United Arab Emirates

A thin, lacy Emirati flatbread made from a yeast-leavened batter poured and cooked on a flat griddle (tawa) until golden, served warm with date syrup.

A ceremonial Gulf Arabian coffee brewed from lightly roasted beans steeped with cardamom and saffron, poured from a long-spouted dallah into small handleless cups and always served alongside sweet dates.

A thick, smooth, gelatinous mound of cooked sorghum or wheat flour dough eaten communally alongside a poured savoury stew or, in Gulf and Yemeni tradition, with honey and clarified butter.

A Gulf Arab breakfast dish of sweet, saffron-and-cardamom-scented vermicelli noodles perfumed with rose water and finished with a thin fried egg omelette laid on top.

A ubiquitous Gulf breakfast of eggs scrambled into a spiced tomato sauce.

Chebab are thin, lacy, saffron- and cardamom-spiced griddle pancakes of the Arabian Gulf, eaten at breakfast with date syrup and soft white cheese, whose golden color, floral warmth, and sweet-savory condiment pairing are collectively non-negotiable to their identity.

A creamy Gulf-style milk and rice pudding scented with saffron, cardamom, and rosewater and sweetened with dates or sugar.

A slow-cooked, heavily pounded porridge of whole dehusked wheat and bone-in meat — traditionally lamb or chicken — cooked until unified into a smooth, dense paste and finished with a generous pour of melted ghee.

A soft Emirati griddle-baked bread enriched and stuffed with fresh white cheese and studded with nigella seeds, eaten at breakfast.

An Emirati dessert of wheat flour toasted in ghee with sugar, cardamom, and saffron until it forms a dense, fragrant halwa-like pudding.

Luqaimat are small, yeasted deep-fried dough balls with a crisp golden exterior and airy interior, served immediately drizzled with date syrup (dibs tamr) and sprinkled with sesame seeds.

A Gulf Arabian celebration dish of long-grain basmati rice slow-cooked to absorption in a deeply spiced meat or fish broth scented with loomi (dried black lime), served mounded over the protein with fried onions, toasted nuts, and raisins.

A Gulf dish of salted fish (or chicken/meat) and flour or rice slow-cooked and beaten to a thick, smooth spiced paste, finished with ghee.

Salt-dried, fermented whole fish — an intensely pungent preserved-fish pantry staple of the Emirati coast.

A thin, hand-stretched dough folded around a spiced egg, meat, and spring-onion filling, then pan-fried flat until crisp and golden.

A festive Arabian dish of whole slow-roasted lamb served over fragrant spiced rice strewn with toasted nuts and raisins.

An everyday Arabian Gulf stew of meat or chicken simmered with tomato, potato and other vegetables in a spiced broth, ladled over or alongside rice.

A triangular deep-fried pastry of thin wrapper enclosing spiced minced meat, vegetables or cheese, eaten across the Gulf and especially during Ramadan.

A Gulf Arab dish of spiced meat-and-vegetable stew ladled over layers of broken thin flatbread (regag/rqaq), which soaks up the broth into a soft, savory base.