Tepsi Baytinijan

So soon after making moussaka, I was quite surprised to find myself making another baked dish involving aubergines, although that is about where the similarities end between that dish and this one.   As you know, I like to enter the My Kitchen My World event each month and this month the country was Iraq.  Now, I don’t know much about Iraqi food and I imagine it to be similar to other Middle Eastern cuisines.   Even so, I wanted to try and find something that was distinctly Iraqi, at least in my mind.   As I researched I came across lots of information saying that other well-known dishes such as tabouleh and falafel are widely eaten in Iraq.  The only problem is, Iraq is not the first country that I would associate them with.  I came across the dish, tepsi baytinijan on Wikipedia, described as a very popular Iraqi casserole and decided to research it further.   It’s a dish of sliced fried aubergines,layered with fried onions and garlic, and usually potatoes,although I found one recipe which said carrots could be used instead of potatoes and so that’s what I did – I wanted to avoid it being too similar to moussaka. Chunks of fresh tomato are then placed on top and small meatballs are placed between the tomatoes.   It is then baked in the oven and served with rice and salad.   Or in my case, jacket potatoes, which admittedly is not very Iraqi.

Ingredients – serves 2

1 aubergine

2 medium-sized  carrots

1 onion

2 tomatoes

250g minced beef

2 garlic cloves

1 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tbsp tomato puree

How to make Tepsi Baytinijan

1. Cut the aubergines into slices about 1cm wide.  Slice the carrots about 1-2 mm wide and slice the onions.

2. Lightly fry the aubergines for about 5 minutes on each side. Put to the side and then in the same pan fry the onions and carrots until softened.  Add one crushed garlic clove a few minutes before they are ready.

3. While cooking the vegetables, make the meatballs.   Mix 1/2 a tsp of each spice and 1 crushed garlic clove into the mince.   Make into small meatballs.

4. Lightly oil an ovenproof dish.  Place the aubergines on the bottom of the dish.   Layer the carrots and onions on top.  Slice the tomatoes into wide chunks and put on top.   Put the meat balls between the chunks of tomato.

5. Put the rest of the spices and the tomato puree into  a cup.   Add 200ml of boiling water and stir till the puree has dissolved.

6. Pour the water over the dish and cover with tinfoil.  Bake in the oven  for 45 minutes at about 180C.

 

Ackee Stir Fry

For the past couple of years, whenever I go into the supermarket near my work, I’ve enjoyed looking at the Caribbean section.   There are various sauces, dried salt fish and tins of ackee.  It’s the ackee that has most intrigued me – I just couldn’t imagine what it tasted like.   A vegetable that looked like little yellow brains and that could poison you if you ate it fresh and didn’t cook it well enough.   It even sounded a bit scary.  Now, you may wonder why I have just looked at it for two years and haven’t actually bought any to try until now.   Indeed, it is clearly a sign that I need to be a bit more adventurous.    The push to actually buy the tin only came when this month’s My Kitchen My World went to Jamaica.   Now, I could have made jerk chicken or Jamaican pasties and both those would have been very tasty, but I decided to use the challenge to try the ackee instead.  As I’d never used it before and didn’t know what it tasted like, I decided to turn for inspiration to Levi Roots and Caribbean Food Made Easy.  He describes it as, ‘one of the delicacies of Jamaica and a very special food’ and the way it is used here and the colours are supposed to represent the colours of the Jamaican flag.  Could I get more Jamaican than that?   Well, only if I’d chosen to serve it with salt fish!  Actually, I suspect that this is not the way ackee is usually served in Jamaica, but is just a recipe made up for the book.   I could be wrong, so please correct me if so.

Anyway, what did I think of the ackee?   Well, the texture was very soft, a bit like lumps of soft scrambled egg and the taste was also very delicate.   It took on the flavours of the lime, the soy sauce and the coriander without having much of its own flavour.   Overall, I’d say it’s not a vegetable I could love, but not one I could dislike either,  I’d happily eat it again but whether I liked the dish or not would probably depend on what it was served with and the flavours of the other ingredients.   So, do you eat ackee?   And if so, how is it prepared?

I am sending this to My Kitchen My World and also Cookbook Sundays.

Ingredients – Serves 2

280g tin ackee

1 red pepper, sliced

1 spring onion, sliced

Small piece root ginger, sliced into thin batons

1 garlic clove, sliced

1 chilli pepper, sliced

1 tbsp soy sauce

Juice of 1/2 lime

Small handful of peanuts, raw or dry roasted

1 tbsp chopped coriander (cilantro)

How to make Ackee Stir Fry

1. Heat a little oil in a wok and add the ginger, garlic, chilli and red pepper.  Stir fry for a couple of minutes.

2.  Add the soy sauce.   Stir then add the drained and rinsed ackee.  Be very careful with the ackee so that it doesn’t fall apart.  Turn the heat down and cover the wok for about 4 minutes so the ackee is heated through.

3. Drizzle with the lime juice, top with the chopped coriander and chopped peanuts.

4. Serve with rice.

 

Salade Liégeoise

I planned to make this recipe in December but somehow I never had time and never had the right ingredients.   Salade Liégeoise is a Belgian potato salad with bacon, green beans, onion and a vinegar dressing.   I also added a few peas as I think they go so well with bacon and potatoes.   I wanted to make a Belgian dish as Belgian was the December destination for My Kitchen My World.   As I write this on 2 January, I hope I’m not too late, but even so, it was definitely worth making.   I served it warm for lunch but it would also be great cold as a side dish or as a packed lunch.   The salad comes from the city of Liége which is in the French-speaking part of Belgian and was the nearest city to the town where I did a Belgian exchange when I was at school.  Now, over 15 years later, all I remember about the food is the chocolate (it was Easter time) and the fruit flavoured beer, but when looking for inspiration online, the name Liége caught my eye and that’s what led to the making of this salad.   I looked at lots of recipes when making this dish but the one it most resembles can be seen here.

In January, the destination for My Kitchen My World will be Jamaica.   The last few months have been a little quiet so if you fancy making a Jamaican dish, then do check it out.

I am also sending this to Deb at Kahakai Kitchen for Souper (Soup, Salad and Sammie) Sundays.

Ingredients – serves 2

Enough new potatoes for 2 people

Handful of green beans

4 rashers bacon

1/2 onion, thinly sliced

2 tbsp peas

Black pepper

Red wine vinegar

How to make Salade Liégeoise

1. Cut the new potatoes into largish chunks.    Boil in lightly salted water until cooked through.

2. At the same time boil the beans in another pan.   Add the peas just before the beans are ready.

3. Add a little oil to a frying pan.  Cut the bacon into small pieces and add to the pan.    Fry until beginning to crisp.

4. Add the onion to the bacon and continue to cook for about 1 minute until translucent.

5. Add the potatoes and black pepper to the pan.  Continue to cook for about 3 minutes so the potatoes gain a little colour, stirring occasionally.   Add the green beans and peas and heat through.

6. Add a splash of vinegar.   Give the pan a final stir and then serve.

 

Shakshuka

Who doesn’t like to have a  cooked breakfast every now and then?  And however nice bacon and eggs are, it’s nice to have a change occasionally, which is partly how I came to make Shakshuka.  Shakshuka, or chakchouka, is a dish of poached eggs, cooked in a tomatoey sauce with onions, herbs and spices, sometimes with peppers, aubergine and chickpeas as well.   Variations of it are eaten throughout the Middle East and North Africa, but it is thought to come from Tunisia originally, which is the second reason why I decided to make it: I needed a Tunisian dish for My Kitchen My World.   If you haven’t heard of My Kitchen My World, it’s a fantastic event where a different country is chosen each month and participants make a dish from that country.   As I love discovering new dishes, it’s a perfect event for me.

I loved the finished dish.   Adding chillies to anything always makes me happy, cumin is one of my favourite spices and I love fresh coriander, so I would definitely make this again.   It reminded me very much of huevos rancheros which is the closest thing to this I’d eaten before.  I’m sure from now on I’ll be making the two dishes so many slight variations I won’t actually be able to say which dish I’m making.  Not that that matters of course.

Ingredients – Serves 2

400g tin chopped tomatoes

1/2 red pepper, sliced

1/2 green pepper, sliced

1/2 onion, sliced

1 clove garlic, finely diced or crushed

1 chilli pepper, finely sliced

2 eggs

1/2 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp paprika

1 tsp dried parsley

1 tbsp chopped fresh coriander

Salt

Black pepper

How to make Shakshuka

1. Add a little olive oil to a frying pan.   Add the chopped pepper.  Fry for a few minutes then add the onion, garlic and chilli.

2. Add the tin of chopped tomatoes along with the dried herbs, spices, salt and pepper.

3. After a few minutes make two hollows in the tomato mixture.    Add the eggs and continue to cook until they have set.

4. Before serving, sprinkle over the fresh coriander.   Then serve with warm pita bread.

 

Bulgogi

Korean food has always been one of those cuisines that I’ve never really got to know.   Most recipes seem to call for pastes and ingredients that I just don’t have and as much as I have often wanted to get to know it, I’ve ended up opting to make Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese or other similar cuisines instead.   I’ve only ever been to one Korean restaurant in my life, and that was about 8 or 9 years ago.    I remember the other people around the table cooked beef and vegetables on a hotplate in the centre of the table, but in those days I didn’t really eat red meat and so ordered my own salmon dish instead.   Only now do I think, how I missed out.

Anyway, over the past few months I had been thinking I needed to learn more about Korean food.   A few months ago I borrowed a Korean recipe book from the library, and was intending for a long time to experiment by making kimchi, but after renewing it a few times the book expired and I had to take it back, having enjoyed looking at some lovely pictures but no nearer to trying out the food.    And then, I noticed that this month’s My Kitchen My World was going to Korea.   It seemed I was running out of excuses not to make a Korean dish.   If only I still had that book.    Never mind,   I turned to the internet and after doing a little research I decided upon bulgogi, Korean marinated and barbecued ribeye steak.   I looked at quite a few recipes and eventually decided upon the one here at Slash Food and only adapted it very slightly.  It sounded authentic.  The ingredients were ones I already had in, the only thing I needed to get was the steak.   The dipping sauce was my own invention, but inspired by various online versions which were all quite different.

The finished result was delicious.    I don’t like sweet savoury dishes and was worried the sugar would make it too sweet but it didn’t.   Definitely a dish to make again.

Ingredients for Bulgogi

300g ribeye steak

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp rice vinegar

1.5  tbsp sesame oil

2 tbsp soy sauce (korean if possible)

1 tsp crushed chillies

1/4 tsp ground ginger (use fresh if possible but I’d run out)

Pinch of pepper

1/2 onion

To serve: rice and lettuce leaves

How to make Bulgogi

1. Slice the beef as thinly as you can against the grain.    If you put it in the freezer for half an hour first it apparently makes it easier to slice, but I didn’t bother.  Also slice the onions.

2. Make the marinade by mixing all the other ingredients together until the sugar dissolves.

3. Pour the marinade over the beef and onions and mix in well so the beef is coated all over in the marinade.

4. Put in the fridge overnight or for at least an hour.

5. It should really be barbecued or grilled but I decided it would be easier to use a griddle pan.   It will cook quickly over a high heat.

6. Serve with rice, lettuce leaves and dipping sauce.   To eat put some rice and meat in a lettuce leaf.  Wrap it up a little and dip in the sauce.

Ingredients for Dipping Sauce

4 tbsp soy sauce

1.5 tbsp rice vinegar

2 tbsp sesame oil

2 chillies

How to make the Dipping Sauce

Slice the chillies finely. Add the other ingredients.    Mix well and serve in small individual bowls alongside the bulgogi.

 

Toad in the Hole

This month My Kitchen My World was asking us to make a British dish.    I set to thinking about what dish to make and the more I thought, the more I realised that most typical British dishes are more suited to Autumn or Winter.    And then I looked outside and reminded myself of why.   Seeing all the rain, why not make a hot comforting dish with lots of gravy.    After all, maybe it was the recent rain that had completely driven away all thoughts of any more summery British dishes.

Anyway, I felt like eating sausages and gravy, and so toad in the hole seemed a perfect choice.  In essence, toad in the hole is just a big Yorkshire pudding with sausages baked in the batter.   It’s an easy everyday dish to make at home, and it is also sometimes served in pubs.    My mum didn’t often make it when I was a child, but I remember eating it at school and when I went to stay with relatives and at schoolfriends’ houses.    I hadn’t actually made it before but I love Yorkshire puddings.   I especially love them when they rise up and go crispy around the outside but stay soggy in the middle.   And of course, lots and lots of gravy is absolutely essential.   I could have made gravy from scratch, but in keeping with the way most people eat this, I decided to just stick with gravy granules.   The amount I made served two of us, but it could easily stretch to serving four, especially if an extra sausage was added.

Ingredients – Serves 2-4

110g flour

3 sausages (225g)

125ml milk

2 eggs

oil

Salt

Black pepper

1/2 tsp thyme

1/2 tsp rosemary

How to Make Toad in the Hole

1. Make the batter.  Put the milk, flour, eggs, a little salt and  pepper in a mixing bowl.   Use a whisk to mix until smooth.    Leave to stand for half an hour.

2. Heat the oven to about 200C.  Put a little oil in the bottom of an ovenproof dish.   Cut the sausages in two and put in the bottom of the dish.   Bake for about 10 minutes.

3. Turn the sausages over and pour the batter around the sausages.   Return to the oven for about 30 minutes until the batter has risen up at the sides and the sausages are cooked.

4. Serve with vegetables and gravy.

 

Chicken Shish Kebabs

Last year I went on holiday to Egypt and when I go anywhere new, one of the main things I get excited about is trying all the food.  Unfortunately I picked up a stomach bug on the second day and wasn’t completely well until the last day so I couldn’t really enjoy it all.  I did manage to eat some absolutely fantastic grilled meats though which were really well marinated and tender.  I’m  not sure exactly what they were marinated in but they were really delicious.

So when this month My Kitchen My World went to Egypt,  I was happy to have an excuse to finally make these kebabs.   I have to say that the end result did not taste quite like anything I actually ate in Egypt so I can’t claim they are authentic.  However, they tasted great and reminded of the holiday that inspired them.

Ingredients

300g chicken, chopped into large chunks

1/2 tsp dried mint

1/2 tsp dried parsley

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp coriander

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Seeds from 3 cardamom pods

1 garlic clove, crushed

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 1/2 tbsp yoghurt

How to make Chicken Shish Kebabs

1. Combine all the herbs and spices with the yoghurt.  Stir well.   Add the chicken and stir so it is coated on all sides in the sauce.   Put in the fridge for at least 2 hours to marinate.

2. Thread the chicken onto skewers.  Cook on a griddle pan, under the grill or barbecue.   Serve with salad and pitta bread.

 

Afghan Potato Salad and Beef Kebabs

I am always interested in trying new dishes and finding out about new cuisines.  I was therefore very excited to research Afghan cuisine for  this month’s My Kitchen My World.  I was lucky enough to discover Shayma’s blog, The Spice Spoon, which is full of delicious recipes from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.   I would definitely recommend this and I know I will be returning here again and again.

First I made the Borani Kachalu, potato salad.  Borani is a cold dish of vegetables in a yoghurt dressing.  I was never a fan of potato salads as a child and always avoided them.  It’s only in the past year that I have begun to try them again, sometimes making a quick potato salad with an olive oil dressing to take to work as a packed lunch.    I think part of the reason I have never been keen on potato salads is because I am not a fan of heavy mayonnaise or creamy dressings but I do love the lightness of yoghurt dressings.  I could therefore instantly see the appeal of this salad.   Not only that but the tomato sauce the potato is cooked in uses some of my favourite flavourings and  spices – ginger, garlic and chilli.   I just knew that this was my kind of potato salad.   I followed the recipe almost exactly except that my slices of potato were larger and more chunky than in the original recipe.  The end result was also much less elegant than the original version.   The only thing I found difficult was having to stop myself eating the potatoes and leave them to cool so I could get on with the kebabs.   I would happily have eaten them warm and would cook them again this way to eat as a hot side dish.

I suspect that an Afghan may not eat these two dishes together like we did but I found they went together perfectly.   The kebabs were really easy to make.  I just put all the ingredients in the food processor, shaped into patties and then fried them.  The one thing I did have to alter in this recipe was the use of herbs.  I was not quite organised enough and only had dried herbs so I used them instead of fresh ones.   I loved the spiciness of these kebabs.   They suited me perfectly and my husband agreed this is definitely something he wants me to make again.   So, this meal was definitely a success.

To see original recipes go here for the potato salad and here for the kebabs.

Ingredients for Potato Salad

2 medium potatoes, sliced

1 clove of garlic, minced

1 knob of ginger, same size as the garlic, minced

8 tbsp passata, and then I added an extra dash

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp turmeric

Dressing

3 heaped tbsp yoghurt

2 tbsp water

1 tsp dried mint

Ingredients for Kebabs

250g minced beef

1/2 medium onion, diced

3 small chillies, diced

2 spring onions

1 small egg

1 tsp ground coriander seed

1 tsp dried coriander leaf

1 tsp dried mint

How to make Afghan Potato Salad, Borani Kachalu

1. Heat a little oil in a pan.   Add the minced garlic and ginger.   Cook for about 30 seconds.  Add the powdered spiced.  Stir for a few seconds then add the passata.  Stir for about a minute then add the potatoes.

2. Make sure all the potatoes are thoroughly coated in the passata.   Add a dash of water so the pan is not too dry, I added an extra dash of passata too.   Put the lid on and leave to cook for 20 minutes.

3. Check the potatoes are cooked. If so, take them off the heat and begin to make the dressing.  Mix the yoghurt, water and mint together and leave in the fridge till ready to serve.

How to make Beef Kebabs

1.  These are so easy you don’t really need a recipe.  Put all the ingredients in a food processor and process till thoroughly combined.

2. Shape into kebabs and fry in a pan of hot oil for about 2 minutes on each side.   This amount of mixture made 6 kebabs for us.

To serve, drizzle the yoghurt over the  top of the potato salad, serve the kebabs on the side with an extra dollop of yoghurt.   I also served a green salad with it.   To be more traditional you could also serve it with naan bread.

 

Vegetarian Sushi

Do I like sushi?  Yes.   Do I like wasabi?   Not if I can see it.   The key to making these tasty is to use an almost invisible smear of wasabi paste.   If you use too much they burn your mouth and nose from the inside out.  Or at least that’s what it felt like to me the first time I made them.

Sushi actually means vinegared rice although many people in the UK think that it refers to raw fish.   Raw fish is actually sashimi, something I would be much more wary of preparing by myself at home, but that I’m happy to eat in good Japanese restaurants.  If you have some, these would be delicious served with a slice of sashimi on top of each roll.  If not, they are pretty good by themselves, just be careful with the wasabi.

I made these for My Kitchen My World which is focusing on Japanese food this month.

Ingredients – Serves 3

150g sushi rice

1/2 tsp wasabi paste

1 small carrot, julienned

1/4 green pepper, julienned

2 inches cucumber, julienned

1 spring onion, sliced into strips

3 sheets of nori

2 tbsp vinegar

1tbsp soy sauce

How to make Vegetarian Sushi

1. Cook the rice according to the pack instructions.  When ready, mix in the vinegar and soy sauce and leave to cool.

2. Use a sushi mat to roll the sushi.  Put a sheet of nori on the mat. Smear a tiny amount of wasabi from one end to the other in a narrow line.   Put some rice on the nori, covering about two inches so there is still some empty nori at the furthest away side.  Lay strips of the vegetables in the middle of the rice going from one side to the other.

3.  The sushi is now ready to roll.   As it rolls the vegetables end up in the middle of the rice.  Cut the roll into four pieces.

4. Serve with soy sauce for dipping.

We ate two rolls for lunch and I took the third roll to work as a packed lunch.

 

Slow Cooker Chicken Tagine

Traditionally tagines are cooked slowly and so I decided that it was time to bring out my slow cooker again.   I got it last winter and used it at least once a week for the first four months, but since spring it’s been gathering dust.  As the weather is now getting a little cooler I feel its time has come again.  A slow cooker may not be quite the same as a conical ceramic tagine, it’s certainly not as attractive, but I was hoping it’d do the job just as well.   When I first got my slow cooker I used to follow recipes and cook the items in stages in pans on the hob and then put the contents into the slow cooker.  But somehow, I didn’t feel that that made my life much easier, and nor did it save on washing up.  I soon realised that just throwing all the ingredients into the slow cooker in the morning led to practically the same results and that’s more or less what I’ve done ever since.   This dish was absolutely delicious and left me feeling I could eat tagine every day.

I’m sending this post to My Kitchen My World for the September challenge which is to make a Moroccan dish.  As I love North African food I’m really excited to see what other dishes are produced.

In the picture below it may look like there is no chicken in the dish but it is there, just hidden underneath all the chickpeas.

Ingredients - serves 2

2 chicken breasts

1 large onion, sliced

1 carrot, roughly chopped into large pieces

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

Knob of fresh ginger, finely diced

Approx 8 dried apricots

400g can chopped tomatoes

400g can of chickpeas

200ml chicken stock

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 tsp coriander

1tsp cumin

1tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp chilli powder

Black pepper

2 lemons

How to make Moroccan Tagine

1.Make a marinade with the spices, juice of half a lemon and a little oil.  Add the chicken.  Put in the fridge and leave overnight or for a couple of hours.  Or, if you don’t have time for this step, just go straight to step 2, and put all the spices in the pot with the rest of the ingredients.

2.Put all the ingredients except the extra lemon in the slow cooker.  Cook on low for up to 8 hours.

3. Serve with couscous cooked in chicken stock with the extra lemon cut into wedges to squeeze over the top.