Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
moments, he had us shaving garlic with prodigious speed and chopping industrial quantities of tomatoes without
them collapsing into sauce.
Petra Kitchen
( 2155700;
www.petramoon.com/cuisinetours.htm
)
in downtown Wadi Musa is a novel idea.
Instead of going out for supper, you pay a little extra to cook your own mezze, soup and a main course. The local
experts who teach you how to cook Jordanian food give you valuable tips throughout the evening. If you get hooked
on the flavours you learn to create, the dishes on the menu change each night so within a week you could be return-
ing home with a whole cookbook.
The whole experience of cooking in the company of strangers makes you realise that cooking in Jordan, just like
dining, isn't about the locally grown ingredients or the handed- down recipe: it's about being sociable. As Sharon
Stark, my fellow apprentice from New Zealand, said: 'If we'd tasted that meal at a restaurant, without all the fun of
creating it, the four of us meeting/talking to each other and our hosts, it would still have been delicious but not as
nice as it tasted that night.'
Vegetarian Options
Jordan, like many countries in the region, has a strongly carnivorous bias in the national
diet - at least, that is, in restaurants. At home, people enjoy their vegetables and dairy
products (such as home-made cheese, yoghurt and
labneh
) and often consider meat as
something to be enjoyed during
eids
(religious holidays) and special occasions.
Delicious vegetable and dairy dishes can be found in many
restaurants in Jordan, especially mezze, but the concept of 've-
getarian' is still an alien one. As such, there may well be meat
stock within a soup or animal fats used to prepare pastries. The
following 'Vegidex' of restaurants is recommended for the
variety of vegetarian options, but not for a nonmeat pedigree.
Most of the nature-reserve restaurants have excellent vegetari-
an choices on the menu and Feynan Ecolodge gets the prize as
the outstanding vegetarian choice.
Best Books for
Jordanian Re-
cipes
»
»
Jordanian Cooking Step
by Step
(Lina Baydoun and
Nada Halawani)
»
»
The New Book of Middle
Eastern Food
(Claudia
Roden)
Ajloun
Ajloun Forest Reserve restaurant (
Click here
)
Amman
Wild Jordan Café (
Click here
)
; Hashem Restaurant
(
Click here
)
Aqaba
Ali Baba Restaurant (
Click here
)
; Blue Bay (
Click here
)
; Formosa Restaurant
(
Click here
)
; Royal Yacht Club Restaurant (
Click here
)
Azraq
Azraq Lodge (
Click here
)
