We decided to make 2 Bahraini dishes -
Chicken Machboos and
Muhammar, which were a hit and a miss, respectively
I first made a trip to
Sahadi's in Brooklyn Heights to load up on spices (I later had to go back out to find rose water and
dried limes, which we left off the original shopping list):
It seemed like the two dishes weren't meant to be served together, so we made the muhammar early in the evening and then got started on the machboos. Following the advice of a comment on the recipe, I cut the recommended amount of cloves in half, but we still found this "sweet" rice dish to have an overpowering clovey (?) aftertaste.
The chicken machboos was much more successful. This is a dish I would love to have again, but due to the prep work involved, probably won't until I find myself in Bahrain. A day later, my apartment still smells like a spice souq.
Chicken machboos, in progress:
and complete:
