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.

Tayyabs: North Indian/Pakistani restaurant, London

his is another London's paradox. Just like you can't find edible Chinese food in Chinatown, so you will be hard pressed for a half-decent curry on Brick Lane. You need to know someone in the know to take you to the right place. Luckily, I know Stephen who has eaten his way through most restaurants in the Big Smoke.

If you don't mind queuing for an hour to get cramped into a munchkin-size seat while waiters dash around with sizzling hotplates right above your head, enveloping you in clouds of aromatic vapours, Tayyabs is your place for quite munchable Punjabi grub (Northern Indian/Pakistani).

The moment you plop your derrière on the chair , you are served an excellent crunchy poppadom, a very fresh salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and onions and two little bowls of chutneys, just flavourful enough to perk up your appetite (provided you need that after all the queuing!). Relax, that is not added yo your bill!

Considered how ridiculously hectic the place is, service is excellent. Orders don't get mixed, the waiters are friendly (if not obsequious as some might like it), and everything arrives in the correct sequence (starters, mains, etc.)

A jug of salty lassi (£5) - light, cumin-flavoured and pleasantly frothy. It's perfect to quench the curry fire in your mouth and it also provides the safety lining that protects your stomach from too much spice.

Lamb chops (£5.50): with all the hype about them I expected nothing short of a revelation. They proved quite okay, not too heavy on spices, but on the skinny side and too well done, t my liking. The presentation on sizzling hot plates makes good for their drawbacks. Four hearty pieces of fileted salmon and sea perch in masala coating (£5.50), come on the same cast-iron plate as the chops. Their crunchy spicy exterior belies the fluffy juicy insides.

Curries didn't prove Tayyabs' forte. Wednesday's special - mughal korma (£6), lamb curry was somewhat spicier than your common-or-garden korma, but also on the oily side instead of korma's usual Mariah Carey-like creaminess.

Karahi bhindi (£5) - okra curry that we ordered to make good for all the meat indulgence, turned out the same: spicy, which I can actually enjoy, and oily, which I won't.

Peshawari nan (£2.50) was utterly sublime: half of it disappeared before I took out the camera. Sublimely delectable, deliciously seared thin crust stuffed with straw-yellow raisins apricots. I would never get tired of it, had I to have it every day.

Plain nan (£1.80) was baked to perfection too, sprinkled with melted butter.

Malai kulfi (£2.50) is an Indian frozen dessert that tastes like rich old-fashioned ice-cream. Never mind what it reminds you of, visually it has a very pleasant moderate sweetness to it as well as a deliciously solid texture.

Tayyabs, 83-89, Fieldgate St. London E1 1JU

Mirin: Japanese cooking rice wine (みりん)

ne late student night last century, in a Nagoya neighbourhood my mates and yours truly ran out of beer. Somebody suggested drinking mirin and, as intended, caused a massive brouhaha.

These days mirin (みりん), mildly alcoholic (14%) syrup is used exclusively for cooking. No one would think of drinking it. However, some 200 years ago, in Edo Period, mirin was a fancy booze. If you try it, you will understand why. For a cooking wine it tastes quite nice, rather like low-alcohol muscat. Mirin-based herbal liquors like toso (屠蘇) and yomeishu (養命酒) still have some currency in Japan but no one has yet thought of marketing them abroad as a novel Oriental drink.

As it has quite a particular flavour you can't just substitute it with white wine and sugar (although you can try!). Mirin is absolutely essential for cooking such Japanese classics as unagi-don or teriyaki sauce.

To avoid paying the alcohol tax on mirin sales, there are two close substitutes in the market: shio-mirin (塩みりん) with 1.5% added salt that supposedly makes it unquaffable and mirin-fu (みりん風調味料, on the picture above), which tastes the same but only contains 1% of alcohol. It may take quite in effort to buy real stuff, hon-mirin　(本みりん), abroad, but the substitutes are actually not that bad at all.

As thanks for reading this far, here I will reveal Japanese housewives' little secret: marinade of equal shares of mirin, sake and shoyu enhances the taste of white fish without interfering with its flavour. Just soak fish filets for half an hour and cook as usual.

cloud ear fungus aragekikurage

Auricularia polytricha

Jaeyuk bokkeum: spicy Korean pork stir-fry (재육볶음)

hen it is gloomy and raining outside, I like to spice up my day with hot food. For myself, I would normally whip up something quick like Thai phad phak ruam mit or Korean gochujang-flavoured udon. For guests, I go to greater lengths. When Muhabbat and Jitte came to visit me from Amsterdam, I treated them to jaeyuk bokkeum.

Jaeyuk bokkeum (재육볶음) is a Korean stir-fried pork. Basically, you marinate thinly sliced pork and vegetables, stir-fry them and serve with lettuce, seaweed, and bean sprouts.

1. Slice thinly 400 g lean pork (or veal for Jews and Muslims), 1 big carrot, 1 big onion, 6 shiitake mushrooms pre-soaked and 1 green bell pepper.
   
2. In a large bowl mix 2 tbsp gochujang (less if you are not into spicy food), 2 tbsp shoyu, 2 tbsp rice wine (dry white wine may also do), 1 tsp brown sugar, 4-5 cloves chopped garlic, 2-inch piece of ginger finely shredded, 1 tsp black sesame and 1 tsp white sesame. I also add 1 tsp kapi paste but this is not obligatory.
   
3. Mix 1 and 2 well and leave to marinate for at least 40 minutes.
   
4. Heat well a thick-bottomed cast-iron skillet. Add 1 tbsp sesame oil and fry 3 until the pork is done.
5. Serve with lettuce, seaweed, bean sprouts and freshly cooked rice.
   

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.

Time to get cracking: American boiled lobster

obsters are the ultimate luxury food, just one notch below caviar. Or, at least, when they are served in restaurants at overinflated prices.

This day and age, however, even Lidl carries lobsters as standard fare, eight quid a pop. Seven if you wait for a sale. At the same price, it may not be as satisfying as a Tesco grilled chicken, a family-size bag of crisps and a gallon of generic Cola for dinner but, hey, there's no perfection in this world!

Frozen lobster is not exactly quite like fresh Maine lobster but it is a very good and honest approximation, especially if you consider the price difference. The Dutch in me can't help getting micro-orgasms just thinking that I pay thirty quid less for the same pleasure as some hedge fund manager in a posh Chelsea eatery. That's how socialism corrupts you.

Celebrity chefs keep coming up with more and more convoluted and far-fetched ways of cooking lobster to please the jaded gourmet but I prefer the good old American boiling. Why interfere with the sweet succulence of God's created crustacean when you only need too accentuate it with melted butter and, perhaps, some dry white wine?

The recipe? Boil, melt, crack, eat, be grateful!

P.S. In our age of luxuries becoming commodities, there is probably only one way to tell a real culinary aesthete from a casual supermarket hound. You can only claim to be true blue-blood food connoisseur, if you have the right utensils to eat fancy food in your kitchen drawer.

Shrimp paste: kapi, belacan, terasi

hatever people can make out of what Nature gives us! Kapi shrimp paste represents a totally different approach to using seafood than crevettes mayonnaise. Here, weeny shrimp that otherwise would be too small to consume is fermented into a condiment. It has a solid homogeneous consistency and intense flavour.

It took me a while to get used to it. For someone brought up halfway between Moscow and Alaska, the heady smell of sun-rotten shrimp ground into paste was just too overpowering.

Time heals everything, even aversion to exotic condiments. These days I add a wee dram even to some dishes that are not supposed to contain it, like Korean jaeyook bokkeum. It works amazingly good.

I call this shrimp paste by its Thai name kapi because I first encountered it in Thailand. It is called the same way in Laotian and Khmer but its native range actually spans from Southern China to Indonesia. In Malaysia it is called belacan, in Indonesia - terasi. They make an intensely fragrant sauce out of it, sambal belacan or sambal terasi that tastes amazing with squid (sambal cumi-cumi). The same thing is called nam phrik kapi (น้ำพริกกะปิ) in Thailand and used as a dip.


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Thai language school and translation agency in Bangkok, Thailand offering Thai, Chinese, English, Japanese, Russian and Laotian (Lao, Isarn, Isaan) language courses.

Crevettes mayonnaise: a grown-up's lunch

est things in life are simple. This reduced version of my beloved assiette de fruits de mer is one of those. Crevettes mayonnaise takes next to no preparation and makes a great lunch or a light supper. It is also served as appetiser on the Normandy coast.

The quality of ingredients here is crucial. I use cooked Greenland shrimp - it is by far the sweetest and most succulent. I bought this batch on the spur of the moment at Waitrose but your local fishmonger should be at least just as good.

The right kind of baguette is crucial to this experience. There are very few bakers outside the Francophone area who understand what a good baguette entails. Crunchy on the outside, fluffy inside - that sounds like a simple principle to follow, but, perhaps, the temptation to bake mud cakes is too strong for many. Your best bet in London would be Paul, if you can afford it, although Marks & Spencer's baguettes are also decent when consumed on the same day.

Now for mayonnaise. Just reading the labels of commercially sold mayonnaise turns me off from food. The amount of chemicals they splice it with is amazing. But there is salvation: mayonnaise, in fact, is super easy to make at home. It takes not more than three minutes to whip your own.

1. Mix yolk of one egg with a teaspoonful of Dijon mustard, a pinch of salt and some freshly ground black pepper.
2. Very slowly trickle a glass of odourless vegetable oil into the mixture, whilst whisking it continuously.
3. Add a dash of white wine vinegar and beat it into the mixture. That's it!

A glass of dry white wine to go with this meal will make you feel like a civilised adult. What a feeling!

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

Edamame: Japanese beans in the pod (枝豆, えだまめ)

hen the Japanese go out to drink, it always involves lots of food. That would surprise London's office crowd who customarily guzzle their after-hours beer straight on top of their lunch Prêt-a-Manger sandwiches.

In Japan, you eat and drink. Once again, unlike greasy chips, fatty chicken wings and salty nuts so popular in the West, Japanese beer snacks are the epitome of wholesomeness. In fact, many of them sound like the dream food of some health-obsessed Californian vegan. Take hiyayakko (冷奴), silken tofu with seaweed, or kimpira-gobou (きんぴら牛蒡), stewed burdock and carrots salad.

In the Japanese equivalent of the pub, izakaya, you are also very likely to be served your beer with edamame (枝豆), steamed beans in the pod. They are very easy to prepare: just steam them for a few minutes and sprinkle with sea salt. Some like to boil them in salty water but, in my perception, it leeches out the gentle flavour.

You can also marinate edamame in miso paste. Just cover the beans with miso and leave for about 8 hours without pods or twice that time in pods. Rinse off the miso before consumption. Serve with beer or sake.

Persian delight: rose petal tea (چای گلبرگ رز)

here are very few people who don't enjoy the scent of dry rose petal potpourri, even if secretly. Iranians, a nation so old that they used to go to war with Ancient Greece, make a gently scented tea out of it. It is no wonder, as they are also credited with giving the world the garden rose as we know it.

I discovered rose petal tea (چای گلبرگ رز) in my neighbourhood Persian shop. I love to drop by there and get light-headed from the overpowering aromas of spices. On that day I was cycling by, when I saw shelves with marked down products standing outside. The Dutch in me couldn't resist that.

When I was a kid, we had rose petal jam from Moldavia. That is why when I saw a bag with "rose petal tea" written on it, the idea of roses as food didn't strike me as outlandish.

Websites selling alternative medicines claim that rose petal tea cures about anything from sweaty feet to adult attention deficiency syndrome. I don't know if it is true or not, I simply enjoy its soothing effect and how well it goes with Middle Eastern sweets.

Hkatenkwan: Ghanaian family stew

raditional African families are big. So when you cook something, you want to make sure that everyone is fed. Stews are perfect for that: you get your fill of protein, fats, carbs, fibre and vitamins in one pot. Ghanaian hkatenkwan is one of those family stews. It's rich, filling and very tasty.



I have checked the authenticity of this hkatenkwan recipe with my African neighbours, so here it goes:

1. Chop half a chicken or 700 g chicken breasts into medium-sized chunks.
2. Put the chicken, sliced ginger (5-cm piece) and half a peeled onion in Pot 1 and cover with cold water. For the veg(etari)an version, substitute chicken with 2 vegetable bouillon cubes and pre-soaked TVP (textured vegetable protein) of your choice. Bring to boil and let simmer 10 minutes to make nice aromatic broth.
   
3. In the meantime, in Pot 2 (make sure it's a large one), fry 2 tablespoonfuls tomato paste in 2 tablespoonfuls palm oil over low heat for a few minutes.
   
4. Add to Pot 2 one and half chopped onions, one or two chopped peppers and a tin of chopped tomatoes, stirring occasionally until the onions are clear.
   
5. Move the chicken and half the broth from Pot 1 to Pot 2.
6. Add one cup peanut butter and some salt to Pot 2. Stir to make sure that the peanut butter dissolves evenly.
   
7. Cook until it bubbles before stirring in 6-8 garden eggs cut in halves and 15-20 whole okras with butts chopped off.
   
8. Continue cooking until the vegetables are tender.
   
9. Add more broth as needed to maintain a thick, stew-like consistency.
10. It becomes even nicer the next day, when all the flavours have dissolved and mingled together, particularly if you use TVP for the vegan version.
    

If you have African (especially Nigerian) guests for dinner, make sure your hkatenkwan is fiery with peppers. Everyone will definitely be chuffed. Otherwise, suit your own taste. Serve over freshly cooked rice, with fried plantain, or with foufou.

Gochujang: spicy Korean bean paste (고추장)

n the olden days, this spicy Korean condiment was left for half a year outside to ferment in large earthen pots. As a food purist as I am, I don't even dream of going to such lengths in quest of authenticity. All I need to do is to go to a Korean store, although quite a few Chinese and Japanese shops these days carry gochujang too.

It is made from chilli paste, bean powder and ground glutinous rice, which distinguishes it from Chinese doubanjian made in a very similar fashion but from chillies and beans. Gochujang's deliciously pungent aroma is essential for such trademark Korean dishes as bibimbap and naengmeyon.

According to Mrs. Che Cheun Suni, my first Japanese teacher, who also happens to be of a very noble Korean lineage, gochujang does possess certain aphrodisiac qualities, making men as hot and fiery as its taste. I welcome your comments on that, should you have a first-hand experience.

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.

How to cook rice the Asian way - moist and fluffy (ご飯の炊き方)

remember how surprised I was to taste fluffy unsalted rice served at my Japanese teacher's place. It was almost two decades ago and then I only knew the traditional Russian way of making an uninspired and not very popular side dish of it: by cooking it into salty semi-gruel.

Seeing my appreciative amazement, Che Cheun Suni-sensei (she was, well, still is, of Korean descent) was kind enough to teach me the secrets of real Asian rice. Later I learnt many more from my Thai, Chinese and Japanese friends. I will share this unwritten Asian wisdom with you.

First of all, you need to find the right kind of rice. There are three main types of rice used in Asian cuisines:

1) short-grained Japonica;
2) long-grained Indica;
3) glutinous or sticky rice.

Japonica and Indica are cooked the same way, except Japonica, which because of its higher protein content benefits from soaking for half an hour beforehand. Sticky rice is altogether another kettle of fish, I will deal with it separately.

Finding good quality rice can be a doozy. It all looks white and grainy and how the heck do you know the difference? There are so many producers and varieties out there. Some brands and types are pretty actually pretty bad and best be avoided. Your supermarket shelving boys will, in all likelihood, just stare blankly if you ask them what rice is the best, so you be better off going straight to people actually who deal in it - ethnic grocery shopkeepers. I did my rice research in Brixton and I am very happy with the results. I advise that you do the same.

Once you have found the right kind, it is time to get down to cooking. This is how you do it:

1. Normally, about 160 ml dry rice (a small cup) is enough for one good helping for one person. Multiply that by the number of expected diners.
2. Rinse the rice 7 times in running cold water until it runs clear. This is to remove the starch and ensure that cooked grains do not stick together. There are also other opinions about why we need to do that.
3. Cover there ice with cold water. The old-fashioned Korean way is to stick your finger upright in the rice and fill as much water as there is rice using your finger at the yardstick.
4. If you use a rice-cooker, use the measure cup and follow the notches on the inside the cooking bowl. You will need to make adjustments though depending on the altitude and humidity. For example, in the humid maritime climate of Amsterdam my house sits 3 metres below sea level, therefore I fill the rice-cooker with water a couple of millimetres below the designated notch.
   
5. If you use short-grained Japonica, let the rice soak for half an hour. If you use long-grained Indica, proceed to cooking.
6. If you use a rice-cooker, just choose the desired cooking mode. Sit back and watch some crap on TV, your job is done. Otherwise proceed to Step 7.
7. Put the pot with rice and water on high fire and bring to boil. Turn the heat to low. If you use an electric stove, turn the heat to low BEFORE it starts boiling.
8. Let the rice to gently simmer and steam away. Now it is your chance to learn to bridle your curiosity as, under no circumstances, you are to open the lid and see what is going on. The rice is steaming now and letting the steam out will interfere with the process.
9. Depending on the amount of rice, humidity, altitude and such, it takes about 15-20 minutes for the rice to get steamed. The rice-cooker will switch off automatically but if you cook rice in a pot you will know it is ready by the dryish, nutty smell of rice starting to get seared where it touches the pot. The trick is to stop the cooking process right there before it get actually burned. If you use an electric stove you will need to turn the heat off a few minutes earlier or completely remove the pot from the stove.
10. After you've turned the heat off, let the rice to sit about 10 more minutes. This is yet another opportunity to learn how to keep your curiosity in check.
11. When you open the lid you will see what the Japanese call the kani no ana, crab holes, in the rice, because the look exactly like the holes that sea crabs makes in the beach sand. It's the first sign of a correctly cooked rice. It means that you did not put too much water and turned it into mashy gruel.
12. Now, gently fluff the rice with a wooden spatula. The rice grains will not be sticking (too much) to each other.
13. If at the bottom of the pot you find an aromatic brownish rice crust, feel free to come and collect your prize at the Ricecookers Hall of Fame! This crust, called koge in Japanese and tahdeeg in Farsi, is a sought-after delicacy in a number of cultures. Iranians are even known to serve it separately as a dish in its own right.
    

Jjam-bong: udon, Korean style (매운우동)

Long before people in Korea and Japan started calling themselves Korean and Japanese, people in Nagasaki and Pusan knew that culturally they had more in common with each other than with their respective political capitals in Edo (Tokyo) and Seoul. One of the things they shared was this dish, jjambong or champon. It is served as soup that comes in a multitude of flavours and accompanying goodies.

I fix it the Korean way. It takes exactly 15 minutes and costs under 1 quid to fix a flavourful, healthy and delicious lunch. This is how it goes.

1. Slice thinly a couple of pre-soaked shiitake. I normally keep some soaked shiitake in the fridge so that I always have it handy. Feel free to follow my suit.
2. Next thing is to soak black kikurage, white kikurage and golden needles 20 g each in water for at least 20 minutes. I f you can't get hold of those, just skip this step.
   
3. Then peel and slice a few cloves of garlic.
4. Heat a frying pan, add 1 tbsp odourless vegetable oil. Sprinkle some black and white sesame (third a teaspoonful each), wait until it starts sizzling.
   
5. Fry the garlic in the pan until fragrant (light yellow in colour), then add 3 very finely sliced medium onions. When those are nice and fragrant too, add the sliced shiitake. Fry until the mushrooms are fragrant too.
   
6. In the meantime, bring to boil exactly how much water you need for your udon. I use the bowl you can see on the picture as the measure.
7. When the water boils, add one pack of udon. Bring to boil again, reduce the heat and simmer for a couple of minutes.
   
8. Tip the frying pan into the sauce pan and add the kikurage, golden needles, and half a handful of whatever leafy vegetables you have: spinach, pakchoi, kangkong, Chinese broccoli. Dissolve 1 tbsp gochujang in the broth. You will need to find this delicious chilli paste as it is defines the taste of the whole dish.
   
9. Let boil for a minute or so. Mind that the udon does not get overdone, it should be cooked just one notch beyond al dente.
10. Serve with a sprinkle of chopped spring onions.

This spicy dish, also known as jjam-bong (짬뽕) if cooked with thinner noodles, when consumed regularly is known to boost your sexual drive.

Bi Won: or Be Warned and read the fine script

ndreas is a German volcanologist who has spent a lot of time in New Zealand walking into craters and analysing billion-year-old rocks. He also happens to be my neighbour in Brixton. Today we went to celebrate his imminent assignment in Singapore. As he knows the true meaning of hot", I thought I would take him to a Thai restaurant.

But as we walked around London from Southbank to Russell Square enjoying the sunny day, we stumbled upon a Korean place, Bi Won. Bibimbap - that is a magic word for me. Andreas did not mind. It was one hour before the dinner opening time but I betted with Andreas that Koreans would open the place a few minutes earlier. It is amazing how what Confucius said 2,500 years ago still matters to them.

I was right. Ten minutes to six the shop was open and ready to feed anyone with enough quid in their pocket.

We both went for a bibimbap set in a hot claypot (£9.50). Served on a plate that would be 1 pound cheaper but what the heck, claypots are nice. I was a tad disappointed that the bibimbap served would be a plain one. The sunchae kind, archetypal for Korean cuisine, with toraji (bellflower root) and kosari (fiddleheads), that you always get in any Korean restaurant worth its kimchi was not to be had in Bi Won. Well, I should have read the menu more carefully.

"Well", I told Andreas, "at least we get to taste all little panchan, Korean pickles and salads that come in wee bowls to accompany the bibimbap." That way, what is essentially a bowl of rice topped with veggies and a few stripes of meat, becomes a satisfying meal. We happily dug into our bibimbap bowls, letting the raw egg get cooked by the heat of the clay pot and the crust form where the rice touches the pot. Well worth the extra quid. But my heart was crying out for the panchan that still was not arriving. I reminded the proprietress of it. Her steely look told me the truth even before she put it in words.

Eat your heart out. They only serve panchan at lunch. Phew! I felt I let Andreas down. Polite as ever, he kept dutifully explore his pot. The volcanologist in him did show as he carefully avoided the fiery gochujang.

Two grown men won't get full from two bowls of rice, no matter how great it may taste. I ordered a namul platter (£6.20): kongnamul (cold boiled bean sprouts with sesame oil), musaengchae (finely julienned white radish in a sweet vinegar sauce), young zucchini namul (usually, it would be cucumbers) and sigeumchi namul (sesame-flavoured blanched spinach). It all was very lovely, crispy fresh, lightly parboiled just to give a nice crunchy texture and gently flavoured with sesame oil, garlic and soya sauce.

Pro's: Fresh good quality ingredients.
Con's: Wee bit on the pricey side. Read the fine script too.
In a nutshell: Good quality Korean food, if not the cheapest you can get.