NotCurry

Tuesday (posted Wednesday)

The young man has a friend staying for the next week or so. This is good as he has someone to speak teen to. But it does increase the food consumption. Two teens can pack away an awful lot of food. At the weekend I watched in awe as they polished off over £20 worth of raspberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants in a single sitting. The day after they consumed 2lb rhubarb and its associated crumble. And that's just puddings...Meanwhile there seems to be an intravenous drip of smoothie going into their hyper-fuelled bodies. Remind me to buy some Innocent stock. The young man thinks his appetite might still be depressed post H1N1..!

Meanwhile it is raining. It's been raining on and off since we arrived and we have not got the charcoal going once as yet. I have already cooked a leg of lamb and some kebabs that had been intended to be cooked outside but were eventually done inside. I'm pleased to report that the Risoli griddle performed well when pressed into service as a kebab grill with the young man's friend as kebab turner. Tonight, with over 750g of left-over lamb leg my thoughts turn inevitably to curry. But with last week's experience to moderate my thoughts I need to think about notcurry so as to ameliorate the young man.

Eventually I am inspired by Atul Kochhar. The wife and I have enjoyed Benares and Kochhar's subtle spicing and eclectic approach to the regional food on India provide me with the chance to make Indian food and still be able to claim this is not curry. I make 'Mamsa Ishtew' which he calls an 'aromatic stew with coconut milk'. Definitely not a curry. The recipe below is adapted from Kochar's as I started with par-cooked lamb. If you'd like to cook it from scratch, you'll need the book.

Mamsa Ishtew

750g rare roast lamb leg in cubes
300ml coconut cream
15g root ginger julienne
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt to taste

4 tbsp sunflower oil
8 garlic cloves thinly sliced
2 large onions halved and thinly sliced
3 green chillies in julienne (no seeds)

12 curry leaves
1 large star anise
5 cm cinnamon stick
4 cloves
8 cardamom pods
3 bay leaves

25 black peppercorns
1 1/2 tspn ground turmeric
3 tspn ground cumin
3 tspn ground fennel seeds

Place the coconut cream and lemon juice in a sauté pan, add the lamb and sprinkle on 3/4 of the ginger. Barely simmer (use a diffuser) for 20 minutes with the lid on.






Heat the oil in another pan. Sauté the garlic briefly then add the leaves and whole spices. Let them crackle a bit then add the onions and chillies and soften them without colouring. Add the spices and sauté for a further 10-15 minutes. Don't burn the onions.

Add this mixture to the meat and stir it in. Simmer again for 20-25 minutes. Again this should be very gentle but this time with the lid off. Garnish with the rest of the ginger and serve.

We served this with Bombay potatoes which is probably as mistake as both dishes are yellow. But it worked as notcurry and both young men woofed it down. If I had a better response to green I would probably choose to serve it with Sag Aloo.

Franglo-Morrocan

Despite the Swine 'Flu the young man is still eating. It must be the Tamiflu...

I roast a leg of Lamb.

First I spike it with 2 garlic cloves cut in slices and inserted into the flesh. Then brush it with a little melted butter. On this I sprinkle dried thyme and a mix of 2 tspns cumin seeds ground fine and mixed with 1 tspn sweet paprika and 1/2 tspn salt.

Roast the lamb leg at 250 for 15 minutes then turn it down to 190. Add 150 ml white wine. After 10 minutes add 200 ml veal stock and baste. Baste it every 10 minutes and cook for 12 minutes per pound. Add another 100 ml veal stock as the liquid evaporates. When done remove and wrap expansively in foil to rest.

Strain the gravy and taste. Add more wine if it is too salty and boil off the alcohol.

Carve coarsley after 15 minutes rest and serve with roast potato and peas...(the only green that the young man will countenance)







Finish with British strawberries.











Curry tomorrow!

Adana Kapab

In the early eighties I spent two years trying (unsuccessfully) to get a television series called 'The Ottomans' off the ground. The idea was to try to explain Ottoman culture though the craft - as evidenced by the remains - and to try to piece together the social and political history from the artefacts and the written evidence.

One episode of the series was supposed to be about food. There remains so much evidence both visual and written as well as metalwork and ceramics. The military history is particularly rich. If an army marches on its stomach then the Sultan's crack troops - the Janissaries - weren't leaving anything to chance. Their insignia was the cooking pot and spoon. Each regiment carried their enormous copper kettle into battle as their standard. Their officers held posts named after the kitchen hierarchy - as 'chief cook' 'soup cook' and 'water carrier' - and when they were displeased with their treatment by the Sultan they would over turn their pot - symbolically refusing the Sultan's rations (and therefore his politics). With an empire that at its height stretched from the gates of Vienna to Jeddah and included much of North Africa Ottoman culinary influence can be discerned today in many cuisines.

My interest in Turkey arose from a magical holiday spent with two Turkish friends Metin and Cem. We spent a few days at their house in Bebek on the European shore of the Bospherous and then at their villa on Burgazada in the Kizil Adalar archipeligo in the Sea of Marmara just south of the Bospherous. Later we took the ferry from Istanbul to Izmir and then drove on to Bodrum where they berthed their Gulet and sailed east towards Kemer. Whilst we ate many delicious fish during the trip, one recipe that we found in Stamboul, the islands, Izmir, Bodrum and all along the south coast was Adana Kebabı. Later, during research for the series treatment, I ate Adana Kebab in and around Çukurova province and in the city of Adana itself. I've probably eaten scores of versions of this kebab...

Adana Kebab is a köfte but it's worth thinking about the origin of the word before reaching for the mincer. Köfte comes from the Persian word kūfta. In Persian, کوفتن kuftan means 'to beat' or 'to grind' as in the mortar. Adana Kebab should not be made from minced lamb. Traditionally it would be made from lean meat such as lower leg bulked with lamb tail fat in the ration 5:1. The meat fibres need to be relaxed but not ground fine and certainly not minced to a paste.

In Turkey I've seen this mixture beaten then chopped and beaten again. But it's possible to do this carefully in the magimix. Despite my butchers offers to give me lamb tail, for the most part life is too short allow too much time rendering lamb fat, so we use shoulder which has about the right amount of fat once the shoulder is chopped up. Prepare the shoulder as 1-1.5cm cubes then add what ever seasoning you prefer. Working in batches of about 500g put the mix in the magimix and pulse it 10 or 12 times. This should leave you with a mix that is relaxed and where the lean is a variety of sizes but the fat is evenly distributed and more 'smashed' than the lean. Overall the mixture is sticky enough to form into a Şiş.

There are two schools of thought about seasoning. One set of chefs use a variety of seasonings including some or all of cumin, ground coriander, fresh coriander and or fresh parsley. All the recipes call for some form of pepper (whether sweet or hot) as well as salt. Over thirty years I have not been able to form an opinion about who is right. But I have decided how I prefer to cook it. We favour the purist approach simply using great lamb to start and seasoning this with salt, chopped bell pepper and a little ground black pepper.

Adana kebab does require a proper skewer. You need a wide skewer - at least 5/8ths and preferably 7/8ths. The resemblance between this and a foot soldiers sword is too great to resist. I am sure this is pre (or post) battlefield food. So here is the recipe we use - collected and adapted from many years of Turkish travel.



Adana Kapab

1Kg Lamb shoulder
1 Bell pepper
1 tspn sea salt

Prepare the lamb as above. Form it into Şiş around your skewer - these Şiş should be between 1.5 and 2 inches wide, 1 inch thick and around 7-8 inches long. 1 Kg makes 3 or 4 Şiş.

Grill on a hot charcoal grill but not directly over the coals. Build the fire to one side of your barbecue and set the Şiş in the middle. Collect the dripping on a piece of Pide. Timing depends on your fire but the kebab is done when it becomes a little springy.

Serve immediately with

Fresh sheep yoghurt
Lemon quarters
Grilled tomato quarters
Fresh parsley
Onion Salad (Slice a whole sweet or red onion very thinly. Dress with lemon juice and sprinkle with Sumac)
Pide Bread (recipe here)
Ayran (recipe here)










Thirty years on, Cem is still a cook -here interviewed by Jason Goodwin, author of the 'Yaşim' detective novels - he makes yet another köfte - 'Ladies Thighs' or Kadin Budu:

Ragù - la grassa, la dotta

Where, how and when does a young man learn to cook today?

Research conducted by the BBC in the nineties before they started to produce the Delia Smith 'How to Cook' series indicated that 36% of people between the ages of 20 and 30 claimed that the last meal that they had 'cooked' was a bowl of cereal. Over 20% UK homes do not have a dining table. 'If it fits in a toaster, I can cook it' might be the motto of many of the young man's contemporaries.

He likes to eat. He does it regularly - and often with gusto. Cheese, olives, anchovies, chorizo, jamon, foccaccia, hovis, oat cakes, apples, oranges, nectarines and kiwi all disappear from the kitchen with alarming speed when he's at home.

We've always made a ritual of sitting down to eat together and entertaining friends at the table. Childish cake baking - stirring the mixture (and licking the spoon), pizza dough, being the magimix whizzer, pancake mix, making lemonade and frozen yoghurt have all featured. But when should he start to cook real food? Hot oil, boiling water, sharp carbon steel knives and gas or charcoal ranges do not mix easily with under 11s. But once he was 11 we've cooked together from time to time taking small steps to increasing complexity.

Delia says "If you want to learn how to cook start with eggs" and we did. We've boiled, scrambled and fried eggs. We've made omelettes with cheese, jamon and chorizo. Extended this to Tortilla for a family tapas.

When it comes to the cook books Delia doesn't do it for him nor does the original Nigel Slater - Real Fast Food - though a 30 minute time limit is definitely the right agenda for 11-13 year old cooks. Of all the books Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Family Cookbook is the one he likes best. The wife was able to arrange for HF-W to sign a copy for him - so now he has his own. We've already roasted a chicken. Now we're ready for a bit of complexity - a Ragù. I can't put it better than HF-W (p287)

"Once you've learned how to make spag bol, you've begun to master a range of skills that will introduce you to a whole family of different recipies. The ingredients may vary quite a lot from recipe to recipe but the techniques remain the same: the proper browning of the meat, the slow sweating of chopped vegetables in oil or butter, the gentle stewing of the meat in a highly flavoured sauce."

So this morning we cooked Ragù. Actually, we cooked up a vatful as Ragù freezes well.

I've been cooking Ragù so long I can't remember whose recipe I first used but I guess it will have been Elizabeth David's from Italian Food - first published in 1954. I remember having an increasingly dog-eared penguin paperback edition which eventually disintegrated completely. (see my librarything for the current). Certainly I still feel inclined to include chicken liver and do not use milk/cream. This method is also in the Alan Davidson Oxford Companion. Marcella Hazan and Anna Del Conte use milk and Claudia Roden double cream. None of these latter three include livers. Perhaps I am behind the times? Heston Blumenthal of course goes to Bologna, interviews everyone and returns to his kitchen where he sets up experiments. I believe he may have used a blow torch...

Of all the recipes I looked up HF-W's is the best described in terms that a teenager might undersand and his ideas for extension of the technique to Picadillo (for Tacos), Cottage Pie and Chile con Carne are an important next step for this audience. Anyway this recipe is mine rather then HF-W's. It took 55 minutes to cook 2Kg of (butcher) ground skirt plus trimmings and a big big soffrito. It should be possible to deal with 500g mince meat in 35 minutes and that is the quantity this recipe is based on. This should feed 4 adults or 3 teenagers.

For the soffrito
1 Celery stalk washed clean and grated
1 good Carrot peeled and grated
1 large sweet onion peeled and chopped fine
2 garlic cloves peeled and chopped fine
2 tblspn Olive oil

Meat
500g premium ground beef
75g Chicken livers coarsely chopped (optional)
3 slices pancetta (or un-smoked streaky bacon)

Sauce ingredients
75ml red wine
75ml veal stock (or a knorr veg stock cube dissolved in 75 ml warm water if you must)
2 tblspn tomato paste (ketchup will do at a pinch)
500ml tomato passatta drained
2 good pinches oregano
Salt to taste

Heat the oil over a medium heat in a sauté pan. Add the onion and stir. Meanwhile lightly cook the pancetta in a frying pan on medium heat so that it releases some oil. Don't crisp it. Keep stirring the onions and after a few minutes add the garlic, celery and carrot. Keep stirring - they mustn't burn.

Lift out the pancetta and cut each slice into 6 or 7 pieces. Put it in a bowl. Add the chicken livers to the hot pancetta fat and cook for a minute, stir then cook for another minute. Keep stirring the onions etc. Take out the liver and put it with the pancetta. Stir the onions and turn them down to low.

Turn up the heat in the frying pan and, when hot, add the beef. Spread it out but don't turn it over for 2 or 3 minutes. It doesn't matter if it burns a bit. Turn it over and press it down in the pan. Cook for another 3 minutes untill the beef isn't pink any more. Tip it into the bowl with the livers etc. Add the tomatoe paste to the meat and mix it in with your fingers.

Keep stirring the onions. After about 25 minutes they should be translucent and soft. Take them off the heat and add them to the meat. Mix it all up with a wooden spoon. Then add the passata to everything and mix it in.

Put the whole mix into a casserole and add the oregano. Set it on a low heat over a diffusing ring (if possible). Stew for at least 2 hours. Halfway through taste the Ragù. Does it need salt? You can add a good pinch if you feel it needs it but remember that you will probably be serving this with a salty parmigiana so don't add too much...When you feel it's cooked take it off the heat and let it cool. It must cool and be reheated before it's served.

Serve with a good pasta (De Cecco is a good bet). Don't choose spaghetti - serve it with tagliatelle if you must have long pasta or with farfalle or conchiglie and with parmesan and a salad of rocket.

And remember, even though I plan to write this blog for just 8 or 9 weeks, when all the transient readers have long since stopped checking if there's a new entry, these recipes will still be here (along with all those dodgy photos on Facebook) so that it can be consulted on a stolen wireless connection from a 2nd year student bedsit.

Şiş kebap - Towards a dissertation on Kabab

In the summer of 1980 I holidayed on the Greek Island of Spetses. There, on the terrace of a 'village room', I spent several late afternoons in fits of giggles as a result of reading 'Dissertation sur le ou la Keftedes ...' a serious but hilarious essay by Daniel Spoerri - a late Fluxus artist best known for his 'Snare Pictures' or 'picture traps' - many involving food, eating and evidence left behind by gatherings of his friends. (Picture: Wikimedia Commons). His work is also in the Tate

Originhally written in 1970 Spoerri's essay tracks the meatball around Europe, the Balkans and the Mediterranean drawing out the differences and similarities as well as the cultural meaning of the meatball whilst recounting meals with friends and the recipes used.

Over the years I've eaten various Kebabs (کباب) in locations spanning Essoueria in the West to Muscat in the East and from Istanbul in the North to Jeddah in the South and collected recipes and notes along the way. I have often been tempted to undertake a similar study to Spoerri's but concerning the Kebab. But not tonight! I need to make the meshoui... عملنا حفل شواء اليوم

As the heatwave continues we need to keep it simple. Tonight's fare - şiş kebap - would be as at home on an Anatolian beach, a Bospherous Yali, a south London garden or on an allotment in East London bordered by the River Lea. I take my marinade from Sam & Sam Clarkes' third Moro book - Moro East
.

2 Garlic Cloves crushed
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tspn sweet paprika
2 tspn cumin seeds roughly ground
2 tspn coriander seeds roughly ground
Big pinch of Saffron soaked
3 tblspn fresh coriander - roughly chopped
150g whole Greek yoghurt
2 tblspn finely grated onion
Fresh black pepper ground

The Clarkes would use cubed leg but, as we are three, even half a leg is too much. I'm using neck fillet of Welsh Lamb from Waitrose. This is OK but not top knotch. Whizz all the marinade ingredients in the Magimix, cube the lamb and leave it in the marinade at room temperature for at least 2 hours. (Make sure the meat is at room temperature before it is grilled). Grill quickly so that the meat is slightly charred on the outside and still quite rare within.

We serve our şiş with grilled peppers, flat bread, more yoghurt - flavoured with garlic and salt, a pile of fresh mint chopped finely and a salad of whatever is fresh.

Merguez, butchers & Soho in the 70s

I discovered Merguez in 1976 when, as a student, I began to explore the delights of Soho. At that time Brewer Street boasted three butchers. Randall and Aubin was a traditional butcher with a ceramic tiled interior and sawdust on the floor; (it later metamorphosed into a twee coffee shop of the same name and now, as a restraurant, bills itself as 'Soho's Hippest Eatery' - sigh!). Slater & Cook, Bisney and Jones was a more modern affair. Essentially up-market with stainless steel fittings behind the white tiled frontage and a substantial catering supply business. One could buy the best sweetbreads here. Alas this too was to disappear as leaseholds came up in the 80s. It became a Fresh & Wild.

But as a student, whilst I used these two from time to time, my everyday butcher was Dalli's - it was the cheapest of the three and always had the most interesting offal. J and J Dalli occupied the corner of Brewer Street and Lower John Street. The Dalli's were Tunisian and it was natural for them to make Merguez - though in the seventies these delicious sausages were not yet widely sold in the UK. They would use lamb shoulder as the base bulked with other lamb trimmings and fat and spiced with home-made harissa, sumac, garlic, paprika and fennel seed. Once coarsely ground and mixed they would stuff the paste into lamb intestine that they had cleaned and tie them off. The resulting sausage was a revelation to this young student and prompted my interest in the food of the Mahgreb. (Interestingly, Alan Davidson in the Oxford Companion, who is usually definitive on all things culinary has merguez made with beef. But I can find no other reference to this).

What with the predicted heat wave this week, we're going to start cooking outside on the charcoal stove. Whilst Merguez are often served with Cous Cous I also serve them with potato and that's the plan tonight. Grilled Merguez, cold boulangere potato, bread and a Mechouia (salad of peppers, onions, garlic cloves and tomatoes cooked in the embers) with a bottle of Twentyeight Road Mourvedre 2005 ...



Meanwhile Dalli's too has gone, superseded by another bland coffee shop. I guess Merguez production says it all. Producing the sausage is incredibly labour intensive, but it is sold at a raw material price. Coffee, sandwiches and prepared food can all be marked up by considerably more and that's why today there are no butchers in Soho.

'Rosbif'

Both the young man and the wife claim that Rosbif is their favourite. Of course, they also claim that numerous other things are their favourite when I cook these, but a rolled sirloin or (as tonight) a rib is always popular and a bit of a celebration.

I think I learned to roast beef from Jane Grigson's English Food" - one of the first recipe books that I ever bought. Just 23 minutes at 220 degrees on turbo fan setting are need to produce a pink and succulent 1 Kg roast rib...enough for the three of us and more.





I also use a recipe in English Food for the Yorkshires. Jane's recipe and the whole story of Prize-Winning Chinese Yorkshire pudding is recounted here. According to the Guardian, which covered the competition, 'his ingredients [were] oddly arranged, but his pudding swelled to the height of a coronation crown'

And they do!