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!

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.

Khao Sarn Thai restaurant@Brixton, London (review)

This year was the year of Brixton's avalanche-like gentrification. The ruNice restaurants and even a barber shop for white peeps have sprouted all over like mushrooms after rain. I reckon we have a few years to relish the bliss of the BoBo (bourgeois-bohemien) limbo before the 'yuppie suits' cotton on this and make this a new Chelsea, Clapham. The once grimy and forlorn Brixton Market is now teeming with 20 and 30-somethings hanging out in organic bakeries, ethnic restaurants and sunlit terraces.

One of such cool hangouts is Khao Sarn. Having lived 6 years in Bangkok, I'm very wary of Thai restaurants outside Thailand. Now this one I can recommend. If this was French outfit, it would be a brasserie: it churns out classic (some may say "same ole") Thai dishes consistent quality at reasonable prices.

We had a correctly cooked and served, with lime and green onions, phad Thai (somewhat on the smallish side) and the Isarn staple: grilled chicken leg with sticky rice and somtam (papaya salad).

Les cadeaux de Brixton: why I live here

is again the time of the year when I get all sentimental about les cadeaux de l'automne, the gifts of the autumn. I love the generous maturity of this season, the contrast of warm colours and cold air, the earthy smells of fallen leaves and seasonal produce. Last year, I went to the market and, at the spur of the moment, bought two bags of autumnal produce: a pumpkin, parsnips, root celery, chestnuts, Brussels sprouts,

This year I choose to rejoice in the grand affordability of Brixton. The whole display on the picture:

• 6 bell peppers,
• 8 vine tomatoes,
  
• 3 ears of sweet corn,
• 3 bunches of spinach
  
• and a huge bunch of fresh mint
  

only cost me 6 pounds 59 pence!

El Rancho de Lalo@ Brixton, London review

Just when I was about to mourn the demise of Coma y Punto, my favourite Colombian joint in Brixton Market, in its ashes arose another one, El Rancho de Lalo.

They still serve the same good reliable Columbian fare. My all-time favourite bandeja paisa, a huge platter of meats and carbs is just as perfectly cooked and plentiful as at Coma y Punto and costs the same 9.50. The way they make the pig belly crunchy on the outside and juicy inside is inimitable.

They have spruced up the interior and exterior (it was rather shaby before). The maitre-d' swaggers around in the Colombian national costume. The lunch deal: one main + one drink for 6 quid fills up even a glutton like me. I had once their oxtail stew and another time their sancocho,which I succesfully tried to replicate later. Can find no fault with either.

Pro's: Super friendly service. Consistently good food. Great location for Brixton people-watching.
Con's: Slightly cramped seating.
In a nutshell: God bless South America for its food!

El Rancho de Lalo
94-95 Granville Arcade
Brixton Market
London SW9 8PS

Yorkshire roast beef wrap @ The Prince Albert, Brixton

If you know where to go - and it's no rocket science - you can eat extremely well in London for under a tenner. A good example is my local pub, The Prince Albert in Brixton's Coldharbour Lane. Despite its kinky name it churns out perfectly conventional English fare cooked to perfection. I am probably the last person to exalt the virtues of French fries but I find them a treat at The Prince Albert.

Or take this Yorkshire roast beef wrap. I am not quite sure it is really typical British as I have never encountered it anywhere else but it's a beatifully presented and expertly prepared dish. If the picture and my (rarely awoken) enthusiasm were not convincing enough, here's the last one that will sure get you: it's only 5 quid!

Malay fish head curry recipe (gulai kepala ikan)

veryone I know  rolls their eyes squeamishly at the very mention of fish heads.

- How can you eat it what is looking at you? - my Black French friend Lionel's voice goes an octave higher than usual. Well, dude, just don't look back, c'est ça!

My landlord raises his face from his plateful of deep-fried fish fingers only to crack something very sarcastically English about my bagful of nice and fresh salmon heads. I have brought them at Brixton Market, three for a quid, now try to beat that!

But the best thing about them is not how cheap they are but all the lovely textures you get from a big meaty head of a piscine predator - from the meaty cheeks to the crunchy cartilage to the flavoursome brain, and I love the eyes too!

This time, instead of Ghanaian abenkwan, I made it Malay style, gulai kepala ikan. It is so good that some consider it the national dish of Malaysia and Singapore.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients (if you don't know what it is, google it or just show the name to  your local Asian grocer): 

• 3 medium-sized salmon heads
• two red onions
• half a head of garlic
• a three-inch piece of ginger 
• teaspoonful of turmeric
• one crushed and finely chopped stalk of lemon grass
• half an inch of finely sliced galangal
• half a handful of fresh or frozen curry leaves
• a couple of de-seeded chopped chillies
• a few tablespoonfuls of Malay fish curry powder (can be made by grinding ad mixing equal quantities jeera, coriander seeds, fenugreek and red pepper)
• half a litre of tamarind juice (dissolving 50g tamarind paste in warm water) 
• half a litre of coconut milk (or dissolve 100 g creamed coconut and warm water)
• a dozen okras, two large tomatoes cut into eight pieces each, a handful of string beans, and half a dozen halved garden eggs. 

 Cooking instructions:

1. De-gill the heads, wash them well and chop them into 8 pieces each.
2. Peel and make paste out of the onions, garlic and ginger.
3. Lightly fry the paste in a deep cast-iron pot with some ghee or vegetable oil.
4. Add turmeric and fry until it start giving off flavour.
5. Add the rest of the spices. Fry ever so gently, making sure the flavours fold into the oil, not go up with the smoke.
6. Add the tamarind juice and the coconut milk.
7. Bring to a gentle simmer and add the vegetables and fish heads.
   
8. Simmer until the vegetables are soft. 
9. Serve with freshly cooked steamed rice.

Bitter gourd, goya, cerasee, karela: it's all actually one thing

ruly omnivorous that I am, there are very few restrictions when it comes to food, as long as it is nicely cooked. All edible carbon matter on this planet is a gift from God not to be taken for granted. My very few no-no's cover probably just steaks from cute animals like koalas and guinea pigs . Otherwise nothing else is barred. Bitter melon, however, is something I don't suffer gladly. I force myself to eat it because it is supposed to be so good for health (like most other health foods). The ridiculously long average life span on Okinawa, which beats even that in mainland Japan, is routinely attributed to the high consumption levels of goya, as it is known in Japanese.

The most common way to cook it is to remove the scathingly bitter peel and seeds and stuff the remaining flesh with mince, tofu and rice. This brings down the bitterness to a more tolerable level but it still tastes like somebody has accidentally spilt a pack of quinine into the pot.

As if to try to make life in the Caribbean less sweet, Jamaicans make tea out of cerasee. With every sip you need to remind yourself of its alleged health benefits, de-pimpling the skin being one of them.

Giant African land snail: everything is big in Africa

thought they were a legend. By the time I moved to Brixton they had certainly become one. Thanks to an animal rights campaign, Giant African Land Snails were banned from Brixton Market, as "animals with feelings, just like us". Although I do sympathise (to a degree) with the campaigners' cause, why not then go down on trade in crabs and mussels right next door? Be consistent.

But today I spotted them again. They do look quite surreal, somewhat like giant overgrown bigorneaux. Ghana Tiger Snails , as they are also known, grow up to 30cm. The gastropod, or the foot muscle, is what is used for consumption. Snails being hermaphrodites, it contains both the penis and the vagina.  The shells need to be cracked, the meaty part scrubbed with alum and boiled in water until it becomes dribbly. Stir-fry with chopped bell peppers, tomatoes and onions. Use palm oil and Scotch bonnet pepper (SUPER hot!) for authentic West African flavouring.

Kwanga: African cassava wrap

rixton Market always abounds in wonders. When in the mood for a bit of serendipity, I just take a stroll there. This time I stumbled upon another mystery edibles that even the grocer did not know what it was. "Kwanga ya tempe" said the sign. Sounded inviting enough to me. So I got me one - to the amazement of everyone in the shop.

- Do you know what it is?
-No idea. I'll look it up.

So I bought myself a culinary adventure for one quid.

Turns out kwanga is just on of the names for this cassava cakes wrapped in dry banana leaves. It is also known as chikwangue, miondo, mounguele and baton de manioc - depending on where you come from. It is a kind of savoury bread that you have with your mains. It works very well to offset the spicy flavours of African stews.

African onions

ife is full of surprises. Just when you think you've seen it all, wham, it blows right in your face!

The other day at Brixton Market I bought what I thought was a bag of common-or-garden red onions. They were marked African onions but I took it was the grocer's trick to sell more of those to his numerous African clientèle. Turns out wrong. I felt the mighty difference just when I started peeling one. It was like the second power of your regular onion punch. Same went for the taste: onion on steroids and amphetamines! Nothing to do with the gentle sweetness of red onion. Appearances are deceptive. Now I know better.

P.S. I just found out that these onions are also known as Bombay or Nasik or Pune and are also popular with South Asians.

Grape leaves for stuffing and wrapping

rapping is a great way of cooking. Russians use cabbage leaves, Thais - pandan leaves, the Chinese - lotus leaves, the Japanese - bamboo leaves, Indians - banana leaves, Mexicans - corn husks. In Laos and Vietnam they stuff food into pieces of bamboo trunk. The whole shebang is about letting the wrapping flavour permeate the rest of the ingredients.

In the Near East, a vaguely defined area spanning from Greece and Romania to Armenia and Syria, grapes leaves (a.k.a. vine leaves) enjoy a wide coinage. Their flavour is not that strong but the pleasantly sourish kick they bring to food is well worth the trouble of wrapping. My parents are lucky to use fresh ones from their garden but I have to buy them jarred. Most of the preserved varieties I see in Europe are imported from Turkey. I buy mine in an Iranian-run shop at Brixton Market. The first dish I cooked in London using grape leaves was charcoal grilled sardines.

How to cook African plantain

his is NOT a banana. This is a plantain!" Oby definitely has a point. For Nigerians (and Jamaicans) it is a kind of potato that you can fry, boil, mash or make pies from.

I saw similar ones, if somewhat smaller, in Thailand, where they call them kluay nam wah (กล้วยน้ำว้า) and grill them on charcoals.



You can definitely know they are not your regular dessert bananas because they have black stones inside.

The easiest and most common thing you can do with a plantain is to fry it in oil.

1. Heat a frying pan on medium high heat.
2. Add oil, wait until it gets hot.
3. Slice plantains into 2-3mm wedges and sprinkle them with salt.
4. Put the wedges in the pan. Fry until golden brown.
5. Serve with hkatenkwan or abenkwan or any other African or Caribbean dish of your choice.

Mandioquinha: a root veg from Brazil

s it always go with me, an innocent trip to buy some sesame seeds ended up with me walking away with 4 bags of foodstuffs. Such is Brixton Market, a serendipity outlet where you never know what you are in for.

This time my lucky find was Brazilian mandioquinha (aka arracacha in Spanish). It is a root vegetable indigenous to South America. Its taste is a cross between parsnip and chestnut.

I fixed it in the authentic Brazilian way: boiled and mashed, with fried spinach and bife de tira, baby beef steak. No condiments but salt and pepper not to mess with natural flavourful goodness!

The spinach they sell at the market is more robust and has a stronger, faintly bitterish taste than what you get in supermarkets.

Kam-jam: eat like an elf! (金針)

ating flowers seems like an elves' and fairies' pastime. However, there are millions of regular humans in East Asia who do that at least once in a while. Well, the Chinese do not sustain on petals and pollen, but on occasion do consume dried daylily (or tiger lily) buds (金針).

They go by kam-jam or golden needles in Chinese grocery stores but I really like their French name: fleurs de lys séchés. I imagine French royalists (all 14 of them) cringing when somebody boils their totem flower with sea brim and ginger.

They - dried daylilies, but, perhaps,French royalists too - need to be reconstituted in cold water before consumption. Normally half an hour is enough. The water comes out sour-ish and not very pleasantly tasting so I just dump it. The buds themselves taste quite like asparagus without its characteristic funk. I use kam-jam in mapo-tofu, seafood noodles and mushroom noodles. There is also a delicious fish soup recipe where daylily buds feature prominently.

They can be consumed fresh too. My Mom picks them just before they blossom out and stuffs them with something reminiscent of a very light celery-flavoured chicken salad. I will publish recipe once I talk her into divulging it.

Coma y Punto: Colombian Restaurant in Brixton, London

rixton market is full of surprises. Perhaps, about the only thing you won't find here is penguin meat. The rest is there. After my love at first bite with a Colombian chorizo, I discovered a Colombian restaurant there.

Coma y Punto is a simple café right off Coldharbour Lane. A Colombian flag is hung right outside so that you wouldn't mistake it for an Egyptian or Vietnamese place. It is constantly swarmed with Colombians - a good sign, at least qua food authenticity.




We started with drinks: Pony, a sweetish Colombian malt drink for Floyd, and sugarcane juice with a dash of lime for me. My drink was very different from the sweet and aromatic greenish liquid I was used to in Thailand. It looked and tasted more like Russian stewed fruit compote.

The bandeja paisa (£8.50) I ordered is a quintessential Colombian dish. It combines all cultural influences that are present in the country - indigenous, Spanish and African as well as, perhaps, at least half of Colombia's protein deposits. My platter consisted of:

• ground grilled steak
• chicharrón (fried pork rind)
• fried beans
• a fried egg
• fried chorizo
• fried plantain
  
• boiled rice
• sliced avocado
• coleslaw
• an arepa (flat unleavened corn bread)
  

As you can see even if from just the description, it was a meal fit for a giant.

Floyd's giant carne a la brasa, thin slices of grilled beef (£9.00), arrived with rice, fried plantains, coleslaw and two hash brownies.

As we tucked in in our food, a plasma screen on the wall kept displaying video after video of Colombian music. A lovely touch, adding to the ethnic experience. The simple and honest peasant food is perfect to provide you with nutrients for a day of hard work. Just as English breakfast, it is a bit of a guilty pleasure though.

Pro's: Lots of protein and calories to get you going for the whole day.
Con's: Cramped seating.
In a nutshell: Authentic Colombian food at great prices.

Chayote squash: a.k.a. cristophene

epending on which shop you buy it at Brixton market, it is called chayote, chow chow or cristophene. Apocryphally, it goes by "old people's lips" on the Stateside. If you look at the picture you will see where they are coming from.

Chayote is uniquely crunchy, juicy and starchy. Its texture and taste are a cross between squash and guava. It can be used like either.

I find it quite pleasant raw with the sugar and chili powder pepper, just like they have unripe guava in Thailand.

So far I have tried it in its squash emploi in Ghanaian abenkwan and will report on my further findings.

Ode to Brixton Market

allelujah, the vicious plans to pull down this exciting fount of exotic foods and erect yet another Faceless Temple of Bland Edibles and Mindless Consumerism have come to none! Brixton Market is here to stay.

Tesco's 2-pound Curry Pack and Starbucks' Cardamom-and-Chili Soy Milk Crappuccino aficionados will have to go elsewhere and leave us alone to enjoy the colourful cornucopia of African, South American, Indian, Chinese, Caribbean and Middle Eastern groceries.

Brixton Market keeps us from the sad fate of having to sustain on Tesco and the ilk's substandard fodder. Where else can you buy in one place

• Columbian sausage,
• Thai durian,
  
• Nigerian fufu,
  
• Jamaican locust fruit,
• Turkish bulgur,
  
• Panamanian chayote,
  
• Chinese daylily buds,
• Brazilian mandioquinha and
• Ghanaian garden eggs

and at a price anyone can afford?

Shopping for rice in London

ormal folks do their grocery shopping because they have to. Foodies, like yours truly, because they love to. I can spend hours ferreting out right ingredients in fresh markets and grocery stores.

The simple task of buying rice took me to four shops around Brixton Market. In each I interviewed the people about which rice they think is the best value. I was given a bewildering range of opinions about tens of different sorts and types. Indians and Pakistanis all claimed their Old Country's rice is the best.

Finally, I consulted a disinterested part, a Lebanese. I followed his advice and bought Indian Daawat basmati rice. It is more expensive than average but totally worth the extra money spent. It has long grains, faint vanilla flavour and when cooked stays fluffy, the texture the Japanese call tsubu-tsubu.

I haven't yet bought a rice-cooker but I have managed to cook rice in a pan on an electric range even with the golden brown crust at the bottom, so priced by the Iranians and Japanese!

Kuzu pirzola: Turkish lamb chops

urkish food is divine. Seven hundred years of imperial rule uniting such diverse regions as Egypt, Hungary, Azerbaijan, Greece, Algeria and the Ukraine have created a refined cuisine on par with world's majors such as Italian, Chinese or French. Rich farmlands, orchards and pastures as well as 7,200 km of coastline bring an amazing variety of fresh produce to the Turkish table.

I remember myself on my first visit to Istanbul back in my vegan years drooling over luscious uskumru dolması (stuffed mackerel). "Oh, but the poor animals!" I had to remind myself time and again. "Poor lambs need protection!" I kept spinning in my head whilst gawking at aromatic kebab skewers sizzling on open fire. It was truly an agony trip and it delivered the first chink in my animal rights activist armour.

Many years later I find myself recreating the missed pleasures of Turkey here in London. Luckily, it is easy. Most butcher shops in Brixton Market are run by Turkish or Middle Eastern people who know a thing or two about good lamb chops, for it is Turkey's very finest kuzu pirzola (lamb chops) that I set my mind on today.

Lamb chops don't need much frills. The outcome is down to the quality of the ingredients. The only thing I do with them is marinating them lightly in a mix of:

• a dash of aceto balsamico
• a generous amount of coarsely ground black pepper
• some sea salt
• a tablespoonful of honey
• one herb: it's dried oregano this time for the sake of authenticity but rosemary (I just got some from Olga's garden), mint or hyssop are also good.
  

The purpose of this marinade is to underscore, not to upstage the natural lamb flavour so it should be used in moderation. Half an hour is about enough for marinating especially if your lamb chops are excellent quality. About 3 minutes of frying on each side should suffice for lamb chops, they should come out à point, that is pink inside.

The side of stir-fried tomatoes and okra is just that: tomatoes and okra quickly stir-fried with olive oil, salt and pepper. This is a champion combination and there is nothing to add to it.

Bulgur is a Turkish cereal. It is available in most ethnic groceries, if you have those in your neck of the woods. The best way to cook it is by frying it first in butter until it is golden brown and then steam it on very low fire in chicken broth with a pinch of salt.

At a birthday party a couple of months ago I saw a Tunisian girl slow-roasting sultanas and pine nuts for couscous. I decided to do the same for my bulgur. I also added some pistachios, dried figs and apricots.

The final touch is chopped coriander. I use handfuls, you can hardly spoil a meal with it.