How nature does much of the work for us in pairing foods

Maybe it's the early frost, but there appears to be a plague of venomous black widow spiders in my neighbourhood. It's out of character for the formidable creepers, but they are moving out of our gardens and into our homes. A particularly gregarious one dropped down from a gossamer thread to greet a friend who was chopping vegetables at her kitchen counter last night.

I worry less about the possibility of being bitten than I do about what this means for fall. This is my favourite season, and two weeks into it, there's already snow on the ground. We often hear the phrase "what grows together goes together" and it isn't limited to the edible world.

I wonder if the spiders symbolise the changing of the seasons, even though my tomatoes just started coming in. The temperatures dropped radically and everything was harvested at once, forcing many into an overnight glut that will also mean a decrease in output over the next few weeks. When you're harvesting your own food and checking out local farmers' markets, it's easy to develop a natural sense of what to expect to see at different times of year, and even the most rudimentary home cook knows how to resort to classic partnerships such as tomatoes and basil. Slice them up, throw in some fresh buffalo mozzarella, and you have a caprese salad, the ubiquitous vegetarian stalwart.

I discovered caprese salads in Germany, as a 17-year-old vegetarian. It became an immediate obsession and I ordered mediocre platefuls of it everywhere I went: rubbery, bland cheese, grainy pink tomatoes, bruised leaves of basil. Farouk of Egypt was purportedly fond of the caprese salad in sandwich form. I'm not convinced that integrity and relevance have anything to do with purity and authenticity, and I know for a fact that neither is required to make a good meal.

Pairings are generally based on tradition, seasonality and regionality. Where and when things grow are part of the unique gastronomic bar code for every place on earth. As with family, foods that originate and grow together are bound by history, memory and collective association. Not all of these families are happy ones and sometimes food will travel before finding another home in a place it can thrive, forging new connections and creating new pairings.

Nature does a lot of the work for us: think strawberries and rhubarb in spring, melons and mint in midsummer, aubergine and peppers in early autumn, butternut squash and tart apples later this season. They go together like peas and carrots.

One thing we hear a great deal about is terroir, which refers to the ways in which the soil, climate and landscape impart special characteristics to the food grown there. I'm sure we've all heard people argue about which country produces the pre-eminent version of a particular dish or ingredient: coffee, tea, tomatoes and chocolate. My favourite roastery in Abu Dhabi carries five different kinds of zaatar from three different countries. Does Lebanese zaatar taste different from Jordanian and Syrian zaatars? Yes, but which is best depends largely on who's doing the tasting. I always thought I liked Lebanese zaatar best until I conducted a blind tasting with several types of Lebanese and Jordanian zaatar and preferred the latter kinds.

For a cook or a chef, freedom of expression can be really important. How those expressions are received is determined by how competently and comfortably a cook abides by pre-existing laws. No amount of skill in the kitchen is going to eke magic out of a January tomato. Similarly, I recently walked out of a brand-new restaurant after being told that the house burger could only be cooked well done. I don't have time to give everything a shot, so it's easiest to just cut out the poor contenders.

The UAE is a country with a few distinct local dishes, but no real integration of those dishes into the contemporary dietary lexicon outside the home. We tend to combine many different cultural elements in our daily bread. Furthermore, the notion of terroir is not entirely applicable here - and that's OK, for now.

Even Slow Food promotes exposure to sustainably raised heritage animals, organic heirloom produce and handcrafted artisanal raw cheeses from outside one's local agro-economy.

This philosophy is rather like a general approach. As a chef friend explained to me while she was giving me a quick primer in pickling, you can create miniature-themed pantries in your imagination to assign to dishes. For example, you can turn the same basic onion pickle into an accompaniment to countless dishes by adjusting the seasonings in the pickling brine: use rice vinegar, ginger and spring onions for a Japanese dinner; fish sauce, lime juice and chillies for Thai; balsamic vinegar and garlic for Italian, nigella seeds (known locally as habet el barrakeh) and white vinegar for Emirati.

Chef Claudia Fleming created a dish of sauté of tomatoes and plums to serve with basil ice cream and mixed pepper tuiles. The recipe is in her book, The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern, and I made it three times this summer. And Nigel Slater, who did a segment with BBC Food on the topic of foods that grow together, has a recipe called "An Extraordinary Way With Lettuce", which can be easily found online and combines baby gem lettuces, spring onions, fresh mint, peas and broad beans.

The White Lotus: Season three

Creator: Mike White

Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell

Rating: 4.5/5

Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)

Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi

Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi

Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai

Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi

Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia

Company%20profile

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Key facilities

Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
Premier League-standard football pitch
400m Olympic running track
NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
600-seat auditorium
Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
Specialist robotics and science laboratories
AR and VR-enabled learning centres
Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills

How to donate

Send “thenational” to the following numbers or call the hotline on: 0502955999
2289 – Dh10
2252 – Dh 50
6025 – Dh20
6027 – Dh 100
6026 – Dh 200

BIGGEST CYBER SECURITY INCIDENTS IN RECENT TIMES

SolarWinds supply chain attack: Came to light in December 2020 but had taken root for several months, compromising major tech companies, governments and its entities

Microsoft Exchange server exploitation: March 2021; attackers used a vulnerability to steal emails

Kaseya attack: July 2021; ransomware hit perpetrated REvil, resulting in severe downtime for more than 1,000 companies

Log4j breach: December 2021; attackers exploited the Java-written code to inflitrate businesses and governments

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

Bareilly Ki Barfi
Directed by: Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari
Starring: Kriti Sanon, Ayushmann Khurrana, Rajkummar Rao
Three and a half stars

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Company Profile

Company name: NutriCal

Started: 2019

Founder: Soniya Ashar

Based: Dubai

Industry: Food Technology

Initial investment: Self-funded undisclosed amount

Future plan: Looking to raise fresh capital and expand in Saudi Arabia

Total Clients: Over 50

Real estate tokenisation project

Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.

The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.

Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.