Fabada is an Asturian dish from Northern Spain made of beans and pork. I was lucky enough to buy the pork mix - tocino, morcilla, chorizo and ham - in Madrid and the fava beans you can buy in any market in Amsterdam.
Beans are always a bit of a pain to cook but I managed to restrain myself from buying canned ones and went through the whole nine yard of trouble cooking them myself. Considered the amount of gas I burnt doing that, meat might have been a more enviromentally responsible option after all, whatever the tree-hugging mafia may claim.
empeh is an Indonesian product made from soya beans. I first encountered it in Jakarta where my friend's cook fixed me a vegan dinner with meat replaced by fried tempeh. When raw, it smells yeasty and mushroomy and tastes bland and doughy. When cooked, it has a lovely meaty texture and a nutty flavour reminiscent of fried bacon. It is delicious with freshly made long-grain rice and sambal manis (mind you, it is NOT the same as sambal kecap manis, which is a sweetish soya sauce!) This is how I had it for the first time in a remote mountain village on a stopover during our 25-hour Trans-Sumatran Death Trip From Hell back in 2001. It took me some time to replicate that taste. There are a lot of tricks of trade that you need to know to fry your tempeh perfectly:
SMALL EVEN PIECES: Cut the tempeh loaf into even 3-4-mm cubes, this way they all will get cooked evenly.
CAST-IRON WOK: Heat very well a thick-bottomed pan/wok before adding oil. Cast-aluminium ware works just fine too. Heat is distributed evenly in cast-metal ware making sure that everything is cooked thoroughly and evenly.
HOT ODOURLESS OIL: Pour about 1.5 cm of non-smoking cooking oil (mustard rapeseed or grape seed oil is good, olive oil will NOT do) and wait until it gets hot. I normally wait until it just starts ever-so-lightly smoking.
AMPLE OIL: Don't save on oil, if you've poured too much you can always strain the tempehand cut the rest with a paper towel. If you don't put enough oil, you'll end up with a soggy, anaemic final product.
EXPOSE ALL PIECES TO OIL: Add the cut tempeh and make sure it gets all covered with hot oil immediately. This will form a crust on top of each tempeh cube that won't allow it to soak in too much oil.
KEEP STIRRING: Make sure the tempeh cubes get evenly fried on all sides.
MODERATE HEAT: The fire should be medium high. If it is too high, tempeh will burn, if it is too low, tempehwill absorb too much oil and end up greasy and soggy. All stoves vary, so experiment a bit to get the temperature just right.
DON'T OVERCOOK: Fry until crisp and dark golden brown, NOT dark brown. See the top picture, that's the colour you should aim for.
ADD FLAVOUR: A dash of fish sauce or shoyu for veg(etari)ans closer to the end adds a depth flavour and saltiness. Plain salt just makes it salty. Meh.
It comes out so good you can have it as a snack in its own right, or use it instead of meat in various dishes. Just remember it does not need any additional cooking. Also don't let it soak in sauces too long, as it will become soggy. Add before serving to already cooked dishes. The quickest yet supremely delicious dish you can make with tempeh is gado-gado.
The right kind of tempeh is hard to come by. A lot of truly weird stuff is marketed under that name. In London, where I live now, I saw what looks more like vacuum-packed goobers. At £4.65 for 100g, twice the price of Select Angus beef, it must be A-list celebrity goobers. The New Loon Moon Supermarket in Chinatown, however, carries the frozen variety of proper tempeh. Close, but no cigar. That's why I always bring back 2 or three fresh loaves from Amsterdam. Thanks to Holland's past colonial connections, even local chain supermarkets carry it there. Your best bet would be to ask around in your local Indonesian restaurants where they get hold of their tempeh. Or if you have a lot of free time on your hands, make it yourself from beans and tempeh starter available to order online.
ozy or manty is another dish Russians borrowed from their steppe neighbours. It is enjoyed along a vast swathe of land from Mongolia to Russian Finn-Ugric Northwest. The legend has it that Genghis Khan's hordes learnt this kind of cooking in China. The name is also said to derive from Chinese mantou (饅頭) even though manty is more like baozi (包子).
As is the case with most dishes from the area, the ingredients are simple and the outcome is well worth the labour-intensive and time-consuming preparation.
Mix 3 cups flour, 1/2 water, one egg, a tablespoonful of vegetable oil and a pinch of salt. You may need more water as flour types vary from country to country. Russian flour made from soft wheat requires less water.
Knead continuously for 30-40 minutes into perfect homogeneity which is essential for the right result. Cover and put in the fridge for at least 40 minutes.
Mix mince or, even better, finely shredded meat with an equal amount of finely chopped onions (apprx. 6 onions per 1 kg of meat) Originally, fatty chunks of meat were used, very much prized during the harsh winters of the inhospitable Eurasian interior. Modern urbanite life calls for healthier options: I suitably use Tartare mince. The only condiments really needed are salt and pepper, I use best quality: hand-raked Guerdaine sea salt and powerfully fragrant Vietnamese peppercorns.
Roll the dough into thin rounds apprx. 12 cm diametre. Wrap 2 tablespoonfuls of mine but leave a tiny hole left at the very top.
You can buy multi-level manty steamers in Russia but I don't have one. I use a bamboo sieve lined with a banana leave instead, that's my Asian background for you. Steam 40 minutes on a very high fire. This brings out juice from the onions and the beef to produce copious amounts of aromatic bouillon.
Manty are eaten with hands. The trick is to bite off the tip and drink the juice lest its splashes out. Be careful: it will be piping hot!
Traditionally manty are served with a mixture of melted butter and vinegar (tastes way better than it sounds) but I make a dip of sour cream and horseradish - also very Russian. To make them Turkish, you may add some sumac to the mince and serve with yoghurt and garlic.
I follow the authentic recipe to cook Thai green curry - gaeng khiao waan. It is so good it needs no improving.
It starts with lots of chopping and slicing:
2-3 stalks of lemons grass (chop off the dry tops and use them to make infusion), chopped;
4-5cm galangal root, sliced;
3-5 chillies, chopped;
half a head of garlic, peeled and finely chopped;
a few kaffir lime leaves, leave them whole or tear big ones in halves.
First in a medium-heated thick-bottomed pan goes a nice glub of odourless vegetable oil. When the oil is hot, there goes garlic. When it just becomes golden the rest of the herb mix follows to be shortly joined by 2-3 tablespoonfuls of fried chilli paste. When all this goodness becomes fragrant, I give it a generous dash of fish sauce. Then I add half a pack (about 125 g) of creamed coconut milk and slowly whisk in two tins of coconut milk. The point is to infuse the milk with the flavours of the toasted herb mix.
At this stage I add green peppercorns, Thai basil and tiny Thai round aubergines that give the final product that unmistakeable flavour you can smell the moment you step out of the plane in Bangkok. I let it all simmer until a thin greenish film of oil appears on the surface and then add the rest of the ingredients:
a skinned breast of chicken cut into bite-size pieces;
white round auberginescut in halves(also known as garden eggs in Africa);
string beans;
button mushrooms.
When the chicken is done you can serve it with boiled jasmine rice. You can supplement chicken with seafood but then add it at the very end.
ome cheeses are only to get hold of in France. Mostly it's cheeses made from raw milk that are difficult to transport. Pié d'Angloys is made from pasteurised cow milk but I fell in love with it from the first bite.
Decadently smelly and drippy inside it is reminiscent of a very ripe brie. As you may have guessed from the picture of a tiled roof house, it hails from Burgundy. As far as I know, it is sold in the Francophone zone only (France, Southern Belgium, Luxembourg, Western Switzerland). It seems a recent - post-WWII - invention but what it lacks in pedigree it makes good in taste.
Dill and crème fraîche are fish mates made in heaven. You can only improve those with some sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper - but not too much, not to ruin the delicate flavour balance.
Here dill and crème fraîche are happily married to poached salmon and sweet and succulent Greenland shrimp.
In our family this combination is traditionally used for fried carassius, a common Russian fresh water fish with excruciatingly bony but divinely sweet flesh, "karas' v smetane".
One thing about tuna steaks - they should never be overdone. Pink on the inside, seared on the outside - that's the way to go.
Oven-baked vegetables go well with just about anything and since I got hold of some nice asparagus I served home-made hollandaise which is essentially butter-based mayonnaise.
There is no denying: I am crazy. When I discover a new kind of exotic foodstuff I am excited like a child.
The first time I heard the word fufu was in 1996 in a song by a New Yorikan poetess Dana Bryant named Food where she sings and ode to home-made meals tracing their lineage back to "five thousand years of history on the Nigerian countryside". The very name of "egusi soup with fufu" evoked colourful images of what traditional African cooking might be like. But I really had no idea.
My first real life encounter with the cuisine of the Black Continent happened in Bangkok, which has a sizeable African community. I discovered the delights of West African stews and such delectables as fried ram balls. But they did not serve fufu there.
Here in London, Brixton is home to a variety of Black communities from the Caribbean as well as Africa. You can find any imaginable ingredient, except, perhaps, giant snails that were banned from selling for alleged animal abuse. Here I finally found if not the final product then the main ingredient for fufu. It exists in two versions, plantain(savoury kind of banana) and cocoyam (taro root). I am very excited about fixing fufu at home for the first time.
Yesterday I attended Southbank Slow Food Festival which is essentially 2 rows of tents selling organic and exotic foods: from Portuguese jams and Kentish apple juice to organic ham and pheasant supremes.
All nice stuff but a tad on the pricier side, although still cheaper and actually more interesting than Waitrose. I bought myself 6 venison sausages for 5 quid - quite a bargain actually, as you normally fork out more for chopped pig offals stuffed in plastic. The grilled bit I tasted at the stall was superbly palatable: juicy and flavourful with just two basic tastes of venison and pepper in a perfect combination.
The producer - Manor Farm Game - has a very extensive range of yummies such as duck and orange burgers or pheasant, calvados and garden vegetables pies. I will give those a try next time.
One of Normandy’s trademarks and the inspiration behind Dali’s famous The Persistence of Memory, Camembert had a near escape from being sacrificed to cost reduction and mass production. Traditionally produced on small farms from unpasteurised milk of free-range cows, it gains its unique flavour from a variety of local terroirs. It would have stayed a local delicacy but for the advent of railways, when Napoleon III attending the opening of the Paris-Granville line discovers Camembert for the Parisian gourmet table. From a regional curiosity camembert became one of France’s cultural symbols. In recent times however it has fallen victim to its own popularity. The demands for larger production volumes has made manufacturing shift to factories. Economy of scale requires the streamlining of the costs. Farm-raised cows are nowadays fed mechanically mixed fodder and the quality uniformity of milk is the overriding objective. Starting in the late 90s culinary purists and industrial rationalists have been battling over just how much can Camembert depart for the traditional recipe without losing its essence.
Last year things came to head when dairy giants Isigny and Lactalis, which comprise 80% of Camembert sales, demanded that the National Institute of Origin and Quality modify the regulations for their product. To qualify for AOC Camembert needs to be made from raw milk, but the rebel producers insisted that pasteurising or microfiltering milk would reduce the cheese’s susceptibility to potentially dangerous pathogens. The defenders of the terroir, ODC, reasoned that such a step would kill the “very essence of Camembert”. The Laboratory for scientific research of eggs and milk, stated that health risks are "statistically insignificant". Angered, the two producers threaten to renounce their AOC.
The stand-off finally ended on the 18th of September this year with the issue of the PM-signed decree that stipulates the obligatory use of raw milk for Camembert production. Generic camembert however, stays outside this regulation.
Now watch out for the magic words “Camembert de Normandie au lait cru moulé à la louche” on the packaging meaning that you are getting the real deal, not the mass production imitation.
Living in Brixton is like living on an exotic island with British weather. Every overcast day brings a sunny discovery.
I found this strange fruit yesterday at Brixton market. The Jamaican vendor insisted this is the biblical locust that Jesus Christ sustained on while in the desert. Although it is beyond certain that the Gospel was on about a kind of grasshopper, a good source of protein in many cultures, I didn't argue with the good man and bought a piece of his merchandise.
This bean pod like thing turns out a native of the Caribbean and South America, known as West Indian locust fruit or "stinking toe" (Hymenaea courbaril). It is supposed to be very smelly but I found it anything but. It tastes somewhat like freeze-dried vanilla icecream with strong grassy overtones. The pod is so hard I had to put it under a foot of my bed and drop it from a 20-cm height.
Nando's is Portuguese chain restaurant in the UK serving mostly chicken. It is said to be quite good so I decided to see what the hype is about. I was on my own so I got a takeaway.
Well, it is not bad at all. They mixed up my order so I ended up with plain chicken instead of hot so I yet to find out what peri-peri is all about but it was not bad anyway: flavourful, smoky and not greasy. They use fresh, unfrozen chicken and you can taste that, espeically if you've ever tried Tesco's fried chicken that tastes like chicken-flavoured toilet paper.
What you see on the picture minus the salad, which I added myself, set me back £6.10, which is very good for London.
Curiously enough, in Japanese piri-piri stand for spicy, could there be a connection? After all the Portuguese are responsible for introducing chilis to Japan.
Béchamel aux fruits de mer with conchiglie pentacolore is a happy Franco-Italian marriage. I fix this whenever I don't have much time to cook as the recipe is easy and delicious.
Conchiglie pentacolore is seashell-shaped pasta. It is coloured green (spinach), red (tomatoes), white (natural), yellow (curry) and black (squid ink). It goes without saying, it should be done al dente.
For the souped-up version of traditional béchamelI melt a nice knob of butter in a thick-bottomed pan. Then there go a dash of whole allspice berries, cloves and peppercorns, a bay leaf and a wee pinch of ground nutmeg to infuse the butter with their flavours. To make the roux I use equal parts of wheat flour and corn starch. The latter is an Asian influence, it makes the sauce light and translucent. I mix the flour mix and the butter with a whisk on low fire until it becomes golden blonde, you don't want to go any darker with béchamel.
When the roux has cooled down (very important!), it is time to whisk in equal parts of scalded double cream, white wine and home-made shrimp stock. I let it all simmer on small fire stirring periodically with a whisk. The result is a symphony of savoury flavours, laden with natural glutamates that give it that very taste that the Japanese call "koku" (full-bodied).
At the very last stage I add a handful of seafood into the still simmering sauce and turn the heat off.
Call it an easy cop-out but I do use instant soup packages. Especially when visiting a country for the first time, I always stock up on some in a local supermarket. Huge food-makers like Knorr or Maggi conduct extensive researches to find out the average native taste expectations before launching a new line of soup packages. This where I latch on and profit from the results of their effort. If the taste is inspiring enough I then dig out the authentic recipe and try to recreate and, if necessary, improve the taste.
To a substantial degree Brixton is Little Jamaica, so you only need to pop in to a local grocer to pick up an instant flavour of the Caribbean.
Otherwise known as "mannish water", ram-goat soup is prepared from goat's head, scrotum and feet. I love experimenting with food but this is probably a step too far even for me. This soup's reputed aphrodisiac (or should it be Afrodisiac?) properties explain the lengths Jamaicans go to preparing it.
Pumpkin beef soup seems to be a traditional Jamaican comfort food.
Fish tea has nothing to do with tea but is a fish consommé.
Now I don't know what is the target market for cock flavoured soup in Jamaica (though I could imagine!) in the UK it is sold as prim and boring chicken flavoured one.
For African restaurants in London African Kitchen Gallery does what Jamie Oliver did to British cuisine taking a hearty if very simple fare of dubious salubrity and turning it into a toe-twirlingly delicious yet healthy extravaganza of tastes and flavours. The result is so amazing I would have to give each dish on their menu a separate detailed description. It is like explaining the cuisine of an extraterrestrial culture so much more advanced culinarily than ours.
Take, for example, one of the starters, moyin moyin which is a sort of bean-and-tomato paté. The amazing thing is that despite it being very herby with the ever so smooth and fluffy texture resembling none of the original ingredients, you palate will instantly recognise what it is made of. Moyin moyin is served with what I would compare to African green pesto, buttery and flavourful.
Or the deliciously flavourful egusi beef stew that I had on my first visit. Served with perfectly cooked - moist yet fluffy - bean rice it was just the right amount of spiciness to underscore, not overpower the tastes of the main components.
The food is so exquisitely delicious that I do suspect there must be some African magic involved but when I think rationally it could be down to their policy of using organic ingredients and nothing artificial. So used are we to the anaemic industrially produced edibles from the supermarkets that the taste of natural and honest food can come as a true revelation.
There are more imagination-sparking items on their menu that will warrant more visits here, like lamb with mango, curried goat stew or wild spinach with melon seeds. I quit being vegetarian years ago but their asaro, yam and sweet potatoes in pepper & tomato sauce, sounds scrumptious.
Three more things I totally dig about this place and probably you will too: one is that it so cosy it feels like dining in somebody's living room richly decorated with African masks and carvings. Two, both proprietors are friendly and always find the time to talk you through the dishes. And last but not least: it is refreshingly affordable for Central London, all main entries are under 10 quid.
Tip: Do try their home-made ginger beer: probably the biggest kick since the invention of processed morphines!
he humankind has come up with more than one uses for ginger. However, my favourite is to make tea from it. Tea here means hot drink, herbal tea if you will, as no actual tea leaves get anywhere close to the pot.
The recipe is simple, to make 1.5 litres of tea:
Grate a 7-8-cm piece of ginger.
Grind the rind off a lemon.
Tip 1 and 2 into a pot with hot water.
When it cools down somewhat, squeeze half a lemon into it.
Add honey to taste.
The sweet-and-sour combination of lemon juice and honey with the zesty tinge of ginger and lemon rind warms you up from the inside like good brandy. It is ideal for colds or just cold winter evenings.
I was planning to cook abenkwan, Ghanaian palm nut soup, that requires garden eggs as an ingredient. I had little idea what they would turn out to be but there you go: for once eggplants that DO look like eggs.
They are called igba or ikan amongst the Yoruba's of Nigeria, it is referred to as ngilo in Swahili and nakasuga or nakati in Uganda, ntroma in Ghana and jiló in Brazil. I saw them in Thailand where they are somewhat smaller and greener and called makhuea pra. I had no idea they had an English name.
"Increasing intercultural understanding through the appreciation of world cuisines." I hope that my blog will inspire people to open their minds and try other people's food where they live or travel.
. When raw, it smells yeasty and mushroomy and tastes bland and doughy
Posts
