Moroccan-spiced carrots

Today I am updating a post from November last year to make use of these glorious heritage carrots from Natoora. Of course, you can just use normal ones or baby carrots as I did originally. The introduction that follows remains the same, but I have edited the recipe.

As a budding young food anthropologist I feel very ambivalent about the name I have just given this recipe. I just spent my summer writing a dissertation querying the very notion that any dish or cuisine can be assigned a nationality. However, the alternative is a bit of a mouthful: “Carrots with preserved lemon, cumin, caraway and coriander seeds”. I could keep things vague, e.g. “Middle-Eastern spiced carrots”, but that only extends the problem, anthropologically speaking. Anyway, the point here is these carrots are bloody delicious and I really ought to leave such musings to my anthropology pages.

This is such a simple recipe. I threw it together for the first time a few weeks back when all I had in the fridge was a bunch of carrots from the farmers’ market and some preserved lemons that I made a few months ago. (Any excuse to use the lemons – they are fabulous.)

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Gilpin's Chicken Tagine Thing

A few weeks ago some very dear family friends of mine all congregated at the Commonwork Farm in Kent to cook for the open day there. They have been doing this annually for many years now but in 2013 it gained particular significance. Our friend Gilpin, who used to be the head chef there, passed away very suddenly and unexpectedly of cancer. We were all left with a little less laughter in our lives. Gilpin was larger than life. We still have a lot of fun together, but we miss his presence keenly. 

A few months after his death the open day gave us all the opportunity to come together and say our goodbyes in an informal way in a place that Gilpin loved and where he was loved. Against the backdrop of bucolic English countryside – rolling hills, wild flowers and the smell of cut grass – we looked on as his wife, Gayle, trudged up and down over a neatly ploughed field scattering his ashes with the help of a ladle she had borrowed from the Commonwork kitchen (unbeknown to the new head chef). She read a goodbye poem to Gilpin and we all laughed and cried and sang and laughed some more. It was sad, it was funny, it was moving and it felt utterly appropriate.

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Loquat chutney

Loquats are a new discovery for me. I had heard of them before I started working at Natoora, but I only tried one for the first time last week. So when I was asked to do a cooking demonstration in the shop this Friday I thought I should experiment a bit with this lovely fruit. 

Loquats have a texture and flavour akin to apricots, but with a sweet and sour element that lends itself well to Asian cooking. In its initial stages, without the Indian spices, this chutney tasted like a fruity Chinese sauce for duck or pork. Had that been my desired outcome, I would have stopped there, but it tasted a little odd as a chutney.

I added cumin, coriander seeds and cardamom and it was transformed. The result: a sweet and sour and sour Indian chutney with warming spices and a little kick.

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Lamb shakshuka with chargrilled aubergine and garlic yoghurt

Inspired by Yotam Ottolenghi

In my last post, I shared Dr Shakshuka’s traditional Israeli shakshuka, which he demonstrates to Ottolenghi in the last episode of Ottolenghi’s Mediterranean Feasts. In this programme, Ottolenghi also makes his own version of shakshuka with beef and smoked aubergine.

“I have a feeling that what I am doing is slightly sacrilegious” says Ottolenghi.

You can see from his amused expression that Dr Shakshuka agrees.

“If you want to call it a shakshuka, then it’s a shakshuka” he says.

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Albondigas árabe – my Moorish meatballs

 

It is a bit cheeky of me to give my meatballs this name, because they are exactly that – mine. They are neither traditionally Spanish nor from the Moors, but they are packed full of Moorish spices and these are used a lot in the south of Spain where the Moorish influence is most prevalent. Indeed the Spanish are rather quick to add this suffix; a little pinch of cumin or all spice seems enough to mark a dish Moorish and so I am following suit. Oh, and a double whammy of alliteration in both languages was too much to resist.

I started out with the intention of making traditional Spanish albondigas, but even those would rarely involve chorizo or paprika, despite these both being typical Spanish ingredients. Then I got carried away and decided on a Moorish theme adding all spice, cumin, nutmeg and ground coriander too. The result was spicier than the meatballs you would typically get in a tapas restaurant in Spain, but it was wonderfully hearty and warming and the chorizo and paprika gave it a deep, smoky flavour. If you prefer something milder you could tone it down by using sweet smoked paprika and skipping the chilli. And for something smoother with less intensity, you might like to try adding thyme in place of the fresh coriander.

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