Best of 2011

Ingredients of the year: corn tortillas and kalamansi limes

Tacos have made it into the bi-weekly dinner repertoire. Fillings vary: there has occasionally been spiced-up leftover brisket or shoulder of lamb, more often some beans. A cabbage salad is a new and popular addition to the table. Whatever the individual components, this is always fun to eat, its quality underpinned by proper tacos (ordinarily from here, though there are some being made in Brixton now too).

Amongst the many foolish things that the European Commission has done is to forbid the importation of these limes, far more intense and aromatic than anything I’ve come across. Bottled concentrates bring back at least some memory of drinking sweet-sour lime sodas across Malaysia, but I remain on the lookout for contraband.

Method: curing

When I lived in France, I would have no more made confit de canard from scratch than I would have baked my own croissants. But measured by an input-output ratio, this delivers an astonishing amount for very little effort: one pan, about 15 minutes of active time and a bonus jar of duck fat at the end.

Most exciting Brixton opening: Lab G

Our local maestro di gelato is a generous soul, a creative genius and a perfectionist, particularly when it comes to his exceptional pistachio and salted caramel flavours. This is the place we take people when we want them to appreciate just how astonishing the Brixton food scene is.

Best meal (London): Pied á Terre

I was lucky enough to eat at this Michelin 2-star twice in 2011. The food was beautiful to look at, and the kitchen is creative while still turning out plates that are hugely enjoyable to eat. The service was a surprise too: well-informed, generous and far from starchy. At lunchtime, it's not even shockingly expensive.

Best meal (everywhere else): Tek Sen

One of the few disappointing moments of our trip to Penang was finding this restaurant closed (some kind of temple festival) when we tried to make a return visit. This was revelatory food: astonishingly fresh yet amazingly complex in flavour. If there’s a single reason why we’re cooking and eating so much more Asian food now, it must lie in the effort to recapture what was on those plates.

Most-used cookbook: Madhur Jaffrey’s Curry Easy

We had this out from the library on and off for the last 6 months; our permanent copy should be arriving in time for the beginning of Hanukkah. It’s yielded crispy, spicy chickpeas which are perfect with a G&T, our first proper dhal and introduced us to curry leaves. But the biggest game changer has been making our own chapattis, far simpler and tastier than I would have imagined possible.

Most enjoyable food shop: A & C Co Continental Grocers

I’m spending more time in the local Asian grocery these days, and I still make a trip to Borough Market most weekends. But this is the place that I stop into nearly 6 days a week, whether for some olives or nuts to start off dinner, to top-up store cupboard basics or for the things that no one else sells locally, like quinces or fresh bay leaves. These are the people who’ve held onto my extra keys, make me laugh at the end of a rotten day and are eager to have taste me the new cheese that’s just come in. I don’t think most people have a shop like this; I’m very lucky that I do.

Best experiment: growing tomatoes

Flowers and shrubbery may still hold very limited interest, but I’m now beginning to understand why people like to garden. I’m not sure that in the midst of the root rot saga of August and September, or when I was hauling home 40 litres of potting soil on the bus, that I wholly appreciated how satisfying it could be to grow my own food. But it gave me occasion to talk to my neighbours, and was a far better use of time than more Internet surfing. And I learned that even basic cherry tomatoes taste great when picked as the table is being set for dinner.

Canning

As a general rule, I’m happy to benefit from other’s kitchen skills when I think they’re better than mine. That goes for jam (more often than not Bon Maman, though I’d happily frequent this fantastic producer in rural Somerset were she closer), chutney (cue the lady in Somerset again, though half of Borough Market seems to be given over to chutney these days), pickles (well, actually cornichons, and I like most French brands except Maille) and ketchup (where Heinz is king). Beyond that, the cost of fresh produce and the severe lack of food storage options in our 55 square metres have provided little incentive to devote effort to improving my canning skills.

Somewhat by accident, though, I have managed to do enough canning in recent months to have filled up nearly a dozen jars, and a fair amount of our free shelf space. First there were the Lake District blackcurrants languishing in the freezer. These have now been macerating in vodka since sometime in early June. I should have my choice of cold, rainy weekends in late October or early November in which to finish turning them into crème de cassis. Next came a bag of windfall pears from a colleague’s garden. I added some Bramley apples, onions, sultanas and spices, and turned them into chutney. Unfortunately, I won’t know if it’s any good until pears are well out of season.

The chutney was a pleasing, if odiferous, way to pass a drizzly Sunday afternoon, with Formula 1 coverage punctuating the plip-plopping of reducing liquid. But the most enjoyable project so far, and the only one I’ve been able to taste, was spiced tomato jam.Although we’ve grown plenty of tomatoes, there was never a large enough volume at one time to make this recipe. But when I saw some slightly overripe plum tomatoes at the farmer’s market for a knockdown price, it seemed a good use for both my remaining jars and (yet another) variable weather day.

I didn’t tinker with the recipe, merely scaled it down to match the quantity of tomatoes I bought, and replaced the portion of white sugar with more brown. As promised, it cooked down in just under three hours to beautiful jam-like consistency. The spices didn’t dominate as they do in a chutney; rather, there was a hum in the background, a bit of complexity. Likewise, the vinegar added gentle acidity without announcing its presence.

It’s in the cupboard right now, though I don’t expect it will take much to get it opened: goats cheese and a baguette, grilled chicken or perhaps just some good cheddar. On the basis of my brief pre-jarring taste, I’m expecting very good things.

Sweet and Savoury Tomato Jam

barely adapted from Jennifer Perillo and Food 52

Makes 1 ½ pints (about 3 jam jars)

Total time: 3 ½ hours; Active time: 30 minutes

I chose to skip the suggested hot water bath, instead merely pouring the jam into hot, sterilised jars. If you plan to jar this for longer-term storage, please follow directions from a reliable source.

3 1/2 pounds tomatoes (make sure they are ripe and flavourful)

1 small onion

2 cups brown sugar

1 teaspoon coarse salt

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 cup cider vinegar

juice of 1 lemon

Core and coarsely chop the tomatoes. Finely chop the onion. Add these to a large pot. Add the sugar, salt, spices, vinegar and lemon juice to the pot and combine.

Bring the mixture to a gentle boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook until thickened to a jam-like consistency, about 3 hours. (The exact time will depend on the amount of water in your tomatoes.)

When the mixture is nearly ready, prepare your jars. Pour in the jam, filling up each jar to within ¼ inch of the top. Seal tightly and turn upside-down until cooled to help seal.

September highlights

Six weeks on, I’m still waxing rhapsodic about my recent South East Asia trip. But there’s been lots of other shopping, cooking and eating going on. A few highlights:

Tomatoes

Some of our plants succumbed to root rot, a likely combination of months of bad weather and too few holes poked in the bottom of the industrial-size tomato tins which served as pots. But it’s still been a highly credible first crop; we should finish with upwards of 800 cherry tomatoes.

There have been salads and pizza toppings aplenty, as well as roast tomato sauces destined for the freezer. A fair number never make it out of the bowl on the table. For slightly deferred gratification, however, it’s been hard to beat slow-roasted tomatoes, sliced in half, tossed with a bit of olive oil, fresh thyme or oregano, bay leaves, salt and whole garlic cloves, and put in a low oven (100 C) for 2 hours, or until they are wrinkly but not entirely desiccated. They then go in the fridge topped up with more oil, perfect for sandwiches, pre-dinner drinks and tossing through pasta.

Pho @ Cafe East

Amongst the best bowls I’ve ever come across (the saté pho at Pho Dong-Huong in Paris’ Belleville remains a sentimental favourite, but it’s not completely echt) is served at a simple cafe situated in a Deptford parking lot, next to a bowling alley, multiplex and bingo parlour. Its unpromising location is perhaps less surprising when you learn that the surrounding area is home to lots of second-generation Vietnamese. I’m partial to the spicy broth; the rice noodle dishes are good here too.

Cafe East

100 Redriff Road

Surrey Quays Leisure Park

Tube: Surrey Quays or Canada Water

Closer to home

Just underneath the Brixton rec centre, a new meat and grocery shop has opened. Its Algerian-born owner is selling loose olives, lots of fresh North African pastries and French-branded groceries, and, most excitingly, making his own merguez. A rotisserie is set up outside, awaiting the arrival of British Gas.

And in the market(s) proper, the eating options just keep getting better. I’ve heard that a Beijing-style dumpling stand is on its way to Granville Arcade, and I’ve met the very excited British-Oaxacan family pushing to get their Market Row taqueria open by the end of the week.

Notwithstanding the rain, the stands at Sunday farmer’s market have been full of beautiful, cheap fruit and vegetables, the last few weeks of the courgettes, corn, tomatoes and berries overlapping with the arrival of apples, pears and pumpkins. And I can only imagine the weather must be good for beets, because the ones for sale right now are large enough to feed a Ukrainian family for at least a few days.

In the kitchen

It’s been simple—but good—eating around here: lots of stove-top pizza, tacos, grilled meats and salads. A notable success has been finding an aubergine dish that didn’t involve buckets of oil and was worth repeating. I’m not sure why it took me so long to look in the obvious place—one of the Moro cookbooks. This recipe began with the predictable steps of grilling and scooping out the flesh, but then called for sautéing the resultant mush with tomatoes, fresh coriander, cumin and cayenne until the water was cooked out, and the puree rich and caramelised. Perfect alongside grilled lamb kebabs, roasted peppers, flatbread and a tzatziki-like dip.

Gardening

Apparently, I’ve become a gardener.

I suppose I’d been spending a fair amount of time watering and fussing over the motley collections of pots, tins and other receptacles overtaking the windowsills and the ground below, of looking at videos of how to split out tomato seedlings and plotting how the abandoned flat-bed truck at the back of our parking lot could be turned into more growing space. But it wasn’t until a new neighbour described me as “the one with all the plants”, that I realised that there had been some sort of a step change in activity and aspirations.

I should clarify that I’m only growing food, and not so much of it at that. There are half a dozen herbs, several different kinds of salad leaves, chard and, should everything go to plan, maybe 25 cherry tomato plants. I’m on the lookout for some radish seeds, but I’m resisting the temptation to expand more dramatically. Other than the most prolific herbs, there may not be enough of anything to particularly change buying habits.

Starting last summer, I began spending some time at the local community greenhouse. It’s a remarkable place, all the more so for being in a neighbourhood as urban as Brixton. An astounding variety of food grows there: chilli varieties I’ve never seen before, beds of Asian greens tended to by an industrious woman who speaks very little English, all sorts of pumpkins, and, on a highly experimental basis, grapes and rice. There are fruit trees too, and bee hives. The food is sometimes sold, sometime used in cooking demonstrations and, far too frequently, just left for volunteers to scavenge.

A few hours in the sunshine, getting agreeably dirty, seemed like a fair price for suppers featuring fresh-from-the vine tomatoes, herbs and greens. But once the sun and the tomatoes were both gone, the walk towards the greenhouses became less appealing. I’d not sure exactly when the idea of growing some of my own became fixed, but the plan was put into action on the first warm weekend in March. Compost got hauled home on a bus, and a trowel, some seeds and small plants were purchased. By the evening, I had colonised the outside window sills with empty cans, old yogurt pots and the like, while the pots of tomato seeds were lined up, somewhat more precariously, on the inside ledge.

Six weeks on, and the mint plant is halfway up the wall, with no visible sign of the raids for juleps and raita. Oregano, thyme and rosemary are being used almost daily. For a week or so, the chive’s blossoms, purple and tasting almost like a mild spring onion, made their way into almost everything savoury, from eggs to salads to soups. The chard has survived what appears to be a minor bout with beetminer’s leaf, and the rocket will be adorning Tuesday’s pizza. The tomatoes are all still alive, the prodigy of the bunch nearly a foot tall and bursting out of its small port, the laggards barely an inch high. It’s just possible that come August, we’ll have a glut.

Weeding has proven less time-consuming than expected, watering more so, diagnosis of the strange purple splotches (rust, perhaps?) on the sorrel leaves virtually impossible. There has been a childlike sense of wonder in watching things grow from seed, a sense of anticipation in seeing how the plants have changed from one day to the next, a growing excitement at the possibility of being able to eat it all, and some pride in being just a tiny bit self-sufficient in supplying my kitchen.

Since I began growing them, chives have been figuring much more prominently in our cooking. One particular success was a triple allium pizza, featuring leeks cooked almost to the point of being confited, a smear of wild garlic pesto and, when it came out from under the grill, a scattering of chives and chive blossoms. You can find the recipe for the leeks here (follow the basic method, omitting the mustard and crème fraiche at the end). The pesto was made much like any other: toasted, pounded pine nuts (or almond slivers), combined with a big handful of garlic leaves, parmesan and olive oil.

Good, Ugly Supper

Consider yourself lucky that I don't have a camera handy. Piperade, a garlicky Basque speciality of stewed peppers, onions and tomatoes, into which eggs are lightly scrambled, is homely at best. Poaching or baking the eggs might limit the unattractive colour bleed, and a generous hand with the parsley could distract the eye, but piperade's sheer ugliness is hard to disguise.

No matter. This might not be dress-up and go-out food, or even set-the-table-for-dinner food, but it makes an undeniably moreish supper. The traditional accompaniment is salty, silky Bayonne ham, France's answer to the more famous Spanish serrano and Italian parma. But I had my fill of jamon with a bowl of this soup, so I added a bit of extra salt and proceeded without.

I used fresh tomatoes--a variety available here called Marmot, which look like little bean-bag chairs--and bell peppers; substituting good-quality tinned tomatoes and some jarred, roasted peppers would produce a deeper, rounder flavour. For a bit of heat and complexity in my version, I put in a pinch of Spanish smoked paprika; in southwest France, this would most likely be piment d'espelette, also known as ezpeletako biperra. Tabasco could even be used, though I'm generally of the opinion that it only belongs in Bloody Marys.

The ham might be optional, even some of the garlic, if you're sensitive about such things, but I wouldn't sit down without a big piece of crusty bread and a juice glass full of simple, robust wine. Oh, and finally, I've written this for Eat the Right Stuff's vegetarian blogging event. So check it out, for recipes that are far more inventive--and attractive--than mine.

I worked off a recipe from Marlena Spieler's Vegetarian Bistro, which differed in calling for red and green peppers (I forgot to buy the latter), marjoram and cayenne. Since her version made enough for six, I'm giving a scaled-down version with slightly different instructions.

Piperade
Serves 2
Total time 30-35 minutes Active time 15 minutes
2 smallish onions
2 bell peppers
vine-ripened tomatoes, equivalent to about 1 1/2 cups chopped*
1-2 cloves of garlic
3 medium eggs (adjust based on the number of people eating, and the desired ratio of egg to sauce), not fridge-cold
smoked paprika or an equivalent
olive oil

Thinly slice onions. In a medium-sized, deep frying pan or skillet, heat enough olive oil to just coat the surface and add the onions. Season and allow to soften for about 10 minutes on a moderate heat. Coarsely slice the peppers and chop the tomatoes. First add the peppers, allowing these to cook for at least 10 minutes, or until they become almost silky. Now add the chopped tomatoes, giving about 5 minutes for them to soften, meld and give up their juice. (Allow a bit more time for flavour blending if you are using tinned tomatoes.) Slice or chop the garlic and add, along with the paprika. Cook for a few more minutes, adjusting the heat if necesary, until you have a dryish but coherent sauce. Turn the heat down to low. In a bowl, crack the eggs and whisk lightly with a fork.** Spoon in a bit of the sauce, then add the egg mixture to the pan, stirring gently to combine. Continue to stir until the eggs are just cooked through, then remove immediately from both the heat and the pan.


* If the only fresh tomatoes you can find look pale or cotton-woolly, substitute a can of plum tomatoes with most of the juice drained.
** At this stage you could also poach the eggs, though I would advise that you look for advice on how to do this elsewhere.