Spicy chicken tagine with apricots, rosemary and ginger

I love nothing better than pottering about the kitchen on Sunday afternoons cooking up a storm without having to keep one eye on the clock the entire time. Unfortunately, time wasn't on my side this Sunday night, but I was in luck, as this dish was ready in around half an hour--thanks to my trusty pressure cooker!

It's been a while since we've had Moroccan, and I really don't know why. This dish from Ghillie Basan's Tagines & Couscous: Delicious Recipes for Moroccan One-Pot Cooking ticks all the right boxes for me: sassy fresh ginger right in the fore; tart, fruity apricots taking up the rear; flavourful herbs and a slight chilli bite. It all adds up to a bold and lively dinner ready in almost no time.

This was the first Moroccan recipe I'd come across with rosemary as an ingredient, so I wondered if it was authentic. The jury is still out on that one--I've seen Moroccan sources say a very firm non to that, and others that say it is used in particular dishes. Perhaps it's a regional thing? One criticism I have of ethnic cuisine cookbooks written by by non-locals is that they often don't include the local-language name of the dish. Unfortunately, Tagines & Couscous falls into this category, so there is no way to check with other recipes for the same dish.

But that is a minor niggle, really. This tagine is truly superb and, authentic or otherwise, I will certainly not hold back with the rosemary next time! I used 1 tsp of freeze-dried rosemary, as I couldn't get fresh, but this dish could certainly stand up to more. I think 3 tsp would do the trick. I might also try grinding the ginger to a pulp with a Japanese oroshigane next time round for a different texture.

I've adjusted the original recipe for use in a pressure cooker. If using a tagine/tajine or regular pot, the the cooking time in the original recipe is 35-40 minutes, covered, at a gentle simmer.

Spicy chicken tagine with apricots, rosemary and ginger

2 tbsp olive oil plus a knob of butter
1 onion, finely chopped
3 tsp freeze-dried rosemary, 1 tsp chopped finely, the other 2 left whole
40 g fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped or grated
1/2 hot red chilli, deseeded and chopped finely (or to taste)
1-2 cinnamon sticks
4 chicken thighs
175 g whole dried apricots
1-2 tbsp honey
400 g tin plum tomatoes in juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper
leaves from a small bunch of fresh basil

Serves 4

1 Heat the oil and butter in a medium sized pressure cooker. Add the onion, chopped rosemary, ginger and chilli and saute until the onion begins to soften.

2 Stir in the remaining rosemary and the cinnamon sticks. Season the chicken thighs with salt and pepper and add to the pot. Brown on both sides. Throw in the apricots and honey, then stir in the plum tomatoes and their juice. (Add a little water if necessary to ensure there is enough liquid to cover the base of the pressure cooker and submerge the apricots.) Seal the pressure cooker and bring to pressure. Turn down heat and cook under low pressure for 5-7 min, or until the chicken is done.

3 Adjust the seasoning. Shred the larger basil leaves and leave the small ones whole. Sprinkle over the chicken and serve with flat bread or couscous.

Enjoy!

Persian cooking class: Fig salad, mini onions with prawns and tamarind, giant rice meatballs, ferni milk pudding

The last session of the current series of Persian cooking classes was to be in August, but was postponed until late September, as our dear instructors Reza and and his lovely wife Tomoko-san had a series of exhibitions of their artwork on around that time. In the intervening month, summer gave way to autumn and the planned watermelon salad starter made way for a more seasonal fig salad.

Lettuce leaves were tossed gently first with olive oil and then with a zesty dressing of Persian lime juice, yogurt, mayonnaise and honey. Reza has such a delicate hand when it comes to tossing salads, and my classmates and I commented on his precision and artistry. This simple salad was then garnished with quartered ripe figs, roughly broken crackers and lightly toasted black mustard seeds. It was a lovely starter, but would also be a nice weekend lunch dish.

This was followed by a very exciting and exotic dish of miniature onions and prawns in a tamarind sauce. The prawns were marinated in fresh ginger and garlic (unusual in Persian cuisine), coriander leaves and a little black pepper and cayenne pepper for the little kick characteristic of cooking of the Persian Gulf area. The mini onions were fried in olive oil with a dried chilli and then simmered with tamarind water, before the marinated prawns were added at the end of the cooking time. I loved this dish but, as the tartness fiend I am, would maybe double up the tamarind when I make it myself.

Next up was kufte berenj, or rice meatballs in a tomato sauce. Tennis ball sized, these are very impressive on the plate, but are also a complete meal in themselves, with rice, beans and a cube of cheese tucked into their orbs. Spiced with saffron, turmeric and dill, and topped with a mix of sour cream and yogurt (in place of liquid whey kashk, perhaps?) these are certainly not your average meatballs.

By this point we were all feeling quite sated, but there was still more to come! Ferni is the Persian take on that popular Middle Eastern dessert standby of rice pudding. Made with ground rice and milk, and scented with rose water, this pudding is usually served chilled. It's a very different beast from the British rice pudding of my childhood.

As usual, Reza and Tomoko-san had a little gift for everyone who participated in the class. This time it was a little atomizer of rose water.

Although it was the last session of this round of lessons, I'm really looking forward to the next invitation to Reza and Tomoko's "Persian Dining Table". It is clear that these lessons are a labour of love for the two, and their warmth and generosity make these lessons very different from those at other schools. Then again, the combination of Persian and Japanese hospitality was always going to be hard to beat!

Reza and Tomoko in action in the homey studio kitchen

Persian cooking class: Kashk-e bademjan, gheliye mahi, chelo and saffron-scented almond brittle

This month's Persian cooking class was another beauty! The theme was the food of the Persian Gulf (Khalij-e Fars). Unlike the food of other parts of Iran, the food of the Gulf area is spicy, with detectable Indian and Arab influences. Our instructor, Reza Rahbar, is from this part of Iran, and I was super-excited to take this class for a couple of reasons: 1. The food of this area is not so well known, even to this avid Persian cookbook collector, and 2. we were going to make the absolutely mouth-watering stew of fish with herbs, chillies and tamarind (yes, all in one dish!!) that Reza demonstrated on NHK's Asia Crossroads program back in April. Also on the menu were kashk-e bademjan, a starter of fried eggplants topped with a yogurt and feta sauce; chelo steamed rice and sahan asali, an almond brittle perfumed with saffron.

I arrived early and, after having rosewater poured into my palm to refresh my face and hands, enjoyed a nice chat with Reza and his charming wife, who keeps the dialogue going during our lessons when Reza is busy at the stove. A photographer and designer in her own right, she designed the recipe sheet for this month's lesson, and was kind enough to say that my not-so-secret love of the colour orange was an inspiration for the design!

The eggplant starter was a bit of a revelation. There are many eggplant dips in the canon of Middle Eastern cookery, but here was one where the eggplants were pan-fried in oil, rather than grilled over a direct flame. You don't get the smokiness of, say, a mutabbal (baba gnanouj), but with the garlicky-dairy topping, drizzle of hot olive oil and a garish of mint, you certainly don't miss it. The kashk of the recipe name refers to a salty paste of whey, which is a bit of an acquired taste. It's not so easy to get here in Japan, and may not be to the taste of a most Japanese, so creating a similar flavour profile with yogurt and feta cheese was a good option. (Also helpful for those without a Persian grocer's nearby).

I was intrigued by the name of the fish dish, "ghalieh mahi". Mahi is fish in Persian, but what about ghalieh? I asked my dear Iranian friend Hw, who hails from the mountains in the north of Iran. He'd never heard of the word, so I flipped around my Persian-English dictionary till I came up with "qalieh," which was defined as "dish like a fricassee" (don't you hate it when a bilingual dictionary defines a word with another from a third language!). Stew, in other words. Later, I read in my latest Persian cookbook acquisition, A Treasury of Persian Cuisine, that Persian stews were called gholyeh for several centuries under the Arab influence, but the indigenous term, khoresh has once again become the standard term used in most parts of the country, "except for those nearer to the Persian Gulf..." I am now pretty sure that ghalieh, qalieh and gholyeh, are variant spellings of the same word, which translates as stew in English.

If you've had Iranian food before, you will know that there are one or two dishes that are so chock-full of fresh and dried herbs that they take on a worrying dark green tinge. I'm here to tell you that should certainly try any dish like that that you come across, as the odds are that it will be one of Iran's most fabulous dishes, like this one!

Reza's Ghelieh mahi was brimming with fresh coriander and parsley and dried fenugreek leaves. You are not likely to come across fresh fenugreek leaves just anywhere, but it's good to know that Persian and Indian grocers usually have the dried. Ask for shanbalileh if you're getting it from a Persian grocers or kasoori methi from an Indian one. The leaves need to be soaked in water for 10 min, then stir-fried for another 5. To me this seems to defeat the purpose of the soaking, but I am assured that this step does make a difference to the taste in the end.

Although there are many, many fabulous rice dishes in the Persian kitchen, Reza made plain steamed chelo to serve with the ghelieh mahi, which has enough flavour going on not to need a fancy accompaniment. The lovely Afghani (I believe) pottery dish that he served the rice in (photo above) gave the table a festive touch.

As we were all ooh-ing and ah-ing over the unusualness of this dish at the table, I mentioned that the word tamarind in English and Japanese comes from the Arabic for "Indian date". It's a slightly different word in Persian, so our host didn't know this, either, but serendipitously, he had some fresh dates for us as our take-home gift of the day!

Later we had cardamom tea (with a splash of rose water in my case), the almond brittle (which our hosts had made in advance) and a Persian snack of grains scented with what seemed to me to be violet and rose. Delicious! I was so into the food by this time that I forgot to take a picture, but you won't be far off the mark if you let your mind conjure up something from The Arabian Nights (g).

Lovely!

Shiomomi nasu: Salt-massaged eggplants with Japanese aromotics

I have been addicted to nasu (Japanese eggplants) this last while. They are everywhere at the moment, and the cooking magazines (which I really have to stop tempting myself by looking at) have 101 different ways to use them. The "Mighty Nasu" indeed (to paraphrase one of my foodie heroes Ottolenghi).

Yes, the eggplant/aubergine/patlican/baademjaan/badinjaan/baingan/ brinjal is beloved to many cuisines, but have you ever had it raw?? Most of the world makes a fuss about removing the bitterness from eggplants before cooking them, but here in Japan, it couldn't be easier: Just squish around in a bag with salt! The dark, bitter juices come right out, and you don't even need to cook them. How good is that?

This quick side dish recipe is from the June 17, 2010 edition of the Japanese food fortnightly Orange Page (don't ask; I'm as mystified by the name as anyone...). I thought it not bad, for my first attempt at salt-massaged eggplants, but with the Japanese big three aromatics shiso (perilla leaves), myoga (myoga ginger) and raw fresh ginger, it may be a bit "medicinal" for some tastes.

The trick to this dish is to make sure that all the eggplant slices get massaged well, and to slice the aromatics very finely.

I haven't tried this with the larger eggplants that you tend to find outside Japan, which are called bei-nasu (American eggplant) in Japan. For now, I suggest you seek out small, round Japanese nasu, which weigh about 80-100 g each.

Salt-massaged eggplants with Japanese aromatics

Serves 4 as a small side dish with other Japanese dishes

2 nasu Japanese eggplants (about 160 g total), sliced into 2 mm thick rounds
2/3 tsp salt
3 shiso (perilla) leaves, rolled and sliced very thinly
1 myoga (myoga ginger) bud, halved lengthwise and sliced thinly
1 thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped into thin shreds
splash of Japanese soy sauce (to taste)

1 Place the eggplant slices in a small polythene bag and add the salt. Press out all the air and hold the opening of the bag tightly closed with a thumb. With both hands, gently squeeze the eggplant slices until they loose their juices, most of their bulk and become pliant. Make sure not to miss any of the slices. Tip into a colander and rinse with water. With your hands, squeeze out as much of the water as possible.

2 In a small bowl, toss the shiso leaves and myoga. Add the salt-massaged eggplant, sliced ginger and a splash of Japanese soy sauce. Toss again and serve in tiny bowls as an accompaniment to other Japanese dishes.

Enjoy!

Harumi's summer: Rice bowl with stir-fried veggies & teriyaki chicken

I must not buy cookbooks and foodie magazines, I must not buy cookbooks and foodie magazines, I must not buy...

And the reason I must not buy them is that I have been asked by the landlady to move out of my rented apartment after 15 years, as she wants to move in! I really don't know who she thinks she is! It is a terrible imposition, this not being able to buy cookbooks and--- (you get the picture).

I know it in my mind that I need to be shedding rather than adding to my foodie hoard, but heart wants what it wants. All of which is to say, I couldn't resist the latest edition of Haru-mi magazine, Harumi Kurihara's eponymous quarterly featuring, this time, izakaya-style recipes for summer.

Surprisingly, summer cooking in Japan does not necessarily mean light food. The humidity and high temperatures here can really zap the energy, and quite often people want a hearty meal to get them through the dog days of summer. Grilled eel is a case in point: Some enterprising eel purveyor back in the 1800s hit upon the idea of flogging his oil-rich catch as just the thing for boosting flagging energy levels during the summer. And just like that, a connection was made between eel eating and Doyo no ushi no hi (the hottest day of summer by the traditional Japanese calender; July 26 this year).

But I digress.

As I was saying, Japanese people often seek out substantial, well-seasoned food when the temperatures soar, so it is no surprise that quite a few of the dishes in the summer edition of Haru-mi are fairly hearty. This rice bowl being a case in point.

With a soy-and-sugar seasoned mince topping AND slices of teriyaki chicken, you might expect this to be stodgy, but the herbs and lemon keep this meal-in-a-bowl on the right side of the line.

The recipe does require some Japanese groceries, so do read it through first.

-- Mirin is a sweet sake used extensively in Japanese cooking. If you can't get it, you could try this substitute, just a plain sugar syrup or a dash of sugar at a pinch (but I wouldn't recommend this in this recipe).
--Katakuriko (dogtooth violet or more commonly potato starch) is used for thickening sauces and, as in this recipe, to give a distinctive mouthfeel.

On the other hand, you won't need store-bought teriyaki sauce for this recipe. Yay!

Rice bowl with stir-fried veggies & teriyaki chicken

For the ground meat topping

200g beef or pork mince
2 tbsp Japanese soy sauce
2 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp sugar

For the stir-fried veggies
100 g bean shoots, roots removed
1/2 small zucchini, cut into 4 cm long batons
1 small red (bell) pepper, halved and cut into thin slices
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1/4 tsp powdered chicken stock
salt & pepper

For the teriyaki chicken
4 chicken fillets
salt & pepper
Katakuriko or cornflour (cornstarch), for dusting
2 tbsp Japanese soy sauce
2 tbsp mirin
2 tsp sugar

steamed rice
lemon halves
coriander leaves, mint leaves and toasted sesame seeds (optional) to garnish

1 Make the ground meat topping. Heat Japanese soy sauce, mirin and sugar in a small pot, add the mince and stir, breaking up with bamboo cooking chopsticks, until most of the liquid has evaporated. Remove from the heat and allow the meat to absorb the remaining liquid.

2 Prepare the bean shoots, zucchini and red pepper.

3 Make the teriyaki chicken. Remove any fibrous parts from the meat, place between layers of cling film and flatten with a rolling pin [Saffron: lazy folk, like me, can just flatten the fillets right on the chopping board with the heel of their hand (I won't tell, if you don't)]. Cut each slice in three width wise. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and dust each piece with katakuriko or cornflour. Heat oil in a frying pan and fry chicken on both sides. Remove from the pan.

4 Wipe out the frying pan and bring the Japanese soy sauce, mirin and sugar to a boil. When it becomes glossy, add the cooked chicken and toss well to coat. Remove from the pan.

5 Heat a little more oil in the pan and toss the zucchini and red peppers until slightly softened. Add the bean shoots and toss until heated through. Add powdered chicken stock and salt and pepper to taste.

6 Place a single serving of rice in each of 4 domburi or pasta bowls. Top each bowl with a layer of vegetables and a layer of the ground meat topping, sprinkle with coriander and mint leaves, and place the chicken slices on top, sprinkling over any teriyaki sauce that remains. Squeeze lemon over and garnish with sesame seeds, if desired.

Enjoy!

Persian cooking class 2: Nan-cheese-herbs, fesenjan & rose jam

I was super excited about my most recent Persian cooking class, as it was fesenjaan again! After my success with Najmieh Batmanglij's recipe in February, and after seeing our instructor Reza cooking this version on the NHK program Asia Crossroads, I was more than ready for another plate of Iran's classic party dish.

Reza's version, which somehow came to be dubbed "pomegranate curry" in Japanese, is certainly simpler than Najmieh khanom's. Onions and chicken are sauteed, and then spices and roughly chopped walnuts added. The chicken is removed, water added and the onion-nut mixture left to simmer for 20 min. It is then ground into a paste in a food processor or blender, making the sauce base. The chicken is returned, pomegranate paste and saffron water added and the lot left to simmer some more. The food processing bit seemed a bit radical to me, but certainly resulted in a smooth and dark sauce, so it looks like a winner.

None of my Japanese classmates had had fesenjaan before and were, I think, very pleasantly surprised by the combination of pomegranate and walnuts. In any event, there was a great deal of chatter about it round the table. Sour notes are not especially well represented in main dishes here, other than vinegared dishes like sushi, I suppose. No doubt an Iranian would probably have a similar reaction when presented with vinegared rice!

Speaking of rice, saffron rice was also on the menu, and the Iranian way with rice was another hot topic with my classmates. Japan is no stranger to rice, of course, but I can't think of any dish where boiling and draining the rice occurs. Grains that just hold together are preferred to separate grains, which would be much more difficult to corral with Japan's pointed chopsticks.

All of us had a surprise with our teacher's chosen method of cooking the nan for nan panir sabzi (bread, cheese and herbs), which was the appetizer for the evening. Flour tortillas (which being readily available, do duty as all kinds of flat breads) were toasted on a stove-top griller that's normally used for grilling fish here in Japan. Apparently it's the best way he's found of crisping up nan in Japan. There's a bit of a knack to getting the tortillas to puff up, but it works a treat. Must tell my dear Indian friend Sm next time he's in Japan!

Our last treat for the evening was rose jam. How wonderful to know that you can make jam from dried rose petals (or even rose "tea"! The roses here (even in Yokohama, which claims the bloom as it's city floral emblem) don't have a lot of perfume, let alone taste...

The dried rose petals are soaked in water for 3 hours, so you need to plan a bit in advance. Other than that, it's just sugar, rosewater and lemon or lime juice. But oh, oh! What a flavour. Although we had it with ice cream, rose jam is equally delicious on pancakes, bread and stirred into yogurt.

In Iran, of course, fresh rose petals are used, and it seems that when they are in season you get them from the veggie shop. How great would that be??!

Bonito bowl with Japanese aromatics and chilled miso soup with summer vegetables

This is a recipe I learned around this time last year at the Japanese cooking classes I was taking at ABC Cooking Studio. It's a blow-you-away explosion of flavour that really wakes the tastebuds up!

Unfortunately, it contains some traditional Japanese aromatics that might be difficult to find outside the country. For green perilla (shiso), you could try substituting basil or even Thai basil, but there's not really any substitute for myoga (the bud of a ginger plant) that I know of. I've seen celery suggested, but other than a little crunch, I don't see any commonalities with myoga. Certainly, I wouldn't want celery with this dish, but to each their own. You'll also want to seek out ponzu or make your own instant ponzu by combining citrus juice (citron juice, for preference), soy sauce and unsalted dashi stock in a ratio of 1:1:1. (Or you could go the whole hog and make bottleable ponzu using this recipe, but that might be one to save until autumn, when citron is in season (g)) .

Katsuo no tataki, or bonito that has been seared on the outside and dunked in an ice bath to ensure that it is still raw inside, is sold in triangular ready-to-use blocks at Japanese supermarkets. You could try tuna or horse mackerel if bonito is not available, but there's no need to do the searing and ice bathing routine for this recipe, as the fish will be lightly fried in any case.

This went very nicely with chilled miso soup with summer vegetables, another ABC recipe. Chilled miso is a specialty of Miyazaki Prefecture, although this recipe seems to be a pared back version. There's no cooking involved in this, so it's perfect for a muggy Japanese summer's evening. I say the recipe is for 3-4. ABC recipes are often so calibrated that the portions of each dish can be rather small. The original recipe is for 4, but the Young Man and I pretty much polished this off between us in one sitting. Greedy guts that we are (g).

Just a quick note about surigoma or ground sesame seeds. You can buy ready-ground sesame seeds in Japanese supermarkets, but the flavour is better if you toast and grind them to a fine powder yourself.

Bonito bowl with Japanese aromatics

Serves 3-4

200 g katsuo tataki or tuna or horse mackerel
1 tsp vegetable oil
2 tbsp ponzu

200 ml short-grain rice
200 ml water

For the aromatics
4 green perilla leaves (ao-jiso)
12 g fresh ginger
1 myoga (aka myoga ginger)

1 g shredded nori (optional)
12 g garlic, sliced and deep fried (optional)

4 tsp ponzu

1 Wash rice 4-5 times until the water runs clear. Cover with water and leave to soak for around 30 minutes, drain, then cook in a rice cooker with the measured water.

2 Prepare the aromatics. Cut the stalk out of the perilla leaves, stack one on top of the other and roll together to form a "cigar". Slice finely into shreds. Peel the ginger and finely julienne. Soak briefly in water, then drain. Cut the stalk off the myoga, halve lengthwise and slice finely on the diagonal. If using garlic chips, peel each clove and slice into rounds. Punch out any green part with a chopstick. Deep fry until golden brown at 160 degrees C, then drain on kitchen paper.

3 Cut slices from the bonito block about 7 mm thick. Heat vegetable oil in a large frying pan and cook bonito slices briefly, turn and cook the other side (about 2 min total). Remove to a bowl and pour over 2 tbsp ponzu.

4 To assemble, divide rice between bowls, top with bonito slices, shiso, ginger and myoga. Garnish with shredded nori and garlic chips, if using, and sprinkle 1 tsp of ponzu over each bowl.

Chilled miso soup with summer vegetables

For the soup
2 g dashi konbu (dried kelp for stock)
220 ml water
24 g miso paste (mixed miso, for preference)
2 tbsp white surigoma (roasted sesame seeds ground to a course powder)
1/2 tsp raw sugar

2 ripe fruit tomatoes or other mid-sized tomatoes, peeled
1/2 Japanese cucumber (around 50 g)
1 myoga bud

1 Make the dashi. Wipe the kombu with a damp cloth and make cuts in 2-3 places to help the flavour come out. Place in the water and leave for at least 30 min.

2 Prepare the vegetables. With a sharp knife, cut the tomatoes in half through the stalk end, then cut shallow crosses in the rounded side of each tomato half. Slice the cucumber thinly on the diagonal, then cut the slices lengthwise into shreds. Cut the stalk off the myoga and halve lengthwise. Cut each half into thin slices on the diagonal.

3 Make the soup. With a whisk, blend the miso, sesame paste or tahini and raw sugar until smooth. Gradually stir in the kombu dashi. Chill until ready to serve.

4 To serve, place tomato halves in four bowls with the rounded side upwards. Divide the soup between the bowls and top each tomato half with the cucumber and myoga.

Enjoy!