Opening of N_K_D Pizza

Last night was the opening night of N_K_D Pizza in Marina View Towers. Thanks to Sally we were invited to take a special tour of the kitchens where we saw the whole process from start to finish! The owner, Jeff Leach, took us around the different parts of the kitchen and told us about what makes NKD Pizza so different. It combines social media with pizza to create a wonderful, unique platform for networking! Even the opening was a tweet-up!

Everything is natural and the dough used to make the crust is from an ancient method. You can find all the information here. As for the taste, it was phenomenal! The cheese and tomato sauce and the crust were all so FRESH! And I'm not one for pepperoni pizza but I loved this!

Breakfast and Friday Farmer's Market at Baker & Spice

Yesterday, we abandoned our tradition of a grand Friday breakfast at home in favor of the breakfast at Baker and Spice and the Friday Farmer's Market. And we were NOT disappointed.

I ordered blueberry pancakes and they were divine. These pancakes were just about the fluffiest, lightest pancakes I've ever had! They were more like moist cake! And the best part is that it wasn't that sweet. The blueberry compote and the fresh cream served with it was amazing and added the sweetness to it. We also ordered a French toast with sour apples to share and weren't disappointed either. The bread was thick and crispy and the apples added a lovely contrast to the sweetness of the cake. Both the pancakes and the French toast were dusted with icing sugar- which got all over my clothes! So that wasn't the great part about it.

After breakfast, we walked over to the farmer's market and just at that time the sun was overcast by the clouds and the Dubai Fountain started dancing and spraying water droplets on us! It was perfect!

Although if I'm not mistaken foods grown with fertilizers are supposed to LOOK better and more attractive than organic food- I found this to be quite the opposite! The tomatoes on sale (as you can see in the photograph) look SO much better and riper than the non-organic tomatoes I usually buy at the supermarket- and they're BOTH local.

I wanted to buy a sheep but didn't manage to do that because they hadn't brought any that day. And in case you're wondering, I want the sheep as a pet.

Gingerbread biscuits at Sally's!

So today I had a lovely afternoon with all my food blogger friends from our group "Famished in Arabia"! This time, in the Christmas spirit, we gathered at Sally's home to decorate some wonderful gingerbread biscuits she had made!

It was such a lovely experience, the kitchen was full of women chatting, eating, baking, and decorating biscuits!

Check out Sally's blog here: mycustardpie.com

Ruth at Bon Appetit Review http://bonappetitreview.blogspot.com/ made some heavenly scones that we had with rhubarb jam.

Here are some photographs:

Theme: Baby Girl!

I found some pictures while looking through my laptop of cupcakes and biscuits I had made when someone in the family had a baby girl last year. The box (and the cross-stitched motif on it) and card were also made by me.

Thai Cooking Class at ICCA!

When I was participating at BakeFestDXB (http://spontaneous-euphoria.blogspot.com/2010/09/bake-fest-dxb.html), I met the girl behindhttp://www.foodonymph.com/ who told me that she and a few other food bloggers meet every month to try something new in the world of food! I was so excited to join the group and yesterday we took a Thai cooking class at the International Center for Culinary Arts in Hana Center. It was a lot of fun, I got to meet other food bloggers out there, and it was a very exciting- and delicious-process throughout. We were in pairs of two and my partner was Anja. She has a lovely blog that you can check out here: http://anjasfood4thought.blogspot.com/

I can't seem to find the links for all the other blogs!

Here are some pictures from last night as well as the menu.

Menu:

Starter:

shrimpcakes on lemongrass skewers

raw papaya salad with cashews and dressing

vegetable noodles

thai red curry fish with jasmine rice

beef stirfry

pandan leaves and coconut caramel pudding (soo moist, amazing texture, lovely!!!)

Ingredients for the papaya salad dressing.

Cherry tomatoes for the papaya salad. I had no idea cherry tomatoes were used in Thai cooking. I thought it was just a Mediterranean thing.

The delicious papaya salad.

Our noodles- done!

Crispy beef stirfry done! Have I mentioned before how much I love stirfrying?

Thai red curry fish done!

The dessert!

My amazing job at cutting and chopping! I am horrible at this! It was a big challenge for me to get this right!

Themed

These are some cupcakes that I made for a lovely friend of mine who just had a baby boy! I tend to prefer simpler cupcakes with just frosting on it in a home-made style.

Macaroon Sculpture for Fashion Photography Event

Here are some pictures of a macaroon sculpture I made for the launch of "Fashion: The Story of a Lifetime" exhibition at The Empty Quarter Gallery in DIFC Gate Village. The sculpture was inspired by Frank Horvat's famous photograph in L'Officiel pictured below. This photograph is one among many at the exhibition. Make sure you check the exhibition out- it's on till mid October!

The picture quality of the sculpture is poor because I took the pictures from my phone- apologies.

It was the first time I made anything remotely like a design "installation" and it was the first time that I made a shaped structure out of food.. It was a wonderful experience, very challenging and exciting! Loved it! The best part was draping the lace and pearls around the sculpture.