Spicy daikon-oroshi salad

1. Grate daikon (mooli) and heap up on a small platter.
2. For the dressing: mix dry chilli flakes,  garlic powder, fish sauce, soya sauce,  Chunking vinegar, chopped scallions, and toasted sesame oil.
3. Tip the dressing on the daikon heap. Serve.

Three continents in a pan: stir-fried spinach with chorizo and onions

Considering what I stash in my cupboards, it's no wonder most of my cooking is some kind of fusion. Whether 'improving' French stews with Thai fish sauce or spiking hommous with dried lime powder, the Post-Modern culinary pastiche is the order of the day.

Today's lunch was whipped up at the epistemic crossroads of Thai, Spanish and West African cuisines: the classic Thai phat phak fai daeng was made with Asturian chorizo as well as African spinach, onions and Scottish bonnet peppers, proving a very happy marriage.

1. Slowly saute a lot of crushed garlic with a tad of finely chopped Scottish bonnet pepper.
   
2. Add sliced chorizo and fry on a medium fir until it makes the oil red.
   
3. Add some chopped tomatoes and red African onions, fry until the onions are soft.
   
4. Add a lot of chopped African spinach (it's more robust and sweeter than the regular one) and fold into the mixture. Fry until the spinach retain just a bit of crunch.
   
5. Season with Thai fish sauce.
   
   
6. Serve with steamed rice.

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!

Organic vegan sushi: need I say more?

alking about why I quit veganism after 10 years of torturing myself and those around me with what essentially is an eating disorder. This will defend my case without any words: organic barley sushi with tofu and vegetables, that tasted remarkably like a slab of damp toilet paper.

Fire & Stone@London: a Mad Pizza Party

here is a good reason why classic recipes never age. Because the perfect combination once found, does not need to change, stupid! You can't possibly add anything to bechamel without spoiling it.

You may try to enhance the original combination of flavours with a bit of well-intended trickery, like I often do, using, for example, fish sauce instead of salt. Or underscore it with what the Japanese call kakushiaji - a background taste that contrasts and emphasizes the leitmotif taste. That is how a hint of Scotch bonnet pepper brings out the best in puttanesca. But some chefs truly deserve to be pilloried, tarred and feathered for their far-fetched concoctions.

Many a pizza at London's Fire and Stone qualify for that kind of treatment. The USP here is a "global menu" with pizza toppings from all the continents, purportedly intending to represent the best of world's culinary traditions. In reality, under a guise of cosmopolitan originality you are served a good old classic mixed with some highly incongruous companions on a sheet of, granted, nicely baked dough. See for yourself:

• "Sydney": roasted bacon+egg+ham = full English! (Looking forward to addition of spam!)
• "Peking": shredded duck+Hoi Sin sauce+spring onions = Peking duck! (What on earth were they thinking topping this with mozzarella cheese?)
• "Acapulco": chilli beef+jalapenos,+mozzarella+sour cream = flat fajita! (Nothing wrong with that, but don't call it a pizza!)
• "Lombok": grilled prawns+roasted red peppers+syrupy sweet Thai green curry sauce = well, Thai green curry! (Served on bread, for Pete's sake!)
• "Cape Town": beef mince+tomato sauce+chillies = arrabiata! (Beef mince on a pizza, ho-hum, it tastes just like it sounds!)

The menu also features classic Italian and New York favourites that, in all likelihood, simply must be brilliant, but we were after the quirky and we sure got a huge slab of it that evening.

Pro's: Extremely friendly and efficient service.
Con's: Truly weird pizzas. LOUD inside.
In a nutshell: Multi-culti gone wrong.

Monday 27th, 2010: Indian lunch, lobster dinner

Indian Lunch:

• Tikka Masala Chicken,
• Madras Chicken,
• Masala Dal,
• Biryani Rice,
• orange juice.

Lobster dinner:

• Turkish chicken and almond soup (Bademli ve Terbiyeli Tavuk Çorbası)
• chestnut mushroom oven-baked with truffle oil and goat cheese,
• salad du jardin with lime-wasabi dressing,
• boiled lobster with dill-butter dip
• watermelon
• 2006 Chardonnay-Vermentinu-Muscat, Vin de Pays de l'Ile de Beaute
• Stowell's Chilean Sauvignon Blanc

e vous remerci pour notre pain quotidien: Monday 27th, 2010.

Simplicity revisited: grilled portobello mushrooms with crème fraîche and oyster sauce on a bed of caramelised onions

ive me simplicity any time. Even more so when it comes to food. This is one of my fave lunch sandwiches: portobello mushrooms grilled with crème fraîche and oyster sauce served on a bed of caramelised onions and ciabatta. Haha, I gotcha there! Well, in fact, it is way easier than it sounds, does not cost much and is a cinch to prepare.

Here how it goes:

1. Slice finely two onions. Fry slowly with some olive oil, coarsely ground black pepper, sea salt and dry herbs of your choice until golden brown. This process caramelises the natural sugars in onions bringing out their natural sweetness. If you have fish sauce, use it instead of salt.
2. Mix well crème fraîche with a hearty glug of dry white wine and, how can you do without it, coarsely ground black pepper. Season with fish sauce.
3. Remove the stems from portobello mushrooms, put the caps upside down and fill them with the crème fraîche mix. Put them on an well oiled oven tray.

Bake the mushrooms in the oven at 180 degrees until the crème fraîche looks nice and brown (about 12-15 min).

Cut a ciabatta or a baguette in two, top it with the fried onions, grilled portobellos and chopped parsley or ruccola.

This recipe was inspired by the traditional Russian way of stir-frying wild mushrooms with onions and serving them with sour cream. Fish sauce is a harkback to my Asian days and ciabatta is a tribute to my love affair with all things Mediterranean.

Cajun ham with asparagus on a bed of lettuce

hen you have to cook a romantic dinner, inspiration comes easy. Whether it is down to the serotonin rush or the years spent practising the art of cookery, I am so glad I can whip up perfect dishes in almost no time.

This is what I came up with just fridge leftovers: Cajun ham with asparagus on a bed of lettuce with mustard and honey dressing.

1. First, I marinated ham slices in Cajun mix and aceto balsamico bianco.
   
2. Then I boiled asparagus. The trick is to make them soft enough to chew but still crunchy. Once out of the boiling water, cool down the asparagus with cold water to stop the cooking process, otherwise it will come out overcooked and lame.
   
3. Now down to the dressing: a dash of salt, a dash of freshly ground black pepper, a dash of garlic granules, a glog of aceto balsamico bianco, same quantity of extra virgin olive oil, a tbsp of mustard, a tbsp of honey. The exact proportions really depend on what taste you want to achieve. Ideally, it should well balanced sweet-sour. Shake all well until homogeneous.
   
4. Sear the ham on a very hot skillet with butter: basically it is the Cajun noirci technique.
5. Now arrange the asparagus and ham on a bed of lettuce and sprinkle with the dressing!
   

This was just the starter. The main dish turned out infinitely better but that has nothing with the culinary topic of this blog.

Turkish bulgur with pine nuts and Cajun chicken

Bulgur is a cereal popular in the Middle East: Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. I lightly fry it in butter first and then steam it in 3 shares of water. Bulgur is a tough cookie and this can take up to 40 minutes. It should come just a wee bit chewy, al dente, and I enhance its natural nutty fragrance with slowly roasted and chopped pine nuts, cashews and pistachios.

This chicken is to die for. Here I mix Chinese, Hungarian and Cajun influences to marinate slivers of skinned breast filet in lemon juice, lemon zest, liquid cane sugar, ground paprika and toasted garlic:

• half a kilo of skinned chicken breast cut into slivers;
• one lemon, zested and squeezed;
• 3 nice glubs of liquid cane sugar;
• a teaspoonful of ground paprica;
• half a head of garlic, peeled, sliced and toasted.
  

The longer chicken soaks the better: overnight in the fridge is the optimum . I griddle-fry for the nice sear marks and serve with the bulgur. Chopped coriander blends in perfectly into this symphony of tastes.

Here is a theme song for this fragrant Turkish meal (warning: this is NOT, under any circumstances, a homoerotic video!):