Continuing my experimentation with Uzbek food, and also in honour of buying a massive steamer on Friday I decided that I had to deflower it, and what better way than with some Central Asian style dumplings. Manti are found all over Central Asia from Turkey through to China. It is said that Turkic or Mongol horsemen would carry dried manti as a food on the hoof and that is how they spread around the region, however other sources suggest that manti originated in the Middle East and travelled to Asia via the Silk Road. Whatever the origins, dumplings of some sort or another have embedded themselves into the cuisines of the region.
This recipe is based on a Uzbek recipe, where pumpkin appears quite regularly, though mostly they are filled with lamb.
Ingredients
250 g white flour
1 egg
1/2 tsp salt
150 ml hot water
Filling
1 large butternut squash
1 tsp cumin seeds
Ground black pepper and salt to taste
1. To prepare the filling, peel a butternut squash (or other pumpkin of your choice), cut into large cubes, toss in olive oil, sprinkle with salt, pepper and cumin seeds and bake for around 30 minutes in a 220C oven. Leave to cool and then mash roughly
2. Measure out the flour into a large bowl and add the salt and egg
3. Mix in the hot water, the final amount may vary, but you want a pliable elastic dough that is slightly sticky
4. Leave the dough to rest for 10-20 minutes
5. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and cut into squares roughly 4cm x 4cm
6. Add 1 teaspoonful of the pumpkin mixture to the centre of each dough square
7. Pinch the edges together corner to corner, and the repeat. The final result should have quite an intricate shape, though mine looked more like Chinese dumplings, but no matter, it's the taste that counts isn't it...?
8. Steam for 40 minutes
9. Serve with sour cream and chopped dill (or coriander)
Georgian cuisine is quite heavily bread based, with possibly the most well-known being the khachapuri, a delicious cheese-stuffed bread. Another stuffed Georgian bread is lobiani, which is filled with mashed kidney beans. I'm not really a big fan of baking, but I am a big fan of bean cuisine, so decided that this would be an ideal accompaniment to my ajapsandali.
It's a pretty forgiving recipe, and although it says knead the dough for 10 minutes, I think I only kneaded it for around 5 minutes. From an aesthetic point of view, the final form can take many shapes, some lobiani is very flat, others almost bun shaped, and some rolled out in a sausage. I went for round and flattish.
Ingredients
500 g flour
1 tsp yeast
1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
25 g margarine
320 ml warm water
Filling
400 g can of kidney beans (drained)
1 small onion
2 garlic cloves
1 tsp khmeli suneli
1 tsp cumin seeds
For the dough
1. Add flour to a large mixing bowl and rub in margarine
2. Add the yeast, salt and sugar (I used agave syrup instead of sugar - I had some in the house and have been trying to use it up).
3. Mix in enough warm water to make a dough. The amount may vary depending on how accurate you are with your flour measuring. Anything from 300-350 ml should be about right.
4. Knead the dough for 10 minutes (or until your arms get tired!) put back in the bowl, cover with cling film and leave in a warm place for around 1 hour
For the filling
1. Fry the onion and garlic in olive oil until softened and lightly browned.
2. Drain the kidney beans and add to the onion mixture. Some recipes call for cooking the beans from scratch, I went for the easy option.
3. Add the spices to the pan and give a good stir. Take off the heat and mash roughly.
4. Leave to one side to cool.
Stuffing the bread (preheat the oven to 220 C)
1. The dough should have risen considerably, knock it back and knead for a few minutes. Divide it into 4 balls
2. Take 1 ball and roll it out on a floured surface
3. Put one quarter of the bean mixture on the flattened dough
4. Gather the sides together in pleats so they meet in the middle
5. Press the disk flat and gently roll it out again, making sure that none of the bean mixture escapes
6. Repeat the process
7. Bake for around 20 minutes until lightly browned, then take out the oven and place on a cooling rack
8. Brush the surface with olive oil or butter and serve
I'm heading off to the Caucasus in a couple of weeks and figured I'd try my hand at some local dishes to whet my appetite. And because Armenia is my first stop, the obvious logic was to go Georgian ;) Nothing against Armenian food, in fact I find it delicious. My uncle used to go to an Armenian cookery class when I was a kid and I'd often get brought his latest experimentations to try. But Georgian food... ah... I'm a relative newcomer to its delights, having first tasted it a couple of years ago whilst staying in Odessa. My hotel had a Georgian restaurant on site and the smells were too much to resist.
Most countries that have a fairly bland cuisine usually embrace the spicy with open arms; in the UK, Indian food is the go-to if you're wanting something to excite the taste buds, in France you've got the North African influence, and in the US it's got to be Mexican. For the former Eastern Bloc countries the spice fix comes via Georgia (and to a lesser extent Uzbekistan) and despite the break up of the USSR it's still possible to find Georgian restaurants in many places.
And I have to say, it's rare that you taste something so different, so exciting that your first response (had you not been sitting surrounded by scary looking blokes) would be to jump up yelling "Holy shit, what is this?!" Yep... that good.
I spent a large part of the evening trying to figure out what was making it taste just so damn good, my Georgian being non existent, and my Russian and Ukrainian not up to the level required to interrogate a cook. I'd ordered ajapsandali, a vegetable stew not unlike ratatouille. Tomato based (though I later learned that some cooks omit the tomato and use potatoes), with aubergine and sweet peppers. The fresh herbiness of coriander was evident, as was the citrus notes of ground coriander seed, and the earthy tones of fenugreek. All cuisines have their preferred spice blends, with Georgian food the ubiquitous mixture is known as khmeli suneli (which apparently means dried spices), the exact mixture can vary, as do proportions, but the main ingredients that give Georgian food the 'wow' factor are ground coriander seed, fenugreek, fennel, dill, cinnamon and marigold petals.
The recipe below for ajapsandali is my attempt to recreate the meal I ate. I did search online for a recipe, but none that I could find sounded quite right. It could be that it's Georgian food as suited to the tastes of Ukrainians or Poles (I've also eaten it in Georgian restaurants in Poland a number of times) in the manner that Indian or Chinese food is adapted from country to country, but whatever its providence, it's damn tasty and if you're after something a little more exciting than your usual ratatouille, then it fits the bill.
Ingredients
1 large aubergine
2 red peppers
1 large onion
2 cloves of garlic (crushed)
2 tsp khmeli suneli
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp oregano
Saffron (couple of threads - optional)
1 large bunch of coriander
1 good handful of flat leaf parsley
a few sprigs of dill
Salt to taste
500 g carton of passata
1. Fry the chopped onion and crushed garlic in olive oil until softened. While the onions are frying, heat the coriander and cumin seeds in a dry frying pan and grind them. As an aside, I'm not normally a 'grind your own' spices snob, for the most part ready ground spices are perfectly acceptible if you get them from a reputable source and they haven't spend the last 5 years languishing on the back of a shelf, than if you grind them yourself. Coriander seed is the exception to the rule, there's nothing quite like the flavour of toasted and freshly ground coriander seed. If you don't have a pestle and mortar then put them in a plastic baggie and beat the hell out of it with a hammer, rolling pin, or bottle. You don't need a fine powder, just enough to crack the shells and release the aroma.
2. Slice the aubergine and peppers into large chunks and add them to the pan.
3. At this point I also chop up the stems of the coriander and parsley and add them to the pot for extra flavour. Reserve the leaves for later on.
4. Stir in the passata and simmer on a low heat for around 1 hour (or until the aubergine is softened)
5. Once the aubergine is cooked through, stir in some finely chopped coriander and parsley and cook for another 5 minutes or so.
6. Add salt to taste
7. Eat! It's delicious with rice or with flat bread.
Continuing my adventures with Uzbek food, I decided to try my hand at some traditional Bukharan Jewish dishes. Uzbekistan had at one time a sizeable Jewish population, occupying the region of the former Central Asian emirate of Bukhara (currently Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) with small numbers also living in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan and parts of Russia.
A Jewish presence in that region has been recorded since the tenth century BCE, and the population lived there with varying degrees of acceptance and/or discrimination for the next two and a half thousand years. Incidentally, the name 'Bukharan' was coined by European travellers to the region in the sixteenth century. With the establishment of Soviet rule in 1917, life for the Bukharan Jews deteriorated and in the 1920s and 30s thousands fled from religious oppression. During the 1970s and 80s emigration to Israel and the USA started, and by the early 1990s most of the population had left. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union there were estimated to be around 45,000 Bukharan Jews in Central Asia, now only a few thousand remain.
So... back to the food. What is Bukharan Jewish food like? Well, it's pretty similar to the cuisine of other Central Asian countries, with heavy emphasis on rice, noodles and either mutton or lamb as the principle source of meat-based protein. But there are some specific dishes, one of which is Bakhsh. I am not sure of the etymology of the name, but as bakhsh in Persian means gift (as in bakhsheesh), and because the traditional way of preparing this meal involved simmering a bag of chicken, liver, rice and herbs in a broth, I suppose the opening of the package to reveal the cooked delights within was akin to opening a gift. Though I may be totally barking up the wrong tree...
For anyone
wanting to try and cook the traditional meaty bakhsh there is a recipe
in the uber-Uzbek/Central Asian cookbook 'Kazan, mangal and other manly
pleasures' written by Stalik Khankishiev (who is a bit of a Russian
celebrity chef) and you can also watch a clip of him making it here (in Russian)
In addition to the bag method, Bakhsh can also be cooked like a traditional plov (pilaf), which is how I have approached it. As with my recipe for carrot and cashew nut plov, I make no appologies for the total lack of authenticity; I am lacking in the essential kazan (cauldren) and my meatless version would make a Bukharan grandmother shudder. Unauthentic it may be, but I like to think that the recipe below is 100% authentic in spirit...
Ingredients
250g long grain rice
400g can of chickpeas (drained)
1 large onion
1 fennel bulb
2 garlic cloves (peeled and crushed)
8 garlic cloves (unpeeled and left whole)
1 large bunch of coriander
10 green olives (sliced)
1 handful of dill
1 handful of flat leaf parsley
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp black cumin seeds (optional)
1 tsp brown mustard seeds
2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sumac
Olive oil
1. Heat the olive oil in a heavy bottomed casserole dish and fry the sliced onion and
crushed garlic until soft and lightly coloured. Add the sliced fennel and
cook for 5 minutes until just starting to soften
2. Place
the unpeeled garlic cloves and chopped olives in the pan then put the lid
on the casserole dish and continue to cook on a low heat for 20
minutes
3.
Meanwhile, wash the rice in cold water until the water runs clear,
then leave to soak in warm water until the vegetables have finished
sauteing
4. Once the
vegetables are cooked add the spices and stir in gently
5. Now add the chickpeas in a layer on top of the vegetables. Don't mix
6. Finely chop the herbs and add these on top of the chickpeas
7. Drain
the rice and layer it on top of the chopped herbs. The idea with
the layers is that the onions and fennel being closest to the heat will
continue to caramelise during the cooking, the chickpeas provide a
protective layer so the herbs can steam and infuse everything
with their flavour. The rice is the icing on the cake so to speak, holding everything in place
8. Add
freshly boiled water to the pot, I haven't given amounts because it
will vary depending on the size of your pot. You want the water to be
around 1.5cm above the level of the rice
9. Boil
until all the water evaporates, this should take around 5-10 minutes
10. Once the
water has evaporated poke holes in the rice with the end of a wooden
spoon to allow the steam to escape
11. At this
point, turn off the heat, cover the pan with a kitchen towel or aluminium foil and put
on the lid. Leave to steam for 20 minutes
10. Lift
off the lid and now mix everything together and turn out onto
a serving dish.Delicious as it is, or it can be served with a salad.
Uzbekistan is probably not a country that springs to mind when you think of great culinary traditions, however it's a cuisine that surprises... As is befitting its place on the map, the food of Uzbekistan is a delicious meeting of East and West. There are similarities with Turkish food and also Iranian touches with the use of sumac as a souring agent. There are also some Chinese and Indian influences in addition to the obvious Russian influence. It's not, however, a good cuisine if you're vegetarian as everything seems to contain sheep in one form or another.
I was inspired to try and create a vegetarian plov after acquiring a copy of an Uzbek cookery book that I'dpicked up last time I was in Israel. I have to say from the off, this recipe is not authentic. Why? Well, firstly I am lacking in a kazan, the ubiquitous cooking pot used throughout Central Asia. My grandmother had one, a huge black cast iron cauldron-type affair, I did hope to inherit it after she died (along with the axe she used to chop her vegetables - no delicate kitchen implements for my granny) however no one knows what became of it. So in lieu of a kazan I used a cast iron enamelled casserole dish, and I have to say it worked just fine. No sticking or anything untoward happened despite warnings to the contrary. Obviously the other major sticking point in authenticity is the lack of sheep, I substituted cashew nuts for the extra protein. Anyway, the end result was delicious, and very straightforward to make.
Ingredients:
1 large onion sliced into half rings
2 cloves of garlic crushed
1 head of garlic (unpeeled)
2 large carrots
50 g cashew nuts
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp dried barberries (could substitute unsweetened cranberries)
1/2 tsp sumak
Salt to taste
2-3 strands of saffron
100 ml ghee (you could use vegetable oil, but for the unctious mouthfeel it really needs something slightly more wicked...)
250 g long grain rice
Boiling water
1. Melt the ghee in a heavy bottomed casserole dish and fry the sliced onion and garlic until soft and lightly coloured. Add the julienned carrots and cook for 5 minutes until just starting to soften
2. Place the unpeeled garlic head in the middle of the pan, then put the lid on the casserole dish and continue to cook on a low heat for 20 minutes
3. Meanwhile, wash the rice in cold water until the water runs clear, then leave to soak in warm water until the vegetables have finished sauteing
4. Once the vegetables are cooked throw in the cashew nuts, sprinkle on the cumin, paprika, sumak, barberries, salt and saffron strands. Stir in gently without disturbing the garlic
5. Drain the rice and layer it on top of the vegetables. Don't mix in, you want the vegetable layer at the bottom protecting the rice from burning, or else rather than a plov you'll get a rice crust (which is actually v.tasty in itself)
6. Add freshly
boiled water to the pot, I haven't given amounts because it will vary depending on
the size of your pot. You want the water to be around 1.5cm above the
level of the rice
7. Boil until all the water evaporates, this should take around 5 minutes
8. Once the water has evaporated poke holes in the rice with the end of a wooden spoon to allow the steam to escape
9. At this point, turn off the heat, cover the pan with a kitchen towel and put on the lid. Leave to steam for 20 minutes
10. Lift off the lid (and enjoy the gorgeous smell!) take out the garlic head and leave to one side, now mix everything together and turn out onto a serving dish. Place the garlic bulb on top. The idea with the garlic is that the now creamy soft oil infused garlic cloves can be squeezed over the individual servings to taste. You can eat it as it is, or serve a simple tomato and onion salad as an accompaniment.
I like a challenge. I also find that after a busy week cooking for me is a way to relax... I'm in the process of moving house so with all that impending stress I really need to chill, and what better way than cooking up something tasty.
Tidying out my cupboards I realised that I had amassed rather a lot of ancho chillies, and after a midweek shopping trip I had acquired some more, plus some mulatto and guajillo chillies. So... what to make with them? I'd fancied trying my hand at making Mole Poblano, probably one of Mexico's most famous moles, or sauces, and best know outside of Mexico as being the 'one with chocolate in' - though chocolate is just one its many ingredients.
It is a little time consuming to make, but well worth it. I've adapted the recipe slightly, because I didn't have a few of the ingredients. Traditionally it contains peanuts and unskinned almonds. I had neither so substituted cashews, pine nut kernels and some ready ground almonds. The recipe also calls for aniseed, raisins and tomatillos, which I didn't have in the house, so fennel seed, a dash of balsamic vinegar (to mimic the tartness of tomatillos) and some agave nectar for sweetness went in instead.
I also cut a few corners on the technique which would probably incurr the wrath of Mexican grandmothers. The recipe I had called for numerous different steps, of frying in batches, draining oil and then grinding. I decided to split the recipe into three main stages; the herb, spice and nut mixture, the chilli puree, and the tomato, garlic and onion mixture. These can be all made in advance, and then all you have to do is mix then together and cook the sauce down for an hour or so.
Mole Poblano
8 large dried ancho chillies
4 mulatto chillies
2 guajillo chillies
1 head of garlic, cloves separated but unpeeled
4 tablespoons of sesame seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds (or aniseed)
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp thyme
3 bay leaves
1 disk of Mexican drinking chocolate (or 6 squares of dark chocolate - I used some chocolate with naga chilli for additional heat)
1 stick of cinnamon
1 handful of cashews (or peanuts)
4 tablespoons pumpkin seeds (hulled)
2 tablespoons pine nut kernels
3 stale corn tortillas
2 red onions
2 large tomatoes
1 litre vegetable stock
Olive oil
seasoning to taste
Nut and spice mixture
1. Add the sesame seeds, pine nut kernels, cashews (or peanuts), fennel seeds and peppercorns to a heavy bottomed frying pan and toast until golden. Watch carefully to ensure they don't burn
2. Pour into a pestle and mortar and grind until it becomes a fine powder. Alternatively if you have a coffee grinder do it in there. Much easier!
3. To this mixture add the ground almonds, dry herbs and ground spices.
4.
Toast the tortillas until they are crispy (I put them on the oven shelf
whilst the vegetables were roasting - see below), then crumble them into the
nut and spice mixture
Tomato mixture
1. Cut the tomatoes and onions in rough chunks, toss in some olive oil and place on a baking tray
2. Add the unpeeled garlic cloves
3. Roast for around 30 minutes at 200 C until the onions are soft and slightly charred
4. Remove the skins from the roast garlic cloves and blend to a puree.
5. Add 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and taste the mixture, adding sugar or agave nectar to taste
Chilli puree
1. Toast the chillies in batches in a heavy bottomed frying pan for a couple of minutes
2. Once all the chillies have been toasted put them in a large bowl and pour over boiling water
3. Leave to soak for at least 30 minutes
4. After soaking, drain the chillies (reserving around 300 ml of the liquid)
5. Remove the stalks and seeds and put the chillies into a blender
6. Blend to a fine puree with the soaking liquid
All of these stages can be prepared separately depending on how much time you have.
To make the Mole Poblano
1. Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large pan, once hot slowly the chilli puree for a few minutes
2. Stir in the tomato and onion mixture and simmer. You want it to have the consistency of tomato paste
3. Slowly add the dried nut and spice mixture, and then stir in the vegetable stock
4. Put a tight fitting lid on the pan and simmer for 30 minutes
5. Add the chocolate, stir and cook on a low heat for 1 hour
6. Season the mole to taste.
Et voila! It makes around 1.5-2 litres of sauce, and it should keep for around 1 week in the refrigerator. Traditionally it's used to cook meat such as chicken or turkey, but would work equally well with tofu or quorn. It may not be a traditional use, but I think it would be pretty damn fine as an enchilada sauce as well. You can use it immediately, but it's going to taste so much better after a night in the refrigerator letting the flavours mingle...
