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 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.

Week 59. Algeria. Meatball Tagine & Coriander Salad.

I’m not allowed a Tagine. Our house is too small apparently and our cupboards are full of cooking equipment I “use once and then forget about”. It’s a fair comment and living in a two up two down terraced house in London there isn’t a lot of room for anything. When I have my huge Victorian house with the island kitchen and tri-fold doors which open onto the vast garden I’ll get me a tagine and I’ll impress at dinner parties by using it as the centerpiece and unveiling the food by lifting off the chimney.

Living in London in your 30s means for most that you have to live in a pretty small house. For what we paid for our house, with one downstairs room, you could buy a 4 bedroom house in the country but I wouldn’t want it any differently – especially with my love of food. Within 3 miles of my kitchen there is a Thai Supermarket, a Chinese Supermarket an Indian Supermarket and a generalist supermarket with African and Caribbean sections. There is a Polish shop at the end of my road which covers food from most of Eastern Europe and if I need anything from Sweden I go to Ikea. I learned once in Holland that their dish Hotchpotch is called so as it is a many different ingredients all thrown together in the same pot and they all combine to produce one wonderful result. I see the food scene in London very much on the same lines. We have British cuisine in the background but on top of that we have world cuisine and we can tap into it whenever we please.

I drew Algeria this week and the Meatball Tagine stood out.  For those who is not sure what a tagine is, here is a pic.

Without having Tagine and cooking a dish which required one, it meant I needed to improvise, so I used my casserole. Instead of constantly checking during the cooking process, as I usually would, I put the lid three quarters on and let it steam away. It produced a decent dish.

I love meatballs in most forms. There’s something about the texture which improves the overall taste somehow. These meatballs were the best I have ever made. It’s a big statement but they contained some really bold flavours which didn’t overpower and the undercurrent of harissa is wonderful. I would usually eat meatballs in a thick sauce and put them with rice or pasta, but with this dish there is not much sauce left at the end of the process and I ate it in a flatbread with homous and a fragrant coriander salad. It was rich, spicy, floral, meaty and fresh all at the same time. It’s brilliant food for when you have people round but you don’t want to sit all around the table in an smart dinner party way. You need to eat this with your hands and it’s quite messy.

I often get comments from people who have read this blog which say “that looked great, I really should make one of your dishes”.  All I would say in response, is perhaps you should, but if not then definitely cook something this week which is completely new for you. You will probably like it, it will certainly teach you something and overall you will be a better cook for it.

Meatball Tagine.

• 500g Beef Mince
• 1 Tbsp Paprika
• 2 Cloves Garlic
• 1 Tbsp Cumin
• 1 Tbsp Turmeric
• 2 Tbsp Chopped Fresh Parsley
• 5 Tomatoes (skinned)
• 2 Tbsp Harissa
• 2 Shallots
• 2 Cups Water

Mix the beef mince with the Paprika, Garlic, Cumin, Turmeric and Parsley and divide into about 10 large balls. Add in salt and pepper to taste.

Heat some oil in a frying pan. Roll the balls all around just until they are browned all over and then set them aside.

In a casserole gently fry the shallots for 5 minutes and then add the chopped tomatoes and the harissa. Gently fry for another 5 minutes and then add the water and bring to the boil. Add in the meatballs, stir and then put the lid on the casserole, turn the heat down to a gentle simmer and leave it for 30 mins with one stir half way.

Coriander Salad

• 1 Diced Red Onion
• 1 Diced Cucumber
• 5 Handfuls of Chopped Coriander
• A drizzle of Lemon Juice

Combine!

Week 58. Syria. Ros Bhaleeb.

I stood over the tee at the 10^th hole and prepared to take my shot. It was a warm March day and I was in shirt sleeves. The course was beautiful and I was being paid to be there, as it was, technically, a work day. I wanted to draw the ball from left to right and bring it down onto the green and I swung the club well. My impact was solid and the ball soared towards the green, through the blue sky and I stood back and admired it. Seconds later I glumly realized I had very slightly misjudged the shot and the ball plummeted, landing 15 feet short of the green and in the lake. My mood turned in an instant and I swore, loudly, and crashed my club into the turf with anger.  I had messed up and I was raging.

At that moment I was annoyed with myself and now I am even more annoyed with myself, but now I am annoyed with myself for being annoyed with myself for something so pathetic. The reason I say this is because I am now writing about Syria and what is happening in Homs is worth being annoyed about – not my game of golf.

What is happening in the world today is beyond disgusting. Whilst world leaders have phone calls and meetings and think about what the best thing to do with the escalating situation in Syria, the situation is indeed escalating and innocent people are being executed. It’s not good enough. Let me put this into context. Imagine the reaction in the UK if one person walked out of work today and as they did someone walked up to them and shot them in the head. Would we be appalled? Would we do everything we can to punish the perpetrator and hold them to account that day? Of course we would, but this is happening today over and over again in Syria and the world is responding far too slowly. As a result we have the blood of the people dying on our hands. The rest of the world didn’t initiate murder but we are now responsible for it as we should be in there and stopping it.  This is a food blog and always will be and this is why my ranting will stop here, but this is worth being angry about and not bloody golf. Life must go on in other parts of the world, but when you get annoyed by those little things, remember how some people in this small planet of ours are frightened today and many people will have today as their last and tomorrow their families will be destroyed. All because we have done nothing so far.

I decided to make a dessert this week and I was intrigued by Ros Bhaleeb. In the UK we eat Rice Pudding but I would imagine 90% of it’s consumption is with the over 70′s and under 5′s. It’s baby food or old fashioned stodge.  It has a reputation for being heavy, tasteless and sickly rich. High end restaurants have attempted to bring it back to popularity by grating some nutmeg through it but it is yet to really take a hold. If people could taste Ros Bhaleeb it would change opinions in an instant. Rose Water is a distillation of rose petals and is used across the middle east to add a floral lift to many dishes. It absolutely does in this dish. We usually eat Rice Pudding hot but this is served very cold and the rose and orange make it feel incredibly light and almost refreshing. Not often do I make something and be utterly surprised at the flavour outcome. With this dish is was a huge shock and in a very good way. We are off to our first BBQ of the year today and I am taking a batch of Ros Bhaleeb with me. I am looking forward to seeing the shock on the faces of my friends.

I used this recipe as this lady is from Syria and very much knows what she is doing! http://www.syriancooking.com/other-desserts/roz-bhaleeb-rice-pudding

Let’s not forgot what is happening in Syria right now.

Week 55. Namibia. Magic Lamb.

It’s hardly been above zero degrees for a week, so I thought we would have a barbeque.

Am I mad? Maybe. Am I bored of winter? Definitely. Do I have the option of a deep pit in my garden to bury a leg of lamb in? No.

I drew Namibia this week and looked at the options for dishes to cook which would be relevant, not similar to something I have done before and appropriate for a Sunday night meal. Magic Lamb stood out.

It’s not clear why Magic Lamb is called so, but it is clear that it is a meal for whilst on the go – and on the go in the African wilderness….not Twickenham West London. It seems as though the dish originated with game or bush meat and was cooked in hastily arranged pits dug into the earth and filled with fire. According to the recipes I read the best option is the pit, but having only a paved courtyard for a garden I didn’t really have an option for that so had to throw on a load of layers and get the BBQ out!.

This particular dish lends well to a photo tour of it, so below I explain how I made it. Taste review post photos. Note – I didn’t do a leg of lamb, but shanks – it just worked better for an evening meal for two.

Lamb Shanks

 

I studded each with chopped anchovies, rosemary, pomegranate seeds, garlic and green peppercorns.

Stud the lamb

BBQ the lamb. In zero degrees.

The lamb tasted phenomenal. When I took it out of the foil I was concerned that the half which had been in contact with the grill was burnt, but I made a sauce/ gravy using some lamb stock, peppercorns and rosemary and just sat the shanks in the liquid for twenty minutes. It worked brilliantly and it almost tasted caramelized.

I’m tired right now. I’ve been cooking outside in the middle of winter. In Namibia it might not get cold much, but it bloody does here.

It’s back to the grindstone tomorrow. It’s quite funny; when I started this blog I saw it as my route to the future and I would amass an enormous following. Do you know how many followers I have? 13. I have cooked for 55 weeks and cooked nearly a third of every country in the world….and 13 people read this blog each week. For you 13 I love you. I will be inviting you to my wrap party. I have cancelled Wembley Arena and we are going to The Kings Head.

Week 52. Ecuador. Arroz con menestra

Some stats to start off:

• So far I have done 52 countries
• It has taken 589 days
• I average a blog every 11.3 days
• I should therefore finish after 2208 days
• 2208 days is 315 weeks
• 315 weeks is 6.06 years
• 6.06 years from the day I began is 19th June 2016
• Save the date for the closing party!

It should be May 2011. I should have, ideally, cooked 52 dishes (one for every week) a year after this blog began. I’m way off, but so are my priorities.

I will never let this blog die, I will absolutely reach my goal and I will post most weeks. I won’t, however, care too much about the quality of my writing. It stressed me out somewhat at the beginning and I thought in depth what I needed to write about, how I could be interesting and or funny. I’m over that. I don’t really like writing – not a huge amount. I love cooking and I love seeing this blog grow and the list of countries to cook dwindle, but the actual writing – not so much. I envy people who can just spit out interesting articles day after day, week after week, but I do wonder how taxing it is to think about what to write. For those who do it easily – I salute you.

I’m off work today as we have a scan for baby number two. We decided not to find out this time the sex, which for someone as obsessive compulsive as I am was utter torture. I cannot stand the idea that someone knows something I don’t, when I could. We had the situation where the sonographer (bit grumpy, occasionally smiley, very attractive) asked “do you want to know the sex?”. Everything inside me screamed “of course I bloody do – you know and now you need to tell me”, but we had agreed we wouldn’t find out this time so I coughed out “nope”. Her next line was not what I expected. I thought she would just know and would not tell us, but instead she needed to write the type of genitalia on her screen, so asked us to turn our heads away. Both Des and I were looking as different screens which meant I then had the opportunity to easily cheat and just sneak a peek. The agony of not turning was like having my nails pulled out. It pulled at the depths of my self control. I succeeded and I suppose I am proud of myself, but it was horrible. Anyway – I saw no willies or anything close, so I’m pretty sure we are having a girl.

Due to the time off this afternoon I knew it was a day for a blog, so yesterday I drew Ecuador. I spent some time researching the country and was slightly confused what to do as I have done the national dish (Cervice) before, when I cooked Panama. This confusion ended the minute I stumbled across the food blog of Laylita. Ecuadorian food galore. Usually I spend time looking at loads of recipes, changing them, adding in my spin, the spin of others and creating a recipe from scratch. This week I didn’t bother. I just chose one of Laylitas. I invite you to look at her site. It’s colourful and full of great looking dishes. This is clearly someone I would get on with as she clearly loves her cooking.

The dish was fantastic. I rarely get suprised from looking at a recipe and then tasting the results, but this time I definitely was. I have cooked lentils in an Asian dhal form hundreds of times, but rarely have I altered the flavour completely. This did that. The lack of spice heat and the inclusion of saffron (I used instead of traditional achiote) and fresh coriander, made it taste deliciously fresh. The steak was predictably iron rich and buttery rare and this complemented the lentils beautifully. The rice was nutty with turmeric and I decided to add a fried egg as Laylita suggested this is what vegetarians had instead of meat. I had to have both!

It tasted like the innards of the poshest burrito ever made.

I’m not going to give you the recipe – It’s on http://www.laylita.com. I want you to go there and find it.

 

The Half Century. Week 50. Philippines . Caldereta.

I’ve been to The Philippines. In 2005 I was tasked with setting up an offshore Telesales Unit for the company I worked for at the time.  I loved my time there but it was extremely eventful. When the company tried to get my insurance they were shocked to find out it would be £2000 for the week. This, supposedly, was due to an increasing trend of kidnappings in Manila, where I was to travel. The kidnappings rarely made the main press stories as they were usually over within 24 hours. Gangs would capture Western Businessmen and demand $20,000 for the release. As the level of ransom was pitched low, companies paid up. I was ever so slightly nervous I was about to become a statistic. My nerves were not overly calmed when my taxi from the airport locked all the doors and when I got to the hotel I was shocked when security sent a dog through the car and a huge mirror underneath the car to check for explosives. The hotel was stunning and the food excellent but it was tarnished by working -girls frequenting the bar and disappearing upstairs with disgusting, fat, sleezey American men who thought it entirely acceptable to pay to cheat on their poor wives.

I worked UK hours whilst over there, as the call centre would be calling England, so I had to head to work at about 5pm. On the first day I picked up a cab from reception and asked to be taken to a cash machine. It didn’t work so he agreed to charge the fare to my hotel and my room. He also told me he knew exactly where to take me, so I sat back in my locked cab and trusted him. To put things into context; I am just short of 2 metres tall, I am white, I have a shaved head and I was wearing a suit. The typical person on the street was a good 30cm shorter and wearing flip-flops. So, with no money, standing out like a sore thumb and holding a laptop, when I was dropped in the wrong place I am sure you can imagine my rising panic. I span around looking for any signs of what to do when I noticed that the cab had turned right at the junction ahead and was heading back my way – albeit down the next block. I have never run so fast in my life. I leapt onto the bonnet and crashed my hand down onto his windscreen, slapping it until he let me back in. Fortunately it had just been an innocent mistake but for those 30 seconds I was lost and alone I was sure he had just set me up.

The rest of my time in Manila was fantastic. I loved the evening thunderstorms and monsoon downpours, the people were tremendously accommodating and the food was delicious. I ate a lot of noodles whilst I was there, but I have always remembered a beef stew I had which blew my mind. Deep rich meat but with flavours of Asia. I haven’t tried to make it until now.

Not the type of dish you would imagine from Asia, Caldereta draws on Spanish influences but has the twist of soy and chilli which you might seem more appropriate. Spain had great influence in the Philippines from 1550 until the beginning of the 20th Century FYI.

It’s very simple to make and works best with slow cooked cuts of meat (see previous post).

Here is how I made my 50th dish!

• 500g Beef Shin
• 1 Onion
• 5 Carrots
• 2 Cloves Garlic
• 3 Bay Leaves
• 2 Large Potatoes
• 1 TBSP Soy Sauce
• 2 Pints Water
• 1 TBSP Chilli Flakes
• 150G Liver Pate
• 1 TBSP Tomato Puree
• 1 TBSP Chilli Sauce
• Salt and Pepper to Taste

Begin by browning the onion and beef together in oil. This will take about 10 minutes. At that point add half the soy sauce and the garlic.

Add in the water and the bay leaves and then let it all simmer for at least two hours.

Once the meat is starting to soften add the chilli flakes, chilli sauce, tomato puree, pate, potato and carrot.

This needs to stew for about another hour and then everything will be thick and soft. If you like you could add some spring onion or chopped white onion now just to add some texture back.

Finally grate some strong cheese over the top, sprinkle with chilli flakes and drizzle with some olive oil.

Week 49. Madagascar. Akoho misy sakamalao & Sakay

Next week I will be cooking my 5oth dish in this journey. Honestly I’m pretty impressed with myself. I had no idea if I would stick to it, but it has consumed me. I look forward to the next dish, the research, the new ingredients and new blends of ingredients I already know. I like the thought that I might hate some of the dishes (Vanuatu) or love them (Sri Lanka). I enjoy ticking off new countries or adding new (South Sudan). It will take a long time to do this but when I finish it will I be the only person in the history of the world to have done this? Maybe.

Back to this week.

It’s firework night in the UK and my mouth is conducting fireworks of its own. My tongue is burning, my nose is running, even my teeth hurt a bit and it has little to do with the mountain of chilli in this dish. I’m burning with garlic overload. If I wasn’t married and wanted to nip out tonight and try and secure the lips of a young lady I wouldn’t have a hope. I stink.

I’ve eaten 8 cloves of garlic in one dish and whilst delicious it’s just not practical if you have to see people within a week. Dishes from Madagascar are characterized by powerful flavours and once I had peeled and squashed the garlic I then blitzed a few chilies for the sauce…..30 chilies. Oh, and then just to continue with the theme I chopped a piece of ginger about the length of my arm.

As you can see from the picture (which I took about 20 minutes trying to style and look even the slightest bit interesting) this is not the most beautiful of dishes. It looks bland. It isn’t!

According to all the facts I looked at Madagascar is the 4th largest island in the world after Greenland, Borneo and New Guinea. What about Australia you scream at me. I thought the same. Australia, despite technically being an island, is actually a continent and that supersedes island status. I wonder if Australia would be happy being classed as the smallest of all continents rather than the beast of all islands?

I was tempted to cook a dish called Mo-Fo just because of how that would translate into the street language of today but instead if chose a different Mo-fo..ing dish.

Based off the East Coast of the African continent, Madagascar has a blend of colonial history which influences cuisine, but typically meat and rice are eaten for main dishes when available.

I chose Akoho misy sakama as it was simple and could be made from readily available ingredients.

To make the chicken (this covered 4 pieces) I poured approximately 6 tbsp of vegetable oil into a bowl and then added 6 cloves of chopped garlic and two inches of grated ginger. Adding a tbsp of salt I then just rubbed all the chicken in this marinade and set apart for a couple of hours.

I baked the chicken which took about 40 minutes and whilst they were heating I made the Sakay. All you need to do is blitz about 30 chillies with 3 tbsp of oil, 2 cloves of garlic, 3 tbsp of ginger powder, 2 tbsp and 1 tsp of sugar. You will make far more than you need but I bottled the rest and will use over the next few weeks on different dishes. It is brutally strong so use in minute moderation. I stirred some through rice and used the rest as a dipping sauce.

Overall this dish is powerful but delicious. Do be aware you won’t be able to speak to anyone close up for a few days after though.