Carrot and Coriander Soup

I found these bad boys down at the organic shop during a trip to (the packed and awful)  Dubai Mall yesterday and they just screamed carrot and coriander soup. Well, carrots don't scream and if they did it would probably be something along the lines of 'don't eat me' but you know what I mean. The flavour is out of this world and the consequent soup is made brilliant by the sheer 'pow' of organic ingredients.

So please don't try and make this with those little orange sticky things that Spinneys et al sell. Make this with unpeeled, organic carrots and oranges. You'll never look back.

Ingredients

• 800g organic carrots
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 medium (200g or so) potato, chopped
• 2 oranges, grated zest and juice
• 1.2 litres good, light stock
• 1/2 tsp salt
• A pinch of sugar
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp coriander seeds

Wash the carrots with a stiff vegetable brush and chop 'em. Throw the chopped carrot in a pan along with the chopped onion, potato and olive oil. Sweat these over a medium heat for 10 minutes or so, giving the occasional stir. Add the pinch of sugar. Meanwhile toast the coriander seeds in a frying pan, you want them starting to brown and giving off that rich, slightly burned orangey coriander seed smell. Add the stock to the vegetables, remembering to congratulate yourself on using a light home-made vegetable stock or a mixture of 1/2 chicken stock and 1/2 water rather than being a lazy bum and spoiling everything by using that gross mixture of salt, msg and celery flavoids that commercial stock cubes are packed with.

Cook the vegetables for a further 10-15 minutes until they have softened, adding salt to taste at the end of cooking. Pitch in the orange juice, coriander seeds and the orange zest and stir these in, cooking for a further couple of minutes before removing from the heat and whizzing comprehensively using whatever whizzy solution you prefer.

Serve with crusty french bread, laced with cream or perhaps even a chopped coriander-leaf laced drizzle of olive oil. This soup is also stunning served cold with, may I suggest, a cheeky little quenelle of sour cream floating in it.

Fish Vindaye from Mauritius

This is a slightly famous dish from the island of Mauritius. The name is said to be a corrupted form of vindaloo, but I don't really see the connection, except that a large portion of the population of Mauritius is of Indian origin. Good stuff for a starter on warm day, with lots of beer or wine. You can adjust the acidity to taste, with the vinegar.

You will need:

500 g Firm, white fish that won't break apart easily, preferably line fish of some sort. Tuna is excellent, as is barracuda or other line fish.

2 Large onions peeled and sliced.

2 fresh green chillies sliced in half lengthways.

A handful of fresh garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped.

3 cm of fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped.

1-2 cups good quality white wine or apple cider vinegar

Sunflower oil

Tumeric

2 Tsp Black Mustard Seeds (kalwanji)

Salt.

Pepper.

Fresh Coriander leaves.

Proceed as follows:

Put into the sliced onions into a bowl bowl and cover with the vinegar for an hour or so.

Pat the fish dry with paper towels. Cut into large porthions, take out any bones and season with salt & pepper.

Heat about 5 mm of oil over a low heat in a large, heavy bottomed frying pan. Fry the fish for a few minutes on both sides, just to crisp the outside. Don't overcook or it will dry out. Remove the fish from the oil, and allow it to drain on paper towels. Wipe the pan clean

Put the peeled and roughly chopped garlic and ginger into a blender with the mustard seeds and grind to a pulp or use a mortar and pestle (better). Crush as many of the seeds as possible.

Pour 5mm of fresh oil into the frying pan and warm through slowly and gently. Important - don't heat the oil too much, you are not going to be frying this, just coaxing out the the flavour. Add the drained onion, the garlic/ginger/mustard seed mix, the sliced chillies, and the turmeric (say about 20 ml). Stir well, and add several tablespoons of the vinegar that the onions were soaking in. The aroma will be fantastic. Cook and stir for about 5 minutes, just until the onion is soft. Add 5 cc of sugar stir well. This is your marinade.

Remove the marinade from the heat. Add the pieces of fish and spoon the marinade over, try not to break the fish up. Check the seasoning and add salt, pepper, and possibly some more of the vinegar.

Cover. cool and refrigerate for 48 hrs, if you can wait that long. It will be worth it.

This is served at room temperature, depending of course where your room is, take it out of the fridge a good while before serving. Just before serving stir in some chopped coriander to taste. If you don't like coriander, leave it out. Put some good crunchy french bread and lots of butter on the table to mop up the juices. Beer or chardonnay to drink.

Mushrooms á la Grecque

I am very fond of this simple, classic salad. It'll keep for a while in a fridge and makes a smashing starter just served on a plate piled up with a twist of thinly sliced Parma ham. I often make this recipe with 1/4 of the ingredients as a side salad for 2 people, in which case I'll usually quarter the mushrooms (hence the piccie) but ideally it should be made with smaller button mushrooms left whole.

Ingredients

• 450ml water
• 100ml olive oil
• 1 large lemon, juiced
• Salt (a good pinch)
• 18 black peppercorns
• 18 fennel seeds
• 12 coriander seeds
• 1 tbsp chopped curly parsley
• 2 shallots, chopped finely
• 500g button mushrooms (2 punnets)
• 3cm celery, chopped

You don't have to go around counting seeds, just a few pinches here and there depending on how strong you like your spicy flavours. Put everything in a pan apart from the mushrooms and bring it to a boil, reducing to a lively simmer for about 10-12 minutes. Wipe the mushrooms and trim the stalks, then add them into the pan and cook them for another 10 minutes or so. Lift out the mushrooms and slip 'em into the serving dish of your choice, then boil down the cooking liquid, stirring it, until you've got 80-100ml of emulsified liquid left in the pan. Strain this over the mushrooms and chill until you're ready to serve them.

Deconstructed Pizza Salad

The contents of a pizza (sort of) in a fancy-looking dinner party starter that really does taste as good as it looks – and has an appealingly pretentious name, too!

Fat Expat Chris ‘Slimseum’ Viljoen’s comment on the gazpacho salad I posted up a couple of weeks ago set me to thinking about the concept of deconstruction (you know, the almost ritualistic fight between life and death in the reduction of an organic entity to highlight and celebrate each of its component selfnesses in the de-meshing of the quintessential life linkages of the whole’s fabric) and that led to pizza.

So here it is. A salad inspired by pizza.

Ingredients

• 1 red pepper
• 1 yellow pepper
• 4 thin slices prosciutto or parma ham
• 25g parmesan, shaved
• 12 olives, pitted
• 12 slices ciabatta
• Buffalo Mozzarella
• 8 cherry tomatoes on their stalks
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• ½ tsp dried thyme
• 12-16 leaves fresh basil
• 8 sprigs fresh marjoram or oregano

Grill the peppers, turning them every 4-5 minutes so that their skins brown and blister on all sides, then either place them in a pan with the lid on or in a secured plastic bag for ten minutes. Remove them and, under a cold running tap, remove the skins, the stalk and the seeds. Pat the peppers dry, then slice them into 8 pieces, following the natural line of the segments. Lay these in a container and drizzle with three tablespoons of the olive oil and thyme. Incidentally, these can be left in the ‘fridge for a couple of days to marinate and are great on crisp slices of bread toasted with a light brush of olive oil.

Brush the ciabatta slices lightly with oil and place in an oven at around GM4 to toast for 10 minutes or so, or until they start to brown and become crisp.

Pan fry the tomatoes in the rest of the oil, adding a good pinch of pepper and salt – this will only take a minute and you need to take care that you don’t overdo it or the skins will split and they’ll mush up.

Lay the peppers on a plate, with a twist of ham across them. Dot the plate with broken off chunks of mozzarella, the herbs, tomatoes and olives. Drizzle a spoon of oil over the whole lot, sprinkle with parmesan and serve with the toasted ciabatta slices on the side.

Ginarek Shots

This is a little fiddly thing wot I served up in place of sorbet as part of a multi-course dinner – a little palate-freshener and a surprise for those who haven’t come across this slightly sour-fresh Levantine fruit. The mixture is crunchy, salty, sour and yet has little sweet notes. A real little explosion of surprising things, then...

Inrdedients

• 12 Ginarak, finely diced
• 1cm celery, finely diced
• 2 medium shallots, finely diced
• Pinch salt
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp honey
• 2 tsp olive oil

In a small frying pan, fry off the shallot in the oil to soften, taking care it doesn’t burn. Add the honey and let it caramelise lightly before removing from the heat. Mix everything together in a small bowl and refrigerate. Serve the salad in cooled shot glasses, with perhaps a teaspoon of frozen tequila in each one and a finishing pinch of salt.

You’ll need coffee spoons to eat it with!

Tapenade

I have an awful weakness for this dark, salty little snacky dippity thing and love digging up wodges of it with a flat bladed knife and slathering it on hot, crunchy toasted bread (preferably rough bread that's been brushed with garlic and oil and toasted in the oven).

Yes, yes, it's got anchovies in it, but you'll not know once the final mixture's been combined. If you can make it a day or two before you intend to use it, then do - the flavours meld together and richen - seriously. You can smooth it into pots for serving and top it up with a preservative layer of fine EV olive oil if you like.

If you want to be more refined, then tapenade is perfect with slithers of toast for aperitifs, smashing with big, ballsy balloons of dark, blood-red wine and a neat addition to your armoury of canapé toppings, too.

But on rough, rustic toasted bread, tapenade is simply great.

Ingredients

• 15g anchovy fillets
• 100g pitted black olives
• 30ml olive oil
• 1 tbsp brandy
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 2 tsp (4 large) capers, chopped
• 1 tsp seed mustard

Whizz in a small blender.

Store for 24/48 hours.

Eat.

.

Bruschetta

There are probably as many variations of toppings as there are days in the year. I’ve listed below some fairly standard ones, and ones that I really like, but I haven’t even touched the sides of what you can do.

Is you want to serve these as canapés cut a French baguette into as thin round slices as you possibly can, and I do mean thin. If the bread is a little bit stale it will help. If you want to make these as a starter cut the bread not into thin round slices but cut it on the diagonal (but still quite thin) and then toast under a grill after brushing with oil.

After slicing brush each side of the bread with olive oil and place onto a baking tray. Put into a hot oven (400F/200C) and cook for 3 or 4 minutes. Turn them over and cook for 3 or 4 minutes again. Watch them like a hawk and don’t let them burn. You will end up with lots of crispy toasted pieces of bread which can then be covered with all sorts of yummy things!



Mozzarella and Tomato with pesto

Spread a good dollop of fresh pesto onto the bread, top with thinly sliced mozzarella and thinly sliced plum tomatoes. Grind a little sea salt on top and serve.

Onion Chutney and Parmesan

To make up the onion chutney peel and roughly slice 3 or 4 large brown onions. Put them into a heavy casserole dish (with a lid) and add 50g butter, 2 tbsp brown sugar, 1 tsp paprika (or ½ tsp pimenton if you fancy a bit of a kick) and 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar. Over a very low heat with the lid on cook the onions for about one and half hours (stir occasionally) and you will be left with a golden brown, sweet oniony sticky mess. Divine!

Put a spoon of the chutney on the toasted bruschetta and with a potato peeler curl off a small sliver of parmesan cheese and place on top. Serve.


Goat’s Cheese and Pesto

Spread a good dollop of pesto onto each bit of toasted bruschetta and place a thinly sliced round of chevre goat’s cheese on top.


Roasted Peppers and Pesto

Roast some red and yellow peppers under a grill until the skin has blackened. Wrap in foil or cling film and leave until cold. Peel off the skin (which should be easy by now), remove all the seeds and membranes inside and cut into long thin strips.

Put the peppers into a little bowl and toss with a little balsamic vinegar. Spread a dollop of pesto on the bruschetta and top with the peppers.

A Chuckle of Chutneys With a Pile of Poppadums

Is a chuckle the proper collective noun for chutney? What would you do if you were surrounded by a whole gang of armed chutnies slapping tyre levers down on their open palms and growling at you? Obviously, fend 'em off with a poppadum!

You can get smashing pappad from the supermarkets in the Emirates - they're usually lurking on the bottom shelf alongside the tamarind and red rice, in little plastic packs with distinctive labels that have a home made look to them. Don't buy the Sharwoods stuff, they're a complete waste of money when the real, authentic thing is sitting under your nose at ten for a dirham. You can get 'em plain or spiced, too.

Rather than drowning them in hot oil, try dry frying them. It's healthier and they're not half bad either. Just sling them in a pan and turn them when they start to puff and before they burn. You'll soon get the hang of it. And then serve them up with a selection of chutneys like the one below while your evilly vinegared vindaloo reheats, bubbling slowly and gloopily, in the kitchen waiting for your unsuspecting guests and their tender palates.

Of course, these chutnies can also stay on the table to liven up the main course if you like - particularly the mango one. But, believe me, if the vindaloo doesn't get 'em, the red chili chutney will.

Coriander Mint Chutney

Red Chili and Garlic Chutney

Tamarind Chutney

Green Mango Chutney

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.

Bakdounes bi Tahine

Another classic Arabic mezze dip... In restaurants, these dips (including houmous, tabbouleh, moutabel and all the others) are eaten with fresh Arabic bread, each piece puffed up into a ball and piping hot from the oven, pierced and collapsing with a wheeze of steam, then dipped into the bowls. Flat rounds of Arabic bread fresh or toasted are also good.

Ingredients

• ½ cup tahine
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 lemons, juiced
• 2 cloves garlic, grated
• 1 cup finely chopped parsley
• 1/2 tsp garlic

Using a wooden spoon, mash the salt and garlic together, then add the tahine paste and beat it in thoroughly. Add the lemon juice, and half the water, beating constantly. Add the rest of the water slowly, checking the consistency of the sauce. Add the parsley to the sauce and serve.

Moutabel

Sometimes incorrectly referred to as baba ghanouj, moutabel is the third of the classic triumvurate of Lebanese mezze salads, and will appear at every mezze, alongside houmus and tabbouleh, without fail. Done properly, it's unctuous, smoky, ever so slightly bitter or 'bitey' and yet smooth. A delight, in short!

Ingredients

• One medium aubergine, around 250g
• 75 ml tahine
• 1/4 cup parsley, chopped finely
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 1 clove garlic, finely grated
• 1 tbsp olive oil
  

Wash the aubergine, and place it whole on a baking tray in the middle of a hot oven (425F/220C/Gas 7). Let it cook until the aubergine is soft, turning it every 5 minutes or so: this should take up to 30 minutes.

Remove the aubergine from the oven, then top and tail it and remove the skin. Whizz the cooked aubergine along with the lemon juice, crushed garlic and tahine. Add the olive oil and chopped parsley.

Tabbouleh

Tabouleh is another core classic of Levantine food and mixes the nutty taste of cracked wheat (burghul) with aromatic parsley and a simple, lemony dressing. And it.is.the.business!

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup burghul
• 3 cups parsley, chopped finely
• 1/2 cup mint, chopped finely
• Juice of 2 lemons
• 2 tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped.
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Soak the burghul for about 1/2 an hour in an equal quantity of water, and then drain it, placing it on a clean tea towel and patting it to dry it out thoroughly. Mix the chopped onion, burghul and chopped parsley together with the mint in a bowl. Mix the olive oil and the lemon juice with a teaspoon of salt and plenty of black pepper: drizzle this over the burghul and parsley mixture and toss. Add the chopped tomato, and mix this in gently. Serve on a bed of cos lettuce leaves to the applause of all.

Houmus

This recipe is core to Middle Eastern Arab cuisine and you'll find versions of it served up everywhere you go. As Levantine as 'yani' and the subject of immensely fierce debate if you dare suggest that any one country makes better hummus (or houmus) than the other. If you want to start a real punch up between a bunch of people from the Arab world, try starting with something like 'Of course, the Jordanians make the best huomus!'

I once shared this tip with a Lebanese journalist, who scolded me. 'This,' he said, wagging his finger at me, 'is a typical British trick!'

Fair enough...

A procedural note: you can soak dried chickpeas or boil them or whatever, then mash them through a sieve but it's so much easier to pop a tin and whizz 'em.

Another note: you may wonder why hummus is spelled differently here and there. You are referred to the letters of TE Lawrence to his publisher.

Ingredients

• 1 tin chickpeas, drained
• 150ml tahine
• 1 clove garlic, finely grated
• 1 lemon, juice and finely grated rind
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• @100ml water
• 1 tsp salt
  

You can use a blender or a hand whizzer or whatever. Chuck in the chickpeas, tahine, garlic, lemon and 1 tbsp olive oil, then add in about 1/2 the water and 1/2 the salt. Whizz it up, adding water so that it mixes up, but take it easy because you just want it to catch, not go gloopy. Add the remainder of the salt to taste.

Now you've got a whole range of options. Hummus is traditionally served in bowls, a whorl scooped in the centre and a drizzle of oil (the other tablespoon) swirled around it. You can also fry up some pine nuts (snoober in Arabic) and scatter these over it or even create hummus bi lahme, which is a bowl of hummus covered with little flecks of fried lamb.

You eat it by scooping it up with Arabic bread, or pitta or whatever you fancy scooping it up with...

Fattoush

Fatoush, or fattoush, can be as fine as you like it, but I like it roughly chopped and crunchy with lots of lemon and garlic. Traditionally, it has a layer of fried Arabic bread scattered over the top: just split a round of bread and cut or tear it into 1" pieces, brush these with oil and then grill or bake them until they're crisp and brown. Personally, I omit this when I'm making fattoush as it's quite heavy: a scattering of freshly toasted pine nuts is something I prefer. I understand this is terribly wrong, and I'm sorry.

Ingredients

• 1 cos lettuce
• 4 tomatoes
• 1/2 cucumber
• 4 spring onions
• 1/2 cup mint leaves
• 2 Arabic breads
• 1 clove garlic, grated 1 lemon
• 1 lemon, juiced and grated zest
• 2 tbsps olive oil
• 2 tsp sumak
• Salt and pepper

Slice the Arabic breads into two halves, and part the two layers of bread. Slide a rough edged knife around the edge of the bread until you have eight half discs with a smooth and rough face. Brush these with 2 tbsps of the olive oil and place in large baking tray on the middle shelf of a preheated oven set to 200C/400F or Gas Mark 6. Bake them for five minutes or so, keeping a watchful eye on them until they are browned and crisp. Remove, and allow to cool. You should end up with something halfway between fried bread and melba toast.

Slice the cos lettuce leaves down the spine and then across into strips, around 2.5cm wide. You can go up to 2.6cm if you really must, but never down to less than 2.3cm. No, I'm mucking about. Suit yourself, really!

Deseed and chop the tomatoes roughly and then slice the cucumber into wideish slices then quarter them. Chop the spring onions roughly, too.

Throw all of the salad vegetables into a bowl. Juice the lemon, and add the remainder of the olive oil to the juice. Add in plenty of pepper, the samak and at least a 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Just before you are ready to serve the fattoush, drizzle the dressing mixture over it all, toss it and then slide the fried bread over the top.

Mushroom Paté

A straightforward starter that never fails to delight, this rich deeply flavoured vegetarian paté is amazing served with lots of toasted brown bread.

The paté can be blended to complete smoothness, or you can elect to have a rougher finish by applying a little lighter touch on the ‘pulse’ button of your whizzer. The brie adds a delicious roundness to the flavour and texture: personally I prefer to remove the rind to avoid too much tart ammonia getting in the way. Serve with plenty of warm buttered toast.

I've made this with a heaped teaspoon of chopped black truffle instead of the cépes and it's really rather cheeky.

Ingredients

• 250g mushrooms, chopped roughly
• 50g butter
• 100ml red wine
• Cépes, a fistful, soaked in 50ml hot water
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 100g brie
• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 30g breadcrumbs
• Nutmeg, a generous pinch freshly ground
• 75g butter, melted
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• ½ tsp curry powder
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Salt

Drain the cépes, straining and reserving the liquid, and chop them. Melt the 50g of butter in a small pan, adding the onions and garlic to cook over a medium heat for 3 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cépes and sauté for a minute then add the wine and turn the heat to low and cook for 15 minutes, covering the pan. After this, remove the lid from the pan and turn up the heat to cook the mushroom mixture, reducing the liquid until the mixture is just moist, not wet. Remove from the heat to steam and cool.

Place the breadcrumbs, nutmeg, curry powder, brie, salt, pepper and 25g of melted butter in a food processor or blender, adding the cooked mushroom mixture. Blend until smooth, using the soaking water from the cepes to add moisture if required. Taste the blended mixture and adjust the seasoning if necessary, then spoon into ramekins. Chill for at least 2 hours, and then serve with warm brown bread toast. You can also serve lemon wedges with this, for a tart touch. The recipe keeps happily in the ‘fridge for a couple of days and freezes like a dream.