Chimichurri Sauce and Farina

When we normally think of Argentina we tend to think about the people dancing the Tango, wearing red and black and perhaps holding a rose between their teeth. When I think about the rooms where these Tango scenes are played out they are always filmed in dinning rooms laden with food. However searching in to Argentina’s food, away from the posh lifestyle of the Argentine elite is the world of the gaucho, the Cowboy. The cowboy has a special place in Argentina’s culinary history after all they are the ones who worked on the land and provided the food.

A lot of Gaucho food is based on the concept of grilled meat with traditional sides. The gem, however, seems to be the Chimichurri sauce served alongside. Legend has it that a Scotsman was trying to say, “give me curry” (che me curry), some say it was British prisoners asking their Spanish jailers for a condiment to have on the side of their meal “Che mi salsa” which later became corrupted.

I have to say that while making this sauce, my mother was in the kitchen with me and looked rather unimpressed with the list of ingredients. On a couple of occasions she did suggest that we add some more things but I refused! The end result is garlic-y and rather like the green Beurre de Paris sometimes served with steak in France.

Farina, Socca, Basin bread are all pretty much the same: chickpea flour mixed with water, left to stand and then shallow fried in a frying pan or dry fried on a griddle

Our meal consisted of grilled lamb, grilled chicken, sautéed baked potatoes, a plain salad, chimichurri sauce and a slice of farina.

Chimichurri Sauce

Ingredients

1 bunch Fresh Coriander
4 cloves of Garlic
2 Spring Onions
Salt
A pinch of Red Chilli Flakes
Olive Oil
Vinegar

Use a food processor to blitz the spring onions and garlic until coarse. Then add in the coriander (leaves and stems), if the mix is unable to move in the processor because it is too dry add a little water. Blitz again with the salt and red chilli flakes. Finally pour enough olive oil while the mixer is moving and a couple of drops of vinegar to allow the olive oil to emulsify.

Farina
.
Ingredients
Chickpea Flour (basin)
Water
1 teaspoon baking powder

Mix the chickpea flour and baking powder with the water until you have a thick batter. Leave to stand for approximately 10 -20 minutes. Spray spray-oil on to a non stick frying pan and pour on the batter. Check to see if the underside has cooked, then flip over and cook the other side. Repeat the process.

Plantation Banana Custard

This dish goes back to colonial day and while that time has gone so of those dishes live on and this is one of those. Again, this has been done by Keith Floyd and many others. There is very little to say about this dish other than enjoy.

Ingredients – serves 6

3 eggs yolks
25g Doves Farm Plain Flour
25g Brown sugar
¾ cup of milk
½ teaspoon vanilla bean paste
2 bananas

1. Mix together the egg yolks, flour, brown sugar together is a bowl
2. Heat the milk and the vanilla bean paste to allow the vanilla to infuse into the milk
3. Slowly add the hot milk to the flour. Do this a tablespoon at a time. If you do this quickly the eggs will cook too soon. Whisk all the while until the milk is fully incorporated
4. Line a metal muffin tin with silicone muffin/cupcake cases.
5. Lay slices of banana at the bottom of each muffin case
6. Pour on the custard mix until ¾ full
7. Then top each custard with some more banana slices
8. Put in the oven at 200 degrees. At 10 minutes in, top with a little brown sugar and continue to cook for a further 10 minutes.
9. Eat as they are or

Tongabezi Chicken Curry

When deciding to cover foods from different continents for Ramadan this year, I have to say that while I felt I was well informed about food in general, I really didn’t know what to expect about non Arab African food. I was familiar with North Africa food and as a coeliac I now know to remind any waiter not to put any free bread over or under my food. I just really didn’t know what to expect with Africa let alone Zambia.

I found this recipe in Floyd on Africa and pretty much all recipes of Tonzabezi Chicken Curry are variations of his. I have, however, made alterations to suit my palate. I’m sure the late Keith Floyd won’t mind. I’ve put the butternut squash in with the chicken as it adds taste and texture to the chicken. I can’t abide the taste of ‘curry’ powder and never use. I also feel that if you are cooking meat on the bone there really is no need to use stock. The chicken, as they cook, will create their own stock from real bones. I’ve also added cumin seeds because the dish lacked a certain je ne sais quoi until this was added. Finally a sprinkle of fresh coriander makes this perfect.

This dish is soothing, comforting and the dish that you just want to come home to. It really is. Serve with white rice, and the sautéed sweet potato on the side. With plantation banana custard for dessert this was simply perfect. Alhumdulilah.


Ingredients – Serves 4
2 sweet potatoes
1 butternut squash
4 pieces of chicken (I used legs)
2 onions
½ a tin of tomatoes
2 inch ginger
2 garlic cloves
6 cardamon pods
½ teaspoon tumeric
1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
1 teaspoon black pepper corns
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dried chilli flakes
4 teaspoons dried lemongrass or 2 whole bruised lemongrass
2 large red chillies chopped
4 tablespoon of yoghurt
Water
1 tablespoon fresh corriander

1. Chop the butternut squash in to quarters and remove any seeds. Parboil the sweet potatoes whole, with the quartered butternut squash. When you can put a knife through the butternut squash and sweet potato remove from the pan but keep the water. Peel the butternut squash and cut into bit sized cubes. Leave the sweet potato whole.
2. Dice the onions and slowly cook in a pan until translucent before adding the ginger and garlic
3. Add the cumin, tumeric, lemongrass, salt and peppercorns. For the cardamom pods bruise before adding to pan.
4. Allow the spices to toast slightly, stir the spices for about a minute under a medium heat before adding the chicken to the pan and turning the chicken in the spices
5. Add enough water to cover the chicken
6. Add the tomatoes and leave to simmer for about 10 minutes on a medium heat.
7. Add the chopped chillies
8. Add a cup of the sweet potato/butternut squash cooking water to the chicken, along with the cubed butternut squash for about 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked and the butternut squash is soft but still holds its shape.
9. Peel and slice the sweet potato and sautee in pan with a little oil until the sweet potato is slightly crunchy
10. Just before you are ready to serve (ie just before you heat the food for iftari) mix in the yoghurt and heat gently, do not allow to boil otherwise the yoghurt will split. It will still be fine to eat but the sauce will look as if it has bits in.
11. Top with coriander
12. Serve with fresh rice and the sautéed sweet potato along side.

Halva and Mini Pooris

When I was little my mum and dad would sometimes make Halva Poori on a Sunday morning, normally when they had their university friends over to visit. My mum would make the pooris and my dad would make the halva. He would start early in the morning and allow no one in the kitchen except for me. I’d sit up on the worktop next to the cooker (no health and safety issues back then!) and I’d watch him stirring and mixing, making a halva that would melt in your mouth.

Before I knew it he was gone, and so had the recipe. I had no one to ask how to make it, as no one was ever allowed into the kitchen. Any time anyone would make me halva it was not remotely like his halva. It would be oily, gritting, the wrong colour, lumpy, every negative adjective under the sun. I yearned for that halva.

Finally last year after tasting a particularly bad gluten free halva (halva is normally made with semolina) I set myself up with the challenge of making a halva which was both gluten free and met my memories.

Halva
50g Basin/ Ground Chickpea Flour
50g Fine Corn Meal
50g Juvela White Mix
50g Unsalted Butter
50g sugar
1 cardamom pod

1. Boil ½ pint of water with sugar until the sugar dissolves
2. Lower the heat
3. Strip the cardamom pod of its husk and place the seeds and butter into the sugar water
4. Allow the butter to melt
5. Mix the flours together in a bowl and slowly pour into the water
6. Whisk the flour and water with a whisk. Keep the flour moving.
7. Once the mix begins to go sticky, use a spatula to bring it together so that it starts to look more like a dough
8. Using the spatula keep moving the dough, flattening it, moving it to remove any remaining lumps. This process will cook out the flour. Do this for about 5 -7 mins until the halva in cooked
9. Place the halva in a bowl and use the spatula to smooth out the surface.
10. Serve with hot pooris

Mini Pooris
These pooris won’t fluff up like real gluten pooris, however they will have some air pockets making them the closest thing to a poori that I have had since being coeliac.

200g Doves Farm Plain Flour
2 tablespoons ispughul seeds with the husk removed
Water

1. Mix the seeds and flour together
2. Slowly mix in some water until the flour forms a dough
3. Make golf ball sized balls from the dough
4. Roll out on a floured surface, using a clean rolling pin, I prefer to roll them all out at once as it makes it easier to fry. Don’t make them too thin.
5. Half fill a frying pan with oil and heat up the oil and then shallow fry the pooris in there. Cook for about 2-3 mins each side until or until crunchy.

Kaufteh

Kaufteh are meatballs. Most cultures have meatballs and no doubt everyone will say that theirs are the best! To me meatballs are lovely, small enough to shape in the palm of your hand and just a perfect end to a long day.

Ask anyone who knows me, and they will tell you that my favourite food is kaufteh (meatballs from Pakistan). I just adore them. I love the whole process from the making of the meatballs, to peeling the potatoes (and that has to be the only time I love peeling potatoes). Making them gives me so much pleasure that it is abnormal.

I prefer to make the kaufteh in a big batch, then I fry the meatballs, and then freeze them, meaning I can have meatballs without so much work later on.

As always I suggest making your own meatballs and playing around with them until you find a flavour combination which works for you. Kaufteh normally contain finely sliced onion, ginger, garlic, chillies and spices along with herbs mint and coriander. Egg is the only binding agent, there is no need to add flour whatsoever. Kaufteh should be the size of a golf ball. Fry off the meatballs and set aside or freeze and then make the sauce.

Kaufteh sauce
Ingredients – to serve 4
1 small onion
4 cloves garlic ground
2 cm of ginger peeled and chopped and ground
½ a tin of tomatoes
Red chilli flakes to taste
1 green chilli
¼ teaspoon garam masala
¼ teaspoon of ground coriander
¼ teaspoon of tumeric
¼ teaspoon of cumin
1/4teaspoon of black pepper corns
¼ teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon of cinnamon or a small cinnamon stick
1 slightly squashed cardom
Salt to taste

Also required
Approximately 12 meatballs
Approximately ½ the amount of potatoes to meatballs
4 hard boiled eggs - peeled

1. Chop the onion, brown the onions in oil so that they become soft
2. add the ginger and garlic and the tumeric, red chillies flakes, then add the whole spices and add the tomatoes
3. On a medium heat cook the spices off, so that when you move a spoon through the tomatoes the oil is visible as a clear line.
4. Then add the kaufteh, heat them in the paste add enough water to cover the kaufteh and allow to boil.
5. Bring to a simmer and add the potatoes and simmer
6. When a knife goes through the potatoes add the peeled eggs.
7. Allow the eggs to heat through in the sauce for a while so that also absorb the spices add the chopped green chilli.
8. Finally top with coriander and serve with freshly cooked rice.

First Fast

Alhumdulilah last night we completed the first fast of the blessed month of Ramadan insh‘Allah all our fasts and prayers will be accepted.

Yesterday suddenly seemed very hot, in fact so much hotter than normal. Each time I was outside, I would come back in feeling burnt. It felt so strange that it was actually both hot in the morning and in the late afternoon. If it wasn’t Ramadan I doubt I would have been so aware of the heat. Without a doubt I would have gone and bought myself a few ice cold drinks to cool me down.

Alhumdulilah we are so fortunate to go for a day without food or drink knowing what we will eat in the evening, knowing that we can choose what we want. My heart aches when I think about the people starving right now. The stories of the people in the Horn of Africa are dire, may we keep them in our duas and may Allah(swt) rain his mercy down on them, send them rain, food and shelter. Until then insh’Allah please give generously.

http://www.dec.org.uk/

Breakfast Bars

A big issue among coeliacs is breakfast. Breakfast obviously sets you up for the day. There is never a time when this is more in important than in Ramadan. After all Sehri/Suhoor needs to set you up for something like 17 hours if you live in the UK this year. Compare that to a winter fast where the day was barely 10 hours!!

Finding food which fills you up for a long time is a major issue if you are coeliac. Foods which contain whole grain, slow releasing carbohydrates are excellent like wheat, rye, oats and barely…its just that as a coeliac we cannot eat them…not even a grain! Although my body can tolerate pure oats (oats which have not been milled with gluten containing ingredients) I still can’t eat them in large quantities and have to be careful so as such am constantly on the hunt for something which will fill me up and which is obviously gluten free.

Alhumdulilah I discovered that corn meal was really filling when I made mealie pap a few weeks ago and since then I have been experimenting to find other ways of eating it.

These breakfast bars are great, they are very filling. The corn meal is wholegrain which is fantastic for coeliacs and non coeliacs alike, it is also a complex carbohydrate which stays in the body for longer. The sunflower seeds contain magnesium which is important for healthy bones, a must for coeliacs.

When making these bars, I wanted to make something which wasn’t sweet. I appreciate the fact that everyone has different sugar tolerances and so suggest that if you have a sweeter tooth add some more sugar at the start. The sour cherries balance out the sweetness of the dates, while the sunflower seeds add texture. Inshallah this will help fill you up for the long days ahead.

Ramadan Kareem

Ingredients
50g pitted dates chopped in to quarters
25g sour cherries (sweetened dried sour cherries)
25g sunflower seeds
25g sugar (add more to suit your taste)
1 cup of fine corn meal

1. In a pan place ½ a cup of water (this must be the same size cup as you use to measure the corn meal) with the pitted chopped dates
2. Place the pan on a low heat until the dates are soft and the water has taken on the colour of the dates.
3. Pour the sugar into the date water and set aside.
4. Measure out 1 cup of fine corn meal and mix it with ½ of hot water to form a crumb texture.
5. Set aside a ¼ of the corn crumbs
6. In the remaining ¾ corn mix slowly a little water so that it sticks together but is still stiff
7. Add the stiff corn mix to the dates and water and keep on a low heat
stirring all the time, use either a silicone spatula or a wooden spoon.
8. When a ball forms add the remaining corn crumbs and stir
9. Add the sour cherries and sunflower seeds
10. Line a tin/oven proof dish with baking paper (the tin should be
approximately the size of a normal paperback book) and pack the mixture in. Pack it in quite well so that there are no hidden air bubbles.
11. Place in a 200 degree oven on the bottom shelf for 15 mins.
12. After 15 remove from the oven allow to cool, chop into approximately 6 logs.
13. Place the logs on a baking sheet and bake again for a further 20 mins.