Cooking The Books

Ceviche

I love to travel.  The older I get the more I want to see the world, experience different cultures and experience the food.  These last few years I’ve been pretty lucky and been to some amazing places. 

The most recent of these was Peru.  When we planned to go to Peru the last thing on my mind was food.  Everyone knows why you go to Peru and that’s to see the Inca remains, to walk the Inca Trail and visit Machu Pichu.  If you’ve got time you also visit the birth of the great Amazon River and if edgy urban sprawls are your thing spend a few days in Lima.  I’d resigned myself to this year’s holiday being a bit of a culinary desert, yes I’d get to eat some guinea pig and a bit of llama but as far as the cuisine went I wasn’t expecting a lot.  The flights were booked way back in February though and the more I started looking into the place the more I noticed food being mentioned.  Seemingly I was way off the mark.  Whether it was ceviche, causa, chicharrones, anticuchos or lomo saltado everyone that had been spoke highly of Peruvian food.  They also spoke of a national obsession with the country’s cuisine rating it right near the top of world when it came to food.

I could, and probably will, write about Peruvian food for a long time and have lots of photos of the various dishes to back up my ramblings.  I think the number one dish in Peru though is ceviche and so that is where I shall begin.  Ceviche is nothing more than seafood, for the most part raw but sometimes cooked and cold, which has been marinated in citrus fruit juice.  If this seafood started off raw then the citric acid effectively cooks it, denaturing the proteins and changing it from translucent raw to opaque cooked in appearance.  This is then mixed with red onion and chilli and normally served with the giant Peruvian corn, called choclo, and some cold boiled potato.

Boiled Water Beef

I’ve been learning Mandarin for a while now.  Because of my love for Chinese food I’ve planned to go there in 2009 so a few months back I started on the language knowing that a lack of knowledge of it will severely impair any time there.  I’m not one for organised holidays so if I want to look after myself I need to be able to speak the lingo.  From a Westerner’s point of view the language is fairly daunting mainly because it’s written in symbols and tone plays such an important part.  Once you get beyond this though the grammar is actually really simple and, lacking the masses of verb conjugation you get with, say, Spanish, you can spend your time learning vocabulary.  As such you find yourself learning loads, even if your pronunciation would leave any Chinese speaker completely unable to understand what you’re saying.

Getting to the reason why I brought my Mandarin learning up and that’s the name of this dish.  In Mandarin (well pinyin anyway) the name of this dish is written shui zhu niu rou – water boiled beef – and it’s the first dish whose name I’ve actually understood in Chinese.  If you’re looking for some plain tasting you couldn’t be further off the track though and so it tends to be translated into English as Boiled Beef Slices in a Fiery Sauce.  This dish is from Sichuan and typically for a lot of the dishes in the region it has lots of heat both from the chili and the Sichuan peppercorn.  It’s from the same book the Mapo Dofu was, Sichuan Cookery by Fuchsia Dunlop, and is perfect if you’ve made that recipe as it utilises the same chili bean paste you use for that.

Shui Zhu Niu Rou - Boiled Beef Slices in a Fiery Sauce, for 2 people.

The Ingredients

1 Head Celery

4 Spring Onions

8-10 Dried Chillies

400gr Rump Steak

1 Tablespoon Rice Wine

2 Teaspoons Sichuan Peppercorns

3  Tablespoons Chili Bean Paste

750ml Chicken Stock

2 Tablespoons Dark Soy Sauce

4 Tablespoons Cornflour Mixed With 4 Tablespoons of Water

The Method

1. Chop the celery into 4cm by 1cm batons and cut the spring onions into similar length pieces.
2. Slice the beef thinly against the grain and marinate in the rice wine, the cornflour and water mixture and a little salt.
3. Heat some oil in a wok and add the chillies and the peppercorns frying until beginning to brown.  When they start to colour remove to a plate.  Once cool chop up into small pieces (see photo).
4. Heat more oil and stir fry the celery and spring onions until starting to go translucent.  Once it’s at this stage remove the vegetables to your serving bowl.
5. Add the chili bean paste to the wok and fry till fragrant and the oil has taken on the red colour.
6. Add the stock and soy and as soon as it’s boiling give the beef mixture a quick stir and pour it all into the wok.  Separate the pieces of beef and as soon as the stocks started to thicken from the cornflour pour it all over the celery and spring onions.
7. Quickly wash the wok then heat up again.  Once hot add some oil, maybe 3 tablespoons, and add the chopped up chillies and peppercorns.  Briefly fry then pour it, oil and all, over the top of your beef, it will spit a bit but that’s part of the fun.

Serve this dish with some boiled rice as there’s loads of liquid and the rice soaks it up beautifully.  This dish is spicy but no over the top and large amount of celery gives it a very earthy quality.

Lasting 3 posts isn't too bad - is it?

The reason I started this blog and gave it this name was to force myself to cook recipes from books and I did intend to follow this mission statement.  I had such a great breakfast Sunday though that I want to write about it and I don't have any cooking book exploits to back it up.

On Saturday it was Chelsea vs West Ham so being a dutiful Chelsea fan I headed down the pub to watch the game.  This meant that I started drinking about 12.30pm and as I was off out with the girlfriend on Saturday night I didn't finish until some point after midnight.  Needless to say I was feeling a bit tender Sunday morning but I'd booked up to meet my friends and their children for lunch and I'm not one to cancel at short notice.  As such about midday I headed down to the local for a spot of lunch. 

The local in question is a place called The Lonsborough and it's on Barbauld Road in Stoke Newington.  The Lonsborough is gastro-pub in every sense of the word I guess, it has a black board full of wines and another with a selection of main meals and desserts with  decidedly restaurant prices.  The food is great but you do pay for it.  On the menu Sunday were normal and veggie fry ups, roast Old Spot pork, roast Fore-rib with Yorkshire, half a roast chicken with stuffing and a pumpkin curry.  The portions are big and top quality, the roasts aren't cheap at £13.50 but for that you a lot (8 or 10 ounces I'm guessing) of well prepared top quality meat.  For the beef it's two thick slices of well marbled and hung rib served a nice shade of reddish-pink, a big yorkie, a few roasties and then a mix of nicely al dente veg with a thin gravy made from the juices.  For some reason I had my heart set on a fry up and so that's what I ordered and it was so impressive I had to take a snap and write about it and the place on here.

It's a beauty isn't it - one huge sausage, 2 rashers of griddled bacon (they're under there somewhere), two runny eggs on a huge slice of bread, beans, a tomato and, to provide some energy for the day ahead, a mass of fried spuds.  Admittedly it was £8.50 but I felt I'd got great value for money when it was presented to me. This was washed down, in case you're starting to think I drink to much, with a pint of coke.

The place has lots of seating, whether at tables or on big leather sofas and benches, and being that area of London it is very nicely done up with lots of old wood and sandblasted steel.  In the summer they have a courtyard open out back and the chefs have an undercover barbecue from where they turn out some grilled delights - that's for another day though.  As it's Stoke Newington it's kid friendly and there tends to be a lot of kids which I guess is either a plus or a negative.  For some reason there's no kids portions on the menu though but they'll happily split a main between plates. 

All in all it's a great pub for food and if you live nearby go check it out.