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.

When Yanks are in town, it's time to get cracking!

t has already become a tradition: when Floyd comes to visit me in London, we always have a surf and turf dinner. For those unfamiliar with the American ideas of luxury food, it is steak and lobster served on one plate. On the Stateside, it is usually the most expensive entry on the menu ordered on special occasions, like when you really want to impress your date.

The surf part comes in the shape of a lobster tail, to make eating easy. For the sake of a more picturesque display, I like a whole creature, for which you will need special utensils. Other accompaniments include corns on the cob (classic American!), dill and butter dip, Italian salad and potato wedges.

Now the choice of wine is always a bit of a doozie, as you are having red meat and seafood in one helping. I guess the inventors of surf'n'turf were not from the stock who would have seen that as a problem, so I adopt their easy approach too: I just pick whatever wine I fancy at the moment, never minding the convention. Chilean Sauvignon Blanc from the Coquimbo Valley is well-balanced, as you would expect it from a Chilean, citrusy and utterly quaffable.

Cooking romantic meals

love cooking for someone as part of woo-pitching. There are so many ways of joy-giving penetration. You can reach the depths of their quickest and titillate pleasure spots no one has ever touched before. You can get inside their brains and excite them with some intense intellectual stimulation. You can touch their soul from within by spiritual sharing. You can touch them profoundly without touching with your energy and vibe.

And you can also offer them food you cooked and it will become, physically, them, their body. The love you invested in preparing the meal will for ever change them up from the cellular level. Isn't that the deepest penetration possible?

Chicken breast marinade recipe

upreme de poulet is the French for chicken breast. Now how do you make it not only sound but also taste good? I have precious little to no time for such futile activities as baking it with cheese or stuffing it. The best thing you can do to food is to bring out, enhance and underscore its natural flavour.

Here is my own marinade recipe for chicken breast. It makes this rather bland, if healthy, piece of poultry a true trip for your taste buds.

1. Grind the very top of the rind of a lime on a grinder. Make sure you don't get too much of the white layer, just green.
2. Cut the lime in two and squeeze out the juice.
3. Add fish sauce, very finely chopped fresh chilli and a wee dram of brown sugar to lime juice. Mix well. Your choice of chilli will determine the final flavour: Scotch bonnet chilli and Thai prik kee noo chilli, for exampe, give the mixture a very distinct character. You can also use liquid cane sugar or palm sugar.
   
4. Marinate chicken breast cut to the desired size. The bigger the chunks, the longer you need to marinate.
   

Las Iguanas: how cheaper can you go?

e all know that London is one of the most expensive cities in the world. But make Kirill your friend and you will be introduced into the world of fine dining on a shoe-string. And that means exactly that: not eating cheap trash for next to peanuts, but having nice nosh in fancy places for a pittance.

Today we went to Las Iguanas in Soho for this very lovely lunch, all cooked to perfection:

• sopa de calabaza: mildly spicy and suprebly creamy butternut squash and coconut soup with a dollop of sour cream; the promised fresh coriander and stripes of corn bread were missing;
  
• chicken quesadilla: tortilla stuffed with spicy chicken breast, onions, peppers, cheese and salsa ;
  
• pasteles: a bit of misnomer, but this Chilean slow-braised lamb with raisin topped with creamed sweetcorn peculiarly explained in the menu as "a sort of cottage pie" is utterly delish!
• sweet potato fishcakes: flaked white fish and crayfish in corn crumbs served with aïoli;
• curly patatas fritas and salad, well lettuce doused with red wine vinegar, really.
  

Now for the bill: £8,87 for two, including tax and tip. Now you too want Kirill for a friend, don't you?

Pro's: You can't beat this price, can you? All entries can be ordered gluten-free.
Con's: Without Kirill's know-how, this place will cost you a pretty penny. Most mains are in the 12-15-quid ballpark.
In a nutshell: Perhaps the best to discover the greatness of South American cuisine outside South America.

Quelle cuisson? Rib-eye steak and diced parsnip salad

his was a bit of a celebratory meal, to mark my latest, very major breakthrough.

The rib-eye steak I brought especially from Amsterdam. I felt very subversive travelling with a planeful of City suits making it for the start of their busy Monday, wearing a sleeveless shirt and carrying a backpack of raw meat: from Moroccan merguez sausages to Dutch runder tartaar extra lean beef mince that I just can't find in London. To bring out the best in the steak, I used a bit of trickery. I marinated it in a mix of:

• freshly ground black pepper,
  
• fish sauce instead of salt,
  
• a wee bit of aceto balsamico bianco (which, thanks to its sugar content, gives that nice golden brown colour tothe steak when you fry it),
• Chinese rice wine (I also had to bring it from Amsterdam because alcohol tax in the UK makes it outrageously expensive for just cooking wine),
• liquid smoke.

Now for frying the steak: you want a really hot skillet, so the meat won't get stewed but seared on the outside while staying pink inside. For that very same reason pat the steak dry with a paper towel before frying. You will also need to use ghee, or pick up the white fluff that comes up when you heat butter - this is to prevent smoking and burning. Ninety seconds on each side and voilà: steak à point!

The salad's pièce de resistance was fried diced parsnips, served with chopped vine tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, sliced red onions, lollo rosso, red batavia, apollo, baby leaf spinach, endive, lamb's lettuce and a lot of dill. More than your 5-a-day in just a side dish, how about that! Classic Italian dressing underscored all this natural goodness.

El Rancho de Lalo@ Brixton, London review

Just when I was about to mourn the demise of Coma y Punto, my favourite Colombian joint in Brixton Market, in its ashes arose another one, El Rancho de Lalo.

They still serve the same good reliable Columbian fare. My all-time favourite bandeja paisa, a huge platter of meats and carbs is just as perfectly cooked and plentiful as at Coma y Punto and costs the same 9.50. The way they make the pig belly crunchy on the outside and juicy inside is inimitable.

They have spruced up the interior and exterior (it was rather shaby before). The maitre-d' swaggers around in the Colombian national costume. The lunch deal: one main + one drink for 6 quid fills up even a glutton like me. I had once their oxtail stew and another time their sancocho,which I succesfully tried to replicate later. Can find no fault with either.

Pro's: Super friendly service. Consistently good food. Great location for Brixton people-watching.
Con's: Slightly cramped seating.
In a nutshell: God bless South America for its food!

El Rancho de Lalo
94-95 Granville Arcade
Brixton Market
London SW9 8PS

Organic vegan sushi: need I say more?

alking about why I quit veganism after 10 years of torturing myself and those around me with what essentially is an eating disorder. This will defend my case without any words: organic barley sushi with tofu and vegetables, that tasted remarkably like a slab of damp toilet paper.

Merci Monsieur Lindt: Crema Catalana chocolate

hat a better souvenir from Barcelona can you bring than a bar of Crema Catalana chocolate? Monsieur Lindt was gracious enough to even add crunchy bits of caramelised sugar that normally forms at the top of crema catalana. Scrumptious!

Fire & Stone@London: a Mad Pizza Party

here is a good reason why classic recipes never age. Because the perfect combination once found, does not need to change, stupid! You can't possibly add anything to bechamel without spoiling it.

You may try to enhance the original combination of flavours with a bit of well-intended trickery, like I often do, using, for example, fish sauce instead of salt. Or underscore it with what the Japanese call kakushiaji - a background taste that contrasts and emphasizes the leitmotif taste. That is how a hint of Scotch bonnet pepper brings out the best in puttanesca. But some chefs truly deserve to be pilloried, tarred and feathered for their far-fetched concoctions.

Many a pizza at London's Fire and Stone qualify for that kind of treatment. The USP here is a "global menu" with pizza toppings from all the continents, purportedly intending to represent the best of world's culinary traditions. In reality, under a guise of cosmopolitan originality you are served a good old classic mixed with some highly incongruous companions on a sheet of, granted, nicely baked dough. See for yourself:

• "Sydney": roasted bacon+egg+ham = full English! (Looking forward to addition of spam!)
• "Peking": shredded duck+Hoi Sin sauce+spring onions = Peking duck! (What on earth were they thinking topping this with mozzarella cheese?)
• "Acapulco": chilli beef+jalapenos,+mozzarella+sour cream = flat fajita! (Nothing wrong with that, but don't call it a pizza!)
• "Lombok": grilled prawns+roasted red peppers+syrupy sweet Thai green curry sauce = well, Thai green curry! (Served on bread, for Pete's sake!)
• "Cape Town": beef mince+tomato sauce+chillies = arrabiata! (Beef mince on a pizza, ho-hum, it tastes just like it sounds!)

The menu also features classic Italian and New York favourites that, in all likelihood, simply must be brilliant, but we were after the quirky and we sure got a huge slab of it that evening.

Pro's: Extremely friendly and efficient service.
Con's: Truly weird pizzas. LOUD inside.
In a nutshell: Multi-culti gone wrong.

Smokey creamy mussels recipe

fter fixing mussels in accordance with the traditional time-honoured recipes for umpteen times, there necessarily comes a time when you feel like making your own contribution to the world's seafood cooking wisdom. This recipe is my (very liberal) variation on the traditional Breton way of cooking mussels with cidre and bacon (moules à la bretonne).

Mussels cooked this way are apparently so good that last time my ex simply had to have me cook them in the precious few hours that I spent in Amsterdam between my planes - at midnight! I was surely happy to oblige.

Here how it goes:

1. Peel and thinly slice half a head of garlic and two onions (or a big handful of shallots instead of the onions).
2. Melt a generous chunk of butter in a mussels pan (like Nigella says, there's no good kitchen without butter).
3. Fry garlic and onions on medium fire until golden brown.
4. Add 2 kg pre-washed and de-bearded mussels and cook stirringly occasionally until all are open. Removing the released juices a couple of times helps to cook the mussels quickly without overcooking. Keep the juices for later!
   
5. Remove the mussels.
6. Add a glass of single cream, a glass of dry white wine, the mussel juices and some coarsely ground black pepper. Simmer until the smell of alcohol disappears.
   
7. Add a tablespoonful of liquid smoke and the mussels and give it all a nice stir. The advantages of liquid smoke are that it is filtered many times and is supposedly healthier than smoked bacon. This shall make you feel better about all the cream and butter in this recipe!
   
8. Serve with oven-baked frites and white wine. The creamy and smoky broth needs to be served in lions head bowls, it somehow tastes better that way!
   

Yorkshire roast beef wrap @ The Prince Albert, Brixton

If you know where to go - and it's no rocket science - you can eat extremely well in London for under a tenner. A good example is my local pub, The Prince Albert in Brixton's Coldharbour Lane. Despite its kinky name it churns out perfectly conventional English fare cooked to perfection. I am probably the last person to exalt the virtues of French fries but I find them a treat at The Prince Albert.

Or take this Yorkshire roast beef wrap. I am not quite sure it is really typical British as I have never encountered it anywhere else but it's a beatifully presented and expertly prepared dish. If the picture and my (rarely awoken) enthusiasm were not convincing enough, here's the last one that will sure get you: it's only 5 quid!

Figs with ricotta and honey recipe (fichi con ricotta e miele)

ome like to spruce up this classic recipe with grilling, blanched almonds, crushed pistachios or vanilla essence. I steer clear of this foppish foolishness and simply enjoy the indulgent mushiness of ripe figs, the creamy crumbliness of ricotta and the rich flavours trapped in the sticky sweetness of honey.

This time I got some plump figs from my favourite Iranian grocer, some ricotta from my favourite (they all are!) Portuguese delicatessen and the honey came from my uncle's own bee farm.

1. Remove the stems and cut figs in quarters.
2. Break ricotta into smallish chunks.
3. Arrange the figs and cheese artfully on a rustic dish.
4. Douse liberally with honey.
5. Profitez bien!

Recipe: Figs with ricotta and honey - Fichi con ricotta e miele

Malay fish head curry recipe (gulai kepala ikan)

veryone I know  rolls their eyes squeamishly at the very mention of fish heads.

- How can you eat it what is looking at you? - my Black French friend Lionel's voice goes an octave higher than usual. Well, dude, just don't look back, c'est ça!

My landlord raises his face from his plateful of deep-fried fish fingers only to crack something very sarcastically English about my bagful of nice and fresh salmon heads. I have brought them at Brixton Market, three for a quid, now try to beat that!

But the best thing about them is not how cheap they are but all the lovely textures you get from a big meaty head of a piscine predator - from the meaty cheeks to the crunchy cartilage to the flavoursome brain, and I love the eyes too!

This time, instead of Ghanaian abenkwan, I made it Malay style, gulai kepala ikan. It is so good that some consider it the national dish of Malaysia and Singapore.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients (if you don't know what it is, google it or just show the name to  your local Asian grocer): 

• 3 medium-sized salmon heads
• two red onions
• half a head of garlic
• a three-inch piece of ginger 
• teaspoonful of turmeric
• one crushed and finely chopped stalk of lemon grass
• half an inch of finely sliced galangal
• half a handful of fresh or frozen curry leaves
• a couple of de-seeded chopped chillies
• a few tablespoonfuls of Malay fish curry powder (can be made by grinding ad mixing equal quantities jeera, coriander seeds, fenugreek and red pepper)
• half a litre of tamarind juice (dissolving 50g tamarind paste in warm water) 
• half a litre of coconut milk (or dissolve 100 g creamed coconut and warm water)
• a dozen okras, two large tomatoes cut into eight pieces each, a handful of string beans, and half a dozen halved garden eggs. 

 Cooking instructions:

1. De-gill the heads, wash them well and chop them into 8 pieces each.
2. Peel and make paste out of the onions, garlic and ginger.
3. Lightly fry the paste in a deep cast-iron pot with some ghee or vegetable oil.
4. Add turmeric and fry until it start giving off flavour.
5. Add the rest of the spices. Fry ever so gently, making sure the flavours fold into the oil, not go up with the smoke.
6. Add the tamarind juice and the coconut milk.
7. Bring to a gentle simmer and add the vegetables and fish heads.
   
8. Simmer until the vegetables are soft. 
9. Serve with freshly cooked steamed rice.