Samphire (also okra, fern and bamboo shoots) kimchi

he only reason why Koreans do not make kimchi out of  samphire is because samphire only grows in North-Western Europe. Should it favour East Asia too, I have no doubt it would have long been part of the gorgeous sanchae or sansai, wild vegetables commonly used to make pickles in Korea and Japan.

Last month I decided to correct this Mother Nature's oversight and made kimchi out of Norfolk samphire. Fresh, crunchy and naturally briny, it is perfectly complemented by ginger and pepper. Just follow your regular kimchi recipe, but use samphire instead of cabbage or daikon. Depending on how much you make, the amount of  ingredients will vary, so I will rather give proportions than exact quantities. You should make enough kimchi base paste to smother the main ingredient comfortably.

 Kimchi base ingredients:

1. equal quantities of minced garlic, fish sauce and minced onion.  
2. double quantities of rice porridge and gochugaru (hot pepper flakes, can be substituted with gochujang)
3. quarter quantity of minced ginger. 

Procedure:

1. Rinse samphire well and remove the woody parts. Cut into equal pieces.
2. Mix the kimchi base ingredients. Fold the samphire into the mixture.
3. Cover with a lid and leave to ferment at a room temperature for 24 hours. When bubbles start showing, the process has kicked off. Move to a cold place, ideally a few degrees above zero degree centigrade. A few days is normally enough to complete fermentation: keep checking until you are satisfied with the taste.

P.S. I also use bamboo shoots, okra, string beans, turnip, daikon (mooli) and fiddlehead fern (warabi or gosari) for my kimchi preserves. Bean sprouts are rather delicate in texture so they can be simply mixed with the excess of juice from already made kimchi and left overnight in the fridge. Kimchi out of bean sprouts and samphire do not hold long, so finish yours within a week or so.

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.

Kale, a.k.a. boerenkool or grunkohlessen: back to roots!

Kale is one of the classic European staple vegetables that Northern European peasants used to sustain on before potatoes and tomatoes and other exotic lovelies became normal.

It is experiencing a sort of nostalgia-driven fad revival in Holland and Germany, when city dwellers have become removed enough from the realities of rustic life to long for the good ole days of hearty healthy food when "things were simple and straightforward".

Kale is indeed a very wholesome one, apparently full of calcium and fibre. The basic recipe is to steam it, chop it and fold into mash potatoes. This is what is sold in Holland as the cheapest one in Albert Heijn's range of infamously insipid steamed lunch packs.

Bitter gourd, goya, cerasee, karela: it's all actually one thing

ruly omnivorous that I am, there are very few restrictions when it comes to food, as long as it is nicely cooked. All edible carbon matter on this planet is a gift from God not to be taken for granted. My very few no-no's cover probably just steaks from cute animals like koalas and guinea pigs . Otherwise nothing else is barred. Bitter melon, however, is something I don't suffer gladly. I force myself to eat it because it is supposed to be so good for health (like most other health foods). The ridiculously long average life span on Okinawa, which beats even that in mainland Japan, is routinely attributed to the high consumption levels of goya, as it is known in Japanese.

The most common way to cook it is to remove the scathingly bitter peel and seeds and stuff the remaining flesh with mince, tofu and rice. This brings down the bitterness to a more tolerable level but it still tastes like somebody has accidentally spilt a pack of quinine into the pot.

As if to try to make life in the Caribbean less sweet, Jamaicans make tea out of cerasee. With every sip you need to remind yourself of its alleged health benefits, de-pimpling the skin being one of them.

How to cook salsify

alsify is one of those "forgotten" vegetables that used to be on everybody's plate before the more alluring tomatoes, potatoes, corn and the ilk hit the Old World's shores and took everybody's fancy for centuries to come.

Although biologically not related, salsify reminds of the Japanese gobou both in shape, taste and texture: long and thin, earthy and crunchy. Both need to be cooked well to become chewable and both have that unmistakable earthy flavour of a root vegetable. The best way to enjoy gobou is kimpira gobou.



Salsify just needs that flavour to be underlined. The recipe could not be simpler:

1. Pick a couple of perky, not flabby, roots, peel them, removing occasional brown bits.
   
2. Cut into 2-inch chunks and immerse into slightly acidic water to prevent discolouration.
3. Boil 15-20 minutes in plain water with a bit of saltuntil it becomes soft-ish, but well before it starts falling apart.
4. Sauté in butter with sliced shiitake. Add salt, pepper and a splash of single cream towards the end.
   

The shiitake meshes well with salsify's flavour. Here it is shown served with chicken burgers, coconut rice and avocado.

African onions

ife is full of surprises. Just when you think you've seen it all, wham, it blows right in your face!

The other day at Brixton Market I bought what I thought was a bag of common-or-garden red onions. They were marked African onions but I took it was the grocer's trick to sell more of those to his numerous African clientèle. Turns out wrong. I felt the mighty difference just when I started peeling one. It was like the second power of your regular onion punch. Same went for the taste: onion on steroids and amphetamines! Nothing to do with the gentle sweetness of red onion. Appearances are deceptive. Now I know better.

P.S. I just found out that these onions are also known as Bombay or Nasik or Pune and are also popular with South Asians.

Finocchio alla griglia: roasted Florence fennel

lorence fennel's lovely anisey flavour goes perfect with fish but it is great in its own right just as well.


I pre-marinate it in an all-purpose mix I use for all vegetables that are going to get grilled or roasted. You will need to mix well:

• a tablespoonful of olive oil;
• a tablespoonful of aceto balsamico bianco;
  
• a pinch of unrefined sea salt;
• a pinch garlic powder;
• a pinch freshly ground black pepper.

Slice fennel, soak it in the marinade for a few minutes and roast on white-hot charcoals or griddle pan. Do not overcook, it should stay crunchy on the inside. Serve as a main or side dish or on top of mixed green salad.

Edamame: Japanese beans in the pod (枝豆, えだまめ)

hen the Japanese go out to drink, it always involves lots of food. That would surprise London's office crowd who customarily guzzle their after-hours beer straight on top of their lunch Prêt-a-Manger sandwiches.

In Japan, you eat and drink. Once again, unlike greasy chips, fatty chicken wings and salty nuts so popular in the West, Japanese beer snacks are the epitome of wholesomeness. In fact, many of them sound like the dream food of some health-obsessed Californian vegan. Take hiyayakko (冷奴), silken tofu with seaweed, or kimpira-gobou (きんぴら牛蒡), stewed burdock and carrots salad.

In the Japanese equivalent of the pub, izakaya, you are also very likely to be served your beer with edamame (枝豆), steamed beans in the pod. They are very easy to prepare: just steam them for a few minutes and sprinkle with sea salt. Some like to boil them in salty water but, in my perception, it leeches out the gentle flavour.

You can also marinate edamame in miso paste. Just cover the beans with miso and leave for about 8 hours without pods or twice that time in pods. Rinse off the miso before consumption. Serve with beer or sake.

How to cook African plantain

his is NOT a banana. This is a plantain!" Oby definitely has a point. For Nigerians (and Jamaicans) it is a kind of potato that you can fry, boil, mash or make pies from.

I saw similar ones, if somewhat smaller, in Thailand, where they call them kluay nam wah (กล้วยน้ำว้า) and grill them on charcoals.



You can definitely know they are not your regular dessert bananas because they have black stones inside.

The easiest and most common thing you can do with a plantain is to fry it in oil.

1. Heat a frying pan on medium high heat.
2. Add oil, wait until it gets hot.
3. Slice plantains into 2-3mm wedges and sprinkle them with salt.
4. Put the wedges in the pan. Fry until golden brown.
5. Serve with hkatenkwan or abenkwan or any other African or Caribbean dish of your choice.

Mung bean sprouts: the pure energy of life (もやし, 豆芽)

ruly, truly, one man's food, another man's poison. I remember how I scared my Moscow friends when I brought a bag of bean sprouts to fix some Chinese food for them. They decided they were in for a feast of creepy Asian worms.

Bean sprouts are widely used in Pacific Asian cuisines. They are known as moyashi (もやし) in Japan, dou ya (豆芽) in China, kongnamul (콩나물) in Korea, tauge in Indonesia (and Holland), thua ngok (ถั่วงอก) in Thailand. In Iran, they are traditionally prepared for the New Year's festival Navrooz. There they symbolize the power of new life.

In Thailand, folk wisdom has it that bean sprouts, when consumed raw, increase sexual drive. It come as no surprise if you consider all the life energy of enzymes and vitamines of freshly sprouting seeds!

I use them for a number of dishes: from Indonesian gado-gado to Chinese mapo-dofu. I can chew them raw much to the consternation of my friends. But I don't mind as it defo gives me a huge perk once in between the sheets! +wink wink+

Mandioquinha: a root veg from Brazil

s it always go with me, an innocent trip to buy some sesame seeds ended up with me walking away with 4 bags of foodstuffs. Such is Brixton Market, a serendipity outlet where you never know what you are in for.

This time my lucky find was Brazilian mandioquinha (aka arracacha in Spanish). It is a root vegetable indigenous to South America. Its taste is a cross between parsnip and chestnut.

I fixed it in the authentic Brazilian way: boiled and mashed, with fried spinach and bife de tira, baby beef steak. No condiments but salt and pepper not to mess with natural flavourful goodness!

The spinach they sell at the market is more robust and has a stronger, faintly bitterish taste than what you get in supermarkets.

Kam-jam: eat like an elf! (金針)

ating flowers seems like an elves' and fairies' pastime. However, there are millions of regular humans in East Asia who do that at least once in a while. Well, the Chinese do not sustain on petals and pollen, but on occasion do consume dried daylily (or tiger lily) buds (金針).

They go by kam-jam or golden needles in Chinese grocery stores but I really like their French name: fleurs de lys séchés. I imagine French royalists (all 14 of them) cringing when somebody boils their totem flower with sea brim and ginger.

They - dried daylilies, but, perhaps,French royalists too - need to be reconstituted in cold water before consumption. Normally half an hour is enough. The water comes out sour-ish and not very pleasantly tasting so I just dump it. The buds themselves taste quite like asparagus without its characteristic funk. I use kam-jam in mapo-tofu, seafood noodles and mushroom noodles. There is also a delicious fish soup recipe where daylily buds feature prominently.

They can be consumed fresh too. My Mom picks them just before they blossom out and stuffs them with something reminiscent of a very light celery-flavoured chicken salad. I will publish recipe once I talk her into divulging it.

Chayote squash: a.k.a. cristophene

epending on which shop you buy it at Brixton market, it is called chayote, chow chow or cristophene. Apocryphally, it goes by "old people's lips" on the Stateside. If you look at the picture you will see where they are coming from.

Chayote is uniquely crunchy, juicy and starchy. Its texture and taste are a cross between squash and guava. It can be used like either.

I find it quite pleasant raw with the sugar and chili powder pepper, just like they have unripe guava in Thailand.

So far I have tried it in its squash emploi in Ghanaian abenkwan and will report on my further findings.

Garden eggs: finally an eggplant that looks like an egg!

What ever can you not find at Brixton Market!

I was planning to cook abenkwan, Ghanaian palm nut soup, that requires garden eggs as an ingredient. I had little idea what they would turn out to be but there you go: for once eggplants that DO look like eggs.

They are called igba or ikan amongst the Yoruba's of Nigeria, it is referred to as ngilo in Swahili and nakasuga or nakati in Uganda, ntroma in Ghana and jiló in Brazil. I saw them in Thailand where they are somewhat smaller and greener and called makhuea pra. I had no idea they had an English name.



Garden eggs