Berber & Q, Shuk Shuk, The Good Egg, Black Axe Mangal - new Middle Eastern restaurants in Hackney

Middle Eastern food had its big moment in British culture about a decade ago when Ottolenghi hit the scene and brought his generous, zingy, lavish Levantine food to the masses in his London cafe-restaurant-delis and through his eponymous debutcookbook. Soon you could buy tahini, za'atar, sumac and proper bunches of fresh herbs everywhere, and our larders all got a bit more interesting.

In that time we've seen handy little chains like Yalla Yalla and Comptoir Libanaise popularise mezze, and the Lebanese restaurants of Edgware Road and the Mangal grills of Green Lanes and Dalston have continued to do their delicious thing. The spirit of Ottolenghi has made it into people's cooking repertoire and into the salad counter in many cafes, but only a handful of restaurants – such as Fitzrovia's Honey & Co – have continued to really push and innovate within the Levantine range to bring exciting Middle East inspired cuisine to restaurant tables.

That was until 2015. A new generation of Middle Eastern restaurants have sprung up across London. North East London, and Hackney in particular, is home to a number of them. Best among them are Haggerston's Berber & Q, Shuk Shuk BBQ in Hackney Wick, Highbury's Black Axe Mangal and Stoke Newington's The Good Egg. Read on and find out why.

Berber & Q
Berber & Q was the first of the bunch to open, in a big space under the arches in Haggerston. Loud house music pumps out, it's dark and buzzy with a clubby vibe. For restaurants are the new clubs, as Hackney gets a bit more old and moneyed. The menu comprises meats and mezze with a heavy emphasis on grilling and smoking on the barbe-Q. Q-ueue you will also have to do, as it's terribly popular. Rock up at 7 and they'll probably call you an hour later to tell your table is ready.

But it's all worth it. The barbecued cauliflower 'shwarma' (the most 2015 of dishes) with pomegranate and tahini was the best I've had, and all the vegetarian mezze was swimming in wow factor: the beetroot came with whipped feta, orange and hazelnuts, smoked aubergine with browned butter and pine nuts, a whole smoked garlic head, home made pickles, green beans with garlic and preserved lemon.

The barbecued meat selection was excellent. We had a portion of their homemade merguez sausages, some 'hand pulled' lamb mechoui – essentially an authentic and delicious version of doner meat, and a sticky, rich slab of pork belly cooked in a pomegranate barbecue sauce. It's all served with fresh herbs, grilled vegetables, flat breads and home-made garlic and chilli sauces. All of this is topped off with a great cocktail menu that makes the most of Middle Eastern flavours – think pistachio syrups, sumac, rose harissa in the Bloody Mary, saffron infused rum.

Shuk Shuk BBQ

Shuk Shuk BBQ in Hackney Wick was opened as a collaboration between the local craft brewery Crate and Berber & Q, and is so very Hackney Wick: street food kitchen, kombucha bar and craft beer bar in a two floor renovated warehouse with ping pong tables, sofas and 'mess hall' (i.e. communal) style tables. The menu has much of the same meats as Berber & Q HQ (I opt again for the lamb mechoui, but try their smoky pulled chicken this time).

The sides here are more of a fusion between US and Middle Eastern BBQ – potato salad is infused with saffron in a nod simultaneously to Iran and the Deep South, the slaw has tahini, yoghurt and fresh herbs through it, and the mac'n'cheese is made with Balkan kashikaval cheese, with a herby crumb running through it, and lovely crunchy bits on top. The sides and topping really made it – help yourself to zhoug – a herby, garlicky green sauce, their sweet and spicy BBQ sauce, or the ultra garlicky garlic and yoghurt sauce You also get lightly pickled onions, pickled chilli peppers, rocket and fresh herbs, harissa, and a cumin salt to sprinkle over it.

Black Axe Mangal

Fusion is also on the table at BlackAxe Mangal at Highbury Corner, but here it's taking the Turkish/Kurdish mangal grill as a starting point, mixing in influences from Head Chef Lee Tiernan's days at nose-to-tail trailbalzers St Johns, mixed in with Asian influences, spice mixes from (my absolute favourite fun fusion restaurant) Mission ChineseFood in San Francisco.

The menu is short with a small selection of flat breads, interesting sides, and larger main dishes. We have the lamb offal flat bread, which is their spin on lahmacun. The offal is only lightly pungent but fully flavoured, and it's topped with lightly pickled pink onions, parsley, garlic and chilli sauces. My offally sceptical friend is initially hesitant, but the chewy dough and perfect balance of flavours means we have more competition than we bargained for.

We could take or leave the kale with preserved lemon, but the century egg with cod roe and crispy pig ear is one of the most remarkable dishes I've tried. It conjures up the taste of egg mayonnaise with bacon and cress, but with rich, deep umami flavours from the core ingredients. A charred hispi cabbage with fermented shrimps is buttery, smoky and so so savoury.

The two main meat dishes are nods to mangal classics - the Bakken special is a ludicrously delicious lamb chop with a tomato and pepper sauce, crunchy lentils, yoghurt and chilli. But the only choice for me was the Mission Chinese spiced lamb doner - a zingy, asian-y spiced mixture coating and dusting the offaly lamb, served on a flatbread with lettuce and cucumber, topped with a yoghurty sauce and crispy onion. 

Like Berber & Q and Shuk Shuk BBQ, Black Axe Mangal puts the party into Middle Eastern food, with fun cocktails (love a Lagerita) and a heavy metal soundtrack. 

The Good Egg

The Good Egg is a bit more sedate and traditional in its presentation, and mashes international Jewish and middle eastern influences with nods to Montreal and New York at the same time as Jerusalem, Iraq and Eastern Europe. It's from an ex Ottolenghi team and located on Stoke Newington Church Street, opening after much anticipation to queues of people hungry for brunch.

They bake their own bagels and challa, which are the most delicious I've had, served with nice olive oil and a za'atar mix. They also cure their own beef for pastrami, which I had in their Good Egg Burger (plenty of bone marrow in the patty for extra pungency, and it comes topped with an egg and pickles and served with zoo fries, which have lots of yemenite herb chilli zhoug on top) and is also available on platters, as a big short rib in its own right, or on pastrami chilli cheese fries. Yum.





Like with the other new middle eastern restaurants to open in North East London, the Good Egg is good for sharing, with lots of smaller dishes for the table. We ate burned aubergine with zhoug (again!), beetroot with sour cream, dill and poppy seed, a whole roast cauliflower with tahini and pomegranate (as I said, the most 2015 dish, and a fine version of it) and buttermilk fried chicken with za'atar and a chilli honey dip (greaseless crispy coating, juicy inside).





Brunch is supposed to be a big deal, with lots of inspired egg options - a shakshuka, burned aubergine in pita, pastrami meat hash, challa french toast, pastrami hash. I intend to try it out in the new year.

A little slice of Moro

In general trend terms, I reckon I'm about 8 – 12 months behind the zeitgeist chasers, and probably an equal timescale ahead of the average joe. I didn't make it to #meateasy until its closing week, I still haven't been to Polpo or Hawksmoor. I loved the sound of Morito, but it had been glowingly reviewed in Metro, Time Out and the Guardian and the prospect of a 2 hour wait didn't quite appeal.

Now, Morito, as its diminutive name suggests is the little sibling of Moro - the Exmouth Market classic that has been bringing us the most delicious Spanish/North African/Middle Eastern inspired food for many years. I went there a few years ago and still salivate at the thought of that meal. But, unlike big sis, you can only walk-in in the evenings to Morito - no reservations or nuffin.

So I waited about a year and finally got to go to Morito a few weeks back with some chums from work. Chums who appreciate damn good food and sherry. Waiting a year has the benefits of not having to wait 2 hours for a table on the night - we waltzed in at 7 and took a neat table for four.

We kicked off with a glass of fino each - I had a crisp Manzanilla, reminiscing about my recent trip to Andalucia and tasting those salty sea breezes off it. Our first round consisted of jamon croquettes (so moist and flavoursome inside, perfectly crisp outside), a zingy chickpea salad, aubergine purée topped with dry aromatic lamb and pomegranate seeds (oh.my.god - this was amazing - one to recreate at home).

Next up we ordered a deep Portuguese red, accompanied by chickpea stew with chorizo and morcilla (tender and nicely pungent), cured cuttlefish roe (very delicate, fresh and tasting like a mouthful of sea), pimentos padron (nobody I know has ever been served a mega spicy one - is it urban legend?), and molten cheese with quince and walnuts (perfect combination - earthy walnuts, greasy and salty warm cheese and sweet and tangy quince - I could have eaten this forever).

The atmosphere was buzzy, clientelle were quite Clerkenwell (thick rimmed glasses ahoy, but hey, who am I to talk), and the service efficient but warm, with no sense of us being hurried despite it being quite a busy night later on. 

So the wait paid off, but I'm already kicking myself for how many times I could have visited if I'd tried and loved early on. Numerous publications inform me that Peruvian food is so 2012, and that March will see two Peruvian joints opening in London. This time I'll be reporting from the frontline - no more missing out!

Don't call me fattee

Fattee is a word often bandied around our house. Mostly because Pete eats absolute shedloads for his slight physique (keen cyclist) and I feel the need to match his appetite (also a cyclist, but I do about 20% of the miles he does).

Fattee is also a favourite leftover and larder meal that usually gets made on day 3 of roast chicken leftovers. The original recipe was from the first Moro cookbook and involves some slightly more lengthy and complicated processes. So this is my lazy cheat's interpretation for when you want to make something nice but don't have time to burn.

What you need (for two portions):
1 tin tomatoes
3 cloves garlic
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp chilli flakes
1 medium size aubergine
100g long grain or basmati rice
small bunch of flat leaf parsley
2 pita bread
2 tsp pine nuts
150ml greek yoghurt
2 portions leftover roast chicken

You need to do a few things at the same time:
- make the tomato sauce - sizzle 2 finely chopped cloves of garlic and the chilli flakes in olive oil until slightly golden. Add the tin of tomatoes and the cinnamon. Allow to bubble away and thicken up.
- cook the rice, simples.
- cut the aubergine into 1 cm slices, and then in half again. Ideally you'd charr these on a girddle, but frying is fine too.
- toast the pita, then cut into strips
- toast the pine nuts lightly in a dry frying pan
- chop the flat leaf parsley
- mix the yoghurt with a crushed clove of garlic, maybe a little milk to thin, and some salt and pepper

Once those are all ready it's a layering job and you can decide whether you want to layer plates up individually or as a presentation plate. But you start with the scattering the pita bread at the bottom, then top with rice, spreading it out. Then add the chicken and the aubergine, spreading evenly. Then add the tomato sauce and top that with the yoghurt. Finally sprinkle the flat leaf parsley and toasted pine nuts. Then tuck in!



It might seem a little bit of a fiddly recipe, but all the stages are very easy and you can do multiple things all at the same time. The flavours work well - I always love tomato and yoghurt combinations, and there are some nice smoky notes from the toast, pine nuts and the chargrilled aubergine. It's an immensely satisfying dish and still impressive enough for visitors.

Middle East, made easy

A few weeks ago I went with friends to check out Le Comptoir Libanais, a new mini-chain of stylish little canteens serving Lebanese food. I think the first one popped up in Marylebone early last year and now there are branches in Bayswater, Swiss Cottage and Westfield. They've already received heaps of praise from the likes of Time Out, and it seems everyone else went to try it months and months before I did, but hey...!

We started with drinks - I had a zingy rosewater lemonade, which was sour, aromatic and refreshing all in one. The others had similarly zingy and flavoursome fruit drinks, such as pomegranate and orange blossom lemonade. Yum.



We shared a mixed mezze platter, which had everything you would expect. Fresh humus, smoky baba ganoush, citrussy tabbouleh, falafel, cheese samboussek, a rice salad and picked vegetables. It was all very nice, but not radically different or superior to mezze platters you would find at other Lebanese restaurants in the neighbourhood.



Next up we had wraps - I had half a chicken taouk wrap and half a haloumi and olive wrap. The flatbread itself was nice, wholesome tasting. Maybe I'm a bit more used to greasy street food, but I felt the wraps could have benefited from smatterings of the magic triad of salad, tomato sauce and garlic yoghurt sauce. In sensible quantities I hasten to add! This would have presented the wraps from being a bit dry.



Overall, it was a pleasant experience - nicely decorated, friendly service, the food was nice and the bill was very reasonable. But I've had tastier Lebanese food elsewhere in London. The Independent's review likened it to a Middle Eastern Carluccio's - I wouldn't go quite that far, but it did seem to be Middle-East made easy - for people who might not have considered venturing into a 'proper' Lebanese eatery. This is no bad thing really - anything opens up people's palates to the joys of Middle Eastern cooking is a good thing. But don't go to Le Comptoir Libanais expecting much more than an introduction.

Tufnell Park tapas

Last night I finally made it to Cafe del Parc, after years of cycling and bussing past it regularly. It's located halfway up Junction Road, which is a rather dreary main road that links Tufnell Park and Archway, although there are a few hidden gems there, like the Hideaway and some nice antique shops. I'd always been intrigued by its stylish frontage but never stopped to take much of a closer look.

Inside it is utterly charming - the kitchen is in the middle of the restaurant and totally open, complete with luscious herb plants, bottles of olive oil and hanging chorizo. The tables are arranged around the kitchen; the menus printed on brown paper and attached to clipboards to accommodate for the seasonally evolving menu. The music was fairly loud Indian instrumental stuff, which actually worked quite well. Café del Parc is said to be inspired by old Ibiza and you can well imagine that hippy vibe there.


The menu was absolutely WOW. There were probably about 40 tapas dishes on it, all of which would have been delicious. Luckily there we were a party of four and could justify a reasonable order, even with one seafood eating vegetarian! The wine list was also incredibly well chosen and reasonably priced - we plumped for a rosé that was deep fuschia in colour and beautiful to taste.

We started with some home made bread with olive oil and some olives with garlic and preserved lemon. All of which were amazing. Our first round of tapas was potted shrimps in saffron butter - tasted of the sea, a carrot and lentil stew which was rich with cumin and served with aniseedy dill, and filo pastry stuffed with spinach, feta and pomegranates - this was one of the highlights of the evening - sweet, sour and salty all in one, we could well have ordered seconds.


Next came Moorish lamb skewers with butter bean mash. The lamb was smoky and tender and still juicy and pink inside. The butter bean mash alone would be worth ordering the dish for - rich with roast garlic and herbs, my friend has already tried to re-create it at home!


Calamari rings arrived next - and were a world away from your typical ruibbery bland calamari experience. Again, they tasted of the sea, the breadcrumbs tasted positively healthy and they came with a delicious garlic mayonnaise.


The next dish was a meaty highlight - pan-fried chicken, chorizo and Serrano ham in a creamy, paprika-y sauce. I could have eaten every last drop. We also had deep fried goats cheese balls in orange blossom honey - goats cheese is one of the few things I don't enjoy, but here it was so smooth and soft that it was actually a pleasure to eat.


Next up was razor clams and salad in a sweet wasabi dressing. There could have been a more generous serving of razor clams, but they were still sweet, meaty and delicious. The wasabi dressing gave it a nice kick too.


The last dish to come was the ol' classic, Patatas Bravas, which you just can't go wrong with really:


After such a delicious meal it was hard to resist having a dessert. We opted for the home made ice cream selection, which included a scoop of malaga raisin and cinnamon, a scoop of pomegranate and a scoop of orange ice cream. Wow. We also shared a chocolate mouse, which was rich and eggy, topped with some vanilla ice cream.


Every dish was absolutely excellent, but there were so many more we could have chosen. 12 dishes between four was just the right amount though. I will certainly be going back with anyone who is interested to make more progress on the menu. The tapas were definitely reasonably priced rather than cheap, but the ingredients were clearly of excellent quality and when the bill worked out as £23 per head including wine, it certainly felt like one of the best value meals I've had in a long time. So, whether you live in the area or not, it's definitely worth making a trip to Cafe del Parc if you are in search of quality, imaginative tapas in a lovely setting with great service!

Casa Moro

I was lucky enough to receive Casa Moro for Christmas - it's even more beautiful than the first Moro cookbook, all turquoisey azulejos on the cover, more stories about ingredients and places. There's more of a Spanish leaning in this one, with detailed accounts of the Sams' travels through Andalucia and Morocco.

I tried making their their 'potato cakes stuffed with lamb and pine nuts', which sounded quite like the bombas picanté I enjoyed at Café Andaluz in Edinburgh over Christmas. The recipe involved making an aromatic lamb mince mixture with lovely herbs and toasted pine nuts, which would then be encased in a potato dough and fried. I use the conditional tense because I got flustered and totally screwed up the potato dough. I get stressed about fiddly bits of cooking and try to avoid complex pastry making and other fine-motor-skill-demanding processes. So I turned the dish into a 'middle eastern' Shepherd's Pie by putting the lamb mix in a casserole dish and topping with the potato dough! And it was wonderful - who needs fiddly little balls anyway?!

I served it with my interpretation of a dish I had at Café Andaluz - roasted cubes of parsnip and sweet potato, with chick peas in a yoghurt-tahini-parsley sauce. It was lovely and earthy, tangy, warming.



To make the lamb mixture fry some finely chopped onion in olive oil and butter. Once golden, add 300g lamb mince, a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, some grated nutmeg, the ground seeds of 3 cardamom pods, 3 ground cloves. Cook for a bit longer before adding some toasted pine nuts, finely chopped parsley, a tablespoon of tomato purée and a splash of water to add moisture. Cook for another few minutes and you have a beautifully fragrant, exotic dish that will transport you far away from this grim British winter.

Persia, near Primrose Hill

My favourite thing about living in London is the sheer cultural diversity of its inhabitants. I love being on a bus and hearing different languages in every direction. But most importantly, every diaspora group brings with them their culinary traditions by opening restaurants, cafes, grocers and delis as cultural outposts for diaspora to seek comfort and for curious diners' to discover the exciting and far flung cuisines.

I admire the dedication of The World in 202 Meals in their mission to sample every national cuisine moonlighting in London's restaurants. I have a similar mission in mind, and made a visit to Iran on Haverstock Hill last weekend in the form of a restaurant called Tandis.

I've long been intrigued by Persian/Iranian cuisine - my good friend Afsi is half-Iranian and I have many fond memories of popping round her family's house and snacking on leftover Salad Oliviyeh or hearing tales of the perfect Tah-dig. More recently, I've been dying to go to Persepolis in Peckham and get my hands on some rose petals, dried limes, barberries and other exotic staples of the Persian kitchen. Similarly, Tandis has been on my radar for some time having featured in numerous lists.

Everything about Tandis was great. The service was warm, helpful, personal - the owner was keen to ensure we chose dishes well and entered into a jovial debate with my friend Tamara over the virtues of different condiments for her Loobia Polow (her Iraqi roots said yoghurt, he said tomato salad). The décor is stylish and luxurious, the space light and airy. And the food...wow. There is a big range of starters that you could eat Mezze style, but the waiter advised us to save ourselves for the mains. The mains include a wide range of kebabs as well as some rice dishes and a long list of meaty and vegetarian stews.



I was most interested in the stews - some with split pea and aubergine, others with ground, dried limes and sour plums. I opted for Khoresh-e esfenaj-o alu - a stew of Lamb, spinach and sour plums. It was incredible - the sour, sweetness of the sauce, the green vigour of the spinach and the tender, slow-cooked lamb. Wow. It was almost overwhelmingly tasty with such potent flavours. It came with a huge pile of saffron rice - I love that pungent, perfumed taste. A vegetarian friend had the a split pea and aubergine stew which was also tasty.



We had been advised to save space for dessert - and it had to be faloodeh - a rose and lime sorbet filled with thin vermicelli and topped with sour cherries. It was invigorating, perfumey, sour and bizarre. But very good.



I learnt that the sour taste is prominent in Persian food experience. I think sour is quite an acquired taste - it doesn't feature in many European cuisines and, when it is, it's balanced against another taste sensation. I like it though. That said, there were plenty of dishes that weren't all about the sour. I will definitely be going back - it was very reasonably priced (£7-8 for a stew main, £10 - 11 for a kebab main) and there is just so much on that menu I want to try!

Roasted love

Now that it is certifiably winter, there's no better excuse than to be cooking delicious roast dinners. One thing I've learned is that there are whole different worlds of roasting. Thinking about all the roast dinners I've had in my life, I can attribute different styles of roasts to different people. I'd say my mum's are French-inspired - real herbs, lemons and nice vegetables cooked alongside. My grandparents' roasts are much more traditional, served with lovely rich gravy and root vegetables, often straight out their garden. Mmmm.

When it comes to cooking a roast myself, I'm quite a fan of rubbing, marinading and then slow cooking. I tend to buy less classic cuts of meet - lamb and pork shoulders recently. I like grinding up spices - like cumin seeds or fennel seeds - with garlic, salt and chilli, and maybe paprika. Then cooking for hours and hours on a low temperature. I cooked a shoulder of lamb for 13 hours in anticipation of dinner last Sunday and it was just so, so tender and moist. The meat was literally falling off the bone as I took a knife to it, while the exterior was crispy and spicy.

Accompaniments matter too. I've been inspired by my recent visit to Moro and served recent roasts with braised cabbage topped with yoghurt and sumac. Celariac mash accompanied a pork shoulder...



...and a full Ottolenghi-esque mezze accompanied the lamb. I served it with roast potatoes and artichokes with lemon and olives, grilled peppers in green tahini, beetroot with yoghurt and dill, lemon braised fennel, and braised cabbage with yoghurt and sumac again. It was delicious.



I'm going to experiment with some other roasting styles over the Winter. I have the Silver Spoon and a friend recently gave me Ripailles, so there should be lots of new inspirations!

Moro

A few years ago a dear friend bought me the Moro cookbook. This was when I'd just moved back from the culinary wasteland of Germany (you would not believe how terrible supermarkets are there) and I was beginning to get into cooking big time with my flatmates. I was excited to be back in London - land of farmers' markets, normal markets, global food options. I delighted in skipping up Seven Sisters Road to get the generous bundles of fresh herbs, slightly exotic vegetables and fish to make Moro meals. I read about the restaurant time after time in the Observer Food Monthly and in Time Out, I walked past it countless times, I eyed up the menu online. For our birthdays (in June and July), my partner and I decided we would treat ourselves to a meal at Moro. And last weekend, at the end of November, we finally did!

It all started simply, with delicious sour dough bread olive oil. We munched on that while we contemplated the short, but perfectly mouthwatering menu.



It's worth saying that the service is impeccable at Moro. It was a busy Friday night, the restaurant was bustling with contented, enthused punters and they could easily have been hurrying us along, but were friendly, informal and attentive. We finally settled on a selection of sherries - not the kind of sherries that your grandma drinks too much of at Christmas, but exciting, delicate, interesting sherries served perfectly chilled. The website describes them like so:

"Try this selection to discover the sheer deliciousness of bone dry sherry, from the salty sea breeze tang of Manzanilla, through the more pungent, assertive Fino, finishing with the more complex Manzanilla Pasada whose rock pool aromas are overlaid with subtle nutty age."



For starter I had a pumpkin kibbeh stuffed with sweetly spiced onions, raisins and chick peas. It was served with a radish and pomegranate salad and musky seasoned yoghurt.



Pete had swiss chard stalks with raisins and anchovies. It was earthy, salty and sweet all in one.



My main course was strips of charcoal grilled lamb, served with a smoky, spicy aubergine and bulgur wheat pilav and a shredded cabbage and yoghurt salad. It really was just heaven on a plate - the combination of flavours were perfectly balanced, the meat was super quality and the charcoal imparted just the right amount of smokiness.



Pete had woodroasted pheasant breast, served with onions caremalised in Pedro Ximenez and braised cabbage. I should also say that the wine list was excellent, with a really broad, well-chosen selection of wines by the glass. We had a glass of Gotim Bru and a glass of Mestizaje (described as mid-weight modernist!).



For dessert it had to be the classic Moro yoghurt cake with pistachio and pomegranate seeds. It's something I've made from the Moro recipe book before, so I was keen to try it as it should be. I was pleased to find that my own version wasn't too far off the mark, but this was just stunning: sweet, sour, fruity, nutty, and perfectly paired with a glass of Vino Dulce de Moscatel!



I can honestly say that it was one of the best meals of my entire life. It was a faultless experience, the food and the wine were out of this world, the atmosphere was warm and happy, and punters and waiters alike were equally enthused about the food. Now - to try and replicate at home!

What a Turkey!

Deciding where I want to holiday is always tough. Cuisine is the primary consideration, but that's got to be weighed against authenticity, value, climate, language, etc. My trip to Portugal earlier in the year ticked all of those boxes, but the time spent planning it to make sure that it did tick those boxes was inordinate. To recuperate from the party conference season I wanted an easy, quick fix and decided on Turkey.

The WHERE was the tricky bit. Istanbul was the penultimate destination on my inter rail trip in 2004. I remember the excitement of the 23 hour train journey there from Bucharest, drinking tea and eating salted cucumbers with the conductor, and then arriving in the scorching July heat to find myself, as I had hoped, in another world. I have ideas about travelling through Turkey by train and bus and being very thorough and authentic, so I didn't want to use up too many Turkey credits with this one. In the end, I decided on Oludeniz, on Turkey's south western coast. From my research, it was beautiful, accessible (via package holidays), affordable and still warm and sunny in mid-October.

Oludeniz was indeed beautiful, accessible, affordable and still warm and sunny in mid-October, but it was also full of Brits Abroad. Brits Abroad are not especially keen to immerse themselves in local cultures and cuisines, and the vast majority of the restaurants served full English breakfasts, apple crumble, egg and chips and all those clichéd favourites. There were, however, three great restaurants in the town serving very nice, typical Turkish cuisine, so all was not lost.

The Oba Motel is the last remaining of the hippy settlements that were in Oludeniz long before the asphalt blocks, neon cocktail bars and Turkish delight shops. It still has tree house style huts to stay in, but also features a large, mostly outdoor restaurant service up tasty Turkish cuisine and genial service.

We visited a couple of times, and on both occasions we started with a freebie mini mezze plate, with burnt aubergine, a yoghurt and garlic dip, spiced hummus and a tomato and pepper dip. This was served with the customary so-freshly-baked-it's-all-puffed-up-with-steam pita breads, which are a million miles from those dry pitas you get all vacuum packed from the supermarket.


On my first visit, I had a tasty vegetable casserole, cooked and served in a clay pot. Yummy squash, aubergine, carrots, peas and peppers featured in this simple but satisfying dish.


The other time we visited the Oba Motel, we treated ourselves to a whopping fish platter, with swordfish, calamari, prawns, white tuna and lake trout. All freshly grilled over coals and served simply with the usual sides of rice, chips, salads and green bean stew. The fish was so, so fresh and juicy and laced with just the right amount of char taste.


Desserts in restaurants are seemingly not too big a deal in Turkey, the only dish consistently on menus was baklava, obviously. At Oba we tried a dish, which was warm bananas with (warm) honey, cream and cinnamon. It was really nice, but I'm not sure how traditional it is. Any ideas?


I'll write about the rest of my Turkish culinary experiences later...

Ottolenghi love

A large part of the time I spend thinking about food is spent thinking about Ottolenghi food. For those of you who don't know, Ottolenghi is a small collection of restaurant/delis in London. Their food is albout amazing fresh flavours, ingenious combinations, using plenty of great quality ingredients, copius scatterings of fresh herbs. They published a cookbook, which has since become a bible for me and my friends.

I try and cook at least one Ottolenghi recipe a week, whether it's from the book or Ottolenghi's weekly column 'the new vegetarian' in the Guardian's Saturday magazine. Last night I cooked roast chicken with saffron, hazelnuts and honey. It was amazing burst flavours and smells from the souk, gently exotic and luxurious with its saffron, rosewater, cinammon, honey, lemon and ginger. The roasted hazelnuts gave the dish a velvety earthiness, and combined with the honey, cinammon and rosewater, it was like a semi-savoury baklava.

A quick google revealed that Gourmet Worrier had cooked it fairly recently and adapted the recipe a bigger meal, so I shall re-driect you there for the recipe. I used thighs rather than drumsticks though. I do love the thighs!

My partner is also mad keen on Ottolenghi and cooked last week's new vegetarian recipe, beetroot, yogurt and preserved lemon relish. I am absolutely wild about beetroot, especially when combined with plentiful heaps of fresh dill and creme fraiche or yoghurt. With the addition of preserved lemons (or in my case lots of lemon rind, not ever being able to find them in my local middle eastern shops and being too lazy thus far to preserve lemons myself) this was the zingiest, freshest meal I've had in a while. Here's a photo:


That's enough Ottolenghi for now. Don't worry, though, plenty more to come!