Balaleet - An Emirati Breakfast

Noodles for breakfast? With fragrant spices and omelet morsels? Doesn't sound like the kind of thing you could just whip up every morning for breakfast? Well the Emiratis do - citizens of the United Arab Emirates. Maybe not every morning, but more than just sometimes they might prepare this traditional vermicelli noodle dish.

It sounds harder than it is - it's one of those no-measure things, and tastes good both hot and cold. I tasted it for the first time at the Cultural Breakfast in Dubai, and learned how to make it myself last week at La Mere Culinere's cooking session. This is my own slap-dash version.

Ingredients:

Kids Chicken Urumaki

So pretty. I love japanese food, but my kids don't. I used to look longingly at children in malls munching on sushi cones while mine dragged me towards the chicken nuggets. All that lovely flavour, nutrients like iodine omega 3 and zinc that their diets are so deficient in. Eventually I just stopped looking and longing and accepted my fate - I am a mother of fast food junkies.

Not any more.

This is the first step in getting my kids to eat sushi. They love it. Not only that, they love making it - ahh, my dreams of being mother to a great chef are not shattered after all. Thanks for the inspiration Movenpick (post here about kids menus)

Ingredients:

• 200g boneless chicken thighs, trimmed of fat then pan-fried and sliced into 1cm ribbons
• 1 avocado, sliced
• 100g lean lardons (bacon cubes), panfried
• 1 cucumber, sliced lengthwise
• 3 cups cooked sumeshi rice (preparation guide here)
• nori sheets
• mango pulp (puree or push through a seive) and blanched edamame beans for garnish

Schnitzel

Before visiting Vienna (read my food path through old Vienna here) I had only had one great schnitzel in my life, and that was at the Tivoli Club, in Prahran, a German club with platter-sized schnitzel, cheap boutique beers and lederhosen to be enjoyed in the glow and tinkle of the inevitable poker machines that you always find in struggling Australian pubs and clubs. The schnitzel was to die for – it came about 15 different ways, in varieties of pork, turkey and veal, and with various flavours – Jäger, Zigeuner, Paprika, Käse, Rahm, or my favourite, Holstein – with fried egg, onions and capers. But to be honest, it’s really all about the schnitzel itself. It’s the kind of meat that every carnivore loves, including the super-fussy three-year-old kind of carnivore.

Ingredients:

• 500g lean meat, preferably pork or veal 
• 2 eggs 
• splash of water 
• ½ cup plain flour 
• salt and pepper 
• 1 ½ cups breadcrumbs 
• oil for pan-frying (canola best)