Nutella Cookies

Thanks Bethumia for baking these for me. 

Chocolate cookies made with Nutella.
N-U-T-E-L-L-A.
Recipe is on this site. Courtesy of Our Best Bites. 
Enough said.

Iced Capp

It's hot and you need caffeine. So what do you do? Why, you head to the nearest Tim Hortons and grab yourself an Iced Capp of course. Medium or large size because small is ridiculously small.

Subtle hints of what cappuccino could taste like in crushed ice greets you on the first sip. Hence, the name Iced Capp, short for Iced Cappuccino. The texture is creamy and dense - none of that watered down stuff! And its sweet to taste. Sweet enough that the flavour of coffee is not too overwhelming.

This creamy lush of goodness favours both coffee and non-coffee drinkers. Though it might be an acquired taste for those not used to coffee. So don't scoff it off on the first try, have another one on a different day before you make your final judgement.

Iced Capp is chilled, refreshing and caffeinated - the marks of a summer wake up drink. If you're on a diet, ask for skimmed milk. If you think it's plain and boring, go for the more flavoursome mint chocolate, caramel, hazelnut (My buddy Jamjam's favourite), or vanilla bean add-ons.


Iced Capp's only minor set back? The residue of tasteless crushed ice that lays at the bottom of the cup after it's emptied, coupled with your demise (more specifically mine) to still seek out some form of flavour in them every time... literally, every time.


~For a list of Tim Hortons locations in the GCC, click here.

~Follow them on twitter for regular updates @TimHortonsGCC. They do a great job on replying to posts and retweeting them.

Olive-Stuffed Croissant

I love olives, especially black olives. They go extremely well with Labneh and are the perfect accompaniments of pizza toppings, but there is something about olive paste that takes olives to the next level. 

The first time I ever tasted olive paste was at an Italian restaurant in Montreal, Canada. It was served as an appetizer with freshly baked sliced french baguettes. Used as a spread, each bite was an explosion of olives whose whole purpose were to invade your tongue with intense flavour.  The best thing about this appetizer? I could spread as much olive paste on the bread as my heart desired. And spread a lot, I did! This dark mush of edible softness is like the foie gras of olives.

So if you happen to be at one of the franchises of the International RoyalBakery in the UAE and if you enjoy the taste of olives, dear reader, I suggest you try the 'Traditional Olive Pie.'

The Olive-Stuffed Croissant, as I have blatantly renamed because of its crescent shape, is a pastry roll filled with - what seems to be - olive paste. However, unlike the actual French croissant, the roll is not flaky or soft but is somewhat hard and yet, surprisingly easy to chew. The taste of buttery dough is not as pronounced as it is in croissants. The casing is hollow and abundantly stuffed with olive paste.The urge to grab a spoon and scoop out everything inside in repetitive bites might be difficult to resist! It is not as salty as you would expect from the taste of olives, which makes it work harmoniously as a pastry stuffing. On a side note, the grease you see on the paper in the photo is the secretion of olive juice. In other words, olive oil. 

Have it warm for breakfast - The International Royal Bakery staff are always kind enough to heat it for me - or cold for a midday snack, which is how I prefer it and freshly out of the fridge. Somehow, this enhances the flavours and taste. Just like left-over pizza... right?

So the next time you are at a bakery shop, be it the International Royal Bakery or not, look for that olive stuffed pastry and try it. If you are an olive lover, you will most definitely enjoy its taste. However, if you do not happen to have olives on your  palette of delicious tastes, the worst would be the choice of having cheese croissant instead. So try it! You might actually enjoy it and end up having an additional food item for your daily eats. Who knows!

Shawarma Sujuk

What better way to begin a food blog than to write about the very essence of one's culture? If my people had a choice to redecorate the country's flag with food, there would most definitely be a place for shawarma. We have all heard of beef and chicken shawarmas, but what about sujuk shawarma?  While I was in Lebanon for the month, I was only recently introduced to sujuk shawarma by my cousin G.

So what is Sujuk? Sujuk is a type of sausage made from various spices and is native to Turkey, Bulgaria and Armenia. However, the Lebanese probably have the Armenians to thank for introducing it into their diets. It can be a tad spicy and is more reddish-brown in colour than other regular sausages.  Combine the flavour of sujuk with the magnificence of shawarmas and you will have the sceptre of deliciousness.

The sandwich is made simple: Sujuk, pickles, and tomatoes. No sauce. The meat is sliced thin, which makes it easy to chew and is probably the reason why it melts in your mouth. The flavour of tomatoes balances the spice and saltiness of sujuk. The sourness of the pickles gives the shawarma that extra kick of yumminess. It incorporates what beef and chicken shawarmas lack. It has spice and it is dry. You don't have to worry about the mess you are going to make and spilling sauce onto your clothes is 100% avoidable. Needless to say, with the first bite, my taste buds found love.

I had it for cheap at a place called Basterma Mano in Dawra, Lebanon, but I have been told you can probably get it from any Armenian-Lebanese eatery. My mission is to find a place that makes them here in Dubai. It seems we have another reason to thank the Armenians! Շնորհակալություն !