Indian tandoori marinade recipe

hey say tandoori chicken was invented by a shrewd Indian restaurateur who couldn't see tandoors (bread ovens) stay idle when there was no naan to bake. Knowing Indian business acumen, it sounds a plausible theory.

But back to gastronomy. Here is my recipe for the incomparable tandoori marinade for barbeque.

1. Peel one onion, half a head of garlic and about 6 cm of ginger. Put them in a kitchen processor and reduce them into homogeneous pulp. Add some water if necessary.
2. Chop finely one or two seeded chilli peppers.
   
3. Put about 150 g of natural yoghurt (the fatter the better, never skimmed one!) into a big bowl.
4. Add 1, 2, Tandoori Spice Mix, palm sugar and fish sauce.
5. Stir well until everything dissolves. It should taste pleasantly pungent with a nice balance of sweet, sour, salty and spicy.
6. Chop chicken, fish or what have you into bite-size chunks and mix well with 5.
7. Cover with cling film and let stay overnight in the fridge. Stir every 6-8 hours.
8. Remove from the fridge a couple of hours before cooking. It helps to have your barbecue evenly cooked when the raw mix is of room temperature.
   

Yokan: Japanese bean jelly

apanese sweets, wagashi, are an exquisite affair little known abroad. Yokan, or youkan, is a paste of very fine bean flour, custard sugar and agar-agar.

What seems a simple mixture of basic ingredients, in fact, is a fine art. In Japan there are still a lot of artisan shop specialising in hand-made yokan that fetches very high prices among connoisseurs.

Strangely enough, the word yokan means "sheep broth". Originally, leftovers of slaughtered sheep, like bones, joints and ties, were boiled in water to produce gelatine to give yokan its jelly-like texture. That was the deal in China, where it was invented. However, in Buddhist Japan consumption of animal products (except fish and seafood) was banned for many centuries, so here agar-agar was used instead but the old name has stuck.

Bulmers: English perry

unny that I had to have the "taste of the English summer" on its last day. At least, this is how Bulmers' pear cider has been promoted for last few months. Even the absence of a TVset in my place did not save from the ubiquitous advertising.

It is not that I caved in, it's more down to abysmal choice of summer drinks in my local Sainsbury's where I have paid my first ever visit. I gave the highly cringeworthy 3-litre PET bottle of cider a wide berth and was left with the only option. Luckily, it turned out rather delightful: sweeter and milder than French poiré, Bulmers pear cider is, truth be told, easier to join in its own right.

I remember reading somewhere that the word perry is not used commercially any more because its perceived fuddy-duddiness may turn off the highly coveted youth market.

Franco Manca - the minimalstic house of real pizza

izzas only make annual cameo appearances in my dietary calendar. Somehow, the idea of stodgy crust with anaemic topping smothered in gooey cheese that most pizza chains churn out does not hit my appetite button.

There are lucky exceptions, however. Brixton Market's Franco Manca is one of those precious few. I ventured there only after I had made sure that the chefs there speak very little English, which is a sign that they haven't yet succumbed to the local penchant for food boiled for six hours in industrial taste-removing solution.

The menu is limited to six pizzas and one salad but Franco Manca makes them with minimalistic panache. All ingredients are sourced from organic Italian and British producers and no pizza is topped with such atrocities as pineapples or broccoli or overcrowded with toppings. It is also the best way to maintain quality control (that is how McDonald's, for example, keeps everything tasting the same across the globe: just few items on the menu).

We had a daily special of pizza bianca with wild boar ham and ruccola (£6.50) and meat lover's pizza rossa (£6.80) with really aromatic chorizo from Brindisa and basil. The oven-baked crust made of leavened sour-dough was so good I could eat it plain. The ham was real dry cured wild boar and was superbly delightful with thin wedges of lemon and ruccola. The chorizo pizza was more mainstream but none less enjoyable.

Pro's: Pizzas baked to utter perfection. Very affordable.
Con's: Cramped seating. Only open until 5PM.
In a nutshell: The house of true pizza excellence.

Franco Manca
4 Brixton Market Row
London SW9 8LD

Anatolian bulgur pilaff with vegetables (sebzeli bulgur pilavı)

never grow tired of Turkish food. I love the sheer variety of a cuisine that has incorporated so many ancient culinary traditions and given them a new lease of life in a very creative way.

Bulgur, cereal of cracked and parboiled wheat, is very popular in Asia Minor and the Fertile Crescent. In Syria they make scrumptious kibbeh out of it but in Turkey's Anatolia it is the base for pilaff . It is a very filling yet healthy dish, suitabel for vegetarians.

Here is the recipe:

1. Lightly fry pine nuts, almond and pistachio flakes in clear butter. Scoop them out once golden yellow.
2. In the same butter fry dry bulgur, constantly stirring, until it starts giving out a pleasant nutty flavour.
3. Pour twice as much water as there is bulgur in the pot and put on smallest fire to steam.
   
4. Meamwhile, peel and cut julienne one big carrot. Fry it in a small amount of clear butter until just slightly crunchy.
5. De-stone and roughly chop two handfuls of dates.
6. Once the bulgur is ready (apprx. 25-30 min) - it needs to stay slightly chewy, not too fluffy - add the carrots, dates and nuts, mix well, allow to stay in the covered pot.
7. Finely chop and generous bunch of fresh coriander leaves and mix with the pilaff.
8. Serve hot with a dollop of Turkish natural yoghurt on top of each serving.
   

Zaatar: Arab spice mix (زعت)

Za'atar (زعت) is the trademark Arab spice from the Middle East, unknown in North Africa. It is a mix of dried and powdered thyme, oregano, marjoram with toasted sesame seeds and salt. It is said to have been around since the times of Ancient Egypt, although to prove it with more certainty will take more evidence.

Like curry powder in India, each housewife has her own special recipe of za'atar. In Palestine, za'atar is a part of the national identity lore. That is why the 1977 Israeli legislation that declared za'atar herbs a protected species is used to harass Palestinians by banning them from gathering wild thyme or za'atar in the West Bank, and confiscating it at IDF checkpoints.

Russian proso millet cereal & porridge (пшёная каша)

ussians eat a lot of cereals: some kind of porridge is a common breakfast. Proso millet is one of those. It is reckoned to one of the oldest cultivated grain in Eurasia due to it drought-resistance.

Eaten for breakfast proso, or pshyonka in colloquial Russian, is boiled in water or milk and eaten with milk or butter. It can also be made into a savoury dish. The best way to make it is to fry it first in butter until it starts giving out a characteristic nutty smell and then boil it in water and add stir-fried mushrooms and vegetables: onions, carrots, pumpkin.

As has been the case with many poor man's staples, proso has recently been rediscovered as health food. It turns out that it is gluten-free and rich in microelements. It contains as much protein as wheat, about 11% by weight.

Proso flakes are sold in Russian supermarkets for busy people. You can only use them as breakfast cereal because in savoury dishes proso needs to retain its grainy texture.

Dastarkhan: London's only Kazakh restaurant

sky-blue flag hanging out of a second-floor window is the only giveaway. No sign, no exotic aromas wafting through the air, no foreign-looking people dashing in and out to hint a passer-by that beyond two floors of a wood-panelled Finchley pub lies an altogether different realm that actually has a thing or two to do with Borat's Kazakhstan.

Once upstairs, smiley Kazakh waiters greet us in a colourfully, if haphazardly, decorated room. “Nomadic” rugs and brightly coloured cushions are piling around low tables. You can choose between sitting on topchans or regular European chairs. The window sills are lined with generic bric-a-brac of unidentifiable purpose and provenance. "Exotic" scrolls alternate with generic Art Nouveau lamps on the walls adorned with drawings of Chinese-looking trees. Edward Said would be reeling.

My Grandma’s Cossack family in the 19th century founded Kazakhstan’s present capital as a Russian military outpost in the newly annexed lands but my knowledge of Kazakh cuisine is limited to the mysterious word beshbarmak. I always imagined it to be something lamby, succulent and utterly delightful, a kind of herby pilaff reserved for special occasions.

We wade through a multitude of Russian and generic Oriental classics on the menu trying to line up an authentic Kazakh feast. Our only guide are the strange sounding names of the dishes, as the waiters claim everything they serve is Kazakh. Right. Okroshka is a common staple in the Central Asian steppes. Our orders arrive in the course of over three odd hours, mains before starters, all in a very random succession, providing us with ample time to ruminate whether they are actually slaughtering lambs in the basement to cook for us.

First we get what Russians call "aubergine caviar" (£3.50) , stew of finely shredded aubergines with onions and garlic. Olga's nostalgic choice however turns out very bland stir-fried marrow and tomatoes. Our impenetrably friendly waiter insists it is aubergine and we just leave it at that.



Some time later arrives a wicker basket with baursaki (£3.50), deep-fried pieces of dough, which in the ovenless nomadic world acted as bread. Rather bland in taste, they are however, pleasantly not greasy.



Forty minutes of chatting with Olga and two reminders later arrives kuyrdak (£9.90) . What the waiter has promised to be lamb stew turns out to be chunks of liver and potatoes in an extremely economic amount of some onion and tomato based sauce. The liver is way overdone and hard to bite, so we send it back to the kitchen.



Whilst waiting for the next dish we share a bowl of shurpa or sorpa, clear beef soup with potatoes, carrots and onions. A sprinkle of chopped dill on top of it adds finishing touch to this simple consommé. What was advertised as "traditional Kazakh tea" comes in the form of English Breakfast teabags soaking in hot water. Whilst I think how to react, Olga sends it packing too. Good riddance.



Manty, are steamed dumplings filled with finely chopped meat and onions in equal proportions. Normally they are full of aromatic broth spouting fountains of taste into your mouth. This time however the thin dough got torn before they even ended up on our plate, so what we get is boiled meatballs wrapped in tasteless dough - quite a treat for eight quid.



Triangular samsa pies (£5) are also filled with meat and onions. The dough is nicely flavoured and it's the only dish this evening that experienced a proper Maillard reaction. Hand-made in the restaurant's kitchen, they are, however, served hot, right from the oven, which is a big mistake: they need to be allowed to "come around" wrapped in cloth. The steam coming from the filling then would make the crust moist and pleasant to bite.



And finally, the pièce de résistance, Kazakh national dish of bes barmak (£9) solves my childhood mystery: it turns out square pieces of noodle boiled with onions and beef. By this time we are so behind all schedules and tired of waiting that we take it home in a doggie bag. My attempt to take a picture of the culprits of our dining fiasco in the kitchen are greeted with vehement protests. People dodge out of my way like scared hens. I sense a working visa problem there. They sure won't be getting Highly Skilled Immigrant ones here.


Pro's: The only place in London to enjoy Kazakh culinary exuberance.

Con's: Hard to find. Clueless (if friendly) service. Randomly appointed interior. Nothing-to-write-home-about food.

In a nutshell: This act needs to put its stuff together to call themselves a restaurant.

Dastarkhan
203 Holloway Road
London
N7 8DL

Russian pearl barley & mushroom soup (перловый суп с грибами)

o Russian dinner is complete without soup. Most recipes are traditional and use  obscure cereals and seasonal vegetables with quite spectacular results.

Barley and mushroom soup is at the very top of my favourites. list. It takes some time to cook but the good thing you don't need to be there to wacth the pot all the time. It is rather light yet very filling, full of fibre and complex carbohydrates. The slowly cooked barley and caramelised onions give it gentle sweetness, while the heady aroma of fried mushrooms will keep you salivating like a Pavlov's dog throghout the cooking process.

1. Soak a cup of barley and a generous handful of dried mushrooms in cold water overnight.
2. Set the mushrooms aside and bring water with barley to a boil. Allow to simmer for an hour or so until the barley becomes al dente.
   
   
3. In the meantime, cut 2 potatoes and a carrot into bite-size chunks. Set aside to dry.
4. Finely chop 2-3 large onions and stir fry with the  mushrooms in olive oil until golden brown. Optional: 100 g smoked bacon.
5. Tip the potatoes, carrots, onions and mushrooms into the pot with barley. Add salt, pepper and a couple of bay leaves, mix well and allow to simmer for about 20 more minutes.
6. Serve with crème fraîche and chopped fresh parsley.

Russian oven-baked salmon pie (рыбный пирог)

n the Western mass conscious, Russian diet inextricably revolves around the images of frozen cabbage eaten out of toilet bowls and people queuing for bread at 4AM on dark winter mornings. Thanks to years of Cold War propaganda, we all know that Russians are sullen-faced ruffians chasing vodka with raw potato peels in the midst of Siberian snowfields.

Reality, however, is rather different. With perhaps the only exception of convicted bachelors, Russians traditionally eat three warm meals a day. That extravagant habit explains why of all industrialised nations Russians spend the most time in the kitchen, one and a half hours a day on the average.

A day without soup is considered a wasted day. Although supermarket chains are doing everything in their power to change this, Russians normally eat whatever is in season. Spices are still used sparingly but fresh dill, parsley, horseradish, mustard are common. Sandwiches for lunch and deep fried food are an imported concept and frowned upon.

For me the most prominent feature of Russian cuisine is oven-baked dishes, particularly pies. Pies are made with leavened dough and eaten throughout the year. Fillings, as is the case with other dishes, are whatever is in season.

My favourite is my Mother’s salmon pie. The filling is de-boned wild salmon with black pepper and onions on a bed of buttery rice. The rice soaks in the fish and onion juices and keeps them sealed inside. The dough comes out golden-brown and crunchy on the outside and fluffy inside. Mother normally serves it with light fish broth in small bowls and a green salad. This time we had it with an underrated Austrian white, Grüner Veltliner. I brought it from my trip to Vienna as Austrians don't seem to favour exporting their wine.

Iraqi Grill House@ Edgware Road, London

e were enjoying a leisurely walk along the Regent's Canal from Little Venice walking towards the Camden Lock Market when a torrential rain caught us right by Edgware Road. Unprepared for such a treacherous turn of the weather, we got soaking wet and as it was closing on lunch time we took it as a sign and went on to look for a nice bite in a warm place on Edgware Road, the heart of London's Arab community.

Worldwide media spin machine these days is trying to portray Arabs as archenemies of everything that the West holds dear, but we need to be reminded that it was down to the Arabs that much of the knowledge and culture of the Ancient world was preserved for us. Take Iraq. It is nowadays synonymous with war, suffering and destruction brought to this country by oil-hungry Uncle Sam and its faithful minion Great Britain. This painful image overshadows the fact that Iraq is also the cradle of world’s oldest urban civilization. And as is always the case with ancient nations, Iraq has a fantastic cuisine.

Iraqi Grill on Edgware Road is its very worthy ambassador. We realized that the very moment we stepped out of the pouring rain into its warm-coloured interior filled with mouth-watering smells. It is next to a miracle that any Iraqis would serve food to anyone speaking English after what America and Britain did to their country but we were welcomed warmly and treated nicely throughout our extended lunch.

Although the canopy proudly bears www.khankabab.com, Khan Kabab, in fact, is the name of a fast food outlet that used to occupy the same premises. Strangely enough, Iraqi Grill House have also inherited Khan Kabab's menu covers. I figure it must have been a cost-cutting measure.

We ordered mixed grill and mixed starters to try a bit of every specialty. The starters came on a large platter and consisted of:

• three definitely hand-made dolmas, succulent and gently flavoured;
  
• three lightest ever falafels I've ever had - without any perceptible trace of grease;
• Arab fried potatoes, herby and spicy - this is how I imagined Spanish patatas bravas would be like, not the deep-fried autrocity with chilli sauce that you get;
• the ubiquitous hommous;
  
• moutabal - grilled aubergine and tahini dip.

The mixed grill came in the shape of chicken barbeque, grilled lamb shashlik and kebab - lamb mince with spices - one skewer each. All meat was excellently done - lightly charred on the outside, juicy inside. To accompany this carnal excellence were pickles and chopped sweet onions sprinkled with sumak.

Devon clotted cream with brandy

lthough it sounds like a surefire recipe for an early heart attack, it is an indispensable ingredient for cream tea when it served on scones with jam. There is an ongoing argument whether it originates in Devon or Cornwall. One things for sure, it owes its origin to the cows of Southwest England that produce rich milk that is high in fat content.

Clotted dream is made from unpasteurized cream left for hours to allow the fat content to raise to the surface and form clots.

In the olden days when appropriate calorie intake was a problem, this was a true luxury and nutritional boost. In our days of dietary overconsumption and sedentary lifestyle, it has become a guilty pleasure. Perhaps, it would be a wise marketing move to try and come up with some other word than clotted, which brings about not particularly favourable associations, but then clotted cream would not be the same by a different name.

In Devon, clotted cream is used instead of butter with the jam spread on top of it, while in Cornwall the opposite is true.

quail eggs cooking recipes

Quail eggs are a frequent guest in my fridge.

Palm sugar

unt Pranee, whose diminutive build does not easily mesh with her name meaning "cosmic energy", is fixing me somtam, a fiery salad of shredded unripe papaya. For many years that I spent in Thailand it became my staple food. In a hot climate like there your body craves a spicy kick to perk itself up, and somtam fulfils that function perfectly. In goes a staggering variety of ingredients: from pickled fresh-water crabs and fried peanuts to hog plum and fish sauce. What looks like fossilized mini-piles of blonde poop turns out to be sugar. Thai food is a balance of sweet, sour, spicy and tart so palm sugar was responsible for the sweetneess in somtam.

In Thailand palm sugar is made mostly from the sap of the coconut palm, so it may sometimes be confusingly sold as "coconut sugar" or "palm honey" while, in fact, it has nothing to do with coconut fruits or bees. Depending on the degree of processing, the colour may vary from pale beige to hearty honey brown.

It definitely brings in more complex flavour than refined sugar. It is also less sweet and it adds honey-like mellow mildness to whatever you put it into. In the countries where it is common, it is sold in huge dollops that are dirt-cheap. In Europe I buy it in miniature stacks of neat rounds encircled in strips of bamboo wood (as on the picture).

Whole fish baked in salt

ish does not need much cooking or spice. Its natural flavour is what we like it for. On top of black pepper only one mild spice or herb is allowed. Some spices are a definite no-no: nutmeg, for example, or cloves are too overpowering.

When preparing these two lovely forels, I stuffed them with just fresh lemon grass and some black pepper. Then I put them on a banana leave, covered them liberally with coarse sea salt and baked them in the oven until the eyes turned white. That was it, nothing to it.

The salt cakes on top of the fish and only ever so slightly penetrates the skin. Steamed veggies, potatoes or rice - nothing too strong smelling or pungent - go well with this.

It is impossible to ascribe this kind of cooking to any particular region, it is mostly down to the choice of fish sort and herbs. In Thailand, for example, local catfish (pla buek) is stuffed with lemon grass to make a tear-jerkingly delicious dish.

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.

Chipotle: smoked Mexican peppers

or me chipotle (aka chilpotle) peppers for ever represent the ultimate flavour of Mexican cuisine. Their earthy smoky spiciness that kicks in with a delay, magically transforms any stew or sauce into Mexican fare.

The name originates in the Nahuatl language and stands for smoked pepper, chilpoctli.

Chipotle is a fully ripe jalapeño pepper, smoked until it loses all its moisture. It is an ancient preserving technique employed by Native Americans. There is also the en adobo (in brine) variety that I stock up on my visits to the US of A. I yet have to locate them in Europe.

Kipper: the original red herring

raditional English food is straightforward and quick to cook. Whether it is down to Protestantism or the busy rhythm of industrial society, I don't know. I first heard the word kipper in the famous episode of Fawlty Towers. It took 15 years before I got around to tasting it. Kipper is a herring, which, in a traditional bout of Northern European ichthyophobia , has been split from tail to head, gutted, salted, and cold smoked. As if that is not enough, the traditional recipe requires grilling it.

Although every effort seems to have been made to thrash the last whiff of the sea, the final product tastes rather nice. Before grilling, I sprinkle it with freshly ground black pepper and put a knob or butter on top. It comes out a delicious dark tan colour.