Olympic Food Challenge: Swayweih and Kahwa - Oman

Like a lot of my other non-European countries, I new little about Oman before the Olympic Food Challenge began.  It's all been very educational.  I knew it was a Gulf state but would have been hard pressed to pinpoint it straight away on a map.  What surprised me was the cuisine because it seems to be heavily influenced by Indian food despite there being a tract of sea between the two.  I ended up discounting a lot of the recipes because they were things I'd associate with India like Biryani - although the husband might have eaten that.

Coffee wasn't quite thick enough to stand the spoon up

Instead, as Friday is a working from home day, I decided to go with a breakfast option.  Mostly because it is served with Kahwa - or ridiculously sweet coffee, spiked with cardamom.  If there's one thing the Middle Easterners do well, it's coffee.  Dark and thick enough to stand your spoon up in.  Sadly, I had to make do with Colombian (my favourite, but I doubled the quantity of coffee to water) and for someone who doesn't take sugar in her coffee (unless it's a caramel latte and that doesn't count as coffee), it was really enjoyable.

As for the pasta with scrambled eggs, coconut, onion and sugar or Swayweih to give it it's proper name.  Well it was different.  I was expecting horrible.  Onion, coconut, eggs and sugar?  Hardly sweet and sour but neither savoury nor sweet.  But actually, it worked.  Laced with more cardamom (love the stuff although I know it's a bit of a Marmite flavour) and stirred through vermicelli it wasn't half bad and although I polished it off quite quickly, it kept me going from 7am through til 1pm - something I can normally only accomplish if I have a protein bar or get stuck in a meeting at work.

Omani flag

Would I eat it again?  If I'm honest, probably not.  I like my pasta dressed with parmesan.  I like my scrambled egg slightly runny and smothered in Heinz ketchup on top of thick, crusty sourdough toast that's been liberally slathered with salted butter (a once in a blue moon treat).  Onions, sugar and coconut? Not mixed in with my breakfast all at the same time.  But if I ever find myself in Oman and it's on the breakfast menu, I would consider it again.

That said, I think it's probably a good post-run breakfast with plenty of protein and carbs.  The butter will help keep the speed of the sugar release from the white pasta down and the coffee is sure to keep the adrenaline and metabolism pumping for a while after (I wish I'd gone to nutritionist school when I was younger).  You never know, I might just change my mind one day.

You can find the recipe here along with everything you ever wanted to know about Oman.