Artisanal Products
To celebrate seasonal produce, local growing and authentic Palestinian cuisine.
As you already know, a year ago, I launched a new line of Dima Sharif (DS) products. This new line of products offers a variety of small batch, handmade, preserved, organic and mostly local seasonal produce. Basically, I purchase seasonal organic produce from the local UAE organic farmers and preserve this produce, when it’s at its best (seasonal and ultra fresh, picked on the day). Due to the fact that the UAE does not grow every produce under the sun, when required, I would purchase unavailable produce (such as olive oil for instance, and lemon, which are required in the preservation) then I would purchase from my family farm in Jordan and always give priority to the region’s produce and artisanal products and areas of closer proximity when available.
In preserving the produce, I follow different old school methods, mostly from the classic Palestinian cuisine. Methods that have been tested and proven to work and guarantee elongated storage at times even indefinitely! Yes, these days we grew weary of saying that something edible could be indefinitely stored without the quality being affected! As such all my products are given the “right” expiry date, however, I know they last way longer than that and nothing affects the quality. This is because back in the day, people had no cold rooms, fridges and such access to produce all year long. At times, they had bad seasons, long periods of drought and uncontrollable conditions… As such they really put their brains to work and came up with processes that work! I am following suit.
Like in the past, none of my products include any preservatives, chemicals, additives, colourings or any such unnecessary and extremely hazardous ingredients! Who needs any such thing when amazing produce, real food, and genuine caring methods are applied?! My products are mostly certified organic, and those which are not certified, are not, simply because they are of a wild nature! That means they are not necessarily cultivated by any people following any farming processes, but are natural and indigenous to specific areas, where they wildly grow in specific seasons. Such is zaatar for instance to name just one. My processing follows, natural methods such as salt curing, pickling, fermenting, drying, sun-drying, grounding, brigning and confit preservation methods. I carefully pick the farmers and thus their produce, and everything is made from scratch. Even the minutest detail is taken into consideration, such as the salt (I use only pink Himalayan salt and occasionally natural, raw unprocessed sea salt as required). All vinegars are organic and natural, personally picked from artisans who now supply me all their product for use in my preservation here.
Small batch product & small batch suppliers
It does not stop at the vinegars! Even dairy products, such as the goat’s milk rolled labneh, and jameed (fermented yogurt balls for mansaf) are supplied by a small batch artisan in Jordan, who has her own goats and produces very small batch dairy products from those goat’s. Her production is so small and limited that I buy it all and often run out of these as fast as I receive them! But that is what I love. I get them in season, in top quality and so do you. the quality, the flavour and everything about them is unmatched! This is not limited to the dairy; my sumac comes from a small nursery of 25 sumac trees. It started off as a tree in a family’s garden next to the dairy farm. The owner had grown a few trees from that tree and now there is 25 trees in the nursery. We all know we need massive amounts of sumac to make business sense! As the kilo turns out nothing after drying, hulling and grounding (learn more about sumac processing on this link). Therefore 25 trees were never going to make any business sense for that owner. The family cared for the trees and loved them, no chemicals shower treatments or anything like that. They cared nothing about increasing yield, or commercial production. They gave them away to family and friends. Then I found them, and bought them, and now I have them to offer to you. Very limited batch, and absolutely unmatched quality and flavour. 100% including nothing of the rubbish added to sumac nowadays. Ask all who have tried, or better yet, try it yourself (buy my products here) and if you do not agree I will refund you fully!
Since today’s recipe is using one of my best selling products Shatta, I thought to tell you more about these products… do follow this story and this line of products and learn more as we go… so many amazing things, many beautiful stories and absolutely good wholesome foods for your body and soul.
My “Mooneh” line really is the way “magic happens in the kitchen”… I can never say enough! You have to try…
