Spain Food & Passion, Dubai 2010
I enjoy caviar but confess I am no caviar connoisseur and cannot afford it in any case – the best in the world can cost over € 10,000 a kilo. But until I met Sara Morales, global sales and marketing director of Caviar Nacarii, Spain’s premier caviar brand, I had no idea that there was quite etiquette about eating it.
George and I met her at the ‘Spain Food & Passion, Dubai 2010’ dinner, which we attended at Dubai’s Radisson Blu Hotel on the invitation of the Spanish Embassy.
If we thought the evening would be all about tapas, paella and the Spanish spirits that go so well with that cuisine, we were delightfully mistaken. Sara changed the flavour of the evening for us enticing us with a caviar tasting ritual that was at once passionate and informative.
Having red wine prior to tasting caviar is a big ‘no no’. It should ideally be taken after ‘cleaning one’s taste buds’ with a sip of white wine or better still vodka to remove flavours of anything else we may have had, explained Sara.
Though Caviar is served fresh on a bed of ice, it should never be eaten cold she said. Its best eaten straight from the back of the hand, she explained, putting a tiny blob on ours.
“You then chat with your companions and wait for the caviar to warm up naturally with your body temperature. You then pop it into your mouth taking time to hold it against your palate and let it melt in your mouth. As it does you will savour the different flavours it produces,” she said urging us to do so.
And we did. It was a delicious experience and a far cry from all the caviar I had tasted served as toppings on hors d’oeuvres.
It was a good start to a very pleasant evening – we tried some tapas accompanied by some of Spain’s best wines from Aragon. Dinner was served on the terrace where you could enjoy both Spain’s culinary specialities as well as the view of the night lights of Dubai and the dhow cruises sailing gently on the creek. Added gourmet glamour of the evening was the presence of UAE’s leading chefs - members of the Emirates Culinary Guild - in their distinct chef’s uniforms.
At our table was Troy Rodrigues of Royal Blue, UAE distributors of Solan de Cabras, Spain’s premium brand mineral water which has just entered the UAE market.
It is considered a ‘vintage’ mineral water, a premium brand used in the most prestigious restaurants in Spain. Solán de Cabras has a light mineral content and comes in deep blue bottles protecting it from sunlight and preserving its mineral and medicinal properties.
That’s two premium brands from Spain I discovered that night – Caviar Nacarii and Solan de Cabras – which tells us that there is more to that country than just olive oil and olives.
Olé!
-Kokila-











