Back to Jerusalem: Stuffed Eggplant with Lamb Mince

Three and a half years ago I wandered the well-worn streets of old Jerusalem.  Just four days there was enough to leave a permanent indent in my heart.  Jerusalem (the city) has an incredible energy bubbling away under the surface of a concentration of deeply significant sites (if not the most significant) for four main religions.  The history, the people, the smells, the food...!  As the meeting point of Europe, Asia and Africa, a wide and varied influence is ingrained in the most simple and sophisticated cuisine.

When my friends Jess (check out her awesome blog here) and Jono gave me Ottolenghi and Tamimi's new cook book Jerusalem I couldn't wait to dive into the pages and (hopefully) resurrect some of those memories.  Aside from the mouthwatering recipes, one of the things I love about the book is the introduction - eight pages explaining the importance and passion invoked by food in the region and how history has shaped what you are about to prepare.  The gorgeous street life photography captures the hustle and bustle, and the gritty character of every day life.

Stuffed Aubergine with Lamb and Pine Nuts

Ingredients
4 medium aubergines halved lengthwise
6T olive oil
1 1/2t ground cumin
1 1/2T sweet paprika
1T ground cinnamon
2 medium onions, finely chopped
500g minced lamb
50g pine nuts
20g flat leafed parsley, chopped
2t tomato puree
2t caster sugar
150ml water
1 1/2T lemon juice
1t tamarind paste
4 cinnamon sticks
salt and black pepper

Method
Preheat the oven to 220°C.

Place the aubergine halves, skin-side down, in a roasting tin large enough to accommodate them snugly.  Brush the flesh with 4T olive oil and season with 1t of salt and plenty of black pepper.  Roast for about 20 min, until golden brown.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly.

While the aubergines are cooking, you can start making the stuffing by heating up the remaining olive oil in a large frying pan.  Mix together the cumin, paprika and ground cinnamon and add half of this spice mix to the pan, along with the onion.  Cook on a medium-high heat for about 8 minutes, stirring often, before adding the lamb, pine nuts, parsley, tomato purée, 1t sugar, 1t salt and some black pepper.  Continue to cook and stir for another 8 min, until the meat is cooked.

Place the remaining spice mix in a bowl and add the water, lemon juice, tamarind, remaining sugar, cinnamon sticks and 1/2 t salt; mix well.

Reduce the oven temperature to 195°C.  Pour the spice mix into the bottom of the aubergine roasting tin.  Spoon the lamb mixture on top of each  aubergine.  Cover the tin tightly with foil, return to the oven and roast for 1h 30min, by which point the aubergines should be completely soft and the sauce thick  twice though the cooking, remove the foil and baste the aubergines with the sauce, adding some water if the sauce dries out.  Serve warm, not hot, or at room temperature with some bread or simple rice.

My Notes:  Lamb mince wasn't available so I substituted for beef mince and it still tasted delicious.  I forgot to cover the pan with foil during the cooking and mine dried out pretty quickly (as you can probably see by the photos).  My aubergines also cooked very quickly, so you might not need the full 1h 30min for roasting.  Instead of rice, I served mine with an adaptation of the artichoke and herb salad, using artichokes from a jar, green apple roughly cubed, finely sliced fennel and lots of fresh herbs.  Delicious!

You can get your own taste of Jerusalem on The Book Depository (here) with free international shipping.

Eat Your Way Around Madrid

If you’re heading to Madrid, go hungry and take comfy shoes.  Better yet, go hungry, take comfy shoes and visit friends who live there (if you’re lucky enough to have them).  If not, take a few of these tips and you won’t go wrong, I promise.  Our culinary adventure in Madrid was almost completely in the capable hands of our friends Pili and Tomas.  We were most definitely the sheep to their shepherd and willingly ate our way through whatever appeared in front of us.

The four days we were in Madrid happened to coincide with Spain winning the European Championship (which gives you an indication of how over due this post is...) and the city was absolutely alive.  The Spanish sure know how to party – thousands and thousands of people stormed the streets, flowing down towards Plaza de Cibeles, cheering "viva la roja", drinking, waving their flags and whipping each other into a frenzy.  And this was just our first evening.

We spent our days wandering the streets passing time between lunch and dinner (breakfast seems to be fairly low on the priority scale when you wake up at about 10am...), dropping into the odd museum (the Prado, the Thyssen.... those old chestnuts) but the food was the hero.  The food, oh the food.

Where to start... Let’s start with the best croquettes in Madrid.  Casa Julio's red door makes it fairly distinguishable.  Otherwise you could be forgiven for walking straight passed, which would be a tragedy for your taste buds.  The place is tiny with only four small tables and bar seating, and so authentic that his grandmother still works there.  I have it on excellent authority that a good croqueta has the perfect ratio of creamy béchamel sauce to filling so the flavour is enhanced by the sauce rather than being over powered by it.  This perfect balance is then encased in a crispy crumbed outer shell.  Do not miss the gorgonzola, the mushroom or the jamon.

The best croquetas in Madrid

If you’re not sure exactly what you want, head down to Mercardo St Migel.  It’s not really a market per se, more or a collection of lots of different stalls under one big roof selling all sorts of tapas, drinks or treats.  Take your time to wander each aisle, checking out the huge variety of things available.  If you buy gazpatcho from the Italian guy at the end of the market give him an ‘hola’ and he’ll love you for it (according to him the Spanish – and tourists, it can be assumed – have all forgotten their manners.  Get yourself a beer or a vino tinto and try your luck finding a table - be prepared to stand.

 After lunch, wander the streets a bit longer and call in to Chocolateria de San Ginés for churros con chocolate.  It’s recommended by the Lonely Planet, so LP snobs could be tempted to give it a miss, but this place is so good that the locals also flock here.  It’s open from late in the afternoon until about 6am (apparently) so order a coffee and a churros and replenish those caffeine and blood sugar levels before hitting the streets again.

Churros con chocolate - yum!

I’m not sure I’m cut out for the Spanish rhythm of life.  Being a farmer’s daughter at heart, I’m an early to rise and early to retire sort of girl usually.  Dinner for me feels late at 8pm, so you can imagine the shock to my system adapting to heading out for dinner around 10pm.  It’s a good thing I had coffee and churros for afternoon tea!  I hope you’re in town for at least two evenings, because I’d have a hard time choosing between these two places:  La Cocina de San Antón in Checua, and Juana la Loca in La Latina.

If you’re heading to La Cocina de San Antón book ahead to get a table on the terrace, or be prepared to sit and wait at the roof top bar for one to become available.  You might be waiting a while, but it will be worth it.  Don’t miss the salmorejo – a gazpacho style soup, but made of roasted capsicum sprinkled with a little bit of jamon (more on the wonders of jamon later).  The gazpacho looks a lot like the fake nachos cheese we get in Singapore – orange and plastic - but this soup is incredible – don’t miss it.  Also not to be missed is the chuletón con papas y pimientos al padrón – a fatty beef t-bone whose moist slices taste so good you ignore the centimetres being added to your waist with each mouthful.  If you still have room for dessert, try the chocolate, but give the pyjamas and dressing gown a miss.

jamon!!

chuletón con papas y pimientos al padrón

salmorejo

Juana la Loca is a cosy corner tapas bar in La Latina.  The matire d can be a little on the abrupt side (putting it nicely), but don’t let her scare you off because the feast ahead of you is worthy of almost any insult under the sun.  Start with Tosta de Secreto Ibérico y Cebolla caramelizada which is incredibly moist and incredibly delicious (we can vouch for it – we ordered a second round!) and don’t let anyone talk you out of Huevos rotos con jamón y pimientos al padrón.  If describing it crudely you’d say it was a few poached eggs spilling their yolks over skinny potato fries, but that would be doing it an extreme injustice.  The simple flavours are enhanced with subtle herbs and spices and a scattering of roasted large green peppers. Save some room to share some dessert though because the Milhojas con dulce de leche y helado de coco is not to be missed.  The light, sweet, chocolately layers topped with a ball of coconut ice cream make for a divine mouthful (or more if you still have room).

Tosta de Secreto Ibérico y Cebolla caramelizada

Huevos rotos con jamón y pimientos al padrón

Milhojas con dulce de leche y helado de coco

Everywhere you go in Madrid you will find jamon.  Delicious, salty, paper-thin jamon.  The hind leg is the most expensive, but the front leg tasted just as fabulous to me (jamon aficionados around the world may unite in their dismay).  Every bar you walk into will offer you a tapa when you order a drink, often as simple as a zucchini flower stuffed with an olive.  Don’t turn your nose up at the cava casa, the house bubbles.  It usually tastes great and is a great way to start your meal.

Jamon everywhere!

After so much eating you’ll need to walk some more.  We visited two excellent museums and very different museums – the Prado and the Thyssens.  The Prado is free from 6pm, but you then have to deal with the crowds.  The Prado is enormous (it felt as big as the Louvre to me) so it pays to know what you want to see instead of wandering around aimlessly unless you have hours and hours to spare.  Don’t miss the piedras negras – dark, despicable and depressing and rather refreshing after a few anti-chambers of religious iconography (ok, so I’m a bit of an art heathen).  The Thyssens has an incredible range of work dating from the 1400’s to the 1950’s and conveniently has a smart cafe to rest your weary legs with a coffee, beer or similar afterwards.  Unfortunately we missed the Reina Sophia as it was closed on Tuesdays unlike the others who are closed on Mondays.  This is certainly on the list for next time.

Gran Disparate, Goya
(image from Prado Museum website)

Madrid is a brilliant city for exploring on foot, a great way to burn off the previous nights over indulgence and work up an appetite for the evening ahead.  It does pay to keep the siesta in the back of your mind though – almost everything shuts down from 2pm – 5pm which seems incredible in a modern capital city.  It does make you wonder who is fuelling the economy while everyone rests, but that’s a thorny issue for another time.  After four fabulous days in Madrid I can’t wait to explore more of Spain’s cultural and culinary treasures.  I might have to learn some Spanish though, as I don’t think we can rely on Pili and Tomas to be there forever.

Details you need to know:

Food

Casa Julio (Madera 37, 2004 Madrid)

Mercardo St Miguel (Plaza San Miguel, Madrid)

Chocolateria de San Ginés (Pasadizo de San Ginés 5, Tel. +34 91 365 65 46)

La Cocina de San Antón (Calle de Augusto Figueroa 24,  28004 Madrid, Tel. +34 913 30 02 94)

Juana la Loca (Plaza de Puerta de Moros 4, La Latina,  28005 Madrid, Tel. +34 913 64 05 25)

Museums

Museo Nacional de Prado (Calle Ruiz de Alarcón 23, 28014 Madrid, Tel. +34 91 330 2800)

El Museo de arte Thyssens (Paseo del Prado 8, 28014 Madrid, Tel. +34 902 76 05 11)

Museo Reina Sofia (Santa Isabel 52, 28012 Madrid, Tel. +34 91 774 10 00)

September 30-Day Challenge: Daily Yoga Done!

Daily yoga was always going to be an intensely personal challenge for me, both mentally and physically.  Physically because I hadn't done yoga for about three years (despite telling myself over and over that I needed to get back into it) and couldn't touch my toes, and mentally because I knew there would be times where I absolutely did not want to go, or that I would have to force myself to be organized every single week day of September to get up early, pack all my work stuff into my gym bag and head straight from yoga to work in order to sneak through the door at 9am, or take myself away to practice while I was on holiday for the weekend with friends.  

All of these things I faced and it was with a considerable amount of glee that I didn't take my gym bag to work this morning, and that I can now I can touch my toes with my fists rather than the very tip of my middle finger.

It was actually very lucky (in hindsight) that my daily yoga challenge coincided with an absolutely insane period at work.  I really counted on my one internally focused hour to give myself a kick start and feel calm about the day ahead.  It is amazing how difficult it can be to focus solely on your breathing and not let your mind drift to your deadline for that day, or how you were going to be at work until 9pm that night, but once I snapped into my zone everything else melted away for 60 minutes.  Brilliant!

I battled with myself constantly.  Being a naturally competitive person I was never able to focus just on myself for a whole class.  Sneak peaks at my fellow yogis showed just how far I had to go.  I tried to celebrate my milestones (like touching my toes for the first time in many years!), but often I caught myself thinking "how the hell is her head touching her knees?" when you could drive a bus through the space between mine.  Therein lies the delight and torment of yoga - you constantly see improvement, but someone else can always go longer, deeper, wider, flatter, twistier...

I clearly have very tight hips.  So much so that one teacher looked slightly incredulous when I had to sit on two blocks where most other yogis were managing without any.  One morning class where I was the only one to show up, the teacher and I spent an entire 60 minutes doing hip opening exercises.  I still have a long way to go...

A few proud moments were (obviously) touching my toes for the first time and achieving my first headstand (yes!) without using the wall.

I received so much support from the girls at Yoga Movement.  Yun and Coral were incredibly encouraging, offering advice or encouragement and a friendly face first thing in the morning.  If you're in Singapore I definitely recommend the studio.  It's just as great for the hard core yogis as it is for the weekend (and week day) warriors like me.  

A word of advice:  if you're just getting back into it, or just starting out, leave Alisha's classes until you're a bit more confident.  She's very good, but she loves the physical challenge of pushing limits and I often found myself frustrated in her classes. One 'basic yoga' class with her I actually felt myself getting angry - "how can this be a basic class when I'm trying to bind myself up like a pretzel... and failing miserably?"  I think my anger was more a reflection on myself more than anything else.  Still, it wasn't a very fun class that one...

A whole month of yoga was a fabulous way to get back into it, giving me the progress I needed to stick with it during the 'I can't touch my toes' phase.  I feel much stronger, especially in my core and arms. I'll definitely keep it up, but realistically maybe twice a week, and I'm really looking forward to getting back to my boot camp in October!

October's challenge is going gluten-free.  This one is going to be interesting (in the same way that dairy-free was 'interesting' given the amount of support I get at home for these things...) but more on that later!

Image from Yoga Movement