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

I usually serve these with bacon. It’s sweet n salty amazing. This scotch bonnet salsa is also lovely, but there’s a clear lack of pork in the picture and for that I apologise.

Corn is dirt cheap right now and I constantly hear it begging me to shear it from the cob and fritter the living daylights out of it. The fresh stuff really keeps its succulence but canned and frozen will also work. There are all sorts of things you could add to the mix; Simon suggested cockles, which I’m dying to try. Salt fish is a favourite, if a little more effort. Often though I prefer a simple recipe – a touch of spice, a little spring onion and fresh herbs; it’s all about the corn.

Fiona Beckett asked me to contribute a recipe to her student cooking site, Beyond Baked Beans and so this is it. The recipe is easy, fun to make and when served with bacon and perhaps an egg, one of the best hangover cures known to woman. What more could a student want from a meal? If you can stomach it though, there’s literally no better accompaniment than an ice cold beer.

Corn Fritters

140g plain flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg, lightly beaten with a fork
220ml milk
3 large corn cobs
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
3 spring onions, finely sliced
A small handful of fresh herbs, such as mint, coriander or parsley
If you’re not serving this with a hot sauce, try adding a finely chopped red chilli in the batter
Salt and pepper

Vegetable or groundnut oil, for frying

Sift the flour into a large bowl with the baking powder. Pour in the milk and mix well to make a smooth batter.

Remove any outer papery husk and strings from the corn cobs then stand one on its end on a chopping board and carefully run your knife down one side to remove the kernels. Repeat this until all the kernels are stripped off and then add them to the batter. Add the egg, spices and spring onion and season with two large pinches each of salt and pepper.

Heat a 1cm depth of oil in a heavy based frying pan or skillet and wait until it starts shimmering, but not smoking. Turn the heat to medium-high. Drop a tablespoon of the batter into the oil at a time and immediately flatten it out into a round fritter shape. It will take a few minutes to turn golden on the underneath – you can then flip it over and brown the other side. Be wary as the oil will spit a little and splash as you turn them. Set aside to drain of excess oil on kitchen paper then keep warm in an oven on its lowest setting while you make the rest. Don’t be tempted to try and put too many in the pan at once.

Serve with bacon. And perhaps egg. Or anything else you fancy.

The way to get good at cooking is to go at recipes over and over, not flit around from one place to another and never look back.

I ate a stunning baba ganoush at Maramia Cafe recently as part of a ‘lamb banquet’ organised by Carla. The meat was soft and tasty as hell,  but the baba was what really blew people’s minds. It was thicker than mine; I wondered how they’d achieved the consistency and considered straining the yoghurt. I’m a serial strainer – you end up with something almost cream cheese-y but way more refreshing. I tried using it in the baba and the result was of course, richer. I’ve also started using smaller aubergines, which means that the smoke can penetrate all the flesh, rather than just the outer layer.

That’s it really – makes all the difference.

Baba Ganoush

8 small aubergines
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 lemons (juice)
1 handful mint leaves, chopped
1 handful coriander or parsley leaves (or a little of both), chopped
6-8 tablespoons tahini (I like a good whack but you may want less)
1-2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses
Salt and pepper
4 tablespoons olive oil (not extra virgin)
4 tablespoons strained yoghurt (see below)

First, strain the yoghurt. If you don’t remember to do this the night before it doesn’t matter, even a couple of hours will make a big difference and the process itself takes seconds of preparation. Take a 500g tub of decent Greek-style yoghurt such as Total. Full-fat will obviously taste better than low fat but the latter does work okay. You’ll need some butter muslin, which is available from hardware stores easily. Cut a square of the muslin and line a bowl with it. Mix the yoghurt with a scant teaspoon of salt, mix well, then dollop it all into the middle of the muslin in the bowl. Gather it up, tie string around the top then tie the other end to something (I use a kitchen cupboard handle). Leave it for a few hours or ideally, overnight with the bowl underneath.

Pierce the aubergines with a fork and place directly on the gas rings of a hob (1 per ring) on a low flame, or put them under the grill, turning occasionally until blackened all over and collapsed. They will burst but this is fine, it just requires a bit of attention so you don’t lose the flesh. Remove to a plate and let cool slightly, then scrape the flesh from inside, leaving any bits of blackened skin and liquid on the plate behind.

Blend with all the other ingredients and season and adjust as necessary. You may want to add more lemon, yoghurt or salt for example.

Allow to sit for a few hours before serving with hot flat breads or pitta for scooping.

You’ve probably heard that it is really easy to make good hummus at home and that, once you’ve tried it, you’ll ‘never go back’ to the shop-bought stuff. This is rubbish. I’ve rarely met anyone in real life who hasn’t told me that their experiences of making this classic Middle Eastern chickpea slurry at home were wildly disappointing. Recipes say things like, “for a super simple, healthy supper, just whizz two tins chickpeas with 1 clove garlic, 2 tablespoons tahini, juice of 1 lemon and a glug of olive oil.” It absolutely never comes out right. It’s never smooth enough and the flavours always seem out of kilter.

I’ve been trying to make a decent version myself for years because, once I fail at something in the kitchen, I’m like a dog with a bone; Steingarten-esque in my persistence of perfection. I think I’ve cracked it but let me warn you now, you’ve got to put a little work in to get the results.

I’d been approaching the task in entirely the wrong way, viewing it as a five minute job – whack it all in the blender and hope for the best. Really good hummus though, is actually a labour of love.

It is essential to cook your own chickpeas. Tinned ones pong, their flesh weak and pallid. Soak the dried ones overnight in cold water with bicarbonate of soda then cook the next day; a 10-minute rapid boil and skimming plus an hours simmer should do it. If you think that’s a lot of effort then brace yourself for the next step. The creamiest texture comes from individually popping each chickpea from its papery skin; it is these tough coatings which make the hummus coarse. We’re talking one episode (new format) of Come Dine with Me to skin those suckers.

Another tip is to use the smallest chickpeas you can find. I’ve taken to these brown ones recently; they’re small and nutty, although the end result is never quite as smooth as with white peas. When it comes to blending, I do the tahini and lemon juice first, otherwise the tahini can clump and never distribute properly and then add the chickpeas in batches with a splash of water each time. Again, it all helps to make a smooth paste. The rest is down to personal taste although of course it’s better to add a little at a time rather than try to counteract a dominant flavour later.

Buoyed by my success with the hummus, I decided to have a go at making pitta bread. They only needed an hour to rise and puffed up really well. Unlike the hummus, very easy to get right first time and honestly, so much better than shop-bought. Really.

Hummus

This makes a big batch but let’s face it, if you’re going to faff about skinning chickpeas then you may as well make it worth your while.

325g dried chickpeas (they will double in weight once cooked)
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
5-6 tablespoons tahini
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
Juice of 1 lemon and possibly the juice of another (at least half)
2 fat cloves of garlic
1 heaped teaspoon fine salt
Olive oil

Parsley and paprika to garnish (optional). Toasted pine nuts or whole chickpeas are also good on top.

Begin the day before, by soaking your chickpeas in cold water with the bicarbonate of soda and leaving them overnight. The next day, rinse them, cover with cold water (no salt) and bring to a rapid boil and leave for 10 minutes, skimming off the scum that rises to the top. Drain then re-cover with water and simmer for an hour – 90 minutes, until they are soft and squish easily between your fingers.

Once cool, pop each one from its skin. It takes a while but I found plonking myself in front of the telly eased the pain.

Whizz the tahini and juice of 1 lemon together in a blender until well combined, then blend the garlic and salt into the mix before adding the chickpeas, a handful plus a splash of water each time. When all your chickpeas are blended in, add a good glug of olive oil (hold the bottle over the blender for a couple of seconds), turn the blender on and leave it for a few minutes. Adjust the flavours to your taste. I find it always needs more lemon juice.

Garnish with more olive oil, parsley and paprika.

Pitta Bread (makes eight)

I used part wholemeal flour, firstly because I had some hanging around and secondly for a bit more of a robust flavour. I think it works well but you can use entirely strong white bread flour if you prefer.

220g strong white bread flour
150g whole wheat flour
1 heaped teaspoon fine salt
1 tablespoon caster sugar
1 x 7g sachet fast action dried yeast
300ml warm (not hot) water
2 tablespoons olive oil

Add the yeast to the water and leave in a warm place for about 10 minutes until frothy. This means that the yeast is activated.

In a large bowl combine the flours, salt, sugar and oil and then add the yeasty water. If you have an electric mixer with a dough hook then simply set the lot on the lowest speed for 10 minutes, adding more water if necessary, until smooth and elastic. If you don’t have a mixer, combine the mix until it comes together into a ball of dough. Again, add a little more water if necessary to bring it together. Knead on a lightly floured surface for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic.

Rest the dough in a lightly oiled bowl (so that it doesn’t stick) and cover with clingfilm or a damp tea towel and leave in a warm place until doubled in size – mine only took an hour.

After this time, knock the dough back a little by punching it a few times then divide it up into 8 pieces. Roll each into a ball, then recover for another 15-20 minutes. Preheat the oven to 200C and preheat a baking stone or baking tray (turned upside down).

On a lightly floured surface, roll out each dough ball into a pitta shape – each should be about 0.5 cm thick. Bake them on the stone or baking tray for about 5 minutes, or until golden and puffy. They are best eaten warm from the oven and they re-heat well.