Winter Solstice is upon us once again so it’s time to kick off the holiday season. If you’re looking for something a bit different for your festive feast this year, then look no further than the Hasselback potato, an attractive dish that tastes like a jacket potato crossed with a roast potato.
This method of preparation involves cutting the potato into thin slices that fan out while baking. It can be used for other vegetables like beetroot, carrot and butternut squash, as well as a sweet version using fruits like apple and quince.
Hasselback potato with a pasty and salad
Hasselback potatoes originated in Sweden with the dish featuring in a 1929 recipe book “The Princesses’ Cookbook” by Jenny Åkerström. In 1953. Lief Elisson, a rookie chef at Stockholm’s Hasselbacken restaurant, revived this method for preparing the humble spud.
Preparing the Hasselback
To prepare the fruit or vegetables of your choice, place chopsticks or wooden spoon handles on either side and cut into thin slices until the blade hits the wood.
Ingredients
Four medium potatoes
25 ml olive oil
One teaspoon rosemary or thyme (fresh if available or dried)
One teaspoon cumin seeds
Method
Put two chopsticks or the handles of two wooden spoons on either side of the potato. Cut into 1-2 mm slices, cutting until the blade hits the wood.
Put the potatoes in an ovenproof dish with the cut side facing up. Drizzle liberally with olive oil and sprinkle cumin seeds and thyme (or rosemary) over them.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 c for one hour. Serve on their own or as part of a main course with a pasty or nut roast along with your choice of side vegetables or a salad.
It’s that in-between time of year as the nights grow longer and thoughts turn towards more substantial meals after a long summer of salads and lighter fare. The last of the seasonal vegetables such as tomatoes and courgettes are perfect for stuffing and baking in the oven, making a bridge between summery salads and the heartier soups and stews of winter that are coming up.
Apricot and lentil courgette roundels drizzled with pomegranate sauce and served with a seasonal salad
We stuffed some courgettes with a mixture of red lentils, apricots, tomato, onion, bulgur wheat and lemon juice to make a versatile roundel that can be served as part of a main course or eaten on its own as a meze, a fully vegan alternative to the sausage roll!
Apricot and lentil courgette roundel – a vegan alternative to the sausage roll?
The autumn fruit is at its best at the moment, and we’ve added some pear and pomegranate to an autumnal red cabbage, carrot, celery and radish salad to accompany these apricot and lentil courgette roundels to make a great lunch or supper. By adding a jacket potato, you can make it into a more filling main course.
Ingredients (makes enough mixture for 10-12 roundels)
Three medium sized courgettes
100 g red lentils
50 g dried apricots (or four fresh apricots if available)
One small red onion (approx 75 g)
One medium tomato (approx 100 g)
50 g fine bulgur wheat
25 ml olive oil
200 ml vegetable stock
Juice of half a lemon
One teaspoon cumin seeds
One teaspoon red chilli flakes
Black pepper to taste
Method
Cut the dried apricots into eight pieces and soak in hot water for at least 30 minutes. While the apricots are soaking, heat the oil in a heavy based pan and add the cumin seeds. When they start to sizzle, add the finely chopped onion and fry over a medium heat until they start to soften. Grate the tomato into the fried onion and cook over a low heat for five minutes or so, stirring occasionally.
Now add the washed lentils, pour in the stock and stir. Cook over a low heat for 15-20 minutes until most of the water has been absorbed. Add the fine bulgur wheat, mix it in well and leave covered for 15 minutes. Drain the apricots and stir them into the mixture. Add the lemon juice, chilli flakes and black pepper to taste and mix well.
While the lentils are cooking, start to prepare the courgettes by slicing off the ends to make them flat. Cut into 3 cm slices. Gouge out the seeds with a small spoon, leaving a little bit of flesh at the bottom of the roundel.
Pre-heat the oven to 180 c. When the lentil mix is cool, pack it into the courgette roundels and stand them on a baking tray with the filling topmost. Bake at 180 c for 30 minutes or so – the courgette should still be firm and not too squidgy and the lentil mix should rise slightly and be beginning to brown on top.
Serve alongside a salad of red cabbage, carrot, celery, radish, pear and pomegranate and a jacket potato, drizzling pomegranate sauce over the roundels or allow to cool and serve the roundels as a snack on their own.
Continuing with our summery vibe, the year’s first green bean crops are appearing. Green beans are great for adding a bit of crunch to a stir fry or a salad, we’ve gone for the best of both worlds by mixing our green beans in with celery, carrots, spring onions and walnuts on a bed of funchoza (vermicelli) noodles, liberally dressed with soy sauce, apple vinegar and sesame seeds.
KCC’s green bean funchoza supreme
This recipe lends itself to the pictorial treatment – see below for the steps needed to assemble this summery salad. Also check out our reel on Instagram as well with an orangey red, green and gold inspired Black Uhuru backing track.
Get the ingredients ready – serves twoPut a bed of 150g noodles in the bowl – cook them according to the pack instructions and cool in cold waterAdd 50g sliced celery and 50g chopped spring onionAdd 75g grated carrotsAdd 150g cooked green beans – cook in boiling water for five minutes and then put in cold water to keep them crunchyAdd 50g chopped walnuts – toast them for a tastier flavourSprinkle with one teaspoon sesame seeds, 10ml soy sauce and 10ml apple vinegar, mix well and serve in two smaller bowls
Happy Nauryz – the day of the Spring Equinox that marks the start of the new year in some parts of Asia. it’s a big celebration in Central Asia with a focus on things coming back to life after the long winter months. This year we’ve made some green noodles inspired by shivit oshi – dill noodles from Khiva, Uzbekistan, to mark the coming of spring.
Rolling out the noodlesReady for the potNauryz noodle stir fry
As you may recall, here on KCC we’re not huge fans of dill, aka the devil’s weed, so we replaced it with spinach to give our noodles their distinctive green colour. We served our noodles with an orange and green stir fry made from pumpkin, carrots, spring onions, beansprouts and broccoli.
Shivit Oshi – dill noodles in Khiva, Uzbekistan
We washed our Nauryz noodles down with some Turan Tiger beer as a nod to the year of the tiger.
Ingredients (makes four servings)
For the noodles
300 g plain flour
100 ml water
40 ml olive oil
120 g spinach
For the stir fry
100 g spring onion
300 g pumpkin
200 g carrot
300 g broccoli
200 g beansprouts
50 ml olive oil
20 ml soy sauce
Two teaspoons cumin seeds
Method
For the noodles
Pour boiling hot water over the washed spinach leaves and leave for one minute. Drain and then cover with cold water. Drain again and put in a blender with the water and blend to a smooth paste.
Stir the oil into the flour and then add the blended spinach. Mix well and knead the dough. Make sure it is neither too sticky (add more flour if so) or too crumbly (add more liquid if so). Cover with cling film and leave in the fridge until you are ready to use it.
Roll the dough to 1 mm thickness on a lightly floured surface. Fold the dough over three or four times and then cut off 2 mm slices and pull out the noodles by hand.
Cook in a pot of boiling water for five minutes – taste to check that the noodles have the texture that you prefer (e.g. al dente or softer). Drain and serve immediately.
For the stir fry
Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and add the cumin seeds. When the seed begin to pop, add the chopped spring onions and stir fry over a medium heat. Add the pumpkin, cut into 1 cm cubes and stir fry for five minutes.
Next add the broccoli and stir fry for another five minutes over a medium heat. Add the grated carrot and beansprouts along with the soy sauce and cook for a few more minutes. Serve on a bed of noodles.
This time round on KCC we’re going for a chickpea, aka chana, chilli that includes a slab of dark chocolate to balance out the acidity of the tomato sauce – a combination that works surprisingly well.
Chocolate chilli chana
We first came across the dark chocolate infused mole sauce many years ago in a Mexican restaurant in Barcelona. It’s been on the list of things to cook for a while and having received a selection of Green and Black’s chocolate that included an 85% cocoa bean bar there were no longer any excuses not to try it out.
We served our chickpea chilli with some pearl barley – it’s also good with brown rice, couscous, bulgur wheat or some flatbread to mop up the chocolate rich sauce. We also recommend washing it down with a margarita or two.
Ingredients (makes 3-4 servings)
300 g chickpeas (cooked)
150 g carrot
150 g onion
50 g red lentils
250 g tomatoes
20 g dark chocolate
25 ml olive oil
150 ml aquafaba (chick pea cooking water)
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon paprika (smoked if you can get it)
1 teaspoon chilli powder (or chilli flakes)
2 cm cinnamon stick
5 cloves
1 bunch fresh coriander
Method (Cooking time approx 45 minutes)
Heat the olive oil in a heavy-based pan and add the cumin seeds. When the seeds start to pop add the diced onion. Stir fry for five minutes over a medium heat and then add the diced carrots. Cook for five more minutes and then reduce to a low heat. Add the chopped tomatoes and cook for another five minutes.
Add the aquafaba, ground coriander seeds, cinnamon, cloves, paprika and chilli powder and stir well. When the mix starts to bubble, stir in the red lentils. Simmer the mixture and after 15 minutes add the cooked chick peas. Cook for another 10 minutes over a low heat and then add the dark chocolate.
Serve with pearl barley or a grain of your choice and garnish the Chocolate Chilli Chana with fresh coriander. Take a slug of margarita and enjoy!
This time round on Knidos Cookery Club we’ll be looking at some innovative uses for plov, Central Asia’s favourite rice dish. As you probably know, we don’t like wasting food at KCC, so we’ve come up with a couple of ways to make the most of any leftover plov you may have — plov fritters and the plov wrap.
Plov Fritters sizzling in the pan
Plov makes a great base for fritters – simply add some grated carrot, potato, beetroot or courgette and some flour or an egg to bind the mixture together. Fry or grill until golden brown on both sides and then serve in a burger bun or as part of a meal with salad and other side dishes.
A plov supreme!
While walking around the streets of Almaty recently, KCC came across a fast food kiosk specialising in local dishes such as plov, lagman noodles and manty dumplings. One dish that caught our eye was the plovash, a plov burrito if you like!
Plovash – the plov burrito
Plovash is a clever play on words — lavash is a paper thin flat bread commonly found in the Caucasus and Central Asia — simply filling the lavash with plov gives us the plovash.
100 g grated raw carrot (or potato, courgette or beetroot)
50 g chickpea flour (or one egg)
25 ml oil
Method
Combine the leftover plov with the grated carrot and then stir in the chickpea flour (or egg) and mix until all the ingredients are combined well. Make into 4 – 6 burger shapes. Heat the oil in a heavy-based frying pan and fry the fritters until golden brown on both sides. The fritters can also be grilled or cooked on the barbecue. Serve with a salad or on its own in a burger bun or pita.
This time round on KCC we’re turning our attention to plov — Central Asia’s favourite rice dish. There are no hard and fast rules for plov, with regional variations prizing different ingredients and each family having its own take on what should go into the dish. One thing is for sure — this spicy rice, carrot, onion, garlic and dried fruit concoction makes for a great centrepiece for any party and is perfect for sharing with family and friends.
A plov supreme!
KCC travelled up to Kazakhstan’s capital Nur-Sultan to visit a modern day plov-meister who has perfected a tasty, meat-free take on this classic Uzbek dish. Our plov-meister learnt his trade on the mean streets of Hojeli, Karakalpakstan and in the student dorms of Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
Keeping the vampires at bay…
There are no strict cooking times for this recipe — it’s more of a feeling than an exercise in clock watching. Apart from the holy trinity of onion, carrot and rice, our plov-meister deploys whatever is to hand in the kitchen, adding dried fruits and spices along with a surfeit of garlic. For best results, your plov should be cooked in a kazan, a cast iron cauldron, but a deep, heavy-based saucepan or a casserole dish will suffice at a pinch. The pan should retain the heat to enable the plov to cook slowly and for the myriad flavours to meld.
Achik Chuchuk – add chilli pepper to taste
Serve the plov alongside a spicy achik chuchuk tomato and onion salad, steaming bowls of green tea and Uzbek bread, non, click here for a recipe from Caroline Eden’s excellent Central Asian focussed cookbookRed Sands.
Ingredients (makes enough for 8-10 servings)
100 ml cooking oil (For the authentic Uzbek taste track down some cottonseed oil, but failing that sunflower, rapeseed or olive oil works just as well)
500 g onion
500 g carrot
500 g short grain rice
6 heads of garlic
150 g currants /raisins /sultanas – or a mix of all three
100 g dried apricots (with stones)
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
For the salad:
250 g tomatoes
250 g onion
One teaspoon dried basil
1 – 3 Chilli peppers, finely sliced (adjust as to how hot you like your food)
Method
Heat the oil over a low heat in a heavy-based pan and then add the sliced onion. Fry the onion until it gets a golden-brownish colour so that later the rice will get its distinctive orangey colour. Cut the carrots into 5 cm long slices, a few millimetres wide and then add to the onions. Cook until the carrots are very tender so that they can easily be cut by a spatula or a wooden spoon while stirring.
Now add the spices, the whole dried apricots, currants, sultanas or raisins (or all three) and whole heads of garlic. Cook for a few minutes to allow these ingredients to absorb the oil and the carrot/onion juice.
Rinse the rice carefully until the water runs clear and then put the washed rice on top of the spicy, fruity vegetable base and then pour water over the top through a fish slice to allow an even distribution of the liquid.
Cover the rice with an extra 1 cm of water and then cook over a high heat and when the water disappears from the top of the rice, turn it down to a very low heat, close the lid and allow it to steam for about 20 minutes.
Serve with a spicy tomato and onion salad — achik chuchuk — a salad made from thinly sliced tomato and onion, a sprinkling of dried basil and diced chilli peppers, according to how hot you like it, and oven-fresh non bread.
We’re always on the look out at KCC for something to celebrate and this week we’re heading for Scotland. Coming up on 25 January is Burns Night, which marks the birthday of the country’s national bard, Robert Burns, with a night of poetry and songs accompanied by lots of drinking and feasting.
A hearty bowl of barleekie soup – a barley, carrot, leek and lentil stew
The celebration revolves around a hearty supper and commemorates the life and works of Scotland’s most famous poet with recitals of his work and comforting winter fare. It’s all washed down with a wee dram or two of whisky.
The first course of the supper is usually cock-a-leekie soup, this is followed by the main attraction, haggis, a savoury, offal-based dish that is similar to “a crumbly sausage, with a coarse oaty texture and a warming peppery flavour,” according to the BBC Good Food website. It’s usually served with neeps (mashed turnip) and tatties (mashed potato). Clootie dumpling, a steamed, dried fruit pudding, is served for dessert.
Leeks aplenty in Turkey, many moons ago
We’ve replaced the chicken usually found in the cock-a-leekie soup with green lentils to make our vegan version – Barleekie soup, named for its key ingredients of barley and leeks.
If you want to try your hand at haggis but are not keen on all those innards then check out this recipe from Emi’s Good Eating for a vegan take on Scotland’s national dish. As for the clootie dumpling, check out this recipe from the BBC.
Ingredients (for 3 – 4 servings)
100 g pearl barley
100 g green lentils
One leek (200 g)
One carrot (150 g)
One lemon
50 ml olive oil
600 ml vegetable stock
One teaspoon cumin seeds
One teaspoon turmeric
One teaspoon ginger
One bay leaf
Method
Soak the barley and green lentils separately for 4 hours. Zest the lemon and mix this into the soaking barley.
Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and then wash the leek thoroughly and chop the white part into 1 cm rounds and roughly chop the green parts. Add the leek to the pan and then stir in the spices. Sweat the leek over a low heat until it is soft.
Stir in the chopped carrot, barley and green lentils and then add the vegetable stock and the juice of the lemon and the bay leaf. Simmer for 30 minutes or so over a low heat until the the lentils and carrots are cooked but the barley still has a bit of bite to it.
Serve hot with hunks of crusty bread or oatcakes if you have them.
With no end in sight to the COVID-19 pandemic – infections continue to rise steadily here in Kazakhstan, averaging around 1500 new cases a day over the last week – it’s time for some more culinary escapism. We’re transporting our taste buds to Sri Lanka for our take on string hoppers, a super tasty noodle, dhal and chutney combo.
String Hoppers à la Qazaq with mung bean dhal and coconut and carrot sambol
It’s usually served for breakfast on the island, but in our opinion it also works really well as a main meal. Our version features some locally sourced kespe, or noodles, as we couldn’t find red rice noodles in our local supermarket (!) and a dhal made with mung beans – check out KCC’s dhal recipe here (simply replace the red lentils and pumpkin with 200 g mung beans – soak the beans for 3 – 4 hours before cooking).
Green hot chilli peppers
Coconut and carrot sambol
Breakfast Sri Lankan style – string hoppers with coconut sambol and dhal in the background
The sambol, a quick and easy chutney, is an essential part of the string hopper experience. It saves on waste, as you can use the dried coconut left over from making the coconut milk for the dhal – click here for our coconut milk recipe.
Kespe – noodles from Kazakhstan
Carrot and Coconut Sambol
Ingredients (serves 3-4)
50 g desiccated (dried) coconut
150 g carrot
One small onion
One small tomato
One fresh green chilli
One lemon
Method
Grate the tomato and mix with the finely chopped onion in a large bowl. Add the dried coconut and the juice of the lemon and then add the grated carrot and combine all the ingredients together. Gradually add the finely chopped green chilli, tasting every now and then until you reach your chilli heat tolerance levels.
Serve alongside the mung bean dhal mentioned above and with noodles or spaghetti — use about 75 g of dried pasta per person, cooked according to the instructions on the pack.
There were signs this week of life slowly beginning to return to some sort of normal. Cafes and terraces are set to open once again in Almaty from next week and the streets are busier. We’re not planning on changing too much at the moment and, in the meantime, we’re content to continue our armchair culinary travels.
Half-way there – assembling the briam…
Greece has been in the headlines this week with the news that its beaches are reopening and it’s preparing to open its borders to tourists next month. This news brought back memories of holidays in the Greek islands and the great food in the tavernas. One of our favourite dishes is briam (pronounced bree-AM) – a delicious stew of oven-roasted seasonal vegetables.
Briam – good enough to eat
As usual, we’ve taken a few liberties with the recipe, omitting aubergines (usually a key ingredient) as they are not quite in season in Almaty yet, so foodie purists please look away. We’ve added carrot and spinach to the usual potatoes and courgettes and then cooked it slowly in a tomato sauce. We’ve also topped it with some breadcrumbs to enclose our briam.
The name briam has an interesting history – it is a borrowed word – there is no letter ‘b’ in the Greek alphabet, instead this sound is represented by combining the letters ‘μ’ (m) and ‘π’ (p) – ‘μπ’. Many Greeks call this casserole tourlou tourlou (all mixed-up), so briam could have come from Greeks who lived in Anatolia until the mass population exchanges in the early 20th century.
Briam and salad
In the Ottoman era, there was a word biryan, spelt büryan in modern Turkish, which refers to a side of lamb cooked slowly over charcoal in a pit in the ground – a speciality of Siirt in the Kurdish area on the borders with Iraq and Syria. This in turn could come from Persian, where biryan means roasted (notice the similarity with India’s biriyani). Whatever the name’s origin, it tastes great!
Ingredients (serves 4)
For the bake:
Two courgettes (approx 300 g)
Four potatoes (approx 300 g)
One carrot (approx 100 g)
200 g spinach
75 g breadcrumbs
For the tomato sauce:
One red onion
250 g tomatoes
One bunch of parsley
20 capers
25 ml olive oil
One teaspoon mustard seeds
250 ml vegetable stock or water
Method
Make the tomato sauce first. Heat the oil in a heavy based pan, add the mustard seeds and when they start to pop add the chopped onions and cook over a medium heat, stirring occasionally. After five minutes reduce the heat and add the chopped tomatoes. Stir and simmer for ten minutes then add the stock, chopped parsley and capers. Cook until the liquid has reduced by half.
Cook the spinach for a few minutes until it is beginning to wilt and then set aside. Cut the potato, courgette and carrot into 1 mm slices and put a layer of potatoes, then courgettes and then carrots into a greased baking dish. Add the spinach and pour half the tomato sauce over the vegetables. Add another layer of potatoes and courgettes and then pour the remainder of the tomato sauce over the layers. Spread the breadcrumbs over the top.
Cover with tin foil and bake in an oven at 180 c for around 1.5 hours. After an hour, remove the foil and cook for another 20-30 minutes until the breadcrumbs go start to go a golden brown colour. Keep an eye on it to make sure the breadcrumbs aren’t burning. Serve immediately with a fresh salad – it’s also great when it’s cooled down a bit.
Knidos Cookery Club 