We have heard such wonderful tales about camel meat. We have heard that it is coarse like beef, but flavoursome and gamey. We have heard that it is the least fatty among all edible meats and quite chewy. We’ve heard that the camel’s hump is a juicy, fatty delicacy that can be turned into butter – and also that it can’t because it’s quite globular. And we’ve heard that a camel eating man, compared to a goat and cow eating man, is a full man, according to a Somali proverb.
Unfortunately, we can only relay what we’ve heard about camel meat, because we’ve never actually eaten the stuff ourselves, except on a pizza.
A long and arduous search throughout the capital left us with dead leads and a disappointing, camel-meat shaped absence in our tummy. In spite of camel featuring on the menus of quite a few Arabic food joints around town, the meat itself just does not materialise. We’re not sure why. Additionally, camel has recently been taken off the menu at restaurants like Mezlai at Emirates Palace.
It appears, however, that camel meat is sporadically available at Al Bathna – usually when the Armed Forces Officers Club & Hotel has hosted a wedding or function – and as a pizza topping at Olivia’s. This, we’ve found to be strong and overpoweringly salty, but still quite delicious. It didn’t, however, satisfy our craving to get our choppers into a real, traditional camel dish. We hung our heads in despair – frustrated that in Abu Dhabi you can find exotic cuisines from the farthest corners of the earth, readily available, while a regional delicacy like camel is so hard to come by. We put it down to a lack of popularity, and have emerged like a phoenix from the flames of failure with two solutions.
The first is a call out: Dear Abu Dhabi food joints and high end hotel restaurants, please bring back the camel. Not only do we want to eat it, we feel it is far too significant an aspect of the cultural cuisine of this region to be neglected thus. The second solution is a means by which you can source and prepare camel yourself. There are plenty of butchers and markets in the city that sell camel meat. Madinat Zayed Market (opposite the Gold Souk) has a butcher on the right which specialises in this Arabic speciality, and is rather popular with the locals. Additionally, the Ridley brothers’ Wagonwheel Butchery at Zayed Port Market sells everything from Boerwors sausages to camel biltong.
Once you’ve returned home with your purchase, you may find yourself in the dark about how to cook it. To shed some light on your predicament, we’d like to share the generous contribution of executive chef Rick Ney from the Park Rotana, who pitied our failed efforts at eating camel and offered us a most excellent recipe.
Camel kofta in tomato sauce
The Koftas
2 large slices of white bread
200ml milk
450g lean minced camel meat
2 cloves garlic, peeled and coarsely chopped
55ml water
1 fresh green chilli; coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons chopped coriander leaves
1 tablespoon fresh mint leaves, chopped
salt to taste
The Sauce
5 tablespoons cooking oil
2 medium onions, finely chopped
2 teaspoons ginger paste
2 teaspoons garlic paste
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1½ teaspoons ground cumin
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
¼ teaspoon chilli powder
1 small can tomatoes
150ml warm water
½ teaspoon salt to taste
1 black cardamoms, split open
4 whole cloves
12 inch piece cinnamon stick, broken up
2 bay leaves, crumpled
2 tablespoons thick set yoghurt
2 tablespoons ground almonds
1 tablespoon chopped coriander leaves
Kofta directions
1. Soak the bread in the milk for a couple of minutes and squeeze out all the milk.
2. Put the bread in a food processor with the remaining ingredients for the kofta.
3. Blend until smooth and then divide the mixture into approximately 24 balls, each slightly bigger than a walnut.
4. Rotate each ball between your palms to make neat, round koftas.
Sauce directions
1. Heat the oil over medium heat and fry the onions until they are just soft (about 5 minutes).
2. Add the ginger and garlic and fry for 1 minute.
3. Add the coriander, cumin, turmeric and chilli powder and stir quickly. Stir and fry until the spice mixture looks dry (2-3 minutes).
4. Add the tomatoes, one at a time, along with a little juice.
5. Continue the process until all the tomatoes are used then add to the mixture the water, salt, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and the bay leaves.
6. Stir once and add the koftas.
7. Bring the liquid to the boil, cover and simmer for 5 minutes.
8. Beat the yoghurt with a fork until smooth, add the ground almonds and beat again. Then stir very gently into the sauce so as not to break up the koftas
9. Cover and simmer until the koftas are firm (about 10 minutes).
10. Stir and cover again and simmer for a further 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to ensure that the thickened sauce does not stick to the bottom of the pan.
11. Stir in half the coriander leaves and remove from the heat.
12. Garnish with the remaining coriander leaves and serve with rice or bread.
Al Bathna, Armed Forces Officers Club & Hotel, Khaleej Al Arabi Street (02 441 5900); Olivia’s, ADNEC (02 444 6900); Wagonwheel Butchery, Zayed Port Market (050 329 6683).
