That moment

Dear Reader, I so hope you had a loving Christmas and a lot of good food to go with it. Did you? I made a ham roast with maple syrup bacon crust, there was a lot of it, and it was nice. I didn't know a girl can eat a multi-pound ham joint practically by herself. Anthony caught a stomach bug and spent Christmas Eve squarely sick, poor thing, so I had to do all the eating. No complaints. But quick, quick, 2012 is nearly out of the door, it goes so fast, I can barely believe it, not enough time for a lengthy talk now, no way, the boom-booms of early fireworks can already be heard all over the city. And what did I do with these twelve short months? Well, yes, I finally went to see my family after a hundred, no, two and a half years of apart-ness; I put strawberries in my spaghetti; I got married. There was a crayon of every color in the box, the darkest one included. But digress shall I now not, need to keep it brief, yes sir.

I was on my bicycle pedaling hurriedly to work the other day -- I think Thursday after Christmas that was -- at an ungodly hour of 6 a.m. I dodged however little traffic there was on the roads at the time, whooshing past red-eyed traffic lights like rules are not for me. Running a light at one intersection, I noticed something that caught me in my tracks. The yellow round face of the moon hung so low it seemed to be resting in the crooked arms of the barren trees. The Rijksmuseum's spikes glistened in the inky sky in the distance, the whole building all of a sudden looking like a castle. The soft, golden lights strewn around a towering pine tree ahead of me swayed gently in the wind. I go the same route almost every day, yet I never saw anything like it before. The darkness, the moon, the lights, the trees, all seemed so out of this world for a second, as if an illustration from a fairy tale book came to life -- or I felt like I was in the book. Every year a child in me expects to see a glimpse of magic at Christmas and New Year's, and that moment, in the middle of a city, was that. It enchanted me. It's been days since then, and I'm still thinking about that view and about that feeling. Where am I driving at? Here: I wish us all for the nascent year a swath of breathtaking moments in life's everyday-ness. That and time and insight to notice them all.

Happy New Year, Dear Reader. Happy 2013.

As for today's recipe, well, it's a soup, but a very good soup, worth to be talked about on New Year's Eve. 

 

Roast Pumpkin Soup with Cinnamon

Adapted from Moro East, by Sam and Sam Clark

Yield: (small) 4 servings

It's a little firework of a soup, in that it's exciting and familiar at the same time. There is pumpkin that you roast first to lay upon it more flavor. Then, there are spices: cinnamon and dried chili. And then, there is a whole lot of fresh cilantro (coriander). In between, there are deeply caramelized onions and a swatch of garlic. The ingredients and flavors are all usual kitchen dwellers, but together and in the form of a soup they speak an exotic dialect.

I use much less cinnamon than prescribed in the original, because, in my humble opinion, you don't need as much as half a teaspoon of cinnamon in your soup.
 

I like it served plain, maybe with a sprinkling of toasted pine nuts and a scattering of more fresh cilantro, but you can up the game and drown a dollop of good-quality Greek yogurt (thinned with a bit of milk) in your bowl. Go ahead, suit yourself.

600 g (1 1/3 pounds) peeled and seeded pumpkin or squash (equivalent to about 1 kg/2 pounds unprepared pumpkin), cut into 3-cm (1-inch) cubes
6 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, halved and thinly sliced
2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/8 tsp fresh ground cinnamon
a pinch of crushed dried chili
1 medium potato (about 150 g or 1/3 pound), peeled and cut into 2-cm (1-inch) cubes
1 1/4 L (5 cups) vegetable or chicken stock, preferably hot
1 medium bunch (about 30 g/1 ounce) of fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped (stems and all)
Fresh lemon juice, to taste
Salt and pepper, to taste

Warm the oven to 200 C (390 F).

Toss the pumpkin with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil, a healthy pinch of salt and some black pepper, and spread it out in a roasting tin. Roast for about 20-30 minutes, until very soft and starting to color. Remove out of the oven and set aside.

Heat the remaining 4 tablespoons of the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt; cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onion begins to turn nice and golden. If the onion browns too fast, scale the heat down a notch. Add the garlic, cinnamon and chili, and fry for another minute to release their flavor. Add the roasted pumpkin, the potato and the stock, and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook for about 20 minutes or until the potato is soft. Remove from the heat and throw in the cilantro.

With a handheld mixer or in a food processor, blitz the soup until smooth. Check for seasoning and adjust to taste. You may want to add a tiny spritz of fresh lemon juice to the lot to brighten things up a bit.

Can't help it

Minutes before sitting down and writing this story, it dawned on me that there is one thing I talk about time and again on this blog (and pretty much everywhere else, which makes me feel for those doomed to converse with me). The recurrent theme is: potatoes, a stamp in my Russian culinary ID. Did I tell you that potatoes are no secondary thing for a Russian? Did I tell you that yet? I’m sorry, can’t help it. So here goes again.

It is my grandparents’ custom to buy large quantities of potatoes in mid-fall (before their price would jump up later on) for the family to feed off in winter months. It all begins with multiple visits to local farmers’ markets to first select samples to test taste. A good spud has to meet the following criteria: it should not darken while cooking, and once boiled, it shouldn’t turn rubbery, but it can’t crumble too much under the pressure of a fork either, and most importantly, it has to taste creamy without any assistance of butter or dairy. Once a specimen capable of accomplishing the mission is found, my grandparents would load their white nearly thirty-years-old Soviet four-wheeler with sack after sack of un-scrubbed jacketed tubers.

Every other week for the next four or five months my grandfather would go to his garage basement to pick over the potato lot, or rather what gets left after the family starts to pack it away, for sprouts. Now there being fewer heads to feed – my uncle’s whole family of three moved to Moscow; I’m living abroad – and a new, less sturdier, almost flimsy car to load, the annual potato purchase grew smaller in size, but its importance is, and always will be, high. The household in winter is not complete if there are not enough potatoes in that dark garage basement.

We had the spuds simply boiled, pan-fried with onions, roasted with chicken; stewed with tomatoes and river fish; as a main or a side; for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner; left over from a yesterday’s meal and freshly cooked. If I got sick and developed a bad cough, I didn’t have a chance to get away from having to stand over a pot with just cooked tubers and inhale the coming-out steam, my head covered with a towel to prevent the heat from escaping. The potato is believed to have particles with anti-inflammatory qualities and the steam to bear them in transit, was what my mother told me.

So I’ve had it a lot with potatoes, except that I didn’t have them cooked with sherry. Entirely by the way, I didn't have anything cooked with sherry. For one: there was no sherry around me in my formative years. The first libation "from the West" made its way to new Russia in early nineties and, if my memory serves me right, it was called brandy liquor. It came in dark-glass stubby bottles with a sail ship on the blue-sea label. I was uninterested to taste it then (and I'm not sure I would be now). My parents say it would never fail to give them a terrible headache, the best of possible bodily reactions to the drink.

Second of all, I think sherry falls into that category of fine drinks that one grows to appreciate with age. Also, I had to be old enough to stop believing that a sweet alcoholic substance such as the one in question should be reserved for an after-meal glass and not a pan of potatoes. But then again, it’s not your plain Jane pan of potatoes. In it, artichokes make an appearance as well. And the potatoes are those small springtime tubers that turn eminently fragrant in salted boiling water and whose thin skin crackles just so under your teeth giving way to the young creamy flesh underneath it.

The idea comes from the MORO East cookbook, a beautiful compilation of Eastern Mediterranean recipes by the owners of the acclaimed MORO restaurant in London, Sam and Sam Clark. Originally, the sampling in question goes by the name “artichokes and potatoes with oloroso sherry”. But I think the artichokes, though no lesser important to the accumulative taste of the ensemble, should, instead, come second in the title, for in my view the potatoes are the name of the game here. Hence what follows is "potatoes and artichokes with oloroso", the change is minor but imperative.

The actual substitute in the original is my use of marinated artichoke hearts in place of fresh ones, for which there are two reasons. One, artichokes in the Netherlands is not a local thistle. Which means I have to be prepared to live with a new dent in my wallet for months at hand if I wish to enjoy them fresh, imported, as is usually the case, from Italy. I don’t want to go down that road again. Two, I discovered that the sourness of the marinated artichokes is a perfect foil to the sweetness that comes with sherry. An additional bonus: a shorter cooking time.

You start by browning some onions. Once those are halfway to their color destination, you add the marinated artichokes, and let the duo cook together until the onions are golden and the artichokes develop a mild blush. Next goes a tiny bit of garlic, followed after a minute by sherry and water and fresh basil (MORO East uses mint, but I find basil mingles more successfully with the rest of the given ingredients). Finally, you nudge the cooked potatoes in the skillet, cover with a lid and let it all bubble for a while allowing the heat to leverage the unity between the subtle vegetables and the intense oloroso sherry. A few squirts of olive oil and more fresh basil at the end and you are ready for a delicious cheer on a plate. The caramelized onions and soft artichokes intermingle and soak up all that deep caramel flavor of the sherry, winding up to be sweet and sour all at once, making perfect companions for the mellowed plump spuds that got infused with the basil’s peppery herbal notes and nutty sherry, that same sherry. Oh, potatoes can get so lucky!

Potatoes and Artichokes with Oloroso Sherry

Adapted from MORO East, by Samantha and Samuel Clark

Serves 2 as a main or 4 as a side dish

This dish is an "all-year-rounder", considering you use the marinated artichokes. When new harvest tubers go off season, normal potatoes would be a bet just as good.

A word on sherry: while S. and S. Clark suggest medium oloroso sherry (“oloroso” means scented in Spanish) for this dish, I had delicious results with a dry oloroso variety as well. The bottom line is that regardless of what oloroso you get to use – it varies in types from dry to sweet – it should be good enough to be sipped on its own, as goes with any alcohol in cooking, you know.

500 gr (16.5 oz) new potatoes, scrubbed
4 good-quality (canned) marinated artichoke hearts, quartered
5 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 large garlic clove, thinly sliced
150 ml (1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp) oloroso sherry
100 ml (1/3 cup plus 1 Tbsp) water
2 Tbsp roughly chopped fresh basil

1. Boil the potatoes in slightly salted water until tender; drain. When they are cool enough to handle, peel them and cut the large ones in half or in quarter.

2. Over medium fire, heat 3 Tbsp olive oil in a large skillet. When the oil is hot, stir in the onion and a pinch of salt, cut the heat back to medium-low and fry for 5-7 minutes, or until the onion is soft and starting to color.

3. Add the artichokes, and stirring occasionally, fry for another 3-5 minutes, or until the onion is golden and the artichokes take on golden hue.

4. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more. Pour in the sherry and water; add half the basil. Place the potatoes on top and sauté, uncovered, for the next 2-3 minutes. Stir, cover with a lid and continue cooking for another 4-5 minutes more.

5. Squirt with the remaining 2 Tbsp olive oil and sprinkle on with the rest of the basil. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Earnestly speechless

Before Easter celebrations roll in, please, let me tell you real, real, real quick about this simple, simple, simple dish that would do no less than be a graceful side to meat, poultry, and even fish, should that be your main! Like I just said, the dish is awfully simple. But what you also should know, and consider this your fortune, is that it is utterly delicious. So much so that every time I dig my fork in it, I want to fling my room window open and scream, scream, scream my excitement out at the people on the street, because I swear I get so thrilled about the stuff by every mouthful that I want everybody in the world to know what I know. And it is this: fried potatoes with coriander, cumin and spring onions are terrifyingly awesome together. So much so that it makes me earnestly speechless – even voiceless. And that, as you can see, clashes with my plans to scream. I don’t quite know what I’m going to do, except that I am going to eat those potatoes as much as I can. And if possible, I am going to eat only those potatoes. Come Easter there will be no exception. I’m sure.

At this point I think I should tell you that I am, by default, no stranger to a good potato. The reason is that I am Russian. Consider this for a moment: In the year 2007, Russia, the e-site potato2008.org tells us, was ranked second among the world top ten potato producers. The same potato2008.org says that in potato consumption, Russians “took silver” as well. I personally can testify to that. I grew up in a family where potatoes were bought in sackfuls every fall to last us through the winter months. Up to this day, the tradition, of which my grandparents are in charge, is still running.

Since my childhood up until a few years ago, fried potatoes with onions was the most frequent dish to appear on my plate. I was so familiarized with the stuff that at some point it became impossible for me to get excited about a good potato at all, is what I’m saying. Impossible until I tried the recipe for Lebanese fried potatoes with coriander from the MORO East book last week, that is. Since then, all I want is to scream from, and with, excitement.

Happy Easter, Dear Reader!

Fried potatoes with coriander (cilantro)

Adapted from MORO East by Samantha and Samuel Clark

Serves 4 as a side dish or 2 as a main course

1 (about 2 pounds) kg potatoes, peeled and washed
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
½ tsp ground cumin
10 spring onions, thinly sliced
Large bunch of coriander (around 50 grams), finely chopped (stalks included)
8 Tbsp (120 ml) olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

1) Cut the potatoes in half and place them in a large pot. Cover with cold water, add salt and bring to a boil. Cook for about 15-20 mins, or until the potatoes are tender, but not mushy. Drain and let cool until they are comfortably warm to handle.

2) Cut the potatoes in chunks. Gently toss with the cumin, garlic, half the spring onions and half the coriander, making sure not to break the potatoes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

3) In a wide non-stick skillet, heat the olive oil over a medium flame. Add the potatoes and fry on one side until these are golden and a bit crispy, about 10 mins. Turn them over with a wooden spoon, taking care not to break them, and fry until the other side is also golden. Transfer to a large serving bowl and combine with the remaining coriander and spring onions. Adjust the seasonings.