Cooking Middle Eastern in Cambodia, Part 2

Finally, a follow up to my post Cooking Middle Eastern in Cambodia.

I spent a week earlier this month cooking from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden. My overall rating is that it's a really wonderful cookbook and surprisingly, it's not too hard to get the necessary ingredients to cook Middle Eastern food in Cambodia. The time of great suffering is over, perhaps it's time to move to Laos.

Yogurtlu Basti: This Turkish dish, chicken with spiced yogurt, was fantastic. Very simple, delicately spiced with cardamom and ginger and easy to make. I'd make this again. This would probably impress people if I was willing to have people over for dinner (but I'm not).

Chicken with almonds and honey: This Moroccan dish, djaj bel loz, was my least favorite of all of the dishes I tried to make. I was really unclear what the texture was supposed to be like, or how finely ground the almonds should be. The recipe says "coarsely ground" and I think I, not being a stickler for details, left them coarsely chopped. The chicken was stewed and then baked and by the end was quite tough. I wouldn't bother with this one again, although I did like the exotic combination of cinnamon, honey, saffron, almonds and rose water (I made my own with dried rose petals). I didn't get a snap of this one.

Spicy shrimp: Another Moroccan dish, I let my cooking buddy be in charge of this dish. Because he's a chef, he refused to follow the recipe as I insisted, and instead, threw in what "felt right." I at least won the battle that he could only include ingredients from the original recipe, but he put in a tablespoon of chili instead of a pinch and the whole thing ended up nearly blowing my face off. It was still pretty good.

Moutabal: This typical eggplant dip was a way for me try and re-assess my feelings about tahini, after getting a chiding email from EatingAsia. Basically it's roasted eggplant mixed with tahini to make a dip. I used half the tahini recommended and did not find it offensive. I'll even admit to liking it. Hopefully that will satisfy Robyn. This recipe was easy to make and would be nice again if I had guests, which I won't.

Couscous salad: I never like tabbouleh so I don't know why I made it. I always get annoyed at the crap to couscous ratio. Knowing this, I should have altered the ratio, but like a good little recipe Nazi I didn't. So although this tabbouleh was probably better than any I had eaten before, I was still annoyed by the crap to couscous ratio. The chef thought it was great though.

Tamatem bel Bassal: This very simple tomato salad with onions was a real winner, although it requires decent tomatoes which are not easy to find in Cambodia (expats, try Veggy's on Street 240). I really liked it with the addition of the optional cumin. Nice and vinegary. Yum.

Ghorayebah: Made these butter cookies with hazelnuts because I'm a beast and always want dessert. Luckily, I ran out of butter and so made a quarter of a recipe. They were good but a bit dry, possibly because I shorted the butter. I ignored the suggestion of the chef in attendance who said I should chop the hazelnuts and mix them into the batter. In retrospect, I should have respected his chefness because they would have been better that way. Nice with a cup of tea, anyway.

Pita bread: my pita bread did not turn out perfect, but this may because of my limited experience with breads. My first batch was OK, but the second batch left me with a pile of rock hard frisbees.

And so my week of Middle Eastern cooking draws to a close. Next up, Vietnamese.

A Taste of Washoku

After my trip to Japan last year, it finally dawned on me that Japanese food didn't exist merely for people that were too cowardly to eat sushi at Japanese restaurants. I thought that Japanese cuisine was limited to chicken teriyaki, the dish that my friends who are afraid of "raw stuff" would order whenever we'd go to the sushi bar. Visiting Japan smacked some sense into me, obviously, and I became very interested in Japanese food, particularly home-style cooking. One of the first cookbooks I picked up after my trip was Elizabeth Andoh's Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen. Soon after, I snagged a few of her back catalogue as well, which are fantastic as well (but not quite as beautiful).



Washoku means "the harmony of food" and is a culinary philosophy that balances flavors, colors and nutrition for delicious and visually appealing meals.

Andoh's cookbooks have changed the way I cook. She is clear and incredibly thorough, explaining things as simple as how to make rice properly. Many of the dishes I made from her cookbook were ones I had never tried before, and it's been gratifying to come to Japan and recognize food I try here as something I had already had at home made from one of her recipes.



So I was incredibly excited to join not one, but two, of Elizabeth's food tours and one of her cooking classes that focused on the Japanese preparation of fish.



One of my favorite parts of Washoku was when Elizabeth writes about matching "food to vessel." She talks of her cupboards crammed with Japanese pottery, all waiting to be matched to the perfect meal. As nerdy as this makes me, it was thrilling to actually have a look in one of her cupboards and get to pick out the dishes for the meal that we assembled in class. It's a lot harder than it looks!



A few days after I took the cooking course I went to a historic ryokan in Tsumago and was stuffed with a many, many course meal that involved fish cooked about six different ways. I can proudly say that I could probably cook at least five of them now. Thank you, Elizabeth!



If you're interested in Japanese cooking, I'd very highly recommend Washoku. For more Elizabeth Andoh, you can visit her page, A Taste of Culture.