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!

Beans with ocean trout, preserved lemons and rocket

It is a real special occasion to get the opportunity to eat this dish. It has been a favourite of mine for many years, but it contains just one too many of the things that make the Young Man turn up his nose for me to be able to make and actually expect him to eat it. Hopefully you don't have such problems, as this is a truly spectacular medley, despite comprising just a handful of ingredients.

I remember printing this out years ago (my printout is well spattered and grease-stained--always a good sign), but forgot where. Happily, it is still on the Net, and wouldn't you know it, it's from my food hero Nigel!

Nigel's version is for flageolet beans and salmon, but I've substituted soy beans and ocean trout, which I reckon is even better. I've also made this with white beans and chickpeas, and spinach instead of rocket (which goes by the name arugula in other parts, apparently) before, so feel free to ring the changes yourself. It is what Nigel would tell you himself.

If you have a stash of pre-cooked pulses in the freezer, you can have this on the table in minutes. Just don't forget to reheat your beans beforehand, to kill off any lurking bacteria. If you have a pressure cooker and remember to soak your beans before going out to work, you'll still be tucking in in no time. Soy beans take around 3 1/2 minutes to cook under pressure. I'll leave Nigel's full instructions here, in case neither of these options are available to you.

Soy beas with ocean trout, preserved lemons and rocket

Serves 2 as a main dish

150g dried soy beans
6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
couple of bay leaves (optional)
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
half a preserved (pickled) lemon
a loosely cupped handful of coriander leaves
300g ocean trout fillet (the tail is good here)
2 small bunches (about 100g) rocket leaves

Rinse the beans - they can be dusty - and check them over for any small stones, then soak overnight in cold water. They will need a good five or six hours to plump up. Drain, then tip into a deep pan of furiously boiling water, but adding no salt - it would make them tough. Cook for 10 minutes or so at a fierce boil - a habit that is supposed to stop them from giving you wind later on - then turn them down to a rolling boil. I put a little olive oil and a couple of bay leaves in at this point for no other reason than that it makes the kitchen smell good as they cook.

If the water gets low, top it up from the kettle. The time the beans will take to cook is anyone's guess - much will depend on their age. At this time of year they are certain to be last year's harvest, so they will need at least 40 minutes (mine took an hour yesterday). New-season's dried beans that appear in the autumn should be tender in 20 minutes.

A tender bean will squash easily between your fingers, but the best way is to taste them.

Put the salmon on a dish or grill pan and rub it lightly with oil, then cook it under an overhead grill for 10 minutes or so till the flesh is just opaque.

To make the dressing, add the vinegar to the oil in a large mixing bowl, a grind of salt and pepper (remember that the lemon will be salty), then finely chop the lemon and roughly chop the coriander leaves and add them both to the oil and vinegar. Pull the fish from its skin in fat chunks - I think bigger pieces are more attractive in a salad - and add them to the dressing. No need to toss it yet.

Drain the beans (you can get them ready early in the day and shake them in a little seasoned olive oil while they are warm), then toss them gently with the salmon and dressing. Try not to break up the fish.

Pick the rocket over, discarding anything that is not in good nick, then fold the leaves tenderly into the salad and serve in the next half hour or so, before the leaves wilt in the dressing. Serves 2 as a main dish.


Enjoy!

Plum cous cous

The Young Man has jetted off to Australia for his "summer holidays" and I am now cooking for 1 (or two, since I like to have the second portion for lunch the next day). As the YM says, now's my chance to eat all the herbs that he normally turns his nose up at and to put chilli in everything. There are some benefits to having the run of the house (g).

As I often do when the YM is away, I immediately turned to Nigel for some lazy cooking-for-one food inspiration. Most of the recipes in his The 30-Minute Cook (subtitled The Best of the World's Quick Cooking in my older edition) and Real Fast Food are for 2, so you get great grub without copious amounts of leftovers to somehow cram into your poor overworked freezer.

This is an adaptation of a recipe for peach and almond cous cous in The 30-Minute Cook. I've made it with peaches before and loved it, but it will be another month or so before peaches come down to anything like the price that would permit their wanton inclusion in a side dish (g).

Plums are in season, though, so here we go.

Now, you are probably not going to get lots of luscious juice from a plum like you would with a peach: since you want to be able to dice your fruit, it may not quite have reached the point where it is dripping with sweet nectar. You might want to compensate for this with lots of lovely fresh ground black pepper. You might also want to adjust the amount of lemon juice you use depending on the sweetness of the plums.

I had this with the very brilliant Crisp Spiced Grilled Chicken from the same book. I never can get enough of the stuff. Nigel has even convinced me that you really do want to leave the skin on when it's grilled chicken. And since no-one was around to see, I even got to scoop up the marinade that got stuck to the foil in my grill pan and scoff that down as well. Just don't tell the YM, alright!

I didn't have almonds on hand, so they got left out, but if you want to add them back in, the original recipe calls for 2 tbs flaked almonds, toasted.

Plum cous cous

100 g cous cous
2 large plums, diced
Handful of mint leaves, chopped
Large handful of flat-leafed parsley, chopped
2-3 spring onions, sliced
Juice of 1-2 lemons
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt & freshly ground pepper

Sprinkle cous cous with 100 ml water, leave for 10 min, then break up the lumps that form with your fingers. Chop the parsley and mint, but not too finely, and mix with the lemon juice and olive oil in a salad bowl. Add the spring onions to the dressing.

Halve and stone the plums and cut the flesh into large dice, saving any juice. Add the plum flesh to the dressing along with the cous cous.

Enjoy!

Nigel's dal and pumpkin soup with chimichurri bread

It was the start of the YM's spring break, and already he was going stir crazy, so I sent him off to the local public library to get some books (and get out of the house for a bit). He insisted that if he had to go, I should have to, too. Fair enough.

I was in for a very nice surprise to find not only a great book on spices (a Japanese translation of a Dorling & Kindersley edition, it turns out), but also that the English language section has been greatly expanded since the last time I was there (admittedly too long ago). And best of all, what did I spy but my hero, Nigel's 2006 hardback, The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater!!! Ah, the joy of getting back together with an old flame! Ah, the familiar flutter of excitement and anticipation that gets you into the kitchen before you've even finished reading the recipes.

If you are familiar with Nigel, you'll know he offers up no-nonsense grub that does exactly as he says it will. Whether that be to "uplift", "excite" or, in this case offer up a soup that is "soothing, yet capable of releasing a slow build-up of heat from its base notes of garlic, chili and ginger; a bowl of soup that both whips and kisses." (Whoa, there!)

The only thing disconcerting about this book, is that my Nigel, as British as they come, is suddenly talking about cookies, cilantro and all-purpose flour and lbs and Fahrenheit. In short, he's speaking the American dialect, as this, apparently, is the American edition (could they not just have put the Americanisms in brackets like the rest of the world does?).

This soup is a joy, for all that (although I am guessing it will be called red lentil (or at very least dhal) and pumpkin soup in the non-localized edition (g)). And the caramelized onion topping simply moreish.

The Argentine chimichurri bread recipe is one I snaffled from Allrecipes years ago and is still my very favourite bread maker recipe. It is full of aromatics, and the smell as it bakes has me salivating every time. I often ramp up the amount of herbs (usually more than doubling the amount in the OR), and have added thyme and rosemary on occasion, too. If you have a bread maker, I really recommend this recipe.

Nigel's dal and pumpkin soup

1 small onion
2 cloves garlic
ginger, a walnut-sized knob
1 cup + 2 tbsp red lentils
1 1/4 tsp turmeric
1 1/4 tsp chili powder
2 cups pumpkin [S: a quarter of a Japanese pumpkin, or a piece the size of your cupped hands; don't peel or chop it yet]
1 small bunch fresh coriander, roughly chopped

For the onion topping:
2 medium onions, cut into thin rings
2 tbsp oil
2 small hot chili peppers, halved, seeded and chopped finely (or to taste)
2 cloves garlic

Peel the onion and chop it roughly [S: but not too roughly; the cooking time is short]. Peel and crush the garlic and put it with the onion into a medium-sized, heavy-based saucepan. Peel the ginger, cut it into thin shred and stir that in too. Add the lentils and pour in 6 cups of water. Bring to the boil. then turn the heat down to an enthusiastic simmer [S: don't you just love Nigel's way with words!]. Stir in the ground turmeric and chili powder, season and leave to simmer, covered, for 2o minutes.

While the soup is cooking, peel the pumpkin and scoop out the seeds and pulp, wrap in clingfilm and microwave on high for 5 minutes or until tender. Open the wrap to let some steam out, and when cool enough to handle, peel and chop the flesh into fat chunks. Set aside.

To make the onion topping, peel the onions and cut them into fine rings. Cook them in the oil in a shallow pan until they start to colour. Cut the chilies in half, scrape out the seeds and slice the flesh finely. Peel and finely slice the garlic and add it with the peppers to the onions. Continue cooking until the onions are a deep golden brown. Set aside.

Remove the lid from the lentils and turn up the heat, boiling hard for five minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, then add the cooked pumpkin. Puree the soup in the blender (for safety, a little at a time) until smooth [S: or use a stick blender right in the pot], then pout it into a bowl. Stir in the roughly chopped coriander and check the seasoning. I find this soup likes a more generous than usual amount of salt.

Serve in deep bowls with a spoonful of the spiced onions on top.

Makes 4 good-sized bowls.

Argentine Chimichurri Bread

"Oregano, parsley, onions, garlic and a dash of cayenne pack plenty of punch in this bread machine loaf. Use it for sandwiches, or try it toasted."

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup water
1 1/2 tablespoons white wine vinegar [alcohol-free vinegar if making for Muslim friends]
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
3/4 teaspoon dried oregano
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons chopped onion
3 tablespoons fresh parsley
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon white sugar
3 tablespoons wheat bran [or porridge oats]
3 cups bread flour
2 teaspoons active dry yeast


DIRECTIONS:

1. Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select Basic or White Cycle; press Start.

Enjoy!

On hearing my foodie heroes speak

I was listening to a podcast on the BBC this lunchtime and one thing leading to another, as it does, discovered Radio 4’s Women’s Hour. Knowing it was the BBC, the very name conjured up visions of matriarchs, all smelling of lavender and violets, sitting around discussing the proper way to grow petunias, knitting patterns, oh, and plum jam (on which topic the film Calendar Girls offers some humourous enlightenment).

It wasn't all that bad, and while not exactly hip, the programme's Food and Cooking section does have lots to offer food junkies in need of a hit. And so it was that I heard for the first time the voices of two of my biggest foodie heroes (Nigel Slater, Diana Henry), and one (Anissa Helou) who is almost certain to join their ranks when I finally relent and purchase her book Modern Mezze.

Knowing them only by their written words, I was surprised by how un-posh Nigel sounded, and how down-to-earth-Irish Diana did. Diana, especially spoke nothing like I imagined she would. After all, it was her Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons, and its Mediterranean/Middle Eastern bent, that started this cooking quest to begin with. (And whose latest book, Roast Figs, Sugar Snow, Amazon.co.jp has promised to deliver very soon, just 3-5 weeks after the ordering; how am I supposed to wait so long!?)

Actually, they both sounded like the sort of friends you’d want to have over for eats round the table for hours and hours. I’m sure they’d be just as good company as the have been in print, even if they sound nothing like they do on the page (g).

Saffron

Nigel's wild rice, pomegranate and prosciutto salad

Christmas tends to come early in Japan as the 25th is a normal work day, but the 23rd a national holiday for the Emperor's birthday (how kind of him to think of us poor expats in timing his arrival (g)).

This year, I thought I'd push the boat out a bit with tradition, since I thought our dear Iranian and Japanese guests may not have had a "real" Christmas dinner before. But I did want to include pomegranate, as it is a seasonal fruit in Iran, also, being a significant feature of the Yalda, or Winter Solstice celebration (December 22). How lucky for me, then, that pomegranate also seems to be in vogue in the UK this year. So I immediately snapped up this gorgeous salad from Nigel Slater's column in the Guardian for my Christmas menu.

Aside from tart little pomegranate rubies that pop pleasingly in your mouth and festive-looking green parsley, the salad's dressing contains the juice of not one but THREE citrus fruits. What could be more perfect for a blog named Saffron and Lemons!?

As for the prosciutto, well I could take it or leave it, personally. The cost to flavour ratio was not really there for me (but I did forget to flash-fry the papery slices in my haste to get stuck into it).

So for anyone looking for a substitute, having remembered that pork products are not on sale in their country of residence (g), the substitute is nothing except an extra little grinding of salt. I also found that, using a zester and not a box grater, I had more lime zest than I needed so I only used half. I reckon the recipe would be spot on if you are using the grater, though.

A good way of removing the pomegranate seeds (gleaned from the fabulous Silk Road Cooking: A Vegetarian Journey) is to score a long line around your pomegrante from the stalk to the base, peel the skin off and break the seeds up in a bowl of water. You can then scoop off any pith that may have got in as it floats while the seeds sink to the bottom.

Wild rice, pomegranate and prosciutto salad

Serves 4-6

125g wild rice
a large handful golden sultanas
a large handful pecans
2 pomegranates
a small bunch flat-leafed parsley

For the dressing
juice of half an orange
zest and juice of a lime
juice of half a lemon
balsamic vinegar - a few drops
olive oil - 2 tbs
12 thin slices of prosciutto
Sea salt

Cook the rice in four times its volume of lightly salted water, covered with a lid, for about 45-50 minutes. It should be tender, but still have a pleasing bite to it. Drain and allow to cool.

Put the saltanas and pecans into a mixing bowl. Break open the pomegranates and
remove the seeds, adding them to the saltanas. It is worth taking great care here, so that none of the bitter white pith surrounding the seeds gets in. Roughly chop the leaves from the parsley - I try to keep the pieces quite large - then stir them in.

Make the dressing by mixing the juice of the oranges, lime (plus zest) and lemon with the oil, vinegar and a generous pinch of sea salt.

Bring together the rice, fruits and dressing and leave to marry for 15 minutes. Cook the prosciutto slices briefly in a hot, non-stick fying pan. They will be flecked with gold in a matter of seconds. Place a couple of heaped tablespoons of the rice on each pile, then surround with the pieces of warm prosciutto.

With every last morsel being polished off, and the young man of the house declaring it "yummy", I think this salad may make regular appearances at our Christmas table from now on (and maybe at other times too).

Enjoy!