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Food inspired by Arabia
written by NICOLA SHIPWAY
photographed by SYED FASIUDDIN

“I’m interested in the stories behind food – why people cook or eat something”

Cooking and writing: Marrying two hobbies
“I was 21 years old when I landed in Tunisia,” says Mike Harrison, a teacher of English at Sultan Qaboos University and an ardent gastronome. “I was passionate about everything – the food, the
people, the architecture, the sea, the views.”

So delightful was his first foray into the region that Mike went on to work round the world: from Tunisia he moved to Saudi Arabia, and thence to Senegal, Iraq, Oman, Latvia, Tajikistan, Albania, Turkey, Zanzibar, Ireland, London, Dubai, Bahrain and Sharjah, before returning to the sultanate three years ago.

Brought up in what he describes as a mono-cultural town in northern England, Mike has a specific interest in Islam and Arabic, particularly the food, which is his hobby – he describes his first book, From Tagine to Masala (Zodiac, 2004), as the culmination of a gastronomic journey round the Islamic world. “I’m interested in the stories behind food: why people eat or cook something, and what it tells you about those people.” His food writing, which took off in Zanzibar, grew out of this inquisitiveness; by the time he was in Bahrain Mike was contributing to the Gulf Daily News, compiling a Holy Ramadan series of daily recipes inspired by dishes discovered during his travels.

Today Mike juggles his work with other food-related projects. He is currently putting together a second book of anecdotes and recipes that has a working title of The Real Flavours of Arabia and which will focus on the street food of six vibrant Arabian cities – Tunis, Marrakech, Aswan, Aleppo, Muscat and Sana’a. Each chapter will feature stories and elegant recipes that Mike has gleaned from his wanderings. His aim is to avoid obvious dishes; in the Egyptian chapter for instance, instead of falafel will be a recipe for a 3,000-year-old aphrodisiac that uses caramel and walnuts.

testing the recipes
Cooking at the NHI
Some of these recipes and stories are the subject of a series of cooking nights at the National Hospitality Institute (NHI) in Wadi Kabir. The idea began when a friend suggested Mike ought to host a night at the NHI based on From Tagine to Masala. The raconteur/ dinner combination was such a success that the night was repeated three times.

The Arabian Nights series is based on the same formula: Mike recounts anecdotes from his trips while guests enjoy recipes cooked by NHI students. Alan Dunn, team leader of the Gulf Chefs School at NHI, says the set-up gives the students variety and teaches them new types of cooking.
“The students live in Oman but when they work they have to cook everything across the board, be it Italian, Chinese or Indian. We train them so that they can go and work anywhere.”

Each Arabian Nights event takes a single city as its theme – the next one, on March 25, is ‘Sumptuous Syria’, and ‘An Evening in Old Sana’a’ will follow in April. The series is a way of trialling each chapter, of fine-tuning the book before publication, but its charm lies in the combination of excellent cooking with conversation.

Mike is an engaging companion and a knowledgeable gourmet. “This is fenugreek, called helba in Arabic, which I bought in Goa,” he says, gesturing to one of the jars in his kitchen, which overlooks a garden stocked with rocket, aubergines, spring onions, lemons, cassava, basil, figs, mangoes, sugar cane and lemongrass. “Everyday in Yemen everyone stops to eat salta, a stew of meat and helba. A friend took me to a salta house and there were huge gas cylinders belting out fire, and the stew bubbling away, and then they threw in a beaten froth of helba and the salta turned into what looked like an evil swamp, all brown, green and yellow.

But the thing is that eating salta does something to the stomach to prepare it for qat, which Yemenis chews afterwards.” For more of these evocative tales, buy a ticket to Arabian Nights.

For details about the remaining Arabian Nights evenings at the NHI, call 24 816313. Tickets cost RO10 each and include dinner.