Daring Cooks Challenge #3

Dolma/Cold Stuffed Grape Leaves

Our October 2010 hostess, Lori of Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness, has challenged The Daring Cooks to stuff grape leaves. Lori chose a recipe from Aromas of Aleppo and a recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

This was the October challenge from the Daring Cooks website. I was pretty excited to have a go since I love stuffed vine leaves.

First things first though; an expedition was required to find somewhere that sold preserved vine leaves. None in Sainsburys, or Marks&Sparks, or Tesco, or the Greek deli in Oxford. Hmmmm. Where next?

Fortunately I had a monday evening trip to London last week, and even more fortunately some elementary googling told me that there was a Greek Grocery on Moscow Road. The Athenian Grocery turned out to be a veritable treasure trove of yummy treats. I'll be back. But in the meantime, a packet of vine leaves in brine were procurred, carried across London, taken to a concert, and traipsed back to the Cotswolds via Oxford. I hope they enjoyed their evening out.

It was easy to make the filling for these, and they were easy to cook. The fiddly bit was separating the vine leaves ready to roll up without ripping them. I knew all those years of striving to unwrap my Cadburys creme eggs without tearing the wrapper would come in handy one day! Excellent training for separating preserved vine leaves. I did rip a few, but they were mostly OK, and there were more than I needed in the pack anyway. A few did spilt during the cooking or when taking them out of the pan, but they were mostly fine. The taste was good.



Given how much I like eating stuffed vine leaves I'll definitely make these again. I won't put quite so much filling in each one next time (must remember that rice expands with cooking!) and hopefully that will solve some of the issues of them splitting.
Now then...when am I next going to be passing Moscow Road in London?

Also, this Sunday I finally made Dan one of his very first recipe requests; Beef Wellington. I served it up with Dauphinois potatoes, which made him one very happy man. He ate too much though. In fact, he was so greedy that he had to lie on the sofa after to let his stomach recover. Although now I think about it, that was probably an elaborate ruse so get out of doing the washing-up.

Cooking from the 'Axis of Evil'

Ridiculous statement. I do hate that kind of label. "War on Terror" also bugs the hell out of me. You can't wage war on a feeling for God's Sake!

But anyway, even if it is from the 'Axis of Evil' (please read Iran) the Chicken Fesanjan recipe which we had for dinner tonight was very delicious indeed. So at least they're eating well over there while we make our stupid sweeping statements about their nation.

Fesanjan is a stew of coarsely ground walnuts, a lovely subtle but warming mix of spices (cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, cardamom) and pomegranate molasses (you can get this quite cheaply in Sainsbury's), with chicken and onions. I served it up with rice and spinach and a few fresh pomegranate seeds sprinkled over the top. You can use duck instead of chicken.

Must make more middle eastern recipes - I just love the mix of flavours.

I got the original idea to make this when I had Claudia Roden's Middle Eastern recipe book from the library. Sadly, I had to return the book, but it turns out the internet is full of recipes for this dish, so just do a google hunt.

Sorry - rather short post! Turns out training for a half marathon is rather tiring, so I don't have much energy just now! The run is on sunday.

Free-styling

This week I went off-piste a little.

I did follow a recipe for one of the weekend's experiments - houmous without the tahini. Personally I prefered this to the tahini'd version as you could taste the chickpeas and spices much more clearly without the sesame. I'll definitely do it that way in future. It was another recipe from the Claudia Roden book I borrowed from the library - its proving a great success!

Then after that I came over all over confident, with mixed results:

We had fish for dinner on saturday. Sole to be precise. Now, I thought it would be a good idea to pimp my sole a little.

So, I decided to make a sort of pesto with a handful of parsley, a couple of mint leaves, a squeeze of lemon, a few blanched almonds and a crushed garlic clove. Pounded it all together (good for the stress-levels!), spread it on the sole, the rolled the whole thing up and steamed it.

I felt like a culinary genius.

"I can do this" I thought.

"Lets have sauce too."

"Not just any sauce...I'll freestyle a hollandaise type of sauce."

"How hard can it be...?"

Oh yuck.

Too much lemon.

Too much white wine vinegar.

Not enough butter.

So sharp it made me wince.


(The fish with almond pesto was good though, so at least we didn't starve that night.)

Persia and the Middle East

I'm at the stage in this project where I've made quite a few curries, a few Italian recipes, some Spanish and Latin American dishes and I'm craving something a bit more unusual.

Middle Eastern cooking is something I would love to investigate: I love the subtle warmth of spices in middle eastern and north-African cookery, and the subtle balancing of couscous, dried fruits, nuts, lamb. Beyond houmous and pitta bread its not all that easy to find good examples of food from the region in the UK. Actually, I think that the pitta and houmous you can generally find over here probably isn't that good when you compare it to the real thing.



I recently discovered that my local library has a rather good selection of recipe books, which gives me wonderful chances to experiment with new recipes without making my bank manager cry.

Last week I unearthed an old Middle Eastern cookery book by Claudia Roden. Its crammed with fantastic sounding recipes, so I've been struggling to choose where to start by experimenting.



This weekend I finally made a decision and attempted Spinach with Almonds, Terbiyeli Kofte (Turkish Lamb meatballs in lemon sauce), and steamed rice. Served with a small bowl of kalamata olives it all felt suitably authentic!

Terbiyeli Kofte

For the meatballs:

250g lean minced lamb
1 slice white bread (crusts cut off)
1/2 beaten egg
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
salt

For the sauce:

1 egg yolk
juice 1/2-3/4 lemon
100ml water
salt and pepper

First make the meatballs.
Soak the bread in a splash of warm water, then squeeze the liquid out and combine with all the other ingredients, mixing well with your hands until it is all smooth and well-combined.
Form the mixture into marble-sized meatballs. Bring a pan of lightly salted water to the boil, reduce to a simmer and poach the meatballs for about 15-20 minutes.

Put the rice on to cook at this stage if you are having it as an accompaniment.

When the meatballs have about 10 minutes left to go make the sauce:
Bring half a pan of water to simmer point.
In a heat proof bowl (which will fit over your pan of water) stir the egg yolk until pale, then gradually add the lemon juice stirring as you go.
Once the lemon is incorporated add the water and season with salt and a little pepper.
Place the bowl on top of the pan of simmering water and warm through. DON'T let the sauce get to simmering point or it will curdle.

When the sauce is warm fish the meatballs out of their water with a slotted spoon. Put them in the lemon sauce and gently stir them round to coat them.

Serve.

I think that poaching meatballs is a fantastic way to cook them. I make a pasta recipe where the meatballs are poached in tomato sauce. They come out soft and flavoursome, and its a healthier way to cook. They really don't need to be fried.

The lemon sauce may sound like a wierd thing to put with meatballs, but trust me - its unusual but gorgeous.

This went well with spinach. Its definitely making it onto by 'make again' list, and I'll be working my way through more recipes from the same book in the coming weeks.