Xawaash

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I started cooking some Somali dishes because I was not satisfied with the quality of a Somali take-away I discovered in Amsterdam. Xawaash is the basic Somali spice mixture. Apparently you pronounce this as ha-wash. The below quantities are enough for a couple of recipes:

Quarter cup cumin seeds
Quarter cup coriander seeds
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
A piece of Cinnamon bark
Half a tablespoon cardamom pods
Half a teaspoon cloves (whole)
One tablespoon turmeric powder

Toast all ingredients except the turmeric powder. Grind everything to a powder and mix in the turmeric.

Beer iyo basal

What can you do with xawaash? Make Beer iyo basal for instance, liver and onions. I bought a pretty nice goat’s liver at the goat farm near my father’s house. Camel liver is better but this is not an option for me. The recipe is very easy.

Fry 2 sliced onions, 1 red bell pepper and 1 green bell pepper in some oil. Add a couple of minced garlic cloves, anything between a teaspoon and a table spoon of xawaash and fry until the onion and peppers are almost done.

Slice the liver in thin slices. Add a bunch of minced fresh cilantro leaves and the goat’s liver. Depending how thin you sliced the liver, this dish should be fried on high heat for just one or two minutes. Don’t overcook liver. It will turn tough. Serve immediately with Somali bread.

Summer is over so I do most of my cooking in the dark now. The photos do not look very good.

Digaag Qumbe

Another dish you make with the spice mixture is a yogurt coconut chicken called Digaag Qumbe. I first blended the following ingredients: tomatoes, any type of spicy pepper, bell pepper, tomato paste, yogurt, and xawaash. Set aside.

Then I fried a mix of onion, garlic and ginger until fragrant. Add the blended tomato mixture. Boil for 10 minutes. Add potato and carrot and cook until half done. Then add pieces of chicken. I used thighs, but chicken with bone should be even better. Add a cup of coconut milk and simmer until everything is done. Adjust for salt.

I have seen version with added brown sugar and ghee at the end of the cooking proces.

Serve with rice, fresh cilantro and fresh banana.

Bitter melon soup

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I love bitter melon paired with meat. The bitter perfectly balances out with the fatty texture of pork or salt beef. This Cantonese soup is very easy to make. In The Netherlands the easiest pork bones you can buy is in the form of ribs. Cook the pork ribs in the usual way: boil the ribs in water, discard the water and start again with fresh water. When you have bones with a lot of blood, soak the bones in water for a couple of hours.

When the soup is simmering add 1/4 cup dried barley, red dates and sliced ginger. Simmer for an hour or so until the meat almost falls off the bone.

You can slo use candied honey dates. Same fruit (red jujubes) but sweeter. Both are used in medicinal soups.

Add sliced bitter melon, but not too much. For a liter of broth I used 1/4 of bitter melon. Simmer until the vegetable is cooked. Season with salt and MSG.

That’s it!

Washoku (和食)

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The concept washoku is registered as an UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage for being "Traditional Dietary Cultures of the Japanese".

Washoku is a social practice based on a set of skills, knowledge, practice and traditions related to the production, processing, preparation and consumption of food:

1. A Rich Variety of Fresh Ingredients and Respect for Inherent Flavors
2. Nutritional Balance that Supports a Healthy Diet
3. Expressions of the Beauty of Nature and Changing Seasons
4. An Intimate Relationship with Annual Celebrations

On my first night in the outskirts of Tokyo I had a late night dinner which has some elements of washoku, which is written with two characters: 和 means ‘Japan’ or ‘harmony,’ 食 means ‘food’ or ‘to eat.’ The aesthetic presentation of the food is emphasised.

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江鱼仔上湯 Ikan bilis stock

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Ikan bilis is Malaysian for the Indonesian ikan teri, which are dried small anchovy in English. You can make a simple stock with just a few ingredients as a basis for soups.

Soak about ten red dates in hot water and take the seed out. Quarter half a yellow onion and boil these in 1,5 liter of water.

While this is boiling soak 100 gram of dried anchovy in water to desalt the fish. Dry the fish thoroughly and fry the fish in a little oil until light brown together with a smashed piece of ginger.

Add the fish and ginger to the pot with the dates and onion and boil for no more than 15 minutes. Any longer the stock might turn bitter. Put the stock through a sieve and cool,

Mee Sua Soup 阿嫲面线

One recipe you can make with this stock is Mee Sua Soup. Mee Sua is wheat vermicelli. For this soup wheat is used instead of rice vermicelli. There are many variations on the recipe. Basically you add pork meat balls, sliced pork, pork liver, fish balls, green vegetables, like choy sum, and a raw egg into the boiling broth. For taste drip with sesame oil and Chinese cooking wine just before serving.

You must first boil the noodles separately because they are quite starchy. Just cook them for 20 seconds and rinse in cold water to remove the starch. Add the noodles to the soup after the egg is poached and the meat balls are cooked, otherwise the noodles get soggy. Vegetables are also best blanched separately first: rinse in cold water.

The pork meat balls are very easy to make by mixing minced meat with cornflour, soy sauce and some white pepper.

Garnishing: spring onion and crispy fried shallots. I discovered that frying shallot on high heat ensures crispiness but the moment between light brown and burnt only lasts seconds.

Jamaican jerk

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Some notes on my 2024 attempt to make jerk chicken. There are so many recipes floating round it is very difficult to pick a right one. I picked one with a mistake in the recipe and used too much soy and Worcestershire sauce, the marinade became way too liquid. Although it still tasted okay, it wasn’t quite right. Normally I would have discarded the marinade and start over but I had to rush to work in the morning. I often cook early in the morning on working days.

What went okay was the brining. To make the meat tender before marinating I brined the chicken parts in: 4 cups of water, 75 grams salt, 60 grams sugar, 1 tablespoon whole allspice, 5 garlic cloves, crushed, 1 hot pepper, halved (in The Netherlands this will be either a madame jeannette or adjuma pepper), 1 piece of ginger, roughly chopped. I brined the chicken for 24 hours.

I marinated the chicken for about 36 hours, but next time I will find a different list of ingredients for the jerk. I did use the left over hot peppers to make a quick hot sauce. Just cut the pepper in small pieces, dice an onion and slice some garlic. Fry the pepper, onion and garlic in a little oil and then add some water and simmer for 15 minutes until the pepper is soft. Transfer to a food processor, add some vinegar, salt and sugar, and blitz until the sauce is smooth. You have to taste to adjust the amount of vinegar and salt, but the hot sauce on its own is almost too spicy to taste.

Despite of the not so perfect jerk marinade the result was very good. It missed some of the spicy tones, like pimento and pepper. Maybe the soy sauce in the marinade was too overpowering. The chicken was incredibly tender and had some sweetness because of the salt-sugar brine. I barbequed the chicken rather than smoke it since I don’t have a smoker, and certainly no pimento wood.

Jamaican original served with festivals.

Thai green curry

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When you try to find a recipe for Thai green curry the instructions are often to first fry the curry paste in oil. Not this recipe from the backyard of Mark Wien’s mother in law. She dissolves the curry paste simply in water. I decided to test this recipe. I used prepackaged curry paste and didn’t make any photos. The result was very encouraging and I will make this recipe again with self made curry paste. In Thailand this dish is not called a curry but แกงเขียวหวานไก่.

Ingredients for the paste:

50 grams Thai green chilies (พริกขี้หนูเขียว)
1 head garlic (กระเทียม)
3 shallots - small shallots about 2 tbsp in total (หอมแดง)
1 thumb sized chunk of galangal (ข่า)
5 cilantro roots (รากผักชี) coriander
1 kaffir lime - just the peel (ผิวมะกรูด)
2 stalks lemongrass (ตะไคร้)
1 tbsp. white peppercorns (พริกไทยขาว)
1 tsp. coriander seed (ลูกผักชี)
1 tsp. cumin seed (ยี่หร่า)
1 tsp. salt (เกลือ)
1 tbsp. shrimp paste (กะปิ

In fact I tested this recipe twice. The second time I used tofu instead of chicken and the result was not good. You need the flavour of the chicken bones. If you want to make green curry tofu you need to find a different recipe.

You need to dissolve the curry paste in about half a liter of water (2 cups). Add the chicken. This should be chicken including the bones, so buy a whole chicken. You want flavour.

When the chicken is boiling add a generous amount of kaffir lime leaves.

The green curry also needs vegetables. Thai egg plant is a first choice. Wash and quarter the egg plants.

Add the egg plant to the chicken and mix. By now almost all the water has evaporated.

The trick apparently is to use coconut cream instead of coconut milk. She has a rather large bag of coconut cream. The coconut cream you buy in a package is more concentrated: add enough water. You want about 3 cups of liquid.

Simmer the chicken, egg plant and coconut cream until done. Add a big hand full of Thai sweet basil.

For some colour add sliced spur chilis. In The Netherlands you can buy this under the Indonesian name lombok. They are not spicy.

After adding the lombok and the sweet basil leaves the curry is done.

Bhindi ki sabji

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This recipe for fried okra, bhindi in Hindi, is dead easy. With a few tricks the okra will not get slimy but stays crunchy. In Louisiana gumbo soup the sliminess is a feature, but not in this dish. Okra is native to East-Africa. The amount of ingredients for this stir-fry is quite limited. On the right hand side in the photo below the fresh ingredients: okra, red onion, garlic, chili pepper and cumin seeds. On the left side: coriander powder, turmeric and salt.

Before frying, wash the okra and pat completely dry before cutting the okra in thick slices. When the okra is dry it will not get slimy. Like in most Indian recipes, first fry the cumin. I used mustard oil for an extra layer of flavour.

Next add the garlic, red onion and chili pepper.

When the onion is translucent add the okra. Never use a lid. A lid traps moist and the okra will get slimy.

When the okra is almost done season with coriander powder, turmeric and salt. Fry until the okra is completely done.

Karela ki sabji

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This Punjabi recipe would be called “Karela ki sabzi” in Urdu, sabji being the Persian loan word in Hindi for ‘vegetable’. Karela is the Hindi word for bitter melon, which looks quite different in India from the Chinese variety I know as Surinamese ‘sopropo’. I found these karela in Amsterdam in a small corner shop called Sara Supermarkt & Slagerij on Eerste Oosterparkstraat number 154.

For this recipe you cut the Kerala is small slices and remove the bitter inner core and seeds for each slice. Wash the slices in water and mix with salt. Let the salt remove some of the moist of the vegetable and drain well. Make sure the slices are dry before the next step.

For the frying proces I used a neutral oil. I reserved the mustard oil for the last part of this recipe. Fry until somewhat crispy. Set aside.

Slice a few onions or shallot and fry until fragrant. Set aside.

Now the flavours are introduced. Puree or grate a few, or one big, fresh tomatoes and set aside.

In mustard oil fry the following:

1 teaspoon cumin seeds, 1 teaspoon fennel seeds, 1 teaspoon fenugreek.

When the seeds start to splutter add the pureed tomato. Add 1 teaspoon chili powder, 1 teaspoon coriander powder, half a teaspoon of turmeric and 1 teaspoon amchur (mango seed powder). Mix well until the oil separates.

Add the fried karela, mix and add the fried onions. Adjust for salt. Cook for another 4 minutes.

Serve with chapati and a chutney, this garlic chutney is great. This recipe is a keeper. It’s just perfect for me. The taste is amazing.

Water spinach / kangkung / ong choy / rau muống

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Water spinach is native to Southeast Asia and can be found in practically any kitchen in the region. In Cantonese it is called ong choy and in Vietnam rau muống. Thankfully, it is also available in The Netherlands but hard to find outside a big city. Most recipes are very easy. I will try quite a few but I started with an Indonesian recipe: Kangkung Tumis Terasi (“stir-fry shrimp paste water spinach“).

Kangkung Tumis Terasi

Make a spice paste:

  • 2-5 red lombok

  • 1-5 red raw or bird-eye chilis.

  • Shallot.

  • 4 cloves garlic.

  • 1 tablespoon dried anchovies, toasted or fried.

  • 1 teaspoon terasi.

You simply fry the spice paste in oil, add some chopped tomatoes, a little water, salt and the water spinach cut in 3-5 centimetre long stalks.

Just stir-fry until the stems are tender.

Shashlik / шашлык

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The recipe is almost too simple to post. Its origins are rather interesting. The word shashlik entered English from a Russian word, which was borrowed from a Turkic language. Shish means skewer, shishlik can be translated as "skewerable”. Its origins are from Central-Asia but by the 20th century it was very common in the Russian Empire. Originally the meat would have been lamb meat, but depending on your religion pork works really well. I got a 300 gram piece of Schweinekamm with plenty of fat. I cut the meat in big cuncks and marinated the pork in water with salt and cumin powder. The water evaporates on the fire leaving the salt and cumin behind in the meat.

The shashlik I know is mainly from German restaurants we used to visit as a family in the 1970s or 80s. The meat is skewered with onion and paprika. All you have to do is keep the temperature of the charcoal low enough not to burn the meat, and turn the skewers often!

I simply served all three skewers to myself with a yoghurt sauce made of: yoghurt, grated cucumber, raw garlic, salt and cumin powder. This was just perfect.

Nasi Lemak

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Due to the terrible summer of 2024, up until half of July at least, I was dreaming of Asian night markets and I stumbled upon an old video of Anthony Bourdain on Penang Island, Malaysia. While the bad weather almost warrants a premature suicide, I opted for making nasi lemak (rice coconut) instead. It is a simple dish but the individual elements are time consuming. I started with the sambal. It’s a sambal made from dried chillies.

Blend the following ingredients to a fine paste:

  • 50g dried red chillies, almost any type will do, but soak them in water before blending.

  • 50g or 1 large red onion

  • 30g or 5 cloves garlic

  • 30g or 1 tbsp ginger

  • 2 stalks lemongrass, inner core.

  • 20g or 1 tbsp belachan or trassi, toasted

  • 2 tbsps of fried ikan bilis (dried anchovies), fried

  • 1/4 cup oil to blend.

You also need to prepare the following: 1 tbsp tamarind paste, 50 gram palm sugar, a bit of salt. Mix with 3 tablespoons water.

Fry the paste on a low heat until the oil separates from the paste. This is called “pecah minyak”. Then add the tamarind mixture and taste if it needs adjustment in saltiness or sweetness.

While you can keep nasi lemak very simple, just serving sambal, tiny fried fish (you buy these salted; either fry them in hot oil straight from the package or wash them to get rid of most of the salt) and peanuts, boiled egg and cucumber, you can also serve this dish with a piece of chicken.

Chicken

It is important to cut the chicken in rather small pieces. Use chicken including the bone, just forget about chicken breast. Fry the chicken pieces in oil until the skin is nicely browned. Set the chicken aside.

Prepare a spice mixture of:

1 tsp coriander seeds, whole
2 tsp cumin seeds, whole
1 cinnamon stick
2 cloves
Lime leaves.

Prepare the following ingredients:

One chopped onion
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
3 slices chopped ginger, finely chopped
2 Birdseye chillies, finely chopped
2 tomatoes chopped.
Lemongrass
Trassi/belachan
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp turmeric
Coconut milk

Method

Add the spice mixture in the hot oil you used for frying the chicken., cook for a couple of minutes.

Add the chopped onions and brown the onion for 5 minutes. Add the garlic, ginger, chilli, chilli powder and turmeric powder and mix while stirring.

Add the chopped tomatoes, salt and if needed a little water. Stir until you have a sauce. Add trassi and the lemon grass.

Pour in the coconut milk and bring to a boil. Add the chicken pieces and simmer until the chicken is tender. Add water if needed, or chicken stock.

Jamaican rum punch

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Mix in a mixing glass: ice cubes, 60 ml Wray & Nephew White Overproof Rum, 30 ml Appleton Estate dark rum, 1 teaspoon grenadine, juice of a whole lime; fill the glass with 100% pineapple juice. Add some spice: 1/4 teaspoon pimento. Pour in a glass. Note: a total of 90 ml rum makes a very strong punch!

Arroz de Tamboril

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Another easy one pot dish. Tamboril is monkfish (Dutch: zeeduivel), which has a firm texture needed for a recipe like this. I used my earthenware pot on an open fire.

Add olive oil, garlic, bayleaf and chopped onion to a pot (optional: celery stick) fry. Add diced tomatoes once the onion is soft. Stir in Portugese carolino rice, coat the rice with the oil and add a glass of white wine. Finally pour in a generous amount of fish stock (1 - 1,5 liter).

Simmer for 30 minutes. Add the monkfish and fresh prawns, adjust for water, and simmer for another 7 minutes or so.

When ready you can stir in some butter, add black pepper and salt to taste. One thing I noticed is that the rice will soak up a lot of moisture after the cooking proces. Serve with lemon and fresh cilantro.

Fondue savoyarde

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Since I spent a long weekend in Chambéry (Savoie) for work I wanted to make fondue savoyarde at home. Instead of a fondue from the Savoie I used cheese from no less than three Alpine countries.

The types of cheese used vary between all the online recipes. Comté seems to be a requirement. I wanted to buy Beaumont but the cheese shop in Amsterdam didn’t have it, so I went with Swiss Gruyère instead. Beaufort de Savoie would also be an option, next to the Gruyère, but the production is limited. In the end I walked out with the following combination:

220 gram Swiss Gruyère.
220 gram French Comté Juraflore, 18 mois.
100 gram Fontina d’Aosta D.O.P., a rather soft cheese from Italy.

I used 3 small sherry glasses of white wine, but this was almost too much. I had to use potato flower to thicken the sauce. The wine was a dry Gelber Muskateller from the German Pfalz (Herxheim am Berg). A very mineral wine. Winzergenossenschaft eG Herxheim am Berg

Otherwise, a cheese fondue is very easy to make. The cheese has to be at room temperature before you add it to the hot wine, if not the cheese may curdle. A glass of Kirsch at the end and some black pepper is the finishing touch.

Note: it is important to use medium heat. If the temperature is too high, the cheese might become lumpy.

Padang and Papua cuisine

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I went to Festival Indonesia Timur and had Papua food for the first time. Since my father has lived in Sorong, in what is now Western New Guinea, I was always curious about the food. My father never ate local food, or he doesn't remember. What he remembers is that the Papua called him “white cockroach” and the Indonesians “blue monkeys”. Yet, in his free time he went into the Papua villages equipped with a stainless steel box containing medical scalpels. He was inspired by Albert Schweitzer, trying to perform minor medical procedures. My father was not a doctor but later in life he was licensed to be the first medical responder on board Shell tankers after completing an internship in a hospital.

Sagu cakes

For carbohydrates the Papua were depended on sago instead of rice. Sago is the starch extracted from the core tissue of Metroxylon sagu, the true sago palm. One palm can provide up to 300 kilogram of starch, but the extraction proces is laborious. You have to split the stem lengthwise.

A Sago palm is "harvested" so that the starch can be used for Sago production, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. Photo credit: I, Toksave

You can make papeda from the starch, a congee, but also make solid cakes, called sagu. The fried cakes tasted a little sweet, so I guess the palm starch was mixed with a sweetener. Otherwise the meal consisted of stewed cassave leaf and stewed chicken. I would have ordered babi but I was with a friend who cannot eat pork, so I went with ayam instead.

Masakan Padang

There were also plenty of Padang food stalls. Masakan Padang is the food of West Sumatra and it is distinct from the usual Javanese food you will eat in The Netherlands. I am not an expert on Masakan Padang, but it seems they use more spices. It was amazingly tasteful.

Nasi Padang

I wanted to eat more but there is only so much you can eat in half a day. Below is a popular snack made from fishcake, cabbage, tofu, potato and peanut sauce. The name gives away its origins 燒賣; siomay. This Chinese snack has been incorporated into Indonesian food culture.

Siomay

Chinese cabbage stir fry

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There are two easy stir fry recipes I fall back on when pressed for time. Both contain Chinese cabbage as the center piece.

Chinese cabbage and dried prawns 包心菜炒蝦皮

Soak fermented dried prawns in warm water. Reserve the water.
In the meanwhile slice fresh ginger and spring onion. Separate the white from the green. Cut the cabbage in small pieces.

Heat oil in a wok. Throw in the white part of the spring onion and ginger. Add the shrimp. Fry for a minute or so. Add the cabbage and shrimp water. Wok until the cabbage is tender. Add the green part of the spring onion, adjust for salt and ready.

Szechuan spicy cabbage stir fry 手撕包菜

Whisk together 1 tbsp soy sauce, 1/2 tbsp Chinese vinegar, 1 tsp sugar and salt. Set aside.

Heat oil in a wok and add dried chili peppers and szechuan peppercorns. Add chopped garlic. Add cabbage cut in bite sizes and the soy-vinegar mixture. Wok on high heat. You can add freshly fried peanuts to this dish.

Baingan bharta

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Baingan ka bharta (mashed eggplant) is the Hindi name but in India this dish has many different names depending on the local language. This dish is as simple as the name suggests. Grill the eggplant over an open fire. A gas stove will work.

Then heat mustard oil and infuse the oil with hing, then add finely cut onion, the ubiquitous ginger-garlic paste, tomato and fresh chilli pepper. Other spices that can be mustard seeds, cumin seeds, turmeric, red chilli powder, salt. Adding yoghurt is an option. Add fresh cilantro at the end.

It is mostly served with a variation on the roti. For a more complete dish add (precooked) potatoes. If you serve baingan bharta with a dahl you almost got yourself a thali.

Ingredients for the most basic version:

1 eggplant
1 tomato finely chopped
1 green chili finely chopped
1 onion finely chopped
1 inch ginger grated
¼ tsp asafoetida (hing)
2 tbsp mustard oil
Roti or chapati for serving

Swahili Prawns

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In the early 1990s I travelled to Kenya and ended up in Malindi. For centuries the coastal city, like Mombasa, was the melting pot of Bantu speaking Africans and Arab, Persian and Indian traders. The language which emerged, Kiswahili, is a Bantu language influenced by Arabic. Portugese explorer Vasco da Gama arrived in 1498 in Malindi on his first voyage to India, opening a direct link between Europe and Asia by sea. This event ushered in centuries of mercantilism and colonial expansion. Of course, I stumbled upon the Hemingway Bar in Malindi.

“You did not kill the fish only to keep alive and to sell for food, he thought. You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. ”
— The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway

Ernest and Mary Hemingway on safari in Kenya, 1953-54. Photo: Public domain in the US. Photographer: unattributed.

In 1933 writer Ernest Hemingway visited Malindi for two days of deep-sea fishing. He stayed at the Blue Marlin Hotel. I am not sure if that hotel still existed in 1991, butI do remember visiting the Hemingway Bar, somewhere on the beach front. An English guy I met went fishing for his birthday and came back with a shark. I got very ill that night - high fever - and vaguely remember an Australian guy carrying me to the bus I had to take to Nairobi to catch my plane back to Amsterdam. Not sure how I made it back to Amsterdam.

At that moment in life I wasn’t particularly good at cooking, and at my Malindi hostel I remember an Asian guy buying fresh prawns at the market and whipping up a quick prawn curry in the little kitchen the hostel provided. I was amazed and envied his skill. Now decades later, I tried to find a similar recipe using ingredients typical of the Swahili coast.

Mchuzi wa kamba wa nazi

Heat oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and gently fry one chopped onion, 3 cloves garlic and 2 cm of chopped ginger for 1 minute. Add 2 table spoons tamarind juice, about 200 ml coconut milk and 3 finely chopped tomatoes. Simmer the mixture for 2-3 minutes. For color you can add turmeric . Add large prawns (shelled or whole), season with salt and freshly ground black pepper and stir in the juice of 2 limes and chopped coriander.

Meanwhile, to cook the coconut rice, heat the oil in a saucepan and gently fry a chopped onion until softened, but not brown. Add the 150 gram rice and stir, then pour in 300 ml coconut cream and add enough water to just cover the rice. Cook for 15-20 minutes until the rice is soft and has absorbed all the liquid. Fold in chopped coriander and serve immediately with the Swahili Prawns.