Grilled Moroccan merguez (مرقاز) and couscous aux legumes

erguez is a harissa-flavoured Moroccan lamb sausage. In Amsterdam they are sold in the ubiquitous Moroccan butcher shops. To find one in London you need to go to Goldborne Road in North Kensington.

Lean and spicy, merguez does not need any additional seasoning. It tastes best grilled. Mind and do not overcook, it should stay pink and juicy inside.

The best accompaniment for merguez is couscous aux legumes, couscous with vegetables. You can go for the traditional Moroccan way of steaming it for hours on end in special earthenware, or do as I do and fix it in under 10 minutes with comparable results.

1. Peel and slice a few cloves of garlic.
2. Heat a thick-bottomed pot and add a nice glub of olive oil. When the oil is hot add the sliced garlic.
3. Fry garlic until golden yellow and add chopped mint and coriander, a small bunch each. If you can't get hold of fresh herbs use dry ones. Allow the flavours to diffuse into the oil.
   
4. Add any robust vegetables cut into bite-size chunks. I try to use one of each colour, for example, carrots, string beans and cauliflower. Tomatoes won't do because they are too gentle and I find that broccoli is too smelly and clashes with couscous. Quickly stir-fry for a couple of minutes.
5. Add one cup of water and wait until it boils.
6. Add 2 cups of couscous and stir well. You can use more couscous and water but the proportion must be the same to ensure that couscous comes out fluffy and not soggy.
7. Reduce the heat to minimum and leave to steam for a 15-20 minutes.
8. Serve with slowly roasted sultanas and pine nuts.
   

Sometimes I top merguez with tomato velouté flavoured with something simple and honest.

1. Fry a few cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced, in a glub of olive oil until golden brown. Add any spice or herb you want at this stage, like smoked paprika powder or finely chopped coriander
   
2. Add half a tablespoonful of corn starch and make sure it dissolves chunkless into the oil. Fry a short while.
   
3. Add a tin of pizza tomatoes and reduce the heat. Stir well and allow to simmer for 10-15 minutes.
   

Chopped fresh coriander and sweet red onions give the whole dish a herby and crunchy zest.

Full-bodied Cahors comes from the Southwest of France. Russian Orthodox Church considers it to be the only type of wine good enough to represent Christ's blood in the Holy Eucharist. It is delightfully robust and goes gloriously with spicy merguez.

Cajun blackened salmon (saumon noirci)

discovered blackened salmon on my first trip to Texas. We were loitering in a shopping mall waiting on Aunt Lou to finish her shopping when I saw a sign for a Cajun restaurant. I simply had to check it out because you don't find that kind of food in the Old World. Blackened salmon became love at first bite.

Actually, there is a bit of tragic history behind this dish. French-speaking Acadian settlers in what we call now New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were forcefully evicted from their lands when the English took over in 1713. Some of them came fleeing to Texas. They held on to their traditions, and very importantly, their cuisine.

I admire its rustic sophistication. It combines simple ingredients with inventful spices and more advanced ways of cooking than you would expect from country folks. Although this recipe was invented in the 1980s by Paul Prudhomme, it was since wholeheartedly embraced as a truly Cajun dish.

1. Cut a whole salmon half-an-inch thick. I use imperial measures here because 1.27cm would be too cumbersome to say.
   
2. Melt about 100 g unsalted butter.
3. Heat a cast iron frying pan very, very hot. I consider it ready for action when it starts smoking. I use a griddle skillet for the lovely sear marks.
4. Dip salmon pieces in melted butter and sprinkle moderately with Tony Chachere's Cajun Frying Spice or in the mix of 1 tbsp powder garlic, 1 tbsp onion powder, 1 tbsp ground paprica, 1 tbsp black pepper and 1 tbsp white pepper.
5. Yank salmon on the hot pan. Watch out as it can flare up. Fry about 1 minute on each side.
6. Serve with fried or baked potatoes.
   

Here is a piece of traditional Cajun music to accompany this flavourful meal:

Spaghetti alla carbonara: it could not be easier!

n our culture of instant gratification it only seems sensible to buy ready-made food, be it soups, mains or even salad dressings. But many dishes are so easy to make and they come out so much fuller of taste and healthier, not to mention the emotional satisfaction. For example, I can't remember last time I bought mayonnaise, which all in all takes just under 5 minutes to fix.

However, this time I will introduce carbonara, which is basically bechamella based on bacon and onions. The chemical explanation of the following process is that the flour makes the roux that will give the sauce its creaminess, while the bacon, onions and pepper will give the taste.

1. Heat medium high a thick-bottomed pan. Add a nice glub of olive oil.
   
2. Fry 125 g smoked bacon (I like it more than guanciale, but feel free to use whatever cured pig meat you want) and 2 chopped onions until golden brown. I use red ones but regular ones or shallots are just as fine. Some people add button mushrooms at this stage, which is supposed to be and Italo-American invention.
3. Add 2 tablespoonfuls of wheat flour with a generous grind of black pepper and fry until it get nicely mixed with the oil. Make sure it gets fried a bit too otherwise the final product will smell doughy.
   
4. If you substitute one tablespoonful of flour with one of corn starch the sauce will come out lighter and fluffier.
5. Reduce the heat and add a glass of single cream and half a glass of white wine.
6. Allow to simmer for about 20 minutes periodically stirring.
7. At the end, the traditional recipe calls for mixing in an egg beaten with a pinch of salt and a wee dram of pecorino but I often skip it.
   

In the meantime, cook your favourite pasta al dente and - ta-da! -serve with your homemade carbonara.

The cherry blossoms on the side of the plate are real. It's spring in Brixton!

Indonesian gado-gado: tempeh and veg salad with peanut sauce

his is what you can make with tempeh: gado-gado, a real Indonesian staple. It can be served as a main dish or a side. First time I tried it in the Sumatran hinterland. It dominated our lunch although there were many other dishes. The combination of crunchy, soft and chewy ingredients and the spicy-sweet aromatic sauce won me over in an instant. Once we stood up from the meal, the bill was served: 50 cent a head.

Gado-gado stands for "mix-mix" in Bahasa Indonesia so nearly anything goes into it. That said, certain things never do: e.g., tomatoes, croutons or ruccola. I prefer to improvise within the limits that Indonesian themselves find acceptable. This time I made it with

• blanched pak choy,
  
• blanched carrot,
  
• a boiled egg,
  
• fried tempeh (the crucial ingredient for me as it is so quintessentially Indonesian!)
  
• raw or blanched bean sprouts.
  

You can also use

• diced boiled potatoes,
  
• raw or blanched lettuce,
  
• blanched string beans,
  
• fried onions,
  
• blanched bean sprouts

without straying a bit from authenticity. Indonesians put them all in gado-gado.

Normally gado-gado is drenched with peanut sauce but I also have it with just sambal manis, as on the picture. Instant peanut sauce, sambal pecel, as in the picture below is available in most ethnic groceries in Amsterdam but I yet have to track it down in London. You only need to dissolve it in hot water or coconut milk. I also add some crushed lemon grass, shredded kaffir lime leaves and galangal powder. Making your own is not complicated but you need to line up all the right ingredients. I will post the recipe when I get around to that (feel free to prod me!).

Serve gado-gado with freshly cooked long-grain rice.

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Spruce up your diet with my vegetarian recipes from all over the world!

Café in the Crypt @ St.Martin-in-the-Fields: dining on gravestones

ired of the same ole? Why not try dining on gravestones in Central London then? Quite revealingly named Café in the Crypt at St.Martin-in-the-Fields Church offers unpretentious English classics in a basement cafeteria. This site has been a burial ground since at least 410 but the dining tables here stand on gravestones from more recent times. Weirdly enough, not a single punter seems to mind.

Olga and yours truly had there their pre-theatre dinner. Olga is fasting so she barely nibbled on some couscous. I recommend everyone to take her out: won't cost you the earth and she's delightful company! I had a ball with Today's Special: beef and turnip stew, baked rosemary potatoes and boiled red cabbage (£8.50). There is no going about the fact that traditional English food tends to be rather mucky but here good quality ingredients have redeemed it. The presentation may not have been top notch but the beef was tender, the turnips - flavourful, the potatoes - as tasty as they look on the picture and the cabbage was, well, boiled cabbage.

My starter, bean, potato and thyme soup was just the right degree of peppery and quite aromatic considered that it came from a pot that is kept warm the whole day. For the afters, I had a princely dollop of apple pudding with a ladleful of custard. The pudding crust was delightfully crunchy, the puréed apples - with just a hint of cinnamon and the custard - exactly the right degree of sweetness. Despite the volume it did not end up lying heavy on my stomach. The pudding and soup combo is priced at £5.65.

To wash it all down, we had Victorian Lemonade (a zesty concoction of ginger and lemon) and Apple and Beet Drink (an innocently bland light crimson water). Great thing about this place is that great classical music is just two flights of stairs away. I am very picky and hard to please when it comes to music but tonight's Vivaldi seemed highly conducive of good digestion!

Pro's: Great location, freaky design twist (memento the gravestones!).
Con's: The smell of boiled cabbage pervades EVERYTHING.
Summary: Simple and honest food but expect nothing fancy.

Café in the Crypt, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Duncannon Street, London WC2N 4JJ

Unagidon (うなぎ丼): Japanese summer survival tool

apanese summer is relentless, especially in the cities. The concrete jungle absorbs the sun heat while millions of air-conditioners pump out typhoons of hot area into the streets. It is in fact so bad that it is a national custom to send "midsummer heat fatigue" (natsubate) greeting cards inquiring how others are managing.

Unagi-don (うなぎ丼), grilled eel fillets served on top of hot rice, is supposed to provide strength to withstand the exhausting heat. There is even a special day, Doyou no Ushi no Hi, when its consumption is deemed especially beneficial.

Whether a commercial gimmick or Oriental wisdom, unagi-don is a superbly delicious dish. In fact, I enjoy it even more in winter. I cook it the Kansai way: cutting the eel's belly and basting the grilling fillets with tare made of sake, mirin and shoyu. Unlike epicurean Kansai merchants, stuck-up Edo (Tokyo) samurais hated that practice as it reminded them of seppuku (commonly and incorrectly known as harakiri).

The recipe is really simple:

1. If you have a whole eel: cut off the head, gut it, cut it in 6-7 cm pieces and removed the spine. Don't worry about the small bones.
2. Mix shoyu, mirin and sake half a cup each. Marinate the filets for at least an hour.
3. Grill the filets, regularly turning them over and basting with the marinade. Depending on your grill it takes up to 20-30 minutes. Alternatively, use a grill skillet.
   
4. Serve on top of freshly cooked Japanese rice. For the authentic taste only use short-grained japonica, long-grained jasmin and basmati just won't taste right.
   

Japanese sake or beer goes well with unagi-don. Dry white wine might be good as well but I find it a sacrilege and never even try but why should it stop you?

One of my favourite Japanese songs. Technically it is Okinawa-flavoured but it won't clash with the taste of unagi-don.

Ho mok talay: a super fancy Thai omellete

hai food is never too complicated to cook nor is it awfully time-consuming. It is down to the right combinations of fresh ingredients to impress the eater.

The list of what goes into ho mok talay (ห่อหมกทะเล) may sound intimidating to the uninitiated, but it is really a coconut-milk based seafood omelette with Thai herbs and spices. And a great one at that!

In Thailand they normally steam it in banana leave boxes, but I couldn't be arsed with such dainties. I just slow-cook it in a huge pig iron wok with just the same result! The quantities of the ingredients really depend on how much of ho mok you want to end up. So there you go:

1. Heat a nice thick-bottomed wok. Oil it with odourless vegetable oil.
   
2. Chop half a bunch of pak bung and line the wok with it.
3. Add seafood and white filleted fish. I use shrimp, squid, mussels, clams, baby octopuses (octopussies?) and whatever gifts of the deep brine I can lay hold of.
4. Beat eggs and mix them with coconut milk and some corn starch: about 2 eggs and a tablespoonful of starch per tin. Two tins and 4 eggs fill up my huge wok.
5. Add: sliced galangal root (about 2 inches), 6-8 finely shredded kaffir lime leaves, a tablespoonful of ground kurkuma (turmeric), 2 stalks of lemon grass (chopped) and 1-2 chopped chilies (ho mok is not supposed to come out too spicy!), 3 tablespoonfuls of crushed peanuts.
   
6. Pour the mixture into the wok and make sure it goes al the way through the fish, seafood and pak bung.
   
7. Cover with a lid and cook on low fire until it achieves the texture of omelette.
8. Serve with freshly steamed jasmine rice!

The technology is the same with those banana leave boxes, but then you steam them for 15-20 minutes.


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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.

Nothing cookin': Japanese hiyayakko

his simple dish takes no cooking at all. It is a variation of hiyayakko (冷奴)- a classic Japanese beer snack.

Raw silken tofu is simply garnished with wakame seaweed and ever so lightly poached enokitake mushrooms.

I make the dressing out of equal parts of:

• soya sauce
• sake
• katsuobushi extract and
• lime juice (because I can't find yuzu that the original recipe requires).

An itsy drop of wasabi adds a pleasant zesty tone. That's it. Nothing cookin', really.

Veg(etari)ans: skip the katsuobushi extract, use konbu or shiitake.

My nostalgic grub: ham and cucumber sandwich

hen I was growing up, sandwich was a piece of bread with butter and a slice of sausage. While my peers gleefully munched on theirs, I was always appalled at such lowliness and lack of finesse. I always knew there is more to sandwiches than slabs of unadulterated cholesterol and meat of dubious provenance stuffed in pig's intestines. But I seemed to be the only one around with that opinion.

Paper-thin salty ham and fresh-smelling cucumber slices on earthy rye bread (sumuštinis su kumpiu ir agurku) washed down with powerfully aromatic espresso in a café at the Vilnius Railway Station - this is my strongest memory of my first parents-free vacation at 15. These days I know more far-fetched ways to fancify a peace of bread but I still keep trying to recreate that feeling of a newly found freedom in a vaguely foreign city. I just use better ingredients.

Swedish knäckerbröd bread with sesame seeds, smoked Schwartzwälder ham, French mustard with unripe black peppers and - it's never the same without them - slices of cucumber and three umlauts!

Thai durian does not smell!

he king of fruit, durian (ทุเรียน), is my favourite ever. Thanks to globalisation now you can buy it in many ethnic groceries even in the West. In Amsterdam it's to be found in Chinatown, in London - at Brixton Market.

It's got a bad rep because of its alleged pungent odour but that is so not true. The real culprit is the cheaper yellow-fleshed variety common in Malaysia in Indonesia. In Thailand it is known as Chani and generally looked down upon. It smells indeed rank and does not taste as good as the superior type, the more expensive Mong Thong, the Golden Pillow.

Its creamy flesh reminds of fruity custard but, really, is just incomparable to anything else. It is delightfully sweet but the Thais can't seem to have enough, they eat it with sweetened sticky rice boiled in coconut milk!

Recently I have seen writings by gormless individuals trying to bust the "myth" that combining durian with alcohol is dangerous. Whatever your "research" may say, I myself have had a near-death experience when I gulped down a can of beer half an hour after gorging on a durian. That was one of the most unpleasant physical experiences. Despite it was 30 degrees in the street, I was covered in sticky cold sweat. I felt sudden weakness like I was about to faint and there was nothing to do about it because both the fruit and alcohol had already been in the system. Creepy. So NEVER mix alcohol and durian!

Breton cotriade: poor French fisherman's delight

Breton cotriade is basically the same as Russian ukha: white sea fish stewed with potatoes and onions. In Russia most of time it is made of fresh water fish, while in Brittany, naturally, of the catch from the brine.

The only condiments being sea salt and coarsely ground pepper, this dish brings out the best of the flavour in fish. It is very simple yet exquisitely delicious.

The recipe couldn't be simpler:

1. Peel and cut potatoes, let them dry a bit (this way they will less likley crumble).
2. Peel and chop an onion.
   
3. (Skip this part for the Russian ukha!) Fry a few stripes of bacon in a pot. Add the onion and cook until soft.
   
4. Add cold water and put the potatoes (and raw onions for ukha), bring to boil, then add fish.
   
5. Keep skimming the froth that comes up to the surface.
   
6. Add salt and pepper to taste. This comes out even better when you use the heads of big fish.

Venison sausages with juniper sauce

cooked the venison sausages I bought at the Southwark Slow Food Festival the best way I know how: with juniper sauce. It is a variation of the classic bourguignonne for game dishes. Juniper berries give that foresty, coniferous fragrance that goes well with the powerful flavour of venison, boar or pheasant. Potatoes boiled in jackets are there just to soak in the juices and aid the enjoyment of two major flavours.

Simplest, quickest and yet great spaghetti dinner

All best things in life are free, they say. Well, some may not be free but they can still be very cheap.

Like this amazing spaghetti recipe: a family dinner for under a pound, how about that? I learnt it from my Italian friend Luisa. Once we were stuck late at night at home with a few mouths to feed and a virtually empty fridge. The kitchen cupboard was not exactly full too (see, this was not my home!) Luisa came to rescue and everyone was full and happy in just 20 minutes.

1. Boil a pack of good quality spaghetti al dente.
2. Peel and slice a head of garlic.
   
3. Toast garlic golden brown in generous amount of olive oil.
4. Mix the garlic and oil into the cooked spaghetti.
5. Serve with grated parmiggiano or cheddar.

I serve it with some chopped sun-dried tomatoes and salted anchovies if I have those, but that is optional. Here the best of Italian cooking comes forward: simplicity, healthiness, taste based on the quality of ingredients and time-proven combinations.

I am really tempted to predicts that this recipe, if ever noticed, may come in vogue in the forthcoming months.

Huevos rancheros: South American scrambled eggs with vegetables

Well, this is entirely my own enhanced version of the highly popular huevos rancheros. First I sauté smoked bacon and chopped red onions in olive oil. This is followed by a dash of aceto balsamico bianco, a glug of oyster sauce and a generous grind of black pepper - these tastes should be incorporated into the oils and juices that later will spread across the dish.

Then I add chopped bell pepper, garden eggs, okra and tomatoes. When all the veggies are still crunchy there go 3 free-range eggs. It comes out smoky, peppery, filled with the flavours of all the veggies.

For a complete breakfast: a cup of hot coffee, a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice (spremuta) and some whole grain bread with sunflower seeds.

Met mamuang thod: toasted cashew nuts with chilies, red onion and lime juice (เม็ดมะม่วงหิมพานต์ทอด)

Met mamuang himmaphan thod (เม็ดมะมวงหิมพานต์ทอด) is a beer snack. I first tried it when I went out with my first boss for the very first time. I did not feel like a virgin but I surely liked this combination a lot. For some reason, it is not awfully common and sometimes you need to explain the waiter or even the cook what you want from them.

It could not be easier:

• Chop one red onion and 2-3 chilies.
• Heat a wok, add half a tablespoonful of odourless vegetable oil.
• Lightly toast cashew nuts. Add salt if you use raw nuts.
  
• Mix with onions and chilies, sprinkled with lime juice.

Quick, tasty, savoury, healthy, very Thai, indeed.

Dashi: Japanese stock bases

n Western cuisines cooks use chicken, veal or beef broth for the base of many dishes. In Buddhist Japan meat consumption was banned so people had to look elsewhere. This is how in Japanese cuisine we now have three basic stocks, dashi (出汁):

1. shiitake (mushroom, しいたけ)
   
2. kombu (kelp, 昆布)
   
3. katsuobushi (fish, 鰹節)

They give Japanese food that unmistakable flavour, just a refined hint of natural decay, inherently connected to the aesthetic concept of wabi-sabi, transience of all creation.

All these basic stocks naturally contain glutamic acid that is responsible for the taste we associate with savoury foods like meat, cheese or mushrooms. In Oriental cuisines this constitutes the seventh taste (umami, xianwei) in addition to sweet, sour, salty, spicy, tart and bitter.

When isolated, a derivative of glutamic acid, the naturally occurring monosodium glutamate, aka MSG, is used to enhance tastes of food. In the late 80s, it was demonized in the US media as causing the so-called "Chinese restaurant syndrome". In fact, no evidence but anecdotal has ever been found to back that claim. In fact, at the time America found itself in the midst of the Yellow Peril hysteria, searching for a new enemy to replace the Red Peril of the Soviets. Before the extremely convenient myth of War on Terror emerged, Japan and China became the "enemies du jour". In line with this, ubiquitous Chinese takeaways were chosen for a smear campaign. Despite scientific research that disavowed this myth it has persisted in public opinion to this day.

There is one secret however to correct usage of ajinomoto as MSG is commercially known: add it at the very end of cooking and try to avoid rewarming. Actually the same applied to preparing all Japanese dashi from scratch: the broth never reaches the boiling point! Glutamic acid is a natural amino acid and gets destroyed by high heat: this is how overcooking actually kills taste.

These days hardly anyone prepare dashi from scratch though. Imagine having to make broth every time before you start cooking a meal! Katsuobushi stock is sold in granules as in the picture but I make kombu and shiitake stocks myself. I just bring water with a few pieces of kombu to about 90 degrees or soak dried shiitake in water overnight. I use both to cook Western food too as it adds a whole dimension to the taste!

Liquid aphrodisiac: Jamaican mannish water (goat soup)

Or should it rather be afrodisiac with an 'f'?

Never mind that mannish water, the Jamaican goat soup, looks a bit like chunky Thames water, it tastes quite alright! I fixed it with potatoes, okra and garden eggs (which are, in fact, eggplants) but as the recipe varies from household to household any other veggies are fine too.

It is supposed to increase male sexual drive (women are excluded from this) but I don't know if it had much effect on me. It is hard to notice with my depressed serotonin levels. At any rate, mannish water, hearty and spicy, proved great comfort food on a gloomy February afternoon.

So there you go:

1. Wash well a goat's head or an equal amount of goat's meat.
2. Put in a large pot and cover with cold water. Add a few cloves of garlic, bring to boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for a couple of hours.
   
3. Add all or a few of the following, chopped into bite-size chunks: green plantains, yams, taro root (a.k.a. cocoyam), carrot, seeded and peeled chayotes, garden eggs, okra.
4. Add some chopped habanero pepper to taste, a few sprigs of thyme and salt. Simmer another 20 minutes.

A bowl of goodness: Taiwanese seafood and mushroom noodles (海鮮麺)

o, they are going to have JUST noodles?" thought I watching Taipei's smart office crowd going down on their lunch. For an Asian outsider, noodles may not sound like a meal. In Russia noodles are considered lowest grade junk food popular amongst trumps, students and washed-up bachelors.

That is all because nobody cares to fix them properly relying solely on whatever they find in the instant packages. However, with a bit of imagination it is very easy to recreate the kind of gorgeous meal I saw in Taiwan. It is healthy, filling and delicious, a little constellation of delightful chunks and pieces. The recipe couldn't be more simple: put everything in a bowl, pour boiling water, microwave for 3 minutes. Below are the ingredients I usually use.

Seafood:

• two types of shrimp,
  
• squid,
  
• baby octopuses,
  
• clams,
  
• mussels.
  

Seaweed:

• konbu,
• wakame.

Mushrooms:

• shiitake,
• cloud ear,
• jelly ear,
• yamabushitake,
• oyster mushroom,
• snow ear.

Veggies:

• kamjam (daylily buds),
• lotus root,
• pak choy,
• kang kong.
  

A smidgen of toasted black and white sesame seeds livens up an already vibrant mix even further.

I made this one Korean style, flavoured with kimchi, but I also make it, with the help of some herbs and condiments, in a variety of other styles:

• Japanese miso (miso paste and katsuobushi extract),
• Thai tom yam (galangal root, lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves, chilies and fried chili paste),
  
• spicy Szechuan (doubanjiang, Szechuan pepper and sesame oil) or
• Korean gochujang-flavoured udon.