PRO BONO STREET FOOD RECIPES #2

CHICKEN BICKEN CURRY
I spent some time getting this one right: Beginning in my tiny kitchen in Brighton in 1993-1996, then in Cape Town 1996-1999, New York 1999-2009 (I cooked it for my mate Charlotte in NY this year). I've served this for many a dinner guest and it always goes down well. Okay it's nothing like a real curry but it is a real English Curry, whatever the fuck that means (bastardized!) but it will still make you sweat...


Feeds 4
1 onion
4 chicken breasts
a small lump of fresh root ginger, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 jar Patak’s balti paste (or similar)
1 bunch fresh coriander
6 curry leaves
2 teaspoons each of ground cumin, coriander, turmeric
and garam masala
4 cardamom pods
1 chicken stock cube
600ml/1 pint/2 1/2 cups water
1 x 200g block creamed coconut
1 green chilli (chopped)
a good knob of butter

Chop the onion. However you want. Small is good. Fry until golden. This is important as you don’t want to make everything taste of onion.

While the onion is cooking, wash and chop the chicken breasts into smallish chunks. Add the chicken to the onion when it looks like it’s about to burn. Then add the ginger and the garlic.
Fry up for 5 minutes or until the chicken turns white. Add the curry paste.

Chop and add three-quarters of the bunch of coriander (save the rest). Add the curry leaves, ground spices and cardamom pods. Add the stock cube and enough of the water to cover the meat. Put the pan on the lowest heat setting available and cook for 20 minutes.

Chop the coconut block, then add it to the chicken with the chilli, remaining water and the butter too. Cook for about an hour and then remove from the heat and allow to stand for a couple of hours.

Gently reheat, sprinkle with the remaining coriander, and serve with basmati rice and/or naan bread.

Nice Beach 1989

Me and my mate Ali had come down to Nice after the 1989 bicentennial celebrations in Paris. We checked out Jean-Paul Goude‘s parade and then jumped on the overnight train to Nice. The previous day, Ali‘s credit card had been swallowed up in a cash machine and so we were well under manners and a tight budget, until his girlfriend could make it down to nice and hook us up with some cash. On the train I hooked up with a French/African guy going south into the army who sold me a large chunk of hash. We smoked all night in the corridor from Paris to Nice We checked into the temporary youth hostel (a fire station) that opens each summer, and lived out a meagre, but chilled, existence, trying to make the money I had last. Each day we‘d get up and walk to the cheapest supermarket and buy some food: Salami, Laughing Cow cheese and a couple of baguettes. This would last us all day. We thought about buying and selling soft drinks on the beach (BOISSON FRAIS!) but the competition from the Moroccans was a bit fierce. After tanning all day listening to Balearic beats on the Walkman, we‘d go back to the youth hostel and shower. I‘d wrap up a joint and then we‘d go back to the beach to eat the other half of our daily food ration and watch the night descend, stoned to the bone. Sometimes we‘d throw stones at floating Evian bottles, just for the thrill of hearing the crack of stone on plastic, and the sea would merge with the sky and I‘d have to look away. This was how we spent the summer. Ali‘s girlfriend eventually turned up and that night we went out and eat at a small Italian restaurant in the old part of town that served up killer pizza. One of the best tasting meals ever. Peace+love to Ali, wherever you are.

Free Range Kosher Chicken Noodle Soup

Okay, so chicken was this week's meat of choice for the sunday roast and today I'm gonna turn it into the best soup. Just like that... Make sure its a decent bird (Kosher/Free-Range) and after it's been ravaged by the hungry hoards take a big fuck-off pan with lid and put what is left of the chicken in with a couple of liters of boiling water. Boil for a couple of hours, with the lid on.
Using a colander drain off the stock and then pick out what meat is left and return (with stock) to the pan, discarding the horrorshow bits in the bin. Add chicken stock cube (Knorr or Kallo is best) 2 cloves of chopped garlic, two peeled and sliced carrots (or any veg left over from the sunday dinner - chopped roast potatoes are good), some lemon juice and salt and pepper. Add a knob of butter and a sprig of rosemary and then boil up for 15 mins. Add the noodles ( Lubella Filiini no 2 are the best) and cook for 5 more mins.
Optional Peri-Peri powder is great but not essential.
Serve and watch it go... Yam yam yammmmm. Lekker!

The Happy Mondays

It's wicked to get up on a cold Northern Monday morning and knowing that you've got a day of hard yakka of pure creation in front of you. My working life is divided into food, travel, and people and I love them all. The people bit covers everything: talent, stories, and often leads to the discovery of new food. This in turn is linked to travel and so the circle is complete. It's a good job I just don't do one thing as I get bored very easily and bouncing from one thing to another keeps me distracted. Talking of getting distracted and into trouble, this leads me to The Happy Mondays, who are on my list...

Hush Hush it's illegal

Spent most of today in Newcastle with my pal Hush, shooting/filming him create an fucking huge piece in his all-new style in an abandoned warehouse in Gateshead. I've not done anything so illegal in a long time (well, not since I was in LA with HUSH...) and it was good to get my heart going a little. All will be revealed in the Hush film I'm half way through shooting... Then I drove home and eat a killer Sunday lunch with my family: the Ying and the Yang - the big wheel keeps on turning...

Pesto Pastie

Had some pastry left over from the steak pie and so made a proper fusion of street food - Cornwall meets Rome - mushroom, cheese, and red pesto (with optional bacon/ham) pastie.
Okay what you do is roll out an oval piece of short crust pastry (or puff - whatever you have) and spread a decent teaspoon of red pesto, like a mini pizza. Fry some mushrooms and bacon or ham up in a pan with some butter for 3 mins and then wack on top of the pesto. sprinkle with cheese, salt+pepper and pull up the pastry around the edges, making it into a pastie-like shape. Brush pastry join with milk and then stick in the oven for 20 mins at 160. Makes a change from the usual!

The Reamins of the Pie (Steak & Guinness)

Yesterday my son (hero of post below) said that he was bored of all the Italian food we had been eating (okay he had a point, I have been hammering my Bella Granny's recipes since getting back from Rome) and when I asked him what he wanted he said 'something tasty'. Both my kids like decent food. My eldest (daughter) likes anything I cook and is up to speed on proper spicy food, but my boy likes his traditional English Fayre: Shepard's Pie, Fisherman pie (both not really pies as there is not a scrap of pastry in sight), Meat (usually mince) & Potato Pie, Spag Bog (a very English dish!). And steak pie. He loves one of them, and so I got a few recipes together and decided on the best form of attack. He's not that fond of too much veg so no mushrooms or celery (both of which go well in the pie)-  just the carrots then. Braising steak is best for this job so buy it before it's chopped up and then you can make your own whatever size you want. Oh and apparently you have to have some bacon in there... Anyway it went down like a 747 (quickly) and made me think more about traditional English food. Recipe will follow when it's 100% perfected...

Get Your Drink On

This is one for the hardcore gangbangers out there... My latest favourite beverage is the Earl of Bosh.
My boy made me a cup of tea the other night and used the wrong teabags. But it was dope!
1 Earl Grey + 1 Roibosh teabag = The Earl of Bosh.
Take it with milk and you're laughing all the way to your nearest meth dealer. That's street living alright!

PRO BONO STREET FOOD RECIPES #1

As the season of good will to all (wo)men approaches I've decided to start giving it away! I'm sending my tried and tested recipes from year dot to yesterday out into the digital ether...

Straight from the streets of Bo-Kaap (google the fucker) this is the killer Cape Malay Curry that tastes like it should -- Outta this world.

CAPE MALAY MINCE & PEA CURRY (okay so it has potato in as well)

Feeds 4

2 teaspoons vegetable oil

1 large onion, sliced

1 tin tomatoes

3 pieces cinnamon bark

5 cardamom pods

3 cloves

3 teaspoons garam masala

1 teaspoon turmeric

4 teaspoons ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ginger paste from a jar

3 teaspoons garlic paste from a jar

500g/18oz minced steak or lamb

425ml/3/4 pint/scant 2 cups stock (the same as your meat of choice)

4 potatoes, peeled and quartered

200g/7oz frozen peas

Heat the oil in a large pan, add the onion and fry until golden. Add the tin of tomatoes and cook on a low heat for 10 minutes. Then add all the spices and simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add the mince, allow to brown, and then add the stock and cook for at least 30 minutes on the lowest heat, stirring constantly.

Add the potatoes to the mixture and cook for another 15 minutes, or until the potatoes begin to crumble, adding more stock if needed – you want it to be fairly wet. Finally, add the frozen peas and cook for 5 minutes.

Serve with Indian breads such as rotis or parathas.

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King Adz Column

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