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

Fattoush - the salad for non-salad lovers

I hate salads that taste like a pile of grass. I'm more of a caesar salad person - sure, I like some leaves, but I prefer them crunchy, and then I want a whole heap of non-salad items in there, like bacon, eggs, bread and cheese. Or maybe a complete lack of leaves, like in a greek salad - again, with the cheese, and something tangy like olives. But just don't serve me weeds - ugh.

This region has a famous salad, and I'd never heard of it before I arrived - but now I order it everywhere. I'm on my own special mission to find the best Fattoush (also fatoush, fattush and probably a myriad of other spellings) that can be found in Dubai. So far, it's a war between Bayt al Wakeel on the Bur Dubai side of the creek in the middle of the Old Souk, and Tagine, at the One and Only Royal Mirage.

Fattoush's wonderful addition is fried bread. It's like an arabic crouton, but better, and I make mine in the oven and they taste just as good. These croutons are so awesome, I eat half of them before I even make the salad. But the salad is pretty good too - it's fresh, aromatic, colourful and crunchy. 

Green means hot

I am a very fortunate lady. Not only have I got a husband who very cleverly got us an expat stint in the centre of the world, but I also have Mary in our household. The title of "housemaid" does not fully describe her position or influence. Some days she is Maid, others Nanny, but my favorite is Chef. Mary is Tamil Sri Lankan, and so much of her food is in that vein, but she is also an exceptional study and has a remarkably good palate, so anything she finds lying in the bottom of a fridge drawer or at the back of a pantry can be added to other flavours to make something wonderful. The only underlying theme - chilli, and boy oh boy, she does like it hot!

The other week she made what she calls "herb relish". It has leafy herbs and onion and green chili, and is amazing next to her curried eggplant. It inspired me to make the sauce below - I love the fresh flavours, and imagined it without the rice, but with cucumber in it to cool that chili a little. So here we have my spicy green salad: