Lamb Potato Cakes

I'm immensely fond of these and they're simple to make, even if the recipe does look terribly complicated. The end result, crisp on the outside, fluffy and hot on the inside with a sweet, spicy dip, is simply an absolute treat. It's a simple three-step: make the peach dip up, then the potato mixture and then the meat filling. Then it's just down to spooning filling into the potato to make the cakes. Simple!

These are a good old fashioned Arab favourite and, as usual with these core dishes, everyone in the Arab world claims them as their own and will happily wrangle over their provenance until the plate is cleared...

Ingredients

500g potatoes
3/4 cup burghul (cracked wheat)
1/4 cup plain flour
1 egg
1 tsp salt

Filling
2 tbsp olive oil
1 white onion (@250g )
500g ground lamb
1/4 cup chopped almonds
100g chopped dried apricots
1 tsp baharat
175 ml water
1 tsp salt

Peach dip
3 peaches, chopped
1 tbsp chopped onion
2 tbsp olive oil
50g walnut halves
2 tbsp vinegar (Balsamic is ideal)
1 tbsp date syrup
125ml water

Make the peach dip first: fry the chopped onion until it starts to brown, then add the peach pieces and the walnut halves. Cook for 1 minute, and then add the water. Cook for a further two minutes, then add all the other ingreditents. Cook for 15 minutes, uncovered, then leave to cool. When it's safe, blend the sauce and, if you like, strain it. It'll store in the fridge for days.
Now for the cakes. Chop the onion finely. Peel, cube and then boil the potatoes until tender, then dry mash them. Soak the burghul for 15 minutes, then press it dry. Mix the burghul and the mashed potato, then add the flour and the egg, beaten, into the combined burghul and potato. Season and mix well. Form into balls, wetting your hands first to stop the mixture sticking to them. This recipe should make 10 balls.

Fry the onion until it is translucent, then increase the heat, add the lamb and fry it until it browns. Stir in the other filling ingredients and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat to cool.

Flatten each burghul ball out, in the palm of your hand, and place a generous teaspoon of filling in the centre. Reshape into a ball, and then flatten slightly to form a cake.

Deep fry the cakes in hot oil, turning after about 3 minutes. Serve with the peach dip.

Spaghetti Carbonara

This is a classic dish and a personal favourite. Smoky bacon, smooth creamy sauce and bitey pasta: I can eat this stuff by the bucket. Over the years I've come to prefer tagliatelli with carbonara, although I've had a really nice version in a restaurant that was made with spirelli and the addition of sundried tomatoes. So do try that if you like!

Serve it up with bruschetta. Go on, do! And by all means, substitute the streaky bacon with lean ham, pancetta cubes or, if you prefer not to eat pork, with beef bacon or turkey ham.

Ingredients

• 500g tagliatelli
• 300g streaky bacon, chopped
• 5 eggs
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp fresh grated parmesan cheese
• 200g creme fraiche
• 1 tbsp parsley, chopped finely.

Boil a kettle of water, and then pour the water in a roomy pan along with ½ tbsp of olive oil. Bring to a gentle boil, and then add the pasta. Boil for 8-10 minutes until cooked.

While the spaghetti is cooking, fry the bacon, ham or beef sausage in the remaining olive oil. Whisk three of the whole eggs with the yolks of the other two in a bowl, adding plenty of freshly grated black pepper and the parmesan cheese. Mix in the creme fraiche and the cooked bacon or beef sausage.

Drain the cooked pasta and return it to the pan with the heat off, adding the mixture to it, stirring it to heat through (using the residual heat from the pan only) and serve in hot bowls sprinkled with chopped parsley.

Matchbous

Matchbous is a classic 'Khaleeji' dish, a lamb, rice and tomato stew that comes from the same school of thought as 'kuchery', 'mensaf' and the other meat and rice mixtures that are cooked around the Middle East, including the famous bedouin 'mutton grab'.

Like many Gulf dishes, it uses ‘loomi’, or dried lime, as a seasoning. If you can’t, for any reason (for instance, if you're not actually living in the Middle East or on the Edgeware road), find true loomi, then grate the rind from a fresh lime, and use this instead. It's also based on a 'masala' or spice mixture, known in the Middle East as baharat - the ingredient links to a baharat recipe.

By all means substitute olive oil for the ghee if you're worrying about the health aspects of this recipe. But, honestly, a couple of tablespoons of clarified butter ain't going to make a huge amount of difference if you're planning to wolf down this mega-meal!

Using tinned chopped tomatoes, especially the kind mixed with garlic, not only cuts down on the workload, but improves the flavour and texture of the matchbous as well. Yes, I know Wilfred Thesiger wouldn't have done it like that. But I wouldn't do many of the things he probably did...

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg lamb shoulder, in 4 pieces on the bone
• 2 large onions, roughly chopped
• 2 tbsp ghee
• 1 tbsp baharat
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 2 tins chopped, peeled tomatoes
• 5 cloves
• ½ tsp powdered loomi
• 3 pieces cassia bark
• 6 cardamom pods
• 3 tsp salt
• 750ml water
• ½ cup chopped coriander
• 2 cups basmati rice

Fry the onions in the ghee using a large pan over a medium heat, until they turn transparent. Add the baharat and turmeric, and cook until the spices and onion are thoroughly mixed. Add the lamb pieces, and turn to coat with the spices, Cook until the lamb browns. Add the tomatoes, the other spices and the salt. Cover, and simmer for 15 minutes.

Add the water and the coriander to the pan, cover tightly and cook over a low heat for 2 hours, or until the meat is tender. Add the rice, bring the pan to the boil, then reduce the heat to low again, to simmer the matchbous for 20-25 minutes, until the rice is cooked. Remove the cover, turn off the heat and stir the mixture once. Pile the matchbous onto a serving platter, placing the meat on top. Serve with a green salad and yoghurt or laban.

Baharat

This ‘masala’ or spice mixture is used extensively in Gulf cookery and you’ll need it to make matchbous. These quantities make a smallish amount, suitable for the experimenter rather than the dedicated ‘Gulf’ cook! Arab families will have their own favourite variant, but might like to try this one for a change...

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp black peppercorns
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 tsp broken cassia
• 1 tsp cloves
• 2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp cardamom pods
• 1 tsp ground nutmedg
• 1 tbsp paprika

Grind the spices and bottle them. If you have to grind them in batches, mix them up well once they are bottled.

Sporadic Rice Pudding

Serves 6

Sporadic rice pudding? Yup. It's from the Sporades.

Alonysoss is an island in the Greek Sporades group (which includes Skiathos and Skopelos, actually, as you ask) which was hit by a massive earthquake in the 1960s. The old town was abandoned for years, but was being slowly repopulated by intrepid Germans when I was there, something like 20 years ago. German tourists are funny, they're like the calm before a touristic tsunami. If you find Germans anywhere, you can guarantee that the rest of the world will discover it five years later.

Anyway, there was a restaurant there run by a Brit and her Greek hubby. I can only remember her as snooty. But she made a fantastic cold rice pudding. And so I showed my gratitude by stealing the recipe.

Ingredients

• 100g short grain rice
• 800ml milk
• 75g caster sugar
• 50g butter
• 3 eggs, beaten
• Rind of 1 lemon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg, freshly grated
• 2" piece cassia or cinnamon stick
• 1/2 tsp powdered cinnamon
• 6 tsp strawberry jam

Butter six oven-proof ramekins, and preheat the oven to 300F/150C/Gas2. Cook the rice, milk and cassia together in a pan over a low heat, simmering for 10 minutes until the rice is almost tender. Add the sugar and butter and stir them in. Remove the piece of cassia. Cool the mixture a little and then stir in the beaten eggs and lemon rind. Cook the mixture, stirring it to stop it sticking and making sure it doesn' boil, for a few minutes more until it begins to thicken.

Pour the mixture into the ramekins, adding a sprinkling of cinammon on top, then bake in the oven for 30 minutes. If you have a ‘gulf oven’ that tends to burn the bottom of all it surveys, then place the ramekins in a bain marie, a baking dish with an inch of water in it, before placing them in the oven. You’ll have to increase the cooking time to perhaps 40 minutes if you do this. Cool the ramekins, then chill for at least 2 hours before serving.

Serve the ramekins of rice pudding with a dab of strawberry jam on top.

Cauliflower Cheese

This is a straightforward enough recipe that results in a deliciously cheesy sauce around tender cauliflower that just demands to be served with warm French bread or warm crusty rolls - but with plenty of butter to hand!

Ingredients

• 1 large cauliflower, washed and cut into four pieces
• 2 oz butter
• 2 tbsp flour
• 500ml milk
• 100ml single cream
• 150g grated strong cheddar
• 1 small red onion
• 4 cloves
• 8 peppercorns
• 1 small carrot, thinly sliced
• 6 sprigs parsley
• 2 tbsp breadcrumbs
• 1 tbsp walnuts, chopped finely
• Salt and freshly grated black pepper

Mix together the walnuts and breadcrumbs, and toast them on a baking tray under a grill until the breadcrumbs brown. Set aside.

Peel the onion and stud it with the cloves. Add this, the peppercorns, the sliced carrot and the parsley to the milk and cream in a pan, and bring to a boil for five minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to one side.

Fill a large pan up to about a 5cm depth of water, add a decent pinch of salt and bring to the boil. Remove the green leaves from the cauliflower and chop them, and cut the cauliflower into four pieces. Add the leaves to the water, and the cauliflower on top of these, and turn the heat down to simmer for ten minutes. Drain, discard the leaves, and reserve on a dish in a low oven.

Strain the vegetables out of the milk and add the cream to it. Melt the butter in a pan, add the flour and mix together over a low heat. Add the milk slowly, stirring to avoid lumps forming, and keeping the heat low. When all the milk has been added, turn up the heat and bring up to boiling point to thicken until the mixture will coat the back of a spoon lightly. Turn the heat to medium, add the grated cheese and stir until it has melted into the milk mixture. Pour this over the cauliflower, and sprinkle with the walnut and breadcrumb mixture and with plenty of freshly grated black pepper.

Show it to the grill for a minute then serve immediately.

Vegetable Lasagne

Much maligned, because familiarity breeds contempt, I still find that lasagne is one of the all time great entertaining foods - a little but like Chile Con Carne, lasagne's somehow a terribly '80s dish, especially served up with a green salad and lashings of piping hot garlic bread. Sadly, lasagne is something that pubs and restaurants alike always mess up. Worse, trying to get an edible vegetable lasagne when you're eating out is a mission doomed to end up in plates of insipid mess with layers of rubbery pasta slithering around.

This, immodest of me I know, is however a guaranteed winner. Rich, gloopy and deep. Stay in, then, and crack open a wickedly deep Chilean Sauvignon...

Ingredients

• 500g packet lasagne pasta sheets
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 1 large red pepper, diced
• 250g button mushrooms, quartered
• 100g green beans, chopped into 1 cm pieces
• 1 tin tomatoes, chopped
• 500g fresh tomatoes, skinned and chopped
• 1 tin red beans, drained
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tsp pesto sauce
• 3 bay leaves
• 2 sticks celery, sliced evenly
• 1 carrot, halved lengthways and sliced
• 1 tbsp chopped fresh (or ‘cooks cheat’) oregano
• A pinch of dried thyme
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• ½ tsp salt
• Freshly grated pepper

Bechamel Sauce

• 600ml milk, at room temperature
• 50g butter
• 50g flour
• ½ tsp dried nutmeg
• 100g parmesan, grated

Fry the onion in the olive oil over a medium heat. After five minutes, add the peppers, the celery, the green beans and the carrot. Fry, stirring, until the vegetables have started to brown, turning up the heat to brown if required. Add the garlic and the mushrooms, and cook a further five minutes. Add the tinned and fresh tomatoes, the bay leaves, oregano, thyme and pesto and then season well with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Last of all, add the red beans, then cover the pan and reduce the heat to very low, and leave the mixture to simmer for an hour.

In a small pan, melt the butter. Remove the pan from the heat, and then add the flour, stirring it to mix with the butter and form a thick paste, or roux. Slowly add the milk, stirring well after each addition to mix with the butter and flour without causing lumps to form. Return to the heat, stirring, until the mixture thickens into a creamy bechamel. Add the dried nutmeg and stir it in well.

Omit this next step if you are using a brand of lasagne pasta that doesn’t require pre-cooking. Boil a kettle, and place some 15-20 lasagne sheets in a wide based pan. Crack three or four sheets into two in case you will need to fill in uneven gaps. Pour the boiling water over the sheets, taking care not to let them stick together. Place them on a medium heat for five minutes. Remove them from the water.

Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5. Cover the base of a baking dish with a layer of the tomato mixture (about half of the mixture), and then cover this with a layer of pasta sheets. Spoon half of the bechamel sauce on top of the pasta, and then add another layer of pasta and a layer of tomato mixture. Repeat this until the mixture is used or the dish full, whichever happens first! Sprinkle the grated parmesan over the top, cover with foil and bake for 25 minutes. Uncover, then return to the oven for a further 25 minutes, until the top of the lasagne has browned. If the top needs more browning, do this under a hot grill. Serve with plenty of green salad and garlic bread.

This lasagne freezes like a dream: leave it to cool once you have made the layers and then freeze it, defrosting it thoroughly when required and then cooking as above.

The Galle Fort Hotel

The Galle Fort Hotel
Galle
Sri Lanka
Booking: +94912232870
Email: info@galleforthotel.com

Chris Ong and Karl Steinberg own the Galle Fort Hotel: Ong jacked in a career in investment banking in Malaysia and he and partner Steinberg bought the 17th century Dutch villa following a trip to Galle staying in a Muslim-owned guesthouse in the fort (where Madam was more than a little suspicious about her rather exotic guests).

Steinberg's a pleasant chap, a little shy perhaps. But Ong is a real character - scandalous, arch and highly amused, he's the cook and a fantastic one at that. Together, the pair have transformed a ruin into what must stand as one of the most stylish boutique hotels in the East: a fantastic, uber-funky 14 room slice of sheer post-colonial lavishness, the Galle Fort Hotel is an absolute must for a meal, but also the best place to stay in Galle by far. Rooms start in at around the same price as the badly-run Sun House, coming in at way under a third of the outrageous rates charged by the Amangalla down the road. And the Galle Fort, for my money, is a much better place to stay than the Aman, which may be posh but is also snotty, doesn't have AC in its dining room and serves odd food. Honestly, if I wanted to eat vichyssoise, Galle is probably not the first place I'd choose to eat it...

Now I must be clear here: we didn't actually stay at the Galle Fort. We'd blown it and decided to stay at the Sun House, but we ended up spending most of our time down at the Galle Fort before finally fleeing to Colombo after deciding we'd rather eat our own earlobes than spend another night at the Sun House and, when it comes down to it, Galle. But Chris took us around the rooms and they are utterly stunning: we ate there, hung around there and generally used it as a bolt-hole, much to our second host's amusement. And it's lovely.

The food is amazing. Ong is a self-taught cook and his talent for presentation, for innovative menus that combine asian, fusion and european dishes, flavours and textures means that every meal is a delight. There's choice on the menu and the kitchen will do pretty much anything you ask of it within reason. Chris' chicken soong starter and his amazing tarte au citron are still standout experiences for me, but I have to confess I spent three days stealing from him quite happily.

If you've had enough of the local food and you want to eat stunningly well in Sri Lanka, better than you can in Colombo, then the Galle Fort is the place to be. If you want to stay in Galle, then give it up (it isn't cheap) and stay at the Fort.

The Sun House Hotel, Galle

The Sun House Hotel
Galle
Sri Lanka
Bookings: +94 91 4380275
E-Mail: info@thesunhouse.com


What more could you want to make your boutique hotel experience unforgettable than the facilities offered by the Sun House in Galle, a former colonial bungalow converted into a small, exclusive and luxurious hotel?

The Sun House offers a gurgling twit British owner who appears to have escaped from a comedy show, limited and inflexible dining, a set of threadbare towels and sheets, broken plumbing and a nice, steady stream of rat's piss onto your pillows as you sleep. It really is the perfect way to come to a state of fear and loathing in Galle.

Please don't make our mistake. Please don't stay at the Sun House. The sooner they go out of business, the sooner someone higher up the food chain can do something decent with the place.

Geoffrey Dobbs won't hesitate to tell you that he made his money 'Out East' and doesn't have to work any more. He's bought up quite a few bits and bobs in Galle, including the Dutch House (over the road from the Sun House), Lunuganga, The Beach House and Taprobane Island - you can't take away from the man his act of faith in the sheer beauty of Galle or his entrepeneurialism in buying up all this real estate and letting it out to wealthy tourists at rates that are really, really hefty by Sri Lankan standards (the Sun House comes in at $200 a night, perfectly acceptable beachside B&B's come in at $20. And a Sri Lankan won't earn $200 a month).

But nobody wants to have their conversation before dinner interrupted by some crumpled, gangly fool wandering up and issuing his 'Little Britain' style catchphrase: "Hello. I'm Geoffrey. I'm the owner."

To do this properly, you have to put on a hopelessly dippy upper class English accent. Try Tim Nice But Dim and you're getting close. Oh, and don't forget to do it constantly - preferably then looking confused as your guests look irritatedly up at you and then following up with an embarrassed shuffle, a cheesy grin and, 'Oh, sorry! Wrong couple!'

Follow that up by providing threadbare sheets and towels in the room, a constantly fish-dominated menu (try that with a wife who doesn't like fish and who doesn't want to eat a green salad followed by chicken curry every bloody night of the week) and leaky plumbing staunched by wet towels and you're starting to stretch the meaning of 'boutique hotel'.

Then chuck in charging guests for the use of the hotel tuktuk, an inability to provide anything but the most venial of bashi bozouks as a tourist driver or guide and no lunch menu and you start to create a boutique experience that only the English would recognise: the slightly painful and demeaning discomfort that public schoolboys have always secretly missed.

The tuktuk (Sri Lanka's ubiquitous moped-driven three wheeled transport) is of course necessary to get down to Galle without ending up in a sweaty heap. The driver they provide for day trips does not, of course, speak English and will take you to every crap tourist trap in the area that pays commissions to drivers, including The Mad Monk of Galle.

But the daddy was the odd smell in the room, the constant presence of powerful incense burned by the staff every time they made the room over and the skittering in the roof cavity at night. We eventually put two and two together and spotted the tell-tale dark yellow drips that had solidified on the wooden beams. The bed was being constantly spattered by ratpiss from the rodents in the ceiling space.

We'd already taken to eating our meals down at the superb Galle Fort Hotel, to escape the constant 'chicken surprise' menu. But now we'd had enough. We fled to Colombo, checking out early and declining Geoffrey's offer to spend our last night in the more expensive Dutch House (an offer made to other guests and accepted with pathetic, grovelling, fawning gratitude by an English party that was staying there at the same time as we did. A true Fawlty Towers moment).

The Sun House staff's reaction when we checked out early and told them why? 'You have to expect that. This is a boutique hotel!'

Good grief.

I can't prove that the parasite-linked dermatitis we both had treatment for when we got home was linked to Geoffrey and his rats. But in my heart of hearts, I know I will wish him and his enterprise ill for all time.

JW's Steakhouse

JW's Steakhouse
Fine Dining
JW Marriott Hotel, Dubai
Booking: 04 607 7977

Consistency is the true high point of this, Dubai's oldest and most established steakhouse. It's just consistently damn good, time after time after time. There are flashier joints, there are more expensive joints. But nowhere will you find a safer pair of hands.

Don't worry about the slightly naff 'brass' plaques on the tables with regulars' names on them: it's just part of the 'gentleman's club' atmosphere: dark woods, deeply studded green leather high back club chairs and beef bone napkin rings, along with the steer decorated underplates, are all part of the Texan Men's Club feel. This is not a place to take vegans, although they might serve you one if you agree to have it done rare.

They do a stunning lobster bisque here (OK, so it's a weakness of mine. Sue me) which is served with a swirl of cream and flaming brandy, with a side dish of flat French bread croutons alongside little dishes of marie rose sauce and parmesan to sprinkle on them. This is a treat.

They also do a smart foie gras with apple - this is worth talking some friends into and accompanying with a half bottle of cheekily chilled Tokay, although we settled for Brown Brothers' dessert wine last visit as they'd carelessly run out of Hungarian laughing juice.

But the main feature is the steak: you want wagyu, you want black angus striploin, you want filet mignon or t-bone. JW's does steak very well indeed. Any vegetables are ordered as sides: try the onion rings, asparagus and the hash browns are all splendid (hash browns had been replaced by some other pan-finished potato, but it's OK - they'll come to their senses soon enough).

We've been eating here for something like 12 years now and it's never once let us down. And strangely enough, I think that's probably the highest praise I can think of for any restaurant.

The Thai Kitchen

The Thai Kitchen
Thai Food
Park Hyatt Hotel, Dubai
Bookings: 04 602 1234

Dubai and Tokyo are the only two cities in the world with all three Hyatts, the 'Regency', 'Grand' and boutique 'Park' branded properties. And Dubai's Park Hyatt, although it suffers from being on the 'wrong side of the creek' is certainly a stunner: dazzling white, mediterranean exteriors together with funky nouveau Arabesque interiors , amazing service standards and very high production values all round make this an exceptional hotel even in a city of five star hotels.

Having heard bad things of the Thai Kitchen, we approached it with caution. And got the surprise of our lives. It's a must-do evening out: we've been back time and time again.

The restaurant itself is down on the creekside level, which means its next to the pleasant and uber-funky seafood bar by the creek - great for a drink before dinner. It's darkly decorated but well-enough lit, laid out in the 'eat among the kitchens' style and so pleasantly noisy with plenty of watch-the-chef theatre verité going on. The staff are great. But the food... oh the food.

The menu is extensive and incredibly inexpensive (about Dhs 30, or $9, for each item in the mains, for instance), but then the waiter will warn you that the portions are tiny. So you order a lot of things. Given that every one of them is distinctive and delicious, the act of dipping in and out of the array of dishes scattered on the table (arguably too small for this kind of thing) quickly becomes a shared delight, with lots of 'Try this one' stuff going on. Pretty soon you're caught up in a whirl of salty soys and fragrant, citrus lemon grass; astringent kaffir lime and dark palm syrups, red and green, sweet basil aniseed and narcotic coconut.

But the biggest surprise of all comes last with an average two persons and good wine slipping in at under $150.

The Manhattan Grill

The Manhattan Grill
Fine Dining
Grand Hyatt Hotel, Dubai
Bookings: +971 4 317 1234

Possibly one of Dubai's most expensive restaurants, but to my mind undoubtedly the best. If you want to shell out some Dhs 300 ($82) for a Wagyu steak, then this is the place to do it. The lobster bisque (served with some appropriately bijou clams popping out of it) is so rich in stock that it starts to go gelid as you get near the end. The mood and service can't be faulted, the cookery is stylish, done to perfection and just the right side of design over content to make your tastebuds pop as much as your eyeballs.

This, then, is the stuff.

Bukhara

Bukhara
Indian/Kashmiri
Ajman Kempinski Hotel
Bookings: 06 714 5555

Echoes of Samarkand, the Great Game and the northern Kashmiri passes. The Muslim food of Delhi: spiced kebabs, subtly flavoured, meaty meals served with piles of steaming, crisp-edged breads bubbled up in a fiery oven and a heart-stoppingly rich dal. This, then, is the food that Bukhara serves to its guests. In a deeply strange way, it has to be said...

Bukhara is to be found in the deeply odd Ajman Kempinski, a hotel that feels strangely like an office building, something to do with the blue-framed windows and the functional (being kind) interior design. If you fancy a drink before or after the meal, your choices are limited to the weird marble-floored open plan 1st floor bar which stinks of indoor shisha smoking, is open plan, echoey and lit by the unremitting glare of halogen. Your alternative is the sleazy, dark cocktail bar downstairs downstairs which, for some mad reason, imposes a dress code.

The decor at Bukhara is no less odd in its way, with half of the guests forced to sit on heavy stools not entirely unlike mushrooms. With no backs to them, they're not terribly comfortable, so the rush is on to get the high-backed settles that face the stools at each table. The 'theme' of the restaurant is irritating in the extreme: you're given bibs and no cutlery because you're supposed to eat everything using your hands. Try that with dal makhani. So we always ask for cutlery and there's always a fuss about it. And we always get it.

Bukhara is not cheap (do pronounce the k hard, as in bu kara when you book: bu khara is very rude in Arabic indeed). We're eating out in Ajman, for pity's sake, not London.

But do go there if you find yourself with an evening to kill in the Northern Emirates. Because the food, the stuff you get when you make a selection from the worryingly toilet-seat shaped daft wooden menus, is simply the most amazing of its kind. It's food that surprises and delights, that raises eyebrows and brings smiles. It's spicy, dry, aromatic, herby: warm and satisfying, dry and pungent: perfectly cooked and deliciously varied. This is food that you over-eat, guiltily, knowing that you've simply eaten too much and you're just going on because it's so damn good. Try the spiced butterflied shrimps. Try the stuffed potatoes or the leg of lamb. Try the mildly aromatic chicken kebabs, the coriander chicken and, for sure, the dal makhani. In fact, try as much of it as you can. And wash it down with pints of glacially cold lager.

Bukhara is undoubtedly a memorable experience. Just a strange one...

Pork Fillet, Carrot Fondue and Sherry-Shallot Dressing

Do not be put off by the rather strange title of this recipe. It is really very simple, yet looks absolutely stunning as the colours are just fabulous and every time I have served this it has been a huge hit.

Ingredients serves 4

• 2 pieces of pork fillet (about 500g will feed four.)
• 6 slices of streaky bacon/parma ham/proscuitto
• 1 tsp chopped garlic
• 2 tbsp sherry

For the fondue

• 500g carrots peeled, chopped
• 1 onion chopped
• 50g butter
• 300ml double cream

For the dressing

• 200ml dry sherry
• 2 or 3 shallots peeled and sliced into ‘rings’
• 1 tbsp sherry vinegar
• 3 tbsp EV olive oil
• 1 tbsp brown sugar


And then you need to:


In a heavy saucepan melt the butter over a low heat, throw in the chopped onion and carrots. Put lid on and soften for about 30 mins until very tender. Add the cream and cook over low heat for a further 10 or 15 mins. You can play around with this and add all sorts of things; a mix of half carrots and half butternut squash is great. Adding 1 heaped tsp curry powder, or just cumin powder would also be great. Once cooked carefully pour mixture into food processor and whiz for quite a long time until very finely pureed. You want something that is quite sloppy and so add more cream if necessary. It should be just too thick to pour but not thick enough to stand up in a pile, it should sort of ooze over the plate!

Lay the slices of bacon/parma ham side-by-side on a board, place one pork fillet across the slices, spread 1 tsp chopped garlic along the fillet, grind some sea salt and fresh pepper over it, place the second fillet on top and then roll and wrap the bacon/parma ham around the two fillets. Place the pork fillets on a oiled baking dish, spoon 2 tbsp of sherry over the fillets, cover in foil and place in hot oven (400F/200C) for 30mins (take the foil off half way through the cooking time).

In a small saucepan put the sliced shallots and the sherry and bring to a gentle boil. Simmer until reduced to about 1 tbsp of syrupy liquid. Remove from heat and add vinegar, EV olive oil, sugar and seasoning. With a fork or whisk stir it all together.

To serve spoon some of the carrot fondue into the middle of a warmed plate, slice the pork fillet into “rounds” and carefully place in the middle of the carrot fondue. Drizzle a little of the dressing over each (it should sort of run all over the place) and serve to your lucky guests!

Spaghetti with Prawns in a Creamy Sauce

The pernod in this really adds a wonderful flavour.

Ingredients, serves 2

• 180g dried linguine pasta
• 100g Frozen or fresh prawns (if frozen rinse under cold water and drain)
• 1 big leek
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed, chopped small
• ½ tsp dried chilli flakes
• 1 tsp fresh lemon zest
• 50ml Pernod (or other aniseed flavoured drink Ouzo, Ricard, Arak)
• 50ml Martini Bianco
• 300ml white wine
• 1 small tbsp cream cheese or mascarpone
• Small handful of chopped fresh flat leaf parsley

And then you need to…….

Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil and cook pasta as per packet instructions. Drain.

Clean and then slice the leek on the diagonal into thin ovals

Heat a frying pan over medium heat, splash a glug of EV olive oil in and add the leeks, garlic and chilli flakes. Cook for about 10 minutes until leeks have softened.

Add Pernod and cook until evaporated, add martini and cook until also evaporated.

Pour 150ml white wine into a glass, drink. Pour remaining 150ml white wine into the frying pan. Add cream cheese or mascarpone and the lemon zest. Stir and add prawns. Simmer until prawns are thoroughly cooked.

Tip drained pasta into frying pan, give it a couple of flicks to mix, add chopped fresh parsley and freshly ground pepper and serve in shallow pasta bowls.

Simple and Quick Lamb Pie

This is a great dish to do with leftover lamb though you can of course use fresh; it is quick, easy and very tasty. It is also a great dish to play around with, add some vegetables, make it a little spicy, mix some herbs or something into the topping….whatever takes your fancy.

Ingredients, serves 4

• 500g cooked or fresh lamb
• 1 onion chopped
• 2 cloves garlic chopped fine
• 2 tbsp sherry
• 100ml lamb or beef stock
• 2 tbsp tomato puree
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• Pinch dried mixed herbs
• 1 tsp paprika
• ½ tsp pimenton
• Small handful of washed chopped fresh parsley
• 1 medium sized potato
• Breadcrumbs, enough to make a crust about 1.5 inches (3 cm) deep.
• 100g hard cheese (cheddar, gruyere) - grated

And then you need to:

In a small saucepan put the whole unpeeled potato, cover with water, add 1 tsp salt and bring to boil. Boil in water for 20 minutes.

In a heavy casserole dish heat a glug of olive oil, and gently sauté onions and garlic. If you are using fresh meat cut the lamb into smallish cubes and add at this stage. If you are using leftovers add a little later (see below).

Once the lamb/onions have cooked add sherry and stock and reduce by about half. Add tomato puree, pinch of dried herbs (rosemary, oregano, thyme, etc), the cooked lamb (if you are using the leftovers from a roast) and the can of chopped tomatoes. Simmer over low heat until the sauce is quite thick.

Cut the potato into thin slices. No need to peel.

In a food processor whiz up some breadcrumbs and then add the grated cheese. Whizz with a blade to mix thoroughly.

Remove the casserole dish from the heat, stir in chopped parsley, place the potato slices in a thin layer over the top. Sprinkle the breadcrumb/cheese mix over the potatoes and cook in an oven (175C/375F) for 40 mins. Keep an eye on it to make sure the top doesn’t burn.

Alternatives:

On top of the sauce and under the potatoes you could also place a layer of sliced aubergine. The aubergine will need to be sliced and gently fried in olive oil (then drained on kitchen paper) first because the cooking time might not be enough to do them properly.

You could add diced carrot, peas or some beans (cannellini, flageolet) to make it a more hearty pie.

Bearnaise Sauce

Béarnaise can be a bit of a fiddle and it has a very irritating habit of splitting but it is well worth the effort. There is nothing more sublime than a fantastic grilled steak, crisp frites and béarnaise sauce, it is heaven on a plate.

Ingredients:

• 1 small onion, chopped finely
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped finely
• 1 tsp dried tarragon
• 1 tsp whole peppercorns
• 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp water
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 150g butter



In a small saucepan combine the chopped small onion, chopped garlic, dried tarragon and some whole peppercorns. Add 2 tbsp of white wine vinegar and 2 tbsp of water. Bring to simmer and reduce until you are left with about 1 tbsp of liquid, drain and put to one side.

Place a glass bowl (not a metal one) over a saucepan of just barely simmering water. The heat here is crucial for even just a shade too hot and the sauce will separate. Put two egg yolks in the bowl, add the reduced vinegar mixture, 1 tsp Dijon mustard, some chopped fresh tarragon (optional) and whisk. Slowly add a little cube at a time of room temperature/soft butter, whisking all the time, until you have added 150g of the stuff.

If the sauce does separate in another clean glass bowl put an egg yolk and slowly whisk in the separated sauce. It’ll be fine again so don’t worry!

Pommes Frites

They say the Belgians make the very best pomme frites and this version here is based on the double frying technique that they generally employ.

Ingredients:

1 large potato per person
A neutral oil for deep frying


To make the frites peel and chop into thick or thin (as you prefer) chips/fries and put into large bowl filled with cold water. The Belgian way is for very thin frites and if you have a good mandolin it will probably have a setting on it to slice the potatoes very quickly.

In a deep wok or pot heat about 1 litre of oil (I usually use a neutral oil like sunflower, but groundnut would also be okay....it needs to have a high smoking point) to about 150C. On my cooker that is a medium heat. Make sure the oil is hot, drain the potatoes, dry on a clean dish cloth and add the potatoes to the oil. The oil will splutter and hiss quite vigorously at this stage so stand back.

Cook potatoes for about 5 mins, remove and drain.

Just as you are about ready to eat, heat the oil to 185C (medium-hot setting) and again when hot put the partly cooked frites back in again. Give them another 5 mins, (maybe less, keep an eye on them) remove, drain on kitchen paper, put in a dish and give them a really good grind of sea salt.

Serve immediately.

Prawn Chow Mein

Chow Mein means fried noodles and there are probably as many recipes or versions of this as there are cooks in China. You probably wouldn’t find anything like my version in the great People’s Republic of China but it is still quite tasty.

Ingredients, serves 4:

• Packet of dried Chinese egg noodles
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 150g peeled big prawns (shrimp). I use frozen ones, thaw under a cold tap and drain in sieve.
• 1 carrot chopped into thin ‘julienne strips’
• 1 onion chopped into biggish chunks
• 3 cloves pf garlic, chopped
• Fresh ginger (about 2cm square) chopped
• 1 tsp chilli bean paste
• 3 tbsp fresh chicken stock
• 3 tbsp sherry
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 spring onion cut into very fine strips.
• Assorted other vegetables as you wish. You could use baby asparagus, thin French beans, red pepper and little pieces of celery and of course Chinese cabbage.


And then you need to:

Bring pot of water to the boil, chuck in noodles and cook for 3 mins. Drain, throw into bowl of cold water and then drain again. Put into large bowl, pour over sesame oil, stir to coat and put to one side.

Heat wok to medium high heat, add 1 tbsp groundnut oil, and throw in onion, garlic, ginger and carrot.

Stir for about 1 mins and then add stock, sherry, soy sauce and chilli bean paste. Cook for about another 2 mins, add all other vegetables and the prawns, and continue to cook until the sauce has become quite thick (this should not take long). Add the cooked noodles and the spring onion, stir to coat and to mix through and then tip out into a large shallow dish.

Serve with a little dish of soy sauce into which you have chopped 3 or 4 thai chillis.

“Pad Thai” - Fried Noodles Thai Style

I think pad thai is probably as close to a national dish as you can get in a country such as Thailand, it is available everywhere from hawker stall to five star restaurant. Pad thai is often served in a sort of thin omelette case which you peel open to reveal the noodles inside but that is far to fiddly for me! These noodles are usually offered with a choice of chicken or prawns and quite often will be served with a small pile of crunchy bean sprouts, a small spoon of sugar, a lime wedge and some crushed peanuts on the side.

This is a very fast dish to cook, as is often the way with SE Asian food, it is the preparation that takes the time.

You will need (serves 2):

• 100g Rice noodles (look for those that are thin and flat, rather like linguine)
• 1 onion chopped biggish pieces
• 2 cloves garlic chopped fine
• 1 cm square knob of fresh ginger chopped fine
• 1 Thai chilli, chopped fine
• 100g Prawns or chicken (cooked) as you wish
• 25g, Cashew nuts, roasted
• 2 Spring onion, chopped into fine strips
• A few leaves of fresh mint and fresh coriander
• 1 egg
• 100g Firm beancurd, cut into ½cm squares
• Small handful of beansprouts

Sauce:

• 2 tbsp fresh lime juice
• 2 tbsp tamarind juice (see note below)
• 3 tbsp fish sauce (nam pla)
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp paprika powder
• 2 tsp caster sugar

For the prik nam pla

• 2 tbsp fresh lime juice
• 2 tbsp fish sauce (the nam pla of the title)
• 2 tbsp cold water
• 2 heaped tsp caster sugar
• 3 or 4 finely chopped thai chillis

And then you need to:

Put dried noodles into large bowl and cover with boiling water. Allow to stand for 15 mins, drain and put to one side.

Wash bean sprouts, blanch in boiling water for 1 minute, drain and refresh under cold water.

Mix together the ingredients for the sauce

Mix together the ingredients for the prik nam pla, making sure the sugar has dissolved.

In the wok or a small frying pan heat over medium heat about 1 tbsp groundnut oil. When hot add chopped beancurd. Fry for about 5 mins on each side until lovely and brown. Don’t throw these around too much, just leave them to cook away and then turn them over every so often with a palette knife. When cooked drain on kitchen paper and set to one side.

Heat wok over medium high heat, add 2 tbsp groundnut oil and when hot throw in onions, garlic, ginger, chilli. Stir for about 1 minute.

Add noodles and quickly stir. Add cashews, prawns/chicken, fried beancurd, bean sprouts and stir to mix.

Add sauce ingredients and continue to stir to make sure everything is coated. Then make a sort of well in the middle of the noodles and add the egg. Let to set for a little bit and then mix into the noodles. Keep stirring.

Add spring onions, mint and coriander, quick mix then tip out onto a big shallow dish. Sprinkle some more chopped coriander leaves on top, and serve immediately. For those who like it spicy add some of the prik nam pla for the authentic Thai afterburn.

Pan Fried Salmon with ‘northern-style’ Chinese noodles

Northern-style noodles are served cold and I suppose are a close relative of the famous Sichuan ‘dan-dan noodles’ though without the fiery kick in the head that the Sichuan version often provides!

The recipe for the noodles is an adaptation of a Ken Hom version.

Ingredients (for four persons)

For the Fish:

• 1 salmon filet per person, skin on.
• 1 good sized knob of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped fine
• 3 cloves garlic chopped fine
• 150ml mirin or sherry
• 2 tbsp fish sauce (nuoc nam)
• 1 tbsp soy sauce


For the Noodles:

• 350g dried or fresh egg noodles
• 2 tbsp Sesame oil
• 3 tbsp finely chopped Spring onions to garnish

For the sauce:

• 3 tbsp sesame paste or creamy peanut butter
• 2 tsp finely chopped root ginger
• 2 tsp chilli bean sauce
• 3 tbsp Chinese white rice vinegar or cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp orange juice
• 2 tbsp light soy sauce
• ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2 tsp caster sugar
• 2 tsp ground roasted Sichuan peppercorns (if you have them)
• 2 tsp groundnut oil
• 1 tsp Sesame oil

And then you need to:

In a freezer/sandwich bag put the fish and the marinade ingredients. Let to sit for at least an hour.

Bring to the boil a pan of lightly salted water, when ready throw in dried noodles and cook for 3 mins.

Drain noodles and plunge into cold water. Drain again and tip into large mixing bowl. Add 2 tbsp sesame oil and give them a toss. Set aside.

Mix all sauce ingredients together and whisk with a fork.

In a frying pan heat some groundnut oil over a medium or medium low heat. You must not have this too hot otherwise the fish will burn very quickly from all the sugars in the mirin.

Place salmon skin side down and cook for about 2 mins. Flip over and cook for about another 1 min.

To serve noodles, pour the sauce on top and toss well, put into four bowls and then garnish with the spring onions. Place cooked salmon filet on top of the noodles. Serve straight away.

Creamy Mashed Potatoes

If there is a dish more comforting than creamy mashed potatoes I don’t know what it is.

The way I make mine are not for the faint-hearted, and certainly not for those on any sort of low fat crusade. This dish is based loosely on the classic Irish dish of ‘champ’.

Ingredients

• 4 medium sized potato (1 per person).
• 2 spring onions, chopped very fine
• 1 tbsp cream cheese (Philly)
• 50g or a good sized knob of butter
• 100ml double cream
• A good grind of fresh black pepper.


Peel and chop the potato into quite small chunks. Place in pan of water, add a little salt, bring to boil and cook for about 12-15mins until soft.

In a small saucepan add all other ingredients and heat gently until butter and cheese has melted and you have lovely creamy mess. This process not only makes the mixing easier later but also cooks the spring onions a little bit and takes away some of the strong oniony taste.

When cooked drain the potatoes and put through a food ricer. I have a contraption that looks like a huge garlic press and it does a wonderful job. Using a hand held plunger type affair is never going to get a silky smooth finish I am afraid.

Add the cream/spring onion mixture and stir to fully incorporate. I personally like quite a sloppy consistency and so if the creamy stuff hasn’t quite achieved that add some fresh milk and mix again. You can also add fresh natural yoghurt, marscapone, creme fraiche, whatever you like really!

Chicken Breasts Wrapped in Proscuitto and stuffed with boursin

This is quite standard fare in our house and we have it quite often. It is not super exciting but it is yummy, very easy to do and you can make it look quite attractive. I alternate between serving it on a pile of mashed potatoes with some sautéed leeks or for a slightly more sophisticated version I make a saffron-infused risotto and place it in a metal ring and balance the sliced chicken on top.


Ingredients for 2 servings.:

• 1 chicken breast per person
• 2 slices of parma ham or proscuitto per person
• Boursin cheese (garlic and herb) or something similar
• Fresh Basil
• 1 clove chopped garlic
• 2 sun dried tomatoes chopped fine

For sauce version 1:

• 1 level tbsp plain flour
• 50ml White wine
• 50ml Chicken stock

For sauce version 2:

• 50ml marsala sherry



Please chicken breast on wooden chopping board and whilst pressing down flat with the palm of your hand use a small knife to either hollow out a ‘pocket’ or cut open a flap. Do not cut through the breast.

Mix boursin with the garlic and chopped sun-dried tomatoes. Stuff the pocket with a good sized knob of the mixture and a basil leaf or two.

Place two slices of ham together on a board, place breast on top of ham and roll tightly around the chicken breast. (Parma / proscuitto ham is expensive in Dubai so if you only want to use one slice per breast place ham on a diagonal and roll around breast that way.)

Using olive oil grease a baking dish, place chicken in dish, cover with foil and place in oven (375F/190C) for 40mins.

Remove foil after 20 mins

After 35 mins pour off any juices from the dish into a small saucepan, put chicken back in oven.

For sauce version 1: With the saucepan over a medium-low heat whisk in 1 heaped tsp plain flour, add the white wine and whisk again. Add homemade chicken stock, (keep whisking) until sauce is the right consistency. Check for seasoning. Go easy on the salt because the ham is already quite salty.

For sauce version 2: pour marsala sherry into a saucepan with pan juices. Heat over medium heat and reduce by half. That’s it!

Remove chicken from oven, slice each breast in two width-ways (I like to do this on a slight diagonal as it looks better). Place on top of what you are serving it with, pour some sauce over the breast and serve.

If serving with mash and leeks:

Sauté some thinly sliced leeks in butter. Mash potatoes with butter and a little double cream (I also like to add some finely chopped spring onions).

Place a mound of potatoes in middle of a plate, pile some leeks on top of potatoes. Arrange the two pieces of the breast on top of the vegetables, pour over sauce and serve.

If serving with risotto:

Make a basic risotto with onions, garlic, Arborio rice etc. Use wine and chicken stock. I like to add some strands of saffron for the colour.

When the risotto is just about cooked add about 1 tbsp of mascarpone cheese to make it all delicious and creamy.

Using a metal kitchen ring (about 10cms diameter) place risotto in middle of plate and press down a little to make a firm, round ‘tower’ of rice. Arrange two pieces of chicken breast on top of rice, pour sauce over and serve.

Chicken Tikka Masala version 2

The recipe calls for a lot of Kashmiri chillis, don’t be alarmed. These chaps look fierce but are actually pretty mild. What they do impart is a wonderfully vibrant colour.

What I like about this curry was the fantastic colour that the kashmiri chillis gave it without adding too much in the way of heat. Also frying the potatoes (which I had in a restaurant a little while ago and thought ‘what a clever idea’!) meant that they didn’t all break up but retained their shape and taste. I thought it worked really well.


You will need (serves 4):

• 4 Chicken breast (1 smallish one per person)
• 2 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
• 8 cloves garlic, peeled
• Knob of fresh ginger (2cm square), peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 heaped tbsp tandoori spice mix
• 1 tbsp korma curry paste
• 1 can tomato soup
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 200ml fresh chicken stock
• 5-10 dried Kashmiri chillis
• Small handful chopped fresh coriander (cilantro)
• 1 large potato, peeled and chopped into smallish cubes


Heat oven to 375F.

Soak the kashmiri chillis in a bowl of hot water for about 20mins.

In a food processor drop in the onion, garlic and ginger, add about 2 tbsp water and whiz to a fine paste. Remove.

Drain the chillis, cut off the stalks and drop into food processor. Add 1 tbsp water and whiz to a fine puree.

In a heavy casserole dish heat 1 tbsp ghee or butter over a low to medium heat. When hot add pureed onion mixture and chilli mixture. Cook gently for about 5 mins.

Add tandoori mix and korma curry paste. Cook gently for another five minutes or so.

Add chopped chicken and stir until cooked. If it gets a little dry at any stage and starts sticking add some chicken stock.

When cooked pour in stock, soup and chopped tomatoes. Give it a stir and put in oven with a lid on for about 2 hours. Stir every half an hour or so.

Meanwhile put the chopped potatoes in a saucepan with lightly salted water and 1 tsp turmeric (adds colour). Bring to boil and cook for 5 mins only. Drain.

In a frying pan heat a splash of olive oil over a low-medium heat and when hot add drained potatoes. Sprinkle liberally with cayenne pepper and fry gently for about ten minutes or so until golden. Give the potatoes a flick every so often to keep them turned.

Take the curry out of the oven, gently stir in the potatoes and fresh coriander and serve immediately.

Roasted Plum Tomato Feuillete

This makes a wonderful starter, simple to do, pop it into the oven a little while after the guests arrive and away you go.

Ingredients, serves 4:

• 4 plum tomatoes
• EV Olive oil
• 2 tsp balsamic vinegar
• Puff pastry, ready rolled if available.
• Fresh basil leaves (2 whole leaves per person and a similar number again)
• 250g mascarpone cheese

And then you need to:

Slice the tomatoes into two lengthways.

Top tip here: if you look at the stalk end of a plum tomato you will see that it has two small mounds and two small dips. If you slice the tomato down through the mounds it will open up all the lovely flesh and pips, if you slice down through the troughs it will open up showing only the whitish pith.

In a small dish place the tomatoes cut side up, sprinkle with a pinch of coarse sea salt, drizzle about 2 tbsp EV olive oil and the balsamic vinegar. Pop into oven heated to 160C/325F and leave for about 45 mins.

Finely chop half of the basil and stir it into the mascarpone. Taking two dessert spoons make the mascarpone into ‘quenelles’ (small rugby-ball shaped dumpling), one per person.

Roll out the pastry (better still use a ready rolled sheet!) until about the thickness of about 2 or 3mm and with a small bowl or pastry cutter cut out circles (one per person) about 10 cm in diameter. Place them on a lightly oiled baking tray and with a small sharp knife lightly score a line 1 cm in from the edge all the way around, forming a sort of border.

If you have some pastry left over and want to make ‘lids’ for the tarts then feel free but bake them on a separate baking tray.

Place two fresh basil leaves on each pastry circle, place two of the roasted tomatoes on top of the basil, making sure they are inside of the lightly scored line. Put the tray in the oven at 175C/350F for about 12-15 mins, keep an eye on them.

When the pastry has risen and has turned golden remove from the oven. Carefully remove the tarts from the tray and place on plates. Place 1 quenelle of mascarpone on top of each feuillete and serve immediately.

I normally serve this with a few dressed roquette or manche (lambs lettuce) leaves to give a bit of colour.

There are lots of alternatives you could play with. For example substitute mascarpone for goats cheese is excellent (though if you do this cook the goats cheese, put it on top of the tomato tart before putting them in the oven).

Also a little smear of pesto on the pastry before adding the roasted tomatoes is lovely.

Slow cooked lamb with mint, pomegranate and feta.

This is an adaptation of a Nigella Lawson recipe and it makes a delightfully easy, stress free meal. Literally shove the lamb in the oven for five hours, come back and it is done. Perfect. I normally abhor dishes which combine meat and fruit but this one works very, very well.

The gorgeous Nigella suggested using lamb shoulder in her recipe but I actually prefer this with lamb leg. I find the shoulder a little bit too greasy though it does produce a slightly more ‘moist’ dish. Anyway, I leave it up to you, try both and tell me what you think.

If you do use lamb leg and have a big enough casserole dish get one with the bone in, but a de-boned lamb leg will work just as well. Two small lamb legs will feed six greedy people or 8 not so hungry ones.


Ingredients, serves 6/8

• shoulder of lamb or lamb leg
• 4 shallots halved but not peeled
• 6 cloves garlic left whole
• 1 carrot peeled and halved
• sea salt
• 500ml boiling water
• big handful freshly chopped mint
• 2 pomegranates
• Pomegranate molasses (optional)
• Handful of feta cheese cut into small cubes

And then you have to:

Preheat the oven to 140C / 300F. Do NOT do what I did once which was to heat the oven to 140F and then wondered five hours later why the lamb hadn’t cooked.

On the stove, brown the lamb, fat side down, in a large roasting tin or if you have one, a large casserole dish. Remove when browned a little, and set aside while you fry the vegetables briefly. Just tip them into the pan - you won't need to add any more fat - and cook them, sprinkled with salt, gently for a couple of minutes. Pour the water over and then replace the lamb. Let the liquid in the pan come to a bubble, then either cover tightly with foil or if in a casserole dish put the lid on. Put in the preheated oven.

Now just leave it there for about five hours. A little more, a little less makes no difference at all which is why it is a perfect stress free dish to make for a dinner party. Just take the lamb out of the oven about 30mins before you plan to serve it, leave it covered just sitting happily on the side.

Whilst the lamb is cooking wash and chop the fresh mint and put in a little bowl.

Slice the two pomegranates across the equator (if the ‘stalk’ ends are the two poles) and with one of the pomegranates holding the cut side over a large bowl squeeze hard to get as much juice as you can out of it. With the second pomegranate again holding the cut side over the large bowl start to tap it quite hard all over the skin with a wooden spoon. In a little while the beautiful little seeds will start raining down. Pull out any of the white pith that might have also fallen out and discard. If you do happen to have any pomegranate molasses lurking in the back of your cupboard add a couple of tablespoons to the mixture.

Cut the feta cheese into small little cubes.

To serve this dish I spread a pile of roquette leaves on a big flat platter. Take the lamb out and with a couple of forks pull the meat off the bone and into pieces. The meat will be very soft and will just fall apart.

Pile the lamb on top of the roquette leaves, spoon the pomegranate seeds and juice all over the lamb, then sprinkle with the chopped mint leaves and finally spread around the small cubes of feta.

And that is it, very simple, it looks great, and it is always a popular dish.

I usually serve this with a dish of small cubed roasted potatoes, a crisp green salad with a simple walnut oil vinaigrette. A salad of plum tomatoes and roasted peppers is also very nice.

Salmon Fishcakes, with an Asian Twist

Asian style fish cakes tend to be a bit rubbery, and I don’t mean rubbery as in the way a HK Chinese chap would say “lovely” but rubbery in the way that they bounce. High.

This recipe is straight from camp Ken Hom’s “Travels with a Hot Wok” and it is all about English styled fish cakes but with Asian flavours. These fishcakes are really damn good and very easy to make.

Ingredients, serves 6 as a starter or 2 hungry people as a main course:

• 250g salmon fillet
• 175g breadcrumbs
• Small handful of finely chopped Coriander
• 3 cloves Garlic, finely chopped
• 2cm square of fresh Ginger, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp Mirin
• 2 Spring Onions, finely chopped
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tsp fish sauce (nam pla)
• 2 eggs
• Plain flour

For the sauce:

• 150ml, Plain yoghurt
• Cucumber
• Mint

And then you need to:

Place the salmon in a shallow bowl, pour on the mirin and half of the chopped ginger. Leave to stand for about 30 mins.

Place the bowl of salmon in a steamer over a saucepan of boiling water and steam for about 15 minutes until cooked.

Drain the salmon from the cooking liquor, flake into small pieces with a fork, discard any bones you might find and tip salmon into a large glass bowl.

To the salmon add 100g of breadcrumbs, garlic, rest of the ginger, spring onions, coriander, fish sauce and the olive oil. Add a good grind of fresh pepper and mix well.

On three separate plates put the flour, the eggs (beaten) and the rest of the breadcrumbs.

Shape the salmon mixture into circular cakes. You should get about 6 out of this amount. I make mine about 3 cm (1.5inches) thick.

Heat a large frying pan over high heat and add 2 tbsp peanut (groundnut) oil. When very hot turn heat down to low.

Immediately dip fishcakes first into the flour, then the beaten egg and then the breadcrumbs, making sure both sides are well covered. Place fishcakes into frying pan.

Cook for about eight to ten minutes on each side. Don’t keep poking or moving them around, just let them cook away nicely and turn them carefully after about eight or so minutes.

To make the sauce finely chop some cucumber and some fresh mint leaves and stir into a good dollop (150ml) of plain fresh yoghurt. You could add some crème fraiche, some mayonnaise, some Tabasco, some horseradish or whatever else takes your fancy.

Serve fishcakes with a fresh green salad (frisee leaves work well, though something bitter like radicchio would also be nice) with a sharp vinaigrette dressing, and a bowl of the yoghurt sauce on the side.

Teatro

Teatro
Fine Dining
The Rotana Towers Hotel, Dubai
Bookings: 04 3438000

The hotel is a horror, more like three star than lala and also home to the appalling Long's Bar, which is supposed to be a faithful copy of the bar at Raffles in Singapore. The faithfulness of the reproduction is perhaps questionable: Long's Bar is underground, dark, dingy and odiferous.

So to find a restaurant here that is so regularly packed to the gunwales and so highly thought of by a huge universe of regulars is something of a surprise. But you ain't seen nothing yet.

Theatro is an eccentric restaurant, to say the least. The menu's a bonkers mix of Italian, Thai/Chinese, Indian and 'International'. The Maitre d', one of Teatro's great assets, juggles guests with an expert eye that instantly differentiates a regular from just a difficult random and bills, coos, flatters and teases at the same time as taking no BS from anyone. Which is about everything you could ask for.

The food's good: not brilliant, not startling but fine. Mixing and matching menu items is quite fun, but then Teatro is quite fun. And like any piece of theatre, it's as much about the atmosphere as anything - and Teatro is a hubbub of conversation and clinking holloware, laughter and chatter. It's a warm, convivial place to eat together, drink together and laugh together.

The hotel brands Teatro as 'Fine Dining' and we've stuck with that in the label for this article. But it's more like 'fun dining' to be honest...

Thai Pepper Soup

This is a spicy hot soup, rich and lemony with the taste of fresh green pepper corns. A Thai supermarket should be able to do the fresh green pepper corns, which will freeze just fine although they lose some of their bright green colour and crunchy texture.

Ingredients
Garnish

• 1 red pepper, finely diced
• 2 tbsp coriander, finely chopped
• ½ red chilli, finely diced
• ½ carrot, finely diced
• 3 spring onion greens, finely chopped

Soup

• 1 litre good vegetable stock
• 125ml white wine
• 4 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1/2 large red chilli, chopped finely
• 1 strand fresh pepper (1 tsp corns)
• 1 kaffir lime leaf, torn in shreds
• 1 lemon grass stalk, bashed and knotted
• 3 spring onion whites, chopped lengthways into matchsticks
• 1 clove garlic, chopped

To prepare the lemon grass, hold the thin end and give it a series of damn good whacks on the kitchen worktop: it should mush the bulbous end and generally make a mess of things, although lemon grass is so fibrous it'll hold together. Now just twist it into a knot and pop it in the soup: the bashing releases all the oils in the grass.

Mix garnish ingredients together and then divide between four soup bowls. Heat the soup ingredients together in a pan for 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove lemon grass and pour into bowls. Serve immediately.

Eid Custards

This custard could live with being made the day before so that the flavours really settle in. It's called Eid Custard because I made it up for a feature I did on Ramadan food: Eid Al Fitr is the celebration that follows the month of fasting and the Middle East LOVES custard and, in fact all things creamy. And it loves dried fruit and nuts, too. So I just put everything everyone likes together!

If you can use a vanilla pod, scraped to get the velvety-tasting seeds out, then do so instead of using vanilla essence.

Ingredients

• 6 egg yolks
• 480ml double cream
• 50g caster sugar
• 2 drops vanilla essence
• 4 dates, chopped
• 40g pistachios, chopped
• 40 skinned almonds, whole
• 1 tbsp orange flower water

Put the almonds into the orange flower water, and shake them around to coat. Leave them to soak.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together with the vanilla essence in a roomy mixing bowl while you heat the cream in a pan over a medium heat stirring occasionally and generally taking care not to burn it. It should be just on the point of boiling but not actually rising up the pan. Pour the hot cream over the eggs in a steady stream, whisking all the time.

Return the mixture to the pan you used to heat the cream in, and heat gently, stirring to stop the mixture sticking, lumping or over-heating (the latter means a curdle and we don't want that). If you're scared of curdling, do it in a double boiler or a pyrex dish suspended over a pan of boiling water. over boiling water for ten minutes, stirring continuously. Don’t stop stirring for anything: if you do, all is lost!

After a couple of minutes, the custard should thicken nicely and adhere to the back of a spoon placed in it. Remove the pan from the heat but keep stirring for a couple more minutes, then cover the bowl with cling film to stop a skin forming on the custard. Leave it to cool for 15 minutes or so.

Add the chopped dates, the pistachios and the whole almonds to the custard and mix them in well. Fill four glasse with the custard mixture. Stand, covered, in the ‘fridge to cool and thicken further overnight. Serve. You could top the glasses off with a whorl of cream or some chopped soaked apricots, or perhaps with a dash of honey. Or all of the above!

Couscous

A mightily abused North African ingredient, it is also a very rude word in Arabic, just get the context and intonation wrong and you'll soon find yourself surrounded by people rendered totally helpless through laughter. If this happens, club them before they recover.

It helps to avoid phrases such as 'Mariam's couscous is really tasty'.

Couscous is a small grained semolina, made from durum wheat and used throughout North Africa and the Levant. The packs you buy in supermarkets have been pre-steamed, but the original stuff of North Africa is steamed over a broth. This means that supermarket couscous can be prepared simply by adding boiling water or stock, then fluffing it with a fork after it's soaked for a few minutes.

Buying pre-flavoured couscous, particularly with some daft chef-goon's face on it, is a terrible thing to do. What a waste of money and what a terrible thing to eat: all nature identical ingredients that fill your mouth with the neon plasticity of too-strong, too-bright flavours.

No. Be an adventurer. Make your own couscous. Then add things as you see fit. Try it with a tagine or pop in some grilled vegetables to make a salad. Or make it with a strong stock and just have it nice and plain.

The Jordanian Chef Story

It's not much of a story, but here goes anyway. For a time there was a restaurant just down from the First Circle in Amman, which had a conservatory front and which was warm and red-lit. It was called 'The Patio'. It was the perfect haven from the dark, rainy, cold Jordanian winter nights and had a pot-bellied iron stove in the middle of the floor that gave out immense heat. The rain would patter on the glass roof while you sat on gaily-coloured cushions drinking red wine and chatting.

Their tagine was stupendous. I used to go back every trip for more. Whenever my pal Lena would ask where we should go for dinner, I'd try and get us to the Patio.

It was so good. The guy had to be Tunisian or something. Fragrant, delicious, tender chicken floating in a sharp, harissa-spiced chickpea broth laced with flakes of red-tinged onion.

It had no fruit or nuts or other stuff in it. In fact, it's not really a proper tagine, but the type of mixture that maghrebis serve around hot couscous. It didn't alter the fact that it was delicious.

I finally cracked and asked to talk to the chef. I wanted the recipe.

We chatted by the kitchen door. He was Jordanian. In pidgin English and Arabic, we went through the magical process. He kept talking about 'spice', adding 'spice'. I asked him to show me the spices. He came back, smiling sheepishly, with a plastic bag of Tunisian spice mix.

The next time we went back, oddly, The Patio had closed. I suppose it was meant to be: I'd never try the tagine again and have my romantic vision of a maghrebi chef cooking up mama's own tagine spoiled by the knowledge that it was all down to a supermarket spice mix.

Recipes

A Jordanian Tagine
Harissa Paste
Couscous Salad

Couscous Salad

Couscous is a great collector of flavours, and yet adds its own nuttiness to almost every recipe it’s used in. This is a spicy salad, great with barbecues but is also nice with a snappy little tagine!

Ingredients

• 500ml chicken stock
• 3/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp grated fresh ginger
• ½ tsp ground cumin
• 1/4 tsp turmeric
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 250g chicken breast, chopped
• 200g couscous
• 1 medium carrot, diced
• 1/2 red onion, diced
• 1 red pepper, diced
• 1/2 cucumber, diced
• 1 green apple, diced
• 50g currants
• 1 can chick peas, drained & rinsed
• 1 lemon, juiced
• ½ tsp salt

Whisk together the chicken stock, cinnamon, ginger, cumin, turmeric and two tablespoons of olive oil. Bring this mixture to a boil, and then reduce to a low simmer, adding the chicken breast. Poach the chicken breast until white throughout, for about 5-8 minutes, then remove the chicken using a slotted spoon, and reserve.

Return the stock mixture to a boil, and add the couscous slowly, stirring it into the mixture thoroughly. Boil for one minute, then remove the pan from the heat, cover tightly and stand for 15 minutes.

Break up the couscous grains using a fork, and then place the mixture in a mixing bowl, breaking up any remaining lumps as the mixture cools. It may be necessary to rub the grains with your fingers to remove lumps.

Add the diced ingredients to the couscous, and toss it thoroughly to mix. Mix together the remaining olive oil and the lemon juice, and season with plenty of black pepper and salt, until it forms a vinaigrette. Pour this over the salad, and leave it to stand for a while, three to four hours if you can, before serving.

Harissa

Harissa is a fiery, North African chili paste. My favourite one is Tunisian ('Harissa du Cap Bon', it's called) and comes in a yellow tube with a picture of a lighthouse on it. I just like the packaging. If you can't get it: make it...

Ingredients

• 60g chopped red chilis
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 red pepper, skinned, deseeded & chopped
  
• 1 tsp coriander seed, ground
• 1 tsp caraway seed, ground
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Whizz it all together. It'll freeze or you can store it in the fridge by putting a layer of oil over it. If you want to cut down on the chili zap factor, de-seed the chilis first.

Chicken Tagine - Jordan Style!

I stole this recipe from a Jordanian chef. I rarely embarrass myself or chefs by scabbing for a recipe at the end of a meal, but this was so good I had to. The recipe is as unlike a North African tagine as you're going to get. Oh, and it's also dead easy to make! Instead of the lean chicken used in the recipe, try it with a greater weight (about a 1kg bird) of chicken on the bone, chopped into pieces. Excellent!

This should ideally (traditionally) be served up with a steaming, fragrant couscous that's been steeping in stock and spice, but some people hate the graininess of couscous, in which case rice does nicely. A salad of couscous and grilled vegetables is also a neat accompaniment.

Ingredients

• 500g chicken, cubed
• 1 tin chickpeas
• 1 onion, chopped roughly
• 1 tsp harissa paste
• 500ml good chicken stock
• 1 clove garlic, grated
• 1 3cm cinnamon stick
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 2 tsp tomato paste

Fry off the onion over a medium heat until it turns transparent, then add the chicken to brown lightly. Add the harissa and the garlic, then the salt and spices and finally, after it's all been fried around a bit, the chicken stock. Bring to a boil and then slow to a very simmery simmer. Add the chickpeas and let everything just cook up together, about 15 minutes for lean chicken and about 35-40 minutes for meat on the bone. Add the tomato paste and mix it in (you can omit this step for meat on the bone as the sauce will thicken naturally), then twist the lemon into it and season with pepper before serving up.

Vinaigrette (Classic)

As simple as it gets... Lash out on some really nice olive oil, something like Planeta to be really lavish.

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 6 tbsp vinegar
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 pinch sugar
• 1 pinch mustard

Whip it all up. That's it. If you want to be naughty, bottle it with a few peppecorns and a clove or two of peeled garlic, then shake it up the next day and use it.

Salad Clementine

There's no fruit in this: it's named after a posh French bird, not an orangey thing!

This is the kind of thing you cook in your dreams when Elizabeth David comes round to tea. You offer this with perhaps a glass of lightly chilled Pouilly Fuissé and she smiles at you because she likes it...

Ingredients

• 6 medium tomatoes
• 6 hard boiled eggs
• 1 tablespoon capers
• 1 tablespoon sliced gherkin
• 1 tin anchovy fillets
• A little milk

Dressing

• 2 tablespoons red vinegar
• 1 teaspoon mustard powder
• 6 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons tomato puree
• 1 tablespoon fines herbs
• Salt and pepper

Cut a shallow line across the tops of the tomatoes with the point of a knife, just to break the skin, no more. Boil a kettle of water, and pour over the tomatoes. Leave for no more than 30 seconds, and drain them. This allows the skins to be peeled easily from the tomatoes. Peel them, then cut them in half through the stalk. Remove the seeds. Heat the oil in a frying pan, and sauté the tomatoes quickly on both sides. Lift them out of the pan carefully, and leave to cool. Drain the anchovies, split each fillet into two and then slice each halved fillet to make matchsticks. Place to soak in a dish of milk, to draw out the salt.

Peel the hard boiled eggs, and cut each into four vertical slices. Two of these should be white only, while two should contain the hard yolk. Reserve the slices with the yolk and chop up the remaining whites. Combine the dressing ingredients in a jug, and mix well.

Lay the slices of egg on a serving plate, and place a slice of tomato on top of each, face down. Place the slices of anchovy over the tomatoes so that they form a lattice. Pour over the dressing, and place in the fridge for an hour to chill. Just before serving, sprinkle with the chopped egg whites.

Strawberry Salsa

This should probably be filed under Californian, but the hell with them: I'm claiming it as British.

This salsa mixes the sweetness of strawberry with the bite of the vinegar and onions and a nice bit of 'erb. Great with chicken or fish and you can dice everything small and warm it all to make a drizzling sauce for grilled chicken, too.

Ingredients

• 1 small red onion, chopped finely
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 2 tbsp orange juice
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley
• 1 tbsp chopped coriander
• 1 tbsp runny honey
• 2 tsp seed mustard
• 1 tsp grated orange peel
• 2 tsp chopped jalapeno peppers
• 200g strawberries, chopped

Reserve the strawberries. Throw everything else into a bowl, give it a good toss around and then fold in the strawberries. Job done!

Imam Bayildi

A classic Arab dish, which is thought to hail originally from Turkey, but which many states claim as their own: like houmous, you can get a punch-up over the various claims to the origin of this dish. The story, told in a million different versions, is that it caused an Imam to faint because it was so good.
This can be served as part of a mezze, as a side dish to a grill or as a starter in its own right, in which case it's nice with rounds of toasty bread brushed with olive oil, salt and garlic.

Ingredients

• 4 medium aubergines
• 6 tbsp olive oil
• 2 medium onions, sliced thinly
• 2 green peppers, sliced thinly
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
• 2 ripe tomatoes, sliced
• 3 tbsp tomato puree
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp powdered allspice
• 1 bunch parsley, well chopped
• 12 tbsp cooking oil
• 450ml water

Cut a slit down the side of each aubergine, salt the insides and put them to one side. In a large saucepan, fry off the onion, peppers and garlic over a medium heat to soften and ten add the sliced tomatoes, tomato puree, the salt, paprika and allspice. Cook for five minutes more, stir in the chopped parsley and then set the pan aside.

Rinse the whole aubergines and then dry them. Heat the cooking oil in a frying pan, add the aubergines and fry them gently until they begin to soften, but not collapse. Remove from the pan, and place them in a baking dish, slits uppermost. Open up the cuts in the aubergines, and spoon the vegetable mixture in equal proportions into each aubergine. Clean out the pan containing the vegetable mixture with the water, and pour over the aubergines. Bake in a 375F/190C/Gas 5 oven for 1 hour. Remove, and cool. Serve chilled.

Sage Derby Hotpots

Sweet potato, tangy cheese, cream and lots of pepper. That's all it takes, but the combination of flavours is daftly delicious. If you can't get hold of Sage Derby, a prince among cheeses, then try something really adventurous like a Dolcelatte! This will make four normal ramekins. When you're sweet potato shopping (the orange ones are always so much nicer than the white variety) try and bear the size of your ramekins in mind, as you're cutting rounds to fit.

Ingredients

• 150g sage Derby cheese
• 1 long sweet potato
• 4-6 tbsp double cream
• Black pepper

Heat the oven to 400F/200C/Gas 6. Take the black rind off the cheese and, as far as you can, because it’s quite crumbly/sticky, slice it thinly. Peel the sweet potato, and slice it into thicknesses of about 3-4mm. Now place a slice of the sweet potato on the bottom of each ramekin, then top this with cheese. Add a smattering of pepper. Place another sweet potato slice on top, and then cheese and then pepper. Repeat, until the last potato slice is tottering above the lip of the ramekin. Push the whole lot down firmly, and add a final layer of cheese. Now pour a generous tablespoon of double cream over the top and down the edges of the pushed in mixture, adding a little more cream if you think it’s necessary. Top with lashings of freshly ground black pepper.

Bake the whole lot in the oven for 30 minutes. Smile smugly at the compliments and make a note to self to post a 'loved the recipe' comment...

Quick Apple Chutney

This probably qualifies more as an apple sauce, but it's made in 2 minutes and made for serving with cold pork or as a side to a slice of hot black pudding laid on an oat cake with a salad dressing around it. Or as a tasty tidbit with cold roasted ham.

Ingredients

• 2 apples, peeled, cored and chopped
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 125ml water
• 1 large spring onion, chopped
• 2tsp dried sage

Throw the lot into a heavy-based saucepan and boil it up, with the lid loosely over the pan, until the apples have absorbed the moisture. Give it the occasional mix up to distribute the sugar, sage and onion throughout. Serve warm or cold.

Granitas

Here's a trio of Granitas, the Italian ice with attitude. Lacking the sophistication and smoothness of a sorbet, Granitas are smashing smashes of icy sharp texture and arctic tastes, heaped shavings of flavoured ice piled up in a pre-chilled serving glass. It’s worth giving them a single stir as they freeze, about an hour into freezing, depending on how aggressive your freezer is, just to stop the mixture settling out - but don't over-smooth things, a Granita should be jaggy!


Coffee Granita

Ingredients

• 200ml strong coffee
• 1 orange, juice and zest
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• Generous shaving of nutmeg
  

Peel the zest into curls using a potato peeler and pour the hot coffee over the curls to allow them to steep. Mix in the brown sugar and stir to dissolve, then the nutmeg. Leave to cool, then strain the mixture and freeze it.

Pineapple Granita

Ingredients

• 100g fresh pineapple, chunked
• 200ml water
• 2 tsp brown sugar

Whizz, strain, freeze.

Orange Granita

Ingredients

• 200g fresh pineapple, chunked
• 250g orange segments
• 3 limes, juiced
• 100g brown sugar
• 4cm piece cassia (or cinnamon peel)
  
• 275ml water

Boil the cassia in 100ml of the water for five minutes, then remove the cassia and stir in the sugar to dissolve. Add the rest of the water and pour the mixture into a blender, adding the lime juice, pineapple and orange segments (take care there are no pips or pith left on the orange segments and do save as much of the juice as you can when you’re segmenting the orange!) and whizzing. Strain and freeze.