Why I bake my own bread

started making bread about two years ago. It had been in the pipeline for a while, within my general trend of opting out of processed food, but the tipping point came in May 2014. As we drove down a stretch of the Adriatic between Istria and Montenegro, I noticed that in Croatia it is apparently legally required to display bread ingredients in a visible, readable fashion. Going through long lines of unpronounceable chemical compounds has tripped off the final alarm in my brain. Back in London, I discovered that supermarkets guard such information for their dear lives: from Iceland to Waitrose, none shows what exactly they put in their bread. It took me an arduous, drawn-out email exchange with M&S to get them to reveal what they put in their baguette.

As I started digging around, I found out that the Chorleywood bread process, invented in the UK in 1961 and then spread all over the world, puts speed, bottomline and efficiency ahead of compatibility with how humans digest their food. It turns out that the bastards only let the dough to proof for a few minutes, barely allowing the yeast to break down things that the human stomach is not well equipped to process, such as gluten and various sugars. The latter-day pandemic of  the celiac disease, when people get adverse symptoms from eating bread and pastry, might well be credited to that wondrous innovation introducing the values of capitalist production into your digestive system. 

That's how I got converted into hand-made bread. My two specialties are largely inspired by the wonderful custard-running Gino d'Acampo. Every now and then I diversify and try other recipes, but my two mainstays, week in, week out, still are pagnotta con finocchietto, farmhouse loaf encrusted with fennel seeds, and pagnotta ligure con patate, Ligurian rustic loaf with potatoes and rosemary. I do modify and jazz up the recipes, with quite splendiferous outcomes, so please feel free to contact me, should you fancy a recipe. All pictures here are of my home creations.

Nettle soup, done well

It's again this time of the year when foodies and those aligned with them start cooking foraged weeds. What used to be (really) poor man's grub, these days is a social marker of the educated classes. Now, I've seen and tried and number of nettle soups this year and, I hate to say that, people you need to get a grip. Just boiling leaves with random veggies does not do the trick, or any trick for that matter. That's what my 85-year-old farmer uncle cooks for his piglets, literally. Nettle has its own special flavour that, if served to humans, needs to be cherished, flaunted and taken proper care of.

So here I will share the proper nettle soup recipe, as it's been cooked in my family for at least three generations.

1. Pick a bunch of young nettle leaves, they need to be light green and with no flowers forming.
2. Remove the stems and rinse well in cold water.
3. Sautee in butter on a low heat.
4. Add chopped shallots or onions. Cook until soft.
5. Add a can or two of chopped tomatoes with juice. If too thick, add water.
6. Beat a nice large biodynamic egg and add into the boiling soup, as you stir it, making sure it comes out stringy, not cloudy.
7. Let it bubble away for a little while to let the tastes mingle.
8. Salt and pepper in moderation. Sprinkle a few drops of fish sauce to enhance the flavour.

This recipe balances the sourness from the tomatoes and the sweetness of sauteed onions to give the nettle a proper stage to show off its zing.

Old wives' tales (that are quite likely true):  

• Nettles are supposed to stimulate your liver to cleanse blood. 

• It is not recommend to eat too much nettle soup, not more than 2-3 times a year, naturally in the spring.

Miyeok guk: Korean seaweed soup recipe (미역국)

iyeok guk (미역국), Korean seaweed soup, is packed with essential nutrients that are hardly ever present in your daily 5. That is why in Korea it is given to pregnant women and students about to sit for an exam.

Like all Korean recipes it is straightforward, simple and yields amazing results. The beef stock lends the seaweed a depth of flavour, while the aromas of garlic and sesame oil make the melody of this soup a fully harmonised one.

1. Soak 2 tbsp of dried seaweed (miyeok in Korean or wakame in Japanese) in plenty of cold water. I also use kombu/dasima but that is optional
   
2. In the meantime cut 50 g lean beef into thin strips and marinade them in 1 tbsp of sesame oil and a modicum of freshly ground black pepper.
   
3. Heat a wok and quickly stir-fry the beef.
   
4. When the beef is nicely browned, reduce the fire and add the seaweed. Make sure to wring it out as dry as possible. Stir-fry very briefly.
   
5. Add 3 cups of water and bring to a simmer.
6. Add 3-5 cloves of garlic, sliced, and soya sauce to taste.
7. Simmer until the garlic is soft.
8. Serve with a sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper , a drizzle of sesame oil and a pinch of finely sliced scallions.
   

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.

Kuki wakame (茎わかめ): Japanese seaweed stems

h Christmas! The time to wash down lovely oven-dehydrated turkey and vein-clogging trifle with copious amounts of hangover-sure punch. Last year, however, I escaped the joys of London's festive season to eat raw fish on a hotel rooftop. As the tropical night's tightening embrace was squeezing more and more sweat out of my body, kuki wakame (茎わかめ) was what I had swapped the obligatory fart-inducing Brussels sprouts for.

Nominated as among world's 100 most invasive species, wakame kelp has stems whose lovely texture is simultaneously crunchy and jelly-like, described in Japanese as kori-kori. When used as food, they are called kuki wakame and have a nice flavour of seawind. Wind, however, is where all parallels with Brussels sprouts stop.

This Japanese-style aemono salad requires minimum cooking: the accent is on harmonising (aeru) the ingredients. So, here goes the recipe:

TBC

Hou-tou-gu (yamabushitake): the wonder of China

he wonder of Da Shan, Monkey Head Mushroom!" Gaudy red characters on a package in my local Chinese shop cried for attention. They got mine. I had no idea what was so wondrous about this weird-looking fungus but I would just google it once back home.

It turned out the characters did not lie. Decoction of this mushroom (猴頭菇 - hou-tou-gu) is used in traditional Chinese medicine to treat or prevent such conditions as indigestion, thrombosis, dementia, neurasthenia as well as the ulcers and cancer of the stomach, duodenal and oesophagus. It is known to reduce to level of lipids in blood.The secret behind such an astonishingly wide strike zone is ascribed to the polysaccharides that address the root of those seemingly unrelated conditions.

It is one of the Four Culinary Treasures of China, the other three are bear's paws, trepangs and shark fins. It is also known as Lion's Mane Mushroom, Bearded Tooth Mushroom, Hedgehog Mushroom, Bearded Hedgehog Mushroom, pom pom mushroom, or Bearded Tooth Fungus. Its Latin name, Hericium erinaceus, is only used in scientific literature while the Japanese name, yamabushitake (山伏茸) frequently occurs in commercial contexts.

Nan bao - better than Viagra

ince the topic of aphrodisiac food seems to have attracted quite a bit of attention here, I will write more about these magic tablets. Although not technically food, they are pure herbs.

While in the West Viagra brings short-term benefits without addressing the root of the problem, the Chinese have taken a more holistic approach. Nan bao (男宝), meaning 'male treasure', is a mix of herbs that fixes your whole system so that you have more sexual drive. It takes two weeks to finish the treatment course, but its benefits lasts long.

Nan bao can be bought in most Chinese pharmacies. It is not covered by most basic insurance policies but then again you do not need a prescription for it.

Kombu: Japanese kelp

n Russian, it is called "sea cabbage" or laminaria and is normally the base ingredient for an uninspired pickled salad. When Yeltsin and his cronies were busy plundering Soviet assets, canned laminaria salad was one of the few items always available in food shops. This seaweed's taste would have forever associated for me with Yeltin's hunger winters, had I not rediscovered it upon moving to Japan. The Japanese know a myriad highly delectably uses for it and it is in Japan that I grew to love this multifarious kelp.

For hundreds of years in Buddhist Japan a ban on meat consumption ban was in force, so people had to come up with something else than veal or chicken stock for cooking. Kombu, as it is known in Japan, is one of the three main soup bases (dashi). It is of gentler flavour than the other two, which are made of dried flakes of skipper mackerel (katsuo) and shiitake.

When it is sold dry it comes in two ways: shredded (on the picture) or in sheets. It is always covered with sharp-tasting residual sea salt and hence is high in iodine. When consumed over a long period of time, kombu is known to reduce grey hair and darken your natural hair hue. Thanks to it, through the years I have gone from light brown to dark brown with not a silver hair in sight.

I use it to make stock for miso-shiru, to make congee or o-kayu for breakfast, to prepare delicious beer snack tsukudani.

Miso: Japanese soya bean paste (味噌)

n the olden days of self-isolation, Japan was a strictly Buddhist country. In culinary terms it meant that meat consumption was banned. For protein, the Japanese had to rely on fish and beans. When others would be content chewing on fried fish and boiled beans, the Japanese went to great lengths to diversify their diet. Beans alone come in a myriad of often unrecognisable, yet very delicious guises.

Miso is one of those. Essentially, it is salted bean paste fermented with Japan's official national micro-organism, Aspergillus oryzae, known in Japanese as kouji-kin (麴菌). The paste is also augmented with ground grain such as rice, barley, mullet or buckwheat. Fermentation makes beans more easily digestible and, in fact, even medicinal. Miso consumption is credited with a slew of health benefits starting from hypertension control to curing radiation sickness.

As it always goes with food in Japan, there are hundreds of regional varieties. They all can be divided into four big categories:

1. shiro-miso, which is of a blonder hue as in the top picture,
   
2. aka-miso, which is dark(er) brown,
3. kuro-miso is the darkest of them all,
4. hatcho-miso has the strongest flavour.

Most famous regional varieties include:

• Hatchou miso (八丁味噌) - Aichi Prefecture
• Nagoya miso (名古屋味噌) - Aichi Prefecture
  
• Sanshu miso (三州味噌), slightly bitterirsh miso widely used in kaiseki dishes - Nagoya Prefecture
  
• Kujo miso (郡上味噌), based on a mix of barley and beans - Gifu Prefecture
• Gozen miso (御膳味噌), red sweet-tasting miso with a high content of ground rice - Tokushima Prefecture
  
• Kinzanji miso (金山寺味噌, 径山寺味噌), the base paste is made from beans, rice barley and vegetables - Wakayama Prefecture
  
• Aijiro miso (相白味噌), blonde sweet-tasting miso - Shizuoka Prefecture
  
• Hokkaido miso (北海道味噌) - Hokkaido Prefecture
  
• Tsugaru miso (津軽味噌), spicy-tasting red miso - Aomori Prefecture
  
• Akita miso (秋田味噌) - Akita Prefecture
• Sendai miso (仙台味噌), spicy tasting miso with rice and with coarsely ground beans, can be consumed raw - Miyagi Prefecture
• Aizu miso (会津味噌) - Fukushima Prefecture
• Echigo miso( 越後味噌) - Niigata Prefecture
• Sado miso (佐渡味噌) - Niigata Prefecture
• Etchu miso (越中味噌), light miso with whole rice grains, aka "water miso" - Toyama Prefecture
  
• Kaga miso (加賀味噌) - Ishikawa Prefecture
• Seikyou miso (西京味噌) - Kyoto Prefecture
• Fuchu miso (府中味噌) - Hiroshima Prefecture
• Sanuki miso (讃岐味噌) - Kagawa Prefecture
• Shimabara miso (島原味噌), barley-based - Nagasaki Prefecture
• Satsuma miso (薩摩味噌), sweet-tasting barley-based miso - Kagoshima Prefecture
• Edo Amamiso (江戸甘味噌) - Tokyo Prefecture
• Shinshu Miso (信州味噌) - Nagano Prefecture
• Sakura Miso (桜味噌) - Osaka Prefecture
• Akadashi (赤だし) - Kyoto Prefecture - 豆・米調味味噌
• Sotetsu miso (蘇鉄味噌) or Nari miso (なり味噌), made from detoxified cycad fruit - Okinawa Prefecture and Amami Islands in Kagoshima Prefecture
  

Apart from its main role as the base of miso-shiru soup, miso is a very versatile condiment. One of the effects of fermentation is the increased content of amino acids that our taste buds perceive as savoury. This makes it a welcome ingredient in many dishes. It is used to pickle vegetables in the marinade called miso-zuke.

Other ways to use miso in cooking include:

• miso udon
• basting mix for dengaku, yakimochi and corn on the cob
• marinades
• misoyaki sauce

So let it be known as "snow ear" (雪耳)

sometimes think how I would contact Chinese export companies and offer my services in developing (or just using) proper English names for Chinese food ingredients. After all it's all about, in my friend Yasmin's words, "branding, branding and once again branding". Give something weird and unknown an attractive name and watch it sell like hot pies.

In the Chinese shop where I do my groceries this lovely mushroom is unpretentiously called "dried white fungus". I can vividly recall the expressions of puzzled disgust on the faces of my good friends Muhabbat and Jitte, when I suggested they add some to their shopping basket. Not many people want to eat what sounds like something you get on your toe-nail in a public bath.

A fancy name would make it so much easier to sell. You don't have to be very inventive: just translate the Chinese name directly into English: "snow ear" (雪耳). Got your attention, huh? Or "silver ear" (銀耳). Same reaction, innit?

It is mostly used for desserts. Prized for its gently crunchy texture, it hardly has any taste of its own, so I use it in some savoury dishes like spicy seafood noodles or Korean udon. In Chinese medicine it is considered a longevity booster, mainly for its blood-vessel de-clogging working.

Kikurage: the mushroom of many names (キクラゲ, 黑木耳)

nown in the past as Jew's ear, these days it is safer to call it kikurage (キクラゲ) by its Japanese name. Its alternative name, jelly ear, is not very widely recognised, while the Latin name, Auricularia auricula-judae, is too cumbersome. The Chinese name hei mu er (黑木耳) will hardly ever catch on, will it?

Once I had to ask Floyd to buy it for me in a Chinese shop. None of the names seemed to work although hei mu er proved outside Floyd's linguistic abilities. Finally, he gave up on seeking help from the shop's people and, after quite an effort, managed to locate it himself. The bag said "Black Fungus".

Kikurage is sold dry in most Asian stores. It expands a lot when soaked in water (takes about 30 minutes). The pictures below is the same mushroom as above before soaking! It has a faint earthy flavour and gently crunchy, agaric texture for which it is mostly prized. I don't know what kind of coincidence it is, but kikurage is only popular in the traditionally Confucian countries - Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan and Vietnam. It is not particularly click with the rest of Asia.

In traditional Chinese medicine hei mu er is believed to possess anti-thrombosis properties, that is, it de-clogs your arteries and veins. By extension, it is believed to promote longevity. Polysaccharides that it contains have a tumour-preventive effect.

I use it in a variety of dishes: from sashimi (it is one of the few mushrooms you can eat raw) to noodles and sweet-and-sour chicken. It does not need much cooking and can be added just a couple of minutes before the dish is ready.

Mung bean sprouts: the pure energy of life (もやし, 豆芽)

ruly, truly, one man's food, another man's poison. I remember how I scared my Moscow friends when I brought a bag of bean sprouts to fix some Chinese food for them. They decided they were in for a feast of creepy Asian worms.

Bean sprouts are widely used in Pacific Asian cuisines. They are known as moyashi (もやし) in Japan, dou ya (豆芽) in China, kongnamul (콩나물) in Korea, tauge in Indonesia (and Holland), thua ngok (ถั่วงอก) in Thailand. In Iran, they are traditionally prepared for the New Year's festival Navrooz. There they symbolize the power of new life.

In Thailand, folk wisdom has it that bean sprouts, when consumed raw, increase sexual drive. It come as no surprise if you consider all the life energy of enzymes and vitamines of freshly sprouting seeds!

I use them for a number of dishes: from Indonesian gado-gado to Chinese mapo-dofu. I can chew them raw much to the consternation of my friends. But I don't mind as it defo gives me a huge perk once in between the sheets! +wink wink+

Natto: treasure box of wholesomeness (納豆)

atto is the food that the Japanese give foreigners to have fun seeing their disgusted faces. "Wa-ha-ha-ha, you canto eato Japanizu foodo!" Smelly, sticky and stringy, it looks like half-rotten eggs of an alien spider. In fact, natto (pronounced nut-toe) is half-rotten soya beans and is only popular with about half the population of Japan. The other half hate it just as much as most foreigners.

My first encounter with it was when I saw my Argentinian Nisei friend Patricia having it for breakfast. She opened a small styrofoam pack, squeezed mustard and tare sauce from the attached weeny bags, mixed it all in and tipped it on top of a bowl of rice. That and green tea started her day. I had only heard that natto is gross stuff (that's accepted public opinion in Osaka where we were at the time) so I made fun of Patricia.

However, when I tried natto myself, it turned out quite nice: nutty and somewhat reminiscent of strong cheese. With the extra zing of mustard or negi it actually tastes great.

Later I found out that natto is packed with scientifically proven health-promoting substances preventing a range of medical conditions from thrombosis, baldness and obesity to cancer, osteoporosis and Altzheimer's.

Natto is cheap and available from most Japanese food shops abroad. In London it costs me £1.19 for a pack of four.

Hui Sup tea: the drying by drinking paradox (去濕茶)

am always on the lookout for new herbal teas. This time I spotted this bag in a Chinese supermarket. Its strange name was what caught my eye: Dehydrating Tea (去濕茶) .

Now you drink tea to replenish liquid in your body, not the other way around. I consulted my Singaporean friend Han-sheng, aka Hon-sang, if you choose to call him in his native Cantonese. He is an accomplished graphic designer and a very erudite man, versed in both Oriental and Western cultures.

According to him, the Chinese drink this herbal tea in summer, when our water intake understandably increases. As a result, our yin aspect, the moist and inactive element, goes up. This makes us feel battered and listless. Hui Sup tea (去濕茶) is made of herbs that increase the dry and vigorous yang aspect without depriving our body of the essential liquid. Quite a trick , isn't it: drying up by drinking?

"So what do you do living on the equator, where the summer never ends?", I kept quizzing. "We just drink it year around." There is no outwitting the Chinese.

For those of you who can't get hold of it where you live but want to fix a yang-boosting infusion themselves here's the ingredients breakdown:

• Artemisia capillaris (20%)
• Flos gossampini (30%)
• Flos puerariae (17%)
• Rhizoma dioscoreae (13%)
• Honeysuckle (7%)
• Juncus effusus (4%)
• Rhizoma alismatis (9%)

Bombax ceiba or wood cotton flowers (木綿花) can also be added to the mix as they clear excessive heat from the internal organs and help regulate the kidney function.