Slow cooked lamb curry with kitchuri

Nothing says welcome home to me as much as the heady perfume of a languidly cooked lamb curry, one that’s been muttering and grumbling away on the back burner for several hours. The scent immediately reminds me of eyeballing Mr Taj and his blood stained apron from behind the folds of my mother’s sari. I’d watch him, with the vaguely comforting smell of raw flesh in my nostrils as he’d casually feed a carefully selected leg through the electric saw, the searing whine of bone on metal a distant echo of the abattoir.

Several hours later my brother and I would relish the yielding velvet of garlicky flesh disintegrating beneath our tiny, greedy fingers, scooped up with hot flaky parathas. We’d fight over the precious pieces of rich bone marrow left in the pot, teasing them out with the ends of teaspoons and feasting on the spicy, buttery rewards.

I’ve made this with lamb but the spicing lends itself equally well to beef or mutton. Kitchuri (the origin of “kedgeree”) is a fantastic foil, a lightly spiced lentil and rice dish, it’s the ultimate comfort dish in Bengali cuisine, however it’s also one that I’ve never come across on any restaurant menu.

Filed under: good times, lunch, tea , Bengali

Crisp Bitter Melon and Stir-Fried Bengali Greens

Crisp Bitter Melon

Bitter Melon, or Karella as it’s called in Bengali is a violently bitter vegetable. To temper this and extract those mouth-puckering enzymes a good long salting is required. Once broken down into paper thin crescents, fried up crisply with cumin, chilli and salt and eaten with mouthfuls of steaming rice, it makes a delicious dish, one that’s simultaneously salty, crunchy, bitter and ever so slightly sweet. These alien looking vegetables resemble warty, tubercle-ridden cucumbers and can be found in most Asian shops and markets. This recipe works well as a side with a mild dhal as a slightly sweet foil to the bitter edge, or as the palate-rocking prelude to a more substantial feast.

Filed under: lunch, sides and salads, starters , Bengali

Coconut Prawn Curry/Chingri Malai Tarkari

In his fascinating book “An Edible History Of Humanity” Tom Standage identifies the origins of the Black Death in the lucrative fourteenth century spice trade. He deftly recaptures the way in which Jani Beg, the khan of the Golden Horde attempted to deter Genoese traders from exploiting the port of Caffa for trading slaves by catapulting them with the plague ridden corpses of his own army. As the few remaining survivors fled westwards they carried the plague home with them in their ships. (For some reason this struck a particular chord with me, quite possibly because my mother’s maiden name is Beg).

Ironically, popular Western belief dictated that spices or “splinters of Paradise” as they were called, could also purify the corrupted air and offer protection from the plague. Standage discusses the Muslim curtain which blocked European access to the East and the aggressive race to bust around this stronghold and be the first to form a direct link with precious exotica such as cloves and cinnamon. He recounts the way in which Vasco da Gama and his crew of thugs savagely looted unarmed Muslim ships off the coast of India, and used the prisoners for crossbow practice. How the hands, noses and ears of these prisoners were cut off and sent ashore while the mutilated captives were bound and burnt to death in their own ships. It’s so easy for us today to just stroll casually past the glorious technicolour bounty of little screw top jars on our supermarket shelves and forget that their relationship with these shores has a long and blood-seeped history.

Filed under: lunch, tea , Bengali

An Autumn Feast/Smoked Aubergine Dhal

I’ve been ordered out of bed on a Saturday morning to conjure up a Bengali feast for a posse of aunts, uncles, cousins and their adorable yet eternally hyperactive progeny. I usually relish these big messy get togethers; the preparation even more so.

This takes place with a casual sort of precision, all the women in the kitchen gossiping and joking at once. My aunt surveys me over her glasses whilst hacking at some pui saag (otherwise known as Malabar Spinach) and gives me the usual “so when are you going to start having babies then?” ribbing. I test the dhal and mutter something about one thing at a time but they feign deafness and chatter pointedly about my cousin Mitthu in Bangladesh who’s just had a beautiful baby girl. My other aunt tells me I look a lot more attractive now that I’m finally getting a bit of meat on my bones. What none of them can work out though, is why on earth I insist on cutting my hair short like a little boy. I turn a delicate shade of plum and defensively stroke my shorn occipital bone. They talk about how beautiful, plump and “fair” Mitthu is – “she has hair down to here!” my aunt pauses mid chop to hold the knife against her sari clad arse while everyone murmurs approvingly.

A very traditional Bengali feast consists of several courses, beginning with something bitter (to wake up the palate), followed by the lentil and vegetable dishes. Next comes fish, followed by meat or chicken and finally dessert. We aren’t that formal today, but nonetheless fry up crisp slivers of bitter melon simply adorned with cumin, turmeric and plenty of garlic to start. This is followed by the Malabar spinach sautéed in panch phoran (Bengali five spice) and smoked aubergine dahl, then a coconut prawn curry, a slow cooked beef curry and kitchuri. (the word “kedgeree” originates from kitchuri but instead of fish or egg, it’s made with a mixture of lentils, rice and spices). It’s more standard to make a biryani for these big gatherings, but there’s something informal and comforting about kitchuri and it goes perfectly with the beef. We finish with some Payesh, a rich, cardamom scented Bengali rice pudding.

It’s all finger licking good and even the fussiest child eats every last loving handful. There’s much boisterous laughter and yelling over one another, the little ones surge around, fuelled up on Vimto, while the uncles tease them and talk shop – everyone sated on the rich juices of family life.

Over the next week I’ll put up all the recipes, but for starters, here’s that smoked aubergine dhal…

Filed under: lunch, sides and salads, tea , Bengali

Hix Soho

A mobile of Fray Bentos pies gently twirls in the white high-ceilinged room as David Hasslehoff tucks into his hanger steak with baked bone marrow. A fluorescent finger part-designed by Sue Webster points the way to “Mark’s Bar” downstairs where Nicky Clarke, James Nesbitt, Joe Warwick and Monica Brown rub shoulders on mahogany leather sofas. They’re all sipping outrageously sippable negronis crafted by that mixological wizard Nick Strangeway. Mummified fish, that Damien Hirst has trapped in formaldehyde dangle from the ceiling of the Martin Brudnizki designed interior. You’d be forgiven for thinking you’d stepped into a private members’ club, or an art gallery perhaps. This is in fact Mark Hix’s latest venture on Brewer Street, and it’s bloody brilliant.

It’s the third time I’ve been here in the past week and the place only officially opens to the public on Saturday. But when I drop in on Wednesday evening, the place is saturated with friends and family. Tonight it’s Friday and everything is half price, because they’re still not open, but nonetheless, it’s packed to the rafters. The menu reads a like a love letter to food, think Manx queenies (scallops) with wild boar bacon and herbs, ox cheek with mixed beets, horseradish and chickweed or pheasant, chanterelle and chestnut soup. And those are just the starters. Mark advises on a selection and we are soon tucking in to a luxurious Cornish fish soup, heaving with gurnard and red mullet and replete with Julian Temperley’s cider brandy. Even the bread and butter is spot on, a big rustic hug of warmth. Our cod’s cheeks, tongues and throats with girolles arrives and it is astonishingly tasty. It somehow manages to combine incredible delicacy with a meaty clout; the whole dish embroidered with a silky spring onion-flecked sauce. I shamelessly lick the plate clean.

We have “heaven and earth” which turns out to be a gigantic fluffy meatball of black pudding with apples and potatoes, it breaks open in a fug of steamy herbal goodness. Wild duck with salsify and elderberries is pure sex on toast, and my lamb and oyster pie is easily the best I’ve ever had. The salt marsh mutton, kidney and oysters combine to magnificent effect, the meat sits dense and tender in its intensely lamby gravy, under a flaky, buttery lid. It immediately falls apart upon contact with the spoon, the oysters dripping with Neptunian juices and the plump kidneys making the whole dish rock. I am temporarily possessed by the ghost of the former restaurant that occupied this site, Aaya, and find myself wanting to down the gravy from the bottom of my pie dish ramen style. The deep fried Pollack with chips and mushy peas is crisp, greaseless and spankingly fresh. It’s served with a boat of home made tartare sauce and a bottle of Sarson’s vinegar. I love that. It’s the tiny touches like this that make it feel personal and not like just another stuffy restaurant.

We drink Les Foulards Rouges, Soif du Mal, which is 70% Syrah, 30% Grenache and 100% delicious. It’s rough and cloudy with some incredible strains of apple and pear. Stuffed to eruption point, we order pudding. The stomach is begging me to stop but my tastebuds are demanding that I press on to culinary Moscow. The lemon trifle is lush, creamy and light, the limoncello notes sashay over the tongue. Defeated, we head downstairs where people are chilling out, drinking gorgeous cocktails and generally having a ball.

It’s here that we pick up on one very major problem with this place and it’s a rather serious predicament that I very much doubt they are ever going to be able to iron out. In fact, I can predict that this fault will only gradually worsen… You see, the thing is, there’s a definite hex about Hix, and once you’re in there, I’m afraid it’s very, very difficult, if not impossible to ever leave.….just don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Filed under: lunch, tea

The Ledbury – Lunch with the Champion

The chef gently cradles the fuzzy purple sphere, as if presenting his first born. He beams at us.

“It’s a peach” he explains, before slicing it open to reveal the juicy indigo flesh that bleeds softly into a pale white heart. We’ve just had one of the most spectacular lunches in the history of ever and now 30 year old head chef Brett Graham is introducing us to his tiny kitchen. He bounds into the back room and proudly pulls out a tray of green leaves from beneath a sodium lamp. I stare at him.

“Don’t worry, it’s not weed” he laughs. “These are my herbs”.

Filed under: lunch

Crab Linguine

My constant mewling about being skint seems to be paying off. The other day Abel and Cole sent me a box of freebies to sample in return for a review. It was only a small box mind you, but it was gratis nonetheless. I would love to be the sort of gluttonous liar that might declare it all to be utterly delicious, thereby ensuring a steady supply of organic goodies from them and indeed other purveyors of fine grub. Unfortunately that sort of back scratching sycophantic nonsense just isn’t for me. Furthermore, I can just picture the look of utter horror on my old BJ (broadcast journalism) lecturer Martin Shaw’s face and I have to kill the thought stone dead in its corrupt little tracks.

I do happen to really like Abel and Cole as they tick all the right ethical boxes with me, so I was mildly excited to receive their surprisingly over-packaged box containing some free hand picked white Cornish crab from the “Seafood and Eat it” company, some Laverstoke Park Farm mozzarella, some black olive hummous and some thin, white maize tortilla chips from Garcia.

This was quite literally a mixed bag, in the sense that half of it was positively manna from above and half of it was quite possibly the worst stuff I’ve ever put in my mouth since that fateful time I was tricked into eating basashi (otherwise known as “horse sushi” –I spat it out as soon as I realised what it was).

The tortillas were far too salty (and I like my salt). They were also vaguely reminiscent of stale Mazola. The hummous was a pot of indistinguishable grey sludge with no discernible flavour whatsoever. It was crying out for garlic or even just salt. I couldn’t work out why anyone would create anything so tasteless, let alone send it for review.

Filed under: lunch, tea

Old School Parathas

I’ve searched high and low but cannot find a recipe for parathas anywhere.  Before you start bombarding me with links to the contrary please note – I am fully aware that the net is saturated with recipes for what are effectively chapatti dough that’s been rolled out once and then fried, however these are not the parathas that I know and love. These are recipes for chapatti dough that’s been rolled out once and then fried.

There’s nothing out there for the kind that my mum has always rustled up. Hers are crisp, delicate and most importantly of all, shot through with a mille feuille of flaky buttery layers.

When I was about five years old I remember spending many a fun-filled afternoon helping to make these. I’d stand on a chair steadying the bowl as she poured in a big puff of chapatti and plain flours, sending up a white cloud of dust and depositing a fine and ghostly layer on my little brown arms and face. She’d then instruct me to mix in a big pinch of salt and make a hollow in the centre. Into this well she would pour what must have been a couple of teaspoons of molten ghee. There were never any measurements.

I would then incrementally add drops from a milk bottle and mix these in until it was just on the cusp of pliable and sticky. She would tell me that the stickiness was important because a firm dough that’s been made with less liquid is easier to work with but nowhere near as tasty to eat.  I just thought the stickiness was important because I was five.

She’d plonk me in front of Chorlton and the Wheelies with a big bowl of this dough. I’d happily sit there, kneading away and wondering what it must be like to live in a teapot until the sticky mixture would come together in a smooth and supple dough.

Filed under: breakfast, lunch, snacks, tea

My Gran’s Chicken Curry

There are hundreds of recipes for chicken curry. This is the stuff I was brought up on.

Think aromatic delicately spiced meat, chunks of tender, melt-in-the-mouth potato in a thin and deeply savoury gravy. The complex layers of flavour are born from a very specific mixture of whole and ground spices. This recipe was my late grandmother’s – she passed it on to my mum who passed it on to me. It’s been tweaked a little over the years (my gran would use skinned chicken pieces and just add them to the spiced onion mix) but that’s the beauty of curry, you can always experiment and make it your own.

If you want to make like a proper Bengali housewife, then be sure to make this in the morning and leave it all day to allow the flavours to marry. If you can leave it overnight so much the better.

Filed under: lunch, tea

Smoked Green Tea Salt and Pepper Tofu

Like a lot of people I seem to spend an awful lot of my time at work counting down the days until pay day. However, it’s not hi-top trainers or Christopher Kane handbags that are preying on my mind. Nor do I hanker after Margaret Howell frocks while waiting patiently for the 27th of every month. Oh no. Instead I sit there counting off the days until I have enough money to buy more fodder. This month it was the quarterly Oriental food shop. Yes, that’s right – I spent most of May fantasising about kimchi. I sat through endless dreary meetings pretending to listen while wistfully anticipating that halcyon day when I could skip into the Centre Point Food Store in Tottenham Court Road and buy Calpis, pickled turnip, fresh tofu, frozen gyoza, bottles of umeboshi plum wine, instant ramen and dreamy bags of Tohato caramel corn to my hearts content…..I do prefer the Centre Point Food Store to the Japan Centre, for one thing it’s a lot cheaper and it seems a lot less manic. I’m pleased to report that despite the fact that it’s cheaper I still somehow managed to spend a small country’s GDP in there and am now well and truly brassic.

Filed under: lunch, snacks, tea , vegetarian

Ottolenghi

287 Upper Street

London N1 2TZ

I’ve been meaning to visit Ottolenghi’s for such a long time – there’s been many a time that I’ve admired those pretty rose-hued meringue stacks and luscious looking salads; the red and white exterior sleekly defined next to the plethora of cafes and restaurants on Upper Street. I usually glance briefly and longingly over from the other side of the road before rushing along, late for yet another appointment, only to be met by an impatient beautician instead of one of those friendly (yet frazzled) white pinafore-clad waiters. I’ve been reading Ottolenghi’s recipes in the Guardian for years now, have made his gorgeous  macadamia and caramel cheesecake recipe at home and read endless glowing reviews of his food – so yes, my visit was well overdue. An impromptu visit from my future in-laws provided the perfect excuse to finally make the pilgrimage to Angel on what was an absolute scorcher of a Bank Holiday Monday.

Filed under: lunch

Green Tea Noodle Pot

I came home feeling ravenous and more than a little dehydrated after a strenuous session at Bikram yoga. Bikram basically involves working out in sauna-like conditions for an hour and a half. I always go and I always wonder what on earth I’m doing there about half way through when I’m half-blinded with sweat and feel like I’m on the verge of passing out. And I realise that like an absolute sucker I’ve paid through the nose for the privilege of that special feeling.  Again. They say that Mr Bikram is loathed by traditional yogis and is seen as some some of snake oil peddlar of “ancient Indian wisdom combined with modern science” to gullible Westerners. That he is in fact a clever old charlatan who lives in LA and owns a stable of Rolls Royces, a mansion and a swimming pool. It’s difficult not to think about all this while gurning your way through the tree pose. That’s not what annoys me the most though. It’s the fact that Robert Downey Junior goes to my class. Robert Downey Bloody Junior. It’s just not right.

Anyway, on the way home I tried to recall what we have in the fridge – some duck stock that I’d been simmering away for a couple of days (on the lowest heat possible with some quartered onions, peppercorns and garlic) a leek, a couple of carrots, a tomato and some spinach.  I’ve had these noodles in the back of my cupboard for a while so decided to throw together a big bowl of noodle soup. It hit the spot in an intensely hot and sour kind of way and made me feel awash with health to boot. Sod you Mr Bikram, this was FREE!!  Mmmm!

Filed under: breakfast, lunch, tea

Lentil Doughnuts in a Spiced Yoghurt Sauce AKA Dahi Vada

Sometimes only GITS will do. If you have time to clean, wash and soak the black lentils overnight before grinding to a paste with salt, ginger and bicarbonate of soda then of course the results will be infinitely tastier, but when I want to cut corners I always turn to the little box of GITS in my cupboard.  Dahi Vada (or Doi Boda as we call them in Bengali) is my street food of choice whenever I visit Bangladesh. Savoury doughnuts of spiced lentils are fried, soaked briefly in water and then combined with cool, thick yoghurt. This is garnished with coriander, chilli powder, tamarind and roasted cumin and served chilled.

Filed under: lunch, snacks

Tatsuta Age Mackerel

I picked up some sparklingly fresh mackerel from the excellent Steve Hatt and decided to have a go at making tatsuta age mackerel. I substituted the more traditional potato starch with rice flour and used rice bran oil for frying. I used to have this all the time in my school lunch when I taught English in Japan, but had never actually tried making it myself – it was much easier than I thought it would be. Bite sized chunks of mackerel are briefly marinated in fresh ginger, sake and soy before being drenched in seasoned rice flour and then deep fried until crisp.

Filed under: lunch, snacks, tea

Roast Tomato Soup

I’ve been wanting to make a roast tomato soup for ages. After some mild research I decided to go for a classic combination of Gordon Ramsay’s (Secrets) and Delia’s (Vegetarian Collection), but with more emphasis on Gordon’s for ingredients and Delia’s for technique, with a few added touches of my own. I added a splash of Tempranillo to the soup rather than Balsamic vinegar and lemon thyme instead of basil. I found that Gordon’s roasting time left the tomatoes looking a bit “raw” so I turned the heat down to 190°C and left them in there for an hour. I also mixed Woodsmoke BBQ sauce with the water I used to re-hydrate the sundried tomatoes. I didn’t have olive oil so used a mixture of flax seed and rice bran oils instead. Finally I had a tiny bit of tomato vinegar in the back of the cupboard so trickled this in to serve.

Filed under: lunch, snacks, tea , cheap, healthy, vegetables

Lemon, Sage and Garlic Roast Label Anglais Chicken

I decided to splash out on a whole chicken last week.  Label Anglais are the Rolls Royce of the chicken world. They are raised slowly and allowed to mature, and celebrity chefs make glowing references to them. Although they are pricier than supermarket chickens (around £10 for a medium one) you can easily get 3 meals out of a bird once you’ve picked over the meat for a salad and boiled the carcass up for soup or stock.

I quickly bought a modest looking bird from Wyndham House Poultry at Borough Market before I could change my mind, and they generously chucked in the giblets and knocked off a pound because they’re very nice like that.

Filed under: lunch , comfort

Roast Broccoli

I hate broccoli. Liver, spinach, anchovies, olives – I have no problem with any of these things. But broccoli?  Bleugh. I only eat it if it’s so smothered in something else (cheese sauce) that there is no remaining hint of that weird, irony taste. At least that’s what I used to do.  I recently discovered that if you roast it, it becomes not only edible but actually very very delicious.

I am proud to say that my anti-broccoli days are now behind me. Indeed, it is not uncommon for me to make a bowl of these as a little snack, or have them as a side dish with a nice bit of grilled fish.  The broccoli becomes charred and almost caramelised, and the salty, garlicky juices go perfectly with a squeeze of lemon.

Filed under: lunch, snacks, tea , cheap, healthy, vegetables

Hummous

I love real hummous but hate that cardboard-like slop you so often get in the shops. It’s so easy to make the real thing and it literally costs pence. Unfortunately my magimix is on strike so I had to make this in the blender, which meant lots of pushing down and stirring but with velvety results. I love sun-dried tomatoes so threw in a few of those along with the tangy oil in the jar and needed to use up a glut of limes from Whitechapel Market, so added those to the mix. A touch of smoked paprika and lots of omega rich flax seed oil really pumped up the proverbial volume.

Filed under: lunch , cheap, chickpeas, healthy, vegetables

Miso Vegetable Soup

This is the simplest soup ever. Add whatever vegetables you have knocking around, I find carrots, spinach and mushrooms work well. The only essentials are seaweed and the spring onion. I like to have this for breakfast with a fruit salad, or if I’m feeling particularly virtuous for supper with steamed brown rice, furikake and a tamagoyaki omelette.  Although it’s not strictly authentic, I find a drop of rice vinegar adds the most delicious tang to to the salty broth. The miso paste and dashi can be bought online or from Chinese and Japanese food shops and once you have them they last for ages so it’s well worth investing in decent quality miso, i.e. with a minimum of ingredients. The one in my fridge only contains rice, salt and soyabeans.

Filed under: breakfast, lunch, tea , cheap, healthy, Japanese, vegetables

Tomato Rasam

Whenever I was ill as a child my mother would make me a big steaming bowl of this. She would also inexplicably give me Lucozade, but it was the 80’s I suppose. Sometimes I find myself craving this spicy, tangy broth. Adding soaked mung beans makes for a more substantial dish.

Filed under: breakfast, lunch, tea , cheap, vegetables