With the inauguration of Dubai Metro on the 09.09.2009 Dubai has written history again by launching the first Metro System in the Middle East and the largest, driverless Project.
I made my way to the Mall of Emirates (MoE) Station and brought the Silver NOL card for the day (Gold was not available) and made my way towards City Center Station. Great and smooth drive, standing in front of the Gold Class for having a prefect view onto the track and clicking away. I could feel the excitement amongst the joy riders, not many commuters where on their way to or from work as it was in the afternoon, just after lunch.

Mall of the Emirates & City Center Station

There are not many such opportunities like following the construction of a Brand new Metro in a booming city such as Dubai, see it being launched and testing it four days later. With the opening of the first line, the red line, 10 Stations of 29 have been opened to the public, making my travel from MoE to City Center a journey barely noticeable. Usually by car it will take anything between 40 minutes and 2 hours during rush hour!

My way back from City Center to MoE however was totally different; delays where announced over the barely understandable speaker system; 10 minutes, then another 15 minutes and one more set of 10 minutes to wait. Finally an Asian Lady came down the Station: “Hello guys, listen up, no train, leave the station to proceed to the waiting bus above ground!” Love it; sounds like in Manila somewhere. Everybody up the escalator but no waiting bus but more chaos. Everybody back into the station, outside it was too hot for waiting. Still no busses as announced. After some more chaos in the station and more Tagalog amongst local Kabayan; I really felt I must be in Baclaran, just with a bit more variety of nationalities trying to understand Tagalog. Finally after another hour waiting we could board a train to drive us back to the Mall of Emirates. What should have been a trip of say 20 minutes took me over two hours?

Let’s get to the trains! Guys!!

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Download a pdf. file of the DubaiMetro Guide

Coconut Macaroons like we know in Switzerland are completely different to the French Macaroons; first of all the sugar is cooked together with the egg whites and desiccated coconut until the sugar has been dissolved and the mixture reaches just the boiling point. Just a touch of flour is added and then baked in a rather hot oven for 10 minutes.
I used fresh grated coconut brought in the market as I believe such a classic requires the best ingredients. Overnight I prepared the finger bananas do to be oven dried and then mashed some up for the base of the baking mould before piping the hot mixture into the moulds.

To assemble this delicious dessert I used some of the dried bananas for the garnish of the Coconut Macaroon and served this with a Raspberry-Balsamic sauce together with dried Raspberries and Coconut shavings brought from my last Bangkok trip.

Since most components are relatively sweet in taste I prefer something sour to drink, of course with alcohol and an Italian Limoncino is just the perfect beverage for this. As I brought some unusual handcrafted glasses in Bangkok with a base of an Elephant head I thought it will go well with this theme of fresh coconut and bananas.

The Recipe can be Downloaded here in PDF file