A spot of foraging up north

"Give you a reason on compulsion! If reasons were as plentiful as blackberries, I would give no man a reason upon compulsion, I." ~ Henry IV, Part I

If there is an ideal place in which to celebrate autumn, and everything nature brings with it, then Yorkshire is perhaps it. There are forests in abundance that are impersonating traffic lights with their leaves, turning yellow around the edges with a rim of burnished red. The breeze that whips your face as you climb a steep hill covered in heather has a bite to it that you wouldn't have felt a few weeks ago. Best of all, the gastronomic evidence of autumn's arrival is on display wherever you go, from the butchers advertising a brace of grouse or local pigeon to the blackberries that adorn stretches of roadside for miles, glistening and begging for someone to brave their thorny garrisons and pick them. As Shakespeare observed, blackberries are indeed plentiful. It would be a shame not to succumb to the bushes' proffering, and to leave such a versatile ingredient untouched.

I succumbed. And you can tell, because my hands are covered in scratches. Not only scratches, but little red lumps that itch annoyingly - I think nature was being a tad unfair when she decided to always place a thick patch of nettles in very close proximity to the juiciest-looking blackberries. Still, at least I have two big bags of berries to show for my labour. 

A slightly less successful quest involved the pursuit of the bilberry. These are like blueberries in appearance, but tarter and more flavoursome - your average supermarket blueberry, I find, more often tastes like a small capsule of flavourless banana than anything deserving of the name "berry", a word that carries pleasant associations of tartness, juiciness and sweetness. Bilberries are rarely cultivated; instead, you find them growing in the wild on small shrubs barely a foot high. They grow best on high ground and heathlands. Indeed, I was driven for fifteen minutes uphill this morning to "Crocodile Rock", a rock overlooking the Dales and so called because it looks like a crocodile with its mouth open. 

The reason behind this being that my mother had been waxing lyrical about bilberries, and their superiority to blueberries. She bought some in the deli up here last year for some extortionate price, but knew they were to be picked up by this rock. I was sent to harvest said berries if I could. 

After identifying the bilberry bushes using Google Images - they are everywhere, amongst the heather - I spent about half an hour sure that this couldn't be the right bush, even though the internet was adamant. There were no berries to be found. She had told me they are quite hard to spot, lying just underneath the leaves, but I combed through about fifty bushes and found nothing. I was just giving up, sure it was too late in the season (August to September) to find them, when I saw this:

This, at least, was proof that the bilberry was not a fictional construct designed to test my patience. I was a little bit elated, I must admit (tragic, isn't it? I really must get myself one of these life things, one of these days). Sure it could not be a one-off, I scoured the bushes again.

Another slight leap of the heart and spirits.

I imagine normally these bushes are festooned with berries, when the season is in full swing. I was clearly too late in the year; it took me two hours of pained scouring to gather barely a handful of berries. But the sheer joy and satisfaction when I saw one gleaming on the underside of a twig...I take pride in my little tupperware box of bilberries. There are probably enough to fill something about the size of a mini mince pie. The kind you get at Christmas drinks parties. I did feel bad having to tell my mother that the huge bag of berries I came home with did not, in fact, contain bilberries, but blackberries (I found loads on the way home) - her face fell when I presented the optimistically-sized box with its scattering of purple jewels. 

I've told her that she had better find some use for them, however small-scale, because I do not want my two hours of braving the cold, getting scratched hands, ferreting around in bushes and getting very odd looks from dog-walkers to be in vain. I think the £4 she paid for a bag back last August was a bargain, now that I know how much sheer effort it takes to harvest these elusive berries.

As for the blackberries, I think a pear and blackberry strudel, and a batch of apple and blackberry jam (using windfall apples from the tree in our garden back home) are on the cards.

A duck salad, and more figs

This is one of those "put many of my favourite things in a bowl together, stir, and hope it tastes nice" recipes. Couscous, parsley, fresh mint, coriander, pomegranate seeds, chopped pistachios, pomegranate molasses, lemon juice, and then the shredded meat from roasted duck legs, tossed with more pomegranate molasses before adding it to the couscous. It's delicious. Sliced rare duck breast would work well too, as would lamb. 

For dessert, poached figs and ice cream. These specimens were not quite luscious enough to eat raw with cheese, but simmering them for five minutes in a syrup of honey, saffron, orange flower water and cinnamon rendered them rather lovely. 

Aubergine cheesecake

Sounds bizarre, doesn't it? But when it comes from the pen (or rather, the keyboard, via the medium of Guardian Online) of the great Ottolenghi, one can't help but have faith. Faith did indeed pay off in this situation - the end result is delicious. A bit like a quiche, but without the pastry, and with the bonus of soft roasted aubergines and sharp tomatoes. 

Start by roasting two sliced aubergines with some oil and salt and pepper in a hot oven, until soft. Line an oven dish with oiled foil and arrange the aubergine slices across the bottom, filling the gaps with halved baby plum tomatoes. Sprinkle with fresh oregano (do you know how rare it is for a recipe to specify fresh oregano?! And how annoying this is, given that it grows completely wild in our garden, an untapped resource begging to be exploited?!) Then make the cheesecake mixture: whisk three eggs with some feta, creme fraiche (Ottolenghi says cream, but I had an open pot of creme fraiche that needed using), ricotta (Ottolenghi says cream cheese, but again, I had ricotta in need of use) and black pepper, and pour this over the aubergines. Bake for about 40 minutes until set, then leave to cool until it can be cut into pieces. I skipped this step as I was too hungry, but it is still nice with a slightly molten interior.

I reckon this basic recipe would work with most things - oven-roasted tomatoes on the top would be delicious, as would roasted red and yellow peppers (might try that one soon actually), bacon and spinach, caramelised onions...Lovely. Some sort of base, like a sweet cheesecake, might be nice too - made out of melted butter and breadcrumbs. Definitely a recipe to tweak at some point. Not that the original isn't yummy, of course.

Pasta stuffed with courgette and feta

I think I've finally mastered the art of stuffed pasta. I attempted something novel this evening in that I cut little circles out of pasta to make circular ravioli instead of square. It means there's more stuffing and less overlap of pasta round the edges that tastes of nothing. Which is definitely a good thing. I also changed my pasta dough recipe by omitting the tablespoon of water I normally add: it means the dough is more difficult to pass through the machine at first (it crumbles a bit), but after that it is infinitely easier to work with, and doesn't stick together. The eggs I used were laid by my Dad's colleague's hens, and they turned the dough a rather startlingly bright orange. 

I've long been a fan of a Nigel Slater recipe for courgette and feta cakes: saute spring onions with garlic and grated courgette until golden, then mix in feta, flour and dill and form into cakes, then fry. They are delicious - I'm not normally a fan of courgettes because they can often be watery and bitter, but somehow when mixed with dill and feta they take on a wonderful flavour. When you fry the cakes and get a lovely crispy outside and a soft inside where the feta has melted...food heaven.

It seemed an obvious candidate for stuffing pasta. I added pine nuts for a bit more texture, and served the pasta with a lemon, parsley and butter sauce. I figured a creamy sauce would be overkill given the feta in the stuffing; these lovely little ravioli (not the technical term I am sure, as I think ravioli are square, but I am too tired to look it up right now) taste great just with lemon, butter and parmesan. 

Sushi: a first attempt

Having recently developed a slight obsession with sushi, accompanied by a sinking feeling every time I hand over the best part of a fiver and receive a tiny box full of the stuff, I decided to try making my own. If one of the contestants on Junior Masterchef can do it, I figured, so can I. 

A trip to the oriental supermarket followed, and I returned laden with the following: sushi rice, pickled ginger, wasabi paste, miso soup, nori seaweed sheets, and even a bamboo sushi-rolling mat.

The rice is easy: soak in cold water for an hour, then put in a pan with twice as much water, bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes or so until all the water is absorbed. Then stir in a mixture of caster sugar, rice vinegar and salt, and leave to cool. It ends up incredibly glutinous and sticky - I have a feeling that the "sticky rice" you can order in oriental restaurants is just sushi rice. It's actually quite hard work to extract the amount you want from the entire mass in the pan at the end.

The type I decided to make is called makisushi: rice and filling inside a sheet of nori seaweed. To make this, you lay a sheet of seaweed down on the bamboo mat.

Put the rice on top with a little bit of wasabi paste spread over it (in future, I may skip this step and let people add their own wasabi as they eat it...it was a little too strong!)

Then add the filling - this one is smoked salmon and cucumber - and use the bamboo mat to roll the nori up around the rice. You can wet the end to seal it together, but I found it held together nicely without me needing to bother.

This one is "crab" (i.e. crab sticks, because I can't afford real crab, nor can I find any in Cambridge) with avocado mashed with lime juice. 

And finally, a filling of smoked mackerel mashed with roasted, skinned red peppers (which, by the way, tastes absolutely amazing on its own and would make a beautiful sandwich):

So you're left with nice long rolls of sushi, which you can then slice (using a very sharp serrated knife) into rounds as long as you like - shorter is better for ease of eating, I found.

I think they look rather stylish laid out on plates with some pickled ginger and wasabi sauce. I also found some miso soup in the oriental supermarket to go with them. Some edamame beans would have been nice - there are few things more satisfying than podding them yourself straight into your mouth - but unfortunately I couldn't find any fresh ones. Next time, perhaps. Next time I also want to do it properly and use raw fish, maybe once I'm back in Oxford and have access to a proper fishmonger. I'd like to try nigiri sushi, which is just blocks of sushi rice with a strip of raw fish laid out on top. 

Not bad for a first attempt though, I think. And the best part? I still have at least two lunch-sized servings left, with no need to hand over my hard-earned cash to M&S.

Ottolenghi's "One-pan wonder"

I love this man. A rather outlandish statement, perhaps, seeing as the great Yotam and I have never met, but if one's cooking is an expression of one's personality, then I have reason to believe I would like him very much. This is delicious. Surprisingly so; I wasn't sure yoghurt and lemon juice on top of raw tahini and eggs would taste very nice. However, Ottolenghi's recipes have yet to let me down and this one was no exception. One problem though is that the raw potatoes take forever to cook in the pan, and by the time they are edible the onions are burnt. I would par-boil them first. Other than that - yum. I made some flatbread which I cooked on a griddle pan to go with it, but pitta bread or even a white baguette would go nicely as well - you need something to soak up all the lovely yoghurt, tomato and tahini mixture.

Pork and lemon meatballs

There are few things more satisfying than spaghetti with meatballs. The crispiness of the seared outside, the softness of the seasoned meat in the middle, all enveloped in a nest of pasta, tomato sauce and lashings of cheese. I prefer this version to the more traditional beef; pork mince is lighter than beef and, when coupled with lemon and parsley, produces something quite refreshing rather than something that will make you want to lie down immediately after finishing it. 

The recipe is based on a Nigel Slater creation. He suggests adding chopped anchovies to the mixture; I heartily agree (they give everything so much more depth of flavour), but unfortunately Jon does not like anchovies, therefore they were banned from the mix. Alas. 

For enough meatballs for four people, mix 500g minced pork with salt and pepper, 70g breadcrumbs, the zest and juice of a lemon, a big handful of chopped parsley, a teaspoon of dried thyme and two tablespoons grated parmesan (and 8 chopped anchovy fillets if you're lucky enough to be cooking for someone who appreciates their salty goodness). Shape into little balls. You can pan-fry them, but I prefer to cook them in the oven, a) to guarantee they're fully cooked through and b) to guarantee they're crispy on all sides. Put them in the oven at 180C for about 15 minutes - keep checking as you don't want them to dry out.

For the tomato sauce, just saute a chopped red onion and three crushed cloves of garlic in some olive oil until soft. Add a couple of tins of chopped tomatoes and some tomato puree, a pinch of sugar and a dash of Worcester sauce, and simmer until thick. Season to taste and serve over the meatballs on top of spaghetti (or penne, for that matter). An immensely satisfying dinner.

(Thank you to Jon for the photos).

The Middle (F)east

If New York is where one travels to shop, the Caribbean is where one travels to sunbathe, and South America is where one travels on one’s Gap Yah, then the Middle East is where one travels to eat. Or so I firmly believed when I set off there three weeks ago, and even more firmly believe having returned, undoubtedly fatter and with cravings for flatbread.

I fell in love with Moroccan cuisine when I first inhaled the scent of a lamb tagine. Admittedly it was in England, in the kitchen of the restaurant where I then worked, but it sparked a love affair that did indeed take me to Morocco and to more magical tagines (amongst other delights). Having worked my way through one Moroccan cookbook, I purchased the beautiful Arabesque by Claudia Roden, a guide to the cuisines of not only Morocco but of Turkey and Lebanon too. It’s a wonderful book, with notes on the culture of the three countries and how this affects the way they cook. A lot of the middle eastern food I make derives from Roden’s recipes.

So, having read Roden’s book cover to cover, and followed it up with the Lonely Planet’s section on Middle Eastern food, I set off to Turkey, Syria and Jordan with high hopes (and a large appetite...but that’s nothing new).

First stop, Istanbul. I found uttering the words “Shall we go and get a kebab?” an alien experience, having never succumbed to that student favourite in England: unidentifiable meat carved into an unnatural cone shape, dripping in fat and crammed into a pitta bread with some flaccid lettuce. This is a sorry state of affairs, because the authentic kebab is a beautiful thing, and one undeserving of such a massacre. The main difference between a Turkish and an English kebab is that the Turkish rotating cone of meat has visible layers of meat on it. You can believe that it is real, unprocessed meat that has simply been pressed together into a slab and spit-roasted, unlike the slick, greyish mass that graces kebab vans all over England. This is most obvious for the chicken kebabs, which I actually preferred to their lamb counterparts. In Goreme, Cappadocia, I ate an Iskender kebab, which is marinated chicken served on top of torn pitta bread in a spicy tomato sauce. In Istanbul, a lamb doner kebab in pitta bread with tomato and, oddly, chips. Why they put chips in the bread I am not entirely sure, but the kebab sans chips was very good. Speaking of lamb, I also sampled what the menu translated as “Turkish pizza”: flatbread topped with minced lamb and spices. Not a bad lunch for 2.50 lira, or £1.25.

Istanbul was also our first experience of the Middle East during Ramadan. The two main things I noticed were the increasing irritability and tiredness of taxi drivers and waiters, and the overwhelming sense of being stared at every time you lifted a bottle of water to your lips in the street. Much as I wanted to placate the locals and let nothing pass my lips from dawn until dusk, being unused to the heat, and doing a lot of walking, meant that this was never going to happen. We did, however, find ourselves inadvertently experiencing Ramadan, Muslim-style. Arriving at a kofte restaurant recommended in my guidebook, we were greeted by a large queue out of the door. We were eventually ushered into the bustling restaurant and seated at a table for six with food and drink already laid out on it: bread, salad, water. Puzzled, we eventually realised that everyone else was sitting, staring at their food and waiting for the announcement that they could finally eat it. We decided to wait too, though the waiters said we didn’t have to. We finished the salad, and they brought us steaming bowls of soup (lemon and chickpea, I think), followed by plates of kofte (minced meat and spices) with pickled peppers. The kofte were delicious, and it was great to be sitting eating in a place with so much atmosphere.

Some other excellent Turkish delights included imam bayeldi, a dish of slow-cooked aubergine in olive oil with tomatoes and spices. It translates as “the imam fainted”, and there are various theories as to why, the main one being because the dish was so delicious, although I prefer the theory that he fainted when he discovered just how much olive oil the dish contained (aubergines really are the sponge of the vegetable world when it comes to soaking up oil). In Goreme we ate a local speciality, gozleme, which is flatbread stuffed with various fillings and cooked on a griddle. I had one with minced meat and spices, and another with cheese. Another local speciality there is the testat, or “pottery kebab”. This is a dish of meat cooked inside a sealed terracotta pot, which is broken open for you at the table – quite a spectacle to behold (see left). You have to order it at least three hours in advance to allow for the slow cooking time. We ate two, a meat one and a chicken one, at a lovely little restaurant where we sat on carpets around a low table and ordered half the menu, including a dish of baked okra, more gozleme, and an aubergine stew. I suppose it is the Turkish equivalent of a tagine. Also in Goreme we sampled borek, which is a coil of filo pastry with various fillings, oven baked and served with two sauces: spicy tomato, and yoghurt. I had the nazar, or minced meat, version. Possibly one of my favourite dishes from Turkey.

Of course, no mention of Turkish cuisine is complete without a nod to baklava, the ultimate in sugary goodness. I couldn’t even wait 24 hours to sample some after arriving in Istanbul: we quickly tracked down a baklava shop, and the friendly owner gave us a mixed box to take away. I’ve sampled many different forms of this teeth-crumbling confectionary, including milk and hazelnut, pistachio and chocolate, walnut, and custard, but my favourite remains plain pistachio. There is nothing as delicious as that first bite of syrupy, buttery, crispy, wafer-thin pastry. Although the subsequent bites are pretty good too, as I discovered when I ate five pieces in quick succession. Soon followed the greatest sugar headache of my eating life so far. It was worth it. I returned to that baklava shop three times. I ate variations in Damascus that were nice but not as syrupy (including an interesting triangle-shaped one that was filled with custard and made with vermicelli soaked in syrup round the outside), and in Amman that featured custard as well as nuts, but the Turkish variety remains my favourite.

On to Syria, where prices halve and the amount of food doubles. The way to eat in Syria is mezze, all the way. Although all the restaurants seem to offer an odd mix of French-influenced dishes, my advice would be to order as much mezze as takes your fancy, and enjoy attempting to finish it all (I guarantee you won’t – even with six of us, we struggled). All our Syrian meals began with a big basket of flatbread and several dishes of mezze, and often ended with a complimentary platter of fruit, which we were often far too full for. There was also an occasion where some Syrians celebrating a birthday at the next table shared their enormous chocolate mousse cake with us, and we soon wished we hadn’t eaten so much flatbread. We had mohamara, a dip made of red peppers, walnuts and pomegranate molasses; moutabal, burnt aubergine mixed with yoghurt; baba ganoush, burnt aubergine mixed with olive oil, garlic, peppers and tahini; hummus (which needs no explanation, although hummus beiruti, hummus with meat and pine nuts on top, is a lovely variation); fattoush (salad of vegetables, toasted pitta bread and sumac); tabbouleh (bulgar wheat, parsley, and lots of lemon juice); beef stir-fried with mushrooms and onions; deep-fried mushrooms with garlic dip...

One of my favourite Syrian mezze dishes is kibbeh, which are lemon-shaped patties made of bulgar wheat, minced meat, pine nuts/walnuts and spices, and deep fried. They are crunchy and incredibly moreish. Apparently before the invention of food processors, Syrian women used to pound the meat and wheat together using special pestles and mortars, and you would be able to hear the grinding all through the villages; it was the test of a cook’s skill. I think every meal I ate in Syria featured kibbeh of some description. Later when I found them in Amman, it was like some sort of homecoming.

Another dish I was keen to try was fatta, a breakfast dish consisting of meat and pitta bread layered in a tahini sauce. However, it wasn’t quite what I expected; I imagined a thick layer of meat and break with a dollop of sauce on top. What arrived was a huge bowl containing some chunks of chicken, flakes of bread, and an absolutely enormous amount of tahini, garnished with a thick layer of olive oil and toasted pine nuts (see left). The first few mouthfuls were delicious, but the sheer amount of rich sauce and total fat content was overwhelming, and rendered the dish unfinishable. Not something I could eat for breakfast every day if I didn’t want to be lifted out of bed by a crane – I would indeed be fatter if I ate fatta with any regularity. Luckily we had also ordered saaj, a Syrian sandwich made of flatbread with various fillings: one of my favourites is za’atar, a thyme and sesame seed spice mix which is mixed with olive oil and spread on bread. I also bought an enormous bag of the stuff from a street vendor for 50p, and thought with dismay of the same sized tub I had purchased in Oxford for £3 a few months earlier. Later in Amman I found a za’atar pizza; bread spread with thyme and olive oil doesn’t sound like it could be particularly addictive, but it really is.

One of the joys of Syrian food is its prevalence on every street. As we struggled through Aleppo with our bags, having arrived after an epic journey from Turkey, confused by the Arabic street signs and unable to find our hotel, we passed one of the main food-selling streets. Even amidst all the chaos, I was entranced by the huge piles of fruit and vegetables; more aubergines than I’ve ever seen in my life; a bakery bringing huge trays of freshly-baked bread out onto the street; vendors selling cheese in strange knot shapes, piled up in huge vats; a man forming chickpeas into falafel and deep-frying them; mountains of dates, dark and glistening. In Damascus they eat shwarma, the Syrian equivalent of a doner kebab; marinated meat sliced and piled into flatbread with a garlicky yoghurt sauce. The people in Aleppo are the friendliest I have ever encountered; wherever we went, we were offered handfuls of food. We passed a shop selling Syrian sweets, and were immediately inundated with samples to try, including some delicious marzipan and pistachio sweets, and little slabs of apricot paste – apricots pureed with sugar and set like toffee. I was still finding samples in my bag days later. In Damascus you can find candied fruit for £2.50 a kilo. I recalled my trip to Nice a year ago, where a box of four small candied clementines cost the best part of 10 euros, and purchased a large wooden box of candied oranges, apples, dates, lemons and plums.

In Aleppo I attempted to buy some figs from a street vendor (there they were, piled up high, properly ripe and oozing ambrosial syrup, a sight you will never see in England, where figs arrive underripe, rock hard and woolly-tasting, and are best consigned to the bin), only to be led down the back of the market to the vendor’s friend, who requested to have a photo taken with me on his phone. After obliging two other Syrian men with photos, the vendor piled up a tray with figs, spent a long time selecting a perfect bunch of grapes, and then presented me with the whole thing for free. And oh, those figs tasted good. On the way out of the market we bought some bread; I expected it to be hard and rather bland-tasting from the way it looked, but it turned out to be the most delicious brioche-like creation, with a thick layer of sugar crystals on top. Also divine was the date-stuffed brioche loaf which we succumbed to as well. You simply have to look curiously at any food item in Aleppo to be obligingly presented with a sample: we nibbled bits of falafel, date bread, dates, apricots, pancakes, fresh pistachios, having set out to sightsee rather than eat. Perhaps, being unable to eat themselves because of Ramadan, the locals were enjoying the food vicariously through us. Either that, or they are just genuinely hospitable, generous people who are proud to show off their food. And so they should be.

Food is quite literally everywhere in Syria, a fact that was driven home when I saw a man cycling down Aleppo’s manic roads with a huge carcass strapped to the back of his bike. It was probably a sheep, and had been skinned but otherwise left intact, and there it was just hanging off the back of his bike. Similarly, a walk through the meat section of the market is enough to turn our delicate English stomachs, as you see fish writhing in pits on the ground, waiting to be killed, and whole carcasses hanging up in windows, as well as sheep’s heads piled up high, and various entrails. It really does drive home how sterile our shopping experience is in England, where meat is packaged in plastic with very little to link it to the animal it originated from. Unlike in England, there is a real sense of abundance to food shopping in Syria; everything is piled up high in huge bags or crates, and stall holders will grab handfuls of dates, spices, fruit, vegetables, cheeses, pistachios, and pile them into bags for you. Buying things in small quantities raises eyebrows, as I discovered – clearly everybody was shopping for the breaking of the Ramadan fast, and therefore quantity was a priority.

Breakfast on our first morning in Aleppo opened our eyes to the delightfully named “King of the Vitamin”, one in a long line of Syrian juice bars that I am missing greatly now I have returned home and find a small bottle of smoothie costing about £3. You could smell the fruit hanging up outside these stalls metres away. They will chop, peel and juice, and present you with an enormous tankard of fresh fruit smoothie for the absurd cost of around 50p. My favourite was a pink-coloured mixture of (I think) banana, orange, strawberry and kiwi. They also sell marinated cheese paninis for 25p; the cheese was halloumi-like in texture but tasted like feta. Better than any panini you’ll find in the UK, I guarantee. You can present the vendor with an empty 1.5litre bottle, and have it filled with fresh orange juice, squeezed before your eyes, for £1.50. Found on restaurant menus everywhere is a “lemon and mint” drink, which is basically still lemonade mixed with fresh mint. It sounds odd, but is incredibly delicious and immensely refreshing in Syria’s 35+ degrees C. Also found on the streets is a curious creation that looks and tastes a bit like Ribena, and I believe is made with water, sugar, ice and dried berries. I was sort of forced into accepting one by a street vendor, and was very glad I had done, especially as it contained lots of ice and I was still acclimatising to the massive increase in temperature between Turkey and Syria.

And then to Jordan, which seems to have a lot of food in common with Syria. Here we finally sampled proper falafel, after being unable to find it in Damascus due to street vendors being closed for Ramadan. We sat down at a “restaurant” in Amman that was really more of a fast food stall that spilled out onto the street (cockroaches scuttling over the ground all part of the experience). A man approached carrying a large metal bowl from which he scooped handfuls of falafel onto a napkin in the middle of the plastic table (there was no cutlery in sight). We were then given a huge basket of flatbread and two bowls of dip: one was hummus, the other fuul (an Egyptian mix of fava beans and spices). Later the waiter brought six steaming glasses of mint tea, sweet enough to cause instant tooth decay. The total cost: £1 each. The falafel was delicious: small, crunchy and incredibly addictive. Also good was a meal we had at “Cairo Restaurant”, which was just barbecued chicken served with bread soaked in the spicy cooking juices, and rice. Simple but immensely satisfying after a seven hour border crossing by bus. Another dish I was urged to try by Lonely Planet was mensaf, a Bedouin dish of lamb spit-roasted and basted with spices and served with rice and a yoghurt sauce. We went to a restaurant where the menu was entirely in Arabic, so the easiest option was to just ask for mensaf. It arrived, a big bowl of yellow rice topped with a piece of slow cooked lamb, tender enough to eat with a spoon, and a big bowl of rich yoghurt sauce. No one managed to finish the dish, such was its richness. Delicious, though. 

In Aqaba I had to try the sayadiah, a local dish of fish served with spicy rice and caramelised onions, and a tomato sauce. It was enormous and wonderful; the fish had been battered and fried before being placed on top of a mound of fragrant rice. Other good things eaten by the Red Sea included a dish of labneh, creamy cheese spread on a plate and topped with olive oil, crushed garlic and walnuts. I could still taste the garlic several days later, but it was worth it; so delicious mopped up with flatbread. Mufaraka potatoes with egg was a pleasant surprise; it was a sort of mixed up Spanish omelette, cooked diced potatoes fried in spices with beaten egg. The owner of our hotel on our last night presented us with a plate of home-made baklava; it was just as good as the stuff I had in Turkey, possibly even better for being free. It followed a nice dish of grilled fish, which tasted wonderful after a hard day’s snorkelling (and probably observing said fish swimming around the coral reef...)

And now I am home, decanting my za’atar into a jar and flicking through Claudia Roden’s book to find recipes for everything I have eaten over the last two and a half weeks. No doubt tomorrow’s trip to Tesco will be a depressing affair, and I will be dismayed at the paucity of fresh fruit and vegetables, the price of smoothies, the meat in plastic trays and the lack of friendly vendors offering me pieces of falafel or handfuls of pistachios to sample. On the  plus side, there are several countries that are no doubt eagerly awaiting me and my stomach. Next stop, Lebanon, methinks. 

More Ottolenghi, and a medley of berries

I realise as I write this that I have made quite a lot of risotto recently. I think it is turning into a bit of a habit; I just love the depth of flavour you can get from a good risotto. I think it is also to do with my parmesan addiction: anything you can grate the stuff liberally over is going down well at the moment. I had also been asked to cook something vegetarian for dinner, and risotto is always a good way to make people forget that their meal lacks meat, because it makes up for it with lots of flavour.

Naturally, I turned to Ottolenghi's Plenty, my favourite vegetarian cookbook. This lemon and aubergine risotto caught my eye, because I love aubergines and the idea of using roasted aubergine flesh in a risotto intrigued me. It's just a basic risotto but with lemon zest and juice added to it, with roasted aubergine (put under a very hot grill until blackened then cut in half and scoop out the flesh) stirred in and chopped sauteed aubergine sprinkled on top. Next time I will use more aubergines; I used three smallish ones for six people but I think more wouldn't hurt. 

For dessert, a white chocolate and vanilla mousse with summer fruits. The mousse is Green & Blacks vanilla white chocolate, milk, and vanilla extract, set with egg whites. The fruits are a medley of redcurrants, blackcurrants, blueberries, peaches, strawberries, raspberries, cherries and small plums macerated in vanilla sugar. It could almost trick you into thinking it was healthy. 

A salad to wake you up, and dessert heaven

I was going to start this post by saying that the above pear tart is the best dessert I have had in ages/my new favourite dessert. But my boyfriend cruelly mocked me yesterday for apparently starting all my blog posts (or at least those that are dessert-related) with that phrase, so in defiance I am not going to use such an opening. I will instead say that this pear tart is simply "a dessert worth making". (Even though it is in fact one of my new favourite desserts. Sshh...)

The recipe came from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cookery, a book I have only recently discovered amid my mother's recipe book collection. It is quite an old one, I think, and has no photos, but does have some charming illustrations and is a complete bible of Italian food. It taught me how to make pasta - quite an accolade - and has all the information you could ever need about Italian ingredients, how to match pasta to sauces, how to make a proper risotto... The recipe for "A farm wife's fresh pear tart" caught my eye, as the words "pear tart" are generally quite likely to do in any circumstance. Better still, it involved no faffing around making pastry. You simply take about a kilo of pears (I used conference), peel, core and slice them, then fold them into a batter of eggs, milk, flour and sugar. Pour into a tin greased and dusted with breadcrumbs, stud with cloves, and bake for about 45 minutes. A sort of pear clafoutis, I suppose, but more fruity than cakey. I could stress how incredibly delicious it is, warm from the oven, with vanilla ice cream, but I am now wary of saying such things thanks to Jon. So, I will just say, try it yourself. Ask me if you want the recipe.

Preceding this dessert I made a salad from Ottolenghi's first cookbook. I am beginning to think that anything he creates is guaranteed to be mouthwateringly delicious; I've never had an average Ottolenghi recipe yet. Sometimes the list of ingredients may strike me as a bit bizarre, and I find it hard to imagine how it would taste. This was one such recipe. It involves roasting a chicken (easy), then making a salad using three types of rice: basmati, wild and brown. To this you add chopped spring onions, sauteed whole onion, chopped red chilli, loads of mint and coriander, chopped rocket, and a dressing made from the chicken roasting juices, sesame oil, Thai fish sauce, olive oil and lemon juice. The result is truly delicious: it has a kick from the chilli and is quite sharp from the lemon juice and fish sauce, but you end up with beautifully moist rice from the chicken juices and then tasty pieces of chicken meat scattered throughout. Not a difficult dish to make and well worth the effort it takes to separately cook three types of rice. Yotam himself remarks that it is "delicious and nutritious". I could not agree more.

An unusual pasta sauce

Generally when pasta sauces involve meat, it is normally minced meat or finely ground meat. However, last night I made a sort of stew to use up some lovely braising beef from the Yorkshire butchers, and to satisfy a pasta craving I had been nursing for a couple of days, thought I would serve it with pasta. I finely shredded the large chunks of beef so they'd stick more easily to the pasta, and the pasta became coated in the lovely braising liquid, containing cinnamon, cloves and coriander. I suppose you could serve it with couscous or mash, or even rice, but there is something very satisfying about the combination of pasta and aromatic shreds of beef and red peppers. Pappardelle is, I think, the best choice of pasta here because it's large enough for the sauce to cling to all the strands, but rigatoni might work well too, or those giant pasta shells you can get (I imagine the sauce would fill up the shells nicely once given a good stir).

Recipe (to serve 4-5): finely slice about 5 onions and saute them until soft in a pan. Remove and set aside. Add two sliced red peppers and saute until soft. Remove to a separate plate. Add 900g stewing beef and brown in batches. Return all the beef to the pan and add the onions, 4 cloves, a cinnamon stick, a tsp ground coriander and a tsp ground black pepper plus a generous grinding of salt. Pour over 900ml beef stock and bring to the boil. Cover, turn the heat down and simmer for a couple of hours. After this time, remove the lid and reduce until the liquid has a sauce-like consistency (I used some arrowroot to thicken it more). While doing this, remove the beef chunks from the pan and, using two forks, finely shred the meat before returning to the pan. Return the red peppers to the pan until they have softened. Serve with pasta.

Beetroot and goat's cheese risotto

Dramatic-looking food. The addition of grated beetroot to a normal risotto recipe turns it alarmingly sanguine, contrasting nicely with snowy white clouds of goat's cheese crumbled over the top when serving. It needs quite a lot of cheese to set off the beetroot's rather cloying sweetness, and a few handfuls of rocket stirred in at the last minute would probably be a good addition too. 

Thanks to Jon for the lovely photos. 

Duck with pomegranate

Genuinely one of the best lunches I have had in a long time. Although I probably say that quite a lot, I definitely mean it. I love days when I cook from a recipe that I am not sure about and sounds like an odd mixture of ingredients, and it ends up tasting amazing. They had lovely Gressingham duck breasts on special offer in Sainsburys the other day, and I found a pomegranate in the reduced section in Tesco yesterday (£1.25 full price for a fruit the size of a small orange?! I miss the days when they were five for a pound at Oxford market...fortunately I got this one for 50p, and it made me a little bit happy). I know duck goes well with pomegranates from my excessive reading of various recipe books (and because duck and sharp fruit is a pretty standard combination - cherries, quinces, oranges...) so I did a quick google and found a recipe that sounded quite nice.

It was. The duck breasts are coated with honey and pomegranate molasses and pan-fried then finished off in the oven, and served with a pilaff of bulgar wheat, pistachios, dried cherries, red onion, parsley and mint. Sounds like a combination that could never work, but the end result is truly delicious and I urge you to try it. I think the secret is the pomegranate molasses: I bought a bottle in the Moroccan deli in Oxford a few months ago and ever since have been finding recipes that use it. It's just pomegranate juice boiled down to make a sticky syrup, and has a wonderful sweet-and-sour quality to it that enhances everything you put it in. I made a really good Ottolenghi recipe for sardines stuffed with couscous that had pomegranate molasses in it, and also an aubergine and chickpea stew. Its flavour is addictive and intriguing: people always ask "what is it that makes it sort of sweet and sour?" It's a bit like orange flower water in that respect: it adds a flavour note that isn't too overpowering but somehow gives the dish something extra.

It's lovely in this, mixed with caramelised red onion and sour cherries and used to flavour the pilaff, and also rubbed onto the duck to give it a lovely crispy, tangy coating. The duck stays wonderfully moist (hate that word, but there is no alternative really) - I have cooked duck breasts a few times but these were definitely the best I have ever eaten, which may be down to finishing them off in the oven rather than drying them out by cooking in a pan. Although, that said, I could have eaten the pilaff all on its own - I think the key is using vegetable stock (Marigold bouillon powder in this case) to cook it in. The scattering of fresh pomegranate seeds at the end brings everything together, and also makes the dish look beautiful. A wonderfully aromatic, sweet, sour, savoury plate of delights. 

Risotto, two ways

We sell a beautiful risotto at the restaurant where I work. It's wild mushroom, and served with parmesan shavings and a drizzle of truffle oil. As with anything containing truffles, the smell emanating from the plates is just sublime. It's enough to make me hungry even if I've started my shift feeling full. So, on my only night off and cooking opportunity last week, the craving got the better of me and I just had to make risotto.


I'm still excited by all the peas and broad beans around (how tragic that sounds...oh well), and thought they'd make a more summery risotto than truffles. So I just made a basic risotto (saute a finely chopped onion and two finely chopped garlic cloves in olive oil until soft, add 75g risotto rice per person and a knob of butter, stir for a minute or so and add a glug of white wine, wait until absorbed then add hot chicken stock a ladleful at a time until the rice is cooked but still has a bit of bite) but cooked some broad beans in the stock and then added some pea pods to it for extra pea flavour, and stirred in some fresh thyme, basil and chopped chives at the end. Then in went the cooked broad beans (half of them double-podded, the rest left) and a big bowl of fresh peas, until the peas were cooked. To this I added some bacon that I had cut into little pieces and fried until crispy. Lovely with lots of grated parmesan.

Cold risotto is not one of the most appealing leftovers; no matter what method you use, it never really reheats very well. The alternative, however, is excellent: shape balls of risotto with your hands into little cakes, coat in beaten egg and dip in breadcrumbs, then shallow fry until crispy on the outside and soft and gooey in the middle. The Sicilians call their version of this arancini because they look like oranges: they shape rice into balls and deep fry, often putting some sort of filling like mince or chopped mushrooms in the middle. I ate one in Palermo that was almost the size of my head. It was the messiest thing I have ever eaten, given that I had only one flimsy paper napkin with which to stem the flow of oil emanating from it, but it was delicious.

You can stuff the risotto cakes with pieces of mozzarella, or other melting cheese, or whatever you like, really, depending on the flavour of the original risotto. I left mine as it was, but put some ham and parmesan shavings on top. Broad beans, ham and parmesan: perfect combination. I love the crispy coating that forms on the outside of the cakes in contrast with the soft centre. Yum.

Gooseberry and elderflower sorbet

There are plenty of green things around at this time of year to get excited about. Broad beans and fresh peas, as discussed in a previous post. Globe artichokes - possibly the most labour-intensive ingredient of them all, but immensely satisfying to prepare. The pale, satiny husks of corn on the cob. Asparagus, if you can still find some hanging around. Gooseberries.

Gooseberries have quite a short season, and are one of the only fruits that you won't find all year round, having been shipped in from Kenya or Brazil or something. This, I think, makes them extra special, and something to be cherished while they last. I've already used them to make a sauce for grilled mackerel (a classic combination, and one I was pleased to see featuring on Great British Menu this year). I am also planning a gooseberry meringue pie, a gooseberry and amaretti biscuit fool, and a gooseberry cheesecake. Today, though, sorbet seemed like a good option - not too labour intensive and not too filling, given that I intended to eat a sizable portion of the aforementioned rye bread for lunch (and did. It was great).

Gooseberries and elderflowers are another classic combination, and work very well together in this sorbet. You could make it with real elderflowers if you can find them, but elderflower cordial is a good shortcut. Just get 500g gooseberries, and top and tail them. Put 150ml water in a pan with 120g sugar, and heat for 5 minutes or so until the sugar has dissolved and it has become syrupy. Add the gooseberries and cook until they are soft. Allow to cool before pureéing in a blender. Add some elderflower cordial to taste (I didn't measure, just put in a couple of big glugs of the stuff, but it depends how strong your cordial is, so taste it as you go). Churn in an ice cream maker until frozen, then put in the freezer. Simple as that. 

I like my sorbets quite sharp, but you can add more sugar if you don't like tart fruit. This is lovely on its own, but also good with vanilla ice cream, or a handful of fresh raspberries. It would probably also be quite good with a rich dessert, like a vanilla cheesecake. 

The best bread in the world?

I made this black pepper rye bread today. I am truly convinced that it is the best bread I have ever eaten. It has everything I look for in a good loaf (yes, I do have a set of required qualities for a good loaf - I am that obsessed with carbohydrates): a chewy crust, the crunch of seeds, dense and doughy in the middle, and dark and nutty. It is yet another recipe from Dan Lepard, and I think the rest of my life will be greatly improved due to the fact that I decided to try it out. I had it, as he recommends, with cream cheese and smoked salmon. A perfect combination. It is also good with the smoked mackerel pâté I made a few weeks back, and, for that matter, with chicken pâté. So delicious and so perfectly textured...I cannot even begin to describe. BAKE IT, dear readers.

Tourte de Blette

I came across this pastry creation on holiday in Nice last summer. We ate dinner sitting outside at this tiny little restaurant (I believe it was called Lou Balico), and gorged ourselves on the 25 euro set menu. I remember eating delicious deep-fried aubergine slices, a salad with bacon and goat's cheese, and a plate of roast lamb served, rather bizzarely, with spaghetti and pesto. Except no ordinary spaghetti and pesto: we were given the pestle and mortar from which to help ourselves - it weighed a ton and was about as big as my head. Everything was delicious, but by the time dessert came around I was too full to even contemplate it. The waiter explained that the dessert of the day was "tourte de blette". Blette, he translated, is what we call Swiss chard.

Weird? I thought so. I ordered ice cream, and to this day regret it: the tourte arrived, and turned out to be possibly the most delicious dessert I have ever sampled. The pastry was flaky and covered in sugar crystals, and the filling was sublime: it didn't taste at all like chard, more like sweet apples. It had raisins and nuts in it, and I wished I had ordered one instead of my ice cream. Instead I had to be content with nibbles from one that wasn't mine. Alas.

So when I found a beautiful bunch of rainbow chard at the market a couple of days ago, I just had to give it a go. I'd never really tried or cooked with chard before: it's not that easy to find. However, it keeps cropping up in Yotam Ottolenghi's writing, which makes me think it must be worth tasting, as he is one of my culinary idols. It tastes rather like spinach, but looks much more beautiful. After trawling the internet for a recipe (again, not easy, as most are in French and even then they're not ubiquitous), I settled upon one that looked good.

So. I made pastry, which I have never done before but which was pretty easy as I used the food processor. It's quite a rich pastry and on its own tastes like shortbread - definitely no bad thing - I've been breaking bits off the pie and nibbling them all day (dangerous, just leaving it out on top of the counter...). The filling was my entire bunch of chard, boiled for 15 minutes, drained, squeezed dry and chopped (it's almost sad to see how little a huge bunch of greens becomes when the water is squeezed out). To this I added some raisins soaked in rum, some toasted pine nuts, some sugar, the zest of a lemon and a couple of eggs. This mixture went into a pastry-lined pie dish, some sliced apples went on top, and then the pastry lid went on, brushed with beaten egg. Into the oven for half an hour. It was very easy to make.

I ate it with vanilla ice cream last night, and also for lunch today. It was nice yesterday, but oddly is even better for sitting around all day. I think the flavours have improved. The recipe I used suggested laying the apples on top of the chard mixture; I think it would be improved by mixing them in. Once you get past the slightly odd sensation of sweet spinach, the whole thing is delicious - almost like rhubarb and apple. Left for a day, it loses all spinachy-ness and just tastes curiously delicious and very moreish. The raisins and pine nuts are what makes it, I think. A very bizarre sounding dessert, but delicious and one that I think I will make again - but change the recipe slightly to what I have suggested  below. An immensely satisfying foray into Provencal cuisine, I think. I am really pleased with the end result.

So, here is my recipe:

For the pastry, sift 420g flour (I used self-raising because I had run out of plain, and it made a lovely light pastry), 100g sugar and a pinch of salt together. Rub in 225g butter (can be done in seconds using a food processor). Add the juice of half a lemon and 2 eggs, and knead briefly to form a dough. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least an hour.

For the filling, blanch 900g swiss chard (or a mixture of chard and spinach) in boiling water for around 15 minutes, until the stalks are tender (less time for spinach). Drain in a colander and, when cool, squeeze out as much water as you can with your hands. Then chop finely. Mix with the zest of a lemon, 40g toasted pine nuts, 100g sugar, 2 eggs, 1-2 cooking apples (peeled, cored and finely chopped), and then 50g raisins which you've boiled in 2tbsp rum until they've soaked up all the rum (you could probably use brandy or kirsch or whatever, depending on what you have alcohol-wise). 

Roll out two thirds of the pastry to line a buttered pie dish (mine was oval and about 30cm diameter. You have to sort of guess what size you'll need. Spoon the filling into the pastry crust and roll out the remaining pastry to form a lid. Join the two together by pinching with your fingers. Use a fork to make patterns around the edge, and prick holes in the top. Brush the top with beaten egg and bake in a pre-heated oven at 170C for 30 minutes until golden. Eat warm with vanilla ice cream.

Veal ravioli with a mushroom cream sauce

I bought a pack of minced veal from Boccadon Farm Veal at the Real Food Festival with the intention of using it to stuff ravioli, and finally got round to it this evening. I just browned the veal with chopped red onion, garlic and rosemary, added a splash of red wine and let it simmer. This went into the ravioli, and I made a mushroom sauce - sliced mushrooms sauteed with garlic and thyme, a splash of white wine added and reduced, and then some creme fraiche and parsley stirred in. Delicious with some grated parmesan on top. It was as if I had combined two of the best pasta dishes - bolognaise and carbonara. 

Broad beans are sleeping in their blankety beds

The title of this post refers to a true musical classic: the song "Cauliflowers fluffy, and cabbages green", sung at that esteemed educational establishment, Milton Road Infant School, Cambridge. I remember it being a highlight of my childhood, and it is possibly to thank for my appreciation of all things vegetable. I always remember the line about broad beans in their blankety beds, and a more accurate gastronomic observation, I think, has yet to be found. Because broad beans do indeed sleep in their blankety beds: the inside of the pod is soft as a feather. There is something rather nice about all the little beans snuggled up inside in their green duvet.


I love broad beans, and was rather excited when I spied a tray at my greengrocer's. This excitement swiftly doubled when I noticed the tray of fresh peas next to it. Yes, you can buy both frozen all year round, but there are few food-related tasks more satisfying than podding fresh peas or broad beans, and I whiled away a happy fifteen minutes doing so (though had I been cooking for more people than just myself, it may have become tedious...who knows). You feel you've put more effort into a dish if you've laboriously podded its ingredients.

Broad beans and peas are lovely with ham or bacon, but unfortunately someone had stolen the last of the ham from the fridge, otherwise I would have just boiled them, tossed them with some garlic oil and cubes of ham and eaten it like that. Instead, I went for something just as good, replacing the salty ham or bacon with feta and adding some couscous for the simple reason that I am mildly addicted to its texture. I also added some parmesan: broad beans and pecorino is a classic Italian combination, and parmesan is the closest thing to pecorino, which I didn't have. Boiled broad beans and peas, garlic oil, couscous, salt, pepper, chopped mint and fresh oregano, pumpkin seeds, grated parmesan and crumbled feta, and some chargrilled courgette for extra greenness. That was lunch.

Apricot and ginger scones

I seem to have a sort of automatic reaction to being at home: baking. Perhaps this is because I don't really like the idea of baking in my student kitchen - you never know how clean the surfaces are, and I don't relish the idea of kneading bread dough on a surface that moments before has been home to bacon or some form of grease. Perhaps this is also because at the moment, given that I spend all mealtimes (except for breakfast, thankfully) waitressing, I don't have time to cook any proper meals (a fact that makes me very sad, and which I hope to rectify as soon as possible), and therefore need to consume maximum calories in minimum time. Baked goods seem like an effective way to do this.

Yesterday, I made scones. I am actually not very good at making scones. I have only made them a couple of times and they haven't risen well, or have ended up more like rock cakes. I think I am a bit of a scone perfectionist because I strive to produce a scone comparable with those that emerge from the kitchen of The Rose tearoom in Oxford. I urge you to go there if you haven't already been. The scones are like heaven with jam on top. Seriously, they are the best I have ever tasted. Mine will never compare. There is something truly perfect about a warm, fluffy, crumbly scone topped with jam and clotted cream.

So I was quite happy yesterday when I decided to experiment and come up with my own scone recipe. Plain scones are definitely a good thing, but I fancied something with a bit more substance, and decided on apricot and ginger scones. It works in biscuits, so why not in scone form? I mixed a load of stuff together that I had a vague idea might work, put them in the oven for ten minutes, and squealed in delight when they rose perfectly: they were soft and fluffy in the middle, and just brown and toasted on the outside. (I actually did squeal. That is how childish food makes me). Very good just with butter, so you can really taste the ginger and apricot, but also delicious with apricot/cherry/strawberry jam. And, of course, a nice pot of Yorkshire tea.

Here's the recipe, if anyone wants to replicate said scone-making triumph.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Sift 125g plain self-raising flour and 125g wholemeal self-raising flour into a bowl. Add 1tsp baking powder. Cut 60g butter into cubes and rub into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs (as you would for crumble or shortbread). Stir in 30g brown sugar, 2 globes of stem ginger in syrup (finely chopped), a handful of chopped apricots, and the zest of an orange. Make a well in the centre and break in an egg, and about 4 tbsp yoghurt. Mix it all together until you have a dough - you don't want it to be too sticky, but you also don't want it too crumbly. Add more yoghurt or a bit of milk if it's too dry. Put on a board and roll out to a thickness of about 2cm. Use a biscuit/scone cutter to cut into circles. Brush the tops with yoghurt and sprinkle with brown sugar. Put on a baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes until golden. Eat while warm from the oven.