Improved creole chicken stew

Here is a variation on the recipe above [below], having gone through a few more experiments and the discovery of a local Thai grocery store. I had also watched Blumenthal’s interpretation of tikka masala and liked the idea of throwing in a pot of yogurt to finish the dish. The idea for this dish emerged from reading about the culinary triangle of influence bounded by China, India, and the Malay region. The cream was an impulsive idea on my part.

Take chicken pieces, preferably thighs, and season them with salt and pepper. Sear them in peanut oil over high heat, and set aside. Chop onions into thin slivers. Chop ginger into matchsticks, or use one knob ginger and one knob of galangal root. If you use galangal it may be easier to use a small food processor. Grind coriander seeds, black pepper, chilli powder (mix Indian and Thai powders for a balance between kick and fragrance), and cardamom in a spice grinder, then throw in a few sticks of fresh turmeric (not the other way around, or the dry ingredients will not turn to dust). Add a few cloves of garlic as well. Heat a generous amount of peanut oil in a large pan, and throw in the onions and saute over a medium heat until translucent and separated into curls. Add all the spices with a pinch of garam masala, and saute for another five minutes. Make sure not to burn the spices. Add the chicken pieces and a few tablespoons of chilli bean paste, turn up the heat, and continue to mix. If you can find tamarind syrup, pour in a generous amount to taste; if not, make tamarind water by stewing tamarind and then straining out the pulp. Sweeten the mixture with palm sugar, preferably the soft gooey kind rather than the hard chunks. Brown sugar (muscovado) will also work but won’t be as fragrant. Salt the mixture with patis. Experiment with the balance of sweet/sour/salty to achieve your preferred taste: make the flavours stronger than you ultimately want them because they will be muted later. Simmer until the chicken is cooked, then throw in a tub of creme fraiche. Garnish with fresh coriander and serve with chopped chillies so that individual eaters can adjust the heat to their temperament.

Asian creole chicken

Cut the chicken thighs, deboned, into bite-sized chunks. Douse them with light soy sauce, Chinese wine, and a bit of sesame oil. Dredge in a mixture of potato flour and cornstarch until they are caked with the paste. Fry them in oil until golden and crisp. In a wok, fry chopped ginger until aromatic, then add a tablespoon of chilli bean paste, a moderate spoon of thai curry paste, and a small dash of tomato paste. Keep frying, and then throw in the chicken chunks and chopped salad onions. In a bowl, soak tamarind and then strain out the water. Season with salt and stock, and add a spoon of potato flour. Turn up the heat on the chicken pieces and add a generous dash of patis several tablespoons of soft brown sugar. When the pan is very hot and the mixture almost burning, stir in the tamarind water and mix quickly so that it does not clump up. Stir for a minute or so until the sauce glistens. Garnish with coriander and serve with hot rice.

Fish in foil

This one came together quite serendipitously: I was determined to cook two fillets of Icelandic cod and entertained vague ideas of pan-frying. In the meantime the baby potatoes I had cooked alongside the roast chicken from the other night were haunting me with the memory of their crisp, taut skins and melting insides that burst in the mouth like a kind of starchy xiao long bao. I had also been leafing through a cookbook in which chicken was steamed with a topping of spring onions, and this was also wafting through my mind. In the end, this was the recipe that emerged.

Take a generous amount of very small potatoes with their skins still on, and macerate them with a very generous amount of goose fat, sea salt, and rosemary or dill. Roast in a preheated oven for about thirty minutes. Meanwhile, prepare the fish: make parcels by laying them out on large sheets of aluminium foil. Start with two slices of lemon, then the fish, generously seasoned with salt and pepper, and then two slabs of good butter, sliced leeks, a mound of enoki mushrooms, another slab of butter, and then another slice of lemon and a sprig of dill. Wrap the whole thing up, one for each fillet, and place on top of the potatoes and bake for another twenty to thirty minutes. When opened the fish should be meltingly tender in a lemony-butter sauce, and the mushrooms soft but still with a bite to them. Serve by folding the parcels into a boat shape or transferring onto a plate; serve with the potatoes, which we dubbed Keith Richards potatoes for their leathery quality, in a big dish on the side.

Bistek

Nothing complicated here, just trying to tweak the garden-variety Pinoy bistek. Everyone knows the problem with this dish: it’s usually made from thin, chewy beef from cows that have gone beyond vintage but are not quite antique; there’s always too little sauce and not enough onions; moreover, you’re somehow supposed to eat it with a spoon and fork. But the basic concept is sound. I used marbled cuts of four-week dry-aged sirloin marbled with plenty of fat and cut into fairly thick slices, around 0.7 centimeters. Some might argue that beef of that quality shouldn’t be subjected to this kind of cooking but should merely be flash-fried, but as long as it isn’t marinated too long the extra dash of flavour enhances the dark aroma of aged beef.

Take several cuts of dry-aged sirloin and marinate in a mixture of half a head’s worth of chopped garlic, Japanese soy sauce, the juice of a whole lime, and plenty of freshly-ground black pepper. Set aside for about forty-five minutes. Slice onions into thick rings; make more than you think you need because there’s always not quite enough to go around. Heat a heavy pan over a high heat and throw in the onions with a generous slick of groundnut (aka peanut) oil while the pan is still heating up. By the time the pan reaches a high heat the onions will be slightly soft and will begin to brown. Keep shaking the pan so that the slices loosen into individual rings. Just as the onions begin to brown (this should happen very quickly) take them out of the pan and set aside. Add some new oil and, as it begins to smoke, lay the strips of beef in the pan, shaking to keep them from sticking. Turn over and cook until medium: this should all take less than a minute and the soy sauce will caramelise into a deep, rich brown; take care that they don’t burn. Return the onions to the pan and add the marinade liquid and turn the heat the medium; let the liquid boil off a little and colour the onions. This, too, should happen fairly quickly. Slather these over the beef strips and serve with hot rice, a handful of lamb’s lettuce or mache, and buko juice with ice.

Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb

This was an attempt at making a lighter sinigang, more in keeping with the more popular fish sinigang variations that one finds in the Philippines: a light, clear broth with plenty of vegetables, including crunchy curls of red onions, all the flavours contributing to the final taste of the soup but remaining separate and distinct. Most importantly it should be a soup, not a stew. The lightest sinigang riffs are nothing but vegetables and fish boiled up in water and then soured; I obviously wanted something more flavourful than this. I also didn’t want the fish to be the annoyingly tedious bony kind: I have no love lost for bangus, which you take a mouthful of and then spend the next five minutes chewing carefully and pulling the whisker-thin bones from between your lips and leave them in a mound at the side of your plate. I opted for a nice fillet of wild Scottish salmon. To keep the broth light, I desisted from using any tamarind at all.

Take a large piece of very fresh salmon, and cut into large portions. Chop five or more stalks of rhubarb into pieces and bring them to boil with two thinly sliced onions, half a head of crushed garlic cloves, an unpeeled knob of ginger, crushed, and a large handful of whole peppercorns. Simmer for about twenty minutes or until everything is mushy and aromatic. Strain the broth out, pressing on the fibres left in the sieve to extract all the flavour. Add some fish stock, season generously, and add patis and lime juice to taste. It should be quite concentrated as the vegetables will exude water. Add large chunks of radish, aubergine, and fine beans in lieu of string beans. If you like them crisp add them later, but traditionally they should be dull green and limp. Simmer for about fifteen minutes. Adjust the seasoning and then add one red Spanish onion; carve out the base so that they separate when sliced: make nice thick curls. Toss in two tomatoes, quartered. Bring to a boil, then carefully slide in the salmon fillets. Reduce the heat to medium and bring carefully to a boil again; the moment the surface begins to tremble turn the heat off. Leave covered for another two minutes and then serve immediately, serving each person one fillet and then ladling the vegetables and soup into a bowl.

Pork sinigang

It’s a challenge to replicate a good pork sinigang in the United Kingdom because there are no packets of instant flavouring to be found anywhere. Nor can you find, even if you wanted to go old school, fresh tamarind, kamias, guavas, or any of the usual souring agents. I decided to return to the essence of what makes a sinigang a sinigang: that meat and vegetables are cooked in soup that is soured by a melange of ingredients that should be as uncommon as possible. This is the reason for the taboo against using vinegar to sour a sinigang: it is too easy, too common, too ready to hand. The best sinigangs, when you talk to people, are made with fruit that can only be found in one particular grandmother’s back garden in Bacolod, on an incredibly obscure plant that has been alive for seven generations but only produces a few fruit a year, but is absolutely incomparable, and I’ll tell you all about it but you can never have it because you aren’t related to her, tough luck on you. Thus I began the task of recreating sinigang, not in terms of flavour or technique, but in terms of its definition. For this I have to thank food scholars such as Doreen Fernandez, who have performed the task of defining sinigang and codifying the definition, so that there is a measure of authenticity that is not derived from taste or replication of technique. The experimental sinigang from this evening, perhaps an ur-sinigang of sorts, was soured with rhubarb and tamarind.

Take a strip of pork belly, and chop it into chunks. Saute curls of onion and chopped garlic over a medium-to-high heat; do not melt them down over a low heat in the French manner of making a braise. While they are still crisp but beginning to give off their aroma, toss in the chunks of pork belly, and toss together to allow the flavours to mix. In another pot, make the souring broth by boiling up segments of rhubarb, and wet tamarind (available in blocks) in water. Add stock to the pork and bring both pots to the boil. After a few minutes the rhubarb will become soft and pulpy and the tamarind will have dissolved. Strain this liquid into the other pot and adjust the water to make a soup. Add tomatoes and aubergines and simmer; after about half an hour, add string beans or haricots verts and boil for five minutes more. Adjust the seasoning with either more water, some patis, a squeeze of lime juice, etc., to get the right balance of salt and sour. It should be sour enough to elicit a wince of pain when imbibed. Serve with hot rice and a dip of patis.

Roast pork belly in salt

This is actually a recipe for lechon kawali made without using a kawali. The important thing in this case is to find a slab of pork belly that is thick enough, with just the right amount of fat striations running through it, and a nice smooth skin that will become nice and crisp. Most cuts of pork belly, if you can even find it in British supermarkets, are disgustingly lean and sometimes even have the skin taken off. This reminds me of stories about people who have never previously encountered a banana eating the skin and throwing away the inside. I found an old-fashioned butcher along North End Road in Fulham, a local butcher who knows his stuff and loves his meat. So to speak. I managed to obtain over a kilo’s worth of pork belly in a large square slab, a little bigger than a tournament chessboard, with a couple of vestigial nipples sticking out. After some consideration we decided to cook half of it rather than the whole, so I hacked at it for a cleaver for some time until finally resorting to a handsaw. I can tell you now the difference between a hack and a handsaw, no matter which way the wind is blowing.

Take the pork belly and encrust it with a thick layer of salt (I used Maldon sea crystals, but any rock salt will do); you will need about a cup. Shove the whole thing into a preheated oven at a medium heat (180 degrees with the convection fan on) and roast for about forty-five minutes. Take it out of the oven and move the rack up to a higher slot. Turn on the overhead grill function, or use a salamander if you have one. Scrape the salt crust off thoroughly and return to the oven and broil until the skin begins to bubble and pop and makes a hollow sound when tapped, about twenty minutes. Carve into bite-size pieces and serve with a dipping sauce made from soy sauce, vinegar, a squeeze of lime juice, and thinly-chopped chillies. Serve with plenty of rice and coca-cola. Pair it with a salad of ripe tomatoes tossed with parsley and patis. 

Stuffed cabbage leaves

This is not the horrible stuffed cabbage that I found recipes for on the internet, that I remember from potlucks in the seventies; the mass of sodden leaves, of stodgy rice, smothered in a ketchup-like tomato sauce. I’m not sure where I remember this recipe from, but I saw a beautiful head of cabbage in the aisle of the grocery today and I thought to myself, by golly, you only live once. So I decided to try this one out blind. I wanted the cabbage parcels swimming in a delicate broth with a flavour of its own, not drowned in a sauce. Here I present the details of the successful experiment.

Take a large cabbage with plenty of dark green outer leaves; pluck the leaves off like petals from a rose and plunge them into a saucepan of boiling water. Boil them for a minute, then pour out the water and place them under the spigot with the cold water tap running over them. Steep dried mushrooms, preferably a mix of wild mushrooms, porcini, and morels, in hot water and leave to soak. In a large bowl, mix a generous amount of pork mince with two or three slices of old bread that have been pulverized in a processor or grinder. Cut several slices of smoked bacon into thin strips. Add all these together with some chopped chestnut mushrooms, two eggs and a generous amount of seasoning and mix well with your hands. Wrap the parcels by closing the cabbage leaves, stem side outwards, around a small baby’s fist of the farce and placing them in a shallow baking container or large saute pan. Thinly slice a handful of mushrooms and strew them over the parcels. Mix the steeped mushrooms and their dark brown water with a measure of chicken stock, and pour over the parcels until they are halfway or so submerged. Cover with aluminium foil or, if using a saute pan, a lid. Thrust into the oven and cook for forty minutes to an hour at 180 degrees. Ensure that the pork is cooked; the inside will remain slightly pink because of the saltpetre from the bacon. Serve with some good country bread: we had Poilane with the glorious Beppino Occelli butter from Italy. For dessert we had a mix of strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, sprinkled with a capful of Grand Marnier, a squeeze of orange juice, and plenty of icing sugar. 

Rabbit in cream

This one is almost straight out of The Art of Eating, with very little alteration. I have learned from that journal that the better rabbit to eat is one that was slaughtered at twelve weeks rather than eight weeks, but my current butcher here in London has no idea how old the bunny was when it died. I am desperately in search of a better butcher. 

 

Take a rabbit and cut into largish pieces. Finely chop an onion, two carrots, and three stalks of celery. Cutting evenly doesn’t really matter since the vegetables will be discarded later, but it is good for one’s pride. Saute these in a generous knob of butter and allow them to sweat and soften. In another pan, brown the rabbit pieces over a high heat with salt and pepper until they are nicely caramelized. Transfer these to the pot or saute pan containing the aromatics and mix over a medium heat. Turn the heat up and throw in a glass of good white wine and an equal amount of chicken stock. Add a bay leaf and some parsley stalks and bring to a boil. Put the lid on and simmer for an hour. When the rabbit is tender take out the pieces, strain the broth, and discard the ghost of the vegetables, having squeezed them of the last of the flavour they are willing to give. Reduce this liquid in a saute pan over a high heat, and then put in generous dollops of creme fraiche and thick double cream. Turn the heat down to medium low and season as it comes to a gentle boil with salt, pepper, and a spoonful of french mustard. In another pan, melt some butter over a lively flame and saute some small button mushrooms or a combination of various mushrooms until brown and fragrant. Mix the rabbit pieces into the reduced sauce, top with the buttery mushrooms, and serve with crusty Poilane bread and a large bottle of wine. 

Moqueca

This is a Brazilian seafood stew. There are two kinds of moqueca, Capixaba and Baiana. I got this information straight from the Wikipedia page, so there is no need to get there yourself, as there is little other information aside from a link to recipes, and I am about to give you one. It is for Moqueca Baiana with a few tweaks. 

Take a fillet of an unfussy fish such as cod or haddock, and cut it into portions. Marinate it in lime juice with salt, pepper, and chopped coriander. Slice one large onion into very thin curls; crush and chop a few cloves of garlic. Dice peppers: yellow and green bell peppers are decorative and echo the colours of the flag of Brazil. Slice a few chillies thinly Roughly chop a a tomato or two as well. Now in a large saute pan fry the creamy part of a squeezing (or tin) of coconut milk until it renders its oil. Squeeze in about a tablespoon of dull red palm oil (dende) and in this fat combination fry the garlic and onions until soft but not brown. Turn up the heat a notch and add the chillies, peppers, and tomatoes. This should exude a copious amount of water. Season generously and allow to simmer so that all the flavours mix. Throw in the fish and begin cooking the polenta. Disregard the instructions on the package and use a proportion of about 50 grams to two cups of water. It can be enriched with a little butter. Cook in the normal way, beating with a wooden spoon until unguent. The fish should have cooked by this time; lower the heat and stir in some more coconut milk (but not the thin water), and a little more palm oil to finish. Serve together, the polenta and stew mixed up as a mushy mound on one’s plate.