Food Stories has been predominantly recipe (not restaurant) focused this year. Creating is what makes me feel happiest inside, it turns out. So here are my favourite recipes of 2011, followed by the most memorable guilty pleasures; it would be terribly neglectful to exclude the latter, I think, as it’s surely clear by now that I’m quite partial to a filthy (probably pork-based, definitely artery-shuddering) snackette, or four.

1. Egg Yolk Ravioli (top photo)

It took three attempts, but I eventually nailed this recipe and was rewarded with some of the most decadent pasta I’ve ever eaten; a quivering yolk coddled by a ring of spinach and ricotta, ready to ooze headlong into a sauce that is made almost entirely from melted butter. Crushed pink peppercorns and purple basil made it one of my prettiest plates of 2011, too.

2. Piri Piri Chicken

2011 was the year I got even more into BBQ. Come drizzle, hail or sunshine, I was out there guarding that Weber, tongs in hand, bucket of meat on standby. We worked our way through jerk; brisket; brats cooked in beer; pulled pork and an obscene amount of wings (more on those later) but one of my favourite recipes was this piri piri chicken, inspired by a local takeaway. The combination of charred chicken (for piri piri must be charred), feisty chilli and tangy vinegar sauce made this one of my hits of the summer.

3. Boston Baked Beans

These rich and smoky Boston baked beans are thick with molasses and packed with nubs of smoked pork belly. They’re about as different to regular baked beans as you can imagine and they rocked my world.

4. Baghdad Eggs

I first came across Baghdad eggs in Jake Tilson’s brilliant cook book, ‘A Tale of 12 Kitchens’. This combination of  onions, sharp yoghurt and spiced butter on eggs is now my favourite weekend brunch.

5. Daim Bar Ice Cream

I visited Sweden this year and re-discovered Daim Bars. They went straight into ice cream. I watched my boyfriend devour the remains of this, straight from the tub with a spoon, after which he lay back, clutching his stomach, moaning “I feel siiiiiiick”. In a good way, you understand.

6. Ham Cooked in Coca Cola with a Rum and Molasses Glaze

The only way to make this sticky-sweet ham any better would be to pull great big hunks off it, stick it in a sandwich with some deep fried pickles and…oh, wait a minute.

7. Hickory Smoked Hot Wings 

After my first batch of home made hot wings, I wanted to do a variation and decided to smoke them using hickory wood chips, before dousing them as usual in Frank’s Hot Sauce and melted butter. Come to mama.

8. Smoky Aubergine and Lamb Pide

Pide are like a pointy Middle Eastern version of pizza. I based the recipe on my ‘Peckham Pizza’ (based on lahmacun). The topping is an intense paste made from spiced, minced lamb and the flesh from a charred aubergine. Garnished with chopped pickles and herbs, they’re lovely eaten as is, or wrapped around some salad.

 9. Pork Pibil Tacos

This pibil was made with pork knuckles and smothered in achiote paste – a wonderful ingredient which simply has no substitute. The tacos were spicy, drizzled as they were with a sauce made from orange juice, onion and scotch bonnet chillies.

10. Sausage Rolls with Apricots and Whisky-Caramelised Onions

And finally, a seasonal entry at number 10, my new favourite sausage roll recipe. Onions were slowly, slowly caramelised then bubbled furiously with whisky before going into these sausage rolls along with some dried apricots. The sweetness worked so well with the sausage meat and I’ve had great feedback from people who’ve made them this Christmas.

For the guilty pleasures, I’ve exercised some restraint (most uncharacteristic) and narrowed it down to five:

1. Baked Gnocchi with Gorgonzola and Spinach

Sneaking in on 3rd Jan was this rather naughty dish I made for my boyfriend’s birthday dinner. Home-made gnocchi baked in a sauce of Gorgonzola and cream, with a little spinach thrown in to ease the guilt. The gnocchi goes crispy on top while remaining gooey and soft underneath. A cardiologist’s nightmare.

2. Wedge Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing and Candied Bacon

Candied bacon is definitely one of my top guilty pleasures of the year, so much so I wrote a whole post about making it and using it. I have fond memories though of this ‘salad’ garnish, chopped candied bacon sprinkled over a river of blue cheese dressing and crunchy iceberg.

3. Deep Fried Pickles

Everyone went mad for these in 2011. I stuffed mine into a sandwich with coca cola ham and hot sauce. Then I had a lie down.

4. Meatwagon Burgers

I’ve followed Yianni’s journey from his van in Peckham, through #Meateasy in New Cross and now to Meat Liquor via The Rye. The latter has to be the most convenient and dangerous burger vending situation ever in existence if the state of my waistline is anything to go by. The Rye pub is opposite my house you see and for a few glorious months I needed to do little more than hop over the road to get my fix. Now they’re gone and Meat Liquor is in central London. I could cry.

5. Eggy Bread and Candied Bacon Sandwich

In at number 5: the sandwich of shame. I had candied bacon to hand and I’d just made eggy bread. It had to be done, see? We felt the guilt after eating this but damn, it was good. Sick, but good. If you’re into sandwiches, I’ve written a post about my top 5 here.

Phew. No wonder I need to lose weight. The diet inevitably starts er, tomorrow but until then I’ve got a Ginger Pig rib eye with my name on it. Happy New Year everyone. Thank you for reading and here’s to a tasty 2012. Cheers!

We all know that chilli is addictive; the more you eat the more you become tolerant to the fire and want increasing amounts on everything. I have this ‘problem’. I want chilli pickle, chilli oil and every type of imported dried chilli I can get my hands on. I even bought a naga chilli plant (at Brockley Market), so that I can grow plenty of the hottest chillies in the world while simultaneously being too scared to eat them. When it comes to hot sauce though, it’s been a real personal mission. A great hot sauce can liven up just about any meal, be it jerk chicken with rice and peas (a must) or simply cheese on toast.

Everyone has at least one hot sauce in their cupboard, right? I think it’s a shame that so often that bottle is nothing more than a lonely Tabasco, a weeny thing that suggests fierce heat but doesn’t particularly deliver, despite having a pleasant peaty flavour. It has its place, which is often at the back of the cupboard where it sits unloved for years sporting an orange crust betwixt bottle and fiddly green cap.

The best hot sauces make you pause before dinner and think, ‘I wonder if I could get away with a blob of X on this?’  and they make you push the boundaries of your tolerance; we’ve all enthusiastically scooped up a massive blob – ‘I can take it!’ – only to be reduced to a snivelling wreck. A good hot sauce will make you crave, crave, crave. I’ve tried a LOT of varieties in recent years and these are the ones I think find the right balance between their position on the Scoville Scale and flavour. A hot sauce shouldn’t simply be very hot, you see (I’ve tried ‘Death Sauce‘ and found it unbearable); it should have depth, sweetness, acidity, salt and it should capture the flavour of the chilli in question. It’s a big ask. Here are my favourites, in no particular order:

1. ‘No Joke’ [see www.nojokepeppersauce.co.uk. £3.25 + pp for 170ml. You'll need to e-mail info@nojokepeppersauce.co.uk if you want to order some, for the moment - new website coming soon. Follow the creator, Susanna on Twitter at @nojokepepper]. 

‘No Joke’ hot sauce (‘created in Trinidad, hand-made in Cumbria’), the newest addition to my cupboard, winged its way to me via food writer Adam Coghlan (his girlfriend’s mum makes it). I’ve tried a lot of scotch bonnet-based sauces in my time and this is one of the best. It has a jammy consistency, with a pure scotch bonnet flavour offset by the sweet, sour and spicy notes of papaya, lime and ginger. The heat pulls no punches but is balanced by the sugar and spicing. A truly tropical-tasting hot sauce.

2. Holy Fuck Sauce by The Rib Man [£5 for 250ml from www.theribman.co.uk]

Londoners have been going crazy for this sauce, and rightly so. It comes from the kitchen of Mark Gevaux (The Rib Man) and was apparently named ‘Holy Fuck’ because that’s what people say when they first taste it. He uses scotch bonnet and a smaller amount of bhut jolokia or naga, the world’s hottest chilli. It does, of course, pack serious burn but somehow – possibly through some kind of sorcery – Mark has managed to capture the rich, fruity perfume of the chillies. There is no other hot sauce with a comparable flavour; it’s truly addictive. A lot of sweetness balances out the heat and I wonder if he uses ketchup in the mix. It has the most incredible thick texture, too. I’m not sure I can ever be without a bottle.

3. Tan Rosie Garlic and Pepper Sauce [£4.00 for 250ml, available from www.tanrosie.com]

I came across this one thanks to a tip-off on Twitter. It’s made to a family recipe by Tan Rosie foods (based in Birmingham) who advertise it as a ‘true taste of the Caribbean’. Phewee! Yeah, this is a hot one all right. Despite the heat which, for me, hangs just on the right side of searing, the flavour of scotch bonnets is so incredibly pure. It does border slightly on frustrating, because I always want more of the flavour with a little less of the heat but I can’t help going back for more. I’d choose ‘No Joke’ over Tan Rosie if it came down to it, but a great one to have in the cupboard nonetheless; it’s livened up many a mediocre jerk chicken, although the jerk pictured below was fantastic (from Caribbean Spice Jerk Centre – my favourite until it got taken over by new management recently. So sad).

4. Frank’s Original and Frank’s Extra Hot [you can buy 148ml bottles of Frank's in major branches of Tesco, Sainsbury's and through Ocado for £1.49 a bottle and at Waitrose for £1.59 a bottle]. 

I came across this American brand of hot sauce when I first made hot wings back in the summer. The classic buffalo wings recipe uses equal quantities of Frank’s and melted butter (although these days I’m inclined to skew that ratio a little); one batch and I was hooked. My favourite to date was this pile of hickory-smoked, Frank’s and butter slathered beauties (below). Phwoar. Frank’s is a mild sauce (even the extra hot, which is below Tabasco on the Scoville Scale) but it has a lovely flavour, made as it from a mixture of aged cayenne peppers.

I also love it sprinkled over my poached eggs in the morning. It’s mild enough for 8am in my book.

Those are my favourites, but I want to hear yours. Does Sriracha warm your cockles? What about Encona? Are you a hard core Death Sauce fanatic? I’d like to find some new varieties to try so please do let me know in the comments.

The first time I made hot wings they were good, but not hot enough. I wanted try again using the authentic, not very secret ingredient, Frank’s Original Hot Sauce. I also wanted to try my hand at smoking them so I sensed the opportunity for an Amazon binge and bought: 3 bottles of Frank’s, a tub of Old Bay Seasoning, a Weber chimney starter and a pack of hickory wood chips.

I would encourage anyone who owns a half decent BBQ with a lid to buy some wood chips for smoking immediately, if you haven’t already. There were almost tears of joy when we lifted the lid to find a rack of wings turned orange with hickory smoke; I was amazed at the results you can achieve with just a regular home kettle BBQ.

I’d marinated the wings overnight in herbs and seasonings, then smoked them for 25 minutes a side over indirect heat with the hickory chips thrown in. They emerged crisp and burnished brown, ready for a good plunge into a combo of Frank’s Original and melted butter before going back on the grill, over direct heat for another 20 minutes. To finish, a final lick of that sauce and straight onto the plate.

The smoking, together with the sweet, vinegar-chilli punch of Frank’s (it’s like a thick Tabasco) cut with velvety butter, makes the flavour incredibly intense – not to mention sticky. A mound of discarded kitchen paper stained orange with sauce rose before us as we worked our way, just the 2 of us, through 24 wings.

It seemed appropriate to cut the heat and umami with something a little sharp, a little creamy; a cool, crunchy pit stop between wings. Slaw. This is a classic mix of carrot, white cabbage and red onion; the sauce a mix of sour cream, natural yoghurt, a smidge of American mustard and my secret ingredient – a slosh of juice from a jar of dill cucumbers, which adds a lovely spiced-sweet pickled note.

Later on, we deep-fried more pickles and shoved them into a sandwich with shredded wing meat and slaw. So gluttonous. So unhealthy. So. Good.

Hickory Smoked Hot Wings

26-30 chicken wings

For the marinade

2 cloves garlic
1 white onion
3 teaspoons thyme leaves
3 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning
1 tablespoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1.5 teaspoons ground black pepper

For the sauce

1 bottle plus 2 tablespoons Frank’s Original Hot Sauce (that’s about 12 tablespoons in total)
125g butter

You will also need hickory chips for smoking the meat.

Begin the day before by marinating the wings. Put the onion in a blender with the garlic and 1-2 tablespoons water and blend to a paste. Put into a large bowl (the one you will use to hold the wings) and add all the other marinade ingredients. Mix well. Add the wings and mix really well to make sure they are all evenly coated. Refrigerate overnight.

When you’re ready to cook the wings, remove them from the fridge to bring the temperature up and set up your BBQ for indirect cooking; this means lighting the coals to one side (you will cook the meat on the other side). Take a couple of handfuls of hickory chips and soak them in cold water for at least 30 minutes.

When the BBQ is ready, sprinkle a handful of chips directly onto the coals and put your wings on the other side in a single layer (you may need to do 2 batches as I did). Put the lid on (leave the holes half open) and smoke for 25 minutes. After this time, turn the wings and sprinkle on a few more chips.

Melt the butter and hot sauce together in a pan (don’t be alarmed at the strength of it, this will be tamed somewhat once on the wings). Remove half of it to a bowl and dunk the wings in it, then return to the grill, this time directly over the coals for about 10 minutes each side, until well charred. Dunk again in the sauce before serving. Get the kitchen paper ready.

Sour cream slaw

1/4 white cabbage, very finely shredded
1 medium sized carrot, grated, julienned or shredded in a processor
1/2 red onion, finely sliced
3 heaped tablespoons sour cream
3 tablespoons natural yoghurt
1 teaspoon American mustard
1 tablespoon snipped chives
2 tablespoons juice from a jar of dill pickled cucumbers
Salt and pepper

If you can use a food processor to finely shred the vegetables, do. I used a julienne peeler for the carrot and just finely sliced the onion and cabbage by hand. Put the veg in a large bowl. In another bowl, make the dressing by mixing together all the remaining ingredients. Mix this well with the vegetables. Season with salt and pepper.

There’s only so many times a woman can hear her boyfriend say, “I’m going to make my own hot sauce” before she just gets on and does it herself. I mean, if he’s going to bang on about it all the time then I’m going to be thinking about it all the time and before I know it the mother of all cravings has crept up behind me and planted its claws right into my brain.

So I made the hot sauce while he helped by way of forming words with his mouth and speaking them at me from the sofa.

Basically the idea was that we would cook red peppers and scotch bonnet chillies in the BBQ to really get a smoke flavour going on in the sauce. That worked. The rest is tomatoes, garlic, onion and the usual saucy suspects: vinegar, sugar and salt. The red peppers I think add an essential sweetness, dodging the unpleasant saccharine gloop you get from too much regular sugar. Obviously it’s also fruity-hot; I put 3 scotch bonnets in there for goodness’ sake. De-seed or don’t it’s up to you.

We ate the sauce with jerk chicken and rice n peas. I made the boyfriend go and get it. Ha.

Smoked pepper and scotch bonnet hot sauce

550g tomatoes
6 scotch bonnet chillies
3 red peppers
1 large white onion
4 cloves garlic
250ml white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons salt

Heat your BBQ. Lightly oil the peppers. Crush a piece of foil with oil and place the scotch bonnets in it. Fold the foil into a parcel and use a skewer to make a few holes in it so the smoke can penetrate. Put the peppers and chilli
parcel on the BBQ once hot. Put the lid on the BBQ to keep the smoke in (open the top and bottom air vents). Turn the peppers every so often until soft and charred all over. Turn the chilli parcel once half way through cooking the peppers. Once cooked set both aside to cool.

Cut a cross in the base of each tomato then place them in a bowl. Cover with boiling water and leave for a few minutes until the skins loosen and can be peeled away easily. Dice the tomatoes and set aside.

In a saucepan fry the onion gently in a little oil until soft. Try not to colour the onion too much. Roughly chop the peppers, discarding the stalk, seeds and any charred pieces of skin and add to the pan with the chillies, garlic, vinegar, tomatoes, salt and sugar. Let the mixture simmer for about 30-45 minutes until the tomatoes have started to break down into a pulp. Pass the mixture through a fine sieve then blend it. Set aside to cool.

The grilling season is upon us. I’m excited. The summer stretches out in front of me like one long BBQ sizzling with stuffed squid, beer-can duck, tikka, grilled pineapple salsa, sardines, smoky baba and of course, plenty of jerk (top tips for great jerk here).

Portuguese piri piri chicken is something I’ve been meaning to experiment with for a while. We’ve survived the winter by ordering from Na Pura in Nunhead. The chicken there has a good flavour and is cooked well but I do wish they’d use better quality birds. They also take forever to cook them. After a batch of wings and a chicken or two I’ve hammered down my own recipe and the time has come to say that I’m sorry, Na Pura, but your services are no longer required.

My piri piri sauce is a combination of shed-loads of fierce little chillies, oregano, paprika, garlic, vinegar, oil and sugar; the sweet/sharp balance makes it perfect for the BBQ and BBQ’d it must be because char is very important for this recipe. The skin should be blackened in places. The vinegar in the marinade tenderises the meat keeping it juicy and moist inside. The other important thing to remember is to keep a pot of marinade and a brush to hand when grilling; brush the bird liberally and often. When she’s done, give her a final coat before serving with wedges of lemon and a big salad. And a beer.

It’s nice to serve a pot of the sauce at the table with a little brush, like Restaurante Bonjardim in Lisbon.

Piri Piri Chicken (makes enough for 2 chickens)

30 piri piri or other small red chillies (obviously you may need to adjust the amount according to the chillies you have available)
3 teaspoons dried oregano (fresh would be lovely but it’s quite hard to find around here)
2 level tablespoons paprika
150ml red wine vinegar
200ml olive oil
6 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons soft brown sugar
Salt
Chicken (see instructions on spatchcocking at the end)

Whack everything in a blender until smooth. Pour half of the marinade over your meat, cover and refrigerate overnight. Turn the bird around in the marinade every now and then. When it comes to grilling your bird/s, get the coals white hot then move them to the edges of the BBQ and put your chicken in the middle. Brush regularly with the marinade. Cook until the skin is blackened in places and the bird is cooked through (about 15-20 mins per side for a spatchcocked chicken).

Brush again with the marinade before serving.

If you’re cooking a whole bird on the BBQ, spatchcock (butterfly) it to ensure it cooks fast and evenly. To do this, place the bird breast-side down on a board, with the tail towards you. Using scissors, cut along each side of the backbone to remove it (this requires a little welly as you’re cutting through the ribs but it’s not that difficult). Turn the bird over and use the heel of your hand to push down on the breastbone so that it’s all one thickness. Use skewers to secure the legs and keep the shape of the chicken by pushing them through the thigh and then diagonally through the breast. A bird will take 15-20 minutes per side. If you want to see someone doing it there are some good vids on youtube.

I arrived at this recipe after a week of experimenting with lahmacun, or ‘Turkish pizza’. Lahmacun (pronounced lah-ma-jun) is a thin, flat disk of dough smeared with minced lamb (or beef), spices and aleppo pepper, cooked and then finished with a sprinkle of lemon juice and fresh herbs. I’ve made a few variations over the past 7 days and they’ve all been delish, particularly when scattered with chopped pickled cucumbers. As time went by though I found the recipe evolving into something a little more locally influenced.

As you all know, Persepolis is one of my favourite local food shops and I nip in at every opportunity. The shopkeeper, Sally has a recipe for ‘Persian Pizza’ in her cookbook, which bears many similarities to lahmacun but does away with dough faffing and uses ready bought bread instead. Feeling fatigued, I was having me some of that. I would just cook the lamb mixture before spreading it on the bread and cut about 2 hours off the prep time.

I ditched the aleppo pepper too for a jar of  ‘gongura red chilli pickle’; a highly addictive paste of sour gongura leaves, fierce hot chillies, garlic, tamarind and spices. For post-cooking pimpage, it had to be finely chopped Iranian cucumbers, which have a curious mix of musty/sharp/sweet flavours and are justifiably world famous. To finish, a swirl of cooling yoghurt and the essential fresh herbs.

The way to eat this is to roll it up, grasp it and show it who’s boss. My boyfriend was in raptures over it and I have to say I’m very pleased with the recipe; the bread works better than the dough ever did and the pickle adds an exotic tangy and hot flavour. Crisp bread, spiced meat, chopped pickles, cool yoghurt, fragrant herbs = contrast-tastic.  It’s packed with flavours of the Middle East and is therefore oh so very Peckham.

Peckham Pizza (makes 4)

4 naan breads
500g minced lamb
2 tablespoons gongura chilli pickle (or you could substitute chopped pickled chillies)
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

Garnish
2 pickled cucumbers, finely chopped
Lemon wedges
Fresh herbs (I used parsley and coriander)

Soften the onion in a little oil then add the minced lamb. Stir it, breaking it up until it is all browned. Meanwhile, skin the tomatoes by covering them with boiling water and leaving a for a few minutes. Drain them then cover with cold water for a further minute. Rub the skins off, quarter them and remove the seeds. Blend to a paste in a blender or chop finely.

When the meat is browned, add the spices and cook, stirring, for 30 seconds or so. Add the chilli pickle and tomatoes and let cook for around 10 minutes on a medium heat, stirring occasionally. Check the seasoning and adjust to taste.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Spread the topping over each naan, making sure to really press it down and spread it right out to the edges. Cook for around 5 minutes, until the edges of the naan are nice and crisp. I find the best results come from cooking the pizza directly on the oven rack (i.e without a baking tray).

Artfully dollop on some yoghurt, scatter with fresh herbs and serve with wedges of lemon.

I found myself at London Bridge the other day with some time to kill and so I wandered down to Borough Market. It was a Tuesday, so I knew the main market wouldn’t be open but the peripheral shops like Neil’s Yard Dairy, The Ginger Pig and Brindisa would. As soon as you step into Borough Market some sort of money hoover is switched on and your wallet starts haemorrhaging dosh; so it was that I found myself dropping £20 in Brindisa. I bought some cooking chorizo, Ortiz tinned tuna and dried choricero peppers (also used to make paprika). I pondered how to use the latter and decided I’d try them in a Romesco sauce, a Catalan sauce which is a potent blend of peppers, garlic, olive oil, almonds and breadcrumbs.

Romesco sauce tastes about a million times better made with proper Spanish peppers and I wish I’d had Spanish almonds too. The peppers added a smoky depth and bittersweet flavour, just like the sign in the shop told me it would. The pounded, toasted almonds add richness; I adore any sauce with nuts in, muhammara being another good example. We ate it with pan fried fillets of gurnard but any white fish would work well.

I’ll be making this on my annual trip to Catalonia with two of my mates later this year and eating it with vegetables (hopefully calçots), meat, fish, anything and everything that can be grilled on the BBQ under the beating Spanish sun.

Romesco Sauce (makes enough sauce to serve 6-8)

3 dried choricero peppers
100g almonds
1 thick slice stale crusty white bread (if you only have fresh, dry it out in a low oven)
3 large tomatoes
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Juice of 1 lemon
6 tablespoons olive oil plus a little extra to finish

Begin by removing the stalks from the peppers (twist and pull), shaking out the seeds and covering them with boiling water. Let soak for half an hour. When re-hydrated, chop finely.

Meanwhile, toast the almonds in a dry pan, moving them around until they smell toasty and start to colour slightly. Remove and set aside. Whizz the bread in a blender to make breadcrumbs. Skin the tomatoes by make a cross shape in the bottom of each one then covering with boiling water for a few minutes. Drain, then plunge into cold water and leave for a minute. The skins should now peel off easily. Chop finely and set aside.

In a pestle and mortar, pound the almonds until they are all crushed. You can do this in a blender but you need to be careful you don’t end up with nut butter by over-processing the nuts.

Now you just need to mix everything together. You can either pound it in a pestle and mortar but I used a blender as this makes quite a lot of sauce. Don’t over-blend though, you want the sauce to keep a nice coarse texture. Taste, adjust the seasoning and serve. You may want to add more lemon juice or olive oil.

Most of the recipes on this blog are my own, but sometimes I want to share others I’ve stumbled across, or those that people have sent to me. This pachadi recipe comes from Sharmila, a local food blogger who does Very Good Things with yoghurt and okra.

In my limited experience, a pachadi appears to be a base of yoghurt and vegetables, topped with a mixture of tempered spices; like pouring a tarka over a dahl. It’s clearly South Indian, as mustard seeds and curry leaves feature heavily in many recipes. My first chapadi experience came via Flickr when one of my contacts posted a recipe so unusual to my eyes that I had to have it. Mustard seeds, dried chilli and curry leaves are fried briefly in coconut oil until the seeds pop then mixed with yoghurt and cucumber. It’s hard to resist bombing a hot chapatti into the still-sizzling spiced oil. The flavours will have you on the edge of your seat.

Sharmila’s version is made using okra slices, fried until crisp; a beautiful contrast against the chilled yoghurt. It takes minutes to make and I can particularly recommend it as part of a  ‘curry day’ extravaganza; nargisi kofta curry, chicken tikka and this excellent spinach and paneer dish from Das Sreedharan’s hugely under-rated book, ‘Indian’*. Yes, I know I go on about that book all the time.

Okra pachadi

1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
10 or so curry leaves
2-3 green chillies, chopped into a few pieces
Chilli powder
Lemon juice
Coriander leaves
Two large handfuls of okra, chopped up into smallish (2cm pieces)
Natural yoghurt
Salt to taste
Groundnut oil

Fry the okra in a few tablespoons of groundnut oil until nice and crisp. Drain on kitchen paper.

Combine the okra with the yoghurt (about 200g) and a bit of chilli powder (but not too much – this isn’t a spicy dish). Fry the mustard seeds in a small pan in a tablespoon or so of oil. When they start to pop, add the green chilli and curry leaves. When they are nicely sizzling, pour over the yoghurt mixture. Stir to combine, add salt and lemon juice to taste and then add the coriander leaves.

* The edition of Das’ book that I have doesn’t seem to be available any more but this looks very similar and I imagine will have a lot of the same recipes. It’s one of those books you actually cook from rather than just flick through.

Thanks again to Sharmila for the chapadi recipe.

I’ve had a few requests for the muhammara recipe we served at the Warwick Wingding. I’ve updated it recently so it’s worth posting again. Do try to find the chilli pepper paste* if you can as it has a unique flavour, although regular chillies also work. I often leave out the cumin, too.

Muhammara

8 red peppers
4 tablespoons olive oil
70g walnuts
2 tablespoons hot pepper paste or 2 red chillies, finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted until fragrant in a dry pan and then ground to paste using a grinder or pestle and mortar
50g white breadcrumbs blended to a paste with about 1 tbsp cold water
2-4 tablespoons pomegranate molasses (to taste)
1 clove garlic, crushed
Salt and pepper

Put the peppers on a roasting tray, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper then use your hands to mix around until all the skins are covered. Roast in a hot oven (about 170C) until the skins are blackened then place in a bowl and cover with cling film. Leave for 10 minutes. The skins should now be easy to remove. Chop roughly, discarding the seeds.

Put the peppers, walnuts, breadcrumb paste, chillies, cumin, pomegranate molasses and garlic in a blender and blend to a paste. Remove from the blender and mix in the olive oil then taste and add salt and pepper.

* The chilli pepper paste is available from Middle Eastern food shops and is often labelled ‘red pepper’ or ‘hot pepper’ paste. It comes in jars.

On Saturday Rosie and I set up a mezze stall at local Peckham shindig, The Warwick Wingding. We’d spent all of Friday shopping, solving various mini-crises and grafting away in the kitchen. Pulling off a food stall is a lot of hard work and there are all sorts of issues to consider: what will you serve? Is it realistic? How much will it cost? How many will you feed? How much should you charge? How should you present it? How will you get it there? It goes on and on and on.

We originally wanted to serve jerk chicken but apparently there was some kind of problem with having a BBQ (even though the ribs man had one, so your guess is as good as mine); in the end we decided on mezze, and the organisers were keen to have another vegetarian stall along with Ganapati. We served hummus; baba ganoush; muhammara; fennel, pomegranate and feta salad; lentils with caramelised onions; jewelled cous cous and tabbouleh. Customers picked 5 of these to go with toasted pitta and grilled harissa-marinated halloumi for a fiver. A pretty good deal we thought.

We’d made big batches of everything and just kept re-filling the bowls; by the end of the day we’d sold out of everything bar bread and halloumi so we started flogging halloumi sandwiches for £3, which also flew out fast. A massive relief. That, and the fact it didn’t rain.

One of the hardest things about doing a food stall is making sure you come up with something you can really be proud of. If you’re not confident in what you’re selling then it’s game over. The best parts of the day were when people came to say how much they’d enjoyed the food or that they had come on someone else’s recommendation. People genuinely enjoyed it and thought we offered good value for money. The banter with customers was brilliant and thanks to all the blog readers who came over to introduce themselves – it was lovely to meet you all.

We didn’t cut any corners with ingredients or effort and it paid off. We left with beaming smiles, high on the satisfaction of having fed people well. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

A massive thank you to my partner Rosie, to all the people who bought our food, to our boyfriends and mates who got roped in at various stages and to Terry, Lyndsay and any other organisers I don’t know of who had a really hard time of it at one point, but pulled through and made the event a success.

The Warwick Wingding
Sat 25th September 2010 (the festival is held annually – it started in 2009)
12-7.30pm (then after-party at The Ivy House)
Warwick Gardens
Lyndhurst Way
SE15