Week 6 - The Book of Jewish Food - Claudia Roden

When I first left uni I ended up, thanks to a conversation with my Dad about 'going to get a job' that coincided with me walking past a book shop window with a poster advertising vacancies sellotaped to the door (remember those days), working in a book shop.

Looking back now, it was a very happy time in my life. We were on the cusp of the internet becoming ubiquitous, and I was still reading lots of 'proper' books, I was going through a big George Orwell phase, and had cast myself as the protagonist in Down and Out in Paris and London (especially as I had also worked as a kitchen porter when I was at uni).

One of the best things about my job was finding out that when books arrived damaged, and couldn't be sold, instead of returning the whole book to be pulped, the publisher would ask for just the title page to be torn out and sent back. Meaning the book was left in a pile, along with other damaged titles and proof copies, for the strange bunch of misfits who worked there (me included) to rifle through.

One of my favourite finds from that era was Claudia Roden's The Book Of Jewish Food. It's not how you would imagine your typical cookbook. There are precious few pictures, and lots of dense text. Not something I would have considered parting with my own cold hard cash for, but I quickly became fascinated by the history, the anthropology and the stories of Jewish cuisine and culture. 

I've still, however, never actually cooked anything from it. So this week's #cookbookchallenge saw me not just attempting my first dish from the book, but also my first attempt at boning a lamb shoulder. Which was actually far easier than it seemed, despite attempting it with a vegetable knife and a hangover. Although, I must say the BBC video I found on you tube twas about three minutes long, and my effort was probably around the half hour mark. Still, I managed to keep all my fingers.

The lucky recipient of this feast was the great Stealth. I especially chose the book with her in mind as she studied history and RE for her GCSEs, and took the persecution of the Jews as a kind of personal cause and would frequently try and bring it into debates in the pub over pints of Stella. It's a shame our beverage choice wasn't as cultured as our conversation. And also because she loves lamb. And has a very sweet tooth. 

The original recipe contains just salt and pepper and ground ginger and cinnamon, which seemed a bit parsimonious, even with all the dried nuts and fruit. So I added a few more spices from my cupboard, based on the typical ingredients of ras el hanout, a spice blend used in a typical Moroccan tagine. To serve with it, I made some steamed couscous with saffron and chickpeas and also a dish of tabbouleh. Partly because we needed some greens and partly because one of my life's greatest pleasures in hearing Stealth say 'tabbouleh'. She didn't disappoint.

Lamb with raisins and almonds

Adapted from Claudia Roden

1.5kg boned shoulder or neck fillet of lamb, trimmed and cut into chunks

3 tbsp vegetable oil

2 onions, finely chopped

1/2 tsp saffron threads

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp ground turmeric

salt and plenty of black pepper

2 cinnamon sticks

1-2 tbsp honey (optional)

250 g raisins

To garnish: 100 g blanched almonds

Heat 2 tbsp oil in a lidded pan or casserole dish, put in the meat and brown it lightly all over. You may have to do this in batches.

Remove the meat, add the onions and cook until they start to brown. 

Stir in the saffron and dried ginger, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, turmeric. 

Add the meat back to the pan, season well and and the cinnamon sticks. 

Cover with water and bring to a simmer, skimming any scum that comes to the surface. Put a lid on and simmer gently on the hob (or a 160 degree oven) for 2 hours, or until the meat is very tender, stirring occasionally.

Take the lid off and add the raisins, cook on the hob until the sauce is reduced, stirring regularly to stop it catching. (You can do this stage a day in advance, as I did, and reheat thoroughly just before you want to serve)

Fry the almonds in the remaining oil, or toast in a non-stick pan, until lightly golden. sprinkle over the lamb to serve.

A Tale of two kebabs

If we had been playing the 'things that you haven't done that everyone else has' game then The Ewing's drunken confession, as we queued outside Weymouth's Surfside Diner in the early hours of the morning last September, that she had never eaten a kebab might have won her the prize.

While she might have nabbed a few congealed strands of doner meat covered in burger sauce from my mixed special I still considered her kebab maidenhood firmly intact, and where better to pop her pickled chilli than L'As du Fallafel in the Marais, centre of Paris' buzzing Jewish Quarter.

Excitingly they offered Israeli beer, although sadly Maccabee All Malt turned out to be rather like the naughties band bearing part of its name - rather flat and too sweet. I kept my jaded palate entertained before lunch arrived by eating their salty, smoky homemade harissa paste by the teaspoon.

On the face of it, falafel have an unfortunate worthiness about them. They’re made from chickpeas for a start, surely the least inspiring of peas; they contain vaguely healthy looking green bits; and, to top it all, are naturally gluten free and suitable for vegans. Superfood or just super boring?

Thankfully, here they are just super delicious; served crisp and greaseless from the fryer, the steaming morsels gently perfume the air with the sweet garlic and cumin as you break each fluffy ball open. While it’s debatable how healthy anything deep fried in oil can really be, the finished nuggets still have enough worthiness about them to make them feel like they are doing you some good. Doused in harissa and washed down with beer perhaps less so.

My exotic sounding 'cocktail of mixed meats', a combination of grilled chicken, turkey, chicken liver and lamb, was certainly a majestic mix. Particularly interesting was the chicken liver; I’m not sure I’d want a whole plate of it but the soft, offally nuggets made a nice contrast to the smoky chunks of meat. 

And while the polystyrene plate and plastic cutlery gave it the requisite air of being two in the morning outside the kebab van, hoping you’ve still got enough cash for the taxi, here the food was far better and there were no fists flying or associated gutter-side dramas...

Buoyed by a successful first sampling of mystery meat, we switched up our surroundings for our second kebab with a visit to Moroccan stalwart, Chez Omar. Also found in the Marais, this veritable institution has kept celebrities in couscous and roast lamb (lauded as the best in town by David Lebovitz) for years. And while its glory days may be long gone, still expect to see queues out the door at peak times.

Couscous often gets a bad rap, but that’s little wonder when most people’s experience is something stodgy and bland, straight out of a packet with Ainsley Harriot’s face on it. The real stuff is made from hand rolled pasta that is steamed, not soaked, three times using a couscoussier, or double chambered cooking pot. A lot of effort for something you can prepare at home by boiling the kettle, even if it does taste of sadness and dried herbs (and Ainsley has a lovely smile - TE).

I have to say, I was dubious it would all be worth the effort. But, in one of those very rare (ok, pretty much daily) occasions, I was happy to be proved wrong. Instead of the familiar close-textured gloop, this was buttery and ethereal, and the grains stayed fluffy and separate even when mixed with the juices of the accompanying chickpea and vegetable stew.

Alongside were skewers of good grilled lamb and even better merguez sausages; spicy sticks of juicy minced mutton flavoured liberally with cumin, coriander and chili pepper. They also provided their house harissa, smokier and less salty than L'As du Fallafel but with a pleasingly punchy afterburn.

The jury's still out on the Algerian wine, although you can see we didn't leave much evidence. Better was desert; a giant tray of brightly coloured sweetmeats that are left tableside with a pair of gold-plated tongs for you to PYO, a dangerous prospect with the Ewing around. 

Thankfully the sheer amount of sugar crammed into each morsel makes it hard to eat more than one, although I’m pretty sure my wife would have grabbed another luminous chunk of rosewater-perfumed wobbly loukum given half a chance. To drink try a glass of fresh mint tea, a reviving panacea after the sticky sweetness.

And, in case you were wondering, the Ewing was a fan. In fact, shawarma queue outside the Hello Boss van every Friday night for her mixed meat and cheesy chips (wishful thinking, but I had to get a terrible meat-based pun in somehow).