by James Steen
A dipping sauce accompanies ika-sōmen; usually soy sauce, or mentsuyu, which is made from soy and the fish stock dashi. Ika-sōmen is also delicious when added to hot, cooked noodles and served with the same sauces.
PAD THAI
A national noodle dish of Thailand, perfumed with the scents of lime, garlic and coriander.
Politics created this dish. In the late 1930s, as Siam became Thailand, the government was keen to establish an identity with its new name. As part of the country’s PR strategy, a cookery competition, on a national scale, was held to see who could come up with a new dish. The winner was a dish of noodles, bean sprouts, egg and peanuts, with, perhaps, some coriander. Importantly, the noodles were made from rice and not wheat.
Thailand was keen to move away from its association with China, which was engulfed in the Sino-Japanese War, and China’s culinary influence on Thailand was noticeable. Thailand ate wheat noodles, introduced to the country by the Chinese. Rice noodles would enable Thailand to establish its own type of cuisine, although they could have never known just how much the winning dish would come to be enjoyed by the wider world. The noodles are called sen lek (small strand), or sen jun (jun being an abbreviation of Chantaburi, the province in which they were originally made).
There was another bonus. Thailand was desperate to boost its national coffers and rice noodles – although made from rice in the form of flour, of course – would reduce the consumption of rice. This meant, in turn, that the country could export rice and bring in a sizeable income. It took time, and there have been political blips along the way, but in 2015 Thailand was, after India, the world’s second leading exporter of rice (9.8 million tonnes), with Vietnam in third place.
They called their new dish Pad Thai – fried Thai-style. And it encapsulates, and must always encapsulate, the essential criteria of a Thai dish: a balance of sweet, bitter and salty, with a creamy texture. The dish is sold from carts by street vendors, who busily feed the snack-loving locals every moment of the day. Most agree that, apart from rice noodles, the dish should contain tamarind paste, garlic, sugar, preserved turnip (also called salted radish), fish sauce, bean sprouts, prawns and egg. Peanuts are a crunchy garnish. Lime juice completes it. If you’re missing an ingredient or two, do not worry.
Pad Thai is cooked in a smoky wok on a very hot flame. The soaked noodles are drained and tossed in to join the garlic, shallot, preserved turnip, tamarind paste (sour), sugar for sweetness and fish sauce for saltiness. Then the egg is stirred in, bringing creaminess, before the prawns and bean sprouts are added. Add the peanuts and give it a stir. Pad Thai is served with a wedge of lime ensuring an extra dose of that important sour element. Since its creation, this dish is cooked all around the world, albeit in versions and with ingredients which the Thais would not recognise as their national dish and might not describe as Pad Thai.
GUMBO
A bit of this and a bit of that … Family food from America’s Deep South.
Abby Fisher’s name may mean nothing to the American cooks of today but, in the history of gastronomic literature, she should be remembered as a great champion.
She was born a slave in South Carolina in the early 1830s. Her mother was black, her father white and French. Abby was a cook, and she married Alexander Fisher, job unknown. They lived in Mobile, Alabama, and then crossed the country after the Civil War, heading west, to California.
Abby and Alexander produced at least eleven children, but it is the creation of Abby’s cookery book which ensured her culinary legacy. Once settled in San Francisco, Abby continued to work as a cook, and her talents quickly earned her a reputation and a tremendous following. At the Sacramento State Fair in 1879 she was awarded a diploma, and ladies raved about her Southern food.
Inevitably it was not long before Abby’s ‘lady friends and the patrons of San Francisco’ encouraged her to compile a book of recipes. Doubtless, they all wanted to cook like her, although, remember, it was the slaves who toiled in the kitchens of the South who perfected Creole cuisine. Gumbo has French influences (see: Bouillabaisse) and is cooked in the iron pot much adored by the French, but it takes its name from the Caribbean word for okra, the vegetable which usually features in this stew.
However, a book would have seemed an impossible task for Abby, as she could not read nor write. Her husband was also illiterate so she could not dictate recipes to him. Maybe, therefore, she dictated to one of her kind and admiring lady friends, because in 1880 Abby’s book was published: What Mrs Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking … Soups, Pickles, Preserves Etc. (In 1866 Malinda Russell – born a free woman – was the first African-American cookery book author, with A Domestic Cook Book.)
In the book’s Introduction, Abby told readers that the 166 recipes were:
based on an experience of upwards of thirty-five years in the art of cooking Soups, Gumbos, Terrapin Stews, Meat Stews, Baked and Roast Meats, Pastries, Pies and Biscuits, making Jellies, Pickles, Sauces, Ice-Creams and Jams, preserving Fruits, etc. The book will be found a complete instructor, so that a child can understand it and learn the art of cooking.
She includes those Deep South favourites such as corn fritters, fried chicken and snow pudding, and gives recipes for oyster and chicken gumbos. Then there is okra gumbo soup: a beef shank is boiled in water until the water reduces in volume by half; finely sliced okra is added – ‘don’t put in any ends of ochre … Season with salt and pepper while cooking. To be sent to table with dry boiled rice. Never stir rice while boiling. Season rice always with salt when it is first put on to cook, and do not have too much water in rice while boiling.’
Oh, what folks wouldn’t give for a bowl of gumbo like Abby used to make.
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Melissa Magnuson, artist, photographer and exceptional home cook (as well as my good friend) was born and raised in Mississippi. Gumbo country. One day she made a big pot of gumbo with crab and crayfish, which she ladled onto rice in large, flat soup bowls. There was crusty sourdough bread too. We tucked in – my lord, it was gorgeous – and she told me about this dish. ‘Growing up,’ said Melissa, ‘we were always taught “first you make a roux”.’ Classically, roux is the mix of butter and plain flour, combined in a saucepan over heat and used as a sauce thickener.
‘The roux is roughly equal parts fat, sometimes used from fried chicken or bacon, and flour. These are cooked in a heavy pot – usually cast iron – until medium brown. Peppers, onions, celery – the holy trinity of creole cuisine – are usually added to the browned roux. These are cooked, and then hot water is slowly added.
‘Chopped parsley, garlic and bay leaves are added. Gumbo is basically a wonderful way to use whatever is in the kitchen or caught that day; ham, duck, sausage – andouille – or seafood such as crayfish, shrimp [prawns to the British] or oysters, just as we’re eating now. There are lots of variations. Also, we add tomato sauce or fresh tomatoes, or both.
‘Gumbo can be made with either okra or filé (sassafras powder) to thicken the sauce. Filé was used by the Choctaw Indians – indigenous to Mississippi and Louisiana. Okra goes in during cooking, or filé goes in at the end when the heat is turned off.’
The gumbo debates tend to centre on which to use; okra or filé? Melissa insists: ‘One or the other, never both.’
MEAT AND POULTRY
THE BURGER
A patty of minced beef which has been fried, griddled or grilled, and is usually served in a bun and with fries. Germanic cuisine meets American flare.
In 1904 the city of St Louis, Missouri, hosted a World Fair which drew huge crowds from all over America. It also attracted vendors and sales people who were keen to show off their new creations. The audience, which included a regiment of news reporters, was in for a food treat previously unseen across the States.
Foods that were said to have been ‘born’ at the World Fair include the club sandwich, cotton candy (candy floss to the British) and peanut butter. The ice cream cone, it is claimed, was invented at the fai
r – a waffle vendor saw an ice cream vendor run out of glasses, and so sandwiched ice cream between two waffles. Take it with a pinch of salt. The cone is also said to have been invented in Victorian Britain in the 1850s and, in London, Agnes Marshall gives a recipe for ice cream in a cone in her book, Fancy Ices. The book was published in 1894, a decade before waffles and ice cream met at the World Fair.
Meanwhile, a vendor called Anton Feuchtwanger had arrived at the fair with hundreds of paper gloves, which he gave to customers who wanted to try his steamed sausages. When he ran out of gloves, he turned to a nearby bread salesman and said: ‘Can I take some of your rolls.’ He put the sausages into the rolls and – in a flash! – the hot dog was invented. Well, that’s the story.
Then there is the tale of Fletcher Davis, who arrived from Athens, Texas, with his new sandwich: a succulent beef patty served between two slices of bread. Thus, we have the sensational arrival of the burger which is today one of the most popular foods in the Western world. Or do we? This account has been fiercely contested, with other states battling against Texas to claim ownership of the bapped burger.
In 2007, Josh Ozersky – author of Hamburgers: A Cultural History and online food editor at the Los Angeles Times – wrote convincingly about his painstaking investigation into the numerous assertions. ‘There is one contender whose claim to having invented the hamburger can truly be said to be unassailable,’ he concluded. ‘The sandwich we think of today as the hamburger was almost certainly invented by Walter Anderson, a Wichita, Kansas, grill cook who first made the sandwich in either 1915 or 1916.’
Ozersky said that Anderson was the first to cook standard, flat ground-beef patties on a custom griddle and to serve them on identical white buns. ‘The claim is supported both by nearly contemporaneous newspaper accounts and by the fact that Anderson, with his partner, E.J. “Billy” Ingram, founded in 1921 a restaurant called White Castle, which still makes a nearly identical sandwich today.’
As it was White Castle that created America’s fast-food business, he wrote, and especially the hamburger business, ‘Anderson and Ingram deserve credit not just for inventing the hamburger but for inventing the culture that helped make it our national sandwich’. After all, the burger was food for the masses; a wholesome meal for just a few cents.
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The indisputable origin of the name lies in Hamburg (the patty is not made of ham) where steaks of minced meat were enjoyed by mariners in the 19th century visiting what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was consumed not by hand but with knife and fork. From there, it travelled to America, making its way occasionally into recipe books as a ‘Hamburg Steak’, before becoming the innovation that fed visitors to the St Louis World Fair.
For the American cook, the Hamburg steak made a change to cooking minced beef in dishes such as meatballs or meat loaf. The Hamburg steak recipes of old are all similar. This was an inexpensive dish which did not need to be glamorised, and was simple and fast to make.
A pound (450 grams) of raw minced beef was mixed with a couple of ounces of breadcrumbs (or bread which has been soaked in milk and then squeezed dry), a couple of teaspoons of finely sliced onions, a beaten egg, and salt and pepper. Once mixed well, it was formed into round, flat ‘cakes’ which were dipped in flour and shallow fried in fat. Invariably, the advice was to (over-) cook them – five minutes on each side.
Apart from the regions of Hungary and the states of America, the burger was eaten in other countries, if by another name such as keftedes and from a different type of minced meat, be it chicken or veal.
Generally, it was unknown to the British until after the Second World War and the era which spurned a fascination in all-things American and, in particular, Hollywood-esque. Yet still, the burger took decades to catch on.
When the Hard Rock Cafe opened its doors on London’s Piccadilly in 1971 it was predicted those same doors would be closing within a few months. Rita Gilligan, the longest-serving waitress at the Hard Rock, says: ‘People were dismissive. They said, “Who wants to eat burgers in London!”’ The cynics were soon silenced. There are still queues on the street outside, as customers patiently wait to be seated at a table, to eat a burger and drink a milkshake or beer, as the rock ‘n’ roll blares.
MAHBERAWI
A huge platter of many small dishes, which highlight the best of Ethiopian cuisine.
Leave behind your knife and fork, or chopsticks. The food of Ethiopia relies on the right hand and, crucially, a flatbread called injera, which is made from the tef (or teff) grain and leavened with sourdough. Injera is like the edible spoon. Food is collected in a piece of the spongy bread, which is then folded into a bundle and popped into the mouth.
No injera, no meal. It is an intrinsic part of the culture of Ethiopia which, with nearly 100 million inhabitants, is the world’s most populated landlocked country (sharing a border with Eritrea to the north and northeast, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, Sudan and South Sudan to the west, and Kenya to the south).
Injera is the most common sight at the Ethiopian table, and is used in phrases which have absolutely nothing to do with food. For instance, ‘He has no wat on his injera,’ is an idiom for: ‘He has no money.’ (Wat, by the way, means stew or sauce and is also well used in the Ethiopian vocabulary.)
You do not need much money to enjoy an Ethiopian banquet. The food is inexpensive, although when presented together for mahberawi it is like a banquet fit for royalty. Five, six or seven dishes are all on the one large, round platter, ready to be scooped up in that injera.
The feast might, perhaps, include beef dishes such as: kitfo, which is finely chopped or minced raw beef, marinated in a chilli-rich powder called mitmita; k’itfo leb leb, for which the beef mince is cooked; gored gored, in which beef is served in tender, raw chunks (the fat is left on) and they are either dipped into, or coated in the chilli sauce, awaze. Gomen be siga is beef cooked with collard greens, and alicha siga wot is a stew in which large chunks of beef, preferably on the bone, are added to fried onions and garlic; water is poured in to cover the ingredients and the whole lot simmers gently until it is time to eat.
Ginger is popular in Ethiopian cuisine and so inevitably works its way into most stews, along with cardamom and coriander, cloves and cumin. Lamb, mutton, chicken and goat are also in the diet, often in dishes which incorporate berbere, the nation’s famous blend of spices. The Ethiopians are extremely proud of their berbere, which is a mix of dried chilli peppers, garlic, fenugreek, ginger, cinnamon, coriander seeds, nutmeg and cloves. After that, you can add what you like. These ingredients are ground up to create a powder, usually fiery both in its red colour and in its taste.
This blend features in a dish called doro wot: onion and garlic, both finely chopped, are fried in butter (the Ethiopians like their butter to be clarified) to become a paste; the berbere is added and stirred in; small chicken pieces – bone in – are next, followed by water to cover, and a splash of tej (honey wine) if handy; towards the end of cooking, hard-boiled eggs are added, their whites slightly scored to allow the sauce to penetrate.
Tibs, meanwhile, are slices of meat (lamb or beef) which have been fried in clarified butter, onions and garlic. And the spice of the mahberawi platter is tempered by a bowl of ayeb. This is a deeply pleasant sort of cottage cheese made from cow’s milk, and sometimes used as an ingredient in dishes (fried, for instance with collard greens).
Mahberawi is very much a delight for the carnivore. The vegetarian equivalent is (yetsom) beyaynetu, which is served on the two fasting days of the week – Wednesday and Friday – and during Lent. In the vegetarian meal, the injera bread is brushed in berbere and drizzled with lemon juice, and it can be eaten with a bowl of tomato (timatim) salad. The wat takes a vegetarian twist when it is made with pulses or red lentils, while shiro wat is a most delicious vegan dish of ground chickpeas or chickpea flour, puréed tomato, onion and garlic; a healthy, spicy, curry-ish sauce and perfect on injera.
SHEPHERD’S P
IE
A stew of lamb and vegetables, topped with creamy mashed potato. Piping hot comfort food to banish the bitter chill of Britain’s coldest months.
On Sundays in times gone by, a joint of lamb was roasted for the family lunch after church. People went to church back then, and they did not eat the amounts we eat today, so after the family lunch there was usually meat left on the bone. And in those days, food waste was uncommon; few cooked for the bin as millions do today.
This meant that, come Monday, there was enough left-over meat to make a pie (and on Tuesday, perhaps there would be a nutritious soup made from the bone and a few vegetables). This, it seems, is the origin of shepherd’s pie.
In this day and age, we differentiate between shepherd’s pie and cottage pie; they are similar, but the former is made with lamb and the latter is made with beef. However, the phrase ‘shepherd’s pie’ did not crop up until the 1870s. The pie, it would seem, was being made before it earned the name, and so was probably also called cottage pie.
The late 19th century was the age of time-saving kitchen gadgets, and along came mincing machines or, as they were often known, meat-choppers. If you were a cook and went, for instance, to Chavasse & Co (‘manufacturers of English and American domestic products’) in London’s Oxford Street you would have entered a showroom packed with classy, novel culinary aids.
Apart from bean cutting machines and apple paring machines, there were coffee roasters, egg beaters, machines to stuff sausages, make and cut bread; others to make ice cream and shell peas. Prices for the mincing machines at Chavasse started at ten shillings and six pence, or the equivalent of £24 in 2016 money.