Abu Dhabi has launched “Emirati Cuisine: A Culinary Memory, A Timeless Heritage,” a book documenting 76 traditional recipes alongside the stories, customs and social context behind each dish. The Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Agricultural Excellence Award released the book during Global Food Week in Abu Dhabi, as part of the Abu Dhabi Agriculture and Food Safety Authority’s wider effort to preserve the emirate’s culinary heritage.
The book, published in Arabic and English, is organised into five sections: Fawala, Meat, Poultry, From the Sea, and From the Bounty of Our Land, a structure that mirrors how Emirati cooking has historically drawn on land, livestock and the sea in roughly equal measure. Each recipe includes preparation methods alongside the cultural and social context in which the dish is traditionally served.
ADAFSA developed the book with the Abu Dhabi Heritage Authority and the National Library and Archives, and drew on contributions from Emirati chefs Mariam Al Mansouri, Musabah Al Kaabi, Ahmed Darweesh, Meera Al Naqbi and Faisal Al Harmoudi. Dr Tarek Ahmed Al Ameri, ADAFSA’s acting director general, oversaw the project alongside Mubarak Ali Al Qusaili Al Mansouri, who led the book team, and coordinator Kanna Al Maskari. Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan directed the project in his role as ADAFSA’s board chairman.
Cooking as an archive of local resources
The book’s five-section structure reflects a working assumption in Emirati food history: that traditional dishes map closely onto the resources available in a particular season or region, whether that meant dates and grains from the land, livestock reared across the desert interior, or the Gulf’s fish and shellfish. Treating cuisine this way turns a cookbook into a kind of environmental record, documenting what people ate alongside what their surroundings provided and when.
That approach has become more common in heritage food publishing across the region in recent years, as governments and cultural institutions have invested in capturing culinary knowledge before it is lost to generational change, urbanisation and the standardisation that comes with commercial food production. ADAFSA’s involvement, as the body responsible for the UAE’s food safety and agricultural policy, suggests this kind of heritage documentation is increasingly treated as adjacent to food security policy rather than purely a cultural exercise.
The launch event paired the book’s unveiling with a visual presentation, a book-signing session and live cooking demonstrations, giving attendees a direct link between the printed recipes and their preparation. Positioning the launch within Global Food Week, rather than as a standalone cultural event, placed a heritage publication alongside the UAE’s broader food security and agricultural policy conversations happening at the same gathering.
For a country whose food system depends heavily on imports, documenting and promoting traditional Emirati dishes serves a dual purpose: preserving culinary knowledge for its own sake, while reinforcing a sense of food culture rooted in local produce at a moment when national food strategy is pushing hard toward greater self-sufficiency. Whether the book reaches home kitchens as a practical reference, rather than remaining a ceremonial artefact from its launch, will likely depend on how widely ADAFSA and its partners distribute and promote it in the months ahead.
For the UAE’s large expatriate population, including the Kerala-origin Malayali community that has long worked in the emirate’s hospitality and food service sectors, a bilingual record of Emirati home cooking also offers a rare point of direct access to a culinary tradition that can otherwise feel confined to restaurants and hotel buffets. Whether the book finds an audience beyond Emirati households themselves may depend on how actively it is marketed to that wider resident population.
