Arabesque - Greg and Lucy Malouf

Most Mondays the in laws stay over in the middle of their weekly two day soextremelyhelpfulthankyouthankyouthankyou childcare odyssey. Because they’ve gotten up at some ungodly hour, travelled to our house, looking after the bratlings all day, and have to get up and do it all in reverse the next day, I think they deserve a ‘proper meal’. One with meat in it. Although they like pasta, I’m not sure spag bol cuts it for them, and there are only so many times I can do roast or poached chicken. So, while raiding Dad’s bookshelves I’ve been on the look out for tasty, meaty, EASY, but not boring, meals (without chili because they don’t like it), which include lots of carbs, but no faffy potato-peeling.

This is so perfect – I can even do everything except add the couscous the night before. The kids can eat any left overs and it has amazing depth of flavour. How actually Moroccan it is I don’t know (the book is by Greg Malouf, an Australian chef, and is full of delicious but slightly fusiony things) particularly as I’ve messed the recipe around a bit. The original has chilli powder  and fresh chili in – I left them out and thought I would be pining for the heat, but it really doesn’t seem to be missing anything. I also put in a lot more couscous that he specified. The original is called a ‘soup’ but honestly, that’s not what you feed two slaves loving grandparents at the end of a long day is it? So this is definitely a stew.

North African Couscous Stew –  serves two working parents and two exhausted grandparents

350-400g lamb leg steak – you can get these at the butcher’s counter, or on the shelves, and it's usually less than a fiver – chopped bite size

1 onion, chopped before you’ve even got your coat off

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 tbsp coriander seeds, dry roasted and ground

1 tbsp cumin seeds, dry roasted and ground

1 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon paprika (he said ‘sweet’, I had ‘smoked’, pis aller)

1 can chopped tomato

1 tsp honey

1 tin chickpeas

Chicken stock cube

About 100g couscous (I think, see below)

Parsley and mint if you have them

Lemon if you have one

Saute the lamb in olive oil, and remove.

Cook the onion high until it’s soft.

Add the garlic, and all the spices, and mix in.

Then put the lamb back in and add the tomatoes and honey.

Stir, the stock cube, and enough water to sort of come nearly to the top of the lamb cubes. Not too much. 

Prod the stock cube until it dissolves into lovely saltiness.

Let it cook for around 45 minutes with a lid on. Halfway through, stir in the chickpeas. (or make it all in advance and let it sit).

When you’re ready, turn the heat off and stir in the couscous. Put the lid back on and let it sit for five minutes. I like to use enough couscous that, when it’s soft, the stew is very wet but full of couscous.

Sprinkle and squeeze the herbs and lemon. Serve with Greek yoghurt. Be nice to your in laws.

Madhur Jaffrey's Best Aubergines Ever

Well, it's taken a long time to write this one up. Blame the brain-splatting toll of going back to work to a new job, and getting the new two kids, two jobs, four grandparents routine under way. But here I am, watching the Olympic athletics, talking to no-one as usual, and ready to roll my sleeves up.

I make nearly all my Indian mainstays from this fab blog, which fulfils all my requirements for speed, deliciousness, authenticity, and makeability. When you know you need a meat free night, nothing is better than a saag paneer, or a dal (the dirtier the tarka the better in my opinion - ghee, asfeotida, curry leaves, and chilli!). And the best meal I've ever made for friends was probably a seafood biryani with aubergine raita.  

So I've been waiting to pinch this book for ages - I know Madhur Jaffrey can make good on a title that ambitious. It covers every part of the sub-continent and the diaspora of curry-loving nations, including South Africa, Japan, Burma, and Thailand. I chose a vegetarian recipe because, much as I love meat, I realise that I find it much more relaxing and rewarding to cook with vegetables, pulses etc. Plus, check out the name - I make a lot of damn fine aubergine dishes, so how could I not try this?

It's described by Madhur as an Afghanistan & USA (i.e. she crafted it in her kitchen) hybrid, and its four separate components reflect its composite heritage. There are a lot of ingredients, and it is a bit of work, but I made it on a very nothingy Sunday evening, and it was only about 30 minutes of pottering (I didn't bother salting the aubergines and soaking them for '3-10 hours' - I never do).

Serves 2 (with leftovers)

2 aubergines sliced lengthways about 3-5 cm thick. That's what MJ recommends - I didn't read it properly and sliced them into rounds, quite thin. 

Lots of veg oil for frying. 

For the tomato-chickpea sauce

Oil

2 dried red chillies

1 tsp whole brown mustard seeds

2 cloves of garlic chopped

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

10 curry leaves (from the freezer)

1 tin of chickpeas

Salt

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1/4 tsp ground tumeric

For the yoghurt sauce

Enough yoghurt to serve 2
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cumin seeds which you've 'roasted' in a dry frying pan

For the tamarind chutney

2 tbsp thick tamarind paste

2 tbsp sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp ground cumin seeds as above

Fry the aubergine slices in a large frying pan with lots of oil unti, they are deep brown on both sides. Drain them on kitchen paper.

Make the tomato sauce by frying the mustard seeds and chillies in hot oil until the seeds are popping. 

Add the garlic, and then quickly the tomatoes, curry leaves, chickpeas, and all the spices and seasonings. Bring to a simmer, cover, and let it cook gently for 20 minutes. 

Make the yoghurt sauce by just whisking some air into the yog with a fork, and then stir through the over ingredients. 

Make the chutney by combining the ingredients. I know, I know...I am an amazing cook. 

When you're ready, lay the aubergine on a baking sheet and heat in the oven at 160 degrees for 15 minutes. Put the slices on a large plate in a single layer (or, you know, just in the bottom of two bowls). Dollop as much of the tomato sauce on top as you like, then the yoghurt sauce, and then the chutney. 

The best aubergines ever? Maybe not when there's parmigiana melenzane in the world, but I'm not going to split hairs. 

'Beaneaters & Bread Soup' - Ribollita

Italian again, hmm? Well, it wasn’t meant to be. I saw ‘Beaneaters’ on the spine, and pulled it off the shelf, thinking it must be a compendium of delicious pulse-based recipes from around the world. That would basically be my dream book, appealing to both my tightness, and love of stodge. And, of course, my admiration for the way the bean so cleverly absorbs the flavours of the spices/meats/veg with which you cook it.

When I realised that this was, in fact, a collection of Tuscan recipes, I decided that to put it back would be against the spirit of this blog. And Tuscans do (obviously) eat a lot of beans. Though the recipe I most wanted to make was for Octopus with Potatoes. This book goes into frankly staggering detail about Tuscans and Tuscany, with pages on individual chestnut growers, winemakers, and farmers. It’s pretty interesting, if a little too Chianti-struck. And  the food looks goooood. My heart, along with ¼ of my DNA, will always belong to Southern Italy, but there is a lot to be said for hare ragu.

Octopus and Potatoes was out due to unreliability of octopus supply (though my local Morrison;s usually provides), and anyway, I needed something that all of us would eat on a Sunday lunch. Oh, and of course, it really should have beans in it. The mellifluous sounding (but it just means ‘reboiled’, as in ‘reheated’) ‘Ribollita’ appears in lots of Italian recipe books, and appeals to the belief that the paysan can make a truly delicious meal out of the meanest, cheapest ingredients – plus top quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil of course.

I didn’t have any leafy green veg so I skipped these – but would never recommend not putting leafy green veg in anything if you have the chance. And I didn’t have enough dried beans, so I used 100 g of dried cannellini, soaked overnight, and a tin of them too. It blipped away on the stove for its allotted time, both times, with very little liquid, looking blah and tasting the same. And yet. Dished up, olive oil and parmesan on top, salt…it was lovely. Soft, but not bland. Comforting but not unhealthy.

100g dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight, and then simmered for about 45mins til just soft (with the sage and peppercorns below)

1 tin of cannellini beans (or you could use 3 tins, or 300g dried)

Lots of nice extra virgin olive oil

2 garlic cloves

5 sage leaves…or you know, however many you like

10 peppercorns…ditto

1 onion, chopped

1 carrot, sliced thickly

1 potato, peeled and chopped chunkily

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

As much stale-ish, foreign-ish bread as you’ve got, within reason

Ideally some leafy veg like cavolo nero, kale, chard, spinach

Fry the onion and garlic in the oil, and then add in the root veg, Fry until the veg is releasing its flavour.

Puree the dried beans with a tablespoon on their boiling water.

Add this, along with the tinned beans, and tomatoes, to the pot.

Bring to the boil, and then add the green veg, and the bread. If it looks really dry, add some water, but it’s not meant to be liquid.

Let it simmer very low on the stove, for about an hour. Turn off, and leave overnight.

The next day, turn the oven on to 180 degrees, and put the pot in, covered. Warn through for half an hour, and then another 15 minutes with the lid off – ideally, this will make the bread at the top form a lovely crust. Didn’t work for me, but you never know.

Serve with extra olive oil on top, and a good grating of Parmesan. Obviously season too.

Jamie Oliver's Dan Dan Noodles

I remember seeing Jamie Oliver’s third book at a friend’s house, shortly after it came out. It must have been around 2002, and it was still titled something about The Naked Chef. I thought ‘God, hasn’t he had his 15 minutes yet? How many books is he going to squeeze out?’.

Well! Here we are 10 years on with ‘Jamie’s America’. After Fifteen, and School Dinners, and the Ministry and that disastrous-sounding trip to the States to sort out their school food. He’s been backlashed, and resurgent, so many times he must wake up wondering whether he’s a national treasure, or an exposure seeking busybody with a hero complex today.

This is his tenth book in about a decade (and he’s probably put out another one since then) and they all sell a shitload, and they make him a load of money, and why not put one out every year in that case? And I’d be extremely cynical about it if this book wasn’t bloody brilliant. Seriously, it’s not going back. I’ve made the Dan Dan Noodles twice, and the Stuffed Courgette Flowers, and the Date Shake, and the Broccoli Salad, and the Best Baked Beans, and I will be making the Veal Parmigiana (Veal Parm!) and the Chicken Mole, and the Chili, and quite a few more.  

I might even attempt the somewhat tricky looking Sher Ping Pancakes – mainly because they, like the noodles, contain the incredibly alluring Szechuan pepper. This stuff is a joy for even the most jaded chili-loving palate. I’ve heard it described as ‘hot and numbing’, and the second adjective is crucial. Even if you use too much it won’t send you rushing for the water tap. You’ll just sit there, staring into space, you lips and tongue seeming to literally jangle, for as long as you’ve got. A a bonus, it has a distinct and delicious flavour: a bit lemony, a bit floral, a bit…icey? No, that’s probably just the numbingness. It’s like eating dry ice.

I don’t think I did the noodles justice either time I made them, because my chili oil was seriously underpowered – even with the Szechuan pepper, and raw garlic, a bit more heat would have made it (for me – the husband would probably demur). I will rectify this store cupboard oversight as  this is a great midweek meal, and a good way to eat a lot of green veg. I made it with pork and beef, and both were good.

Serves 2

A chicken stock cube
250-350g minced beef or pork
1 tbsp runny honey
100-150g wheat noodles
2 mega handfuls of dark green veg – kale, broccoli, Chinese stuff, spinach
2 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
1-2 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp Szechuan pepper
2-3 tbsp chili oil
1 spring onion, finely sliced
Lime juice

Dry fry the meat in a large frying pan until they are crispy and golden brown – this takes a good ten minutes, and you need to keep moving it around, though not constantly. When it done, pour away any excess fat, and add the honey. Coat the meat, and cook for about 30 seconds. Then put it aside.

Boil a pan of water, and dissolve the stock cube in it. When it’s boiling, add the noodles, and cook for as long as they need. When they’ve only got a minute left, throw in the veg too. Then drain and return to the hot pan – don’t shake them dry, put them back in with lots of water still clinging.

Immediately throw in the sliced garlic, chili oil, soy sauce, and Szechuan pepper. Mix mix mix and then divide between bowls. Scatter the sticky crispy mince on top, and add the sliced sping onion, and a bit of lime juice. 

Tessa Kiros's Mozzarella in Carozza

My Dad has about five books by Tessa Kiros. Even by the standards of today’s food publishing, they’re beautiful: this one has a black velvet ribbon pagemarker. They are books for home cooks, and she relies heavily on her heritage – Greek and Finnish – and her home – Tuscany – for inspiration. She writes about the feelings of food, and its connection to place, as much as the food itself. Remind you of anyone? Yup, I can’t help feeling that Tessa would be Nigella, if Nige wasn’t (even) better looking, and better connected. 

Which isn’t to say this book is as good as How to Eat.  Like her other books, it’s OK, and definitely in the tradition of genuinely readable cookbooks. But the ‘must make’ percentage is low, and they’re mainly easy family meals. They’re totally in my wheelhouse, just not that tempting. Venezia: Food & Dreams contains lots of charming wiffle-waffle about the city (see also: the ‘Venetian Feast’ section of Nigella’s Feast for more) and lots of recipes which, truly, crop up in every book about Venice. Bigoli with anchovy sauce, risi e bisi, beef carpaccio, Bellinis. The monkfish lasagne sounded a right faff, as did the many pasta with seafood dishes. I’d make pasta e vongole every week, if there was an accessible, sustainable, reliable source of clams near me. But there isn’t, so I really wish it didn’t feature in EVERY vaguely Italianate recipe book.

Anyway, Tessa leaves me feeling melancholic. Perhaps she doesn’t want to be a big name slebby TV cook? But her glossy books, and lifestyle-pimping, make me think she does. And so I feel sad for her. Still, if Nigella ever goes full recluse, we’ve got her replacement good to go.

So, I made Mozzarella in Carozza (another extremely familiar recipe, which I once made, disastrously, as part of an ‘Italian Feast’ in Home Economics, to be served to teachers. I mainly remember that a small part of the ice cream maker fell off and got frozen into the ice cream, and we couldn’t find it). Surprisingly, Tessa doesn’t point out that this translates as ‘mozzarella in a carriage’. The ‘carriage’ is a deep fried white bread sandwich, made even more Elvisian by béchamel sauce, and an egg dip. My husband and I had one each and were utterly stuffed by them – both exhausted and exhilarated by the hundreds (thousands?) of extra calories ricocheting around our bedtime bodies. I recommend these only if you’ve just rotivated a garden by hand, built a wall, or birthed a baby. Actually, it would be a nice thing to make an invalid you were trying to build up. But this isn’t the 1800s, and I don’t know any invalids. Eat it with a salad, but don’t go thinking it will help.

Makes 2

For the béchamel:

2 tbsp butter
4 tbsp plain flour
125ml milk
nutmeg

1 large egg, beaten in a shallow bowl.
large handful of dried breadcrumbs (I make these by ‘blending’ a few slices of bread, then spreading them on a tray and sticking them in the oven at around 150 degrees for half an hour)

4 slices of whitebread
1 ball of mozzarella (cheap is better), sliced finely
a few shreds of ham (optional)

lots of mild olive oil, or veg oil

Make the béchamel – you know how, or you can look it up. I’m not your mum. Helpfully, you can do this well in advance, and use it cold.

Pour the oil in a large frying pan – I am too wussy to really deep fry on the hob, but the more you dare use the better, I’m sure.

Spread béchamel on all four slices of bread, right to the crustless corners.

Make two mozzarella and ham sandwiches, and pinch the edges closed.

Dunk them in the beaten egg, and then in the breadcrumbs – coating as thoroughly as you can.

Fry them in the oil, turning when golden brown. If you're lucky the face of a beautiful woman will appear in the crispy carapace (see pic below, right). Eat immediately, and then do a thousand star jumps, cackling.

Sri Owen’s Balinese Pork Satay

And now for something completely different. One of the great things about being all grown up and stuff, is that, without even really trying, you amass a proper selection of spices, bottles, and things, like tamarind paste. Suddenly, those Asian recipes, with their intimidatingly long list of ingredients require a trip to the cupboard, and not a bus ride to a nicer part of town that you can afford to live in, and a visit to Waitrose. The upside is that now I regularly cook delicious Indian food, and sometimes Chinese too. The downside is that I’ve become incredibly fussy about takeaways. On balance, it’s definitely more good than bad.

The Indonesian recipes in this book are long, and with much ingredient crossover with Indian and Thai food. I’m pleased to say the only things I had to buy for this pork satay was the meat (bog standard mystery mince, though, not tenderloin as Sri Owen specified) and the onion. Everything else was to hand. And it was flipping gorgeous.

I hadn’t really heard of Sri Owen, but the book convincingly sells her as a semi-doyenne of food writing in the UK. She writes interestingly about her experiences as a child (and eater) in pre-war Indonesia, as an ambitious young woman, and then young wife of an English academic, and then as an evangelist for Indonesian food in the UK and Italy from the 60s until today. And she presents an extensive selection of recipes for all occasions, including the famous rendangs and satays.

Much of it looked tricky – I don’t know where to get banana leaves, I don’t buy giant raw prawns on the grounds of sustainability, and the reliance on candlenuts (to be substituted with macademia nuts here) and peanuts ruled out many recipes in this nut-allergic house. But this pork satay jumped out at me on the grounds of mince! (frugal), tamarind! (got a massive pot), ginger! (so yum), and all kinds of ingredients  that I knew were going to be good together. Plus, pork doesn’t feature much in many Asian cuisines, so the change was tempting. Needless to say, pork doesn’t appear in much Indonesian food: this recipe is specifically Balinese. I am pitifully poorly travelled, so my food has to do it for me - how could I resist bringing the flavours of that luscious sounding island into a wet Wednesday evening in Streatham?

I deviated slightly from the recipe in terms of quantity and method (the only ingredient I didn’t have was galangal) – I didn’t use skewers because the mixture looked dangerously wet. I suppose next time (and there will be a next time) I should reduce the amount of spice paste, or up the meat. But this turned out seriously juicy, and I’m not sure I’d want to jeopardise that.

Serves two, generously, with rice. The amount of paste would definitely stretch to 500g, maybe even 750g of meat.

350 g minced pork
A small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
½ tsp chili powder (I don’t think more would hurt)
Knobble of ginger (you know how much you like)
1 lemongrass stalk
1 tsp coriander seeds
½ tsp cumin seeds
2 green cardamom pods
A shard of cassia bark or half a cinnamon stick
pinch of grated nutmeg
1 tsp of tamarind paste with 2tsp of water
1 tsp salt
½ tsp brown sugar
1 tbsp of low flavour oil (I used rapeseed)

Using a food processor, or stick blender, whizz all the ingredients other than the pork, into a paste.

Add the meat and stir to combine. Let the meat marinate in the fridge for as long as you’ve got.

About an hour before you want to cook, take the meat out of the fridge. If you’re going to use sticks you can either form meatballs and thread them on or mould the meat onto the sticks like proper satay (I bet this is trickier than it looks). Because my mixture looks a little wet and loose (I’m sorry) I decided not to risk them falling off the sticks – so they were just unthreaded meatballs.

Grill the meatballs for around 10 minutes, turning them, and brushing them with oil as necessary. Serve with rice, and an Asiany salad – I made a dressing of sesame oil, soy sauce, lime juice, and sugar. It wasn’t quite right, but it was in the ballpark.

Jose Pizarro - Seasonal Spanish Food

It’s not a good time for Spain at the moment. A quarter of the population are unemployed, continued membership of the Euro looks distinctly aspirational, and growth is a distant memory. Anyone who has been to Spain beyond the Islands and Costas will know what a fantastic and alluring country it is, and how dramatic the change for tourists has been, from a beach-only backwater to a country of distinct regions, cities, and cultures. My favourite memory comes from a village called Cazalla de la Sierra, in the scarily dry hills of Andalucia – while walking, we watched dozens of small black pigs fighting over the acorns we threw to them through a fence. It is the acorns that apparently give Jamon Iberico de Bellota, Spain’s finest ham, its beyond-Parma taste.

Despite recent troubles, Spanish food remains high on the foodie-consciousness. Restaurants like Brindisa and Moro established its cuisine in this country as distinct from the other great Mediterranean traditions – saffron, paprika, thyme, oranges, raisins…and lots and lots of lovely pork. Talking of Brindisa, this book is by its founding chef, Jose Pizarro, from the dry central Extramadura region in the heart of Spain. Tierra de Brindisa is one of my very favourite restaurants: if I have to choose somewhere to eat in Soho, I find myself going back there time after time (the fact you can book doesn’t hurt). So I couldn’t resist the recipe for one of my favourite dishes – Spinach with Raisins and Pine Nuts. This is how I did it for two:

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Half a small onion
A small handful of pine nuts
Ditto of raisins
Two massive giant hands of baby spinach

Fry the finely diced onion in olive oil until golden but not too crispy.
Add in the nuts and raisins and fry til the nuts are also golden and the raisins swell up.
Right at the end throw in the spinach and toss thoroughly to coat, but barely barely wilt (I overdid it as you can see – at Brindisa the spinach is warm but not cooked). Season and eat as a tapa, or a side. It’s properly healthy but tastes indulgent and treaty.

We ate it, somewhat bizarrely, with Jose’s Pea and Mint soup. Both recipes came from the ‘Spring’ section of the book, and we ate them during a particularly dark and wet week in April. The soup had the twin advantages of tasting supremely springy, and including the comforting stodge of fried bread and Serrano Ham. A brilliant cupboard and freezer standby – even if you don’t have mint on your window sill.

Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
400g frozen peas
Chicken stock
Big sprig of mint
2 slices of nice white bread (I used Waitrose’s Rye and Wheat Quarter)
4 slices of Serrano ham – or Iberico de Bellota if you’re feeling ritzy

Fry the onion and garlic in the oil, until they are soft and translucent.
Add the peas, and stir to take the frost off, and soak up some flavour. Throw in some white wine or Noilly Prat if you have it.
Add enough stock to cover and let simmer for a few minutes. Pop the mint sprig in.
Meanwhile, heat some more oil in a frying pan, and when its hot, add the bread. Fry on both sides until golden. Then add the ham and let it frizzle up.
Blend the soup, and serve with the ham-topped bread.

I love this book – it’s a description of, and homage to, the traditional rural life of Jose’s parents, as well as a collection of very achievable dishes. It’s divided into seasons – great, except that the Summer section relies on amazing Mediterranean produce, which would be hard to find British grown in our summer. But still, I may be re-smuggling this one soon.