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renchies seem to know no limits to their gastronomic decadence. Just when you thought you knew of all their latest fads, there crops up something new again.
Unlike some other nations who attempt ill-conceived culinary innovations for all kinds of wrong reasons, Frenchies always get it right.
I discovered this unusual mustard last year but there still seems no mention of it in English anywhere. It has a delicate extra flavour and an intense light magenta colour but I still prefer the unripe black pepper one from the same producer.
lorence fennel's lovely anisey flavour goes perfect with fish but it is great in its own right just as well.
I pre-marinate it in an all-purpose mix I use for all vegetables that are going to get grilled or roasted. You will need to mix well:
- a tablespoonful of olive oil;
- a tablespoonful of aceto balsamico bianco;
- a pinch of unrefined sea salt;
- a pinch garlic powder;
- a pinch freshly ground black pepper.
Slice fennel, soak it in the marinade for a few minutes and roast on white-hot charcoals or griddle pan. Do not overcook, it should stay crunchy on the inside. Serve as a main or side dish or on top of mixed green salad.
nglish jokes about Eastern European cuisines are pretty rich coming from the people whose national dish is vinegar-drenched deep-fried potatoes eaten out of a newspaper cone. But then again the English never seem weary of taking the piss out of French cuisine so it is really a local issue.
Kürtőskalács (pronounced more or less like 'kewrtersh-kalartch') is said to be Hungary's oldest pastry. It hails from Transylvania, which, despite being populated mostly by ethnic Hungarians, was awarded to Romania after WWI. So, although it is de jure Romanian, de facto it is Hungarian (I'm talking about pastry, not territory here).
Essentially, it is a ribbon of sweet leavened dough wound around a cylinder, heavily sprinkled with sugar and baked over fire. In the olden days it was turned by hand but these days it is all automatic. When ready it can be sprinkled with caster sugar, cinnamon or chopped nuts. Thanks to it peculiar shape it is also known as chimney cake in English. That is what kürtőskalács actually means in Hungarian too.
In London, I found it in the New Covent Garden market where a very friendly Hungarian lady (on the picture above) plies them for one quid fifty pense a pop. A veritable yum-orama with a cup of freshly brewed coffee.
his is a simple recipe that will allow you combine the lovely earthy flavours of autumn vegetables in one powerful stew.
Wash, peel and dice approximately equal amounts of:
- carrots
- potatoes
- parsnips
- root celeriac
- pumpkin
- yams
- swede
- buttersquash
Add 2-3 stalks of chopped leeks and stew on medium fire with butter, black pepper, unrefined sea salt, a glass of cream, a glass of water, a dash of dry white wine and a wee pinch of nutmeg until soft. Mind and stir regularly. Serve as a main or side dish.
o escape the drudgery of job search last autumn, I would go walking around the parks. London's parks are gorgeous in autumn hues on a sunny day. Sunshine adds vigour and vitality to the leaves' colours, bizarrely glorifying what is essentially a state of decay and dying. Ranelagh Gardens, a hidden gem near Sloane Square, are my favourite.
I also like all the gifts of nature that come in the fall: pumpkins, chestnuts, game, all root veggies with their earthy flavours. I just went shopping yesterday and bought 3 bags of those. The colours, the sense of abundance somehow links in my brain with the human middle age, when wisdom (with some luck) finally triumphs.
don't always mind shortcuts in cooking. The traditional goulash recipe takes up to two hours of boiling down paprika into gravy. You can bypass that by using a ready-made gulyaskrém, paprika paste for goulash.
Hungarians don't expect foreigners to be interested in this product, so you can only get hold of it in Hungary, nor is there any information on the tubes in any language besides Hungarian. However, you only need to know two words: csípős (hot) and félédes (mild). My preference goes for the félédes version for making actual goulash or pörkölt - it does not overwhelm the rest of the stew's flavours. The csípős version is fab as a spicy spread for sandwiches, it has the kind of kick and favour quite unlike anything else spicy. My favourite combination is tomato slices topped with bresaola, fresh basil leaves and paprikakrém.
Now scan the net for cheap ticks to Hungary and off you go! I once flew to Budapest for 48 Euros, return all included. I wish you the same luck!
his is perhaps the best way to describe this dish: Korean fish carpaccio. Unlike the typical miserly platters of 3 paper-thin sheets of meat you get in Italian restos, hwe moochim (회무침 ) is a main in its own right so servings are rather large. It always takes me a while to tuck it in, coupled with a bowl of rice,
So what exactly is hwe moochim (sometimes also spelt hwe muchim)? Multiple slivers of raw fish on a generous mound of shredded raw vegetables doused in liberal quantities of gochujang-based sauce, whereto it owes its Technicolor hues. It is not as spicy as it looks though: it even has a touch sweetness that only underlines the pleasant texture of the raw fish.
reat food takes great ingredients. You can't expect to build a splendid palace using dung-bricks, can you?
Gros Sel de Guérande, is unrefined hand-raked sea salt from Brittany.Nothing added, nothing removed, it is pure essence of the ocean and all the extra minerals give my cooking that extra edge.
Hand-raked, by the way, does not mean that hapless Breton peasants rake it with their bare hands. In fact, it is women with their light touch, who are trusted to scratch off the upper layer of crystallised salt with rakes.
oftas are a common dish throughout the Middle East and South Asia. The Arabic word for this dish is kafta' but I prefer to use the Persian kufteh (کوفته
), because I buy spices for mine in an Iranian shop. It is their flavour that makes all the difference in this balls of mince, rice and onions.
The recipe is simple, although, like in many Iranian dishes, time-consuming. To mae it worth my while, I cook a huge Creuset pot at a time and freeze leftovers to have for lunch when I start missing the taste.
- Cook three cups of rice in two cups of water. The proportions may vary depending on the type of rice you use and also on the humidity/altitude of your place of domicile. The rule of thumb is that rice needs to come out on the dry side, so use about 2/3 of the amount of water that you would normally use.
- While the rice is cooling down, peel and finely chop 6 large onions.
- Mix 500 g (just over a pound) Tartare beef mince with the onions and rice. Add 2 beaten eggs, salt and spices. The choice of spices is really up to you: zaatar goes very well with this recipe
Now this is a nicely odd tea: gentle blue and tasting like cucumbers. Gol gavzaban or borage is mostly used as a savoury herb in the South of France. Iranians, an ancient and sophisticated nation that they are, pick just the flowers and make tea out of them. They claim it has health benefits but I think they drink mostly because it is so bizarre and when you have a few millennia of tea-drinking behind you, you need something like this to get past your excitement threshold and get the kick.
love Korean cuisine, it is clean-cut and refreshing, just like the minimalistic wood-and-steel interiors of Korean restaurants around the world. Soju, in Great Windmill Street, is a savoury jewel in a not-such-savoury lane in Soho.
Strangely enough, the sign that you see when walking down the street says "Korean Kitchen", perhaps for the benefits of those who might take it for yet another Chinese grease joint that are so abundant in the vicinity.
TBC
Pro's: A wide range of Korean favourites. Quality ingredients. Friendly, efficient service.
Con's: Not really cheap.
In a nutshell: Great place for quality Korean fare.
Soju (Korean Kitchen)
32 Great Windmill Street
London, W1D 7LR
020 7434 3262
h Alsace, the land of blue-eyed blondes and bacon-and-crème-fraîche pizza, the flammeküche, thy biggest glory are your wines!
Right across the border, in Germany, the same grape varieties yield saccharine-sweet wines, yet in Alsace they Gallic touch works miracles and here you get veritable perfumes - full of berry and fruit flavours yet dry and light. After my all-time favourite Alsatian Riesling, Gewürztraminer takes the second spot. The nectary water made from liquidized peaches, gently sweet and full-bodied, it can be sipped in its own right, no accompanying food needed.
Important: Alsatian wines only taste right when drunk from Alsatian wine glasses with a long green stem and a wide clear bowl.
erhaps, after all all-you-can-eat buffets are not the best way to reconcile oneself with the cuisine one is not partial to. I love South-East Asia, the treasure box of diverse cultures and exotic flavours. Apart from it being the focus of my academic studies, it is the proverbial box of chocolates when it comes to cuisines. Singaporean laksa, Thai green curry, Lao tambakhung, Vietnamese, Malay, Indonesian gado-gado - if I could make a precious necklace out of food, they all would be there. Except I never could seem to find a suitable gem coming from the Philippines archipelago.
However, I am always to persuasion. For that I don't mind travelling because London's few Filipino eateries, Kusinang Munti is located in Tooting Bec.
have promised to myself umpteen times to shun tourist restaurants like plague. See, unlike neighbourhood restaurants, these do not have faithful clientèle. There is no incentive for them to try to lure punters into coming again. They just churn out generic victuals just good enough not to have people complain.
But, as I haul my butt around this planet quite extensively, it can be hard to totally avoid such establishments. This time we went to Liz's for tea to Windsor. Unfortunately, she did not show up although we did see the royal standard billowing on top of the keep. Once we were done with sightseeing at the castle, we went to town to refill. Windsor is a pretty town and, blessed with royal-obsessed visitors, boasts quite a choice of places to eat. All of them, naturally, catering to mostly tourists. Such was our luck that we happened upon such. Latino Taverna, despite its name, is a Greek eatery. It is set in a picturesque location, on the cobbled slope of a curvy lane.
We went for a lunch choice of half meze, which at 11.95 a head included
- a wee bowl of taramasalata;
- a wee bowl of tzatziki;
- a wee bowl of potato salad;
- a wee bowl with a few olives;
- a wee bowl of melitzanosalata;
- a wee bowl of bean salad;
- a wee bowl of tabuleh.
Those were closely followed by
- four deep-fried calamari rings;
- a wee sauce with mussels;
- a bowl of Greek salad;
- a grill platter: 2 loukanika pork sausages, 2 keftedes (spicy meat balls), 2 chicken breast skewers, two slices of haloumi cheese.
By the way, "a lot of fresh Greek bread" advertised in the menu stands for a tiny sliced pita re-warmed in the grill. For each additional tiny pita you will be charged 2.20.
Lemon squash and soda was very nice: obviously home-made, it tasted like old-fashioned lemonade, refreshingly non-sweet.
Pro's: Great location basking in the sunshine around lunchtime.
Con's: Brisk service.
In a nutshell: Alright for a quick refuel in Windsor, if you don't mind your lunch taste like an in-flight meal.Latino Taverna3 Church Lane
Windsor SL4 1PA
really like the business model British museums have adopted. They do not charge entrance fee. Surprisingly, they reporetedly make three times as much money as when they did. Some dosh comes from donations but the majority of the proceeds appears to come from giftshop and cafeteria trade.
Conceded, the fare they churn out is more reliable classics than top-notch culinary finesse but who would expect the latter from a museum?
Horniman Museum, despite its name, is a family kind of place. Situated on a hill in Dulwich in South London, it hosts a huge collection of stuffed animals and musical instruments displayed in mostly dark and dusty rooms. It smells like it has deposits of dust undisturbed since WWII but it is surely is a good educational value for kids.
Next to it stands a Victorian orangery, except instead of potted orchids and pineapples there are wrought iron tables where the food from the cafeteria is consumed by hordes of shrieking children and their desperate parents.
By half past two, we had to put up with what was left in the kitchen:
- peppers stuffed with rice, feta cheese, tomatoes and herbs - tasted home-made;
- beef stew with a side of brown rice - the beef was soft and flavourful.
Thirteen pounds for the whole bill, not bad at all for London.
Pro's: Well-cooked classics from organic ingredients.
Con's: On a good busy day food runs out quickly.
In a nutshell: No need to bring your lunch box here: the food is cheap and good.
HornimanMuseum
100 London Road
Forest Hill SE23 3PQ
London
was eyeing this cafe for a long time as it lies on my Asian groceries route on Brewer Street in Soho. The tantalising display of honey-drenched Middle Eastern sweets and the promise of a cup of Lebanese coffee - what else a caffeine-addicted sweet-tooth like me needs? Finally I have found a good company to go, my Italian friend Monica. This fine lady is running a language training company in London and, a highly sophisticated Italian urbanite that she is, is probably the best company for coffee and cake sampling.
There are two tables outside on the sidewalk but we went inside to escape the noise of the passing cars that would have completely drowned the conversation. The curly and burly Lebanese proprietor's thin veneer of friendliness barely seemed to contain a deep annoyance with life. Unfortunately for us, we did inadvertently burst that veneer by asking the Arab names for the sweets that we ordered. Three times. Finally,with exasperated sighs, he caved in and, very reluctantly, barked out quick explanations.
As it was late in the afternoon we had to go for some decaf , no time for proper coffee this time. The cold Turkish pomegranate tea turned out to be a rather ghastly canned instant variety with loads of sugar at the bottom of the glass. My African Temptation tea appeared rooibos with masala-esque spices, Durban-inspired, if I had to put my finger on it. Fir that price, I'd expect a more imaginative concoction than a mere teabag in hot water but never mind that!
The rich, sweet cakes were, as it goes, made of filo dough filled with various crushed nuts and soaked in generous quanitities of honey or, perhaps, treacle, we did not dare to ask. Handsome chunks, each enough for two, really, they definitely did not deserve to be served on stirofoam trays. I hate physical violence so I decided to go local and swallow my objections.
Truth be told, Middle Eastern sweets do not seem to be the main business for Ganache. I should have guessed it by the name (ganache is a French chocolate bonbon filling), these people appear to make more money from luxury chocolate sales.
After a long pleasant chat we headed out. As we were leaving, the curly ogre was busy angrily telling off a delivery boy who happened to deliver some boxes inside the shop instead of leaving them on the sidewalk. As we walked away, the sound of his voice faded into the street hubbub. Hopefully, I won't have to hear it again.
Pro's: Handy location. Nice sweets.
Con's: Scary service. Rather pricey. Stirofoam trays in lieu of crockery.
In a nutshell: The pro's don't outweigh the con's.
Once you start using it yu can't stop. Although it is a typically Asian cooking condiment I have discovered that imrpoves the taste of non-Asian food too. Classic oyster sauce supposed to be oyster flesh boiled in water until reduced to dropping consistency. If you want something like that, you will have to prepare it yourself as all commercial brands are, in fact, oyster-flavoured starch sauces.
At this point, I can't possibly afford boiling fresh oysters into drippy brown liquid to help stir-fried veggies taste better so I put up with supermarket varieties. They do bring in that somewhat nutty, savoury taste (umami) to the dish that nothing else can substitute.
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