RECIPE: chicken saag and coriander chapatis

chicken saag and coriander chapatis

As the ever-perceptive Homer Simpson once sang whilst shaking his backside in a conga line during an archetypal The Simpsons moment, “You don’t win friends with salad”.

Unless, you can transform a load of greens into something everyone wants to eat - a curry. A great tasting one at that and likely to be healthier than most ‘salads’ on the market.

I've come across a fantastic 7,000 word article covering the 34 science-backed health benefits of spinach written by Helen Nichols over on Well-Being Secrets. Awesome bedtime reading, should you still needed convincing about spinach.

A chicken saag is a curry consisting of the meat cooked in a spiced sauce made from some type of leafy green - mustard leaves, finely chopped broccoli, fenugreek (methi) or in this case, spinach. There is a lot of good in this dish and it’s low in fat. So it’s a good option for all the self-restraint we’re (supposed to be) exercising at this time of year. Serve with rice to mop up the sauce, or some warm and freshly made coriander chapatis (below).


Chicken Saag 

Serves 4

260g fresh spinach leaves
1 thumb sized piece of fresh ginger, chopped
3 green chillies
2 garlic cloves
30ml rapeseed oil
8 whole black peppercorns
3 bay leaves
1 tsp cumin seeds, ground (or ready ground cumin)
1 tsp coriander seeds, ground (or ready ground cumin)
2 small white onions, chopped
4 tomatoes, chopped
2 tsp mild madras curry powder
1 tsp garam masala
4 skinless chicken thighs with bone, flesh scored
4 skinless chicken legs with bone, flesh scored
5 tbsp low fat yoghurt
Sea salt
Coriander leaves (optional)


Cook the spinach in a pan with a tight fitting lid on a medium heat until wilted - there is no need to add water or oil. Push it about a bit with a wooden spoon. Once wilted, transfer the spinach to a food processor. Add the ginger, chillies (de-seed them if you want to remove some of the heat), garlic and 50ml of water. Blitz until smooth.

Pour the oil into the same pan and on a medium heat, fry the peppercorns and bay leaves until the former begin to pop. Add the cumin and coriander, stir, and cook for a further minute. Add the onions and a pinch of salt, stir and cover. Cook until soft and brown, about 10 minutes - give the onions a nudge now and again with the spoon to prevent any sticking.

Tip Retain any water that condenses in the lid when you lift it to stir - allow it to fall back into the onions.

Add the tomatoes, stir and cook for another 3 minutes. Add the garam masala and curry powder and cook for further 3 minutes.

To this pan add the spinach mix, combine well and cook for another 5 minutes. Stir in the yoghurt, a tablespoon at a time. When fully mixed, add the chicken and combine until they're well coated. Simmer with the lid on until the chicken is cooked through, about 20 minutes. Remove the lid and raise the heat so the sauce begins to boil. Keep stirring and turn off the heat once you’re happy with the consistency of the sauce. Taste for seasoning and feel free to add more yoghurt if it has too much chilli heat.

Serve in warmed bowls with a sprinkle of fresh coriander leaves, a drizzle of yoghurt and some coriander chapatis (below). And by the way, this tastes even better the next day.

288 kcal per serving*

Coriander Chapatis

Makes 15

300g chapati flour
1 tsp rapeseed oil
80g coriander leaves, finely chopped
5g sea salt
2 tbsp low fat natural yoghurt

Sift the flour into a large bowl and add the coriander, salt and oil. To this add 3/4 cup of warm water and the yoghurt. Combine in the bowl with a wooden spoon until it creates one mass and then turn out onto a floured surface. Knead for 10 minutes or until smooth, no longer sticky and it springs back if you poke it. Place the dough into an oiled bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave to rest in a warm place for 15 minutes.

Divide the mass into 15 equal pieces. To do this weigh the whole mass and divide by 15 - the result is how much each piece should weigh, around 45g. Roll each piece into a ball between the palms of floured hands. With a rolling pin and on a floured surface, roll each ball out into the shape of a rough circle with the thickness of a 50p coin (around 2mm).

Heat a non-stick frying pan or tawa over a high heat for a minute. Put a chapati in the pan - when it begins to puff up and bubble, turn it over. You want each side to have browned and blistered a bit. Repeat with the rest of the chapatis. Don't over cook these or they will become hard.

Tip As each chapati is cooked, place it in a pile with the rest and keep the pile wrapped in a clean tea towel, rather than on a cold plate for example. This will prevent any condensation gathering under the bread.

These are wonderful eaten warm and fresh. Alternatively, keep them in an airtight container and consume within a day or so. Or you can wrap them in cling film and freeze them. If you do, place them in a warm oven to thoroughly heat up before serving.

71 kcal per chapati*

Afiyet olsun.

*calories are a close approximation calculated using My Fitness Pal.

ba shan, soho - review

Chinese restaurants get a lot of stick. At least, they do from me. This is because most of them are appalling. 

Greasy piles of substandard meat and carbs swimming in radioactive sauces, slopped onto plates or stuffed into tin vessels, with a side of self-loathing big enough to make you want to drain the MSG directly from your veins. Menus read of generic fried vegetables with a stock protein in a thick sauce, dozens of chow mein options, and a selection of sweet and sour dishes and fried rices; plates of fodder adapted to be blander, thicker and sweeter for the Western palate. This is not what Chinese people eat. 

These routine menu items do nothing to accurately represent the full repertoire of Chinese cuisine: the country is enormous, as is the range of cooking that goes on there. Food is regional and style is distinctive, with influences taken from resources, climate, geography, history, cooking techniques and lifestyle.

The province of Hunan is located in the south-central part of China; a little piece of it can also be found in Soho with the name of Ba Shan above the door. Owned by the people who run the Szechuan sister, Barshu, over the road, it boasts an all Hunanese menu developed with Chinese food expert Fuchsia Dunlop. If your idea of a great meal is having your chops whalloped with fire and flavour, there is little need to entertain the thought of dining anywhere else in town.

Piquant preserved yard-long beans chopped into chewy segments provided an unusual but stellar texture for the vegetable. Stir-fried with stiff boards of salty Chinese bacon and slithers of preserved crisp garlic, it was a piled high plate of spicy and savoury splendour. 

Square slabs of crispy fried tofu with soft middles saturated with black bean sauce squelched between the teeth, the dark viscous extract coating the inside of the mouth with its sloppy fermented pungency. Both plates were furnished with festive chunks of hot green chillies and even hotter red and both had me at their complete mercy - these are precisely the sort of flavour sensations my palate craves for on a daily basis.

A heap of aubergine mush pounded into submission with garlic and sesame presented still in its mortar, and a plate of slippery wood ear fungus, did wonders at pacifying blistering tongues. The glistening quivering dark mushrooms looked freshly hauled from a sea bed; dressed with vinegar, garlic and chillies they were cool, tangy, crunchy and slipped down barely touching the sides.

The restaurant decoration keeps with tradition, with Chinese lanterns, dark wood and walls adorned with images of Chairman Mao. Service was perfectly acceptable; whilst perplexity flashed across the faces of several waiters at the request of additional coriander (a request left unfulfilled - ‘it’s just for decoration, we don’t have any more’), tea was topped up, words were said smiling and despite advance warning of a 1.5hr time limit for the table, we were there for two with no problem. In other words, for a Chinese restaurant, the service was excellent.

The heat from Hunanese cuisine, whilst almost ubiquitous in its presence, is less of the type that leaves a fat tongue hanging out of your mouth in a desperate search for cold lactose. It’s more penetrating than that, permeating through to your core and the very marrow of your bones, leaving a subtle tingling sensation at the corners of your mouth on the way in. I don’t know how they do this, but it’s excellent. 

This is food that doesn’t just pay a visit to your taste buds, it conquers them outright. Planting the flag of flavour firmly into its new found territory to mark its occupation, the food from Ba Shan will leave an impression deep enough that you won’t be able to hold off your next visit for too long.

Liked lots: all of the food; the location
Liked less: was a little quiet at the start, but background music played later on; the menu link on their website is broken (prevents pre-dining anticipation build up)
Good for: authentic, fresh, real, regional Chinese food at good prices; blasting away a cold

My rating: 4/5

Afiyet olsun.

imam bayaldi - turkish stuffed aubergines in olive oil

Any dish named after a tale involving an Ottoman cleric going weak at the knees due to its outstanding flavour is doing pretty well in the self-promotion department. Which is the case for imam bayaldi, literally translating from Turkish as ‘the imam swooned’. A physical reaction I often experience myself when consuming something great, so I totally get this guy.

Aubergine is one of the most revered ingredients across the Middle East, and this popular zeytinyağlı (olive oil) dish is one of the favourite ways to eat it in Turkey. It pulls no punches when it comes to the inclusion of the light green nectar; it is unashamedly oily and all the superior for it. 

Consisting of braised aubergines stuffed with an onion, tomato, garlic and herb mix and cooked in olive oil, its form breaks down to that characteristic and incredibly flavoured oily mush that this glossy purple fruit does so well. Different nuances of this style of eating aubergine can be found across Turkey and the Middle East and is almost unanimously adored by all who reside there; it's surely the best way to consume these tear-dropped treats.

On a recent trip to Istanbul (see my 10 Things to Eat in Istanbul post), I actually had this dish for the first time (how I had managed to avoid it until then I'm note entirely sure) and indulged in a bit of swooning myself. It was however sitting in a pool of olive oil and to conserve all of our arteries, I've used quite a bit less in my recipe than the purists would be happy to let slide, I suspect.
Imam bayaldi is normally eaten as a mezze (starter) and traditionally would accompany other small dishes to whet the appetite prior to the main meal. Therefore, half an aubergine is considered as one portion here. Should you wish for it to take soul centre stage, then accompany it with some quality bread to help mop up any remaining oily goodness.

Imam Bayaldi

Makes 6 starter portions

3 medium aubergines
6 small tomatoes
3 small white onions
4 cloves of garlic
2 tsp sumac
2 tsp dried mint
2 tbsp lemon juice
Extra virgin olive oil (a fair amount)
Sea salt (a fair amount)
Fresh flat leafed parsley (not included in these photos as I didn't have any, but do get it)

Wash the aubergines and peel alternating strips of the skin with about an inch thickness. Put them in a bowl, coat with sea salt and leave for 20-30 mins. The salt will draw out the bitter liquid from the fruit, and the stripes allow the aubergine to absorb more flavour during cooking.

In the meantime, make your stuffing mix. First you want to peel the tomatoes; the easiest way to do this is to lightly score a cross at one end of each tomato, plunge it into a bowl of freshly boiled water for a few seconds, and when you take them out the skin will easily peel away from the cross.

Finely slice the onions and grate the garlic and gently fry these in a very generous glug of the olive oil until they begin to go translucent. When cooked, put these in a bowl and combine with the roughly chopped skinned tomatoes, sumac, dried mint, lemon juice, salt and pepper and a good glug of extra virgin olive oil. Combine thoroughly. If you do have the parsley, roughly chop a good handful and combine with this mix. Set aside.

When your aubergines have had their 20 - 30 minutes simply wipe away the salt with kitchen paper. Peel off the little green bits around the base of the stalk. Slice the aubergines in half lengthways and try to slice right through the stem so half a stem remains on each portion. On the fleshy sides, cut a cross but do not go all the way through to the skin, and stop before you reach the edges of the aubergine.

In a couple of large pans, coat the bases with a very generous glug of olive oil and when it's hot, add the aubergines. You want to cook all sides so they obtain colour and begin to go soft. You may need to add more olive oil if it all gets absorbed.

Preheat the oven to 180C (fan).

Pack your aubergine halves into an oven dish, fleshy side up. Stuff each portion with some of the mix - try to push it right into the crosses. Pile any remaining mix on top of them. Drizzle with a further generous glug of olive oil. Add a splash of water to the base of the oven dish, and cover tightly with kitchen foil. Cook in the oven for 1hr 15mins to 1hr 30mins - it really depends on how soft you like your aubergine flesh.

When cooked, remove from the oven and allow to cool. This dish should be eaten at room temperature, so if you keep it in the fridge do take it out before hand to warm up prior to serving. Eat with other mezze dishes (perhaps some dolma), with quality warm bread and perhaps a little strained yoghurt.

Afiyet olsun.

menemen - turkish eggs with sumac yoghurt

Whenever I utter the name of this rather wonderful staple of the Turkish breakfast table, I inadvertently but consistently slip into spitting some old school 50 Cent lyrics into my air-microphone: 'Many men; many, many, many, many men Wish death upon me Lord I don't cry no more Don't look to the sky no more' A blast from the past that were my university days each time. I of course know no further lyrics to this ‘song’. Whatever did happen to Fiddy C anyway? I’m not entirely sure anyone cares. Questionable London clubs frequented in 2003 aside, menemen is a rather fabulous and different way to eat eggs with the addition of tomatoes and peppers. The traditional recipe sees the eggs scrambled, but I’ve left them unbroken and with dippy yolks for cascading and deep orange bread accompaniment. Mildy spiced and very hearty, this is a great example of the course of the day the Turks do so exceptionally well. Serve with chai and the best quality bread you can find and if it’s topped with sesame seeds, even better.

Menemen with sumac yoghurt

Serves two, or one very hungry person (i.e. me)

For the eggs

1 x green pepper, finely chopped

1 x large green chilli, finely chopped

2 x garlic cloves, grated

1/2tsp cumin seeds

300ml sieved tomatoes

Handful of spinach

2 x eggs

1 x lemon

Olive oil

Small bunch of fresh parsley

For the yoghurt

2 x heaped tbsp strained yoghurt

1/2 x garlic clove, grated

Generous pinch of sumac

Chilli flakes (optional)

Salt

Olive oil

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Pour a glug of olive oil into a saucepan and on a low-medium heat, gently fry the garlic and cumin seeds for a couple of minutes. Add the pepper and chilli and fry for a few more minutes until they are soft.

Add the sieved tomatoes and let bubble for a few minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste and a squeeze of lemon juice. Turn off the heat, add your spinach leaves and stir until they're wilted in the sauce.

Pour this mixture into a shallow but wide oven proof dish. Create a couple of wells in the sauce for the eggs. Crack one egg into a cup then carefully pour it into one of the wells. Repeat with the second egg. Place in the oven until the whites become opaque but the yolk remains runny.

In the meantime create the yoghurt by combining all the ingredients and topping with a pinch of sumac and drizzle of olive oil.

When the eggs are ready, sprinkle with a little coarse sea salt, a few chilli flakes and some chopped parsley. Serve with toasted Turkish bread.

Afiyet olsun.

fat-free creamy beetroot and thyme dip

There are few ingredients that have as intense a colour as the deep flesh of beetroot. Combine purple with the white of quark and you'll end up with a bowl full of colour and goodness that will brighten up any spread.

This dip combines the earthiness of beetroot with the sweetness from soft roast garlic but the clinching flavour here has got to be the thyme. When wazzed up with the cream cheese, you'll be left with a sin-free thick and creamy dip that goes with almost anything. I keep a bowl of this in the fridge as often as possible and have it as a side with a range of dishes from fish pie, to left over pizza, to spreading it on toast and topping it with sardines. An all round winner - I am yet to introduce it to someone who hasn't fallen for it.

Quark
If you haven't heard of quark before, it's time to get acquainted. Meaning “curd” in Slavic, quark is a soft, white and un-aged cheese made from whey. It has a much lower fat content than other cream cheeses (99.8% fat-free) and is popular in Scandanavia and Eastern Europe. Where a dish requires a voluptuous creaminess, I often use quark in place of higher fat alternatives. It both cooks well and is also excellent used in desserts. Best of all, you'll find it in all the standard supermarkets.

Fat free creamy beetroot and thyme dip

250g quark
3 x medium beetroots
4 x garlic cloves
small bunch of thyme
salt and pepper
olive oil

Pre-heat your oven to 180C (fan). Place the beetroot (whole) and garlic cloves in an oven dish and drizzle a little olive oil to coat. Seal the dish with tin foil and place in the oven until the beetroot is soft and can be pierced to the centre with a knife.

Tip Be sure to put the beetroot in whole. If you chop them up their juices will bleed during cooking.

Tip Take the garlic cloves out as soon as they're soft - they'll be done some time before the beetroot. If you leave them in too long, they'll go hard and brown.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool. When they're cool enough to habdle, peel off the skins - there's no need for a peeler as they'll come away in your fingers. Quarter the beetroots and squeeze out the garlic from their skins. Put them in a food processor along with the quark and the leaves from a good few sprigs of thyme. Season with salt and pepper and wazz. Be sure to taste the dip and season further as you wish - you may want more thyme or more seasoning. Spoon into a serving bowl and top with a few more thyme leaves.

Alfiyet olsun.

ricotta dumplings

There are few things that remind me more of how much I love Italian food than the perfectly complimenting aromas from gently frying garlic, cooking canned tomatoes and torn basil leaves. Representing the colours of the Italian flag, these ingredients are some of the key vertebrae that make up the backbone of this cuisine and once my senses have clocked their presence, the anticipation of what delights will follow is almost frantic.

Italian cuisine is generally very simple, allowing quality ingredients to steal the limelight rather than dulling their impact with too much fuss. Despite this simplicity, it’s incredible just how many restaurants manage to get it wrong. Notice my restaurant review page – there isn’t a single Italian venue on there. I am yet to eat at a really good quality Italian restaurant in London that can be compared to the pastas and pizzas I’ve been fortunate enough to savour in Naples (so the bar is set pretty high). It’s relatively easy to quickly tot-up a hit-list of quality French restaurants (often high-end), or really good and reasonably priced Asian venues, for example. But finding an authentic trattoria that stays true to the food and uses quality fresh ingredients with everything homemade (including the mozzarella – it’s best eaten the day it’s made and it only takes a few hours to make from scratch), seems to be an impossible task. Perhaps I’m not looking in the right places – if anyone does have recommendations for excellent Italians in London, please share them.

Genarro Contaldo and Antonio Carluccio

In the meantime, it’s necessary to make Italian food at home. And that’s no bad thing. In my opinion there’s no better inspiration than the dishes cooked from The Two Greedy Italians series starring Gennaro Contaldo and Antonio Carluccio – two clearly very close friends and evangelists of the cuisine. The passion and love they have for their food, the humour they use and the genuine chemistry between them on the screen is both completely inspiring and heart-warming. I honestly don’t think there’s a better cookery show on the box, and I watch a lot of them. Consequently, I have the recipe books from each of the two series and for a quick and simple meal, I opted for the ricotta dumplings. The slightly sweet cheese and tangy tomatoes combined with the yielding plumpness of the light dumplings and aromas from the garlic and basil present to you a plate of nothing other than comfort and delight. Fight these grey May skies and open your home to the tastes from the Amalfi coast.

Ricotta Dumplings

‘These little dumplings, made from a few staple Italian larder ingredients, are traditionally made in my home village of Minori on the feast day of the town’s patron saint’ – Gennaro Contaldo

For the dumplings
200g 00 flour, plus extra for dusting
225g ricotta
3 free-range egg yolks
30g freshly grated parmesan
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
Salt and black pepper

Tip 00 flour is very fine flour and is typically used when making pasta. You shouldn't have a problem finding it in the supermarket.

For the sauce
6 tbsp olive oil
3 garlic cloves, peeled, cut into thick slices
1 chilli, sliced
2 x 400g tinned plum tomatoes, each tomato chopped in half
Few basil leaves

Mix the flour, ricotta, egg yolks, Parmesan, nutmeg and seasoning together in a large bowl to form a soft, moist dough. Tip the mixture out onto a floured work surface and knead for 3-5 minutes. Roll the dough into a long, thin sausage shape, then cut into dumplings about 2cm/1in long. Cook the dumplings for 3-4 minutes in a large saucepan of salted boiling water.

Meanwhile for the sauce, heat the olive oil in a frying pan and fry the garlic and chilli for one minute, then add the plum tomatoes. Bring to the boil and simmer for five minutes. Turn the heat off and stir in some of the torn basil leaves. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Remove the dumplings from the pan with a slotted spoon and mix them in with the tomato sauce. To serve, spoon the dumplings onto a warmed serving plate and sprinkle over the remaining basil leaves.

Alfiyet olsun.

rosemary and garlic focaccia

This weekend has been most pleasant. Partly because of the sunshine, partly because I've been able to fully indulge in my hobbies. A combination of it being the weekend, spring (optimal planting time) and the sun donning its hat has meant an inevitable trip to my local nursery in Merton. I once again spent too much time and money on plants, but few things give me more satisfaction than putting something in the ground and watching it live and transform, attract wildlife, die back into the earth, and return next year. I can, and do, spend hours just observing my garden. There is always something going on, especially at this time of year. Watching fat furry bees heavy and drunk on pollen meandering from one petal platform to the next; pulsating peristaltic worms burrowing into the dark and cool depths of the borders; watching a male robin 'courtship feed' his mate from the sunflower seed feeder, getting her ready for imminent egg-laying. The list goes on. I don't have a large garden, but the life within it and the immense pleasure it gives me is deeply comforting.

So I got to do a lot of digging, lifting, planting, sitting, watching, listening in it today. The wonderful weather called for sustenance to match, and so in between admiring my anemones and pandering over my passionflower, I decided to rustle up a foccacia to have with dinner, thus allowing me to satisfy another slightly more obvious hobby of mine, cooking (and subsequently, eating). A focaccia is a flat oven baked Italian bread, wonderfully savoury and full with the flavour of good olive oil. It can be topped with a variety of typically Mediterranean toppings of your choice and is one of the easiest breads to make. It's also made from ingredients you're likely to already have in stock - a perfect impulse bake.

Rosemary and garlic focaccia

Makes one large focaccia, serves 8-10

500g strong bread flour, plus extra for dusting

1½ tsp salt

Pinch of caster sugar

Extra-virgin olive oil

2 x 7g sachets fast-action dried yeast

Olives (whatever colour you like)

Small handful fresh rosemary leaves

A bulb of garlic

Put the flour into a large bowl, tip the sugar and yeast on one side, and the salt on the opposite side. Make a well in the centre and pour in one tablespoon of the extra-virgin olive oil. Add 300ml of lukewarm water into the well and combine with your hand until it all comes together.

Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for around 10 minutes until it is smooth and elastic. Shape into a round and drag across the surface with your hands cupped around it to make the skin of the dough ball taught. Place in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with cling film and leave in warm place until the dough has at least doubled in size, about 45 minutes.

Tip You can incorporate other ingredients into the dough when you knead it if you wish, such as chopped up sun dried tomatoes.

before first prove

doubled in size

Once the dough has risen, tip it out into an oiled large sandwich tin or a shallow baking tray (the former will give you a smaller and thicker focaccia, the latter will make it larger and thinner - I did the latter). Push the dough flat and right into the corners with your fingertips so it fills the space. Cover with cling film and leave in a warm place for its second prove, until it's doubled in size again.

Preheat your oven to 250°C/Gas Mark 10, or as high as it will go. When the bread looks puffed up and airy, use your thumb to poke deep holes across the whole surface, almost to the bottom. Fill these holes with olives and garlic cloves. Drizzle the top generously (but not swimmingly) with olive oil and sprinkle with sea salt flakes. Pierce the dough all over with rosemary leaves. 

 

Tip Tilt the tray so the oil covers the whole surface. Also use the back of a teaspoon to ensure the oil has coated the rosemary too.

Bake for about 10 minutes, then turn the oven down to about 200°C/Gas Mark 6 and bake for a further 10 minutes until golden brown.

Focaccia is best eaten warm, but not hot; leave to cool on a wire rack for about 10 minutes before serving, or leave to cool completely.

I also managed to fulfil a third hobby today - blog writing. All in, quite a productive and satisfying weekend.

Alfiyet olsun.