Fig Biscuits

My friends, the parents of my new baby god-daughter, gave me this book for Christmas. The Nostalgic Cook Book is a collection of super simple dishes to make with limited ingredients, which were mostly compiled from the war time rationing days of 1940's Britain. There's some interesting stuff in here, like a glossary if herbs and a chart that shows which vegetables are in season in which months of the year, pretty useful. There's also a section of dishes you can make when cooking for one, why do so many cookbooks feel the need to feature that? What is it, so that Billy-No-Mates won't accidentally make a feast for 40 when all he wanted was a sandwich? One of the highlights of that section is a recipe for a cup of coffee. Both white and black!
It's obvious this book is written by a man, the name Bill Habets is a clue. I looked on Amazon for a picture of the cover of this book, so that I wouldn't have to scan it in, and a list of other tomes by old Bill came up. Titles like How To Talk To Your Dog, The Complete Guide To Tinnitus, and The Sciatica Handbook. Yummy! There are others in the same vein. Look it up yourself if you don't believe me!
So, now that all of our mouths are watering, lets get started.
I love fig biscuits, and the idea that I'll be able to make them myself with the minimum of fuss and effort is super cool, the fact that these are sugar free is an extra incentive!
The recipe is very simple, the dough has 4 ingredients and so does the filling, but nothing is really simple in my life... I made the dough in about 2 minutes and started in on the filling. It seemed odd too use only 4 figs for a piece of dough the size of a good fist, but that's what 2-3 oz came to (I slipped a fifth one in there), oh and working with ounces was also a pleasure, not confusing at all. Thanks a lot Bill, how delightfully eccentric.
As I was chopping the figs my concentration slipped, I think I was listening to the boyfriend blither-blathering something about football, and, well lets just say I damn near cut my entire fricking thumb off! I jumped around the kitchen screaming 'SCIATICA' for a few minutes, dabbed the wound with iodine ~ (more screaming, but if you don't do it, you'll never learn...), and from then on the procedure was limited to ordering the bf what to do to finish.
Result: Pretty, right? They don't look nothing like fig rolls, there wasn't really as much filling as I would have liked, so the shape is pretty flat and austere looking. They're also fairly fragile and crumbly, but the taste is great. They don't lack any sweetness and while the pastry casing is a bit serious and plain, the fig mix in the middle has a lot of flavour. You need a cup of tea though. And something good on tv. And for everyone else to go away so you can convalesce in peace!

Shawarma dajaj, Muhammar, Shakshoukeh

Well I'm back, I don't want to gross anyone out, but I was pretty sick. Nasty! I spend New Year's Night playing cards with the boyfriend and watching whatever fireworks we could see out of the window. I heard that the way you greet the new year is the way you're going to spend it... so I'm in for some fun, I guess!!!!!!
Anyway, back in the present, I'm using Maria Khalife's Middle Eastern Cookbook again. I'm not sure what the extraordinary appeal of this book is that has me running back to it, but I suppose it just seems very exotic. So first off is shawarma - the slightly dodgy meat you buy in small tiny pieces from the kebab shop after getting crazy drunk on a school night! I always assumed that this was a Turkish dish. but this recipe is from Lebanon. Funny enough the serving suggestion in the book is to plate this up with pitta, salad, garlic dip and french fries (and maybe crank up the old Billy Idol CD?) I don't have any of those things so I'm making a couple of side dishes, to you know, go on the side.
You're meant to marinade this stuff overnight, but I think we all know that that stuff doesn't mean anything, right? Who's with me? I gave it an hour and in the mean time started in on the Muhammar which is from Bahrain and translates as Golden Rice - not as sexy as it sounds, perverts ;). It's the perfect opportunity for me to use up some of the funny ingredients that have been cluttering my cupboards, saffron, which I don't like, rose water, which tastes like soap, and cardamom which I just have way too much of. Interestingly there is also almost a cup of sugar in this, don't believe me? How about if I also told you that instead of just adding sugar to the rice, you're meant to melt the sugar until it turns golden brown (texture like sun) then pour in the water and cook the rice in that!
While the chicken is marinading, the oven is heating up and the rice parboils in caramel water, I start making the Shakshoukeh which cooks very quickly but is meant to be served cold. Despite the fancy unpronounceable name, this is just bell peppers julienned and fried with garlic, chilli (I used Birdseye, and you couldn't even taste it!) tomatoes and coriander seeds. I also threw a tin of chickpeas in. For some reason this simple assembly is attributed to Jordan.
Result: Well feast your eyes, this lot made my kitchen smell really nice :)
The Shawarma took about 40 minutes longer in the oven than the book claimed if would. This might also be the reason why it was pretty dry by the time it came out. My excuse for overcooking it was the totally unrealistic and bizarrely brown shawarma pictured in the book. For most part, mine stayed a uniform anaemic pale, and neither looked anything like the richly basted, moist stuff you get in the kebab shop. The only dominant flavour was the onion - there was enough of it! You almost couldn't taste any of the stuff I was expecting to make the meat lovely fragrant and delicious, the garlic, oregano, allspice, clove, nutmeg and sumac. If I ever make this again I'll definitely be a lot more heavyhanded with that crap.
The Muhammar didn't come out as yellow as in the book either, I must have not used enough saffron, oopsie! Still, I was expecting a stong sugar hit, (Pow! Right in the kisser!) but while this was definitely treading the line between pudding and side dish, the taste was amazing. Rich but mild enough to be a good base for the chicken, besides sweetness of the sugar you get a slight dustyness from the saffron but the cardamom and rose are just aromas. And I loved the method of parboiling the rice and then steaming it in the frying pan, I've never had such fluffy results!
The Shakshoukeh was alright, pretty good. Who cares?

Update

Yeah, so the chilli cure didn't really pan out, I've been really sick for the last 3 weeks. Back soon...

Kaeng Chud Saku

So, you think the only use to put my 1.5kg of tapioca to is pudding? Think again, idiot. This is Thai tapioca soup - ha!

I'm ill, I have one of those colds I seem to pick up every week or so from all the filthy commuters on the Tube every morning. I'm ill and nobody cares! I still have to go to stupid work because it's really busy at the moment, I can't stay in bed are read comic books, nobody feels sorry for me and brings me cups of tea! It's so unfair!!!!!!!
The conventional way to treat a cold is with lots of rest, warm liquids, vitamin C, etc. Instead I'm going to try a slightly more novel approach and try and sweat it out by eating as much chilli as possible - ah novelty, maybe if I wasn't so easily bored and on the lookout for the next new thing my life would be a lot easier... Or maybe I'd be dead.

Anyway, that was just the fever talking, from the look of the ingredients here one of the options might be to revolt and scare the illness away - this soup contains, besides tapioca, pork mince, crab meat, chicken stock and fish sauce. Eeeeew! We'll see. (Also, pork and crab, this is the most un-kosher thing ever - if only there was some milk in it as well!)
I bought this book when I spent a week in Swanage on the coast this summer. We were staying with my friend's aunt and uncle and I made sure I popped into all of the charity shops in town for, you know, the novelty of out-of-London castoffs. Rosemary Brissenden is an Australian who spent some time researching a thesis in Asia and wrote this book in 1969 after she fell in love with the food. There is a new edition of South East Asian Food out which is supposed to be really good, and which includes Laos,Cambodia and Vietnam in addition to Thailand, Malaysia Indonesia and Singapore (she couldn't go to those places the first time because of the wars). I'm always doubtful as to how authentic early foreign cookbooks could be because of the scarcity of necessary exotic ingredients at the time, but Brissenden is pretty thorough - to the point of calling for things that would be difficult to find in London even today, like jelly mushroom (sounds cute, but is probably gross).
Anyway, here's the loot, (yes, that is Cock brand fish sauce, hahahahahaha, get it out of your system, children)
The first step is to put the mince in a sieve over the pot, with half of the boiling stock in it, and to pour the other half of the the stock over it to seal the meat and prevent it from sticking in big lumps. A noble goal, and I thought it was a good idea until I realised that it just makes all the meat stick to the sieve, uff. Anyway, other stuff goes in the pot, blah blah blah, cook cook cook and voila!
Result: The tapioca is like frog spawn, or fish eyes or something, especially the grains that still have a tiny white dot in the middle. The pork seems to have entirely disintegrated and the crab looks pretty uninteresting - like the eggwhites in a chinese soup (or snot). At this point my money was on this soup making me feel worse, a lot worse. But the saving grace might have come in the form of the garnishes Brissenden suggests. Mine are chillies and coriander in white vinegar, carrot chunks in fish sauce, and chopped up peanuts (Brissenden says to fry up some flakes of garlic, but I didn't have the energy) I sprinkled the garnishes over my bowl (lots of chillies!) and dug in.
This is the nicest thing I have ever made for myself. As I was stuffing it down I thought about how I would love this isn a restaurant, how easy it was, and how much of a mark up I could expect.
All the different kins of meat flavours don't jarr with eachother, but blend into some kind of generous umami unity. Then you bite into a carrot or chilli and you get sweet, hot, sour, saltiness as well, mmmm.
I'm now wondering if this would work as a breakfast dish. Lunch, definitely. Snack, maybe...

Kissel

I'm going to preface this post by admitting that I'm pretty stupid. Really stupid. Stoooopid actually. This is part two of my battle with Larousse Gastronomique and I seem to be pinned down on the floor again...
Kissel is a drink I remember getting as a treat for good behaviour when I was little, the texture mystified me and I always assumed this was one of those things that my grandma alone knew how to make and there wasn't really a recipe for. Larousse has it all, I almost fell out of my chair when I saw it and I knew there and then that I would do whatever it took to make it, I've been really good this year! This task was complicated by the fact that I can't read properly.
Here's the part of the recipe that I found most confusing: Mix 50g potato flour, cornflour or tapioca into the juice. I spent literally weeks hunting all of London for potato flour, I know I could have ordered in online, if I wanted a 5kg bag, but Internet shopping, there's nothing more satisfying than having the thing right there in your hand (and also all the Christmas present buying I've done made me a little apprehensive about using my credit card, ahem ahem). I finally found the stuff in Planet Organic, which I'm really beginning to hate. Every time I can't find an ingredient in a regular supermarket, it's always there. I don't know why this convenience annoys me, but it does. Bunch of stuck up bastards, who do they think they are!?
Don't mind me, I'm only lashing out because of my own inadequacies. When I finally got down to business it struck me that there is quite a big difference between the words or and and. Really, instead of running around, chasing after potato flour (and tapioca) wildly I could have been relaxing in my kitchen with my safe boring old box of corflour. So now I have a useless overabundance of starch in my kitchen, duh.
Result: I'm serving it in my Moomin mug to liven up something that is basically thickened fruit juice (I can't believe how excited I used to get over this, I guess I really am that stupid).
The book suggests serving it warm or cold, but I remember correctly, the proper way to drink this is as soon as it's made - scalding hot so it burns the roof of your mouth. And then you stick your finger in the cup so a skin forms around it. Yum!
The cranberries are still really sour, all the sugar does is take their tartness away, you can taste all the Vitamin C, as my brother puts is. It really takes me back :). Now all I have to do is figure out how much tapioca pudding I can get away with making...