Zanzibar Fish Curry & Coriander Yoghurt

  
Last week we decided to counteract the impending darkness of November by heading for the spice isle.

Not that spice aisle, though it’s rather popular in our house, but the Gauguin-green, beguiling beauty that is Zanzibar, the one one-time hub of the spice trade – and a great deal less palatably, the slave-trade between Africa and the world.
And Freddie Mercury was born there.

She, let’s call her she, has had more outside influences than I have had hot dinners (and that’s a lot); Oman, Portugal, the list goes on. The old part of the capital, Stone Town, witnessed the shortest war in the world at the end of the 19th century: the Anglo-Zanzibar war, which lasted all of between 38 and 45 minutes depending on who you ask. This amazing piece of trivia has not only been banked by the BSG amongst his treasury of random facts, but is greatly bumped up his favourites chart due to the fact that it was begun at about 9am… once the British had finished their breakfast.

Our breakfasts each day were altogether more peaceful affairs, consisting of some of the greatest tasting fruit I have ever encountered. Every bright orange mango was a good one, the bananas were short and sweet and the custard apples were a revelation. Considering that pineapples were brought over by the Portuguese - so aren’t strictly native to Zanzibar - it’s hard to imagine them tasting better grown anywhere else.
  

Of course, some food tourism was inevitable, and between bouts of competitive reading and swimming sessions we took a spice tour, to see the origins of the spices we know so well in their orange-topped jars; I have a new-found respect for each and every one. Fresh  nutmeg looked like a formidable armoured beetle, black in its in its danger-red mace casing. The turmeric and ginger roots were fiery when scratched out of their earthy bed and the cardamom and cloves unrecognisable in their pungent greenness*. Huge almond trees provided cool shade underneath dark, waxy leaves. Like all good tourists, we spent a small fortune in Tanzania Shillings on a few bags of the stuff, still drunk on raw nutmeg, ginger and turmeric. One of the bags contains a rust-hued curry powder, the same colour as Zanzibar’s fertile ground. We used it this week to make a fish curry; the closest to kissing the spice isle a fond farewell, until the next time. Asante sana!

* pics from left to right: cardamom, nutmeg, cloves

The mix looks like a lot, but chances are you have nearly everything in your cupboard already. Make up a big batch and keep it to use again and again - I guarantee you’ll want to. Equally it will make a great meat or veg curry too. It takes no time at all to put together.

For the curry:
1 onion, chopped
Zanzibar spice mix (ground turmeric, cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, chilli powder, coriander and garlic)
500g skin and boneless firm white fish (or a mix including squid and shellfish) in bitesized pieces
1 carrot and 1 courgette, chopped into short batons
Tin of chopped tomatoes
Tin of coconut milk
Salt and pepper

For the yoghurt:
3 tablespoons Greek yoghurt
Handful of chopped fresh coriander
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
Salt and pepper

Soften and lightly colour the onion over a gentle heat. Add the mix of powdered spices and cook for 2 minutes. Add chopped tomatoes and carrot pieces, turn up the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add coconut milk and turn down the heat. Cook for 5 minutes, before adding the courgette and fish. Place a lid on the pan and cook for 5 minutes, until the fish is cooked through.

Serve with the coriander yoghurt, some warm chapati (or rice) and cauliflower cooked in ginger, turmeric, cumin and cinnamon.

Too much of a good thing

When I stumble upon something delicious, I will happily go on eating it.

And eating it. Until I light on something else.

Take mashed avocado on toast, for example – I munched through it for breakfast throughout August, sprinkled with dried chilli and salt, and good slugs of olive oil. I extolled its virtues and hangover-busting benefits to anyone within earshot. I squeezed my way around every single one in the supermarket, only to be frustrated upon returning home to find that my ‘perfectly ripe’ ones were actually grenades disguised as avocados, at which point I would hopefully shove them in a bowl with some reluctant bananas and wait.

It is good though, you should try it - if I haven’t forked it into your mouth already.

Last week we went to Spain for a holiday with friends, culminating in a beautiful, intimate wedding in a white Castillo on top of a hill. Every element of the celebration was laid back and like an old romantic film: the perfect reflection of our friends.

From the minute we got off the plane into the startling heat all I could think about eating were big red Spanish tomatoes, the kind that make a salad all on their own. During the week we had them every which way, accompanied by onslaughts of garlic and olive oil, and punctuated by the occasional slice of jamon or a grilled sardine (a lovely place on the beach called Neptuno did the ones in the picture over a firepit in an old boat – worth a pic I thought). One of the best ways was pan con tomate, the bread lightly toasted and then rubbed with garlic and tomatoes until they shredded away, leaving a faint tomato smear and a few pips.

The BSG’s mum has gamely put up with us now for the best part of a month, whilst the dust in our house flies around. The other night she made a sort of romesco salad, with tomatoes, red peppers, toasted peeled almonds, basil and garlic and it has been sitting out stewing in its oil, accumulating flavour ever since. Well, until just now that is, when I put it onto my toast for lunch, closed my eyes and was briefly transported to that Spanish hilltop. Bliss.

I think I’ll just pop down to the shops and get some more for tomorrow. And the next day…

Food by email – a new Dukan for 2012?

 

On the first day of Christmas,
My step-mum sent to me,
A food postcard* from Mi-a-mi…

*from the 10-course tasting menu she and my dad were treated to on Christmas Eve.

It looked seriously good so I thought I would post it up here. Believe it or not, it was not produced by a restaurant, but by a very talented and consummate host with a demanding day job (which, surprisingly, is not working as a top chef). A Montreal-born Sicilian, it is his family tradition to eat late into the night on Christmas Eve. Those are the only details you’re getting – and don’t even think of asking for his address.

Think of it as a Christmas present: a feast for the eyes, without the calories. (This is the only time you will ever read anything about diets or calories on here, promise.)Their night started young and gradually got older and rounder, finally dropping off its perch at around 3.30am so please forgive them if the order looks awry. I also blame indigestion - theirs not mine.

Even the menu was edible; a cube sandwich of liver pate and fig compote covered with edible paper. WOW.

 

A starter dish of a Caprese salad based on an iceberg melting

 

Snails stuffed with nuts…

Foie gras crepe milkshake with mascarpone Cointreau cream and blueberry port reduction

Stone crab and lobster Martini (bisque)

Meatball cupcake with Pecorino cream

Nigiri in a hickory-smoke-filled snowglobe…

 

(That’s a very pretty hand towel. I don’t think they ate it...)

Frozen Asian pear and Stilton with black truffle

Smokin’ Cubano pulled pork ‘cigar’. Always think twice about licking the ashtray…(unless like here they are sesame seeds)

Individual Beef Wellingtons…in honour of the English guests

Tiramisu with chocolate mousse in handmade chocolate cups

April firsts

I am not such a very nice person as it turns out. I mean, what on earth has Rachel Allen ever done to me? Nothing, apart from smile gently down the telly. And yet for some reason, I find all her jingly, lilting sunniness irritating to the point of wanting to leap in and start a food fight there in her spotless, Ballymaloe telly-kitchen.

However, this longstanding grudge dissipated when last weekend I sampled some of her food. Well, not her food exactly, but recipes from her book, beautifully executed by my friend Sarah, who does everything absolutely precisely: she is a scientist to her very core. (We used to have art v. science arguments at school, like the dog v. cat ones I have with the BSG these days - he is pro-cat if you’re interested in taking sides).

A couple of days with Sarah and her family in the rolling countryside outside Leeds had three of us Londoners wondering why we hadn’t jacked in the big smoke for this idyllic, wholesome life. In the first few warm rays of the year we had lunch outside: a delicious, shredded salad of savoy cabbage, carrots, crisp apples, bacon bits and chicken. And it was Rachel Allen – well Sarah, really – who made us feel these first breaths of summer. I think there may have even been some rougeing of the face, but that was my fault entirely.

Feeling rather virtuous after this refreshing main course (I would say light, except we ate all of it, including Sarah’s husband’s portion…He’d been on a run and thoroughly deserved to eat), Sarah produced the most beautiful lemon tart. Honestly, it looked like the best homemade thing I’d ever seen – shop-bought ones with their unbroken perfection don’t quite cut it. And it tasted like a cloud of citrussy sunshine, and had some kind of bruléed crust on its top. Heaven. As it turned out, that was Rachel too. So, not just a pretty husband, then. I even got a picture of lunch, for once, before it disappeared.

It was surprise we’d managed to fit any lunch in at all, when a mere hour beforehand we’d paid a visit to the Ilkley branch of Betty’s Tea Room. For a first-timer like me, simply ordering a coffee (albeit a rich, Latte Latino made with chocolate sauce and cinnamon) just wouldn’t have cut the mustard, so with it came the plumpest Yorkshire Fat Rascal (an enormous warm fruit bun), some freshly baked rarebit scones and Betty’s famous cinnamon toast. Clearly a recipe they’d perfected over time, the cinnamon and sugar lay in a thick crust over crunchy fingers of brown toast – the sort of mean brown toast you’d never have associated with such a treat but which was now transformed under its crystalline cloak. No wonder Sarah’s son, Finlay, eschewed his rather yummy-looking lunch in its favour.

The rest of the weekend continued much along the same theme – three girls from London, being fed like kings, with pancetta wrapped monkfish, white chocolate mousse, pork and apple crumble (my first savoury crumble – won’t be my last that’s for sure) and on Sunday morning, blueberry pancakes like the fluffiest cumulonimbus made by Rhys, Sarah’s hubby; a good excuse to march up onto the moor for a brisk one.

It was very hard to leave, even harder to manage the wagyu burger the BSG had prepared on my return and nigh on impossible to fathom what we’ll conjure up for them on the return leg; I might ask my new favourite person...

New York (and no, I haven’t forgotten there’s a Barcelona Part 2).

Pastrami sandwiches, knuckle sandwiches*, cocktails, cupcakes; you name it - the BSG’s maiden sojourn in the Big Apple had it all. And man, did we chomp our way through the city. Forget the excess baggage; I’m certain my own bodyweight must’ve merited more fuel on the return flight.

After dropping through thick cloud onto the hitherto invisible JFK runway slick from torrential rain, I’d felt relieved to have packed my umbrella but the next morning the city made its entrance under a high blue sky and in dazzling sunlight, which stayed throughout our stay. New York had dressed for the occasion and the BSG had her best side. We spent the days wandering her ordered streets, the concrete seemingly unrolled over the island like a sheet, coating every yard of it save a few green breaks and countless steaming drain covers where the hot realm beneath stole its respite in long sighs. Our moments of recess generally took the form of refreshment; Katz’s Deli was a must and the first mark on our map. I must admit that it was a lot bigger than I’d imagined it, appropriately loud (and that was just the staff behind the counter) and brash; utterly at home in this city, then.

I had pastrami on rye. I refuse to call it a sandwich because the hand versus cutlery debate didn’t even get a look in. Even the ‘regulars’ employed the metal, like overweight climbers with crampons, to climb this exquisite mountain of warm, spiced beef (and in my case, tomato, Swiss cheese and lettuce; strangely, adding extra, non-meaty ingredients made me feel more virtuous, albeit adding to the workload). Thank goodness we’d covered half the city on foot beforehand; the thing was huge, but my golly it was sublime – I don’t think I uttered an intelligible word over one syllable for the duration. The BSG had the brisket on rye, but no amount of tangy, yellow mustard-aise could make up for his obvious food envy – luckily I needed help. I took a photo, but the perfection didn’t translate and I’m not sure I can find the words either, but you gotta trust me. Iced tea was the perfect choice to wash it all down. Oh, and a plate of crunchy gherkins pickled to varying degrees. Yup, I ♥ NY.

A lunch at Anthony Bourdain’s Les Halles seemed a great lunch spot and didn’t disappoint. My steak tartare, mixed ‘tableside’ was hot and salty and had my first invasion of anchovies in the dish; they were very welcome. The BSG, undeterred by a solid few days of grazing big ordered the choucroute but still couldn’t get over his phobia of that bright, tight-skinned orange US staple, the frank (not Joan Rivers). So no, there were no ‘streetside’ snacks for us, not even so much as a pretzel - no room - and I’m still not sure what a corn dog is.
TBC…
* These were very much on order in the Rangers ice hockey game we saw one night - a game where fighting is positively encouraged and seen as a great skill. Still, preferable to a mouthful of puck I suppose…

Barcelona – Part 1

Homer has a reputation for lofty turns of phrase, and has provided me with the perfect term which aptly encompasses the reason for this prolonged silence, for which I can only apologise. When Lisa tells him that the Chinese words for crisis and opportunity are the same, he proffers Crisitunity.

Unfortunately, Miss Simpson was misinformed; after thirty seconds of delving on the internet – extensive research indeed – it turns out that this is an urban myth. A bit like the one where wiry, adorable, geeky Paul from the Wonder Years became Marilyn Manson and, like that one, I so want it to be true.

You see, my day-job and I have recently parted company due to the godforsaken state of the economy: elements of the critical right there. BUT I have a few things that I have wanted to do for a while and now it seems that the right time has been thrust upon me.
First + second = a crisitunity. *Thanks, Homie* (in a gravelly-Marge-voice*).

I’ll admit that, despite the dominant ‘silver-lining’ genre of discussion, that week - which we’ll call Week R - was fairly shitty (sorry Gran) but, riding on a white charger to my rescue came a weekend in Barcelona with the BSG, booked months beforehand but so perfectly timed. I left my worries behind when Easyjet shut the doors at Gatwick. And then told us that we’d have to wait an hour for a take-off slot. Behind Ryanair. (The BSG did his meditative deep-breathing exercises.)

We touched down in the drizzle. But no matter - two days of eating, drinking and eating and drinking ensued, with a few sights in between. Routes were generally conceived in a join the dots pattern, the dots being the zinc-topped bars where we sought refreshment. Thanks to a finely tuned cultural clock (a very good condensed Rough Guide) we would turn up at each restaurant ten minutes before the rush, but still at a time the late-living Spanish found less funny than the 7pm slots filled by the Americans.

After throwing our cases at the bed in our hotel room we turned on our heels and made a BSG-line for the Boqueria. It didn’t disappoint these two Barca beginners and we quickly found a table in one of the many establishment around its fringe. At 5 o’clock it was a late lunch, even for the locals, but we happily washed down grilled octopus and prawns a la plancha with frosted bottles of cool cerveza, ignoring the rain.


   

















Artfully losing ourselves in the Gothic quarter we took in some gargoyles, the other Cathedral and followed our instincts towards the harbour. But by golly sightseeing is thirsty work; now it was time for another drink. Again the guidebook came up trumps and led us to a Xampanyeria (Cava bar) in an old garage in Barceloneta which served, unsurprisingly, cava, by the coupe. They had the BSG at cava, and they had me at coupe.

Can Paixano is a crowded, rowdy, standing-room only joint where you have to holler over the counter for your drinks at the perennially patient and smiling staff. The atmosphere is brilliant and the fizz and delicious hot entrepans and tapas are robust and apt foil to the sheer quantities of booze being quaffed: you have to order food with your drinks. The floor, strewn with discarded sandwich wrappers, testifies to this fact. There being no time for indecision you just choose anything from the huge wooden menu boards and hope for the best. We did and weren’t disappointed with plates of sizzling chorizo and morcilla. It’s as cheap as it is filthy at under a Euro for a glass of the house stuff (not surprisingly it is full of international students.) We’d had such fun that in our two-day stay, we made the trip twice.
















Then it was onwards, through the thunderstorms, to Cal Pep….