Simit

Simit are to Istanbul what bagels are to New York City—the individually-portioned, ring-shaped breads not just an anytime staple, but an iconic part of what it means to be an inhabitant of that city, the object of habit, preference and memory.

Simit are made with a yeasted dough which is allowed to rise, then shaped into narrow rings. Following the second rise, the breads are dipped into water mixed with a bit of molasses (pekmez), then fully coated with sesame breads before being baked in a hot oven. The resultant breads tend to have a well-browned crust with a bit of resistance, giving way to a slightly sweet, soft yet chewy dough.

Just as with bagels, simit are not really made by home bakers. They are sold by bakeries and at a few new simit-specific chains. Most people, however, tend to buy them from one of the hundreds of carts located across the city. While the cart operators obtain a license to operate in a fixed location, there are also still some itinerant vendors, mostly in markets and some older neighbourhoods, who sell the breads from a tray balanced on their heads. Prices, while no longer government-subsidized, are fixed for both wholesale and retail; the maximum price which can be charged to a customer is 1 TL, or about 35p.

Like most breads, simit are at their best when fresh. While the carts have unmistakable charm and convenience, bakeries present the obvious advantage of happening upon a just-baked batch. Beyond that, some prefer their simit a bit sweeter (likely a product of more molasses in the dipping water), with a harder crust, or with slightly saltier dough.

Simit vendors keep a box of processed cheese triangles (like Laughing Cow) for those customers who believe that the first meal of the day must contain a bit of cheese. The new chains use them, much like bagels, as the basis for filled sandwiches, while cafes serving breakfast platters of cheeses, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, olives and cucumbers often throw a few segments into the bread basket.

It was snowing on my last morning in Istanbul. The local simit vendor was standing inside the vestibule of a nearby bank to keep warm, but dashed out when he saw me. That simit may not have reached the acme of ideal texture or flavour, but it’s the one I remember best.

Istanbul

I arrived back from my trip to Istanbul less than 72 hours ago. Already, there’s only one piece of the sublime pistachio baklava left—supremely buttery but not overly sweet. The chewy, almond-orange biscuits from a sepia-toned bakery in the Besitkas neighbourhood are gone completely, and we’ve made considerable inroads into the pistachio-sesame halvah, bought from a shop that’s been in the same family for nearly 150 years. For folks who claim not to have much of a sweet tooth, that’s an awful lot of sugar.

In between, I’ve been cooking up some savoury dishes with my new stocks of grains and spices. Last night, we began with a winter salad of bulgur, celery, walnuts and pomegranate from the Moro 3 cookbook. Our main course was minced lamb kebabs, seasoned with fruity-hot red pepper flakes (aci biber), dried mint and oregano and garlic, and served with flatbread and a salad of onions, parsley and sumac.

For breakfast this morning, we used the rest of flatbread to scoop up a take on the Turkish scrambled egg and pepper dish, menemen. Lunch was somewhat more ambitious, a spinach and cheese borek, or savoury pastry. Some compromises were necessary: we used Greek filo pastry (the slightly thicker Turkish yufka only being available in a few North London shops), and a mix of feta and ricotta in place of Turkish white cheeses. The filling was made savoury with sautéed onions, to which I also added some more of the aci biber and dried mint. In a change from the Greek versions I’ve had, the remaining yogurt-oil-egg mixture used to moisten the pastry sheets was poured over the assembled dish, softening the crust but becoming almost soufflé-like in the oven.

I have plans for pilaus, other types of kebabs and lots more salads and dips, as well as most anything which will make good use of my ample dried mint supply. And as soon as I get my notes and photos in order, I’ll have plenty more ingredients, vendors and dishes to write about.

For now, though, my ambitions centre on that last piece of baklava.

January highlights

Holiday

For the last few days, I’ve been wholly absorbed in planning for a forthcoming five-day trip to Istanbul. I imagine I’ll make it to the Hagia Sofia and Topkapi Palace, but what I’m really excited about is the food. I’ve even joined Twitter in order to survey expert opinion on the best place for manti, a lamb tortellini of sorts, served in yogurt sauce.

Winter fruit at Maltby Street

Tony Booth’s decision to move his eponymous fruit and veg shop from Borough Market to Maltby Street has added at least 30 minutes to my Saturday morning shopping routine. But damn it if the man doesn’t make it worth it every time. This week there was beautiful Yorkshire forced rhubarb, just over half the price of his Borough competitors. Oranges with flesh the colour of pink grapefruits were 5 for a pound, the Sicilian sanguinello not much more.

Chinese New Year

We celebrated the Lunar New Year last weekend with G’s brother and sister-in-law. There were 14 guests and nearly as many dishes, ranging from wasabi mayo-topped smoked salmon in filo cups to sweet-spicy chicken wings and homemade black sesame ice cream. Little was left of the pomelo salad, but S mixed us up another batch of the tangy, coconuty dressing. (It made an excellent supper when we returned to London, stirred through strips of grilled chicken breast, shredded Savoy cabbage and rice noodles.) And while she claimed that that the turnip cake, apparently an epic labour, was not up to her mother’s standards, chunks of it scrambled with eggs and spring onions at breakfast the next morning was good enough to bring back memories of a similar dish from our Penang food crawl.

Alice Medrich’s cocoa brownies

Had I known that two professional chefs would be attending the gumbo evening for which these were baked, I probably would have tried to find a way out of my hastily-made promise to bring dessert. But not only did these super-moist, fudgy brownies garner praise from all assembled, but I was able to make them in one bowl with the most basic of ingredients and at least half my attention on an unusually good television documentary. Job done.

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.

Somerset and Potato Gratin

You know it’s going to be a good weekend when you’re met on arrival with hugs all around and a glass of your favourite champagne.

We were in North Somerset, 30 minutes or so out of Bristol, staying with G’s first year university roommate and his large and very welcoming family. The champagne—accompanied by a platter of blinis and salmon mousse—began an evening of copious food and wine, good conversation and a level of relaxation very rarely achieved on a Friday night.

The next day, having slept well under the watchful gaze of Justin Beiber (we had poached the seven year old’s room), we headed off on a country tromp. There was mud, stiles to climb over, lush green meadows and lots of sheep: all the things that the city folk expect out of a country walk. We ended up at a restaurant so seasonal, rustic and organic that the well-heeled, left-leaning readers of the Observer named it the UK’s best ethical restaurant. Other than its name, the Ethicurean, it wears its credentials lightly; the food did its setting ample credit.

Set in the conservatory of an old walled garden, much of the food is sourced on site or from nearby suppliers. The menu is small: terrines, salads, pies and platters of cheese and meat, served with local beers and ciders. Highlights included fantastically piquant chutneys and piccalilli (a traditional English vegetable pickle), off-dry Welsh cider and an Eccles cake, a flaky pastry filled with a warmly-spiced and not too sweet currant mixture.

After lunch, we ambled through the garden, where I discovered how Brussels sprouts grow, then into the orchard of dwarf apple trees. Home was through a series of corn fields, our progress hampered somewhat by our haul of mildly intoxicating beverages from the restaurant’s small shop.

We had been asked to cook dinner, a daunting task for a family that has eaten in serious restaurants and has shown us such exceptional generosity on many occasions. The opportunity to repay their hospitality was a welcome one, and the menu planning a massive highlight in an otherwise forgettable work week . We wanted the food to reflect how we like to eat, to demonstrate some effort, but not so much as to impinge on the relaxed atmosphere, and, most of all, to taste good.

We began with the Union Square Cafe’s bar nuts, buttery and warm, the sweetness offset by cayenne and rosemary. A simple salad followed: mustard-dressed leaves topped with blue cheese and walnuts. The main was duck confit; little more than some fresh herbs and a 24-hour run-up required. With that, we served gratin dauphinois and sautéed mushrooms. We finished with quince which we had poached in vanilla syrup until it was almost ruby-coloured, vanilla ice cream (not home-made) and sablé biscuits.

The duck and the quince are two of our favourite dishes at this time of year, while the nuts and salad have both made previous appearances. Sablé biscuits were a bit of a risk, as I’ve probably not baked more than a few batches of cookies since I was a kid. But it turns out, that with good butter, a reliable recipe, and some sea salt, there wasn’t much that could go wrong.

I had wavered on the gratin. Though the obvious accompaniment to the duck, my only experience was with eating it. But I should have known better than to doubt Julia Child. Her version—as adapted very slightly here--was hearty but not too rich, perfectly soft through the middle and appealingly crusty and bronzed on top. It may even be good enough to earn us some more invitations.

Gratin Dauphinois (Potato Gratin)

Adapted from Food 52 (who in turn adapted it from Julia Child)

Serves 6

Total time: 50 minutes: Active time: 20 minutes

Special equipment: mandolin or food processor with a slicing blade; shallow baking dish (about 9 inches long and 2 inches deep)

350 ml whole milk

2 garlic cloves

2 bay leaves (ideally fresh)

Butter

1 kg waxy potatoes

200 grams grated Gruyere

Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 220C. Put the milk in a small saucepan. Peel and smash one of the garlic cloves. Add it to the pot along with the bay leaves. Heat the milk gently until it comes to a simmer. Remove from the heat and let steep.

Peel the second garlic clove, cut it in half and rub the cut side around the inside of the baking dish. Rub butter inside the dish.

Peel the potatoes and slice with a mandolin or similar implement. Layer about a third of the potatoes into the dish. Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle a third of the cheese on top. Make two more layers in the same way.

Remove the garlic and bay from the milk and pour the milk over the potatoes. Bake the gratin for about 30 minutes, until it's browned and bubbly and a knife cuts through the potatoes easily. Let the potatoes cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Eating Penang

Penang (used to refer both to the island of the northwest coast of Malaysia and its capital), or George Town, as it is also known, is hot, crowded and almost disorienting in its concentration of sights, smells and sounds.

There are dozens of places of worship, ranging from the most modest sidewalk shrine to gilded temple complexes and spanning the city’s three major faiths: Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam (the last with separate Indian and Malay strands). Pedicab drivers tout for business, and there are far too many mopeds and motorcycles. The architecture encompasses British colonial relics, like the E&O Hotel and St George’s Church, touches of Art Deco and mid-century modern, and street after street of brightly-coloured, closely-packed shophouses (a building style popular across much of Southeast Asia, these were built in the nineteenth century as combined commercial and residential spaces.) The streets smell of joss sticks and cooking food. Much of the city looks a bit tumble-down and in need of a coat of paint; yet more and more buildings are being beautifully and painstakingly restored as shops, small hotels or homes.

Photographers, those with a yen for a history, or an interest in religious practices, all find plenty to satisfy in Penang. As for those who really like to eat: the quality, variety and sheer scale of what’s on offer is simply astonishing. It says something about how a city chooses to present itself to the world that maps of locations, days and times where several dozen iconic dishes can be eaten are prominently displayed at the airport. And even in a city which is changing rapidly, it’s striking that many of the best and most popular eating venues are ones which have survived the decades virtually unaltered.

With only three days available for our visit, we were almost always full but very rarely disappointed. To recount even the highlights is still a daunting task. A few stand-outs, in no particular order:

Steamed pomfret “Teo chew style” at Tek Sen, an open-fronted Chinatown cafe which has been serving Peranakan (also known as Nyonya or Straits Chinese, after the Chinese immigrants who married local women) dishes for the last 45 years. The mixture of pieces of tomato, black mushrooms, sour plums and some other unidentifiable items yielded a brothy sauce that was clean, sharp and phenomenally complex. The only place with a menu, much less an English-language one, the recent facelift has, according to those in the know, not changed the quality of food.

Mee goreng at Shahul Hamid. By far the most popular dish served in the rather dingy food court next to the seaside esplanade and eighteenth century Fort Cornwallis, the fried noodles cooked up by the stall’s owner are made to his father’s World War II-era recipe. My tin plate came piled with work-charred egg noodles, bits of peanuts, chives and squid fried with lots of chilli paste. In what was probably a quiet 20 minutes, no fewer than 2 dozen portions were cooked to order.

Assam laksa (sour noodle soup) at an unnamed cafe near the city’s business district. The broth balanced chilli heat with a strong punch tamarind, the fish was similar to sardines, meaty with a shredded texture, and the entirety was lifted with small chunks of sweet, acidic pineapple and fresh mint leaves. We could have easily finished several more of these small, orange bowls.

Breakfast in Malaysia

I suppose it’s possible that most Malaysians actually just grab a quick bowl of cereal, or a piece of toast, before heading out for the day. But I’d much prefer to think that the people I saw on the street or in simple coffee shops, filling up on an astonishing variety of rice, noodles, flat breads and more, are indeed the majority.

To start, a beverage. While it’s possible to get almost any fruit freshly-squeezed from dedicated street-side vendors, coffee and tea tend to be the more common accompaniments. The former can be iced or hot, and is usually topped off with sweetened condensed milk. The latter can be made with lemon and sugar syrup, particularly good iced, or turned into a frothy, latte-like beverage—teh tarik—by adding the condensed milk, then pouring the mixture between two glasses.

As for the main dish, the best food purveyors are highly specialised, often focusing on a single dish or—at most—a certain ethnic subset of dishes. It will therefore be necessary to choose at least a first course. On the more culturally mixed western coast, a masala dosa, served up in a Tamil-owned cafe, is a good starting point. These are invariably made to order on a flat grill, stuffed with mustard seed, chilli and onion-laced crushed potatoes and served with tomato, coriander and coconut relishes. The only decisions to be made are whether to spoon a thick, dhal-like sauce over the top and if the standard pancake, already quite thin and crispy, should be swapped out for one which is even lacier around the edges. If you like what you’ve been given, fold down the banana leaf cum serving plate towards you before leaving.

Next, some rice, perhaps the iconic Malaysian breakfast dish of nasi lemak. You may have a choice between fried chicken (ayam goreng) and chicken in red sauce (masak merah); the latter gives more sauce to mix with the coconut rice, anchovies and peanuts. And while boiled (and usually slightly over-boiled) eggs are the norm, any place with a fried egg option is likely to be making up a good plate of nasi lemak. Another option, harder to find but well worth seeking out, is the Indian Muslim nasi kandar, a mini-buffet of meat curries and vegetables, served with plain rice. Think it’s too heavy to be eating at this hour? Consider again. It won’t get cooler until well into the evening, and many of the best nasi kandar stalls will run out by mid-morning.

To finish, a roti canai. Find a vendor with a busy griddle, and watch the flatbreads being made in front of you. For sauce, the thin lentil curry tends to get my nod over the chicken gravy, but look at what the locals are eating and choose accordingly. Wait until it’s cool enough to not burn your (right) hand, but no longer. Like the pancakes you might make at home, these don’t improve over time.

A few venues to try, should you find yourself in George Town (the capital of Penang state), courtesy of the always-reliable Robyn Eckhardt.

Veloo Vilas

Great dosai at 22 King Street, Little India

Toon Leong

The brothers serving up the nasi kandar at the front of this Chinese-owned coffee shop on the corner of Jalan Transfer and Jalan Argyll are carrying on the business started by their grandfather, an immigrant from southern India. The okra and beef are both superb, and the coffee, served up by unusually crotchety older man, is very good here too.

In London, Bonda Cafe, a halal joint near Paddington kept to high standards and low prices by being in the basement of a Malaysian student residence, opens at 8:30 on weekends to serve up nasi lemak and roti canai.

Coconut

In Malaysia, Java and Bali, coconut comes second only to rice in its ubiquity and centrality to both sweet and savoury food. Even the goats—we came across this one near a beach in Terrangganu, eyeing up a coconut shake—seem to like it.

Young, green coconuts—often described as jelly coconuts—are simply sawed open, the watery, gently sweet liquid drunk through a straw. In the process of maturation, the flesh shifts from being gelatinous and quite bland to a meaty, sweet richness. The flesh can then be turned into milk (made by grating the flesh either on a board of nails or with a threshing-like machine, then pressing it, adding warm water and repeating) or oil (a more involved process which requires long, gentle cooking of the milk, then spooning off and refining the liquid fat which rises to the top), or simply grated, to be used as is, toasted or dry-fried.

I can’t say that the oil was particularly distinctive as a cooking fat, though the less processed oil (used in a particularly tasty meal served, of all places, at a “lifestyle cafe” in the Kuala Lumpur airport’s Low Cost Terminal), did have a certain clean sweetness . The milk, however, drew together all sorts of complex tastes and textures—as coconut rice (nasi lemak),anchoring and giving its name to a popular Malay breakfast spread of chicken curry, fried peanuts, crisp anchovy-like fish, hard-boiled egg, cucumber and a spicy, tomato-based sauce (sambal); in tempering the pungent sourness of curried fish soup (Nyonya laksa, also sometimes known as curry laksa or laksa lemak); and as a relatively neutral medium to float sweet noodles, crushed ice, syrups and gelatinous shapes in cendol and ice kacang.

Coconut also features prominently in desserts that more closely resembled their European counterparts. The best we came across were moreish tarts from Leong Chee Kee, a small bakery owned by the same family for two generations. Justifiably popular, the tarts’ double-crusted pastry are impossibly flaky, the coconut flavour intense, and the overall result not too sweet. Impressively tinged green with pandan leaf, but perhaps less exciting in the mouth, were the thin crepe-like pancakes sold across Bali, filled with a palm sugar caramel and fresh coconut flakes.

A new discovery in Indonesia was the abundant use of grated coconut, sometimes fresh, other times toasted, in cooked vegetable salads. These invariably contained long green beans, chilli, lime, sugar, often also spinach or water spinach and young, just-sprouted mung beans, and were sold under the name of urap sayur (coconut vegetables).

Back in London, I found a Madhur Jaffrey recipe for something named Gudangan which seemed a simpler approximation of what I had eaten. (Some versions also use a fresh spice paste.) Without the energy to bash open the fresh coconuts which are abundant at local Caribbean shops, I settled for rehydrating unsweetened, desiccated coconut. And though Jaffrey’s recipe also called for cauliflower and mung bean sprouts, I stuck to the green beans already in the fridge.

The result was, even without the banana leaf as serving plate, plastic stool and relentless heat, highly enjoyable. And with only six ingredients, it stands a better chance than other vacation favourites of making it onto our table on a regular basis.

Green bean salad with coconut and chili dressing

Adapted from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian

Serves 2 amply

Total time: 75 minutes; Active time: 15 minutes

I like this slightly warm or at room temperature, but it can also be prepared a bit in advance and chilled.

1 fresh red chili

1 garlic clove

2-3 tsp lime juice

Scant 4 tbsp unsweetened, desiccated coconut

1 tsp palm sugar (use dark brown sugar or jaggery if this is unavailable)

2 large handfuls of green beans (should be about 1 package or farmers’ market container)

Rehydrate coconut in a bowl with just over 3 tbsp hot water. It should take from 45 minutes to one hour to fully absorb the liquid and become soft.

While the coconut is rehydrating, chop the chilli finely (removing seeds if desired). Mince the garlic. Add both to a mixing bowl and squeeze over lime juice. Add palm sugar. (If it’s hard to get out of the container, try microwaving it for 5-10 seconds or using a spoon dipped in boiling water.) Mix to combine.

Cut beans into 1 ½ inch lengths. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil and add beans. Cook until just tender—approximately 4 minutes. Drain in cold water to arrest cooking and leave to cool.

Add the coconut to the dressing and mix through. Add the beans and combine. Taste for balance, adding salt and pepper and adjusting the acidity and sweetness.

Here and there

Cookbooks

I’ve recently become a member of the local public library. I did so mostly to support the reading demands presented by my four hour a day commute. (The recent haul has included some Philip Roth, Paul Auster and lots of mystery novels.) But it turns out that the cookbook section is surprisingly extensive. This week we’ve been perusing Thomasina Miers’ Mexican Food Made Simple and Madhur Jaffrey’s Curry Easy. As well as both having the now-requisite artfully simple photos, they share a common goal of demystifying what are perceived as complicated cuisines (and in the case of Miers’, introducing it to a UK audience). While there are a few compromises made on ingredients (tomatillos, for example, don’t figure prominently as they’re very difficult to find in the UK) and processes are simplified, the food, on early evidence, doesn’t taste dumbed-down at all.

Beer

Our household doesn’t get through a lot of beer. But we’ve tried a few English ales lately which have generated the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for stinky red wines from the south of France. The most memorable was a golden ale from a microbrewery near the Mendip hills in Somerset. It was fruity, bright and the perfect complement to a far better-than-average ploughman’s lunch: bread from our favourite local supplier, Westcombe Cheddar from Neal’s Yard and pumpkin chutney. Cheddar Ales aren’t really sold outside the local area, but we liked this enough that we’re considering using some our wine storage space to house a few dozen bottles. (Closer to hand, the St. Austell’s Cornish IPA sold by Marks & Spencer has also proved very enjoyable.)

Sorrel

It hasn’t been growing as out of control as I might like, but there’s still been enough to put into scrambled eggs and herby potato salads and to mix with chopped mint and soft cheese for a tasty pre-dinner spread, perfect on thin slices of toast.

Blogs

In anticipation of July’s trip to Malaysia and Indonesia, I’ve been searching for good information on where and what I should be eating. Eating Asia has been a great discovery. Authored by a professional food writer who’s spent the last 20+ years living in Southeast Asia, it features ingredients, street food and markets from the China to Sulawesi and everywhere in between, shot beautifully and explained with a knowledgeable but light touch. This will be my guide to the best fried chicken in Yogyakarta, central Java, and to what can’t be missed in one of the region’s best eating cities, Penang (Georgetown).

Le “Best of”

It has been, by any estimation, a difficult year. Thankfully, though, there have still been opportunities to take pleasure from shopping for, preparing and eating good food. A few of my favourites...

Pastry Assessing on a number of criteria, Le Figaro rated the tarte au citron at Jacques Genin’s Marais shop to be the second-best in Paris. Having not visited any of the close competitors, I can’t make an authoritative judgment. But I was delighted by the elegant, minimalist shop, the intense care shown in selection and packaging and the stripling of lime zest. Genin’s unctuous chocolate ganache tarte was its technical equal.

Restaurant I’d like to think I pipped the critics in discovering Cafe dei Cioppi, an improbably fantastic Italian kitchen-with-chairs serving simple, ingredient-driven dishes like burrata and grilled-vegetable salad, saffron risotto and pumpkin and sausage lasagne. The wines by the glass are unusual, the crowd stylish but not overbearingly trendy and the location, barely more than 100 metres from my front door, unbeatable.

Fruit and veg It will be more than six months before they’re again available at the market, but I’m already anticipating more experimentation with one of my favourite recent discoveries, courgette flowers.

Ingredients A small sachet of juniper berries has been enlivening homemade gravadlax, braised red cabbage and meaty ragus, while bouquets of chervil, pretty enough to put in a vase, have lifted countless everyday dishes like omelettes or leek and potato soup. Fresh Fallot mustard, aromatic and not too hot, has been a relevation, worthy of eating straight from the spoon.

Day out The best burgundies are well outside my budget, but 18 euros paid for a day’s bicycle rental and a map of the Route des Grands Crus. Heading south from Dijon, I passed through the villages and vineyards of Chambolle-Musigny, Vosne-Romanee and Gevrey-Chambertin before lunch, managing three courses and two glasses before a flat, 20 kilometer glide back into town.

Recipe I’m still not sure exactly what elevated my first-ever boeuf bourguignon from satisfying to sublime, but I’m happy to give full credit to the folks at (sadly departed) Gourmet for showing me the way.

Book How did MFK Fisher manage to write about food—and life—in such a spare yet evocative way? My anthology of her writings hasn’t been absent from the bedside table since I bought it last winter.

Wine Drinking Meursault, a fantastic white burgundy, is always a special treat. Having a particularly good glass of it sent over by a fellow patron in a Dijon wine bar was an occasion that I hope to remember for a long time.

Dijon et Poireaux Vinaigrette

“We lived for almost three years in Dijon, which the Burgundians called without any quibble and only half-hearted contradictions ‘the gastronomic capital of the world.’ We were lucky to… be within ourselves eager, interested, and above all husky-gutted. Most of our orgies were voluntary, but even so I doubt if more jaded livers than ours could have stood the thousand bilious blows we dealt them.” MFK Fisher, The Gastronomical Me

In the world’s northernmost fine wine region, Burgundy’s vineyard owners play an annual game of chance with the weather, hoping that limited sun and heat will produce wines which are delicate, rarified and aromatic, rather than thin and mean. As if to compensate for this, the food is rich and abundant, reliant on butter, meat and wine-enriched sauces. The eponymous boeuf bourguignon is only the most famous of a local repertory which includes coq au vin (with chicken usually taking the place of the traditional rooster), ouefs en meurette (eggs poached in a sauce of butter, red wine, mushrooms and bacon), jambon persillade (a gelee-topped coarse pork paté) and snails with garlic butter (escargot).

Ignoring the atypically hot August weather, I managed a fair sampling of typical Burgundian dishes during a recent visit to Dijon and its environs. At a stylish bistro just across from the Eiffel-design central market, where the waitress sported henna tattoos and Gaultier leggings and the patrons were well-fed and equally well-coiffed, I began with a slice of the local paté. It was true to what I’ve seen at charcuteries across Paris, the only concession to fashion being a green, mousse-like top layer of parsley, instead of finely-chopped leaves throughout. Bouef bourgignon provided a satisfying first impression of the dish, the rich, glossy gravy soaking perfectly into the pommes purees. To finish, a sharp, boozy sorbet made with cassis (blackcurrants) and the local liqueur, crème de cassis.

There was a repeat of the bouef bourgignon the next day, the 12 hours of cooking rendering the beef so soft as to require only a spoon. I was delighted by the presentation in an individual Staub casserole, though mashed potatoes were sorely missed. Here the highlights were a poached egg in a cream of summer truffles, the cheese plate, featuring Epoisses from a producer only 10 minutes up the road and the bucolic setting in the centre of the blink-and-you-miss-it wine town of Gevrey-Chambertin. Eating such a meal—complete with matching glasses of wine at each course—was perhaps ill-advised on a day when I still had some 20 kilometres to cycle in hot sun. But both the scenery and the menu were too good to justify compromise.

Once cold temperatures and company coincide, I hope to pull out my own Staub and attempt Julia Child’s iconic recipe. For now, though, I’m concentrating my efforts on slightly lighter fare.

Poireaux vinaigrette is another Burgundian classic, combining leeks (usually poached or boiled) with a dressing made from local Dijon mustard. Tangy and full-flavoured, it would provide an excellent lead-in to a rich, winey stew. Less traditional, but also less stultifying, would be to make a few more leeks, buy a baguette and follow with some good cheese. Let your liver guide you.


Poireaux Vinaigrette

It’s rare that I gravitate towards more complicated versions of simple recipes. But here the extra steps yield real improvements: tying the leeks with a twist of their greens keeps them intact through two stages of cooking. Likewise, replacing boiling with sautéing and braising dramatically deepens flavor and eliminates any potential stringiness. The sauce’s acidity makes this a poor match for more serious wine; pair with a simple, not-too-austere Chardonnay (like a Macon-Villages)

Adapted from Williams-Sonoma French
Serves 2*
Total time: 35 minutes: Active time: 20 minutes

4 slender leeks
Olive oil
3/4 cups chicken stock
1 scant tablespoon grain or Dijon mustard**
Lemon juice or wine vinegar
Salt and pepper
Special equipment: large frying pan; tongs

Trim leeks, retaining the green ends, and split along length. (If they are too long to fit across the base of your largest frying pan, split once across width.) Rinse each under the tap, lifting the layers to remove dirt, but being careful to keep intact. Using a thin length peeled from the trimmings, tie each leek around its middle.

On a medium-high flame, heat just enough oil to film pan. When hot add as many leeks as will fit in one layer. Season with salt and pepper. Turn occasionally until both sides are golden and have spots of deeper caramelisation, about 8-10 minutes. If required, remove to plate and repeat with remaining leeks.

Return all leeks to the pan. Add chicken stock and bring to a simmer. Cover and cook until the leeks are very tender and most of the liquid has evaporated, 10-15 minutes. While they cook, make the dressing, mixing the mustard with just enough olive oil and lemon juice to make a sharp, very thick sauce.

Pour over leeks and check seasoning. Serve immediately or at room temperature.

* While the recipe can easily be doubled, it becomes time-consuming without access to several large frying pans.

** I particularly like this one. The only brand still made with locally-grown seeds, it has an elegant, sprightly flavor. Whatever you use, make sure your mustard is fresh.

Les Meilleures Addresses de Budapest et une recette pour poulet aux paprikas

It took several visits before Budapest began to turn my head. Elements of it are undeniably striking—the Castle Bridge lit up at night, the opulent Turkish baths, the immense Dohany Synagogue. And the cobbled streets and pastel-painted buildings of Buda’s Old Town give it an almost village-like quality. But the overwhelming impression can be of old Communist-era greyness bumping up against generic, sometimes gaudy, new wealth.

My first impressions of the food were equally mixed. While I adored the atmosphere of high-ceilinged, plush cafes like the Central, and the coffee served on little silver trays, the cakes didn’t match the lofty setting. It took a few mediocre goulashes before I hit pay dirt in a nightcap of Tokay. As I took in the (surprisingly unsung) splendour of the Callas Cafe, tiny glass in hand, I realized that I had been trying a bit too hard to tick boxes. And I had foolishly neglected to make use of the local knowledge of my Hungarian colleagues.

On a tip from the founder-owner of Siraly, a charmingly tumbledown café and Jewish arts space, I went for dinner the next night at M, where the walls were covered with whimsical line drawings, the roast goose and cabbage more than satisfied and the waitress’ obvious pride in the desserts made it seem churlish to refuse. I returned the next night too and passed the evening talking to a Dutch teacher, the sister of another staff member, relishing both the surprisingly spicy Hungarian red and the (undeserved) feeling of being a regular.

The next trip was less scripted than its predecessors and either because or despite this, provided the most satisfying eating experiences. Ducking into Gerbaud late on a sub-zero afternoon, I couldn’t remember why I had snubbed it in favour of supposedly more authentic cafes. The hot chocolate was perfectly unctuous and semi-sweet, the clientele a lively mix of dowagers, young couples and tourists, and the atmosphere delightfully rococo. For dinner, one of the survey researchers directed me to a restaurant whose seemingly pedestrian online menu had led me to dismiss it. But the chicken paprikas with homemade noodles was even better than she promised, and the goose crackling starter astounding if somewhat terrifying, and explained only by the favourable forint-euro exchange rate, or, more likely, a bit too much time in the hotel sauna.

Another trip to Budapest is likely sometime this spring. But while the city's grand cafe culture can’t really be matched in Paris, at least some of the food can. I’ve tracked down an authentic paprikas recipe from a colleague’s mother, bought Hungarian-style dumplings from the supermarket (actually German spaetzle) and started to perfect my cucumber salad. Now if only I could overcome a lifetime’s fear of sour cream.

Poulet aux Paprikas (adapted from Ildiko Barna’s mother)

Serves 2
Total time: 1 hour; Active time: 20 minutes

2 chicken legs (can joint if desired)
1 medium onion
2 cloves garlic (optional)
vegetable or olive oil
1/4-1/3 small can whole tomatoes, drained
2 tbsp sweet Hungarian paprika*
Vegetable or chicken stock (I used chicken stock)
Creme fraiche or sour cream to taste

Heat a teaspoon of oil in a cast-iron casserole pot or other heavy pan. When oil is hot but not smoking, add the chicken legs, one at a time if necessary to avoid overcrowding. Season with salt and pepper. Brown well on all sides, being careful not to turn the chicken until it releases naturally. While the chicken browns, chop the onion finely.Remove the chicken from the pot and add the onion, turning to coat with the chicken fat. Turn down the heat to medium-low and cook the onions until soft and translucent. If using garlic, chop and add 1-2 minutes before the onions are finished.

When the onions are finished, take the pan off the heat to add the paprika. Stir it through and add 2 tomatoes from the can; the liquid and remaining tomatoes can be used for another recipe. Put back on a medium-low heat, add just enough enough liquid to cover, and simmer gently for 10 minutes to form a sauce. Put the chicken pieces back in, adding a few more tablespoons of liquid if necessary, cover, and turn to the lowest heat. (Use a flame reducer if your gas burner is too high.) Check the chicken after 30-35 minutes by cutting to the bone; depending on the size of the legs and whether they were jointed, they could take another 10-15 minutes.

When the chicken is cooked through, remove it from the pan and turn off the heat. Add anywhere from 2 tablespoons to ½ cup of creme fraiche or sour cream to the pot; using the larger amount will not only generate a creamier sauce but mute the heat of the paprika. Stir though, replace the chicken and bring to serving temperature.

Serve over spaetzle, dilled egg noodles or, in a pinch, gnocchi. While Hungarian wine—with the exception of Tokay—isn’t exported in large quantities, you could try this with either a zesty, aromatic white (perhaps an Alsace-style Pinot Gris), a medium-bodied red (my local wine merchant sold me an inexpensive Bordeaux), or, for something entirely different, a Zinfandel.

* My Austrian friend has made the unorthodox but quite clever suggestion of augmenting this with a good pinch of Spanish smoked paprika.

Pizza Trois Fois (Pizza Three Times)

I know it hardly singles me out if I tell you that pizza is one of my favorite foods. Since I haven't started a blog about it, built a pizza oven in my courtyard, or, hell, moved back to New York City, you would rightly guess that my devotion has its limits. All the same, though, I join many others in thinking that a really good pizza is amongst the best meals that can be found. (Even better with a glass or three of the slightly fizzy Neopolitan red wine served here.)

Pizza made at home has considerable virtues--the sense of smug satisfaction derived from making the dough and sauce oneself, the ability to source exactly the right ingredients and the chance to eat it when it's still really too hot to be touched. Yet while it easily beats out grocery store and delivery alternatives (at least in my 'hoods), it rarely matches what can emerge out of a commercial oven.

But the first pizza of my vacation week was made at home and it was, all modesty aside, fantastic. Though I had achieved moderately good results with this Mark Bittman recipe some six months ago, the more memorable part of the evening was the back-to-back watching of the last two films in the Bourne trilogy. I don't know what, if anything was different this time. As before, the dough was left to rise slowly in the fridge, I used fresh, basil-infused tomato sauce, and the mozarella was the proper stuff. On this occasion, though, it was almost revelatory: frying the disks of dough on both sides gave the crust a spongy-yet-crunchy texture which is almost impossible to achieve in a home oven, and a brief flash under the grill melded the toppings without incinerating them.

It's been years since I've travelled to Italy, or even had a slice of NYC takeout pizza while standing on the sidewalk. Neither England nor (most of) France is particularly at ease with street food, nor do their respective climates normally lend themselves to dining al fresco. But my 2nd and 3rd pizzas of the week--both eaten in the southern heat of Marseille--reflected the well-known truth that food simply tastes better out of doors.

Marseille, though still some hours by fast train from the Italian border, takes its pizza seriously, with dozens of hole-in-wall joints boasting of their wood-fired ovens. At one of them, located on a heaving North African market street a few minutes from the Vieux Port, we had a very credible slice made pleasantly greasy and spicy with the addition of chunks of merguez sausage. Although I had enjoyed merguez many times before, I had never encountered it in this form, or with the sun beating down on my shoulders.

And the night before, 14 of us had sat at a long table in the garden of a rambling old Marseille house, drinking rose and eating pies embellished with olives and herbes de provence and cooked before our eyes. Here at the home of G's second family, with whom he had spent a year during university, the glasses were refilled with exuberance, the conversation was full of wit and emotion and the pizza was topped with everything from local goats cheese to a pungent Alsacian cheese brought by another former roommate. I couldn't begin to keep up--with either the wine or with the banter--but was content just to soak in the scene.

On sober reflection, I'm not convinced that either merguez or Muenster are pizza's most natural partners. As for the rose, though... well that's another story entirely.

Late Winter Sicilian Salad

There’s something to what is said about Sicily being an otherworldly place. But while geography, politics and poverty have each made tangible contributions to its historic—and in some sense—continuing isolation, the essential strangeness of the place is at once ephemeral and difficult to deny.

In my visit there, I discovered a place where the trains wait for nuns, where one encounters a man selling eels out of the trunk of his car on a rainy Friday evening, where an entire town takes the statue of the local saint out for a parade on her birthday, where the local coffee tastes like it could blow a hole in the top of your head, and the grappa even more so. Palermo is dotted with crumbling, scaffolding-shrouded neo-Byzantine marvels which some EU bureaucrat no doubt intended to have renovated. A Norman-era church stands in the suburbs, while the Vucciera market could, with the exception of the arancini, fried risotto balls, be mistaken for one in the Middle East. And that’s not even mentioning the Roman ruins, which stand unperturbed in the unlikeliest—and occasionally the loveliest—of spots.

I travelled to Sicily too early in my eating career to fully plumb its depths. My itinerary was dominated by relics, not restaurants. But even so, the characteristically strong flavours of the island’s food—the chili heat, the briny salinity of anchovies, the sweet-sour interplay of fruit and vinegar (as in the raisin-studded caponata) and the intense sweetness of most pastries –could not be backdrop alone. In the first few days I made my peace with olives, capers and sardines; by my return to England, I was collecting recipes for what would become a kitchen staple—puttanesca sauce.

With citrus, there were no such qualms to be overcome. It was December, prime season, and everything was ubiquitous and delicious. On our picnics, I learned the technique of removing pith and skin in one neat spiral (though nearly 10 years on, I am yet to master it entirely). I even picked a contraband lemon at an archaeological site. But the easy winner was the blood orange, which, like the gorgeous 5’10 blond who turns out to be a Harvard astrophysicist, could boast more than just looks.

I’m not sure that I ever encountered this salad on my trip, nor that I would have eaten it if I had, as my reconciliation with the liquorice family was still several years off. It’s a remarkable versatile player, pairing well with everything from oily fish to grilled lamb to red-sauced pasta or pizza. And in this strange nether season, it’s a refreshing and strikingly attractive addition to the table. For those who can’t abide raw fennel, endive could be substituted. In fact, I often use both.


Late Winter Sicilian Salad
Serves 2; can easily be doubled or tripled
Preparation time: 20 minutes (for appearance’s sake, wait until the last minute for the oranges, olives and mint; the fennel and endive can be cut up to an hour before eating)

3 medium-sized blood oranges (substitute navels or another flavourful variety if blood oranges are unavailable)
1 large or 2 small heads of fennel
1 small handful unpitted black olives (I prefer unbrined varieties such as Nicoise or Kalamata; oil-cured olives can overwhelm the other flavours)
1 endive (optional)
A few tablespoons of fresh mint or basil
Good quality olive oil
½ or whole lemon
Salt and pepper.

Cut the fennel and endive into very thin matchstick strips and place on a serving plate. Peel oranges, being careful to remove all pith, and cut into circular slices. (If you cut over the plate, you’ll be able to use some of the juices, but you’ll risk destroying the pristine whiteness of the salad’s bottom layer.) Arrange the orange slices over the fennel and endive. Pit olives and depending on size, cut in half; add these on top of the orange, along with the mint or basil. To dress, sprinkle the salad lightly with oil and even more lightly with lemon. Finish with salt and pepper, being sure to taste one of the olives before salting.

Poulet Reine Elizabeth: Coronation Chicken

On a trip to Malaysia and Singapore some years ago, I swooned around the grand Raffles Hotel for hours, made a pilgrimage to the Eton-esque Malay College (where I was shown the bathroom built for the recent visit of Queen Elizabeth II) and gazed through the gates at Singapore’s Cricket Club. Purchases included an old Raffles advertising poster and a photo taken at the time of 1953 coronation (when both nations were still part of the Empire). My studies of British history surely piqued my interest in imperial artifacts, but I hadn’t expected to be so thrilled by what the colonizers had left behind.

I was equally thrilled by the region’s food. But with the exception of the (somewhat disappointing) Singapore Sling, the local cuisines, which reflect the influence of the region’s substantial Chinese, Indian and Nyonyan (Chinese who intermarried with Malay locals) populations, seem to show little evidence of the former British overlords. Equally, neither classic dishes such as laksa, nasi lemak and beef rendang, nor the addictive melting-pot of sweet, spicy and sour flavours, were transmitted back to Blighty.

The case was otherwise with India, where the duration and intensity of imperial influence was far greater. The former largely gained ingredients, such as tea and beetroot, while British settlers (or, more likely, their Indian cooks) developed hybrid dishes, such as mulligatawny and kedgeree (about which I wrote here). From the Victorian period onwards, curry powders were also introduced to the English domestic market, with the result that by the end of the Raj in 1947, the warming (though usually mild) spice mix had become a pantry staple.

It’s tempting to say that curry powder first achieved marquee status during the 1935 ceremonies for George V’s silver jubilee, when the Palace’s chefs concocted a cold chicken dish dressed with a mix of curry powder and mayonnaise. But undoubtedly the most famous use of the ingredient came at a somewhat later royal celebration: the 1953 coronation of the current Queen, Elizabeth II. Created by Rosemary Hume, founder and director of London's white-glove cookery school, Le Cordon Bleu, Coronation Chicken was prepared for a luncheon of 350 Commonwealth dignitaries. The recipe was also printed in newspapers and magazines, and likely served at many of the street parties held across the nation.

The original recipe called for poaching and deboning whole birds, preparing a cooked curry cream sauce (including wine, tomato puree and dried apricots) to which mayonnaise was then added, and serving the entire dish along a cold, herby rice salad.

Newer versions of this retro classic have simplified matters considerably, often using precooked chicken, making a thick, mayonnaise-based dressing, and utilizing the multi-dimensional chutney instead of several other flavouring agents. I chose to cook my own chicken, though good-quality rotisserie could definitely be substituted. I did notice that the highly-seasoned (French) mayonnaise I used somewhat overwhelmed the other flavours. This is, somewhat regrettably, an instance in which neutral Hellmans may be best.

Coronation Chicken
Serves 2
Total time 70 minutes; Active time: 10-15 minutes

2 chicken legs
Peppercorns
Bay leaves
1 heaping tbsp mayo
3-4 tsp mango chutney
½ tsp lemon juice
½ tsp mild curry powder (we used Bolsts madras curry)
Small handful of cilantro
Romaine lettuce leaves to serve (optional)

Place the chicken legs in a wide frying pan or saute pan filled with cold water. Add a few peppercorns, 2 or 3 bay leaves, salt and turn heat to high. As soon as a boil is reached, turn down to a bare simmer. Continue poaching until the chicken is firm and cooked through to the bone. Take off the heat and cool until the meat can be taken off the bone and skin and shredded into bite-sized pieces.

While the chicken cools, make the curry sauce. Add mayo to a bowl, add the curry powder and ½ the chutney. Squeeze in a bit of lemon, and taste. Continue adding chutney until the desired balance of sweetness, heat and creaminess is reached. Season as needed, then mix the chicken through until thoroughly but lightly coated in sauce. Tear or cut the cilantro, top the chicken and serve, possibly on lettuce leaves.