Beirut Express: great dinner for under 10 quid in London

remember what a major letdown was Time Out's Cheap Eats in London guidebook: a random list of fast food grease joints and places that cost 15-20 pounds a pop. Since then I discovered that London is, indeed, chock-a-block with places where you can eat very well under a tenner and they crop up in most unexpected places.

Take Beirut Express: it looks like your common-and-garden urban caff, if decorated in a distinct Levantine style of 80s marble and nickel surfaces. The only giveaway that you can also feed your face here, are two giant kebab "elephant legs" slowly swivelling in the corner. Luckily, I know that they have way better stuff up their sleeve. Check their menu and you will see the classic Middle Eastern lineup of starters, grilled meats and sweets.

Last time I went there with a Japanese girl friend who does not eat much anyway, it took us close to three hours to finish the gigantic platters of starters (meze) and mixed grilled meats (meshawi). This time around there were three of us to feed on those and that filled us up for the rest of the day.

As it goes with Levantine food, the variety is limited and repeated time after time again, but everything you get is utterly fresh and cooked to perfection.

Make sure to try their jellab drink - rose-flavoured date juice, intensely fragrant and sweet.

Pro's: Superlative Lebanese grub. Friendly service. Big portions. Affordable.
Con's: Tables next to the entrance are a tad drafty.
In a nutshell: Levantine cuisine at its usual best.

Beirut Express 112-114 Edgware Road London W2 2 DZ


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Je vous remerci pour notre pain quotidienne: springbok steaks & cresson veloute

The mind boggles just thinking about how far our food travels. For a few pieces of meat to come from South Africa to London and then end up on a dinner table in Amsterdam, we must be forever grateful for being able to enjoy such luxury.

Knowing that Floyd would hardly have juniper berries in his cupboard, I brought those from London too. They are the best to make sauce for probably any kind of game meat.

The cresson veloute is my homage to the wonderful family of French soups so rarelyy cooked outside La Belle France (from my experience an

Billingsgate Market: London's freshest

o say that I am crap in the morning is to say nothing. All too oft, it takes about two hours for a huge mug of coffee, a handful of Chinese herbal pills, a round of Kundalini breathing exercises, an invigorating contrast shower and upbeat music throughout the commute to yank me out of lethargy into some semblance of functioning humanity.

It sure takes a promise of something really special to get me up at 3AM and drag my vehemently uncooperative body across dark and cold London. This time it was the perspective of a sightseeing session that worked the miracle. My group mate Tom used to work for an Italian restaurant and Billingsgate Market is where they used to buy fresh pesci spada and gambas and he promised us a tour. Nice.

Being the wholesale fish and seafood market of the capital of the country that has only recently started shedding its ichthyophobia, Billingsgate is sure not Tokyo's Tsukiji Market. A lot of the produce that will later be featured on the menus as "fresh catch of the day" is in fact hauled in refrigerator trucks. Well, how else then would you ship anything fresh from the tropical expanses of the Indian Ocean to a cloudy island in the North Sea?

At any rate, the choice is incomparably larger than the pathetic hike and pollock of my childhood's fish shops. The high turnover makes sure that the gifts of the sea are affordable to the gluttonous masses in the Big Smoke.

Speaking of prices, they are not that much lower than at my Brixton Market fishmongers, so a couple of quid difference is definitely not worth the tribulations of an hour-and-half night bus trip.

A lot can be said by the food cooked in the market. Grilled seafood in Barcelona's La Boqueria Market was superlative. The only ocean-derived item we found in Billingsgate Market's café was this grilled scallop bagel with bacon and cheese. It tasted just the way it looked.

Ottomanic fiasco: Bazar @ Amsterdam

aaw, I should have known the moment I entered the place: the dim lights, the exotic crockery, the "world cuisines" menu, and a sure giveaway: packed to the rafters with under-35 Dutch yuppies. The daily dining out lifestyle is making quick in-roads into the Dutch psyche, particularly catching on among the above mentioned demographics. A dinner out does not need a special excuse any more, it is just a matter of convenience as well as enjoyment.

But what is there to be enjoyed remains to be agreed upon. In Amsterdam it seems to be candles and cosy interiors over the food served every time. The dim lighting masques the content of the plates and the designer furniture makes the restaurant a sort of extension of your living room perfect for pursuing the Dutch national ideal of gezelligheid (conviviality in a warm,cosy and preferably dimly lit milieu).

Bazar on Albert Cuypstraat got it all covered: there is just enough light to read the menu, the plates and cutlery are exuberantly picturesque and candles are sticking out of all imaginable places.

Although it claims to be a wereldeethuis - a restaurant of world cuisines, the food is mostly Turkish, on the level of your average dinner in Turkey - never bad enough to be sent back to the kitchen, but always making you long for the moment when you finally got it over with your dinner. Like I wrote earlier, I have had much better Turkish food outside Turkey than in the country itself.
These icecream-like balls are Irfan’s starter (€10.50):

• zaalouk, -the best of the bunch, a kind of cold Moroccan ratatouille;
• humuz - aka hommous, flat as a used condom;
• haydari, aka suzme - plain strained yoghurt without a whiff of herbs;
• sarma - aka dolma, stuffed grape leaves, as forgettable as they always are;
• peynir ezme - a spicy-ish feta-cheese spread that acquires its pungent taste and lively light orange colour from the biber salçası pepper paste - served in one big blob, it just was too rich to have allure;
• sigara böregi - filo pastry stuffed with cheese, a good solid B;
• pide - very underwhelming, considered that the only people that could possible beat Turks to making bread are the French. You can get better in any Turkish bakery in Amsterdam any day, and aren't reataurants supposed to be better and more special than our daily home-made meals?

The attractively served on a huge colourful bowl Bizar Bazar (€29) was a meat platter consisting of a mixed grill kebab, that had apparently never been in the vicinity of either charcoal nor grill, most likely just hot plates:

• very chewy pieces of mutton disguised as lamb, ingenuously spiced up with salt;
• pieces of dry and bland chicken breast,
• pieces of even dryer and blander turkey breast,
• pieces of rather passable spicy chicken sausage
• interspersed with pieces of onions, bell peppers and aubergines

as well as

• lamb stew with almonds (and SALT!) à la Persienne - way too conspicuously cooked well in advance;
• fried chicken, tasting suspiciously like frozen "spicy chicken wings" from your local discount supermarket (I once did go through that traumatic experience!)
• two long and raw green bell peppers;
• a mound of rather nice rice;
• a bowl of semi-retired tabbouleh, chopped parsley with bulgur and tomato bits;
• a bowl of bizarrely tough pickles, think slices of wood,softened by immersing in vinegar;
• and a handful of soft and anaemic French fries.

Big beers were in fact half-pints, the service - friendly, yet very unhurried. We were relieved when the dinner was over and we could go home. Wouldn't any comment be superfluous?

Pro's: Beautiful plates and wall tiles.
Con's: Utterly bland uninspiring food. Snail-speed service.
In a nutshell: Bleh. You won't see us again.

Juniper sauce: on top of the game

There is nothing like the resiny bouquet of juniper sauce to complement the rich flavour of game. When served on top of reindeer steaks, it reminds me of my childhood in Arctic Russia where we had both reindeer and juniper, but no one was sophisticated enough to combine the two in one dish.

That does not stop me from enjoying this lovely combination now. It sounds fancy but in fact is very easy to whip up.

Once you've fried your game steaks or what you have (I use clarified butter for that), leave the juices on the pan, add a tablespoonful of juniper berries, a liberal dash of freshly ground black pepper and half a glass of red wine. Reduce it on low fire until trickly. Serve your game meat with the sauce on top and two sides: one starchy (e.g. baked potatoes) and one crunchy (e.g., steamed haricot beans). A green salad with a simple Italian dressing can be good but this time I served a veloute with grilled parmigiano bread.

Heron Thai restaurant London review

I am very rarely impressed with Thai restaurants abroad. Most of them are run by people who got into cooking simply because they could not find any other job. They are also often guilty of watering down tastes to suit the local palate. And some use pre-packaged sauces to cut down the operational costs. Boo! Boo! Boo!

That said, there are lucky exceptions. I saw an advert for this place in London's Thai-language newspaper. It is normally a sure-fire sign of authentic fare.

My gut was right. North-Eastern sausages (krok Lao) were perfectly done: crunchy on the outside, juicy and spicy inside. The sticky rice was expertly cooked. And the yam (a kind of spicy escoveche) of raw crab was nothing short of revelation. I have never had anything like that even when I lived in Thailand.

It was hard to do it all justice though, as the waiters refused to turn down the blaring karaoke, despite there was no other clients in the restaurant. Cheesy tunes were echoing unobstructedly in the empty room full of garishly bright plastic tables and chairs, bouncing off the walls into our poor ears. Very soon our throats got sore from trying to outshout the electrically amplified voices of Thai pop stars and we just kept drinking water that was pushed on us at a pound a bottle against our will.

Pro's: Fantastically tasty food.
Con's: Obnoxiously noisy. Horrible interior. Rude sour service. Pricey.
In a nutshell: Thai food connoisseur's paradise if you know how to switch all your other sense but the taste.

Moo guk: Korean radish soup recipe (무우국)

White and juicy daikon radish gently boiled into a still crunchy softness - that is the highlight of moo-guk (무우국) the Korean radish soup. Don't even get started on phallic connotations: in soup, daikon ends up chopped to bite-size chunks!

1. Cut 50 g of lean beef or chicken into thin stripes.
2. Marinate them in a 1 tsp of sesame oil and some freshly ground black pepper.
   
3. Peel half a daikon (aka, mooli or Chinese white radish) and cut into bite-size chunks.
4. Stir-fry the beef in a well heated pot, then add the daikon and stri-fry a couple more minutes.
5. Add 3 cups of water - and, if you so wish, a handful of pre-washed bean sprouts and /or half a chopped leek - and bring to a boil.
6. Reduce the fire and allow to simmer for 5-6 minutes.
7. Serve with a wee drizzle of sesame oil and a sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper.

Serve as a starter or an accompaniment to a Korean main dish such as jaeyuk bokkeum (spicy pork stew).

Jeyuk bokkeum: improved recipe

While my jaeyuk bokkeum (재육볶음) recipe is apparently a big hit at Barclay Russia's Moscow HQ, I have kept working on it and developed an improved version of this classic Korean dish, which I call "dry" jeyuk bokkeum.

The difference with the "wet" jeyuk bokkeum is that here the meat and veg get grilled and eaten with a gochujang dip instead of getting stewed with gochujang, in which process both kind of lose their most interesting flavours.

To avoid that, I divided the process in two parts: grilling and making the dip.

Grilling:

1. For the marinade, mix 2 tablespoonfuls of mirin, one tablespoonful of soya sauce, one tbsp rice wine, wee glug of sesame oil, white and black sesame seeds, half a teaspoonful each, a few drops of liquid smoke.
   
2. Marinate 200g thin stripes of best beef for about 20 minutes. Better get the stripes from a good butcher or a very good Asian supermarket.
   
3. Cut 8 pre-soaked (better overnight) shiitake mushrooms into thin stripes.
4. Do the same with carrots.
5. Grill the meat and veg on a ribbed skillet or whatever grilling equipment you have.
   

Now for the dip. I am very proud of it. I invented it myself, it is a deeper, richer and more intense version of the classic liquid gochujang they carry in Korean restaurants. For the dip you will need to mix in a bowl:

• a few generous spoonfuls of gochujang;
  
• a few cloves of garlic, crushed;
• 2 inches of fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated;
• a tablespoonful of finely toasted white sesame seeds (easy on this one as it tastes bitter in big doses);
• a tee-wee glug of fish sauce;
• when necessary, some water to achieve the desired consistency.

Serve the meat and veg on separate plates, the dip on the side, a big bowl of freshly steamed rice (here's how to cook rice to perfection) and a platter of Little Gem lettuce leaves or, alternatively, cut Cos (Romaine) lettuce to appropriate size. Wrap a few slices of meat and veg in in a leaf, dunk into the dip and chase with a mouthful of rice. The ultimate winter heart-warmer.

Miyeok guk: Korean seaweed soup recipe (미역국)

iyeok guk (미역국), Korean seaweed soup, is packed with essential nutrients that are hardly ever present in your daily 5. That is why in Korea it is given to pregnant women and students about to sit for an exam.

Like all Korean recipes it is straightforward, simple and yields amazing results. The beef stock lends the seaweed a depth of flavour, while the aromas of garlic and sesame oil make the melody of this soup a fully harmonised one.

1. Soak 2 tbsp of dried seaweed (miyeok in Korean or wakame in Japanese) in plenty of cold water. I also use kombu/dasima but that is optional
   
2. In the meantime cut 50 g lean beef into thin strips and marinade them in 1 tbsp of sesame oil and a modicum of freshly ground black pepper.
   
3. Heat a wok and quickly stir-fry the beef.
   
4. When the beef is nicely browned, reduce the fire and add the seaweed. Make sure to wring it out as dry as possible. Stir-fry very briefly.
   
5. Add 3 cups of water and bring to a simmer.
6. Add 3-5 cloves of garlic, sliced, and soya sauce to taste.
7. Simmer until the garlic is soft.
8. Serve with a sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper , a drizzle of sesame oil and a pinch of finely sliced scallions.
   

Kongnamul guk: veg soups can be fab too! (콩나물국)

his is a surprisingly simple and flavourful soup. Kongnamul guk (콩나물국) is made from truly basic ingredients and takes just a few minutes to cook, yielding a remarkable combination of healthiness and taste.

1. Bring to a boil 3 cups of water.
2. Add 2 generous handfuls of bean sprouts, pre-washed, and 2 tablespoonfuls of fish sauce.
3. Let simmer for 4-5 minutes.
4. Add 1 chopped spring onion, one finely sliced de-seeded chili pepper and 3 finely sliced garlic cloves.
5. Let simmer for another couple of minutes.
6. Season with sesame oil and freshly ground black pepper.
7. Serve!
   

Dakdoritang: chicken stew for wintry days (닭도리탕)

hen the city is snowed in and the frost bites your cheeks, you learn to appreciate the warmth of your home and the satiating qualities of your food with all your physical being. Nothing like hearty spicy stews on a cold December day.

Tonight I cooked dakdoritang (닭도리탕), a Korean chicken casserole. Because it sounds too Japanese, there is a movement in Korea towards renaming the dish dak-bokkeum (닭볶음). A good example of how even gastronomy can be politicised.

As a rose by any name is still a rose, let's get on with the recipe:

1. Peel 3 large potatoes and cut them in bite-size cubes. Leave them to dry in a sieve: that will help them keep shape when cooked, without disintegrating into mash.
2. Do the same with 1 large carrot and 2 large onions.
3. Mix 3 crushed cloves of garlic, a dab of fish (or soya) sauce, 1 tbsp of finely grated ginger and 2 tbsp of gochujang to make marinade.
   
4. Chop 2 organic free-range (they do taste better!) chicken legs or breasts into bite-size chunks and fold into the marinade. Leave for 15-20 minutes.
5. In the meantime, fry the vegetables in a cast-iron pot until half-ready. Remove and set aside.
6. Fry chicken until golden brown.
7. Put the veg back into the pot and add 3 cups of mushroom stock or water. Simmer for 20 minutes on a low fire, gently stirring once in a while.
   
8. Add salt or fish sauce to taste.
9. Turn off the fire and wait until the bubbling stops.
   
10. Blend in 2 tbsp of gochujang and 2 tbsp of finely grated ginger into the stew. Let stay on the stove for 10-15 minutes (although, ideally, overnight to let the flavours to mingle well!).
11. Serve on whole lettuce leaves with a sprinkle of chopped scallions and freshly cooked rice.
    

Jambalaya in November: un peu de soleil dans l'eau froide

aving lived 7 years with a Southerner, you would think I must have had jambalaya more than half a thousand times. Far from that, it is my first time ever I laid my spoon and fork on one.

America's answer to paella, jambalaya combines West African cooking methods with the ingredients of the New World. I am too lazy to post the recipe, you can find it in one of the following books.

Pejines salados: maternity ward's most wanted

n Russia, conventional wisdom has it that if you have a craving for salted fish, you must be preggers. I must be permanently knocked up then, because the craving never goes away. If allowed, I could eat a pack an evening. Luckily, it is not that widely available in London because African dried fish that they sell in Brixton needs to be cooked before consumption. Not your beer snack, in other words.

However, God is faithful, God provides. Just when I had run out of cured tyulka that Victoria brought me from Moscow, most serendipitously, I stumbled upon these beauties called pejines. It took a 4-hour flight from London and a trip to Tenerife's Auchan (called there Alcampo) to get hold of it, but serendipity tends to happen to those on the move.

Much saltier and somewhat leaner than Russian tyulka, pejines should be given out for free in pubs to make people drink inordinate amounts of beer.

My vegetable romance: the best marinade for grilled vegetables (verdure alla griglia)

ack in my Bangkok days, when I was still veg(etari)an, my staple diet was naturally Asian: mostly Thai and Chinese. Once in a while, I would also take to ransacking other restaurants in search of something I could sink my herbivorous teeth in.

One sultry (there they all are!) evening, I went on a date to one of Bangkok's fanciest Italian restaurants. My date was quite perplexed as per where to take me out to, as my militant vegan stance wouldn't have allowed anything animal-derived into my digestive system. Ah, the extremes of youth!

Italian is the favourite cuisine with a lot of Western vegetarians. A lot of dishes are vegetable-based, it is tasty, colourful and offers a reasonable variety of dishes. France is vegetarians' hell, Italy is their paradise. So, this Italian place was an almost inevitable choice.

It must have been my first encounter with real Italian alta cucina. Ridiculously overpriced, cooked to perfection, immaculately presented food served in a converted city mansion, enjoyed with the capital's swishest crowd. Of all the truly exquisite dishes, I was somehow most impressed with my starter, grilled vegetables. After the intense flavours of Thai food, it was quite a revelation that something so simple and unadorned with hardly any spice or herbs - and no chilies in sight! - could be so delicious. It was such a long while ago that now I don't quite remember how I got hold of the recipe. One thing I know is that this marinade makes vegetables taste exactly like on that memorable date.

So here is the recipe:

1. A dab of sea salt, a generous dash of aceto balsamico bianco, a lot of freshly grounded black pepper, a nice pinch of powdered garlic, a liberal glug of olive oil. I also use some fish sauce and a drop of liquid smoke, but you don't need to.
   
   
2. Let it all sit in a deep bowl until it all dissolves, then whisk into a homogeneous liquid .
   
   
3. In the meantime, slice zucchini, aubergines, pumpkins, fennel, onions, tomatoes and bell peppers, evenly and equally thick. Add a few pods of haricot beans. I also use shiitake mushrooms. Portobellos come out very nice too.
   
   
4. Marinate the vegetables for 15-20 minutes, not more, otherwise they become soggy.
   
   
5. Heat a ribbed skillet on a very strong fire. A gas stove is essential here as an electric one won't give you a high enough temperature.
   
   
6. Grill the vegetables until they are nicely seared on the outside. They taste best al dente, slightly crunchy inside, so mind not to overcook.

Tea leaf eggs, pig's blood cake and candied apple on a stick! - Taiwanese Food Fête, London 2010 - 第十四屆臺灣迎新小吃節 (英國倫敦)

can't remember much what I ate in Taiwan, it was such a long time ago. I remember stinky tofu (臭豆腐， chou doufu) we bought somewhere in the mountains. It was delightfully flavourful, nothing stinky at all. I also remember the spicy steamboat (火鍋, huǒ guō ) we had in Taoyuan. Precious little, in other words. So it was about time I had refreshed my memories, when this Taiwanese Food Fête cropped up in my scheduler.

A long journey to W2, so away from my hunting grounds. I don't even know what the area is called. Somewhere-in-the-West. The top floor of a council-run community centre looks like a big student canteen, only today there's no bangers and mash on the menu. Instead, I am starting with "tea leaf eggs" (茶葉蛋, cha ye tan): eggs boiled with tea leaves, aniseed, cinnamon, fennel seeds, cloves and Szechuan peppercorns. Sound better than your scrambled eggs? It tastes better too!

It's about 12PM now, just the right time for some gyoza or jiao-zi as they are properly called in Chinese. See, normally it's a lunch kind of food, part of the dim sum family. This particular kind is called 煎餃, jian jiao, stuffed with dog's meat. Not! Just yanking your chain. It's just your common-or-garden fried dumplings with chicken and veg.

You-fan (油飯 ), "oil rice" is a Taiwanese specialty. It is steamed glutinous rice with mushrooms and chicken, flavoured with five-spice and soya soy sauce.

Pig's blood cake (豬血糕, zhu xie gao) sounds gorier than it actually is. From a distance, it resembles a chocolate ice cream on a stick. The main ingredient is glutinous rice, which helps keep its shape. It is coated with crushed peanuts and chopped coriander leaves immediately before consumption.

Candied fruit （拔丝水果， basi shuiguo) is a traditional Chinese treat sold from street stalls. A pretty healthy snack, unless you are one of the white-sugar-hating brigade.

Now, 'tis time to retreat to my den and digest all these Taiwanese goodness before my kundalini-yoga class starts.

Les cadeaux de Brixton: why I live here

is again the time of the year when I get all sentimental about les cadeaux de l'automne, the gifts of the autumn. I love the generous maturity of this season, the contrast of warm colours and cold air, the earthy smells of fallen leaves and seasonal produce. Last year, I went to the market and, at the spur of the moment, bought two bags of autumnal produce: a pumpkin, parsnips, root celery, chestnuts, Brussels sprouts,

This year I choose to rejoice in the grand affordability of Brixton. The whole display on the picture:

• 6 bell peppers,
• 8 vine tomatoes,
  
• 3 ears of sweet corn,
• 3 bunches of spinach
  
• and a huge bunch of fresh mint
  

only cost me 6 pounds 59 pence!

Gaeng som cha om kai: something hot in a cold country (แกงส้มชะอมชุบไข่ทอด)

rarely cook the same dish two times back to back. With all the diversity available to us these days, it would be a shame to get stuck in a culinary rut. Moreover, my penchant for dietary diversity is in line with the little theory that I have recently developed. See, most of us eat the same stuff , week in, week out. It will be mostly what we like, what we know how to cook, or what is available in our local supermarket.

That kind of skewed pattern of food intake deprives our bodies of a multitude of nutrients. Your body, like a house, needs constant maintenance and you need as many various amino acids, polysaccharides and enzymes as possible to make sure that you keep the temple of your soul in the best possible condition.

This week the sunny and crispy cold weather in London has put me in the mood for some spicy food. The contrast between the chilly air outside and the warm, fuzzy glow of chilli peppers and ginger inside is one of the greatest carnal pleasures. I decided to whip up some gaeng som (แกงส้ม, alternative spellings: kang som, kaeng som, gang som) - spicy-and-sour Thai soup normally served with an acacia omelette. I cooked it on Sunday, to give my cold limbs a perk after a nice afternoon hang-out in Regent's Park, and then once again on Wednesday for a dear guest.

Here, in one serving, I had a most cosmopolitan congregation: mussels from New Zealand, rice from India, shrimp from Greenland, eggs from Britain, fish sauce and tamarind from Thailand, tomatoes from Italy and onions from Egypt. To paraphrase Confucius: "有菜自远方来，不亦乐乎?" ("When food comes from afar, is that not delightful?")

So here is the recipe:

Kai cha om (ไข่ทอดชะอม) (acacia omelette)

1. Take 100 g fresh cha-om (see the picture below) and pinch off the soft leaf parts and the most tender twigs. Discard the branches and stems. Watch out for the thorns!
   
2. Tear cha-om in two half-inch pieces and fold 4 fresh free-range eggs and a dab of fish sauce.
   
3. Heat a skillet, cover the bottom with a bit of vegetable oil and, when the oil is hot, tip the egg and cha-om mix.
   
4. When the omelette is ready on one side, flip it over and wait until the other side gets nicely golden brown.
   
5. When ready, remove from the fire and cut into inch-by-inch squares.

Gaeng som (แกงส้ม):

1. Peel one medium red onion, half a head of garlic, one-inch piece of ginger. Mince it all with 3-4 prik kee noo peppers in a mortar, and mix with juice of one lime, half a glass of tamarind juice, a tablespoonful of kapi (shrimp paste, crucial for the right flavour!) and a nice glug of fish sauce.
   
2. Marinate whatever you are planning to put in the soup - shrimp, shellfish or fish - for at least half an hour.
   
3. Bring 2 glasses of water to a boil, add a handful of haricot beans and a few garden eggs cut in quarters.
   
4. Add the marinating mixture (1) to the soup, simmer gently for a couple of minutes, then add a can of chopped tomatoes and the fish/shellfish.
   
5. Gently simmer for a few more minutes.

Serve gaeng som in a bowl topped with a pieces of omelette and freshly steamed rice on side.

Now for the soundtrack: Something Hot In A Cold Country by Echobelly

Culinary espionage: Mrs. Mahmoud's secret couscous recipe

here is this Sudanese lady in my apartment block who exudes motherly kindness as she glides around unhurriedly in resplendent multi-layered robes. A year ago I was sitting at my Nigerian neighbour's place having a nice friendly banter, trying, as usual, to outshout a Nigerian music channel on TV and two simultaneous mobile phone conversations, when she popped by with a big bundle in her hands. No, that was not an illegitimate baby, but a large pan wrapped in towels to keep it warm. Inside was the most aromatic and scrumptious couscous that ever hit my nostrils or touched my taste buds.

Let's be honest with ourselves, couscous may be a hip food these days, but most of times it tastes like wet sand and smells like old clothes. Even when cooked at home, following the instructions on the package blindly: "boil water, add couscous, let it sit on the stove for a while", results in lumpy gunk none more illustrious than the anaemic supermarket variety.

That is why Mrs. Mahmoud's couscous was a revelation. I had to know how she managed to turn something so bland and unexciting into a fiesta of taste buds titillation. However, all my subsequent attempts to elicit the recipe from her were to no avail. Not she was unfriendly or secretive. She was too shy.

I had had it before and I still get it all the time. When I ask my African neighbours for recipes the immediate reaction is: 'Why would a White guy ever want to cook African food?' 'Well, because it tastes so blooming good!' Any request to teach me a Yoruba phrase or explain the meaning of different ways of tying female headgear are met with the same kind of disbelief and cultural self-denial. The roots of this deeply seated sense of unworthiness are brilliantly explored in Shohat and Stam's brilliant Unthinking Eurocentrism, but I digress.



In short, I had no other option but to try and crack the recipe myself. After a few progressively successful attempts and a lot of spying on African ladies shopping in Brixton market, I have finally managed to get the taste and flavour exactly like that Mrs. Mahmoud's. So here how it goes.

Mrs. Mahmoud's secret couscous recipe:

1. Peel half a head of garlic and two or three large African onions (or just regular red ones).
   
2. Heat a generous amount of vegetable oil in a thick cast-iron skillet. I use olive oil but sunflower oil with a dab of palm oil, just for the flavour, should be very nice too. The amount should be quite liberal, as couscous absorbs it all without a trace greatly improving in taste and texture.
   
3. Slice the garlic and onions very thinly and gently fry on a very low fire.
   
4. Chop half a Scotch bonnet chili and add to the skillet with half a handful of dried anchovies. Flavour with a nice glug of fish sauce. Remove from fire.
   
5. Bring to a boil 3 glasses of water in a cast-iron pot. Reduce the fire to minimum. Tip the fried mix from the skillet into the pot. Add some salt (I use hand-raked Guerande sea salt, as it contains a lot of sea-water micro-elements on top of the plain old sodium chloride).
   
6. Chop into small bits whatever vegetables you have of the following: runner beans, haricot beans, bell peppers, tomatoes, sweet corn kernels. Add to the pot with a few whole Chantenay carrots and cook until half-done.
   
7. Fold a very generous handful of dried mint and/or oregano into the mix.
   
8. Add 500 g (about one pound) of couscous and fold into the mix. Put the lid on and allow to sit on the smallest possible fire for 20-30 minutes. Stir occasionally.
   
9. Serve with lamb chops and grilled vegetables.