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.

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

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! 

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.  

 

Puy lentils and Montbeliard sausage cassoulet recipe

In the days before Napoleon III and Eugenie's with their trend-setting fancy lifestyle became the role model for the newly affluent French bourgeoisie, daily food for the majority of the French was like this: all-in-one casseroles. Chopping and cooking whatever is available on the day into something between a soup and a main course is the ultimate way to feed a big family at the end of a hard day. In France this type of dish is actually known as cassoulet or (caçolet in Occitan) and can still be found on lunch menus in bistrots and auberges, always an inexpensive entry.

For me, it is a winter comfort food that reminds me of my Mother's cooking so as the astronomical spring starts on the 20th of March, this Puy lentils and Montbeliard sausage cassoulet may be the last one I cooked this winter.

Cooking a cassoulet takes a couple of hours but you don't need to be present all the time, it's really about chopping and letting it all just simmer away as you delve into your Facebook comments.

1. Soak Puy lentils in plenty of cold water. Peel and slice a head of garlic and a few shallots.
   
2. Slowly fry the garlic and the shallots in olive oil until golden brown.
   
3. Add chopped Montbeliard (or Toulouse, or Morteau) sausages, potatoes and any root vegetables or tubers you can get hold of: carrots, parsnips, root celery, salsify, turnips, topinambour. Mix well, cover with a lid and allow to cook until half-ready, stirring occasionally.
   
4. Add the lentils and enough water to cover it all. Add bay leaf, all-spice berries and pepper.
   
5. Turn the heat to low and allow to simmer until the lentils are ready.
   
6. Salt to taste. I also use fish sauce and a smidgen of liquid smoke for the extra oomph. Serve with crunchy baguette and a glass of red.

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.

Rustic delight: marmite de lentilles au lard fumé

urprise: this has nothing to do with the masterpiece of British culinary genius, the shoe-sole-tasting Marmite. Marmite is the French for cooking pot and also stands for anything cooked in it. Most of times it's something hearty and rustic. I call this dish marmite to get away with not calling it either soup or stew, because it is neither, being somewhere in the delicious between and combining the best of both so you have the whole dinner in one pot.

True to its bucolic origins in peasant France this dish is simple, filling and tasty. If you use pre-cooked beans from a can it will never take you more than an hour to cook and for most part you will only need to stir it occasionally. So here how it goes, marmite de lentilles au lard fumé (skip stages 1 and 2 if you use canned beans):

1. Soak 2 cups of beans in cold water overnight. Changing the water once every few hours helps to reduce the musical side-effects of eating the beans later.
2. Cover beans with twice cold water and bring to boil. Reduce fire and allow to simmer until nice and soft. This may take anywhere between 40 minutes and a couple of hours.
   
3. In the meantime, peel and chop 3 onions. Heat some olive oil in a pan and slowly fry the onions till golden yellow. This is called caramelisation and brings a whole dimension to the taste of the marmite.
4. Peel and dice 3 potatoes and let lay them around to dry: this will keep them whole in the soup without disintegrating into mash.
   
5. Peel and dice a carrot.
6. Add about 150 g smoked bacon bits and the diced carrot into the pan with onions and fry until it give sout a nice flavour.
7. Add the mix and the potatoes to the beans (they must be cooked by now). Allow to simmer until everything is cooked. Add salt, pepper and your favourite herbs. The classic bouquet garni tastes perfect here.
8. Served wth grilled garlic bread, grated cheese and chopped parsley.
   

Les saveurs de l'automne: autumn root stew

his is a simple recipe that will allow you combine the lovely earthy flavours of autumn vegetables in one powerful stew.

Wash, peel and dice approximately equal amounts of:

• carrots
• potatoes
• parsnips
• root celeriac
• pumpkin
• yams
• swede
  
• buttersquash

Add 2-3 stalks of chopped leeks and stew on medium fire with butter, black pepper, unrefined sea salt, a glass of cream, a glass of water, a dash of dry white wine and a wee pinch of nutmeg until soft. Mind and stir regularly. Serve as a main or side dish.

Mexican chipotle beans stew (guiso de fabas con chipotle)

y experience of Mexico was short-lived. We walked across the bridge from El Paso, Texas to Ciudad Juarez to have dinner. After the comfort and relative safety of the good ole US of A, Mexico felt dodgy. It did not help that we crossed the border as the sun was setting. Shady characters and roaming youths lurked on crossroads. Snazzy patrol cars wheezed down dark streets, stopping to a screeching halt to check people’s documents. The town is infamous for las muertas de Juarez – hundreds of women violently murdered here since 1993, most cases unsolved. In the beautiful dusk light we trundled on looking for a place to grab a bite.

Touching the base with food is Floyd's idea of a short visit: only a meal in a new country can validate your claim that you've been there. When we finally stumbled over a resto still open at such a late hour, he went safe ordering a steak. I remained true to myself and tried something I had no idea what it was. It turned out a hearty stew with potatoes, carrots, pieces of pork and lots of beans. It was very filling and delicious, leaving a pleasant warm aftertaste of smoky spiciness. In my mind this became for ever bonded with the sense of imminent danger lurking outside.

When back home two weeks later, I made a few attempts to recreate that taste of Mexico. I searched online cookbooks for hints, tweaked the ingredients and cooking times and after a few almost-there tries finally hit the spot. So here we go. It is actually quite simple. Measures are approximate and I don't think Mexican people stick to mathematically verified recipes themselves.

1. Peel and chop some potatoes and carrots, set aside.
2. Chop and fry lots of onions in vegetable oil.
   
3. Add some smoked bacon and keep frying.
4. Add the potatoes and carrots. Fry until almost ready.
5. Add canned beans as desired.
6. Add some chopped chipotle peppers.
7. Add some starch mixed well with cold water.
8. Let stew for a while.
9. Serve.
   

As it goes with stews, it tastes better the next day, when al the blessed event of flavour osmosis has occurred.

Hkatenkwan: Ghanaian family stew

raditional African families are big. So when you cook something, you want to make sure that everyone is fed. Stews are perfect for that: you get your fill of protein, fats, carbs, fibre and vitamins in one pot. Ghanaian hkatenkwan is one of those family stews. It's rich, filling and very tasty.



I have checked the authenticity of this hkatenkwan recipe with my African neighbours, so here it goes:

1. Chop half a chicken or 700 g chicken breasts into medium-sized chunks.
2. Put the chicken, sliced ginger (5-cm piece) and half a peeled onion in Pot 1 and cover with cold water. For the veg(etari)an version, substitute chicken with 2 vegetable bouillon cubes and pre-soaked TVP (textured vegetable protein) of your choice. Bring to boil and let simmer 10 minutes to make nice aromatic broth.
   
3. In the meantime, in Pot 2 (make sure it's a large one), fry 2 tablespoonfuls tomato paste in 2 tablespoonfuls palm oil over low heat for a few minutes.
   
4. Add to Pot 2 one and half chopped onions, one or two chopped peppers and a tin of chopped tomatoes, stirring occasionally until the onions are clear.
   
5. Move the chicken and half the broth from Pot 1 to Pot 2.
6. Add one cup peanut butter and some salt to Pot 2. Stir to make sure that the peanut butter dissolves evenly.
   
7. Cook until it bubbles before stirring in 6-8 garden eggs cut in halves and 15-20 whole okras with butts chopped off.
   
8. Continue cooking until the vegetables are tender.
   
9. Add more broth as needed to maintain a thick, stew-like consistency.
10. It becomes even nicer the next day, when all the flavours have dissolved and mingled together, particularly if you use TVP for the vegan version.
    

If you have African (especially Nigerian) guests for dinner, make sure your hkatenkwan is fiery with peppers. Everyone will definitely be chuffed. Otherwise, suit your own taste. Serve over freshly cooked rice, with fried plantain, or with foufou.

Mapo dofu (麻婆豆腐）: numbing hot Szechuan stew

alking about Chinese cuisine is like talking about European cuisine ignoring the difference between, say, Norwegian, French, Polish and Greek food. In China, culinary varies enormously from region to region. On my first trip to China, I would move on to a new place every 2-3 days and I could never get the same food that I liked in the city before. A weirdly enjoyable kind of frustration.

There are eight main cuisines in China if we leave ethnic varieties like Tibetan or Uighur as well as urban fusion styles from Beijing or Shanghai out of the equation. One of the Eight Great Traditions is that of Sichuan (Szechuan).

It hails from the Southwest of China and is the spiciest of them all. There is even a special word for Szechuan kind of spiciness, numbing hot: 麻 (má). This comes from the use of the so-called Szechuan pepper - dried flowers of a special tree that however is not related either to black pepper or chili peppers. They cause a mild numbing sensations to the taste buds.

Mapo dofu is perhaps the most famous Szechuan dish. I first tried it in Japan but my real encounter with it took place in Laos. The country's capital Vientiane is more of an oversized village with a handful of colonial French buildings. Laotian people love, nay, can only eat spicy food so the scraggy man from Chengdu who runs the only Szechuan restaurant in a thatched shack never runs out of customers.

Those were still my vegetarian days so after short negotiations in broken Chinese and Laotian he agreed to cook mapo tofu in front of me. Here I will share his recipe with you. It can be made either vegetarian or with meat.

The basic requirements for this dish are that it should be: numbing hot (麻), spicy hot (辣), hot temperature (烫), fresh (鲜), tender and soft (嫩), aromatic (香) (aromatic) and flaky (酥). This is achieved with a succession of the following.

1. Cut a medium sized aubergine into longish (5-6 cm) slivers and put on a plate to dry.
   
2. Cut a 400-500 g block of hard tofu into 1 cm cubes. Allow to drain and dry a bit.
3. Heat a thick-bottomed pot or wok. Add 4 tbsp odourless vegetable oil and wait until it's hot.
4. Add the tofu, gently stir and make sure it's all covered by oil.
5. While the tofu is frying , peel and slice a few cloves of garlic.
6. Once the tofu is blonde yellow, scoop it out in a bowl and add garlic to the oil.
7. Once garlic is golden yellow, add half a teaspoonful of Szcechuan pepper, one tsp of white and one tsp of black sesame. Fry briefly until fragrant.
8. (This is optional but I really love this touch: add 5-6 pre-soaked and julienned dried shiitake and fry until they start giving out flavour.)
9. (Also optional but it gives the dish a smokey flvaour: add a nice dash of qingjiang vinegar and let it boil out.)
   
10. Add 100 g minced meat: pork, veal or beef. Fry briefly until it's not red any more. Make sure it does not end up chunky. Vegetarians: use pre-soaked TSP (texturised soya protein) mince and soya sauce instead of fish sauce.
11. Add the aubergines and fry for another 5 minutes. Add the tofu.
    
12. Dissolve 2 tablespoonfuls corn starch in half a litre of water. Add into the pot and gently mix.
13. Add 4 tablespoonful of doubanjiang and a glug of fish sauce and a glug of Chinese rice wine. Gently mix. Bring to boil, then reduce the heat.
    
14. Add a handful of bean sprouts and half a handful of pre-soaked golden needles.
15. Allow to simmer for 15-20 minutes more on a very low heat. Allow all the juices to dissolve and mix. It is even better to let the stew sit on the stove for an hour or so.
16. Serve with freshly cooked rice.
    

It is very easy to make it veg(etari)an: use TSP (texturised soya protein) mince and soya sauce instead of fish sauce.

Let Sa Ding Ding's Mantra accompany this fragrant meal:

Asturian fabada: pork and beans stew

Fabada is an Asturian dish from Northern Spain made of beans and pork. I was lucky enough to buy the pork mix - tocino, morcilla, chorizo and ham - in Madrid and the fava beans you can buy in any market in Amsterdam.

Beans are always a bit of a pain to cook but I managed to restrain myself from buying canned ones and went through the whole nine yard of trouble cooking them myself. Considered the amount of gas I burnt doing that, meat might have been a more enviromentally responsible option after all, whatever the tree-hugging mafia may claim.

Thai green curry (gaeng khiao waan) - แกงเขียวหวาง

I follow the authentic recipe to cook Thai green curry - gaeng khiao waan. It is so good it needs no improving.

It starts with lots of chopping and slicing:

• 2-3 stalks of lemons grass (chop off the dry tops and use them to make infusion), chopped;
• 4-5cm galangal root, sliced;
• 3-5 chillies, chopped;
  
• half a head of garlic, peeled and finely chopped;
• a few kaffir lime leaves, leave them whole or tear big ones in halves.
  

First in a medium-heated thick-bottomed pan goes a nice glub of odourless vegetable oil. When the oil is hot, there goes garlic. When it just becomes golden the rest of the herb mix follows to be shortly joined by 2-3 tablespoonfuls of fried chilli paste.
When all this goodness becomes fragrant, I give it a generous dash of fish sauce. Then I add half a pack (about 125 g) of creamed coconut milk and slowly whisk in two tins of coconut milk. The point is to infuse the milk with the flavours of the toasted herb mix.

At this stage I add green peppercorns, Thai basil and tiny Thai round aubergines that give the final product that unmistakeable flavour you can smell the moment you step out of the plane in Bangkok. I let it all simmer until a thin greenish film of oil appears on the surface and then add the rest of the ingredients:

• a skinned breast of chicken cut into bite-size pieces;
• white round aubergines cut in halves(also known as garden eggs in Africa);
• string beans;
• button mushrooms.
  

When the chicken is done you can serve it with boiled jasmine rice. You can supplement chicken with seafood but then add it at the very end.

Here is a theme song for this fragrant Thai meal:

Masak Ekor Asam Pedas: Malaysian oxtail in tamarind juice

Malaysian oxtail in tamarind (asam) juice is a festive dish: when you slaughter an ox, you might as well cook it real good. Gently simmered in fresh tamarind juice the oxtail acquires its flavour from the galangal root, kaffir lime leaves, lemon grass, chilies and unripe black peppercorns.

I serve it with a sprinkle of chopped coriander, never a foreign flavour in South East Asian cuisines.

Here I served alongside with Indo-Malaysian potato curry (top) and nice long-grained rice cooked the Asian way.

Korean chicken with pyogo mushrooms

This is not the typical fiery Korean fare you'd expect. Actually, Koreans know more than splicing their food with industrial quantities of chillies. This chicken dish is based on the delicate combination of the natural flavours of chicken, ginger, leeks and mushrooms.

First, I put a whole chicken in a pot, pour cold water to cover it all, add sliced fresh ginger root (abt. 3 inches) and one stalk of leek chopped into circles. Bring to boil, allow to simmer for half an hour.

In the meantime, I sauté 12 pyogo and and 3 medium oyster mushrooms in a tablespoonful of odourless vegetable oil. If you only have dried mushrooms , soak them overnight in an ample amount of water. That water (mushroom stock) you can later use to cook uncommonly fragrant rice.