Pkhali - Georgian answer to hommous (ფხალი)

 

hiz together in a blender:

1. A can of red beans (although my Mom would also use nearly anything veggie-like: boiled cabbage leaves, freshly boiled spinach, cooked beet roots, fried aubergines, etc.)
2. A handful of walnuts.
3. 1-3 cloves of garlic.
4. Half a handful of coarsely chopped parsley or coriander leaves.
5. A glug of olive oil.
6. Some salt (as I do, I use fish sauce)
7. A generous sprinkle of khmeli-suneli (ხმელი სუნელი), an indispensable Georgian mix of dried herbs, which is best made at home as supermarket versions are invariably inferior. Simply mix equal shares of dried mint, basil, marjoram, parsley, oregano as well as bay leaf powder, ground coriander seeds and black pepper. If you can get hold of dried hyssop and fenugreek leaves, by all means add those too.

Spread some on grilled bread and decorate with a sprinkle of pomegranate sauce (sold in Turkish shops as nar ekşisi) and finely chopped coriander leaves.

How to cook bulots (whelks) the French way

 have always bought bulots (whelks) in France. Farmed mainly in Normandy, these gastropods are well-fed, lush and always sold cooked - or so I thought as I had never bought them outside France. Until one late London afternoon I stumbled upon them in Brixton Market. Just when I lined up baguette, mayonnaise and white wine and got ready to eat them, quelle horreur, they turned out to be raw!

So, I had to add another survival skill to my collection: cooking whelks. This is how you do it.

1. First of all, soak your whelks in cold water for at least an hour. Tht way they will release their droppings into the water so you won't have to eat them.
2. For half a kilo of raw whelks you will need two litres of water, 50 g of salt, one bay leaf, a prig of thyme, a teaspoonful of white vinegar and a generous sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper.
3. Bring everything to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes.
4. Allow to cool down in the resulting court bouillon.
5. Serve, just as I did, with home-made mayonnaise, baguette and white wine. This time I flavoured my mayonnaise with a paste made out of crushed anchovies, garlic and walnuts mixed with some Modena vinegar. A Parisian would hyperventilate and swoon but my Languedoc brethren and sistren will sure understand me!

How to improve hommous

 am not that dedicated to make hommous from scratch. However, the supermarket variety is just too dull and basic, the price of becoming Britain's favourite cupboard commodity.

A few add-ons I came up with never fail to land me adoration from my lunch/dinner guests. I am going to share my little secrets with you today. This is what I add to hummus to give it the extra zing-boom-bang:

• 1 tbsp of za'atar (Levantine thyme)
  
• a dash of Persian lime powder (failing that, lime juice)
• a glug of extra vrigin olive oil
• a sprinkle of garlic powder
• a wee tad of fish sauce for the naturally occurring MSG.

The quantities indicated are not precise because you need to arrage everything to your own heart's content. Good luck!

Samphire (also okra, fern and bamboo shoots) kimchi

he only reason why Koreans do not make kimchi out of  samphire is because samphire only grows in North-Western Europe. Should it favour East Asia too, I have no doubt it would have long been part of the gorgeous sanchae or sansai, wild vegetables commonly used to make pickles in Korea and Japan.

Last month I decided to correct this Mother Nature's oversight and made kimchi out of Norfolk samphire. Fresh, crunchy and naturally briny, it is perfectly complemented by ginger and pepper. Just follow your regular kimchi recipe, but use samphire instead of cabbage or daikon. Depending on how much you make, the amount of  ingredients will vary, so I will rather give proportions than exact quantities. You should make enough kimchi base paste to smother the main ingredient comfortably.

 Kimchi base ingredients:

1. equal quantities of minced garlic, fish sauce and minced onion.  
2. double quantities of rice porridge and gochugaru (hot pepper flakes, can be substituted with gochujang)
3. quarter quantity of minced ginger. 

Procedure:

1. Rinse samphire well and remove the woody parts. Cut into equal pieces.
2. Mix the kimchi base ingredients. Fold the samphire into the mixture.
3. Cover with a lid and leave to ferment at a room temperature for 24 hours. When bubbles start showing, the process has kicked off. Move to a cold place, ideally a few degrees above zero degree centigrade. A few days is normally enough to complete fermentation: keep checking until you are satisfied with the taste.

P.S. I also use bamboo shoots, okra, string beans, turnip, daikon (mooli) and fiddlehead fern (warabi or gosari) for my kimchi preserves. Bean sprouts are rather delicate in texture so they can be simply mixed with the excess of juice from already made kimchi and left overnight in the fridge. Kimchi out of bean sprouts and samphire do not hold long, so finish yours within a week or so.

Fields: Mediterranean flight of fancy in Hackney Central

he beauty of London is that here we have things that would never happen elsewhere. A combination of cultural lassez-faire attitudes, somewhat questionable excess of money, and diverse and dynamic populations snowballs into a milieu conducive to craziest, fanciest, most daring ideas and enterprises. 

Fields, an ostensibly unassuming restaurant in Hackney Central I visited the other day, is a shiny example of that. A brainchild of a Turkish Marxist historian passionate about food, it boasts a Mediterranean fusion menu craftily executed by a Maltese chef and a French sous-chef, and expeditiously delivered by a charming Spanish waitress. The effortlessly exquisite and refreshingly affordable wine list contains the best of all continents, save Antarctica. As I went through it, I noticed Argentina's vertiginously fragrant Torrontés, Chile's unwaveringly reliable Chilean Sauvignon Blanc as well as the best of Entre Deux Mer's whites and reds. Apparently, it was put together by another academic foodie, a Croatian/Bosnian lecturer from SOAS. Great food does take an intellectual effort.

A tableful of meze/tapas we shared between us proved a dinner in its own right:

• smoked fish platter: salmon and swordfish;
• smoked salmon stuffed with ricotta;
• beef carpaccio with sliced artichokes and herbs.

The mains included:

• whole chargrilled seabass marinated and stuffed with mint, fresh tomato, olive oil & lemon;
  
• what they claimed to be Salade Niçoise turned out to be a huge chargrilled fresh tuna steak on a bed of French beans, fresh tomatoes, olives, peppers, new potatoes, lettuce, red onions and boiled egg with wholegrain mustard vinaigrette;
  
• whole grilled sea bream arrived blanketed with stir-fried peeled shrimp and underscored with the chef's own creation, strawberry-and-mint sauce.

Surprisingly, these seeming culinary acrobatics yielded a very wholesomely delectable fare, with no whiff of Nouvelle Cuisine's studied trickery. The portions were generous and it took us an extra effort and extended time to tuck it all in. All fish dishes came with copious  amounts of  fresh lemons, nice  touch. Just when we thought we were about to meet Mr. Creosote's fate, a dessert sampler platter arrived, probably to illustrate the owner's leftist persuasion with an example of duped masses perishing from excesses of consumerism. How very decadently thoughtful!

Clams Breton style, recipe

Palourdes à la bretonne, or clams Breton style. Palourdes is the closest French word I could find to call these clams (they would be called coques, if they were ribbed). In fact, they are Vietnamese natives, known locally as Nghêu Bến Tre, quite a mouthful, so let's stick with palourdes.

This is also one of my improved recipes: normally, Breton style would mean aux lardons et oignons, with bacon and onions. However, a  long afternoon in St. Mâlo, Brittany, spent looking for mussels cooked that style, proved that locals have never heard of anything of the kind. I did not give up and went on to elaborate on what Breton style cooking should be like, which is how all "traditional authentic national cusines" were invented in the first place anyway.

So here's my take on nationalist mythopoetics:

1. Sautee a head of crushed garlic and three chopped shallots in butter.
   
2. Add 2 sliced leeks, a generous handful of Chantenay carrots, diced smoked bacon and stir-fry until haf ready.
   
3. Add 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of clams and continue to cook until the clams start opening.
   
4. Add a jar of double cream and a glass of dry Breton cider.  Picardian blonde beer or dry white wine can do too, although it will deliver a chink in the armour of this dish's authenticity.
   
5. Stir well, gently bring to a boil and simmer with the lid closed until the smell of alcohol goes. Did I say it: remember to stir every now  and then.
   
6. Douse liberally with freshly ground black pepper. No salt necessary as the clam juice and bacon are salty enough.
   
7. To be followed by a nice Breton dance:

Black capelin roe, aka masago (まさご）

ot just the only credible clean-up of the financial crisis aftermath comes from Iceland, but also Lidl's own take on faux caviar at a humble £1.49 a jar. Despite this review by The Daily Mail's own McDonald's sampling guru India Sturgis, capelin roe, known in Japan as masago, could be a good introduction to the world of fishy delicacies for the uninitiated. 

It could be, because, probably in a bid to "posh it up", Norprawn, the manufacturer, decided to "upgrade" the natural yellowish-pink colour to blueish black with the help of no less than four chemical additives: E141 (chlorophyllin), E150d (sulfite ammonia caramel), E151 (Billiant Black BN, banned in many countires) and E163 (anthocyanin). With the accompanying stabilisers E422 (glycerol, previously use as automotive antifreeze) and E412 (guar gum) and preservatives E202 (potassium sorbate) and E211 (sodium benzoate), this product contains a whole constellation of industrial  ingredients to make this "luxury-on-the-budget" offering a veritable chav fodder.

Lidl is truly a mixed bag of tricks. On the one hand, they offer solid cooking basics of very consistent quality for half the ongoing price. On the other hand, half of what they carry is plain vile and fit to make sure consumers won't live until retirement. Caveat emptor.

Clams stir-fried with garlic, coriander and white wine

y cooking is very often an elaborate protracted affair. It can easily can take up a whole evening, punctuated with thoughtful wine sipping, while a piece of particularly nifty software reads me anthropological articles in a studiedly enthusiastic male voice reminiscent of the Pacific War newsreels. To make all that even more interesting, as I cook, I fix myself sort of amuses-bouche to stave off hunger. Normally, they are spin-offs of the main dish, like I can use some of the caramelised onions from the stew as the base for a canapé or some of the Italian marinade for the fish as a salad dressing. 

Last three days I got into a little habit of stir-frying clams with garlic, coriander, fish sauce and white wine. It's a super simple recipe that involves next to none effort yet yields superbly delectable results.

Here how it goes:

1. Crushed and sautée garlic in oil or butter.
   
2. Add clams and sprinkle with fish sauce. Stir-fry on medium fire until all the clams open, remove into a bowl.
   
3. Add chopped coriander, ground black pepper and a glug of white wine, deglaze.
   
4. Add the sauce to the clams. Serve with baguette and white wine. 

Shark steaks recipe

he best thing about shark steaks is that they are, save the spine, completely boneless. Apparently, sharks as a species evolved way before fish came up with having bones, or bladders, for that matter. For the latter reason, sharks need to be constantly in motion lest they drown, which makes them lean and muscly. And that is how they make it all the way to the top of the food chain, on a pre-heated plate, where we, humans, appreciate exactly that. Occasionally, a shark would get back at us for that, but you couldn't quite hold it against it, could you?

Like most white fish, shark benefits from marinating Japanese style, in equal measures of sake, mirin and shoyu mixed together. In case of dire need, those can be substituted with some dry white wine, brown sugar, and well, shoyu, there is not substitute for that. 

Now for the recipe:

1. Heat some butter in a thick-bottom skillet. Fry a handful of unpeeled garlic cloves for a few minutes and then push them to the sides.
2. Remove the steaks from the marinade and pat them dry with paper kitchen towels. Put them in the skillet and fry a few minutes on each side.
3. Now prepare the best dip for fish ever: mix lime juice, grated ginger, palm sugar, fish sauce, chopped chillis and crushed garlic.
    
4. Serve with steamed vegetables and steamed rice.

Choucroute garnie: simple recipe

rench food is not all la-de-da made of fois gras, frog's legs and truffle shavings and served on a doily - just like not every Frenchman is an effete and jaded urban cynic.  Since the French Revolution put an end to farmers eating boiled bark, peasant food has become more sophisticated, while staying true to its simple roots.

Take, par example, choucroute garnie, one of my favourite winter foods, hearty, filling and wholesome. The juniper berries, a generous glug of white wine as well as good quality organic free range happy pork turn the lowly sauerkraut and boiled potatoes into a veritable gastronomic experience. It's peasant food par excellence, so it cooks itself while you can indulge, peut-être, in a spot of mutual blowjob, and then, to clean the palate, in the rest of the wine, as Mireille Matthieu is crooning in the background.

Basically it's like this:

1. Sauté onions in duck fat just a tad beyond translucent, they should taste sweetish.
2. Add sauerkraut, juniper berries, whole black pepper and bay leaf.
3. Pour some white wine.
4. Arrange nice chunks of smoked bacon, saucisse de Toulouse, boudin blanc on top- I skip frankfurters and strasbourgers and use boudin noir instead but you don't need to.
5.  Simmer until the pork is ready, generally up to an hour. In the meantime, boil or bake some potatoes.
6. Voilà - serve with white wine from Alsace, Riesling or Gewürtztraminner! 

Roast pheasant

Japanese nabe hotpot: perfect winter food

hat can be better on a nippy winter evening than a hotpot steaming with the heart-warming aromas of  seafood, mushrooms and green vegetables. There is no recipe, really. You just get together with your friends or family and put all and sundry ingredients in a pot of boiling water, dunk them in a sauce of your choice and wash down with beer or sake.

Well, it's not really that random. First of all, you put a piece of kombu in the water to make aromatic broth. Then put ingredients starting from tougher to cook ones in approximately this order. First in go shiitake, carrots, daikon and bigger pieces of fish. I use chopped salmon heads, the abundant cartilege makes for a fantabulous depth of the soup's flavour. I am not a big fan of fish balls unless they are home-made. Next go green vegetables (hakusai/pakchoi, Savoy cabbage, Chinese broccoli, kailan), oyster mushrooms, shrimp, mussels, crab meat, squid, clams. Last follow the gentlest ones that only need to be warmed up: shimeji, konnyaku, bean sprouts, kikurage.

My favourite dip is mix of miso paste and mirin - Japanese style. Also great is mix of chili sauce, fish sauce, lime juice and pressed garlic - Thai style. Korean dip is gochujang, ground toasted sesame, pressed garlic and ground ginger. Vietnamese dip is lime juice, ground ginger, nuoc mam, chopped chillies and pal sugar. Chinese dip is soya sauce, Chinkiang vinegar, sesame oil and a sprikle of hot red pepper.

Once the last bits are fished out and devoured with thanks, beat an egg into the remaining broth and add harusame.  

 

Strada@London: new menu

 don't need really any particular luring to dine at Strada. That's where I go when I'm in the mood for consistently enjoyable no-nonsense Italian classics. So when I was offered to taste their new menu with whomever I cared to come with, I jumped at the opportunity. In return I was asked to write an honest review. So here's the breakdown:

The starter, large green Castelvetrano olives were meaty and flavourful but the portion was on the skimpy side.

Antipasti platter - Parma ham, Napoli salami, speck ham from Trentino, buffalo mozzarella from Campania, vine-ripened tomatoes, olive tapenade and bruschetta pomodoro - was nice, same as usual, not enough for three men though. We were not allowed to order more.

I never order a bruschetta for a starter, to me it's a glorified sandwich and so did it turn out: grilled bread with some chopped tomatoes on top.

Risotto is easily the most abused Italian dish. The opportunity was not missed this time either: boring and watery, risotto verdure tasted like buttery rice porridge. It reminded me of my worst vegetarian days.

Rigatoni speck with bits of ham and broccoli reminded me of the lunch fare in my short time at kindergarten. Über-meh.

Orata al forno, whole grilled sea bream though was sublime: very fresh tasting and cooked to perfection, with scrumptious crunchy skin with just a sprinkle of salt and thyme and delicate juicy flesh. A side of exquisitely steamed vegetables and boiled potatoes kept it good company.

The dolci were run-off-the-mill forgettable factory-made pistaccio ice-cream and chocolate mousse. Nothing horrible but nothing to write home about either. Just something you can buy frozen in Lidl.

Overall, I was not impressed with the new menu. As a paying customer I would only order the grilled fish. However, I will keep coming to Strada for my regular favourites. And also for cacciuco, a Sicilian fish soup that was new but not on the tasting menu.  

I thank Strada for the opportunity, however, for the next time I would advise them to put their best, not the mediocre, on their tasting menu. Perhaps, just what they serve daily anyway?

Monbazillac wine

his sweet and mellow wine, reminiscent of Muscat, goes well with mild cheese like Brillat Savarin.

Brillat Savarin cheese

ade from triple cream (that's 75% fat for you!), Brillat-Savarin was created in the 1930s to be as indulgent and over-the-top as the man it is named after, the great French gastronome. It is produced industrially from pasteurised milk and tastes like a cross between Carpice des Anges and unripe Brie. When matured, it is sold as Pierre Robert, which has much more character and reminds less of ricotta.

We paired it with sweet and mellow Montbazillac wine, a congratulatory pat on the shoulder.

Bergerac Sec

rench wines can be hit or miss, never mind price or reputation. That is why I always go for Chilean when I need a shot of reliable white. A bit of risk-taking gets rewarded though, as was the case with this lovely Bergerac Sec: crystal-clear gooseberry and currant married with an after-hint of vanilla, la classe!