No. 31 - Burkina Faso Sleep!

Riz gras I can hardly remember, due to college related sleep deprivation, and cider induced, (lets call it) tipsiness. Not only did I have to worry about not poisoning myself but six others, including the guests of honor, Claire Gillan and Mark Conway (for some reason I feel full names are necessary here). And for their welcome home feast from lands far far away, they were presented with none other than the showstopper riz gras, a.k.a chicken and rice. A humble side dish maybe, but I simply did not have the cognitive skills to achieve anything more accomplished. Even still, I left out a vital ingredient and lost and my camera in the spices drawer.

I remember better, the next day having riz gras for breakfast, lunch and dinner asian style, dashed with soya and sweet chili sauce. The perfect hangover food. Trice.

Serves 6                                                                                     Rating: ⁵/₁₀

6 chicken breasts, cut into cubes

500g rice

1 vegetable stock cube

5 cloves of garlic, chopped

3 hot chilies

1 onion, chopped

4 tomatoes, chopped

4tbsp tomato puree (I forgot this)

salt, pepper and oil for frying

The following is how I think it went.

Chop up the chilies, garlic, tomatoes and onion until very fine. Fry in a large pan for a few minutes. Add the chicken, a little water and continue to simmer until the chicken is cooked through.

Stir in the tomato puree and stock cube. Add the rice, one litre of recently boiled water and simmer until the rice is tender and the water is absorbed.

Serve immediately with finely sliced red onion.

No. 30 – Bulgarian Moussa.k.a Potatoes and Mince

(most desperate pun yet)

I feel like I am repeating myself, but this moussaka tasted exactly like its components – spuds and mince, blatantly obvious maybe, but the best and only possible description. This was the first time we marked a culinised dish out of ten - ten being a roast lamb dinner, zero being not worth naming. It turns out that our marking system became more complicated than I originally intended, but I take culinising very seriously and marking the dishes out of ten should give a sort of structure and order to the randomness.  I also tend to forget how good or lets say, less good some dishes are, and find some difficult to recall at all (Bulgarian moussaka in fact being one of them).

Our marking system was doomed from the start. You can’t compare minced beef to a leg of lamb, because a leg of lamb is intrinsically better and minced beef simply can’t and won’t ever compete. This didn’t seem fair though and so having thought about the dilemma for a while, we decided that the moussaka was a ⁴/₁₀ compared to roast lamb dinner (though it depends how much you like lamb) but an ⁸/₁₀ compared to other mince dishes. The final mark works out as a ⁶/₁₀  average.  By this system we could have gone down the road of comparing moussaka to steak, or lobster, or beans on toast, or liver, or marshmallows. We’re just going to have to come up with another system.  

Moussaka                                                                                                                           Rating: ⁶/₁₀

This Moussaka wasn’t what I thought it would be. I thought Moussaka was like some sort of lasagna with aubergine. Not in Bulgaria. I read somewhere that they claim to have invented it and who am I to contest?

It was a very satisfying and comforting sort of dinner. What else can you expect from spuds and mince with a dollop of yogurt?

500g potatoes, peeled and diced small

500g minced beef

oil for frying

salt and pepper

2 onions, diced

garlic, chopped

4 tomatoes, chopped

handful of cheddar or other hard cheese.

1 egg

500g plain yogurt

1 tsp flour

In a heavy ovenproof dish fry the onions and garlic in some oil until soft. Add in the mince and cook until browned. Season. Add the potatoes, tomatoes, cover and bake in a preheated 180 degree oven for about 45 minutes until the potatoes are cooked.

In the mean time, mix together the egg, half the yogurt, flour and cheese. Pour over the meat and potatoes and bake for a further 15 minutes until the top is golden. Serve with a dollop of yogurt and a few dashes of tabasco.