Black capelin roe, aka masago (まさご）

ot just the only credible clean-up of the financial crisis aftermath comes from Iceland, but also Lidl's own take on faux caviar at a humble £1.49 a jar. Despite this review by The Daily Mail's own McDonald's sampling guru India Sturgis, capelin roe, known in Japan as masago, could be a good introduction to the world of fishy delicacies for the uninitiated. 

It could be, because, probably in a bid to "posh it up", Norprawn, the manufacturer, decided to "upgrade" the natural yellowish-pink colour to blueish black with the help of no less than four chemical additives: E141 (chlorophyllin), E150d (sulfite ammonia caramel), E151 (Billiant Black BN, banned in many countires) and E163 (anthocyanin). With the accompanying stabilisers E422 (glycerol, previously use as automotive antifreeze) and E412 (guar gum) and preservatives E202 (potassium sorbate) and E211 (sodium benzoate), this product contains a whole constellation of industrial  ingredients to make this "luxury-on-the-budget" offering a veritable chav fodder.

Lidl is truly a mixed bag of tricks. On the one hand, they offer solid cooking basics of very consistent quality for half the ongoing price. On the other hand, half of what they carry is plain vile and fit to make sure consumers won't live until retirement. Caveat emptor.

Shark steaks recipe

he best thing about shark steaks is that they are, save the spine, completely boneless. Apparently, sharks as a species evolved way before fish came up with having bones, or bladders, for that matter. For the latter reason, sharks need to be constantly in motion lest they drown, which makes them lean and muscly. And that is how they make it all the way to the top of the food chain, on a pre-heated plate, where we, humans, appreciate exactly that. Occasionally, a shark would get back at us for that, but you couldn't quite hold it against it, could you?

Like most white fish, shark benefits from marinating Japanese style, in equal measures of sake, mirin and shoyu mixed together. In case of dire need, those can be substituted with some dry white wine, brown sugar, and well, shoyu, there is not substitute for that. 

Now for the recipe:

1. Heat some butter in a thick-bottom skillet. Fry a handful of unpeeled garlic cloves for a few minutes and then push them to the sides.
2. Remove the steaks from the marinade and pat them dry with paper kitchen towels. Put them in the skillet and fry a few minutes on each side.
3. Now prepare the best dip for fish ever: mix lime juice, grated ginger, palm sugar, fish sauce, chopped chillis and crushed garlic.
    
4. Serve with steamed vegetables and steamed rice.

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.

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.

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.

Tyulka: Southern Russian beer delight (тюлька)

yulka is a sprat-like fish in the Black Sea that, when dried, or rather cured in dry air, turns into veritable vials of most fragrant fish oil and delightfully crunchy meat. A perfect companion for cold beer, it is sold all around Southern Russia, although it is harder to find in Moscow. On the Canaries, a saltier and drier version is called pejines.

Dutch sushi: broodje haring

s I never cease to lament, Northern people have a deep-seated mistrust of fish and seafood. Perhaps, because it comes from a deep, murky and hostile place, there is a perceived need to kill it as thoroughly as possible. Various ritualised ways of exorcising the sea flavour out of fish are thus employed: deep-frying, marinating in vinegar, devilling, turning into fish fingers, etc.

However, once a year the Dutch revel in an apparent fit of defying this ichthyophobia (fear of fish): the Hollandse Nieuwe harvest. Freshly caught herring gets fileted, deboned and eaten raw on white bread with finely chopped onions (uitjes) or pickles (zuur). The harvest falls on the season when the herring is at its fattest and tastiest and hence tastewise is somewhat like a cross between saba and toro.

By the way, some scientists attribute the world's tallest average height of the population in Holland and Norway (185cm for Dutch males) to the high level of habitual herring consumption in those countries. Norwegians are also apparently the hungest nation in the below-the-belt department, so go figure yourself if herring has anything to do with that.

Saba no misoni: mackerel simmered in miso (鯖のみそ煮)

isoni has nothing to do with the fashion house Missoni. It is a Japanese method of cooking in miso paste. Perhaps, the most popular misoni recipe is saba no misoni.

The recipe is simple, inexpensive and healthy. Here how it goes:

• De-bone 2 mackerel fillets and cut them in squarish pieces (like in the picture).
  
• Finely slice an inch piece of ginger, mix it with half a cup water, 4 tbsps sake, 4 tbsps mirin (or caster shugar) and 4 tbsps of miso in a pan and put on medium heat.
  
• Add mackerel and simmer for about 10 minutes on low heat. Make sure the fish is submerged in the sauce all the time.
  
• Add 2 tbsps of miso in the sauce at last, stir well and remove from the heat.
• Serve as a main dish with steamed rice or to accompany beer.
  

Hwe moochim: Korean fish carpaccio (회무침 )

his is perhaps the best way to describe this dish: Korean fish carpaccio. Unlike the typical miserly platters of 3 paper-thin sheets of meat you get in Italian restos, hwe moochim (회무침 ) is a main in its own right so servings are rather large. It always takes me a while to tuck it in, coupled with a bowl of rice,

So what exactly is hwe moochim (sometimes also spelt hwe muchim)? Multiple slivers of raw fish on a generous mound of shredded raw vegetables doused in liberal quantities of gochujang-based sauce, whereto it owes its Technicolor hues. It is not as spicy as it looks though: it even has a touch sweetness that only underlines the pleasant texture of the raw fish.

Šprotes to shproty: how politics meddle with gastronomy (шпроты)

hen I was growing up, Latvian smoked sprats were a special treat. Tinned in aromatic amber-coloured oil, their lovely smokey taste will forever invoke in me the memories of New Year's celebrations. They were traditionally made in Latvia and sold throughout the whole 11-time-zone expanse of the Soviet Union. Every one from the snowfields of Siberia to the desert sands of Central Asia knew what Rīgas Šprotes stood for.

A couple of years ago, however, Russian oligarch-led government tried to punish Latvia for not conceding to sell oil port terminals: they banished Latvian imports, including sprats. In the wake of an anti-Latvian media campaign, Russians have switched to produce from Kaliningrad, a sizeable Russian enclave wedged between Lithuania and Poland. Articles describing discrimination against Russian speakers in Latvia fuelled the patriotic sentiment to the point where even after the oil port facilities were finally sold to an oligarch-owned corporation, the sales of Latvian sprats never picked up back again. Weeny smoked fishes became the symbol of economic patriotism.

Politics aside, sprats taste better unadulterated on rye bread with some finely sliced red onions. I also use them instead of anchovies in the Caesar salad dressing for the extra smokey kick. Although the label says "smoked in a wood furnace", I think they use a ready-made smoke concentrate.

Whole fish baked in salt

ish does not need much cooking or spice. Its natural flavour is what we like it for. On top of black pepper only one mild spice or herb is allowed. Some spices are a definite no-no: nutmeg, for example, or cloves are too overpowering.

When preparing these two lovely forels, I stuffed them with just fresh lemon grass and some black pepper. Then I put them on a banana leave, covered them liberally with coarse sea salt and baked them in the oven until the eyes turned white. That was it, nothing to it.

The salt cakes on top of the fish and only ever so slightly penetrates the skin. Steamed veggies, potatoes or rice - nothing too strong smelling or pungent - go well with this.

It is impossible to ascribe this kind of cooking to any particular region, it is mostly down to the choice of fish sort and herbs. In Thailand, for example, local catfish (pla buek) is stuffed with lemon grass to make a tear-jerkingly delicious dish.

Kipper: the original red herring

raditional English food is straightforward and quick to cook. Whether it is down to Protestantism or the busy rhythm of industrial society, I don't know. I first heard the word kipper in the famous episode of Fawlty Towers. It took 15 years before I got around to tasting it. Kipper is a herring, which, in a traditional bout of Northern European ichthyophobia , has been split from tail to head, gutted, salted, and cold smoked. As if that is not enough, the traditional recipe requires grilling it.

Although every effort seems to have been made to thrash the last whiff of the sea, the final product tastes rather nice. Before grilling, I sprinkle it with freshly ground black pepper and put a knob or butter on top. It comes out a delicious dark tan colour.

Turkish chargrilled sardines in grape leaves (asma yaprağinda sardalye)

y first visit to Istanbul was, in hindsight, quite traumatic. Back in 1999 I was a hardcore vegan and the sight of all the Turkish goodies sizzling tantalisingly on charcoals left me scarred for years.

That is why I have put myself through a self-administered culinary therapy. I recreate all the stuff I missed out on then in Turkey, here in London. Kuzu pirzola, grilled lamb chops, is a good example.

When I received the good news that I was accepted to the SOAS postgrad school, I celebrated Russian style, with a barbeque. The difference was that it was alcohol-free and apart from the scrumptious hand-made Colombian sausages I bought at Brixton Market, I also made Turkish sardines wrapped in grape leaves. I nicked the recipe from wonderful Ghillie Başan's mouth-watering Turkish cookbook. As all great things it is quite simple.

1. Make marinade of olive oil, grated lemon rind, juice of the lemon, aceto balsamico bianco, clear honey, one crushed chilli pepper, sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper. Whisk all ingredients together well. The quantities are not arbitrary. The rule of thumb is that the marinade should come out pleasant to taste, a balanced mix of sweet, spicy and sour.
   
2. Cover gutted and scaled sardines with marinade and let stay for a couple of hours.
3. Wrap the sardine in grape leaves and baste them with the marinade.
4. Grill on white-hot charcoals for a couple of minutes on each side. Do not overcook: when the eyes are white, it is done.
5. I serve sardines with grilled vegetables (tomatoes, bell peppers, aubergines, courgette, onions, garlic) and turmeric rice.
   

Fish sauce: South East Asia's favourite condiment

cquired taste takes some exposure and experience. You need to have lived enough to appreciate decadence. There are precious few people who take to runny French cheeses, coffee or caviar as a kid. I remember how disgusted I was when I tried olives for the first time. A six-year-old would really rather have had a cake.

I was twenty when I got the first sniff of fish sauce but I did not yet have enough mileage. I was instantly turned off. The concept of just-one-notch-before-decay fragrance was too advanced for me. The fact that I just started treading the militant vegan path did not help either. It took me a few years before I learnt to appreciate nam pla's (that's what they call fish sauce in Thailand) flavour.

Fish sauce is made by mixing anchovy-like fish, salt and water and let nature take its course. The result is a clear brownish liquid with a pungent flavour. It has a wide coinage in mainland South East Asia and the Philippines as well as in parts of Southern China were it is referred to as "fish dew" (魚露). South and west of the Thai border it, however, suddenly loses popularity. Only ethnic Chinese use it in cooking there.

These days I can't imagine cooking without it. A bit of fish sauce improves nearly any savoury dish, even some European ones, but shush, don't tell anyone!

Fish sauce is known as nước mắm in Vietnam, aek jot (어장) in Korea, teuk trei in Cambodia, patis in the Philippines, nam pa in Laos.


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Thai language school and translation agency in Bangkok, Thailand offering Thai, Chinese, English, Japanese, Russian and Laotian (Lao, Isarn, Isaan) language courses.

Russian smoked capelin roe (икра мойвы копчёная)

ussians are big on fish roe. If you go to any Russian supermarket, you will see tens of various sorts of it ranging from lowly pike's to princely sturgeon's. Smoked capelin roe is my favourite. In Japan it is called masago and used in its plain form but Russians like everything mayonnaise-looking, so here we go.

It is very affordable, just under two euros a jar, and makes a wonderful bread spread. I like to top such a sandwich with cucumber slices for the extra crunch and fresh aroma.

Flowers, mushrooms and fish: Chinese Daylily Soup (金針木耳滾魚湯)

eahorses, shark fins and swallow nests - the Chinese can make a soup out of anything.

To start from something less challenging, why not try flower buds and tree mushrooms. This light consommé (金針木耳滾魚湯) is fish based but you can substitute fish with stir-fried shiitake to make it veg(etari)an.

Here how you go about fixing it. It is really done before you can say Jack Robinson.

1. Soak a handful of dried daylily buds (金針) and a handful of black fungus (木耳) half an hour in advance.
2. Cut a couple of large tomatoes into large wedges.
3. Slice a 3-inch piece of fresh ginger and fry it lightly in cooking oil.
4. Add a medium sized fish, e.g., sea brim (or shiitake for veg(etari)ans) to the oil and fry it until done.
5. While it is frying, bring to boil a pot of water (2-3 litres).
6. Shred the soaked black fungus and drain the daylily buds.
   
7. Add the fish (or shiitake), fungus, buds, tomatoes and ginger to the boiling water.
8. Season with fish sauce or soya sauce for veg(etari)ans and a dash of ground white pepper.
   
9. Reduce the heat and allow to simmer for 10-15 minutes.
   

Russian salmon roe sandwich (бутерброд с красной икрой)

ussians who have a very good (affluent) life are said to have "enough money to put butter and ikra on your bread". Ikra can means both salmon roe or caviar. I can't have caviar too often, but thanks to visiting friends and family I have a steady source of salmon roe. It used to be one of the most sought-after delicacies in the USSR's product deficit economy. Along with black "Volga" sedans and smoked salami, it was a status symbol of the Soviet nomenklatura. My parents did not belong to the number, so my Dad had to go to great lengths to make sure we would have some on the table at least for the New Year's. I still remember how wonderful these fishy drops of goodness tasted, a rare, very special treat.

These days ikra is a frequent guest on the tables of the Russian middle class. It is not cheap but if you want some you can just buy it in the supermarket. Mom and Dad are retired now and their cat Musya is very fond of it. We like to laugh now that in the olden days the Communists must have eaten it all up so that nobody else would have it.

I upgraded the traditonal Russian salmon roe sandwich by halving the butter amount and using it to grill the bread. I find the contrast of the crunchy crust and unctuous roe is highly delectable.

Abenkwan: Ghanaian palm nut soup with foufou

ive me head!" I point to a coolbox with freshly cut salmon heads. My fishmonger laughs. "What good is one, take two!" An excellent point. And I am so glad his English is not on the idiomatic level yet.

Even before I get down to cooking, I derive a huge kick from shopping for African ingredients in Brixton Market. Now I only need to buy some garden eggs and okra to fix abenkwan, Ghanaian palm nut soup. It is popular throughout West Africa and known as ngonya mosaka or mbanga in Cameroon, amiedi or obey-ekpo in Nigeria, moambé in the Congo, banga in Sierra Leone and nyembwe in Gabon.



The main ingredient that defines the flavour of abenkwan is palm nut oil. Without the oil you end up with a generic stew. It is squeezed out of boiled fruit of Elaeis guineensis. I go for convenience and buy ready-made one. It is imported from Ghana, so as authentic as it gets.

I have been fascinated with the cuisines of the Cradle of the Humankind ever since I heard a song by a New Yorikan poetess Dana Bryant. It was titled Food, an ode to home-made meals that trace their lineage back to "five thousand years of history on the Nigerian countryside". The tastes and flavours of the places I have never been to, what can be more exciting! So here we go, abenkwan soup with foufou! Yeeppie-ho!

The recipe is simple:

1. Fry 3 tablespoonfuls of palm nut oil in a pan for about 10 minutes. Traditional recipe calls for a whole cup but here I prefer to give precedence to post-modern health-conscious trends.
2. Add one chopped onion and one de-seeded chili and fry 10 minutes on medium heat.
3. Add meat or fish that you use and fry it until fragrant.
   
4. Add okra, garden eggs and tomatoes and stir-fry briefly.
5. Pour cold water until it covers everything and bring to boil. Reduce heat and allow to simmer 10-15 more minutes. The traditional recipe requires a whole day of sitting on hot coals but I think in the olden days it was more about food safety.
   
6. Mix foufou flour with water: half a cup flour with 3/4 cup water. Knead well. Make dough balls the size of a regular meat ball. Add to the simmering soup. Cook 5-8 more minutes.

It comes our robust, unctuous and flavourful. Thank you, Mama Afrika!



Here is some nice music to accompany this gorgeous meal:

Cajun blackened salmon (saumon noirci)

discovered blackened salmon on my first trip to Texas. We were loitering in a shopping mall waiting on Aunt Lou to finish her shopping when I saw a sign for a Cajun restaurant. I simply had to check it out because you don't find that kind of food in the Old World. Blackened salmon became love at first bite.

Actually, there is a bit of tragic history behind this dish. French-speaking Acadian settlers in what we call now New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were forcefully evicted from their lands when the English took over in 1713. Some of them came fleeing to Texas. They held on to their traditions, and very importantly, their cuisine.

I admire its rustic sophistication. It combines simple ingredients with inventful spices and more advanced ways of cooking than you would expect from country folks. Although this recipe was invented in the 1980s by Paul Prudhomme, it was since wholeheartedly embraced as a truly Cajun dish.

1. Cut a whole salmon half-an-inch thick. I use imperial measures here because 1.27cm would be too cumbersome to say.
   
2. Melt about 100 g unsalted butter.
3. Heat a cast iron frying pan very, very hot. I consider it ready for action when it starts smoking. I use a griddle skillet for the lovely sear marks.
4. Dip salmon pieces in melted butter and sprinkle moderately with Tony Chachere's Cajun Frying Spice or in the mix of 1 tbsp powder garlic, 1 tbsp onion powder, 1 tbsp ground paprica, 1 tbsp black pepper and 1 tbsp white pepper.
5. Yank salmon on the hot pan. Watch out as it can flare up. Fry about 1 minute on each side.
6. Serve with fried or baked potatoes.
   

Here is a piece of traditional Cajun music to accompany this flavourful meal:

Unagidon (うなぎ丼): Japanese summer survival tool

apanese summer is relentless, especially in the cities. The concrete jungle absorbs the sun heat while millions of air-conditioners pump out typhoons of hot area into the streets. It is in fact so bad that it is a national custom to send "midsummer heat fatigue" (natsubate) greeting cards inquiring how others are managing.

Unagi-don (うなぎ丼), grilled eel fillets served on top of hot rice, is supposed to provide strength to withstand the exhausting heat. There is even a special day, Doyou no Ushi no Hi, when its consumption is deemed especially beneficial.

Whether a commercial gimmick or Oriental wisdom, unagi-don is a superbly delicious dish. In fact, I enjoy it even more in winter. I cook it the Kansai way: cutting the eel's belly and basting the grilling fillets with tare made of sake, mirin and shoyu. Unlike epicurean Kansai merchants, stuck-up Edo (Tokyo) samurais hated that practice as it reminded them of seppuku (commonly and incorrectly known as harakiri).

The recipe is really simple:

1. If you have a whole eel: cut off the head, gut it, cut it in 6-7 cm pieces and removed the spine. Don't worry about the small bones.
2. Mix shoyu, mirin and sake half a cup each. Marinate the filets for at least an hour.
3. Grill the filets, regularly turning them over and basting with the marinade. Depending on your grill it takes up to 20-30 minutes. Alternatively, use a grill skillet.
   
4. Serve on top of freshly cooked Japanese rice. For the authentic taste only use short-grained japonica, long-grained jasmin and basmati just won't taste right.
   

Japanese sake or beer goes well with unagi-don. Dry white wine might be good as well but I find it a sacrilege and never even try but why should it stop you?

One of my favourite Japanese songs. Technically it is Okinawa-flavoured but it won't clash with the taste of unagi-don.