Week 76. Saudi Arabia. Kasba

“Dinosaur food, dinosaur food, I’m in the mood for dinosaur food”

“Munch, crunch, where’s lunch, give me some dinosaur food”.

My 3 year old son is utterly hooked. It’s cute, but it’s driving me nuts. Everything is dinosaur related. What does he want for dinner? “Dinosaur bones”. What does he want to do tomorrow? “Hunt dinosaurs”. What did he dream of last night? You got it.

Most of the time it is pretty fun, but on my way to write this blog I stepped on one of the 75 (the last time I counted) tiny dinosaurs he has scattered all over the place. As I swore quietly, His response:

“It’s not just a dinosaur Daddy, it’s a Saichania!”.

“A what?” I replied, aggressively.

“A Saichania Dad. It is called that because it is beautiful”.

It didn’t look very beautiful to me, and the spines left a deep imprint into my heel. I wonder how many hours work I have had to do in the last six months to fund all the dinosaurs in this house.

He’s no genius though. He wants dinosaur bones for dinner. Bones. Not meat. Bones. Silly little chap.

This week I drew Saudi Arabia.

I couldn’t live there. No chance. It is highly religious, alcohol is banned, women are not allowed to drive (and therefore drive you home) and sex with strangers in the street could lead you to “chop chop” square…..where they regularly behead people. I’m sure there is a much softer side to the culture, but it isn’t easily accessible online and most of what I have read lead to a conservative culture, led by traditions formed hundreds of years ago. It’s a different mindset, but I couldn’t be so restricted. After a hard day a strong gin, no tonic, is something which helps me get through. It’s not approved by most, not very good for me, certainly not godly….but no one in England is going to chop my hands off for it.

Saudi Arabia is a very hot country, one of the hottest in the world, and I could absolutely deal with that. The weather in this country is getting laughable, but a really dirty forced laugh. The laugh a man makes just after he slit the throat of an ememy.

It’s British Summer time next week and today it is snowing. It’s so horrendous outside, with the arctic winds, that I am onto my fourth sore throat of the winter, and a vomiting bug is swirling up and down our street like autumn leaves in a tornado. We have all had it a couple of times. I’m finished with wearing a bloody scarf and waterproof shoes, I’m finished with taking ten minutes to get ready to leave a building and I’m finished with all my non-Brit mates (wife included) telling me how it’s better pretty much anywhere else than here. Come on summer, come here and help me out a bit.

Making this dish I had a bit of a fear. I bloody hate raisins in savoury dishes.

Post cooking the dish, I still do.

I also have a pretty strong dislike of cloves. Raisins are just too sweet. They don’t pollute the rest of the dish, but each time you bite into one you get an unnecessarily strong burst of sweet flavour, which I don’t mind with my breakfast cereal…but not with chicken. The cloves are just overly intense. I like what they bring to the flavour of a dish if they are very briefly exposed to a bubbling broth. This recipe called for the cloves to be left in for the duration and the result was it was too fragrant for me. I didn’t really like the dish as a whole. When I ate the chicken alone it was delicious and the spices had subtlety influenced it – but the sauce was too much. I wouldn’t do it again.

Recipe by Ya Salam Cooking (amusingly American in its terminology)

1 whole chicken, cut into 8 pieces
1 cup basmati rice, washed and rinsed
2 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 bay leaves
1 chicken bouillon cube
1 onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, diced
6 green cardamom pods, whole
5 cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
2 black limes
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon cardamom, ground
1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce
4 hard-boiled eggs (optional)
pine nuts and raisins (optional)

Directions:

NOTE: place basmati rice in bowl with water over it to expand, it will not cook and will stay hard unless you do this. Leave for 15 minutes at the least.
In an 8-quart stockpot on medium-high heat add onions, garlic and. Allow onions to turn golden. Add bay leaves, cardamom pods, cloves, cinnamon sticks, black limes, cumin, coriander, salt, pepper, ginger and ground cardamom. Blend well and allow to sauté for 30 seconds.
Add tomato sauce and chicken bouillon. Mix well until sauce thickens, reduce heat to low-medium. Add chicken allow to sauté for a 1 minute. Rotate chicken so that it gets all of the flavors. Add water until chicken is completely covered. Bring to a full boil then reduce to low. Cook for 35 minutes covered.
After the chicken has cooked reserve broth for rice. In a 2-quart saucepan, add rice and enough sauce from the chicken just so that the rice is covered. Bring to a boil then immediately turn heat to low and cook covered for eight to ten minutes. Meanwhile, why the rice is cooking turn oven on high broil. Add chicken to a roasting pan and broil for five minutes or until golden.

Add cooked rice to a serving platter with chicken arranged on top. Garnish plate with hard-boiled eggs, pine nuts, and raisins

Week 75. Burundi. Burundian Bean Soup.

“What would you like to order sir?”

“Oh, yes, I would like the Flatulence Soup please”

I will get to that in a bit…..

I complained to myself at the beginning of this week that we were running far too low on funds. The economy has bitten hard, my mortgage has gone up, and my wife was on Maternity leave – only getting statutory pay. We have paint peeling off one of the walls in the kitchen and we would really love to replace our plastic windows with wooden sash windows. I would ideally like have sushi for lunch most days, but the funds looked like this week I would have to hold back. And I was annoyed.

It’s materialistic bullshit.

Every now and again I need to remind myself how lucky we are. We live in one of the most expensive boroughs in London. We have a two double bedroomed Victorian house and we own a car. We can afford to have lunch out (occasionally) and we buy new clothes a few times a year. We are privileged. Wooden Sash windows……get real.

I drew Burundi this week and this was what really hit everything home. One of the bottom five poorest countries in the world, Burundi is densely populated, ravaged by warfare and corruption. Education is limited and HIV is rife. It is reported that 80% of the population live in poverty.

We, in general, in the Westernised world have it good. We try and cause reason to be stressed. Perhaps life is too simple and we need to complicate it. Perhaps, given our relative ease, stressing on whether our Jeans look good or which Hair Conditioner to buy – perhaps that’s ok. Sometimes it doesn’t feel so.

Note – I do realise the previous paragraph sounds a lot like that annoying woman in “Sex and The City” talking to her computer.

Given the poverty in Burundi, it’s no surprise that this dish is vegetarian. It’s a delicious and simple bean soup (hence the flatulence). It’s pretty much just water, available veg and a load of beans. Ideally it would be Lima Beans, Kidney Beans and White (not sure which) Beans, so I went with a combination of about seven different beans I could find in the supermarket.

Making the dish was simple. It’s about fifteen minutes work, but with life tough perhaps that’s all the time most people in Burundi have. For us materialistic westerners, it’s a lovely Sunday lunch before a walk and settling down to read the papers and watch Countryfile. It’s the same world, but the contrasts are stark.

Recipe (from CD Kitchen)

ingredients:

1 bag (14-ounce size) dried lima beans
1 bag (14-ounce size) dried white beans
1 bag (14-ounce size) dried pink or red beans
32 ounces vegetable or chicken stock
32 ounces water
4 cups chopped onions
12 stalks celery chopped
1 cup chopped green bell pepper
1 cup chopped red bell pepper
1/2 teaspoon chili pepper flakes
6 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup crunchy peanut butter

directions:

Soak beans overnight, drain, and add stock and water. If you don’t have time to soak them, you can boil the beans for 2 minutes in stock and water, remove from the heat and let them sit for an hour. If the beans soak up all the liquid, add boiling water until all covered.

Meanwhile, in an 8-quart Dutch oven, saute onions, celery and green pepper until softened, about 10 minutes.

Add the vegetable mixture to the beans. Add chili pepper flakes, parsley, salt.

Cook until beans are tender, about 90 minutes. For creamier soup mash some of the beans against side of pot when they soften.

When soup is almost done, add peanut butter and cook 15 minutes more.

Week 74. Singapore. Hainan Chicken.

Bit of a strange one this one. Imagine the national dish of England was “Monaco Chicken” or “Texan Chicken”. The national dish of Singapore, named to represent the dish which shows the pure identity of the country, is named after a province in China  - 3000km away.

This dish was phenomenal, but an utter beast to make. It was confusing (the recipe is pasted below) and caused 70 minutes washing up (I timed it). By the end it looked like I had been transported into a student kitchen. The dish looked so innocent…just a chicken and rice platter….but beneath it the flavours were huge. I’m knackered though. I started at 6pm and I finished washing up at 11pm. I was banking on my wife doing the washing up, but she bloody fell asleep on the sofa after we ate! I think she was pretending.

I’m at a bit of a cross-roads with this blog. I’m into my fifth year of doing it now and have limped to only 74 dishes. I don’t want to stop, but I feel a little like I’m cycling up a massive hill and pretty soon I’m going to run out of energy and get off. I don’t want to, so perhaps I just need to accept that this is not a short term project and I just need to finish it some time in my life. Get it done before I die. I do think I need to take off the “Week” title to each blog post. I’m probably in about week 230 rather than the 74 I’m stating.

I’ve got a cold this week, a really nasty one, so my creative juices are not really flowing. I’m going to get on with pasting the recipe below, but before then a summary.

The reason this is so good is that the chicken is poached in a stock of spring onion and ginger, which plumps it up and gives it a subtlety. The chilli sauce is laden in garlic and hot. The Jasmine rice is perfume and the cucumber and chopped spring onion give it texture. It’s a bowl of spicy comfort food with the condiments from Aromatic Crispy Duck thrown in! It’s a beauty. I’ll have a think of how to simplify the recipe, but for now give this a go!

The recipe was in The Guardian and posted by famed chef Yotam Ottolenghi:

Hainanese chicken rice

For the chilli sauce, try to find relatively mild chillies, or just use fewer of them. Failing that, you can also use a ready-made sauce – I like the Sriracha brand; just make sure it’s a savoury variety, not a sweet one. The acar recipe that follows is another condiment that you can quite happily serve alongside the chicken. Serves four.

100g ginger, peeled and thinly sliced (net weight), plus an extra 15g, finely chopped, for the rice
100g spring onion, sliced into 2cm pieces, plus 1 more whole spring onion for garnish
1 free-range chicken weighing about 1.5kg
1 large cucumber, peeled
75ml dark soy sauce
25ml light soy sauce
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
35g unsalted butter
3 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
420g jasmine rice
Salt
3 tbsp shop-bought fried shallots (optional)
10g picked coriander leaves

For the chilli sauce
About 10 mild to medium-heat red chillies, deseeded and roughly chopped (80g net weight)
20g ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
2 tsp caster sugar
2 tbsp groundnut oil
1 tbsp lime juice
½ tsp fish sauce

For the chicken and the broth
Fill a large pot with cold water and add the sliced ginger and spring onion. Bring to a boil and put in the chicken (for extra flavour, stuff the chicken with more crushed fresh ginger and whole spring onions, if you like). Make sure the chicken is completely submerged in the water. Put a lid on the pot and bring back to a rapid boil. Simmer for 10 minutes, then remove the pot from the heat and leave to one side, covered, for 50-60 minutes.

Once the time’s up, check the bird is cooked by inserting a small, sharp knife into the thickest part of the thigh by the bone – the juices should run clear. Lift the chicken from the stock and slice off each breast, skin included, in one piece. Put the breasts in a bowl with a little stock to keep them moist. Return the remaining chicken to the stock pot, bring back to a boil and simmer, uncovered, for five minutes more. Remove the pot from the heat and set aside to cool down a little.

For the condiments
Make the condiments while the chicken is cooking. For the chilli sauce, put all the ingredients in a small food processor bowl, adding half a teaspoon of salt, and work for a couple of minutes until you have a uniform sauce. Top and tail the cucumber, cut it in two lengthways, then slice each half on an angle into 0.5cm-thick slices. Slice the whole spring onion on a sharp angle into long, thin slices and put these in a bowl in the fridge with some ice water. Whisk together the two soy sauces and the sesame oil.

For the rice
Start preparing the rice about 30 minutes before serving. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Add the 15g of chopped ginger and the garlic, and sauté on medium heat for three minutes, until light golden. Add the rice and a teaspoon of salt, and sauté, stirring, for four minutes; add a bit of stock if it starts sticking to the bottom of the pot.

Take 750ml of the chicken stock, including any fat that has collected on the surface, and add to the rice pot. Bring to a rapid boil, cover with a tight lid, reduce the heat to the absolute minimum, leave to cook for 20 minutes, then remove from the heat but keep covered.

To serve 
When you are ready to serve, return the chicken breast to the hot stock to heat it up a little; it needs to be just warm. Meanwhile, chop the rest of the chicken – thighs, drumsticks and wings – into pieces of whatever size you prefer. Place these pieces on a large platter and top with the breasts, each cut neatly into three pieces widthways with the skin left on; you want to see the breast meat, not the messy, bony pieces of chicken underneath.

Arrange a few cucumber slices alongside the chicken and place the rest on a small plate to serve separately. Spoon some of the soy and sesame sauce over the chicken and put the rest in a small bowl. Put the chilli sauce in a similar bowl. Put some rice in a medium-size, deep bowl and press down to mould it. Turn over briskly on to the platter and sprinkle with fried shallots, if using. Heat up the stock (reduce it a bit for extra flavour, if you like), season with salt to taste, sprinkle with coriander and ladle into individual bowls – the stock is eaten as a soup served at the same time as the chicken. Finally, drain and dry the spring onion slices from the fridge, sprinkle over the chicken and serve.

 

Week 73. Jordan. Mansaf.

I’ve failed. I intended on being in a position that when I drew the country Jordan I could do a video blog and cook it with the “celebrity” Jordan (Katie Price). I would have called it “Jordan does Jordan” and it would have gone viral and I would have been picked up by international TV channels as their new Chef and I would have become a judge on Masterchef. Unfortunately, in order for me to attract Jordan I would have need to have a massive following on my blog and she would be chasing me to be involved. Instead I have one man and his dog reading it and Jordan wouldn’t know who I was if I walked up to her and popped one of her enormous fake boobs.

For my few international followers, Jordan is someone who began life as a tacky model at a Grand Prix (hence the name- as she modeled for the Jordan team) and has managed to build on her tackiness, improve it and become the queen of tack. She has had multiple operations to make her look more like Barbie and she drives a bright Pink Landrover. Her most recent husband (I think they married) was Argentinian and couldn’t speak English. She couldn’t speak Spanish. It was a match made in nonsense. She is, however, supposedly a good mother – particularly to her disabled son Harvey – so I will give her credit for that and hence why I wanted to cook this dish with her!

Proceeding without my grown up doll of a guest, I liked the look of the national dish of Jordan *from now on when I mention Jordan I am referring to the country*. Mansaf is the Arabic word for “explosion” so surely something with such a name was going to deliver some real mouth fireworks. The National Dish, Mansaf is usually eaten on a Friday, which in Jordan is a family day.

Cooking national dishes is usually not overly challenging, as dishes eaten by the masses need to be relatively simple as the masses need to be able to cook it. It’s a little different in Jordan and many of the recipes I have research suggest you take into consideration getting some tutelage from an experienced Mansaf Chef before taking it on. What seems to be the major challenge is the use of heated yoghurt and the need to not curdle it. In reality it wasn’t particularly hard, but I did have to follow the recipe extremely closely. The result was a rich (borderline too rich) kebab/ curry like wrap which was fragrant and full of crunch (from the nuts). We loved it, but really missed any chilli hit. I think chilli would have made it an “explosion”.

Here is how I need to do it: (recipe from the YouInJordan website). Makes for about 8 people.

• 2 Kilos lamb, preferably with bones, cut into thick pieces
• 2 cups yogurt
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 egg white, beaten with a fork until frothy
• 2 teaspoons corn flour
• ¼ cup clarified butter
• ¼ cup pine nuts
• ¼ cup slivered almonds
• water
• salt
• freshly ground pepper
• 1½ teaspoons turmeric
• ½ teaspoon allspice
• 1 small piece cinnamon bark
• 3 cups basmati rice, rinsed
• Markouk Bread. This can be bought in most major supermarkets, but if you can’t find it use large flat bread wraps. You will need one per person if the size of a dinner plate or two per person if the size of a side plate.

Directions

Place yogurt in a heavy-based pan.

Add frothy egg white, corn flour and 2-teaspoon salt to pan and stir gently just enough to

blend.  It is very important to use a wooden ladle and to stir in the same direction.  So, if you stir to the left, you must continue stirring the yogurt mixture to the left throughout the whole cooking process.  Otherwise, the yogurt will curdle. (Herein lies the challenge)

Place pan over medium heat and stir constantly with wooden ladle.  Heat the yogurt mixture until it begins to boil, stirring continuously in the same direction.  Lower the heat and leave to boil gently, uncovered, for 3-5 minutes until thick.

Place lamb in a pan and cover with cold water. Bring slowly to boil. Skim the surface to remove particles. When well skimmed and boiling, add salt and paper to taste. Cover and boil gently for 30 minutes.

Heat butter in frying pan and add pine nuts and almonds. Fry until golden and remove nuts to a plate, draining butter back into the pan.

Add onion to pan and fry gently until transparent. Stir in turmeric, allspice and cinnamon bark and cook for another 2 minutes. Add this mixture to the boiling lamb.

After lamb has been cooking for 1 hour, remove lid and let liquid reduce until it only half-covers lamb.

When reduced, add yogurt sauce, shaking pan to blend it with liquid. Let the mixture boil gently on low heat until lamb is tender and sauce is thick.

In the meantime, prepare the rice as directed on package.

When the rice is ready, remove all the meat, onion and nuts

from the large pan using a slotted spoon. Set these aside. The pan should only contain sauce/ liquid now.

To serve, place the markouk bread on a serving dish and pour over some remaining sauce (from which you removed the meat) Spread the rice evenly over the markouk bread. Then place the meat pieces on top of the rice. Then garnish with the roasted almonds and pines. Drizzle some more of the remaining sauce on top.

Week 72. Zimbabwe. Nyma ye Huju with Sadza

I’m back blogging. I had a brief spell where life got a bit busy but I have fought back and I’m ready to go again. In my twenties I had no idea how tough life could get, how busy it could become and how tired it was possible to get, but we are working this out now and working out how to fight back. In my opinion the answer is to go outside, suck in the air and get pretty cold. Go and refresh your stressed out brain.

Our house was pretty stressed this morning as we have had a shitty time post-Christmas. Everyone has been ill and we have been largely house bound. We decided that we needed to refresh our brains big time so we headed off to the coast. It’s winter, its cold, its grey and it was an hour and a half drive, but it was worth it. Just standing by the sea you feel all your stresses go. The cold wind freezes your troubles and puts a perspective on it all. I’m not intending on being a weird preacher about how I can solve your issues by throwing you on a beach, but it works for us and we feel great tonight. Here is a photo of how the family enjoyed it.

I’m going to write the rest of this quite quickly as whilst enjoying the time on the beach we all had a £1 microwaved hot-dog from a shack. The food poisoning is likely to hit some time soon.

Zimbabwe was an interesting choice for the first entry of 2013. Formerly British, it was made independent in 1980 and handed over to the safe keeping of Robert Mugabe – who we also knighted as one of the leaders against the White Domination in his country. Since 1980 his disgusting leadership has presided over economic downfall, racism, torture and the murder of white farmers by mobs. He rules a beautiful country and has driven it into the ground.  In 2008 he was accused of ordering a militia to murder the wife of his political rival by cutting her hands and feet off and burning her alive. I’ve said it before and I will again and this is never going to be a political blog – but Mugabe is a vile human.

The national dish of Zimbabwe is Sadza, which is Cornmeal. I didn’t think a plate of Cornmeal would be great to write about – so I looked for a dish which might have been eaten with it.

Nyma ye Huju is a Zimbabwean Chicken Stew and it was deliciously fresh whilst being full of chilli. I’m not a fan of Cornmeal. Its wallpaper paste. Put a nice stew on it and it doesn’t improve it – it just means you have to have wallpaper paste with your stew. I would definitely make the Stew again but would have it with rice or even pasta.

Recipe:

• Cornmeal
• 3 Chicken Breasts
• 4 Ripe Tomatoes
• 3 Spring Onions
• 1 Onion
• 1.5 Inches Fresh Ginger
• 1 Hot Chilli
• 1 Tsp Ground Black Pepper
• Handful Chopped Parsley

Steps

• Chop the tomatoes and sweat them in oil for 5 mins
• Add the chopped onion, diced spring onion, diced ginger, chilli and the black pepper. Simmer gently for 5 more minutes.
• Add in the parsley and season with salt. If the sauce seems thick, add in a little boiled water and then add the diced chicken. Simmer for 25 mins.
• Whilst the Stew is simmering, boil 700g of water and put into saucepan. Add 400g of Cornmeal and stir thoroughly. It will quickly start to thicken and after a minute or so add another 300g of boiling water. Constantly stir until it starts to come away from the side of the pan. At this point it is done, so take it out and pop it into the oven to keep warm until the stew is ready. Pour the stew on top.

Week 71. Honduras. Baleadas.

I’ve been playing tennis in recent weeks. Badly. A work colleague suggested we play, and seeing as in the in the last two years I’ve hardly broken a sweat, I thought I would give it a go. I used to play very regularly, when I was in my teens, and was relatively good. I was nothing special, but I could hit my forehands and backhands hard and be confident they would drop in. That’s not the case now. My skills have dissolved during my 15 year hiatus, and it’s bloody frustrating. I played doubles this morning. Our foursome was made up of my mate Tom who used to be a sparring partner back when we were 15 (he beat me 6-0 last week), his mate James (who smoked cigarettes to warm up) and James’ sister Anna who turned up late, didn’t need a warm up and starting smashing forehands past everyone with her leather jacket still on. I was paired with Anna because Tom and James “are always a pairing”. So, I’m lined up on the same side as a lady I’ve never met – and I’m nervous as Tom battered me last week, James is a former tennis coach and Anna looked like she was straight out of a tennis academy with her polished groundstrokes. It was me to serve first and I was immediately broken – largely down to me hitting three double faults and not really caring about the outcome as much as my desire not smash my serve into the back of Anna’s head. From that point it went further downhill. We lost 6-1 and it was all down to me. I was letting volleys crumble at my feet as my pathetically underdeveloped wrists couldn’t cope with the powerful shots being fired at me. I was hitting forehands high and wide, and I repeatedly sliced my backhand into the middle of the net. I spoke about forty words to Anna during our brief time together as tennis partners. These comprised of “Hi, I’m Joe”, “sorry” (about 30 times) and “Bye. I’m really sorry”. It’s a brilliant game though. I want to get better and especially as it’s an acceptable game to play as you get older. I’m going to keep at it and will update you as to my progress. I was actually due to play a workmate tomorrow night, but in my final rally today I slipped on some moss at the back of the course and nearly did The Splits. The problem is, I can’t get anywhere near doing the splits normally….so something popped and now I’m limping. Brilliant.

Dish wise this week its Honduras and we are really talking my kind of flavours. A Baleadas can be eaten at any meal. It could be with scrambled egg at breakfast or in its most simple form for a lunch snack (just beans and cheese).  I chose to make a more substantial version as the flavour combination intrigued me. In cooking a filling of beef mince with tomato and oregano it’s on Italian lines (Bolognese) but there is Cumin in there with it and chilli, so is it a Chilli Con Carne minus the beans? But there are beans…refried beans on the wrap. It’s Central and South America meets Italy with loads of spice and fresh avocado…all in a tortilla. It’s a snacking version of two of my favourite cuisines….mixed together.

Baleadas is street food in Honduras. You can grab them on the go. Here is a picture of a stall:

Making them was simple. Follow this recipe and you shouldn’t go too wrong. Don’t make the mistake of making the beef mix too saucy, as otherwise it will make the tortillas sloppy and it will run everywhere.

For 4 People:

• 500g Beef Mince
• 1 Small Onion
• 2 Cloves Garlic (use more if you like it strong)
• 2 Chilies. You choose strength depending on your taste
• 2 TBSP Olive Oil
• ½ Can Chopped Tomatoes
• 1 TBSP Cumin
• 1 Tsp Chopped Oregano
• 1 Can Refried Beans
• 12 Tortillas
• 2 Avocados
• Jar of pickled Jalapenos
• 200g Feta Cheese
• Sour Crème

First make the beef mix. To do this, sweat the onion and garlic for 10 minutes in the oil. Then add the mince and gently cook until the meat begins to brown. Now add the Cumin, Chillies and Oregano and stir it all through for 2 mins. Now add the tomato and let it all simmer down for about 20 mins. Season to taste and set aside with a lid on to keep the heat in.

Warm the tortillas and the refried beans and then assemble.

On each tortilla fold them in half. And then fill. Start by covering one half in refried beans. You need to make the beans work for 12 tortillas so it’s about two tbsp per tortilla. Then add the beef mix – probably about 4TBSP per tortilla and then a big pinch of grated feta over the top. Then a couple of slices of avocado, a few jalapenos and finally a dollop of sour crème. That’s it, done. Eat as you please! It’s a fun dish and it tastes great.

Week 70. Barbados. CouCou and Flying Fish

**Before you read on, this week was a disaster. The dish tasted nasty (my fault) and the photo didn’t turn out. The photo I have used is lifted from the internet and taken from someone infinitely more skilled at making this dish. To that person I applaud your silky Caribbean Skills. **

I’ve got a lottery ticket in my wallet. It’s been there since Friday. The draw was on Saturday and I haven’t checked it. I love the idea that I am possibly a millionaire. I am also possibly not a millionaire, but on the balance of it I prefer to think that I am.

I think it is about time I won. For the last 18 months I have been receiving £20 per month from my brother and his wife to add to the mini-syndicate my wife and I formed. Each week I buy ten lines. We have won £86.40 in total. We have spent over £750. But that’s not the point is it…it’s a game with a big prize which we might one day win and then it will all be worth it. Yeah right. In the meantime I have to explain to everyone that I did remember to buy the tickets and after a year and a half if we used all the winnings we can just about afford a takeaway. I recently had a great idea. I now don’t check the tickets for a week after a draw. This way I can buy the ticket for the following week before I check the previous week, and even if the previous week is dead I am already possibly a millionaire in the following week. Bar loss or theft, I am therefore always a possible millionaire.

I’d love to have two million pounds. I’d buy a massive house with a big kitchen and a toy room for the children so they can create mountains of mess which doesn’t impinge on my living space. Once a day I can tidy it up and I don’t have to constantly trip over it. Kids are dangerous. In a relatively accurate estimate Henry (aged 3) has over 400 balls in our house. These balls range from tiny marble to basketball and they are scattered all over the place, in the sofa and occasionally on the kitchen floor. I have bruises all over my legs from skidding on them and crashing into the furniture and today when creating this blog I cut my finger whilst skidding on a marble whilst holding a kitchen knife, which I used for balance and stuck it into my opposite hand. A big house, a play room and a ball ban for every other room.

The dish I made for Barbados was not one of my favourites. It looked ok and there were elements of the dish I liked, but overall it was confused. I welcome any Barbadian correcting me on how do create this dish, but look online and there are many conflicting recipes and lots of critique on what is the best way to cook it is. I used a combination of all, but wouldn’t recommend the way I did it as it was overly bitter and not spicy enough. I think this could be a good dish if you had the right recipe so I ask of the Bajan population to help me out. How should I make it?

In summary I made a base of cornmeal mixed with chopped Okra which had been simmered in butter.

On top of that I put the flying fish (I used Mackerel as there aren’t many flying fish in London) stew. The stew was made of Red Peppers, Okra, Parsley, Marjoram, Thyme (too much) and chopped tomatoes. Added to this was a healthy glug of Bajan Sauce which I made separately and blended it. Most recipes stated that the sauce should sit for a week before being used – and this could be the issue as it was tart and the vinegar really came through.

• 6 large Scotch Bonnet  seeds and stems removed, chopped
• 1 large onion, coarsely chopped
• 2 small cloves garlic
• tablespoon mustard
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup chopped carrots
• 1 cup water
• Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and boil for about 15 minutes. Adjust the consistency with water. Puree in a food processor or blender

Finally, Barbados is a beautiful Caribbean country. Hurricane Sandy would have given the island a very tough time last week. I hope the recovery from the damage is with speed. If you have a great CouCou and Flying Fish recipe, please do contact me.