Spicy daikon-oroshi salad

1. Grate daikon (mooli) and heap up on a small platter.
2. For the dressing: mix dry chilli flakes,  garlic powder, fish sauce, soya sauce,  Chunking vinegar, chopped scallions, and toasted sesame oil.
3. Tip the dressing on the daikon heap. Serve.

Three continents in a pan: stir-fried spinach with chorizo and onions

Considering what I stash in my cupboards, it's no wonder most of my cooking is some kind of fusion. Whether 'improving' French stews with Thai fish sauce or spiking hommous with dried lime powder, the Post-Modern culinary pastiche is the order of the day.

Today's lunch was whipped up at the epistemic crossroads of Thai, Spanish and West African cuisines: the classic Thai phat phak fai daeng was made with Asturian chorizo as well as African spinach, onions and Scottish bonnet peppers, proving a very happy marriage.

1. Slowly saute a lot of crushed garlic with a tad of finely chopped Scottish bonnet pepper.
   
2. Add sliced chorizo and fry on a medium fir until it makes the oil red.
   
3. Add some chopped tomatoes and red African onions, fry until the onions are soft.
   
4. Add a lot of chopped African spinach (it's more robust and sweeter than the regular one) and fold into the mixture. Fry until the spinach retain just a bit of crunch.
   
5. Season with Thai fish sauce.
   
   
6. Serve with steamed rice.

Stewed octopus recipe: χταπόδι στιφάδο, jazzed up a tad

Greek recipes are nearly always straightforward, relying on the quality of ingredients to achieve the desired oomph. Even the notoriously difficult to get the knack of avgolemono requires skill rather than any convoluted kitchen gymnastics - and, of course, locally grown organic produce that in Greece is known simply as food. That's, perhaps, why it's so hard to achieve that gobsmacking level of meals so common in Greece when cooking Greek elsewhere.

So I decided to commit a sacrilege and spritz up the good ole octopus stifado with just a couple of very modest innovations. It has proven a major success when I made it for dinner in our vacation house in Lanzarote.

So here are the cooking instructions:

1. Warm up a very generous glug of olive oil in a thick-bottomed pan. Add the spices you are planning to use to infuse the oil with their essential oils. This time I used adobo canario, to pay homage to the host land.

2. Sautee one and a half heads of garlic until golden brown, then add three finely sliced red onions. Sautee until golden brown.

3. Add one gutted, cleaned and chopped up octopus (about 1 kg weight) as well as one and half heads of garlic broken down in cloves but unpeeled. Turn down the heat and stew until tender. Takes about an hour.

4. Add 700-800 g of chopped tomatoes, salt and ground pepper to taste. Stew 10-15 more minutes.

5. Serve with papas arrugadas - potatoes boiled in skin with lots of salt (or even better n sea water) until they get all wrinkly.

Pisto manchego (the best recipe)

The most satisfying recipe for that simple and hearty Manchego farmer treat, the pisto.

1.  Sautee  crushed garlic in olive oil.
2. Add chopped onions, red bell peppers and tomatoes.
3. Season with salt, black and red pepper.
4. Serve on top of slices rustic bread, topped with fried bacon dices and fried egg.

Roasted fennel with yoghurt dip

1.  Cut a fennel bulb lenghtwise in four and baste with some olive oil.
   
2. Heat a ribbed skillet and slowly fry the fennel on both sides.
   
3. In the meantime, crush three cloves of garlic, mix with a few tablespoonfuls of full-fat Turkish yoghurt, and season with black pepper, salt or fish sauce, and a generous amount of chopped mint or parsley.
   
   
4. Serve as the main for lunch, a starter for dinner, or an entry for a tapas feast.

Mole con chocolate y chipotle: Mexican chocolate and chipotle stew recipe

I am not entirely sure how I came up with this. I knew of the chocolate stew, the concept pops up here and there in Mexican cookbooks and food blogs. But then when it came down to cooking it, adding the tangy, smoky pepper known as chipotle, just seemed like the most natural thing to do. After all, both are Mexico's gifts to the world. My gut did not lie. The stew came out luscious and scrumptious, definitely chocolatey, yet savoury and spicy.

So here goes the recipe:

1. Briefly marinate bite-size chunks of organic free-range beef in freshly ground black pepper and fish sauce. Pat the beef dry with kitchen rolls and fry in a cast-iron pot with a bit of oil. Do it in batches, if necessary, to make sure that the meat gets nicely browned, instead of getting steamed in its own juice. Remove to a plate once done.
   
2. Slowly sautee crushed garlic, finely chopped onions and celery in the oil until golden brown.
   
3. Add the meat, red wine to cover, bring to a boil and let simmer until tender. 
   
4. Add a nice chunk of good quality chocolate (or pure cocoa powder) and some chipotle peppers to taste, as spicy as you prefer. Let bubble away slowly for another 10-15 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.
   
5. Serve on top of steamed rice and beans, with red wine to wash it all down. As with all stews, it tastes better the next day, but also benefits from sitting an hour or so on the counter before being served.

Mole con chocolate y chipotle - Chocolate and chipotle beef stew recipe

Nettle soup, done well

It's again this time of the year when foodies and those aligned with them start cooking foraged weeds. What used to be (really) poor man's grub, these days is a social marker of the educated classes. Now, I've seen and tried and number of nettle soups this year and, I hate to say that, people you need to get a grip. Just boiling leaves with random veggies does not do the trick, or any trick for that matter. That's what my 85-year-old farmer uncle cooks for his piglets, literally. Nettle has its own special flavour that, if served to humans, needs to be cherished, flaunted and taken proper care of.

So here I will share the proper nettle soup recipe, as it's been cooked in my family for at least three generations.

1. Pick a bunch of young nettle leaves, they need to be light green and with no flowers forming.
2. Remove the stems and rinse well in cold water.
3. Sautee in butter on a low heat.
4. Add chopped shallots or onions. Cook until soft.
5. Add a can or two of chopped tomatoes with juice. If too thick, add water.
6. Beat a nice large biodynamic egg and add into the boiling soup, as you stir it, making sure it comes out stringy, not cloudy.
7. Let it bubble away for a little while to let the tastes mingle.
8. Salt and pepper in moderation. Sprinkle a few drops of fish sauce to enhance the flavour.

This recipe balances the sourness from the tomatoes and the sweetness of sauteed onions to give the nettle a proper stage to show off its zing.

Old wives' tales (that are quite likely true):  

• Nettles are supposed to stimulate your liver to cleanse blood. 

• It is not recommend to eat too much nettle soup, not more than 2-3 times a year, naturally in the spring.

Vietnamese beef and lemon grass soup: Canh Thịt Bò Xáo Sả

ietnamese cuisine is pure poetry in the pot. Their soups alone are celebrations of agriculture, flavours and wholesomeness. Don't believe me? Try this recipe: beef and lemon grass soup (Canh Thịt Bò Xáo Sả).

1. Finely slice some lean organic outdoor-bred beef and marinate in fish sauce, brown cane sugar and black pepper.
2. Sweat some chopped shallots in vegetable oil.
3. Add some pressed garlic, one crushed and chopped stalk of lemon grass and the meat. Gently sautee until the meat is cooked.
4. Add water and bring to a simmer.
5. Add some bean sprouts (and some noodle, if so desired). Simmer until ready to eat.
6. Serve with a sprinkle of chopped green coriander.

Clams, spinach and butternut squash soup recipe

  nspired by Korean jogae-tang clam soup, I made a few adjustments with some fantabulous results. 

1. Slow-fry some crushed garlic in some groundnut oil until golden.
   
2. Add clams, diced butternut squash, sprinkle with some fish sauce and fry a little.
   
3. Add water and bring to a simmer.
   
4. When all clams have opened, add roughly chopped spinach and simmer a little more.
   
5. Season with black pepper and fish sauce.

Saffron rice.. wthout saffron

ave you ever been frustrated with saffron like I am? The pesky bugger may give that sought-after flavour to your Persian rice, yet it is so finicky in handling. It is never really enough to offer an ample, full-bodied flavour, it needs to be pre-chopped and pre-soaked before you even dare to use it, then the flavour so easily escapes when cooking, and to boot it does not even colour the rice uniformly, leaving it instead tantalisingly spotted here and there. 

Luckily, by pure chance, I have discovered a mighty alternative to it, giving everything we have been begging saffron to deliver for so long, as of yet to no avail. Ta-dam, here enters the perfect couple: dry dill and turmeric powder. By some strange twist of fate, when paired together, they produce the flavour identical to saffron, at a fraction of the cost and effort, The colour too, albeit lacking saffron's reddish notes, with the addition of dill's dark green acquires a depth, elegantly finishing off with the golden brown of the tahdeg (caramelised crust). 

I also truncate the elaborate Persian procedure in favour of the more  straightforward, yet nonetheless effective Asian steaming method. Few more tricks that make this saffronless saffron rice a hit with my discerning guests.

• Add butter generously. I use about 70 g for 11 handfuls of dry rice. Butter is good for you: French people eat a lot of it and don't get fat. Junk food, snacking and eating on the run  - that's what makes you fat, not butter.
  
• Add a dash of sea salt. Without salt, your rice will come out bland and boring. I use fish sauce because it gives an additional level of depth to the flavour, thanks to the naturally occurring MSG, which is not bad for you.
  
• When the rice has been brought to a boil, stir it up to make sure that the dill is evenly spread. Very important: do that while the water has not yet been completely absorbed into the rice. Thus you will ensure that the rice does not turn into a solid slab, allowing for passages for the steam to travel through it, which is how the whole shebang actually gets cooked.
  
  
• Once ready, fluff up the rice. At the bottom, you will find a deliciously caramelised crust, tahdeg. Serve it separately, it tastes like savoury cake. Don't drag our feet though: it's only good while it's warm. To make your rice fit for a celebration table, the Nowruz only being a couple of months away, mix in some finely sliced dried apricots or sultanas as well as pistachio or almond flakes.

How to cook bulots (whelks) the French way

 have always bought bulots (whelks) in France. Farmed mainly in Normandy, these gastropods are well-fed, lush and always sold cooked - or so I thought as I had never bought them outside France. Until one late London afternoon I stumbled upon them in Brixton Market. Just when I lined up baguette, mayonnaise and white wine and got ready to eat them, quelle horreur, they turned out to be raw!

So, I had to add another survival skill to my collection: cooking whelks. This is how you do it.

1. First of all, soak your whelks in cold water for at least an hour. Tht way they will release their droppings into the water so you won't have to eat them.
2. For half a kilo of raw whelks you will need two litres of water, 50 g of salt, one bay leaf, a prig of thyme, a teaspoonful of white vinegar and a generous sprinkle of freshly ground black pepper.
3. Bring everything to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes.
4. Allow to cool down in the resulting court bouillon.
5. Serve, just as I did, with home-made mayonnaise, baguette and white wine. This time I flavoured my mayonnaise with a paste made out of crushed anchovies, garlic and walnuts mixed with some Modena vinegar. A Parisian would hyperventilate and swoon but my Languedoc brethren and sistren will sure understand me!

Clams Breton style, recipe

Palourdes à la bretonne, or clams Breton style. Palourdes is the closest French word I could find to call these clams (they would be called coques, if they were ribbed). In fact, they are Vietnamese natives, known locally as Nghêu Bến Tre, quite a mouthful, so let's stick with palourdes.

This is also one of my improved recipes: normally, Breton style would mean aux lardons et oignons, with bacon and onions. However, a  long afternoon in St. Mâlo, Brittany, spent looking for mussels cooked that style, proved that locals have never heard of anything of the kind. I did not give up and went on to elaborate on what Breton style cooking should be like, which is how all "traditional authentic national cusines" were invented in the first place anyway.

So here's my take on nationalist mythopoetics:

1. Sautee a head of crushed garlic and three chopped shallots in butter.
   
2. Add 2 sliced leeks, a generous handful of Chantenay carrots, diced smoked bacon and stir-fry until haf ready.
   
3. Add 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of clams and continue to cook until the clams start opening.
   
4. Add a jar of double cream and a glass of dry Breton cider.  Picardian blonde beer or dry white wine can do too, although it will deliver a chink in the armour of this dish's authenticity.
   
5. Stir well, gently bring to a boil and simmer with the lid closed until the smell of alcohol goes. Did I say it: remember to stir every now  and then.
   
6. Douse liberally with freshly ground black pepper. No salt necessary as the clam juice and bacon are salty enough.
   
7. To be followed by a nice Breton dance:

Clams stir-fried with garlic, coriander and white wine

y cooking is very often an elaborate protracted affair. It can easily can take up a whole evening, punctuated with thoughtful wine sipping, while a piece of particularly nifty software reads me anthropological articles in a studiedly enthusiastic male voice reminiscent of the Pacific War newsreels. To make all that even more interesting, as I cook, I fix myself sort of amuses-bouche to stave off hunger. Normally, they are spin-offs of the main dish, like I can use some of the caramelised onions from the stew as the base for a canapé or some of the Italian marinade for the fish as a salad dressing. 

Last three days I got into a little habit of stir-frying clams with garlic, coriander, fish sauce and white wine. It's a super simple recipe that involves next to none effort yet yields superbly delectable results.

Here how it goes:

1. Crushed and sautée garlic in oil or butter.
   
2. Add clams and sprinkle with fish sauce. Stir-fry on medium fire until all the clams open, remove into a bowl.
   
3. Add chopped coriander, ground black pepper and a glug of white wine, deglaze.
   
4. Add the sauce to the clams. Serve with baguette and white wine. 

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.

Choucroute garnie: simple recipe

rench food is not all la-de-da made of fois gras, frog's legs and truffle shavings and served on a doily - just like not every Frenchman is an effete and jaded urban cynic.  Since the French Revolution put an end to farmers eating boiled bark, peasant food has become more sophisticated, while staying true to its simple roots.

Take, par example, choucroute garnie, one of my favourite winter foods, hearty, filling and wholesome. The juniper berries, a generous glug of white wine as well as good quality organic free range happy pork turn the lowly sauerkraut and boiled potatoes into a veritable gastronomic experience. It's peasant food par excellence, so it cooks itself while you can indulge, peut-être, in a spot of mutual blowjob, and then, to clean the palate, in the rest of the wine, as Mireille Matthieu is crooning in the background.

Basically it's like this:

1. Sauté onions in duck fat just a tad beyond translucent, they should taste sweetish.
2. Add sauerkraut, juniper berries, whole black pepper and bay leaf.
3. Pour some white wine.
4. Arrange nice chunks of smoked bacon, saucisse de Toulouse, boudin blanc on top- I skip frankfurters and strasbourgers and use boudin noir instead but you don't need to.
5.  Simmer until the pork is ready, generally up to an hour. In the meantime, boil or bake some potatoes.
6. Voilà - serve with white wine from Alsace, Riesling or Gewürtztraminner! 

Roast pheasant

Japanese nabe hotpot: perfect winter food

hat can be better on a nippy winter evening than a hotpot steaming with the heart-warming aromas of  seafood, mushrooms and green vegetables. There is no recipe, really. You just get together with your friends or family and put all and sundry ingredients in a pot of boiling water, dunk them in a sauce of your choice and wash down with beer or sake.

Well, it's not really that random. First of all, you put a piece of kombu in the water to make aromatic broth. Then put ingredients starting from tougher to cook ones in approximately this order. First in go shiitake, carrots, daikon and bigger pieces of fish. I use chopped salmon heads, the abundant cartilege makes for a fantabulous depth of the soup's flavour. I am not a big fan of fish balls unless they are home-made. Next go green vegetables (hakusai/pakchoi, Savoy cabbage, Chinese broccoli, kailan), oyster mushrooms, shrimp, mussels, crab meat, squid, clams. Last follow the gentlest ones that only need to be warmed up: shimeji, konnyaku, bean sprouts, kikurage.

My favourite dip is mix of miso paste and mirin - Japanese style. Also great is mix of chili sauce, fish sauce, lime juice and pressed garlic - Thai style. Korean dip is gochujang, ground toasted sesame, pressed garlic and ground ginger. Vietnamese dip is lime juice, ground ginger, nuoc mam, chopped chillies and pal sugar. Chinese dip is soya sauce, Chinkiang vinegar, sesame oil and a sprikle of hot red pepper.

Once the last bits are fished out and devoured with thanks, beat an egg into the remaining broth and add harusame.  

 

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.