Silk road bulghur salad or transcaucasian delight

The bright colours and bursting flavours of this salad are particularly welcome on a drizzly day. The pomegranate seeds look like jewels, and the dark green of the herbs is accented by the pale green of the pistachios. The flavours and textures combine to make very enjoyable mouthfuls, sharp and sweet, aromatic and savoury, and satisfyingly filling.

The recipe comes from a combination of cooking that I suppose could be called transcaucasian. I’ve been travelling the silk road in my kitchen, I was already familiar with middle eastern and Turkish cookery, and I’ve travelled a little bit further. I suppose you could compare it to tabbouleh.

It is what the French call a salade composée, a mixed salad, or a put together salad. The French make a big deal of such things, although many salads have more than one ingredient, even a green salad.

I’ve been known to complain about long lists of ingredients needed for some recipes, and I hope this recipe doesn’t put anyone off. The ingredients are now easily available in London and many wholefood and supermarkets – pomegranate seeds can be seen alongside sandwiches offered as a lunchtime snack. Currants are traditional standard of the store cupboard, used in old style baking, eccles cakes and squashed fly biscuits. I love their name, evolved from the way the French say Corinth, where they first came from. 

I’m writing this in March, slightly at the end of the pomegranate season this side of the globe. If you are reading this and can’t find pomegranates you can use another sour flavour such as barberries, lingonberries or such, but they won’t give that exploding in the mouth pleasure, rather flavour and a bit more chew. If you can’t find bulghur brown rice would work. Of course if you start substituting too many things then you won’t be making this salad.

I add a pinch of gomasio, which gives an extra dimension. Because sometimes more is more. 

Preparation: 30 minutes

Equipment: chopping board, sharp knife, medium sized bowl

(For cooking bulghur see information at the end)

Ingredients

1 cup (or mug) of cooked wholewheat bulghur

Small bunch  of fresh mint

Small bunch  of fresh parsley

Small bunch  of fresh coriander

3 spring onions

Seeds of small pomegranate (1 cup)

1 tbsp currants

2 tbsp shelled pistachios

Juice of 1 lemon

Juice of 1 mandarin or Satsuma or tangerine

3tbsp olive oil

1 tsp honey

Generous drizzle of pomegranate molasses

Salt and pepper

Method

Chop the herbs as fine as you can

Slice the spring onions as thin as you can

Chop the pistachios – but not too fine

Put the cooked bulghur into medium sized serving bowl

Add the chopped herbs, sliced spring onions and chopped pistachios

Add the pomegranate seeds and currants

Add the lemon juice, olive oil, mandarin juice, honey and pomegranate molasses and stir well and add salt and pepper to taste.

Bulghur

Cook the bulghur as usual or as follows:

Warm one tablespoon of the olive oil in a pan over a gentle heat and add a half cup of bulghur, shaking it around in the pan until it is coated in oil

Add a cup of stock and bring to the boil, and then to a simmer

Put a lid on the pan and cook at a simmer for 10 minutes, covered, then turn off and leave, covered, for five minutes

After this check the bulghur is nice and chewy, and not sticking to the bottom of the pan. There should be no liquid.

NB bulghur can vary hugely, and you may need to adjust the cooking of the bulghur in your store cupboard accordingly

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Cranks date & walnut loaf

adorned with honeyed yoghurt and fruit salad

Cranks was the first vegetarian restaurant in London, on Carnaby Street in 1961. I used to go to the one next to the Craftsman Potters shop, with my mum in the 70s, getting the full strength 70s dose of varnished pine, wholemeal everything and salt glazed earthenware. The food was laid out under the heating lamps you now mostly only see in motorway service stations. But then I don’t go to hotels much, or all-you-can-eat buffets. Oh, and they had a salad bar. It was jolly tasty stuff, and introduced me to the joys of red cabbage coleslaw. Now, in a moment of clarity, I have purchased the Cranks Recipe book via the estimable ebay. It is a gem.

I love a walnut loaf, and, to revisit an old subject, I have eggs to use, thanks to our very own chickens. So I gave the Date and Walnut loaf a try. I’ve just eaten the last slice. I wrapped it up and let it sit for three days before tasting it, or, if you want the truth, I hid it. Cake doesn’t last long around here, and I wanted to see what it was like when it sat for a while. The answer is: delicious.

three trying to lay at once

This cake is made entirely with wholemeal ingredients, and although the name is date and walnut loaf, it tastes wonderfully of orange. I can’t recommend it enough. Some of the walnuts are included in the mix, and some are scattered on top. You get a lovely orangey crumb, with bits of fudgey date the occasional crunch walnut fragment inside the cake and lovely toasty walnut on top. The Cranks recipe recommends it with butter, but for me it is heaven without accompanied by a nice strong cup of tea.

You’ll see that the ingredients are all based around the 3 eggs,  50g of fat, per egg and the same of dates and sugar 100g of flour and 25g of walnuts. So if you want to make a teeny loaf just add that to a third of the juice and zest of an orange. Or make a very very orangey version.

I use an electric whisk.

Recipe: Date and Walnut loaf

Set oven to 170C/325F/Gas Mark 3

Line a 500g/1lb loaf tin

Ingredients

·         150g/5oz Butter or Margarine

·         150g/5ozDark brown sugar (muscovado)

·         3 Eggs, beaten

·         1 Small orange, grated rind and juice

·         150g/50z Dates, chopped and stoned

·         75g/3oz Walnuts, chopped

·         300g/10oz Wholemeal  self-raising flour

Method

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy

Beat in the eggs one by one, then stir in the orange rind

Fold in the dates, and half the walnuts and the flour

Add the orange juice last

Spoon the mixture out of into a lined 900g/1lb loaf tin

Level the surface of the mixture and scatter the rest of the walnuts over the top

Bake for 1 to 1 ¼ hours, until risen and golden brown in a coolish oven 170C/325F/Gas Mark 3

If you can, leave for a few days before eating

Citrus fudge icing

Icing is lovely when judiciously used, and can make a cake, both in terms of looks and flavour. If there is too much icing a cake can become sickly - although there is, of course, no obligation to eat it. Making a 'fudge' icing means you get a crunchy outside and soft inside, and using lemon juice gives a wonderfully sharp tang to go with the sweetness, which is especially good with a cake like carrot cake. This is a good alternative to a cream cheese frosting. It keeps better too, although that isn't an issue with carrot cake as a rule, since it seldom lingers.


Citrus fudge icing


This is enough for the top or the middle of a 9" cake


250g icing sugar
75g unsalted butter
3 tbsp lemon juice
zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange

1. finely grate the zest
2. sift icing sugar into bowl with the zest
3. cut the butter into thin slices and heat slowly, until completely melted - do not boil
4. pour hot melted butter into the sifted icing sugar, beating as you pour, until it is all taken up by the sugar
5. heat the juice in the pan (I use the same pan... without washing)
6. pour the hot juice into the sugar/butter mixture, beating as you pour, until it is one silky mixture
7. let the icing cool until it stiffens, beating it again before using it

• to apply the icing to the cake have a tall mug full of freshly boiled water, use a palette knife or a large knife
• spread the icing quickly, spreading it with the hot knife - as soon as the icing starts to drag on the knife, clean off the remaining icing and dip it into the hot water again
• continue until the icing is applied

grated apple

I love grated apple. Eating it is a pleasure. Somehow the flavour is improved, and the fact that you can suck it to death makes it better than just biting into an apple. I like to pour freshly squeezed orange juice over it. Perfect.

My mother used to give us grated apple when we were feeling poorly. The story she told me is that it is easy to digest. I have no idea if this is true, but as a gesture of maternal love, I have introduced my children to it as well, and it goes down well. 

The best apples to eat grated are braeburns or cox. 

It doesn’t need a recipe.

marmalade three

I have had lots of compliments on my marmalade. I like making it, and it feels like time spent with my mother, grandmother and aunt. It is also a great pleasure, to come out as a culinary alchemist. All cooking is magic of a kind, and working with molten sugar produces a very particular golden bounty. My marmalade recipe is here.

I am just starting my last batch of marmalade for this year. In an unexpected last gasp of enthusiasm, I swiped a bag of seville oranges from Sainsbury's in mid February, and have kept them in the fridge, for no good reason, until now. The fruits have been well behaved, and are still good, despite the wait.

My mum got used to waiting, despite seeming an impatient person, trained in part by her five offspring, whose timekeeping was and is both variable and erratic. Within the family, the tardy was referred to as a Late Long. I am a Late Long, and I should have a badge made, to warn to unwary.

Recipes for marmalade, in many of the cookbooks I refer to, often mention that it's best to make marmalade with the first batch of seville oranges that come to town. I have never seen seville oranges until late January. My marmalade baptism was with the last few seville oranges at the bottom of the box at my greengrocer's. I only got them because his regular old (older than me) ladies hadn't come for them, perhaps having fallen victim to a particularly cold snap. My benefit. So most of the marmalade I've made has been with 'old' sevilles, and this last batch is in keeping with my sloppy beginning in the making of same.

The recipe I've been using refers to a given number of oranges, combined with a weight of sugar. However, this last batch are uniformly smaller than those I've used before, of whatever age. I started weighing the oranges this year, and they averaged 120g per orange - these weigh around 100g each. So I'm doing a five for four deal in my calculations.

Older oranges are easier to prep in some ways, because the pith comes away more easily. This makes cutting the peel easier too. I'm just setting the two bowls out now, and will cook and bottle the magic tomorrow.

marmalade too

I have been making marmalade again. The smell is divine. I'd like it as perfume. The orangey odour wafts around the house, and really can't be matched. When the sugar is added the hint of caramel creates something irresistible. Eating last year's version 2 (recipe here), I think I must be a god, or at least an alchemist.

I am trying a 2011 second batch, with just the light soft brown sugar, and a little demerera. Jars are in the oven. Soon I'll take it to a rolling boil and get the jam funnel out. I'll post the recipe in a bit. As for 2011 batch 1, I have 27 jars on the shelf, only two have labels, and friends are offering to pay for it. We'll see.