Burj Al Arab and the palace hotels of the Gulf · Traditional
Umm Ali
Umm Ali, “Ali’s mother”, is the bread pudding of the Arab world: torn pastry soaked in sweet milk with nuts, raisins and rose, baked under a crust of cream. Every palace hotel in Dubai serves it, and the Burj Al Arab serves it with gold leaf.
Taste profile
Pair it with
Arabic coffee with cardamom, or a mint tea.
The dish comes from Egypt, where legend attributes it to a sultan’s wife celebrating a rival’s death with a pudding for the poor; the Gulf hotels adopted it as the national dessert of hospitality. Puff pastry or dry croissant is torn into a dish, covered with hot milk, sugar, cream, pistachios, almonds, raisins and a breath of rose or cardamom, and baked until the top blisters.
In the palace hotels of Dubai it arrives in a copper dish at the end of a dinner or on the dessert buffet of the brunch; the Burj Al Arab’s version is finished with gold leaf, which changes nothing and pleases everyone.
The home version · serves 6
Ingredients
- 300 g puff pastry or 4 day-old croissants
- 750 ml whole milk
- 200 ml cream
- 100 g sugar
- 60 g pistachios, 40 g almonds, 40 g raisins
- 1 tsp rose water
- ½ tsp ground cardamom
- 100 ml cream for the top
Method
- Bake the puff pastry until dry and golden, or tear the croissants; break into a buttered oven dish.
- Heat the milk with cream, sugar, cardamom and rose water until the sugar dissolves.
- Scatter the nuts and raisins over the pastry, pour the hot milk over and let it soak ten minutes.
- Spoon the extra cream over the top.
- Bake at 200 °C for 20 minutes until the top is blistered and golden. Serve hot in the dish.
Where to taste it
