Greece is the word. Part 1: Pasticcio

I think Greek food is underrated. It's such a shame because, at it's best, it takes the fantastic ingredients the country has available and uses them to simple, unpretentious effect.

Some of the best food I've ever had has been in Greece; plain grilled prawns eaten straight off a newspaper-covered taverna table, throwing the shells into a bucket; freshly caught 'Barbounia' barbecued by the sea and eaten with your fingers and all of those amazing dishes selected from the laminated, misspelt old menus featuring faded photos of the dishes taken in c. 1979 - spiced loukaniko sausages, octopus in vinegar, salty grilled Saganaki cheese, proper oregano-spiked lamb Souvlaki and Horiatiki salad with chewy, crusty country bread. Delicious.

But unfortunately a lot of people only experience the worst of Greek food - the tourist food - overcooked kebabs, flaccid moussaka and plasticky taramasalata. Hideous? Yes, of course - but all destinations have equivalent touristy fare. I've endured deeply underwhelming pasta in Rome, terrible Borscht in Moscow, a very average baguette in Paris and my boyfriend never ceases to be disappointed by the quality of most fish and chips in Britain.

So, in the hope that people give Greek food another chance, I'm going to do a couple of Greek recipes in the next few weeks to show off a bit about a style of food that's cheap, healthy and pretty delicious actually.

And if you need further inspiration have a look at these Greek Food blogs:
- http://kalisasorexi.com
- http://kalofagas.ca
- http://ellysaysopa.com (American lady who does some Greek food but lots of other good things too)

Pasticcio is a good place to start - it's really the Lasagne of The Greeks. This is my interpretation of Pasticcio - maybe it's not 100% authentic - but I think it's 100% delicious. I've been a bit rough with my measurements here because it really depends on the size of your dish - you need a really deep oven-proof dish for this one otherwise you'll over flow and be cleaning the oven for days....

Pasticcio 
Around 750g of  good quality minced beef and pork
A couple of cloves of garlic
A finely chopped onion
Couple of bayleaves
Half a bottle of red wine
About half a teaspoon of ground cloves
A cinnamon stick
A teaspoon of dried oregano
A squeeze of tomato puree
A tin of tomatoes
A couple of eggs beaten
Enough rigatoni/penne pasta for one thick layer in your dish
Plain flour
Big knob of butter
A couple of pints of milk
2 big handfuls of kefalotyri cheese (or a sharp pecorino if you can't get it).

In a big saucepan fry off the onions and garlic in a little butter. Crumble the minced meat into the onion mixture browning it over a medium to high heat. Add the bayleaves, cloves, cinnamon and oregano and tomato puree and stir well. Slosh in the wine, the tin of tomatoes and then fill the empty tin with water and add that too. Then turn the heat down as low as possible and leave to bubble gently to itself for as long as you've got - a couple of hours is good.

Then make a basic cheese sauce. Melt a big knob of butter in a saucepan and add a couple of spoons of plain flour stirring to form a thick paste. Add the milk little by little stirring all the while to incorporate the floury mixture. When you have a thick-ish sauce add a handful of the cheese and stir to melt.

Cook the pasta according to the instructions.

To assemble: add half the cheese sauce to the pasta along with the beaten eggs. Stir well to combine. Pour two thirds of the sauce/egg coated pasta into a well-buttered, deep dish. Pour the spiced meat onto the pasta and then cover with the final third of the pasta. Pour on the remaining cheese sauce and spinkle with the remaining cheese. So it looks something like this:

Then pop it in the oven at about 220 degrees for about 40 minutes (but check after half an hour) until it is golden, bubbling and crispy on the top. Something like this:

Enjoy with a mound of green salad and a nice glass of red wine.

Slow roasted belly pork, mashed cannellini beans & roasted datteri tomatoes

It's no secret that I love slow cooking. If a TV Chef utters the magic words "pop it into the oven for at least 4 hours" I know I'm going to try the recipe. I love the melting, falling apart texture of a slow cooked joint, the fact you can pull the bone out of 5-hour-leg-of-lamb with a gentle tug. In fact I've always wanted to cook something in a low oven overnight but am yet to summon up the courage...

And of all the joints of meat to slow-cook, pork belly is one of my favourites. I love the fact it is comparatively cheap (despite gaining recent popularity as a Gastropub Fave), I love its melting, gooey texture and the fact that it's so forgiving - you can pop it into the oven on a really low heat for 2 hours or 4 hours and it'll still be delicious.

But most of all I love the fact that almost all national cuisines have a use for it. You can shred it and serve it in tortillas with refried pinto beans, lime juice and chillis for a Mexican flavour. You can braise it in a sticky, aromatic, gingery sauce and serve with spring onions for an Asian flavour. Or you can rub it with crushed fennel seeds and chilli flakes and serve with some good roasted tomatoes and mashed cannellini beans for a kind-of-Italian angle.

Which was what I did in the picture above. I bashed up the fennel seeds and chilli flakes with a little sea salt and black peppercorns in a pestle and mortar and then rubbed it all over the meat. I left it for an hour or so at room temperature and then I put on top of a mound of sliced red onions in a roasting dish and put it into a hot oven but immediately turned the temperature right down to 150-ish. I left it to cook for about 3 hours, pouring a little stock around the meat after about 2 hours. I served it on some sweet little roasted Datteri tomatoes with a scoop of creamy mashed cannellini beans splashed with some nice peppery olive oil.

I thought it was a good, lazy Sunday lunch dish. In my fantasy life it would always be followed by a long dog-walk, the Sunday papers and a snooze on the sofa.

A quail tale

I'm not the sort of person who eats Quail on a regular basis. Although I consider myself a fairly adventurous and curious cook, tiny game birds are not a mid-week staple in our house. But I spotted a recipe for Roasted Paprika Quails with Romesco Sauce and it just really appealed. I was also persuaded by the beautiful photograph of the dish - crisp, plump little quails sat on a bright rustic platter alongside a gorgeous antique pewter bowl of the rich red sauce. Adorable.  

The recipe is from Cook in Boots by Ravinder Bhogal. You might remember her - she was awarded the dubious title of the "New Fanny Craddock" by Gordon Ramsey on his F-Word tv show a couple of years ago. Her book references food from different countries and cultures and consequently recipes are diverse and interesting - fusion-y but in a good way. The book is also full of lush photographs, really beautiful food shots, tonnes of vintage props - floral teacups, lace tablecloths - and loads of gorgeous shoe-porn-shots of shiny Louboutins and sparkly Choos.

But although the recipes are appealing, the format is a bit too girlie even for me! The chapters divide food into categories like "Lots of martinis and food to pick at", "PMT"and "Skinny food for when you feel the pinch of the Chloe Jeans" - it all feels a bit cliched and Girlie Magazine (not THAT kind of Girlie Magazine, more like the Grazia token recipe article).

Anyhoo, the quail. So Waitrose were selling them - 2 in a box - for about £4 which I thought wasn't bad for a little treat - and one per person is just about enough. Ravinder says that having them with a salad is sufficient but I'm greedier than her so served them on a bed of Red Camargue Rice which made a nice nutty accompaniment. They were tasty little chaps actually with a discernibly different flavour - more like duck than chicken - and although they're fiddly to eat, provided you don't mind getting stick into some bone gnawing, they make an interesting alternative to a Sunday Roast Chicken.

Adapted from Ravinder Bhogal's Roasted Paprika Quails with Romesco Sauce
2 quails (one per person should be enough)
Teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves
2 Garlic cloves
Paprika
Handful of almonds
Handful of breadcrumbs (I used an old ciabatta loaf)
A couple of tomatoes (I used about 8 cherry tomatoes)
Either 2 fresh red peppers roasted and skinned or the same amount of jarred roasted peppers in oil
A glug of red wine vinegar
A glug of olive oil

Rub the quail with oil, thyme leaves and a couple of teaspoons of paprika and leave to marinate for a couple of hours if possible. Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees. Pop the quails into the oven for about 25/30 mins. While they are roasting get your rice on (Red Rice takes about 25 minutes to cook) and make the sauce. Pop the almonds, peppers, tomatoes, garlic, breadcrumbs and red wine vinegar into the blender and blitz. Add olive oil to loosen as necessary.

Serve the quails on top of the red rice with a handful of rocket and a little bowl of sauce for dipping. 

Sausages with Chakchouka (plus a peculiar deconstructed banoffee pie)

This is a super-quick post to tell you about an easy, wintery mid-week supper.

It was inspired by something in Rick Stein's lovely Mediterranean Escapes book - a recipe for a Moroccan dish called Chakchouka. Chakchouka is a little warm salad-y dish that would probably be served with some nice flatbread but tonight I used it as a saucy foil for some spicy sausages and basmati rice.

Spicy sausages with Chakchouka 

4/6 sausages for 2 - depends how peckish you are! 

2 peppers (Rick says green but I only had red)

3 cloves garlic

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

Half teaspoon cayenne

1.5 teaspoons cumin

A handful of good cherry tomatoes or a tin of tomatoes if you can't find any tasty fresh ones

Bunch of coriander roughly chopped

Oil for frying

Blacken the peppers on the hob top (extractor fan useful here). Get the sausages into the oven on a medium heat. Crush the garlic and fry off in a little olive oil. After a minute add the cumin, cayenne and paprika and fry for a minute or two. Add the tomatoes and simmer on a low heat so the tomatoes break down a little. Run the peppers under the tap rubbing away the blackened skin. Roughly chop the peppers and add into the tomato mixture along with the coriander. Simmer on a low heat for another 10 minutes.

When your sausages are crusty and delicious take them out of the oven and slice diagonally. Serve on a pile of fluffy basmati with a heap of the Chakchouka.

PS. I also made a slightly weird pudding tonight - I had some old bananas to use up so I thought I'd try a sort of rudimentary deconstructed Banoffee Pie...I just crumbled a couple of digestive biscuits into a bowl and then topped it with spoonfuls of marscapone, a shamefully ready-made caramel sauce and a sliced banana.

As the Russian Meerkat would say..."simples".

And actually really tasty.

I ♥ East London

I have to confess that I never really wanted to move to East London. 


7 years ago I was a South-West London girl through and through. My 'high street' was the then-grotty Wandsworth shopping centre (and the Kings Road on payday). I had a highly developed Cab Radar as I took taxis literally everywhere - I was legendary in my ability to find a taxi in Putney at 11.45pm on a Friday night. I was happy knowing I could pop to Northcote Road to buy a handmade cupcake sold by a yummy mummy in a lilac cashmere pashmina. I gave little thought to whether I wanted to spend the rest of my days in a place where Starbucks was inaccessible due to the queue of shiny-haired, double-buggied 30-somethings waiting for a Skinny Latte for them and a Babyccino for little Amelia. And I certainly never thought that I was the sort of girl who would consider the moving to the mythical East.  


At the time, East London was a mysterious place where people wore short-sleeved tee-shirts over long-sleeved t-shirts, listened to shouty music and where, inexplicably, no-one wore fake tan or anything in a colour. A little bit like a massive student union bar for people who dabbled in performance art. Surely it was no place for someone like me? Someone who likes to have a nice glass of prosecco in a bar where they can actually sit down? Someone who wears sunglasses on their head just to keep their hair back and, yes, someone who has The Sound of Music on their Ipod? 


So, when my boyfriend suggested we consider moving East, I gritted my teeth and prepared for the worst - I would have to start skateboarding to work while wearing a peruvian poncho and leg-warmers and listening to a Nirvana/Pan Pipes 'Mash Up' on my Ipod. Urgh. My boyfriend now says there was only one way he could persuade me to make the move - focus on the markets. So he embarked on a campaign of taking me to all the markets in East London - week after week we visited Spitalfields Market, Columbia Road Flower Market, Brick Lane Sunday Market, Broadway Market, Whitecross Road Food Market. Of course, I was completely charmed by them all and head over heels in love with East London. I couldn't wait to move! Fickle? Moi? 


Happily, seven years later, I'm still delighted we made the move. I love where we live - it's full of interesting and different sorts of people, shops and restaurants - I love that it's hard to spot a 'type' of person who lives round here (although there are still one or two Nathan Barleys but they just provide entertainment). And of course there's a significant Bangladeshi community round here who have created the Brick Lane curry empire. Brick Lane is now synonymous with the Post Pub Curry - the neon stretch of road that beckons after a couple of post-work lagers. Unfortunately my experience with Brick Lane curries has been decidedly average, but there are a couple of genuinely fantastic places for curry slightly off the Lane itself. We're lucky enough to live in the middle of four amazing Pakistani places: Needoo Grill, Tayyabs, Lahore Kebab House and, our regular haunt, Mirch Masala - 'shall we have a Mirch" is heard on a weekly basis in our house! Mirch Masala is actually a small chain - they have restaurants in Southall and Tooting in London and one or two in the suburbs - it's very informal, almost canteen-y in style and, as with all these places, you need to bring your own booze if you want a drink.  


But really it's all about the food. The food is fantastic - simple but delicious - lots of grilled and spiced meat, interesting pulses (a sweet, spicy butter bean dish which is delicious) and charred breads. We love their mixed grill with lentil dhal and garlic naan bread pictured above - the mixed grill contains chicken pieces, little spiced drumsticks, lamb chops and little kofta-type sausages - it's certainly too much food for 2 people, although we do try!


Anyway, it's worth a trip East to try any one of these restaurants and I'd try and get here as quickly as you can because things are definitely changing around here - I'm sad to say that the Babyccino has now made its way here too so it's only a matter of time before canteen-style spiced lamb chops are replaced by organic, free-range rose petal macaroons.  Although actually they sound pretty good too...

Trevisana and taleggio risotto

I would consider myself a very "girlie" girl.

I own more than 30 lip glosses, I have seen the  Sex And The City film more than 20 times and cried each and every time (oh god, the horror of the jilting scene) and, yes, there are items of clothing in my wardrobe that still have their shop-labels attached to them.

But, despite that, I'm just not a massive fan of pink.

And while tonight's risotto tasted lovely, there's no getting away from the fact that it was definitely (and defiantly) pink. So if you can get past that then do give this a go.

Trevisana or Radicchio is a red Italian chicory which is tasty but quite bitter in a good way. Apparently it's also good split and grilled with some good balsamic vinegar. In this simple risotto it marries well with the rich, mild creaminess of the taleggio.

Trevisana and taleggio risotto 
One head of trevisano shredded
One red onion finely chopped
A mug-ful of risotto rice
2/3 mugs of chicken stock
2 plump cloves of garlic crushed
A fist sized chunk of taleggio cheese cubed
A splash of olive oil
A big knob of butter

Fry the onion and garlic in a little oil and half of the butter until translucent. Add the shredded trevisana and allow to wilt. Add the rice and stir well to coat with the buttery juice. Then add the hot stock, ladle by ladle, stirring all the time. I know, it's a long old process but I find it quite pleasantly relaxing to just stir mindlessly for a while. When the rice reaches the still-a-little-bite-inside-but-soft-on-the-outside stage add the cheese and stir through to melt. Add the rest of the butter and stir again to incorporate and to add a sheen to the finished dish. I dribbled a bit of grassy olive oil on the finished plate.

Barbara Cartland would LOVE it.

Hate mushrooms? Try my Mushroom Risotto!

I am aware of fact that I seem to spend a disproportionate amount of time devising ways to get my boyfriend to eat food that he hates. Cauliflower soup, warm broccoli salads, cabbage etc. So you'll be relieved to hear that tonight I made his favourite supper - a lovely warming mushroom risotto.

It's worth mentioning at this stage that my boyfriend hates mushrooms.

You see! It makes no sense.

Who hates mushrooms but loves mushroom risotto?

And for that reason, I will continue my endeavours with unpopular foodstuffs - because you never know when I might stumble across his new favourite food...

Mushroom Risotto 

- Pack of mushrooms

- Handful of dried mushrooms

- One white onion

- Couple of cloves of garlic

- A good stock cube - I found some excellent mushroom stock cubes in Carluccios

- Enough arborio rice for two people

- Knob butter

- A few sprigs of thyme

- A couple of big handfuls freshly grated parmesan

Finely chop the onion and garlic and fry lightly in a little butter and oil. Soak your dried mushrooms in boiling water with a stock cube and leave until soft and tender. Slice your fresh mushrooms up and throw into the saucepan with the onions and garlic. Add the fresh thyme leaves and fry everything for another 5 minutes. Add the dried mushrooms and the rice, stirring well to ensure the rice is well coated in the buttery juice.

Then start adding the mushroom soaking liquor/stock mixture one ladle at a time. Stir gently but fairly constantly adding ladle--fuls of liquid when the previous one has been absorbed. You know how the rice should be - but I just keep trying a little until it reaches the right texture - soft but still retaining a tiny bit of bite. When you're happy the rice is done, turn the heat off, add a handful of parmesan, stir and then generous knob of butter and stir well to create a nice glossy finish. I serve with extra parmesan for sprinkling.

Evidently this is worth trying even if you hate mushrooms.

Pan-fried but at least there's no foam... Salmon and broccoli with anchovy, lemon and chill

I was reading the Dos Hermanos chappie's Guardian blog the other day - he's put together a very funny list of the most odious foodie trends - here's a link to it: Worst Food Trends of Decade. I agree with a lot of it - I am not a fan of the "sauce comma" either, or anything foamy or indeed Jamie's bloody Flavour Shaker.  The comments are entertaining too - someone makes the point that the much-used terms 'pan-fried' and 'oven-roasted' are ridiculous - how else do you fry or roast if not in a pan or the oven. It's a fair point really and it's another example of the way that menus are now copy-written as carefully as adverts are. I remember going to a quite-posh restaurant with my boyfriend years ago where we shared a "basket of street-foods" to start with and to follow were served some kind of lamb "bathed in the jewel of gravies". I mean, really.

Anyway, I "pan-fried" some salmon the other day - a couple of minutes on a high heat, skin-side down to make sure it goes super-crispy and then flipped it over for another minute and turned the heat off so it was finished off by the residual heat of the pan. We had it with my new best way to cook broccoli - really lightly stir-fried (is that still ok to say?) with a chopped chilli, a couple of mashed anchovies and a good squeeze of lemon juice.

I thought it was really zingy and tasty, as did my boyfriend, but when I made this for my sister over Christmas she claimed that I had managed to turn a vegetable she loved into something loathsome...Ah well, perhaps I should have served it on a slate and called it an anchovy "jus".