Ambling through Dubai's Ripe Market, a weekly winter bazaar characterised by its gypsy vibe and fluky treasures, it's unlikely that you'll feel spent. But should that happen, a good way to get your senses jiving would be to head to a kiosk serving camel milk ice cream. I'll be honest, the offerings at Nouq, an outstation of the Dubai dairy that only uses camel milk, didn't look any different from staple Indian ice cream made of cow/buffalo milk. Sure, the promise of date sauce or sprinkles added an exotic touch, but the vanilla-flavoured dollop that I sampled looked reassuringly familiar. And what do you know, it tasted similar too, yet was distinct in a way I couldn't put my finger on. Was it a wee bit sharper? Lighter? Lighter than what? Thanks to industrial skimming, I can't even claim to have tasted undiluted cow milk back home! The quandary bugged me to tears.
Whatever it's impact on the taste-buds, a little digging around revealed that camel milk (and presumably its products) beats cow milk at nutrition. "Camel milk ice-cream is noticeably lighter," clarified Stephan Barbier, Nouq's MD, making me feel somewhat triumphant. "This is because it is less fatty. Yet, tasted in its whole form, as in ice creams, it is equally creamy," he added. Also lower in cholesterol, camel milk is packed with five times the Vitamin C in cow's milk, plus healthy amounts of Vitamin A, B, calcium, potassium, sodium, magnesium, copper and zinc. High in insulin, it's good for Type 2 diabetics, while its lightness makes it popular with the lactose intolerant. All this made the ice cream sound like a delicious double-miracle, and just as I'd begun to feel skeptical, I discovered that a section of health and fitness enthusiasts worldwide had declared it a 'superfood' soon after its supermarket production started a few years ago. Camel milk from Dubai is increasingly being exported to Europe and the US.
For Nouq – launched in 2016 and expanding an arsenal of flavours like baklava, honey-saffron, Turkish coffee, Umm Ali, pistachio and date – the trick lies as much in mining the health benefits as in an intelligent unveiling of Middle-Eastern ingredients to a curious tourist market. But that doesn't do away with the need for universal flavours like chocolate with crunchy chips, vanilla and caramel biscuit, to strike a balance. "Due to its earthiness, flavours like vanilla, cacao, saffron and pista are ones that fully express themselves," co-MD, Fred Kuzyk added.
Like its much hailed ingredient, camel milk ice cream is priced high (Nouk's 125 ml cup sells for AED 15 i.e. `270). But tourists seem prepared to pay. Unaware of the hype surrounding camel milk, 27-year-old Udita Mukherjee still didn't blink before treating herself to it because "it's a whole new experience, why not indulge?"
Now that I know camel milk doesn't taste quite as radical as camel meat (another story, another time) may be it's time to head back for a more imaginative flavour of ice cream. How does Mint Tea sound?
