No.8 – Antigua and Barbuda put a foot in it!

Fungi and pepper pot conjures up delicious images of a steamy clay pot full of mushrooms and peppers - at least that’s what I was looking forward to. In reality fungi and pepperpot is a ‘simple’ stew similar to any other stew, reiterating that every country in the world adds meat and veg to water and comes up with pretty much the same thing.

Fungi (pronounced foon-ji) are dumplings made from a cornmeal paste that is thickened with okra. In Antigua and Barbuda it is eaten with pepperpot, a pork and vegetable stew that contains everything except the kitchen sink. All the pepperpot recipes I found added all sorts of piggy parts including skin, bones, snout, feet and ears. I settled with adding a couple of pigs’ totters but I did remove them after about an hour. There was no way they were going to be eaten (pigs trotters are skin, fat and bone and smell pretty piggy) however they did give the stew a meatier flavor. I’m sure that you could leave them out (I like the novelty of weird animal parts) but I would recommend adding a decent meat stock instead of water if you are.

The verdict - fungi and pepperpot is a tasty stew, similar in fact to an Irish stew, although notably it does have much more flavor (due to a hell of a lot more ingredients, and a chili). But what is a stew without a spud? I craved a potato and not the funny fungi, although the butternut squash did the job well enough.

I liked this dish because this is the kind of food that all nations have in common - a pot where you throw in a few scraps of meat, whatever vegetables are lying around and season with any spices you can get your hands on – and bobs your uncle – pretty much the national dish of any country in the world. Have I cracked any major secrets of gastronomic world? Not likely, but I think I’ve definitely made a fairly basic (and obvious) discovery.  I feel I’ll be eating a lot of stews in the upcoming months!

Fungi

Fungi, fungi, fungi. The best part of fungi is how fun-gi it is to say! It tastes of cornmeal and its texture is like slippery paste, this is of course exactly what it is, but if you are going to embark on making the stew, embark on making the fungi (if only for the name). The okra struck me as bizarre but it is actually an essential ingredient because when you cook it releases a kind of green slime, which is what holds the fungi together. Do not leave it out as I nearly did.

Serves 3

1 and ½ mugs of water

1 mug of cornmeal

3 okra, sliced into rounds

salt to taste (I added quite a bit as you can imagine it tastes of nothing otherwise)

butter, to grease a bowl

Cook the sliced okra is the boiling water until tender. The water will go slightly green and become slimy. Remove a mug full of water and reserve. Add the mug of cornmeal to the remaining water and okra and mix up as best you can. Then keep adding the reserved mug of water, bit at a time. The idea is that the cornmeal gets cooked so keep that in mind – keep kind of mushing it together so everything gets a chance to cook from the heat of the pan. It should take between 5 and 8 minutes altogether to cook the cornmeal.

When all the water has been incorporated, grease a bowl with a little butter and dollop a spoonful of the paste into the bowl. Try and cover the spoonful with a little butter and then pick it up and shape into little dumplings. The butter will stop your hands from getting covering in goo (on second thought you could maybe just grease your hands!) Serve with the pepperpot

Pepperpot

What can I say - pepperpot is a good old-fashioned stew – perfect, hearty comfort food. It’s as simple as bung it all in and let it do its thing. This recipe is very adaptable so don’t feel you need to add absolutely everything (although the okra thickens the stew), similarly feel free to add absolutely anything you have lying around (the more meat the better). Like I say, pigs feet are optional but then so are snout, ears, cheek and God knows what else.

Serves 3

Vegetable oil

100g bacon, roughly chopped

100g minced beef, made into little meatballs

2 pigs feet, optional

Vegetable oil

1 onion, chopped

1 garlic clove, chopped

2 cloves

2 tbsp tomato ketchup

a few sprigs of thyme

1 birds-eye chili, seeds left in, chopped

1 aubergine, cut into cubes (neither peeled nor salted)

a handful of okra, halved

½ butternut squash, peeled and cubes

a handful of frozen peas

half a bag of baby spinach

lots of salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a large pot and fry off the little meatballs and bacon pieces until brown. If you don’t have room in this pan which you inevitably won’t, brown of the pigs feet in another pan. To the bacon and meatballs add your chopped onion and garlic and sauté for a few minutes. Next add absolutely everything (this includes the pigs feet), excluding the peas, squash and spinach. Cover the vegetables with water. Simmer for about an hour.

After an hour remove your feet and skim of any excess fat. Continue to simmer for an hour. Check the seasoning – you do not want a bland stew!

After another hour add the butternut squash and peas. (This is when I got on with the fungi)

After fifteen minutes, when the squash is cooked stir in the spinach and serve with the fungi.

No. 7 – P-p-p-picking up a penguin in Antarctica!

Penguins are delicious! Luke and myself have just devoured six penguins between the two of us on a penguin picnic in the p-p-p-park. These days they come in an array of colours and partake in a variety of penguin activities.  

It turns out Antartica doesn’t really have a native dish because no body actually lives there. Early explorers were the first to eat the beloved penguin and they would cook it in the fashion of their native country. I came upon a recipe that roasts the penguin like any other bird and serves it with bisto! Seems like an altogether Irish Antartican explorer. 

No.6 – Thrilla in Anguilla!

When Oddsocks Revival impromptly returned from the Enniscorthy Strawberry Festival, what was originally intended to be a simple pigeon-peas and rice dinner (which would have been extremely boring and bland), became delicious shrimps in a coconut sauce with pigeon-peas and rice. If the boys had returned to only rice and beans my reputation would have been fleeting and so, Teresa and I headed out late that evening in the still ridiculous heat to find some fresh shrimp and plenty of limes for the eagerly anticipated mojitos.

Two hours and zero mojitos later we were still beheading, tailing and deveining our kilo of shrimp, a less than pleasant job poor T had not signed up for.  I for the first time understood why people just buy them already prepared and swore never to buy shrimp whole again. This was until I learned the absolute joy of the stock made from simmering the shells. Turns out there is more flavor in one shell than in the flesh of a million shrimp (a slight exaggeration maybe) so if you are going to the trouble of buying them whole, for Gods sake make a stock. I literally could not believe how delicious it was and mixed with coconut milk - I could have, and truth be told did, eat it with a spoon.

Apologies for the lack of photos and the hilarity of the photos that were taken. (I got a little carried away with being masterchefy, hence the ridiculous tower of rice, which took no more than two attempts!) I blame the booze for my temporary insanity.

Pigeon-peas and Rice (or Black-eyed Beans and Rice)

The national dish of Anguilla is pigeon peas and rice - I must stress that this is pigeon-dash-peas and rice and not pigeon and peas and rice! I however couldn’t get my hands on any pigeon-peas but had read that you can substitute them with black-eyed peas. When overcome with a billion types of peas and beans in the ethnic food store, I of course, mistook black-eyed peas for black-eyed beans and so, in reality the dish below is black-eyed beans and rice and not pigeon-peas and rice - my mistake on many accounts. This is not the most exciting dish. Rice and beans is after all just rice and beans.

Serves 8

1 onion, chopped

3 rashers of bacon, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 tsp ground cumin

400g black eyed beans, presoaked for an hour (obviously use pigeon peas if you can)

400g rice

4 or 5 spring onions, sliced

a couple of sprigs of fresh thyme

bunch of parsley, chopped

salt and pepper

olive oil

Throw away the water that the beans were soaked in and simmer until the beans are tender. Roughly forty minutes or so but you just have to keep tasting them. I also skimmed off the scum.

Cook the rice as you would normally.

Fry the onion, garlic and bacon in a little oil for about ten minutes. Then throw in the cooked rice and cooked beans, cumin, spring onions, the leaves of the sprigs of thyme, parsley and season with salt and pepper and mix the whole shebang together.  And there you have it – beans and rice.

Coconut Shrimp

This is one for the shellfish lovers. It took more effort to deshell the shrimps than I would have like, but if you have the patience and aren’t too squeamish about brains and intestines etc. and love seafood this is worth giving a go. It is intensely shellfishy even before you add the actual shrimps.  Beware: this will not work if you don’t make your own stock so if you are considering using prepared frozen prawns – don’t. If I were doing this again I would just serve it with plain rice and a simple salad. Yum!

Serves 6

I kg of shrimp, whole

juice of 1 lime

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 red bell pepper, cubed

2 onions, thinly sliced

½ can of chopped tomatoes

1 and ½ cans of unsweetened coconut milk

1 tsp cornflour

 a few spring onions, sliced

some chopped parsley

                                

Peel and devein your shrimp. Put the shrimp in one bowl squeeze of the juice of a lime. Set aside. Put the shells in a saucepan, cover with about four cups of water and simmer for 20 minutes. The shells go an illluminous pink colour and so does the water. It starts smelling seriously seafoody.  Sieve the stock and discard the shells.

                                  

Fry up the peppers, onion and garlic until soft. Next simply throw in the coconut milk, tinned tomatoes, about half the shrimp stock (or as much as you like really) and stir in the cornflour. Leave to simmer for about ten minutes or until you get the desired consistency which I would describe as like a seafood chowder. Next add the shrimp and just wait until they have turned pinky – literally 2 minutes. Garnish with the spring onions and parsley ( I forgot this for the photos) and serve with a bottle of seriously hot sauce!

No. 5 - Angola paint the kitchen red!

Muamba de Galinha

This is one of the dishes that I was worried about (I know it seems as if I’m worried about them all!) due to the fact that it contains a huge amount of oil and not only any oil but palm oil – this is a bright orange, semisolid oil that smells a bit like candle wax. It comes from the fruit of palm trees and is used all over Africa as a cooking oil.  It turns out that it really is just like any other cooking oil so if you can’t find it or just don’t fancy the idea, you can substitute it with olive oil or sunflower oil with a couple teaspoons of paprika for colour. Beware the palm oil has a tendency to spit hot orange everywhere so protect your clothing, your kitchen and your face by having a lid at hand - I ended up dancing around the kitchen yelping!

Locating and buying this palm oil turned out to be an experience - I wandered into an African shop in Moore Street Market not really knowing what I was looking for and sure enough I came across a carton labeled ‘palm oil’. I was then approached by a jolly African woman who laughed at the prospect of me cooking with such a thing. The following is a summary of our conversation (You’ll have to imagine the African accent yourself)…

African Woman                 “You eat African food? Ah he ha ha ha ha, ha ho ho ”

Me                                       “No eh, not really, but I would like to try”

African Woman                 “What you buying this for? What you do with it? Ha ha ha, he he he”

Me                                       “Eh, I’m going to cook it with some eh, chicken..?”

(I couldn't remember the name Muamba de Galinha, but even if I had remembered it, I wouldn't have been able to pronounce  it.)   

African Woman                 (Patting me on the back) “Ha ha hee hee….”

Me                                       “and, eh, make a, eh, stew…?”

African Woman                 (walking away) “Ah ha he ha ha ha ha ha …….”

I can only hope that I will run into her again soon!

Her reaction was another reason I was nervous about the palm oil but I can report that Muamba de Galinha was another successful dinner. So if you’re bored of your regular spag bol and fancy something a little more adventurous take a trip down to your local African market and give it  go!

Serves 2

4 chicken thighs

Juice of ½ lemon

125 ml palm oil

2 onions, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 tomatoes, quartered

2 birds eye chili’s, seeds in, chopped

½ squash, peeled, cored, cut into bite-sized pieces

10 okra, sliced into disks.

A tbsp of paprika

A tbsp of cumin

Salt and Pepper

Marinade the chicken thighs with the lemon juice for about an hour. Struggle to add the palm oil to the pan and brown the chicken on all sides. The oil is seriously splattery and seriously orange – expect the chicken to orange not brown! To the chicken, add the onion, garlic, chili and tomato and cook for about half an hour. 

Throw in the squash and cook for another 15 minutes until nearly soft.

Throw in the okra and the additional paprika and cumin – this is where canned palm soup base is required but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Paprika and cumin are probably nothing like it but they give it an extra kick of flavor. Simmer for a few minutes or until the okra is tender.  Season with salt and pepper and serve with rice. Then marvel over how you’ve cooked something authentically Angolan.

No. 4 - Andorra the explorer!

Escudella

I thought that this would be a kind of mediocre dish. It sounds a bit bland – a sausage stew with some past – boring. But let me tell you right now this is delicious! A massive hit with Teresa and Gretta who came over for a little Come dine with me Ireland launch night (sad, I know) which whet our appetites nicely, and Luke raved about it when we had left over’s the next day (and not like his usual “this is great babe”). It's savage.

I found other, more traditional recipes that involved using additional chicken, ham and adding marrowbones and ham bones to the stew. The bone part, I left out (although Luke would have loved that) because this dish was thrown together last minute and surprise surprise, I had no marrowbones in the fridge. If you do want to use them, I think you put them in with the water and remove them before you add the sausages. I would like to think that the recipe below is an unfussy escudella for the busy 21^st century woman. A cop out? Maybe. A cheap, tasty alternative? Certainly.

Serves 5-6

6 cloves of garlic, minced

1 onion, sliced

5 carrots, sliced

1 red bell pepper, sliced

5 new potatoes, quartered

A handful of green beans (just because they were left over from Algeria)

250g pasta (a chunky variety)

8 – 10 big sausages

Pinch of saffron

Chopped coriander (I had no parsley, it will not grow on my ledge!)

Tsp paprika

Salt and Pepper

Get out your largest pot. Fry the onions and garlic for a minute and stir in all the vegetables.  Pour in recently boiled water until it’s a couple of inches above the vegetables. Throw in the saffron and paprika and season well with salt and pepper. Simmer until the vegetables are tender. This should take about 45 minutes although I forgot about them so they cooked for about an hour and a half.  The peppers disintegrated but the stock was damned flavorsome.

Fry up the sausages and slice them into chunks. Add the sausages, green beans and pasta to the vegetables and cook until the pasta is al dente. Keep an eye on it incase you need to add a bit more boiling water. (Traditionally you cook the pasta in water and add in at the end but this way the pasta soaks up all of the vegetable stock). Serve in bowls and scatter with the chopped coriander. Go wild on the black pepper.

No. 3 - Algerian Criterion!

Algerian Beef Tagine

This is a really good dinner – it’s stew, only better - warmer and more comforting because of all the spices. I luckily have a tagine from morocco but any pot with a tight lid will do. There’s feck all ingredients and you just bung them all in, so there’s no excuse. I threw in some green beans just because I fancied some crunch but they're optional. Traditionally you would eat this with cous cous or flatbread (I had mine with flatbread) but it would be savage with mash too. I’m bloody raging I didn’t get a recipe from Dee on this one!

Serves 2 – 3

500g diced stewing beef

1 red onion, chopped

A few cloves of garlic, chopped finely

1 tin of chopped tomatoes

1 tbsp of cumin

½ tbsp ground coriander

½ tbsp ground tumeric

Cayenne pepper to taste

Salt and Pepper.

Fry up the spices and garlic in a little olive oil. Add the onion and the beef and cook until slightly browned. Throw in the tin of tomatoes, cover well and let it all simmer to its heart content for a couple of hours until the meat is tender and delicious. Keep an eye on it so it doesn’t dry out. That’s it. 

No. 2 - Albania drove me insania!

(I am so sorry, they’re just gonna get worse and worse. I can’t help myself.)

Albanian Byrek (spinach and feta “filo” tart)

For Albania I needed make filo pastry – from scratch. If you have enough space, don’t mind the mess and are not put off by having to use a mop handle as your rolling pin (thoroughly washed, I promise), by all means give it a go. In future however I will be buying it prerolled and frozen.  Unless your Albenian grandmamma has taught you, you may never get it as thin as proper filo, I certainly didn’t. I know its not that helpful giving a recipe for a pastry that failed but this is, I guess, what not to do? The filling is yum - spinach and feta, whats not to like. So good in fact, you could screw the pastry altogether. And kudos to Gretta for giving me a hand, whilst holding a nice big glass of red in the other!

Serves 4 for dinner

Plain flour, 400g

Cornflour, for dusting

salt, pinch

400ml of tepid water or there abouts

Spinach, 200g bag

Feta cheese, block, crumbled.

Small onion, chopped.

Pepper, freshly ground.

I started by attempting to make the pastry (don’t do it). Mix together the flour and salt and make a well in the middle. Gradually add water and stir in with a fork until it forms a dough. Its the same method for bread so do it whatever way you’re used to. Knead for a few minutes then divide into 8 balls. Four balls become the base of the pie and four balls become the top.

Dust your surface with a little cornflour, put a ball on the cornflour and then sprinkle a little more cornflour on top of the ball. Roll it out to about the size of your hand, brush it with a little oil and then place another rolled out ball on top. Repeat until you’ve your four balls rolled and stacked but do not brush the top of the final ball with oil. Had enough of balls yet? Next you have to roll out the stack you’ve made to be as thin as you can possibly make it - translucent thin if you can. Make sure you dust with cornflour. Repeat all of the above with the other four balls, so you have two really thin, large sheets of filo pastry. Make sure they’re slightly bigger then your tin.

Then get on with filling which is thankfully simpler than the pastry! Heat up some oil in a pan and throw in a diced onion and fry until translucent. Pile on your spinach and wilt, then throw in your block of feta, smash it up and mix it in. Season with loads of black pepper. Done.

Back to the pastry. Brush your tin with a little oil and roll the pastry around your rolling pin/mop handle and transfer it to the base of the tin. Press it into the corners. Spread the spinach and feta mixture on top of this and then top with the other sheet of pastry. Cut off any excess pastry and kind of roll and squeeeze the two sheets together to form a seal. Finally brush the entire surface with a little oil and bang into a hot oven until the top is golden and puffed.

Serve with left over salata from Afghanistan!

If anyone can successfuly make this pastry will they please let me know. I can’t believe I have been defeated already, and its only country number 2!

No. 1 - Afghanistan has been tried and tasted!

Last Thursday, despite the gorgeous weather and a hangover, I somehow managed to feed a hungry 12 friends, without getting too pissed (beforehand) or dropping anything on my feet. A massive thank you to Luke, Teresa, Gretta, Maeve, Andrea, Katie, Micheal, Kirwan (for photographing the night), Noel, Eoghan, Egle, Donagh - all that came to show their support! I’m already looking forward to the next rendition of Culinisation – Party No. 2!

As for the food, I think we were all surprised at how good it tasted - who knew that Afghanistan rocked such a mean cuisine? Thursdays dastarkhan consisted of a few national and traditional Afghan dishes that were devoured by everyone (no fussy eaters then). I had a few aubergine convertists and we all admitted that the raisins actually made the savory rice! I’ll say it again – who knew!

Qabili Pilau

Qabili Pilau is the national dish of Afghanistan. It is served at all dastarkhan (a floor spread central to Afghan culture) and is a sort of beef and rice dish, topped with fried raisins and carrots. It contains all sorts of spices but is not spicy nor is it an extremely exciting or attractive dish. I wouldn’t recommend eating it on its own but was tasty with the rest of the food - not the star of the show but a necessary addition.

Serves 10 (as a side not a main dish)

Ingredients

500g basmati rice

vegetable oil, for frying

1 onion, diced

750g stewing beef, diced

2 carrots, cut into match stick sized pieces

100g raisins

1 tsp cumin, ground

1tsp cardamon, ground

1 tsp cinnamon, ground

Pinch of Safron

tsp sugar

salt and pepper

boiling water

First thing to do is fry the diced onion in the oil until fairly dark. Then add the diced beef and brown lightly. When the meat is sealed add about a pint of water, salt to taste, and the teaspoons of cinnamon, cumin and cardamom. Cover and let simmer until the meat is tender. I bought the cheapest cut of beef because I’m broke and it took me a good 3 hours for the meat to tenderise, but it depends on what part you buy. When the meat pulls apart easily in you fingers, remove from juice and set aside.

To get on with the topping, cut the carrots into matchstick sized pieces – I found this a pain in the ass. Fry them in some oil and add a teaspoon of sugar. Cook until they’re browned. Remove the carrots and throw in the raisins. You are supposed to cook them until they absorb all the oil and swell up. I refrained from adding yet more oil and they burned. To be honest you could just skip frying them at all and just throw them on as they are.

Boil the meat juice up and throw in the rice, salt to taste, pinch of saffron and enough boiling water to come up to, say, 5 cm over the rice. You’ll probably need to add more later. Cook until rice is just under done. Mix back in the meat to the rice. Scatter with the carrots and raisins, cover and bake in a moderate oven (my oven is crazy but I’m guessing at about 180 degrees) for about an hour. Make sure it is covered tightly with tin foil to stop any steam escaping when it’s in the oven. This way when you take the lid off there’s a gush of steam. Traditionally you serve it on a large communal platter, but it looks great from the pot and saves on the washing up.

Bouranee Baunjan (Baked Eggplant With Yogurt)


This was the clear favorite of the night and as I mentioned earlier, some of my friends were not only converted, but raving about aubergines. However, although it had all of the carnivores more excited about veggies than meat, the aubergines were pretty much deep-fried and this may contribute to some of its deliciousness. I would recommend this recipe to anyone – at all. This recipe is dedicated to Eoghan.

Serves 6 – 8 as a main

Ingredients

6 aubergines, sliced length ways

lots of salt

vegetable oil for frying

2 bell peppers, I used red, sliced thinly

2 punnets of cherry tomatoes, chopped

water

jar of tomato sauce (the usual pasta sauce)

½ tsp coriander

½ tsp tumeric

tsp freshly ground pepper

fresh coriander

250g tub of greek yogurt (or lebene if you can get it)

Cut the stems from the aubergine and slice them length ways into 1cm thickness. You can peel them but the skin is in my opinion the essence of the aubergine. Spead the slices out and sprinkle liberally with salt. Leave for 30 minutes and dab off the water with kitchen paper. Turn them over and repeat with the other side. This process makes this dish quite tedious but salting them means that they will brown in the pan later.

Next you need to fry the auberines – they absorb the oil in the pan like nothing I’ve ever seen. Cover the base of the pan in oil and fry until lightly browned. You’ll need to add more oil when you turn them. I did mine in batches in two separate pans. Set aside on a plate. In the same pan, fry up the onions and peppers in yet more oil, until the onions are soft.

Now its time to start assembly – it’s a bit like lasagna. Get yourself an ovenproof dish and start with a layer of aubergine, then a layer of onion and peppers, then sprinkle on some chopped tomatoes. Repeat until you’ve ran out of ingredients. It doesn’t matter which ingredient ends up on top. Heat the jar of tomato sauce with the ground coriander in the pan you cooked the peppers and onion, and spread over the top. Bang it in the oven for about 30 minutes at around 180 degrees.

Once again, this dish is supposed to be served on a platter, where you spread a layer of yogurt on the platter, carefully transfer the aubergine on top of that and then top with more yogurt. I however am to lazy for that (and do not yet even own a platter) and so served it straight from the oven, with the yogurt dolloped on top and sprinkled with coriander leaves. Delicious with pita bread for moping up the juices.

Kebab e Murgh (Yogurt Marinated Chicken Kebab)

This is a really simple recipe. It just involves throwing everything into a bowl together, leaving it over night and grilling it. As long as you have a decent grill (which I don’t) this should be a walk in the park. For handiness sake, because I was cooking for a large number of people I put the chicken on skewers but this isn’t totally authentic. You can just turn them individually under the grill.

Serves 6 -8

Ingredients

500g  tub of natural yogurt

7 cloves of garlic, minced

2 tsp ground coriander

2 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp salt

1 tsp ground black pepper

dash of garlic powder

8 large chicken breasts, cut into large chunks

Throw everything into a bowl and mix together with your hands to get everything totally incorporated and covered. Leave over night in the fridge. Take them out of the fridge 30 minutes before grilling them. Take off as much of the yogurt marinade as possible (my method was messy and not very effective, just squeezing and squelching it off with my fingers, let me know if you come up with a better solution). Throw the chicken under a really hot grill for about 7 minutes aside (it really depends on how hot your grill is) until slightly charred. Serve hot or cold.

Salata (Salad)

Make this salad, it goes with everything – including Albenia.

Serves 8 – 12

Ingredients

2 punnets of cherry tomatoes, chopped.

3 cucumbers, peeled, core removed and diced.

1 small red onion, diced

bunch of roughly chopped coriander.

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tsp. salt

½ tsp. ground black pepper

Combine all of the ingredients and enjoy the party!

Thanks again to everyone who came, especially  Eoin Kirwan for his photo expertise. Cheers!