Djaj bil karmous wal joz: Moroccan tagine of chicken, figs and walnuts

Always luscious, well herbed and spiced, and often, though not here, featuring my beloved lemon, Moroccan food is an all-time favourite at the Saffron household. But even given all that, this dish is nothing short of alchemy.

It has just a handful of ingredients and only a smidgen of spice, and cooks up in just over 40 minutes. Oh, but the result!

With warm spices cinnamon and ginger, honey and caramelized figs, you might expect this braise to on the sweet side. Instead, it is deeply savoury and autumnal, especially with the added crunch of walnuts. Using little water, this would also be perfect to make in an actual tagine, if you are lucky enough to own one. (I am holding off on getting one, as the Saffron kitchen is already groaning under the weight of too much foodie paraphernalia.)

We had this with totally inauthentic rice for the sake of speed, but I'd love to do it again with a nice fruited and nutted couscous.

The original recipe is from Claudia Roden's Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon, which sometimes gets a bit overlooked in my collection, standing alongside Claudia's major works A New Book of Middle Eastern Food and The Book of Jewish Food.

Moroccan tagine of chicken, figs and walnuts

25 g butter
1 tbsp sunflower oil
2 large onions
1 tsp ground ginger
good pinch saffron threads
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 chicken, jointed
salt & black pepper
1-1 1/2 tbsp clear honey
50 g walnut halves
4-8 fresh figs, peeled, or washed, and cut in half (4 in case of black ones, 8 in case of little green ones)
Squeeze of 1 lemon
Castor sugar

1 Heat butter and oil in a large pan. Put in the onions, cover and let them soften slowly over a medium heat, stirring from time to time. When they begin to colour, stir in the ginger, saffron and cinnamon. Put in the chicken pieces, season with salt and pepper, and turn to brown them lightly all over.

2 Add 250 ml water and cook, covered, turning the chicken pieces over at least once. Lift out the breasts when they are done, after about 15-20 min, and put them on one side. Lift out the remaining chicken pieces about 25 min later, when the are very tender.

3 Let the onions reduce to a rich brown sauce. Stir in the honey and taste to make sure you have enough salt to balance the sweetness and enough pepper to mitigate it. Add walnuts.

4 Meanwhile, sprinkle fig halves with a little lemon juice and a little castor sugar, and put them under the grill for a few minutes to barely caramelize. Serve them as a garnish on top of the chicken pieces.

Enjoy!

A picnic triad 3: Mashed zucchini with onions, garlic and mint

While googling around for picnic recipes, I remembered that I had not yet bought Claudia Roden's paean to picnics, Picnics: And Other Outdoor Feasts, which I'd spied a couple of years back, what else, getting ready for dear H & Hi's annual picnic! (I've ordered the book (since I know I will use it year after year (g)) and will let you know what I think later.)

I came across this picnic recipe of Claudia's on the American Express site Food & Wine. It's a super easy to make appetizer that is exactly what it says it is on the tin. I used less mint than called for below as I prefer peppermint, and added the juice of the lemon (I couldn't resist) rather than presenting it with lemon wedges. You can do both, if it takes your fancy.

Perfect for picnics with veggie eaters, you can whip this up in no time. Which was just as well in my case!

Claudia's picnic mashed zucchini with onions, garlic and mint

Serves 4-6, with other picnic food

450 g zucchini, cut into 3 cm lengths
1.5 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, divided
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 tbsp coarsely chopped mint, or to taste
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Juice of 1 lemon
1 lemon, cut into wedges (optional)

1 Place the cut zucchini into a microwave-safe container in one layer and microwave until soft, around 10 min. Drain and, using a fork, mash the zucchini in a colander to squeeze out as much liquid as possible.

2 Heat 1 tbsp of the olive oil. Add the onions and cook over moderate heat, stirring, until lightly browned, about 8 min. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until it just begins to color, about 30 seconds. Add the zucchini, mint and lemon juice, season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring, until well mixed and heated through, about 5 min.

3 Stir in the remaining half tbsp of olive oil and serve warm or at room temperature with the lemon wedges.

Enjoy!

Claudia's Tunisian meatballs in tomato sauce

It's 6:30 pm on Sunday night and no plan for dinner! What to do? Something easy and tasty, sure, but nothing that's going to take too long and that will require a trip to the supermarket. Thinking quick, I came up with meatballs, something we haven't had for a while, and a dish for which the Middle East has infinite variations.

In the end I went with this one from Claudia Roden's Book of Jewish Food, my all-time favourite cookbook. With a simple tomato sauce, the real flavour in these show-stopping meatballs is in the meatballs themselves. With aromatics like the fiery chilli and garlic paste harissa, garlic, mint, cinnamon and rose, you know you're in for a treat! Made per the recipe, the chilli paste is more warm glow than burn, but feel free to up the harissa if you like.

One interesting technique I learned from this recipe was to blast the meatballs in the oven for a short time before putting them in the sauce. This serves two purposes: (1) the meatballs get browned without the need for turning and inevitably misshaping them, and (2) the excess fat runs into the oven tray rather than your sauce.

If you don't have powdered rosebuds, don't despair. The meatballs will still be fabulous. If you don't have enough tomatoes, either, then use what you have. In my case 1 small tin of tomatoes, some fresh ones, including cherry toms, and a good slug of leftover passata.

The Young Man adored these and asked why we don't have meatballs more often. Well no need to ask twice; there are several dozen meatball recipes in Book alone, and more than enough time to try each one!

Claudia's Tunisian meatballs in tomato sauce

For the meatballs
600 g mince lamb, beef veal (or pork if it is not an issue with you) or a mixture
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/2-3/4 tsp salt
pepper
3 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley or coriander (cilantro)
1 tbsp chopped mint
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp rosebud powder
1/2 tsp harissa, optional

For the tomato sauce
4 cloves garlic, crushed
oil to fry
1 kg tomatoes, peeled and chopped or 1 800 g can of tomatoes, or a mixture of the two
salt and pepper
2 tbsp tomato puree
1-2 tbsp sugar

1 Mix the ingredients for the meatballs and kneed to a soft paste. Make little balls or ovals the size of a small walnut. Place the balls on a baking sheet and roast them for 7 minutes in the oven at 230 C, until slightly coloured.

2 To make the tomato sauce, fry the garlic in a little oil until fragrant. Add the tomatoes, salt, pepper, tomato puree and sugar and simmer for 15 min. The put in the meatballs and simmer another 20 min. Serve with rice.

Enjoy!

Claudia's Hummus

I've gathered quite a few recipes for Middle Eastern dips on Saffron and Lemons in the last year, but it dawned on me that hummus, the mother of all meze dips is not here! How fortunate, then, that I had an opportunity to whip up some for the Mediterranean burgers I was making for the Young Man's birthday party.

This version is from Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food, where we learn that hummus does not have to contain tahini, as most of the tubs you'll find in Australian and other supermarkets tend to. The word hummus itself means chickpeas, but since this is a near ubiquitous use for the little beans around the Arab-speaking world, it also refers to this sharp, smooth dip. If you make a version with sesame paste in it, it is known as hummus bi tahina (humus with sesame paste). So there you go!

This makes enough for a big party. You could halve the recipe for a smaller gathering, but it keeps for around a week in the fridge (and probably in the freezer, though I haven't tried it). We had this with some of Auntie H's world-famous light-as-air bread, and with macadamia, basil and sun-dried tomato pesto on chicken burgers. Yum! Oh, and mixed with some strained yogurt, this made a lovely dressing for slowly pan-fried carrot medallions, and probably steamed broccoli, too.

Claudia Roden's Hummus

250 g chickpeas
salt and pepper
2 tsp cumin
2 large cloves garlic (crushed), or to taste
50-90 ml fresh lemon juice
50 ml olive oil
good pinch of cayenne (optional)
parsley, olive oil and paprika to garnish

1 Soak the chickpeas for a few hours or overnight in cold water. Drain and simmer in fresh cold water until really soft, which usually takes more than an hour, adding salt towards the end of the cooking time. Alternatively, pressure cook for around 6 min under low pressure. Save the cooking water.

Cool a little and put in a food processor with enough of the cooking water to achieve a soft cream. You must add the flavourings gradually and taste often, it should be distinctly sharp. You can leave a few chick peas whole to use as garnish

Serve with sprigs of parsley, a sprinkling of paprika and a dribble of olive oil.

Enjoy!

Slatit batata helwa: Claudia's Moroccan sweet potato salad

Sweet potatoes are a funny vegetable. They pop up in many countries, and each has its own way with them.

In Australia, sweet potatoes often get flung in the oven in a medley with other root veggies with the Sunday roast. If a spice is used at all, it's likely to be cumin, otherwise it's topped with lashings of butter.

One freezing winter when I was studying in China, old guys used to hang around the university gates selling for pennies piping hot roast sweet potatoes, which they weighed on old-time pan and rod scales . With dormitory heating on only at set times of the day, we unacclimatized Aussie students were as likely to use those hot pods as handwarmers as we were to tuck into their belly-filling flaky sweetness.

Around Yokohama and Tokyo, the sound of the yaki-imo or stone-roasted sweet potato guy calling out, "Ishi yaki-imo, yaki-imo," from his wood-fired stove-bedecked truck is the first sign of autumn. But buy one from this old guy, and you're likely to pay a small fortune!

Here we have a Moroccan treatment, with spices, lemon, honey and other goodies. This one is boiled, and with its unctuous spicy sweet and sour coating, looks and tastes quite impressive. I'm afraid that I disappointed my dear friend Hw when he asked how long this took to make; is twenty minutes really all it takes to get something this criminally good!

In all the years I've cooked this, I've not once not had to boil down the cooking liquid until it was syrupy. But that could just be the type of sweet potatoes I use. Anyway, this is more than made up for by spicy aroma that wafts through the house whenever I make this. You might want to wait to skim the scum off the surface before you add those spices, though.

This is also from the same article of Claudia's in the Guardian here. And yes, this and the tagine in the previous post are perfect partners.

Slatit batata helwa (Claudia's Moroccan sweet potato salad)

In this Moroccan salad, the mix of sweet and spicy is quite delicious. It is nice as it is but you may add, if you like, a handful of black olives, the chopped peel of a preserved lemon and a tablespoon of capers. Serve it as an appetiser.

Serves 6

700 g sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 4 cm cubes
½ tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp harissa or a good pinch chilli pepper
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tsps honey
salt
5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley or coriander

1 Boil the sweet potatoes in just enough water to cover. Stir in the ginger, cinnamon, harissa or ground chilli pepper, lemon juice, honey and salt, and cook, uncovered, for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender, turning them over once and being careful not to let them overcook and fall apart. The sauce should be reduced to a thick syrupy consistency. If it is not, lift out the potatoes with a slotted spoon into a serving dish and reduce the sauce further by boiling.

2 Just before the end of cooking stir in the oil and the parsley or coriander. Serve cold.

Enjoy!

Claudia's Moroccan lamb tagine with peas and preserved lemons

Autumn is here and we've not had a lemon recipe for a while! Funny how one's thoughts turn to lemons as soon as the skies get moody...

This is one of the very first Middle Eastern dishes I ever cooked (as a way of using those magic preserved lemons), and it is pretty much a classic in my food repertoire now. It's clean, sunny taste is perfect whatever the season, but I reckon its at its best when the weather is less than stellar. It is also as great an introduction to the seductive taste of preserved lemons as you are likely to find.

I made it for an unseasonably cool January birthday party in Australia one year. There was a big spread, and when I first checked, it looked like my "exotic" contribution might have been a bit too exotic. But just a few minutes later, you'd've been hard pressed to get enough to coat a bit of bread. You can't get much more of a vote of confidence than that.

I've adjusted the recipe for metric and the pressure cooker, but the credit for it rightly belongs with my very, very favourite food writer, Claudia Roden, who wrote the wonderful article in the Guardian that it appeared in a few years back. A culinary tour Morocco is one of my dreams, and Claudia's writing is one of the main reasons. Rereading the article now, I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not the only one.

Now there is nothing exotic at all about the recipe, the preserved lemons notwithstanding (and they are only salt and lemons after all). If you don't have any, go and make yourself some now. They're a total doddle. Really. We'll still be here when you've got them ready.

I made the tagine with beef this time, and I can tell you that it is not a patch on the lamb version. Leg being my preference. Perhaps its as well, then, that we were not able to take it to its intended recipients due to the Young Man being sick with the cold. Sorry Sa, I'll make it again next time!

Lamb tagine with peas, preserved lemon and olives (if you can find them (g))

Serves 6-8

1 kg leg or shoulder of lamb, trimmed of excess fat and cut into cubes
2 tbsp vegetable oil [S: optional, I've never put it in, and never needed it]
1 onion, chopped
salt and pepper [S: go light with the salt as the lemons are salty]
1 tsp ground ginger
A good pinch of chilli powder or chilli flakes (optional)
½ tsp saffron powder [S: optional; it is a minor attraction on this dish]
500g shelled peas
2 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
Peel of 1 preserved lemon or more, cut into pieces
A dozen green olives

1 Put the meat in a large pressure cooker with the oil (if using), onion, salt and pepper, ginger and saffron. Almost cover with water and cook under low pressure for 45-55 minutes or until the meat is very tender.

2 Add the peas, tomatoes, preserved lemon peel and olives and cook uncovered a few minutes longer, until the peas are tender and the sauce reduced.

Enjoy!

A Middle Eastern afternoon 1: Quail eggs with fresh herbs and hazelnut dukkah

For the longest time I've been meaning to make dukkah, the chickpea or hazelnut, sesame and spice mix originally from Egypt that has enjoyed roaring success in the Antipodes the last couple of years. I even brought some hazelnuts back from Turkey last summer for this very purpose!But somehow I just hadn't got round to it--until now.

There are recipes for dukkah all over the net if you care to look (101 Cookbooks has a version from The Spicy Food Lover's Bible that I'm planning on trying next). Nigel also has one in his The 30 Minute Cook, which he cheerfully admits nicking from Claudia's The New Book of Middle Eastern Cooking. That book has been in print since the 60s (my 2nd revised edition was published in 1986!), so I'm not too sure why the "sudden" interest, but such are the vagaries of the cooking world, I suppose.

Anyway, I got the hazelnut dukkah recipe below from Australia's own Stephanie Alexander, who is right up there in my foodie hall of fame and the author of many of the Middle Eastern recipes on Cuisine.

I was looking for some unusual cold meze-type dishes for the girls, who were coming over for some Middle Eastern cooking at my non-air conditioned flat on a swelteringly hot summer's day. These scrummy little eggs with dukkah looked like a good bet because they would be ready in a flash--especially as I had pre-roasted hazelnuts (g), leaving the egg-peeling as the only vaguely time-consuming element--and they could be cooked ahead of time and kept in the fridge till the appointed hour. In the end I wasn't quite that organized, and had to delegate the egg peeling and herb chopping to my dear friends after they arrived. But I reckon that only added to the dish's appeal (g).

I cooked my eggs a little differently from the method in the original recipe (using a technique I picked up from Heather at 101 Cookbooks), and substituted a little cumin seed for some of the coriander seed (mainly because I didn't have enough of the former, but also knowing that the latter is often included in dukkah). I added some of the dukkah mix to the herbs as per the OR, but thought it would be more fun to dip the eggs in the nutty mixture ourselves, hence the little dish you see in the photo above.

As quail eggs are very small, I would count on about 4-5 per person. You might want to scale up the eggs accordingly. You will have plenty of dukkah and herbs (I halved the amount of herbs below and still had some left over), so there's probably no need to scale either of these up unless you're going to more than triple the recipe.

I completed our little snack with Claudia's luscious boiled carrot dip (which the girls also raved about) and some tortillas warmed up in the microwave. That left plenty of room for the Gulf prawn balls in tomato-tamarind sauce that was to be the headline act of the day. More on that shortly...

Quail eggs with fresh herbs and hazelnut dukkah

12 quail eggs or 4 bantam eggs
1 tsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tbsp chopped chives [S: spring onions will also work]
1 tsp chopped mint
1 clove garlic

Dukkah
(This will make more than is needed for this dish but the rest can be stored in a screw-top jar. It is difficult to make much less)

25g hazelnuts
50g sesame seeds
20g coriander seeds
5g cumin seeds
sea salt
pepper

Method
Bring eggs to a gentle boil in a saucepan of lightly salted water, turn off the heat and cover for 5 minutes (quail eggs) or 7 minutes (bantam eggs). Drain and immediately crumple the shells of the quail eggs with light pressure of your hands. Tap the shells of the bantam eggs to allow air to get in under the membrane. This makes the eggs easier to shell later on. Leave to cool.

Mix the chopped herbs together. Chop the garlic very finely and mix with the herbs.

To make dukkah
Heat oven to 180C and roast the hazelnuts until pale golden. Rub in a clean tea-towel to remove most of the brown skins. Chop coarsely or process for a few seconds only and tip into a bowl.

In a small non-stick frying pan, toast the sesame seeds, stirring with a wooden spoon until golden. Transfer to a mortar and pestle and grind just a little. Tip the crushed seeds into the bowl with the hazelnuts.

Wipe out the pan and dry-toast the coriander seeds. Transfer to a mortar and pestle and grind coarsely. Combine with sesame seeds and hazelnuts. Repeat with the cumin seeds.

Mix half of the seed-nut mixture with the herb and garlic mixture. Add sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Store remaining dukkah in a screw-top jar for another day.

Peel the eggs. (Quail eggs have a very tough membrane under the shell so be patient. Once you have pierced this membrane the shell will peel away very easily). Brush the eggs with the olive oil and halve lengthwise. Brush the cut side of the eggs with a little olive oil to prevent the surface from drying. Roll the eggs thickly in the herb and seed mixture and arrange on a shallow plate.

Enjoy!

Maghrebi Mania 2: Harira: Moroccan chickpea and lentil soup

It's been a while since I posted (and made this soup!). Apologies for the delay, but life happens (g).

I had been meaning to make this rich and filling soup for a long time. For Muslims it has particular significance as the soup Muslims in many countries choose to eat before tucking into a huge feast come sun-down during Ramadan. For non-Muslims, it is a great one-pot dish that with the addition of some bread makes a complete meal.

I have recipes for harira in several books, but chose to make this one from Claudia Roden's Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon, since it is a Moroccan rendition of the classic. Claudia's recipe feeds 10 (good if you have guests over for the breaking of the fast), but you might want to halve it if your table is less crowded.

One thing that interested me about this recipe was the unusual use of flour as a thickener. It is not added with the meat and vegetables at the beginning before adding water, but made into a white sauce-like batter, and added close to the end of cooking. This gives the soup an interesting satiny mouth-feel that Claudia calls velvety. I reckon that you might want to up the amount of flour if you are using the Japanese kind. I wanted mine a little thicker.

I've since read in Nawal Nasrallah's Delights from the Garden of Eden: A Cookbook and a History of the Iraqi cuisine that there are other soups made with this technique. She calls them "flour soups", which would not have sounded very enticing if I hadn't had this lovely one first. Perhaps when soup weather comes round again we might delve into this some more.

I made this with chicken, but that is just one variation; you could use any other meat you fancy. If possible, do use bones to enrich the stock. I used a couple of chicken carcasses, which my supermarket sells frozen. If you can't get hold of some bones, you might want to add some stock cubes (as Claudia mentions, but does not actually recommend). I also added some chopped preserved lemons (in addition to lemon juice), which perked this up nicely. Then again, I am a bit of a lemon junkie...

Remember to use less water if you are using tinned or frozen cooked pulses.

Harira: Moroccan chickpea and lentil soup

1 or 2 chicken carcases (optional)
500 g chicken [S: I used chicken thighs, which are more flavourful than breasts]
1 large onion, chopped coarsely
200 g chickpeas, soaked overnight
150 g large brown lentils, rinsed
250 g ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped
2 celery stalks, diced
1 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 tsp saffron threads or powder, or 1/2 tsp turmeric
salt
2.5 tbsp plain flour
75 g vermicelli (optional)
juice of 1/2 to 1 lemon [S: or more for lemon heads]
50 g coriander, chopped
large bunch of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
To serve: 2 lemons, cut into quarters; dates (optional)

If using chicken carcasses, blanch them in boiling water for a few minutes then throw out the water. Put the carcasses into a large pan with the meat, cut into 1 cm pieces, the onions and drained chickpeas. Cover with about 3 litres of water and bring to the boil. Remove the scum and simmer, covered, cor 1 hour. Remove the carcasses.

Add the drained lentils, tomatoes and celery (include some leaves), the tomato paste, pepper, ginger, cinnamon and saffron or turmeric. Simmer for a further 15 minutes, adding more water if necessary, and salt when the lentils begin to soften.

In the meantime, put the four into a small pan and gradually add 500 ml cold water, a little at a time, beating vigorously with a wooden spoon to blend well and avoid lumps. Put over a medium heat and stir constantly until the mixture thickens, then simmer for 10 min. Pour this batter into the soup, stirring vigorously, and cook for a few minutes until the soup acquires a light creamy texture.

If you are using vermicelli (crushed in your hand into small pieces), add this to the soup 10 or so minutes from the end, adding the lemon juice, chopped coriander and parsley at the same time.

Serve with lemon wedges and if you like, also dates.

Enjoy!

Maghreb Mania 1: Claudia's sharpen-you-up carrot dip

No, this post is not about a newly discovered disease affecting tourists in North Africa, but my own craving for all things Moroccan. Although I've never been there, if the food is anything to go by, I know we'll get along very well.

Moroccan is one of the first Middle Eastern cuisines I came across, and I've been in love with the bright colours and vibrant tastes ever since.

The Maghreb, in English, is a broad area of North Africa that generally includes Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, but in the Arabic-script languages, it refers specifically to Morocco. So there you go.

While I am not totally certain, the cumin-lemon juice-ginger spicing of this embarrassingly easy dip hints at a sunny Moroccan (or thereabouts) origin. It is from Claudia's A New Book of Middle Eastern Food, a tasty tome that I come back to again and again, and not just for the abundance of fabulous recipes.

Whenever I find a promising new recipe of Middle Eastern bent, I always run it past Claudia first. Often enough, she will have written about it and all its regional variations in either A New Book or The Book of Jewish Food, or both! This time, a recipe I saw featured at Cuisine recalled this one from A New Book.

Claudia advises making the dip with old carrots, which she says taste better. If you have chilli-averse tongues at your table, I advise not putting in the harissa (a very hot chilli and garlic paste you can buy in tubes) and allowing guests to smear some on their own portions if they like. Either way, this flame coloured dip will certainly sharpen you up!

Boiled carrot dip

500 g (2 large) carrots, peeled
Salt and pepper
1/2 tsp harissa or 1 tsp paprika and a good pinch of cayenne pepper
1-2 tsp cumin
3 tbsp lemon juice, or to taste
4 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/4-1/2 tsp ginger

Boil the carrots in salted water until very tender. Drain and blitz with the other ingredients in a food processor.

Alternative additional flavourings are 2 tbsp honey and 1 tsp cinnamon.

Enjoy!

Kofta Mishmisheya: Iraqi meatballs in apricot sauce

I had some dried apricots left from my trip to Turkey last summer, and, having managed to acquire some more from Tehran Shop, decided to use up the last of my little stash of these divine little treats. I thought I remembered a Georgian (was it?) dish in Claudia Roden's The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, which was one of my very first ME cookbook acquisitions. However, in all the hundreds of recipes, I didn't find the one I was trying to recall (perhaps it is in Najmieh khanom's Silk Road Cooking instead?). Anyway, I found this easy-looking recipe in The Book of Jewish Food, Claudia's other major work of a lifetime (which I hope you will give in and just buy, already (g); it is absolutely the best world cookbook, even for gentiles like me, and one I would love to see emulated by authorities of other cuisines).

Anyway, although this is a Jewish recipe, I used beef/pork mince, Turkish apricots and Iranian ground dried limes, thereby disrespecting all traditions in equal measure, I'm afraid. However, since it is all in the pursuit of good taste, I hope I'll be forgiven.

As it was my first time to make this dish, I made it pretty much to specification. I did feel that the the spicing was a little subtle for me (I like big, bold flavours, after all), and next time I'll probably double the dried lime, and maybe even add some bread soaked in water and squeezed out, as I really like what happens to meatballs when you do this (probably a slice and a half of bread for this much meat). Incidentally, you can check the spicing of your meatballs by frying a little taste up before you commit to rolling your balls. I know on good authority that professional chefs do this all the time. I also upped the lemon juice (but I'm like that (g)).

All in all this was very easy and a nice change from the show-off Middle Eastern stuff I usually cook (g).

As an aside, I realize all my Iraqi recipes are Jewish, so to balance things up a bit, I'm thinking of buying this title. (I know, I know, I'm not supposed to be buying more cookbooks, but the one I've had on order since before Christmas is out of print. Surely I can replace it with this one until that title is reprinted, no? (g). I'm incorrigible, I know...)

Kofta mishmisheya

Serves 4

1 large onion, chopped
3-4 tbsp oil
750 g minced lamb [S: or other meat]
1-2 tbsp ground dried lime [if grinding your own, use the pale dried limes, or limu, that you can get in Middle Eastern/Persian stores]
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp allspice
salt and pepper
3-4 tbsp tomato paste
200 g dried apricots, soaked in water for 1/2 hour [S: Make sure these are not sweetened ones or your sauce will be more of a jam (g)]
3-4 tbsp currants or raisins [S: I used sultanas, same difference]
juice of 1 or 1 1/2 lemons or to taste
1 tsp sugar [S: I didn't think it needed it; you judge for yourself]

In a large frying pan, fry the onion in oil till golden. With your hands, work the meat into a paste with the dried lime, cloves, allspice, 1 tsp of salt and pepper and roll into walnut-sized balls. Add them to the pan and cook, turning them to brown them all over. [S: Depending on the amount of fat in the meat, you may want to drain some off at this point.] Stir in the tomato paste, add the drained apricots [S: I sliced them first] and the currants or raisins and cover with water [S: I used the water the apricots soaked in]. Simmer for about 25 minutes. Add lemon juice and sugar and a little salt and pepper and simmer for another 20 minutes.

Enjoy!

Ingriyi: Iraqi sweet and sour meat and aubergine

When I was but a stamen in the bud of the family crocus, Saffron-Papa was in the habit of making lazy Sunday dinners that would get started around 3 pm and eaten 3 or 4 hours later.

Often it would be a big pot of soup, or a roast or what have you, that he would get started early and leave to do its thing, popping back in from time to time only to check its progress as the afternoon wore on. He could enjoy the motor racing or whatever the sport of the day was, and produce something very tasty for dinner--without breaking into a sweat.

These days we call it Slow Food, and if anyone had suggested then that one day I might like nothing better than puttering about the kitchen producing a meal that might take hours to reach perfection, I would have wondered if they were delirious.

However, it seems that genes do sometimes have their way, and now it is my turn to pass on the lazy Sunday supper tradition.

I've made the recipe below several times now, but the first time I made it was the weekend after "shock and awe". It was a little act of solidarity with the people of Iraq as their country was invaded by the US and its hangers on, such as the countries of my birth and later residence. Not one of our finest moments. At that point I did not have a lot of Iraqi music (I'm still open to recommendations, if anyone has any. Hint, hint (g)), so I cranked up a classic Antipodean protest song by the cult band Midnight Oil, which starts with the line: "US forces give the nod/ It's a setback for your country". As protests go, mine was decidedly ineffectual, but I did learn a new dish and gain an appreciation for the culinary arts of a country unlucky enough to be in the cross-hairs of the US.

This is another recipe from Claudia Roden's masterpiece The Book of Jewish Food, where she tells us that it "became the traditional festive and Sabbath dish of the Bombay [Jewish] community, which was formed in a great part by Jews from Iraq." Well that's not so surprising I suppose, since lamb and tamarind are staples in India, too.

Anyway, it is the perfect dish for one of those lazy Sunday afternoons we were talking about earlier. The only thing that requires any close watching is the caramelising of the onions and frying of the eggplant [aubergine], which you can do at the same time, anyway.

I cook the meat under low pressure for around 40 minutes, which is plenty of time to sort the onions and eggplant.

I would also suggest adding a little more tamarind paste (say half a tablespoon) for extra oomph.

Ingriyi

Serves 8 or more

1.25 kg lamb or beef, cubed
salt
2 large aubergines, weighing about 1 kg, cut into 1.25 cm slices
1 kg onions, sliced [S: 3-4 large onions]
sunflower oil for frying
1.25 kg large tomatoes, peeled and sliced [S: thickly; say 4-5 large tomatoes]
pepper
2 tbsp tamarind paste
1-2 tbsp sugar, or to taste

Simmer the meat in water to cover with a little salt for 1 1/2-2 hours, until tender [S: about 40 minutes under low pressure].

Sprinkle the aubergine slices with salt and leave for 1 hour to draw out their juices.

Fry the onions in 3 tbsp of oil over low heat till very soft and really brown, which gives them a caramelized taste [S: adding a pinch of salt to the onions is supposed to speed the caramelising process].

Rinse and dry the aubergine in a tea towel, then fry briefly in very hot oil [S: I slice the eggplant fairly thick, so it is better to fry them over medium heat until tender as they don't cook much more in the oven], turning over once, until lightly browned. Alternatively, you can brush the slices with oil and cook them under the grill [S: perhaps in other countries with grills larger than 2 slices of toast... (g)].

In a [deep] baking dish, assemble layers of aubergine slices, drained meat (keep the stock), onions and tomatoes, sprinkling each with a little salt and pepper.

Heat about 250 ml of the meat stock in a small pan and stir in the tamarind and sugar. When the paste has dissolved, pour evenly over the layers. Bake at 180 C for 30-40 minutes. Serve hot with rice.

Enjoy!

Albondigas di Prasa: Turkish leek meatballs

This past weekend, we had a Young Lady stay with us while her mum and dad went out for an early Valentine's celebration. To celebrate at this end, the YM and I took our guest out to our favourite local izakaya (Japanese tavern) for what I reckon is the best Japanese pub grub you're likely to get, and huge glasses of Calpis (a fermented milk drink) that the YL just about had to climb up on the chair to drink. (Not being a huge fan of Calpis, I had my usual perilla plum wine instead.)

Ichinokura, as the izakaya is called, has been my favourite feeding and watering hole for more years than I care to remember. While Japan is full of fabulous eats, you generally have to loosen the purse strings quite a bit to partake of them. Good food that won't break the budget is less easy to find. But we have consistently enjoyed great food and super-friendly service at Ichinokura since before the YM was even born (he's 13 now). When he was little, the huge scary-looking mask they have on display near the cash register somehow became an obake (ghost), so the restaurant has been known by one and all in our circle as Obake Restuarant ever since. The Young Lady was, it seems, immune to the goul's scare tactics, but certainly not to the food: she gobbled up her fair share.

Overnight, Yokohama was treated to snow (again!) and the Young Lady's mum and dad had to trudge through it all to pick her up. Which was all a good excuse for some more fun in the kitchen, really. This time a leek and potato meatball recipe called out to me, so I gave it a go.

I adapted this from a recipe in The Book of Jewish Food. The original recipe called for deep frying the meatballs, but I am not a huge fan of deep-frying, so I tried shallow-frying them instead. I was so-so about the end result, but when I fried up the remainder of the batch as patties a little later, they were creamy and delicious, just like Claudia promised.

I am fascinated by the name of this dish, which appears to be from Izmir, or Turkey, at least. But Claudia tells us that Albondigas is from the Arabic. I don't know about the di prasa bit, but it sure doesn't sound Turkish to me!

And if any Turkish people reading wonder if this is actually a Turkish dish, Claudia tells us that it is rarely to be found outside of Jewish homes, but it is available from a Muslim-run Jewish restaurant called Kaser Levi Lokantasi. Now that is fusion cooking!

Albondigas di Prasa: Turkish leek meatballs

500 g leeks
2 small potatoes, weighing about 250 g
250 g chicken mince
1 egg
salt and pepper
flour
oil for frying

Trim and wash the leeks and cut them into pieces, then boil them with the potatoes until they are very soft. Drain, and when the vegetables are cool enough to handle [S: note the last point well!], press them between your palms as hard as you can to get all the water out that you possibly can [S: I found wringing them in kitchen paper did the trick]. This is very important in order to make the meatballs firm.

Now put the leeks, potatoes, meat and egg into the food processor with about 1 tsp of salt and pepper and blend to a soft paste. [S: I found my paste a bit "wet", so added some flour to stiffen it up]. Shape into little round flat cakes about 6 cm wide and pan-fry in oil, turning them over once. Drain on kitchen paper and serve hot.

Claudia tells us that the creamy meatball/fritters are often served with a fresh tomato sauce made a little sharp with lemon juice. Does that sound like our garlicky and minty sauce from the Iraqi meatballs?? You bet. So this is how we peacefully merged Turkey and Iraq on a plate.

And the response: Cleared plates from everyone except the YL, who was not really in the mood for trying Auntie Saffron's weird culinary creations and had to be brided to try just one little bite (g). Not to worry, though. Mum managed to down the extra portion and the YL "made do" with rice and furikake (dried fish and vegetable flake topping) to fortify herself for the snow-slowed trudge home.

Enjoy!

Preserved lemons

I love fruit. Here in Japan, fruit is highly seasonal. And winter brings a cavalcade of citrus fruits to tempt the palate, quench the thirst and boost your vitamin C intake.

The variety of citrus in Japan is phenomenal: green-tinged early-picked mandarins herald the end of summer; regular ones appear in time for the gobble-fest at New Year. The fragrant triumvirate of kabosu, sudachi and yuzu adds zing to Japanese food from autumn right through the long winter. Ponkan, sweet and juice-laden iyokan (which I eagerly await each year), tangellos, grapefruit, oranges... Whether for their juice or their peel, citrus fruits are exactly what you want when it looks like the sun may never again break through heavy winter clouds (although it seems to finally have done so today in Tokyo).

But to my mind, the ruler of the citrus domain is... Well, given the name of this blog, I'm sure I don't need to spell it out (g).

So, the time has come to get down to it with some recipes showcasing the ever fabulous lemon.

But first we need to make some preserved lemons. These are the "salty lemons" that opened my eyes to the fabulous epicurean treats that are out there in the world just waiting to be "discovered".

It is amazing that something so mind-blowing (to me, anyway) is so easy. All you need is a clip-top jar, lemons and salt. That's it! Oh, and the most important ingredient--time.

Through some kind of strange alchemy, these three ingredients give you not "salty lemons", but something altogether more delectable. A lovely mellow but tangy fruit, whose peel (and pulp, if you want, and who wouldn't want?) adds a fresh and fabulous dimension to so many Moroccan dishes. You can also add them to meat sandwiches in place of pickle, use them to brighten up a simple green salad or salsa, or just gobble them on their own. The "juice" somehow morphs into an unctuous syrup, that is just begging to jump into some salad dressing. (Lemon aficionados may even find a teaspoonful pinched from the jar a very sharpening way to jump-start a brain addled with the cold.)

Here they are, pictured with the original jar that my dear friend N brought from Australia (the contents long since savoured with relish).

Preserved lemons

1 Choose organic lemons, if you can. Scrub them with dish-washing detergent and rinse them very well, then pat dry.

2 Cut the lemons in quarters lengthwise, but not all the way through to the stalk. Fill each lemon with a heaped tablespoon of salt and place in the (sterilized, if you're worried about salt-resistant germs) jar, pressing down heavily as you go. Once the jar is filled with lemons, fill it to the top with juice from additional lemons, then seal. It is important to keep the lemons immersed in the juice so that mould does not form. (Although Claudia Roden tells us that any white mould that forms is harmless, and should just be wiped off. Not that I've ever had mould, but in case you do.)

3 Turn the jar over and press down on the lemons each day for a week, topping up with more juice if you need to. Leave to mature for a month on the counter, then store until needed in the fridge. These will last a very long time. Depending on how salty you like things, you can wash the salt off before you use them. I don't usually bother, though, and just adjust the salt in the dish accordingly.

For me, preserved lemons were a total revelation. They can be addictive, and even cause abnormal behaviour in users, such as strange urges to tour the world in search of other culinary treasures. You have been warned!

Enjoy!

Nanaeya: Iraqi meatballs with garlicky and minty sweet and sour sauce

I've been sitting on this lip-smacking dish for a while, now, not really knowing what to say about it. It is not the Iraqi lamb, eggplant and onion dish I promised earlier (it's not really the season for tomatoes or eggplants, after all), but it is Iraqi.

I made it on Sunday the 16th, and woke up on Monday the 17th to the news that the Turkish government had actually made good on its threat to cross into Iraqi Kurdistan. As someone with Turkish friends, Kurdish friends and friends in Iraq, it just didn't seem the right time to add more fuel to the fire with this, a Jewish Iraqi dish.

But I hope I will be forgiven, anyway, since this bright, sunny dish is the perfect antidote to the winter blahs and, if you are in warmer climes, so much the better, as it is a Passover dish, which makes springtime its usual season.

It is from my very favourite cookbook, The Book of Jewish Food by Claudia Roden. This is my desert island cookbook. (But I’ll only consent to the island bit if it has a self-replenishing supply of all my foodie goodies (g). Otherwise, it would be sheer culinary torture.)

I don’t know about you, but the cookbooks I like best put the dishes in their historical and cultural setting, teaching me something of the people who devised them and why, and why I would want to cook them. All of Claudia’s books do this, but The Book is in a class of its own (Nigella Lawson calls it the best food book she's ever read; I say it is one of the best books I've read, full stop.)

With literally hundreds of recipes, it covers the cuisines of Jews the world over (Italy, India and China included). Its main focus, however, is the food of the various Middle Eastern Jews. For the stove-top traveller (such as myself), it is a veritable treasure trove to come back to time and again. I encourage everyone with an interest in the food of this region--regardless of their personal brand of religious sentiment (or lack thereof)--to rush out and get a copy of this book pronto.

Anyone with firsthand knowledge of other styles of Iraqi cooking, please feel free to comment on this dish. I love finding commonalities (and differences) in unexpected places.

750 g minced lamb (or beef or pork (!), or...)
Salt and pepper
1 bunch of flat-leafed parsley, finely chopped (I used a Japanese "bunch", which comes in a little plastic coffin minus most of the stalk)
1 1/2 large onions, chopped (or sliced in half-rings for a more textured sauce)
3 tbsp light vegetable oil
6 or more garlic cloves or to taste, finely chopped Juice of 1 1/2 lemons
1 1/2 tbsp sugar or to taste
1 large bunch of fresh mint, finely chopped (I used 1 of those coffins of peppermint and just picked the leaves without chopping them)
2 tomatoes, chopped (optional)

Make the meatballs first: mix the meat with about 3/4 tsp of salt, pepper and the parsley and work to a soft paste with your hands (I use the Asian method whereby you pick up and dash the mix against your bowl a few times until the fat disperses and it becomes paste-like), then roll into balls the size of walnuts.

For the sauce: fry the onions in the oil till soft. Add the garlic and the meatballs to brown them all over (I had to push the onions aside for this manoeuvre). Add chopped tomatoes, if using. Now pour in water not quite to cover the meat and bring to the boil (I needed to skim the scum off). Add a little salt and pepper and simmer for about 25 minutes, until the meatballs are very tender and the sauce reduced, turning the meatballs over once. Mix the lemon juice and sugar and pour over the meat. Cook for 15 minutes more, scattering the mint over in the last few minutes (the recipes adds it with the juice and sugar, but I think it would look better without being cooked so much, and that is what I'll do next time).

Enjoy!