Tamarind and Thyme

We spent last Sunday night with a squirrel – two actually. I bought these at our farmers’ market (Ealing) and they were sold cleaned and skinned.

Butchering is obviously not my strength. I managed to get off the haunches and some of the forearms and various other bits of meat but couldn’t deal with the main chest cavities. Nothing I read online prepared me for the strong odour of one of the animals; while it certainly wasn’t a rotten meat smell, I just wonder if the squirrel’s scent glands had been accidentally activated.

They were stewed using my default stew recipe. Onions, carrots, (we didn’t have celery), a herb (this time dried oregano), flour, red wine, vegetable stock and a long slow braise.

The flavour? Well, while some of the meat had too much of that scent (discarded), other pieces were totally fine. It’s extremely lean and gamey and well, a bit chickeny. I won’t be rushing to have them again but at least I can say I’ve tried it!

Last week, I came home from work just early enough to catch the tail end of an episode of the Great British Food Revival on BBC2. It was the pork episode and I watched Clarissa Dickson Wright drone on rather soothingly about various rare breed pigs and how tasty they are (I can confirm they are!). One recipe she made was a slow roasted pork belly with anchovies and chestnuts that looked mighty appealing and I went onto the BBC food website to get the accompanying recipe. The recipe listed online was clearly missing a step or two and quantities seemed a bit off; still, I thought perhaps they know what they’re talking about. Well, they didn’t and I had to throw some more beer and water into the bottom of the pan to prevent all the goodies at the bottom from burning. This recipe just confirms that we all need to go with our own knowledge and intuition when it comes to cooking.

Anyway, I suppose it was the curiosity about whether chestnuts and anchovies go together that piqued my interest with this recipe. Surprisingly, they did – the sweetness of the chestnuts mixing with the saltiness of the anchovies and really, one can never go wrong with a slow roasted pork belly. While my pork wasn’t from a rare breed pig this time, I did get it from the farmers’ market and it was loaded with flavour. We served it with kale and celeriac puree, the latter recommended by the television show. I’d never cooked with celeriac before and while it’s not perhaps a puree I’d serve with just any old roast, its celery sweetness complemented the savoury sauce created here.

Slow Roasted Pork Belly with Anchovies and Chestnuts
adapted from that on the BBC Food website.
serves 4.

A good slab of pork belly, skin scored (I think mine was about 1kg but you can definitely use a larger slab; I’ve used up to 1.5kg in the past)
3 tbsps olive oil
1 tin anchovies in olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
200g precooked chestnuts (mine were vacuum packed)
freshly ground black pepper
400mL dark beer
1 tsp salt
50mL brandy

Preheat your oven to 230 Celsius.

Take a roasting pan that can be used on the stovetop and heat it over medium heat. Add the olive oil and the oil from the anchovy tin. When hot, add your chopped onion and fry for about 5 minutes. Chuck in the garlic and fry for another minute. Roughly chop your chestnuts (or not…I quite liked them whole if small) and the anchovies and stir those through. Season well with lots of black pepper and pour over the beer. Stir and take off the heat.

Dry your slab of pork belly thoroughly, especially its skin. Rub the salt into the skin, getting it into the scored skin. Place it on top of the mixture in the roasting tin, ensuring that the skin doesn’t get wet.

Place the roasting tin into the preheated oven. After 20 minutes, turn the temperature down to 160 Celsius. Roast for 3 hours. Check it every once in a while to ensure that the stuff at the bottom of the tin hasn’t dried up (and burnt!) and if it’s looking a bit dry, chuck in some water, making sure not to get your pork skin wet.

At the end of the time, check your crackling. If it’s not crackly enough, place your pork (in the tin) under a hot grill and watch it closely. Mine took about 15 minutes under the grill this time but yours might be faster. Crackling!

Let the pork rest for about 10 minutes before slicing and serving with the chestnut and anchovy sauce.

There are a surprising number of Persian restaurants and shops in Olympia, Hammersmith and Chiswick. I’m not sure why there are so many here – does any one know? I’m not one to complain, of course; I adore Persian food and love that it’s all here on my (West London) doorstep. I was a-hankering for some and so last Saturday, Blai and I went out for a date night and while we were turned away from our first choice as it was packed, we managed to find one free table at another equally packed Persian restaurant just across the street from the first. This restaurant was Faanoos; their first restaurant is in Richmond and this Chiswick branch is their second.

We started with their Mixed Mezeh for 2 (£7.95) and it was a good introduction to what I suppose must be their most popular dips.

Going clockwise from the top there’s:

• Mast o Moosir (yogurt with wild garlic), which was gloriously garlicky and zingy
• Pickles – I spotted cauliflower, cabbage, carrots in the mix; they were quite strong
• Salad Olivieh (chopped potatoes, eggs, chicken and pickled cucumber mixed with mayonnaise and lemon juice) – this is essentially a Russian salad all mushed up and surprisingly, it tasted fantastic!
• Kashk e Bademjan (fried aubergine and onions with yogurt puree) – pretty good but I felt like something was missing from it… that said, I have no idea what it should taste like

Next time, we’ll likely just order one or two of our favourites rather than go all out with the platter again. To go with all this, we had a round of Persian bread (£1), freshly baked in the oven next to us. That man was churning out flatbread after flatbread; the demand was pretty relentless. The small restaurant gets through quite a bit of bread.

We split two main courses. First, a grill, of which there are quite a few on the menu: Chelo Kabab Koobideh (£6.50), which was two skewers of a most tender and juicy minced lamb with a side of saffron rice, grilled tomatoes and salad. The only quibble was that I prefer my tomatoes to be much more grilled, allowing for you to squish the hot juices into your rice. Also, we weren’t brought any butter (lovely melted into your rice too) – they forgot. If they forget to bring you butter, remember to ask for it!

Second, an Okra stew (£6.95) full of lots of soft baby okra and lamb that fell apart at a touch of the fork, all in a thin tomato and garlic sauce. Rice on the side, of course. The flavours were gentle but extremely soothing and those flavours certainly popped more when the stew had cooled a bit from its piping hotness when it was brought to us.

With a bottle of sparkling water and a glass of doogh, a salty yogurt drink, date night cost us a total of £28. Service was generally good and the space itself was strangely homely… if your home had chopped straw covered walls. It’s well worth a visit if you’re craving something of that ilk in the area.

Faanoos Restaurant
472 Chiswick High Road
London W4 5TT

Did you know that this week is Spam Appreciation Week? I have no idea how these food weeks are allocated but this was one I could get behind. My love of Spam is well documented and I know I’m not the only one! The very kind people at Spam UK got in touch with me through Twitter earlier this week and sent me a few cans as well as an apron and spatula and I’m starting to put those tins into good use.

As I also had a big tub of kimchi gifted to me by Sabrina (thank you!), I decided to combine the two to make a bokkeumbap, a Korean fried rice. There was a very good Korean restaurant down the road from where I live but they closed for a new start (so said the sign on the door) and they used to serve the most delicious fried rice, all oily and surprisingly tasty despite the few ingredients in it. It was this I had in mind, as well as a kimchi fried rice we had in Pacific Plaza, when I cooked this. While that version of kimchi bokkeumbap had fatty belly pork in it, I chose to use Spam; the tinned luncheon meat is very popular in Korea and its meaty saltiness pairs well with that spicy cuisine. And with kimchi – yum!

This really hit the spot a few nights ago – it’s fast (so long as you have the ingredients in the fridge, including cold cooked rice) and gorgeous and overall, is some serious comfort food. It’s best with older, stronger kimchi but the you could fry younger kimchi for longer to get more flavour. Do you like it spicier? – Add some gochujang or Korean chilli powder. If you don’t like fried eggs with liquid yolks (really?), you could cook the eggs before hand into scrambly bits to stir into the bokkeumbap near the end. Tweak it all you like as it’s quite adaptable; all fried rice is.

Before I share the recipe for kimchi and spam bokkeumbap, I just wanted to share another fried rice variation I learned about recently from Austin Bush’s blog. Khao phat Amerikan is a Thai American fried rice and I wonder if it is available outside Thailand. It’s fried rice with ketchup and raisins (?!) and is served with fried hot dogs, fried chicken and ham on the side. Quite often there are also fried croutons and a fried egg involved. From what I gather, some innovative cook took the elements of an American breakfast (not unlike a British fry up) and turned them into something a little more Thai. I can imagine fried Spam on the side of this too but strangely, I’m not that keen on recreating this at home. Serve me a kimchi and spam bokkeumbap anytime!

Kimchi and Spam Bokkeumbap
serves 2 regular eaters or 3 on a diet. Hmm.

3 tbsps sunflower oil
1 small onion, finely diced
1 small carrot, finely diced
200g of your favourite Spam, diced
1 cup chopped kimchi plus whatever kimchi juices you can salvage
cold, cooked rice for two (use Korean or Japanese rice…the slightly sticky short grain kind), about 700mL in volume
1 spring onion, finely sliced
1 tsp sesame oil
salt to taste
toasted sesame seeds
2 eggs
gim – Korean toasted seaweed (optional)

Prepare all your ingredients. Chop, dice, slice.

Heat a wok or large pot over medium heat and add the oil. Throw in the onion and carrot and saute under tender – about 5-10 minutes. Add the Spam and continue frying for another 2 minutes. Add the kimchi and continue frying. If you’re kimchi is quite fresh, fry for longer to deepen the flavours. If you’d like it a bit spicier, you can add a bit of gochujang at this stage. Pour in the kimchi juices. Break the rice up with your hands (get them wet to prevent it sticking too much) and then add it to the pan. Stir continuously, gently breaking up any lumps of rice. If needed, add a bit more oil… fried rice really does require more oil than you think! When it’s thoroughly combined and all hot, drizzle over the sesame oil, throw in the sliced spring onion and add salt to taste and continue frying and tossing for a couple more minutes to combine thoroughly. Take your fried rice, the bokkeumbap, off the heat.

Heat a frying pan, add a little oil and fry your eggs as you like them. Plate your bokkeumbap, sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds and top with an egg per serving and some gim. Serve.

Last Saturday, I joined Sabrina of Sabrina’s Passions, Sabrina’s mother, and Su-Lin Ong (yes, the other Su-Lin who is the Ong and who is not me!), all excellent company, for a lunch in New Malden. Su-Lin (the other one) had found an article by Tom Parker-Bowles on Su La, a restaurant I’d not come across before owing to its being a little away from the main high street. If you were to get to New Malden by train, it’s a bit of a walk from there; essentially, you’d walk down the high street to the roundabout, turn right (you would turn left for Hyun’s Bakery) and continue walking way past the residential area until you come to a small row of shops. That’s where you’ll find Su La. Of course, if you have a car (the other Su-Lin very kindly drove me there), it’s easy.

We were seated immediately (the table had been booked previously) and settled down to peruse their beautifully bound, and long, menus for a while before deciding on quite the selection of dishes. We were going to feast that lunchtime!

A Korean meal isn’t complete without banchan, the little dishes that accompany the main meal and so a few were ordered. Now, I gotta say – I don’t like the fact that one must order these separately here in London. I’ve not been to Korea but from what I understand, restaurants will usually provide some banchan as complimentary to the meal (it’s definitely the case in Vancouver’s Korean restaurants). I would think the price of these extras would put people off from ordering them and then they wouldn’t experience a full Korean meal. Anyway, enough blathering – here were the kimchi and namul that we ordered. Definitely a good start.

A seafood pajeon came out first. Light and crisp and incredibly moreish this pancake was, with a dip of soy, vinegar and sesame on the side.

A japchae, with its deliciously chewy sweet potato starch noodles, came out next. This was very good but seemed to be lacking in the beef that’s usually dotted throughout; perhaps we didn’t read the menu description properly.

Have you noticed that Korean food is a little more difficult to search for in English due to its lack of a constant transcription to the Roman alphabet (cf pinyin Chinese)? Tteokbokki is one of those words that I’ve also seen as duk bok ki. However it’s spelled, this was tubes of tteok (or deok or duk or…), sticky rice cakes, in a thick chilli based sauce with vegetables, hard boiled eggs and triangles of fried fish cake. I love the chewiness of tteok in savoury dishes like this but I’m still not used to the sweet versions, possibly because I think they should be sweeter.

After we were nearly finished with these dishes, the waitress came over to clear off the tabletop grill. The platter of grilled meats that had been so patiently waiting on the side were about to take centre stage.

And on that platter? Sirloin, pork belly, pork neck, duck. On a separate plate, so that the marinade wouldn’t contaminate the other meats, lay galbi (marinated beef short rib).

After removing the tabletop cover, the waitress swiftly and confidently carried a bucket of hot charcoal, set it into the recess and slapped a grill on top. She threw on a few pieces of meat at a time, starting with the duck and pork belly and finishing with the galbi, letting them grill till golden brown and cutting the pieces up with scissors halfway through cooking.

We snatched pieces off the grill with our chopsticks and lay the hot pieces of meat on cool leaves of lettuce (which had to be ordered separately), dabbing the tops with seasoned fermented bean paste or gochujang, chilli dressed shreds of spring onion, kimchi and possibly a slice of grilled garlic or a bit of fresh green chillli before wrapping the parcels up and shoving them into our mouths. Normally one would also wrap rice in there too but we opted for this “lighter” way of eating it and would have our rice separately in a bibimbap. Apart from the two sauces mentioned previously, there was also a soy, vinegar and sesame dip and a sesame oil, salt and pepper dip for the meats. All delicious. I’d never had duck in a Korean barbecue before but this was lovely with all the fat melting away during the grilling process. And while the pork belly (samgyeopsal in Korean) was also very very good, it’s the tender, juicy pork neck that may have won top spot on my list of favourite pork cuts.

After we had finished most of our meats, the waitress asked if she could bring out the bibimbap. The sizzling dolsot (stone pot) came out and its contents (rice, vegetables, raw beef, egg) were tossed with plenty of gochujang-based sauce. We scraped the pot to get at the best part – the crispy crusty rice.

At the end of our meal, a cut orange was brought out for dessert. I adore the way Korean restaurants present their fruit.

The bill, with service and barley tea for everyone, came to £86 between the four of us. Very reasonable considering all that meat! We were pretty stuffed too. If you’re going to head down here, I’d recommend that you ask about the private rooms with the traditional low Korean tables. We were actually first directed to a somewhat private, sectioned off room (with a regular table and chairs) but opted to sit in the main room to see what everyone else was eating!

But we weren’t finished yet. After lunch, we made our way further down the road to H Mart, following the instructions given to us by the waitress at the restaurant. The opening of this large American-Korean supermarket, the first in the UK, was obviously a big deal in the community as everyone knew about it and knew how to get there too and it had only been open for a week! From Su La, you continue down Kingston Road (away from that roundabout) and go past the railway bridge. Take the first right (opposite the Carpet Right on the left) and then turn right again. There are signs just past the railway bridge.

I am a fan of the H Marts in Vancouver and have always wanted one of these here. And it didn’t let me down – it’s big (though not as big as the one I visited in Vancouver) and is chock full of Korean groceries. The fish and meat counters looked very good and the vegetables are very fresh. There’s a large freezer section with lots of dumplings and vegetables and some Chinese and Japanese goods. There are even tables set up throughout the supermarket for us to sample various goods; I quite enjoyed the kimchi sample table. I bought as much as I could carry: rice, crispy seaweed, snacks, Korean chilli powder, tteok, two types of mushroom, radish kimchi, Korean pears. Sadly, there’s no food court (we had been hoping to stop there for tea) but that didn’t stop Su-Lin (not me) from buying coconut ice cream mochis for us all to eat in the car park, standing around our shopping trolley!

It is difficult to get to without a car though and because of this, I’ll still frequent the little shops near the train station. Still, it’s nice that H Mart’s made its way across the pond. Sabrina’s post on the afternoon has some photos of the inside of H Mart; I was too busy shopping!

Su La
79-81 Kingston Road
New Malden, Surrey
KT3 3PB

H-Mart
Unit 1, Leigh Close
New Malden, Surrey
KT3 3NW
(Take the road opposite the Carpet Right on Kingston Road)