Monday 27th, 2010: Indian lunch, lobster dinner

Indian Lunch:

• Tikka Masala Chicken,
• Madras Chicken,
• Masala Dal,
• Biryani Rice,
• orange juice.

Lobster dinner:

• Turkish chicken and almond soup (Bademli ve Terbiyeli Tavuk Çorbası)
• chestnut mushroom oven-baked with truffle oil and goat cheese,
• salad du jardin with lime-wasabi dressing,
• boiled lobster with dill-butter dip
• watermelon
• 2006 Chardonnay-Vermentinu-Muscat, Vin de Pays de l'Ile de Beaute
• Stowell's Chilean Sauvignon Blanc

e vous remerci pour notre pain quotidien: Monday 27th, 2010.

Indian tandoori marinade recipe

hey say tandoori chicken was invented by a shrewd Indian restaurateur who couldn't see tandoors (bread ovens) stay idle when there was no naan to bake. Knowing Indian business acumen, it sounds a plausible theory.

But back to gastronomy. Here is my recipe for the incomparable tandoori marinade for barbeque.

1. Peel one onion, half a head of garlic and about 6 cm of ginger. Put them in a kitchen processor and reduce them into homogeneous pulp. Add some water if necessary.
2. Chop finely one or two seeded chilli peppers.
   
3. Put about 150 g of natural yoghurt (the fatter the better, never skimmed one!) into a big bowl.
4. Add 1, 2, Tandoori Spice Mix, palm sugar and fish sauce.
5. Stir well until everything dissolves. It should taste pleasantly pungent with a nice balance of sweet, sour, salty and spicy.
6. Chop chicken, fish or what have you into bite-size chunks and mix well with 5.
7. Cover with cling film and let stay overnight in the fridge. Stir every 6-8 hours.
8. Remove from the fridge a couple of hours before cooking. It helps to have your barbecue evenly cooked when the raw mix is of room temperature.
   

How to make plain rice exciting: turmeric rice recipe

any Westerners and Russians do not seem to like Asian style steamed rice. Though I do not share the sentiment, I kind of can see how one could find it bland and unappealing. So here is a simple way how to make rice more exciting:

1. Rinse rice seven times and cover it with cold water. (Check if interested detailed rice-cooking instructions.)
2. Add a pinch of salt or a slug fish sauce, a piece of butter and a teaspoonful of turmeric powder. Also add a few cloves, a few cardamom pods and a stick of cinnamon broken into smaller pieces.
3. Cook as usual.
4. Chop a handful of cashew nuts and half a handful of dry apricots and add to the cooked rice. Mix well. You can also substitute apricots with white raisins (it not for nothing that Sangli, world' largest turmeric trading centre is also Asia's most important place of raisin trade).
   
5. When serving, sprinkle some chopped coriander leaves on top.
   

I serve this rice with anything: from grilled fish to Indian curries. In fact, it is good enough to be a dish in its own right. The aromatic crust that forms at the bottom of the cooking pot (see the picture above) is absolutely scrumptious.

Tayyabs: North Indian/Pakistani restaurant, London

his is another London's paradox. Just like you can't find edible Chinese food in Chinatown, so you will be hard pressed for a half-decent curry on Brick Lane. You need to know someone in the know to take you to the right place. Luckily, I know Stephen who has eaten his way through most restaurants in the Big Smoke.

If you don't mind queuing for an hour to get cramped into a munchkin-size seat while waiters dash around with sizzling hotplates right above your head, enveloping you in clouds of aromatic vapours, Tayyabs is your place for quite munchable Punjabi grub (Northern Indian/Pakistani).

The moment you plop your derrière on the chair , you are served an excellent crunchy poppadom, a very fresh salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and onions and two little bowls of chutneys, just flavourful enough to perk up your appetite (provided you need that after all the queuing!). Relax, that is not added yo your bill!

Considered how ridiculously hectic the place is, service is excellent. Orders don't get mixed, the waiters are friendly (if not obsequious as some might like it), and everything arrives in the correct sequence (starters, mains, etc.)

A jug of salty lassi (£5) - light, cumin-flavoured and pleasantly frothy. It's perfect to quench the curry fire in your mouth and it also provides the safety lining that protects your stomach from too much spice.

Lamb chops (£5.50): with all the hype about them I expected nothing short of a revelation. They proved quite okay, not too heavy on spices, but on the skinny side and too well done, t my liking. The presentation on sizzling hot plates makes good for their drawbacks. Four hearty pieces of fileted salmon and sea perch in masala coating (£5.50), come on the same cast-iron plate as the chops. Their crunchy spicy exterior belies the fluffy juicy insides.

Curries didn't prove Tayyabs' forte. Wednesday's special - mughal korma (£6), lamb curry was somewhat spicier than your common-or-garden korma, but also on the oily side instead of korma's usual Mariah Carey-like creaminess.

Karahi bhindi (£5) - okra curry that we ordered to make good for all the meat indulgence, turned out the same: spicy, which I can actually enjoy, and oily, which I won't.

Peshawari nan (£2.50) was utterly sublime: half of it disappeared before I took out the camera. Sublimely delectable, deliciously seared thin crust stuffed with straw-yellow raisins apricots. I would never get tired of it, had I to have it every day.

Plain nan (£1.80) was baked to perfection too, sprinkled with melted butter.

Malai kulfi (£2.50) is an Indian frozen dessert that tastes like rich old-fashioned ice-cream. Never mind what it reminds you of, visually it has a very pleasant moderate sweetness to it as well as a deliciously solid texture.

Tayyabs, 83-89, Fieldgate St. London E1 1JU

Shopping for rice in London

ormal folks do their grocery shopping because they have to. Foodies, like yours truly, because they love to. I can spend hours ferreting out right ingredients in fresh markets and grocery stores.

The simple task of buying rice took me to four shops around Brixton Market. In each I interviewed the people about which rice they think is the best value. I was given a bewildering range of opinions about tens of different sorts and types. Indians and Pakistanis all claimed their Old Country's rice is the best.

Finally, I consulted a disinterested part, a Lebanese. I followed his advice and bought Indian Daawat basmati rice. It is more expensive than average but totally worth the extra money spent. It has long grains, faint vanilla flavour and when cooked stays fluffy, the texture the Japanese call tsubu-tsubu.

I haven't yet bought a rice-cooker but I have managed to cook rice in a pan on an electric range even with the golden brown crust at the bottom, so priced by the Iranians and Japanese!

Indian-Malaysian potato curry

This potato curry is Indian of origin but is very popular in Malaysia. As with all curries, the technique is about infusing oil with spices and then using it to make the gravy.

In this case this stew's intense fragrace is based on 2 components:

1) peeled and puréed six shallots, half a head of garlic, 3 chillies and 3 inches of ginger;

2) spices: garam masala, ground turmeric, cinnamon sticks and curry leaves. First I briefly fry the spices in odourless vegetable oil and then the pungent purée. Then I add pre-fried vegetables (potatoes , carrots and a tomato) and pour water to cover it all. Let it simmer 15-20 minutes and ideally let it rest for some time to allow all the juices intermingle and soak into the vegetables.

I serve it laced with yoghurt and sprinkled with fresh lemon juice and chopped coriander.

Here it is served alongside with Malay oxtail in tamarind juice and nice long-grained rice cooked the Asian way.

Here is a theme song for this fragrant Indian meal: