Two tales from elsewhere kitchens

It’s interesting that Melinda set this as this week’s challenge, and even referred to Proustian madeleine moments, as I had something like one just last night (madeleines themselves, incidentally, always make my think of The Bridge theatre, which offers them as interval snacks). My actual Proustian moment was more savoury. I’ve mentioned before having a meal at Honey & Co in London in January, and as going back isn’t exactly possible right now, I decided to re-create my main course, lamb siniya.

The original meal I was trying to recreate.

The recipe for this, which is a kind of Middle Eastern shepherd’s pie, is in the Honey & Co cookbook. The main difference between this and a shepherd’s pie is that the topping is made from a mixture of yoghurt, tahini, lemon juice and egg, which bakes to a kind of bread or cake like consistency. If you have the spices and tahini, it’s fairly easy to replicate at home. Fry some onions, then add minced lamb, and fry until it starts to brown, then add ground fennel and Baharat spice (I have this, both because I love Middle Eastern food, and because I cannot resist a spice blend). Fry some more, then add a bit of tomato puree, mix through, then put the lamb in a layer on the bottom of a casserole dish (there should already be a layer of a vegetable of some sort on the bottom of the dish, but I didn’t have anything suitable, so I just missed it out. Mix together the ingredients for the topping, then spread a layer on top of the lamb. Sprinkle with pine nuts, then bake until the crust is golden.

My version: not bad...

My Proustian moment came when I opened the door to check how it was cooking, and was hit by a waft of a delicious spicy smell, which took me straight back to Honey & Co.  I served the siniya with a tomato salad, just as they do, and it was delicious.

My other elsewhere kitchen comes from Italy. I ate spaghtti cacio e pepe in Rome early last summer, in a café on the edge of Piazza del Popolo, as the sun went down. I saw drone footage of the empty piazza in a news report on the Italian lockdown, and I remembered that meal. Then I realised I had pecorino cheese, which I’d bought in a mad moment on Ocado. Cacio e pepe is one of those dishes which is definitely more than the sum of its parts, which are: pasta (a long thin one, like spaghetti, or one of its close relatives), ground black pepper, butter (at least in the recipe I found), and pecorino.

Piazza del Popolo, taken while waiting for dinner to arrive, last May. Sigh....

I haven’t tried making this myself before now, as these fiendishly simple dishes are often fiendishly hard to reproduce, but, as things stand now, I can’t exactly go and find a restaurant to serve it to me, so I gave it and try, and it actually worked… Cook pasta (you all know how to do that) to just less than al dente. While you’re doing this, melt some butter, and add lots of ground black pepper. Add the pasta to the pan, along with some of its cooking water. Then add a pile of grated pecorino, and mix until the cheese is melted and formed a sauce that lightly coats the pasta. Serve, with more grated pecorino. Slightly to my surprise, this really worked.

Cacio e pepe

If you can’t go to the food, the food will have to come to you…