Bhutan - home cooking

I cook once a week. That sounds pretty lame really as it suggests Elle cooks all of the rest of the time. Which is true. But when I cook, I cook from scratch. It's an evening long, sometimes day long, event. I take a recipe, I follow it to the letter. It usually works out perfect. I feel like a good cook. But actually, I'm just good at reading instructions.

Still, you learn your strengths and weaknesses. I learned my culinary weakness long ago. Flour. I can't work with flour. Anything that has to be a certain conisistancy to be able to work with its a big no no. Always ends up in disaster.

Why the hell I thought I'd be able to make Bhutanese momo (dumplings) I haven't got a clue. This Bhutanese meal was 50% of a disaster.

It was to be a two parter. The main I chose to cook was pork fing. A kind of spicy pork stew/curry with noodles. I was a little concerned that the portion wouldn't be enough, so I decided to make a side dish of momo. The filling in the momo can be any meat really, but I think more often than not the Bhutanese use minced beef.

The timing of the two parts looked quite handy. The pork fing was to cook for quite a while, during which I'd make the momo.

For the pork fing I bought 1 onion, 1 tomato, 1/5 a block of butter, 700g pork shoulder and 3 green chillis. I was also supposed to buy a small amount of cellophane noodles (about 60g). But I couldn't find them anywhere. I dare say I would've found them in London's Chinatown but that would've been too much effort. Instead I went for the thinnest rice noodles I could find.

I chopped the onion and tomato and added this with the chopped pork and 120ml of water into a pan of the melted butter. I waited for it to simmer, then covered it and cooked this for 90 minutes. At this point I made a bit of an error - I added a touch more water, and I covered the pan. The contents of the pot was quite shallow so I was concerned about it not cooking evenly. In the end the meal was a bit too watery, when it should be drier, but it wasn't too problematic.

Speaking of problematic, it was time to prepare the dumplings. First the easy bit. The filling. 500g of minced beef, one finely chopped onion, 70g oil, some salt and a bit of chilli powder, all mixed together as much as possible. Then set aside.

The dough. Flour and water. Simple as? Was it buggery. Into 600g of plain flour, I added 4 cups of water. I hate cups. Give me millilitres anyday. I worked that out to be about 800ml of water. You can see my problem. Rather than add water a bit at a time, I dumped it all in and mixed. And mixed. And mixed. And I had thin white paste. I added more flour. And more flour. Then all the rest of the flour I had in the flat. I had a slightly thicker thin white paste. So thin it poured through my fingers. There was no way in hell I was rolling this into anything. Except the bin.

Elle said I was surpsingly calm. I think I was. But it's because I already knew this was going to happen. The only problem I had now was the big bowl of raw mince and onion. I ended up frying this, adding some more noodles to it, and serving *that* as a side dish along with some chilli, soy and BBQ sauce.

Anyway, at least I still had the pork fing, and this seemed to be going well. Except the excess sauce. I tried to boil as much of it away as I could without impairing the meal but eventually I had to serve it.

I was right to be initially concerned about the portion size, as it made barely a bowl each (I was certain the amount of noodles suggested was too small but other recipes suggested a similar amount). While the portion may have been on the small side, it was extremely filling. Mostly because of the butter. It was really rich in that respect, but it was no bad thing. It had a really nice subtle spice, the pork was of melt in the mouth consistency and the noodles added a little bit of substance but didn't get in the way. It turns out this would probably have been a nice satisfying meal on it's own, although the dumplings would've been perfect with it.

I think travelling to the nearest Bhutanese restaurant, probably in Bhutan, would've been easier than those dumplings. Never again.

Benin - home cooking

Another edition of cooking in our kitchen, as London is lacking when it comes to Beninian cuisine. Eating in Benin is heavy on staple foods - yams, maize, plantain. Fish is also popular. But of course, given the chance, I will always aim to cook something that doesn't involve seafood. Furthermore, I will usually strive to cook something involving chicken so long as it is a common, popular national dish. Two years working at KFC are to be thanked for that.

After some research, one word came up again and again. Amiwo. Better known to you and me as polenta. That's not necessary a direct translation (it might be) but certainly that's what you end up with. Read on for my experiences of turning cornmeal into polenta...(!)

Again, this recipe was split into two parts. The making and cooking of the cornmeal, and the preparation and cooking of the chicken.

For the polenta I bought half a kg of cornmeal, 1 onion, 125ml of peanut oil, a tomato, a pepper (I chose green) and a clove of garlic. Another ingredient that was suggested was dried ground crayfish. I didn't expect to find that anywhere. And I didn't. Instead I added a dash of fish sauce. I've no idea if that was the right thing to do, but it didn't seem detrimental!

For the other half of the meal I bought four chicken breast fillets, 1 more green pepper, fresh parsley, 2 more cloves of garlic, another onion and a bit more peanut oil. I was also supposed to use celery for this part of the meal, but we both hate celery - one of the few things I just won't eat - so it was skipped.

It's best to get the chicken going first and then just keep it warm afterwards. I added some peanut oil to the pan, and seared the chicken fillets in that before adding the chopped pepper, garlic, parsley and onion. After frying for a bit, and adding a touch of water. I let this braise for a good 15 minutes or so. Originally I was a bit concerned that it would dry out, but actually there was more than enough liquid for it to braise.

Now to the "amiwo". In a second pot I heated the 125ml of peanut oil, which seemed like a huge amount, and then fried in this the tomato (pureed), chopped pepper, crushed garlic clove and fish sauce with a touch of water. Separately I dry fried the cornmeal in another pot. This felt strange. I was frying one of the driest substances you could imagine. It seemed a bit fruitless, especially when I started to sense some burning smells. The cornmeal did start to turn a little brown which I think was the idea. I then took a third of this and mixed it with a good bit of water and stirred into a bit of a paste. I then stirred this into the other sauce pot and heated for 15 mins on a low heat, gradually adding the rest of the cornmeal.

This is where I feared it was all going wrong. It all started getting extremely thick. To the point I couldn't really stir it any more. I ended up adding so much more water than I thought I'd have to. In the end, however, I ended up with a pot full (full being the word) of home-made polenta which seemed to have a great consistency.

Once it was all ready, I arranged a base of polenta and on top of that added the chicken fillets and vegetables, spooning over a good bit of the sauce to mix with the polenta, garnished with some fresh parsley.

Stodge. That was the crux of this meal. A big dollop of stodge with chicken and veg. Polenta is polenta. Not particularly interesting although the way it was cooked in this instance meant that the polenta itself had more flavour than any time I'd had it before. The extra sauce helped as other the meal would have been incredibly dry.

The chicken itself was good. Not hugely flavoursome, but succulent. It was definitely a sufficient meal. I suppose where it falls down, according to my personal taste, is the lack of spices. 

Not a bad meal at all, just not hugely interesting.