Vermicelli in UAE

I have always thought that our vermicelli (popularly known as bee hoon) is very much a Chinese food usually either fried or cooked in soup. However, in UAE vermicelli is eaten in quite a different way. Ever been to a Chinese breakfast stall and you choose your combination of rice – noodles, kuey teow – noodles, bee hoon – noodles and so on? But I bet hardly anyone would usually make a combination of bee hoon – rice. But here, vermicelli rice is the exact combination they use! You could find bits and pieces of vermicelli in your rice to go with your kebab! And just as I thought it is weird enough, today I sampled a dessert made of vermicelli! It’s some kind of jelly with lots of vermicelli (cut into smaller pieces) served with some peanuts. A sweet and chilled concoction – not bad although sweet vermicelli tasted a bit weird in my mouth. And there is also rice jelly – a concoction of jelly with rice (almost porridge like) with some raisins sprinkled over. I thought that this tasted better than the vermicelli dessert. Oh… and perhaps the weirdest food name I’ve come across was ‘kenduckly chicken’ – is it a chicken or a duck?

I am still counting my days to the end of my 5-month affair with UAE. Everyone seems to be aware I’m about to go off – I made little secret of it since I’m clearing up the office and demolishing everything around it. As one pointed out – I am demolishing his nostalgic memory of the site office! Well… everything has to come to an end.