Tarhana soup recipe tarhana corbasi (Tarhana Çorbası)

Instant foods are not a recent invention. It was the Phoenicians who came up with couscous, a wheat micro pasta, handy to carry on long ship journeys and cook in no time with minimum effort. 

The amount of effort to prepare food that can be cooked instantly, however, can be staggering. Good Moroccan wives get up in the wee hours to go to market to buy ingredients to make couscous by hand that will be ready to eat for dinner in the evening.

Apparently, it takes about 10 days of daily kneading to make the dry flakes or granules for Turkish tarhana soup (Tarhana Çorbası).

Black olives flavoured with sage, garlic and lemon rind

Turkish cuisine offers a slew of marvelous ingredients that in the loving hands of a Turkish mama turn into exquisitely heart-warming treats.

Take for example salted olives, provocatively called in French à la mode grecoise. Those are black olives in salt, full stop. On their own, they are definitely an acquired taste: a complex mix of tart and salty, rich in flavour, lacking in fragrance, and somewhat on the dry skinny side.  

Now the task is to imagine oneself a Turkish mater familiae and think how to bring out olives' strengths and make good for their weaknesses. This is my take.

I peel and slice thinly one head of garlic, part a lemon with its rind and crush a handful of dried sage. I fold all that into a 200 ml olive oil, shake well and mix with 1 kg black salted olives in a glass jar. Let stay in a cool place, NOT in the fridge, for a couple of days, to allow all the flavours to fuse. Serve with Turkish bread, grilled halloumi cheese, sliced ripe tomatoes and whatever Mediterranean dainties you can get hold of.

Yukhoe - Korean steak tartare (육회)

ho would think that eating chopped raw beef mixed with raw egg yolk on a bed of sliced pears would make for a great culinary experience? Well it did! It comes flavoured in that characteristically subtle Korean way, just underlining the natural goodness of the ingredients. I figured that it must be just sesame oil with a wee sprinkle of toasted white sesame. So, that's pretty much the recipe! Mas-issge deu seyo, enjoy your food!

Turkish manti soup recipe

Of course, it is mantı, not manti, the vowel harmony! I am always inspired by Turkish cuisine, it is such a potentially wondrous fare that somehow all too oft ends up very über-meh in most Turkish restaurants, even those catering the local clientèle in Turkey. I suspect that real Turkish food must be made by Turkish mama's loving hands for her family.

In the absence of such in my social circles, I have no choice but to be a Turkish mama to myself. So I venture northwards, to Finsbury, where round-the-clock Turkish grocers beacon with mouth-watering displays of ripe fruit and fragrant bread and then rows upon rows of roast pepper paste jars, bags of crackly bulgur, packs of salted olives and huge trays of syrupy sweets. Slurp.

A pack of thumbnail-sized ravioli, mantı, costs 1.39 quid. It's enough for three pots of delightfully tangy and zesty soup. I also insist that you invest in a jar of proper Turkish acı biber salçası, spicy pepper paste. Don't let the word spicy confuse you, this is nothing like Thai or Jamaican spiciness, more like Basque piment d'Espellete.

So here's for the recipe:

Slowly roast some crushed garlic in olive oil. Fold in a full spoon of tomato passata and a full spoon of acı biber salçası and fry a couple of minutes more. Add some dry mint and sea salt. Add a litre or so cold water and bring to a gentle boil. Add mantı and a tin of boiled chick peas. Remove from the fire after 5 min and serve with lemon juice and chopped coriander.

Stale bread pudding recipe

Baking has always been exclusively my parents' remit. My Mum churns out pies, buns, cakes and the like on a nearly daily basis and even my very male supremacist Dad is highly apt at making that king of doughs, leavened one.

I only have started baking recently, inspired by Nigella's voluptuous poetics in her How To Become a Domestic Goddess. This recipe is a slight improvement on her "pudding made from rich man's leftovers".

Beat 2 eggs, a generous glug of rhum, 250 ml double cream and 3 tbsp demerara sugar. Fold in half a chopped stale baguette and let soak for half an hour. Mix in a handful of raspberries and a handful of black chocolate chips. Put in a buttered porcelain tray, sprinkle with a little demerara sugar and bake 40 min at 170 degrees.

Serve on your boyfriend's bubble butt.

Puy lentils and Montbeliard sausage cassoulet recipe

In the days before Napoleon III and Eugenie's with their trend-setting fancy lifestyle became the role model for the newly affluent French bourgeoisie, daily food for the majority of the French was like this: all-in-one casseroles. Chopping and cooking whatever is available on the day into something between a soup and a main course is the ultimate way to feed a big family at the end of a hard day. In France this type of dish is actually known as cassoulet or (caçolet in Occitan) and can still be found on lunch menus in bistrots and auberges, always an inexpensive entry.

For me, it is a winter comfort food that reminds me of my Mother's cooking so as the astronomical spring starts on the 20th of March, this Puy lentils and Montbeliard sausage cassoulet may be the last one I cooked this winter.

Cooking a cassoulet takes a couple of hours but you don't need to be present all the time, it's really about chopping and letting it all just simmer away as you delve into your Facebook comments.

1. Soak Puy lentils in plenty of cold water. Peel and slice a head of garlic and a few shallots.
   
2. Slowly fry the garlic and the shallots in olive oil until golden brown.
   
3. Add chopped Montbeliard (or Toulouse, or Morteau) sausages, potatoes and any root vegetables or tubers you can get hold of: carrots, parsnips, root celery, salsify, turnips, topinambour. Mix well, cover with a lid and allow to cook until half-ready, stirring occasionally.
   
4. Add the lentils and enough water to cover it all. Add bay leaf, all-spice berries and pepper.
   
5. Turn the heat to low and allow to simmer until the lentils are ready.
   
6. Salt to taste. I also use fish sauce and a smidgen of liquid smoke for the extra oomph. Serve with crunchy baguette and a glass of red.

How to saute mushrooms

Ever wondered how sautéed mushrooms never come out looking as good as they taste or smell? Here is how to beat the cheeky buggers and make them as aesthetically pleasing on the plate as in the moss under an oak tree.

1. Wash mushrooms in cold water, drain and set aside in a colander. Don't believe those who will tell you mushrooms are too tender to wash. Yappety-yap. There is nothing to spoil your plate of lovely sautéed mushrooms as grains of sand on your teeth.
   
   
2. Heat a frying pan on low medium fire. Dip the mushrooms into the pan. Use no oil or butter at this stage. Gently stir from time to time to prevent the mushrooms from burning and remove the juice in a separate bowl.
   
   
3. When the mushrooms stop oozing the juice and have reduced roughly twice in size, remove them in a separate bowl.
   
   
4. Melt some butter in the pan and fry until the froth turns nice golden brown colour. Add some finely sliced garlic and when it turns golden, add a generous amount of finely chopped shallots. Fry until golden brown.
   
   
5. Add salt or even better fish sauce and, perhaps, a couple of bay leaves. Tip the mushrooms and the juice into the pan and allow too simmer on a low fire for a few minutes. Season with pepper and serve as a main with grilled bread, as a side dish or on top of pasta.
   

how to cook black rice recipe

bahrain cuisine dining restaurants food

Sanchae Korean mountain vegetables 산채 - 山菜

Yeepie-ho, my quest is over. I have managed to find sanchae (산채), Korean mountain vegetables, in London. No Korean restaurant here yet serves my all-time favourite sanchae-bibimbap (산채비빔밥 ), so I may be one the first ones to cook it in the Big Smoke.

Madeira food and dining

adeira is not exactly your gastronomic destination. What you mostly get here is what guidebooks politely call "hearty fare": simply cooked peasant grub.Fried chicken or fish with a side of potatoes and veg - centuries of British involvement with the island's economy seem to have taken its toll!
For an island plopped whack in the middle of an ocean, Madeira lets down in the seafood department: there is fish and seafood galore in the markets but in the restaurants they end up cooked in the blandest and most forgettable way, oily and overdone.The fiery looking bunches of dried chillis I saw in the markets never seemed to find their way in any food that I tried. Could they just be used to ward off evil spirits in houses?Funchal's Mercado dos Lavradores may be named Workers' Market but it is mostly busloads of German cruise ship tourists that are unloaded into it with astounding frequency. Heaps of most exotic fruit make you wonder why it was the lowly apple that Eve had to be seduced with in Paradise.



Bacalao, the salted cod, as seamen's staple is probably what ensured Portuguese colonial expansion, but hello, refrigeration has been with us for over a century! I have heard so many times that it can be cooked in 365 ways but in each dish it tasted like bits of PVC soaked in stock from Knorr's fish cubes.The local specialty, espada (scabbard) filet with fried banana is of highly dubious culinary value: very good fish prepared in the most unimaginative way.

On the other hand, lapas grelhadas are a treat. Cooked very much like your escargots à la bourguignonne, grilled with garlic-parsley butter, they come together perfect with a sprinkle of lime juice and a sip of nicely chilled Portuguese white.

Madeira's finest seafood restaurant, Doca de Cavacas is definitely head above shoulders of other comparable establishments on the island, but then again, it's not such a hard feat. A platter of rather oily grilled fish, squid and prawns comes with the sides of boiled potatoes and vegetables. Meh.What is superlative in Madeira is bread and pastry. The local round bolo de caco is good enough to eat plain. With some garlic butter it makes for a scrumptious meal!Madeiran pastry is cheap, abundant and universally perfect, nothing to do with the utterly dull and boring British Madeira cake.Some varieties, particular those involving coconut flakes, apparently have been brought back by emigrant Madeirans workers returning from Venezuela, hence names like bolo Venezuelano.
Pastéis de nata, egg custard cakes that seem to have a universal currency from Macao and Dili to Lusaka and Manaus, are invariably delectable with a shot of punchy fragrant espresso.Bolo de mel, another Madeiran specialty, is a treacle sponge bun with nuts, delish dunked in port.

Roasted pheasant recipe

Judging by the rate the company where I work peddles grouse, partridges and venison to various posh restaurants, London's appetite for game shows no signs of abating. Inspired by observing the fringes of this celebration of ecologically clean gastronomy, I delved into the latest English edition of La Rousse Gastronomique. Here is what wise Frenchmen say.

Truss and bard a young pheasant, brush with melted butter and season with salt and pepper. Roast in a preheated oven at 240 degrees for 30-40 minutes, depending on the size of the bird, busting 2 or 3 times. Fry some croutons until golden brown. Untruss the pheasant and remove the barding fat. Place it on top of the croutons and keep warm. Deglaze the roasting pan with a liittle poultry stock and serve this gravy separately. To make it an ultimate treat, the pheasant can be stuffed with truffles before roasting and the croutons can be spread with a small amount of forcemeat with the minced liver of the pheasant. (Source: La Rousse Gastronomique, Hamlyn: London, 2009)

Photos will follow when I get around to implementing this recipe in my kitchen. Please bear with!

Roasted quail recipe (caille rôti)

hese days quails are farmed but in fact they are game. A quick sniff will confirm this: quail meat is heavier and chewier than your chicken or turkey. That is why I treat them as game, that is cook with

1. Crush a handful of juniper berries and add with freshly ground black pepper and sea salt to red wine.
   
   
2. Using a sharp knife, make incisions in each quail from the inside without piercing the skin.
   
   
3. Soak the quails in the marinade making sure that it goes into the incisions. Let stay overnight in the fridge.
   
   
4. Take out the quails out of the fridge at least one hour before cooking to get them back to the room temperature and allow the excessive marinade to drip off.
   
   
5. Heat the oven to 220 degrees. Pat the quails dry with paper towels. Warm some butter and mix with a small amount of honey, salt and pepper. Baste the quails with the mixture and place them on the oven grid.
   
   
6. Bake for 20 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 200 degrees. In the meantime sweat some chopped shallots in butter and add the marinade, allow to reduce to half.
   
   
7. Serve with sautéed wild mushrooms and double-cooked potatoes. Use the reduccion as sauce.
   

autumn roots soup recipe

Shrimp stock recipe (fumet de crevettes)

use shrimp stock (fumet de crevettes) as the base for bechamel and so should you, it makes the whole difference, giving the lowly mix of fried flour and cream whole dimensions of flavour and richness.

1. I love pink Greenland shrimp (they taste sweet and are not farmed) and keep all the peelings refrigerated until I am ready to cook this. Put whatever shrimp peelings you have in a large pan of cold water with some roughly chopped celery stalks, carrots, leeks and halved onions.
   
   
2. Bring to a boil and allow to simmer for 40 minutes.
   
   
3. Towards the end season with salt, bay leaf, allspice berries, nutmeg, cloves and black pepper. Allow to simmer a few more minutes.
   
   
4. Set aside to chill and then refrigerate if you plan to use it later.
   
   
5. If you are planning on making some bechamel immediately, keep it hot, as it is the roux that needs to be chilled.

Shrimp stock recipe

Duck magret salad recipe (Salade de magret de canard)

If I have to choose between travelling to Israel and eating a salad made from ducks force-fed on corn, I go for the latter. Defo much less cruelty supported.

1. Pat a magret dry and wallow it in a mix of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.
   
   
2. Heat a frying pan on medium high heat
   

Feteer meshaltet egyptian puff pastry

Khao Sarn Thai restaurant@Brixton, London (review)

This year was the year of Brixton's avalanche-like gentrification. The ruNice restaurants and even a barber shop for white peeps have sprouted all over like mushrooms after rain. I reckon we have a few years to relish the bliss of the BoBo (bourgeois-bohemien) limbo before the 'yuppie suits' cotton on this and make this a new Chelsea, Clapham. The once grimy and forlorn Brixton Market is now teeming with 20 and 30-somethings hanging out in organic bakeries, ethnic restaurants and sunlit terraces.

One of such cool hangouts is Khao Sarn. Having lived 6 years in Bangkok, I'm very wary of Thai restaurants outside Thailand. Now this one I can recommend. If this was French outfit, it would be a brasserie: it churns out classic (some may say "same ole") Thai dishes consistent quality at reasonable prices.

We had a correctly cooked and served, with lime and green onions, phad Thai (somewhat on the smallish side) and the Isarn staple: grilled chicken leg with sticky rice and somtam (papaya salad).