land and sky.
Let be under my shoe
All that was!...
Nothing lasts with time…
Waiter, a glass!
How many pieces of ice? Doesn’t matter…
A piece it’s enough or make it two!
Now give me the Pleiades,
And leave the Earth to those who have been dwelling on it for centuries…
I now am the one who inhabits alone the light of the stars…

Oman: overview

Generally speaking the small Gulf nation-state of Oman (عمان) has received very little scholarly or related attention. In fact, a quick search on this nation-state using Google, Bing or other search engine will guide the researcher to small amounts of information, some of which is useful. However, in relation to its neighbours such the UAE or Qatar, Oman receives little to not attention especially by the press. This seems an unfortunate circumstance for, what I have read to date (which is not significant) Oman strikes me as a fascinating nation-state. It would not suffice to review the diverse culture living within its borders, however a brief mention would permit an interesting comparison to the perception most of have of Oman: the Gulf nation consists of Baluchis (predominantly from Pakistan, although some are of Iranian heritage), Persians, Zadjalis (predominantly from Pakistan, around the Sind area), Hindus (predominantly from India, the Sind and Gujarat), Lawatiyya or Khojas (from India and of Shiite practice) and Zanzibaris (from Zanzibar in modern day Tanzania), to name but a few. The diversity, it seems, although having some ramifications in terms of communal integration and acceptance, co-exists in a manner perhaps comparable to Syria or even Morrocco. While a civil war did take place in the 1970s that from many account was gruesome at times, the current climate of Oman is one of a blossoming civil society.
Oman is predominantly (roughly 75-80%)Ibadhi (الاباضية) Muslim which is a sect of Sunni Islam. Some scholars believe it to have developed from Kharajites (خوارج), a strict sect of Islam adherent to the belief that an able leader should guide the Muslim community (ummah) as opposed, generally speaking to the Shi'ite doctrine that the Ummah should be guided by a member of the Prophet Muhammad's family. However, I still need to do further research into this practice of Islam before I can elaborate further. Suffice to say the rest of Omani culture practice other forms of Islam such Shi'ism (Twelver Shi'ism, which is the dominant religion of Iran; and Jafari Shi'ism) while a very small minority of Hindu worshipers, Christians, Zoroastrians and even Bahai's also dwell in Oman.