LIMITED PLATES IN LARISA

In the summer of 1969 I took a little time off from my work in Belgrade (see earlier posts) and headed south to Athens. Greece had been under the military rule of Colonel George Papadopoulos for a couple of years and his junta was getting a bad press overseas. My trip to Athens coincided with a media junket being put on by the colonels and I found myself on a whirlwind trip from Athens to Salonika with a mixed bag of correspondents representing papers from the New York Times to Moscow’s Pravda.

Along the way we stopped for a night in the provincial town of Larisa. The American press (I was wearing my Copley News Service hat) were lodged at the best hotel in town along with the Germans (Die Welt and Frankfurter Algemeiner Zeitung), a Dutchman (Het Parool) and Italians (a couple of freelance photographers and somebody from the Vatican). The domestic press were given rooms at the second best hotel in town, while the two Russians (Pravda and Izvestia) a Bulgarian and a Yugoslav (Politika) were given dormitory beds at a rather down-trodden hostel.

We did all eat together, however -- at a bazouki restaurant, one of those Greek establishments (and often a tourist trap) where you are encouraged to break plates to show appreciation for the music. Of course, you pay for the plates you break. On arriving at the restaurant our hosts gave us each an official looking communique that contained the ‘house rules’ for the evening. We all thought it was a joke, but no. The American, German, Dutch and Italian contingent were allowed to break 20 plates each at government expense, the domestic press were rationed to 10, while our East European colleagues were told that they would be held financially responsible for any of their breakages.

The Western media shared their bazouki plates with the less fortunate East Europeans that night in Larisa, much to the ire of the accompanying junta officer who made copious notes in a small book about our ‘subversive activities.’

It was on this particular trip that I discovered a classic Greek walnut sauce called skordalia, which actually derives from the Greek word for garlic and is an excellent accompaniment to a baked fish, or large seafood, such as jumbo prawns or crayfish. (A few years later while travelling through Rajasthan in India, I came across a walnut and mint chutney that vaguely reminded me of skordalia).

SKORDALIA

50 g fresh white bread
4 cloves of garlic
50 g of crushed walnuts (or almonds)
3 tablespoons olive oil
Salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste

Remove the crust from the bread and moisten with a little water. Squeeze dry and combine with garlic and nuts to make a smooth paste. Add the oil gently and finish with salt and lemon juice to taste. Grind all ingredients in a blender. A little water may be added if the paste is too thick.

Another version is to substitute the bread with a medium-sized hot boiled potato, which is crushed and combined with the garlic and nuts.

WALNUT MINT CHUTNEY

12 walnuts
2 green chilli peppers, seeded and ribs removed
1 cup mint leaves, washed and drained
1/3 cup of water
3 tablespoons of sour cream
salt to taste

Shell walnuts and soak overnight in water. Grind all ingredients in a blender.

SALAD DAYS IN SOFIA

Back in the Sixties there was an English entrepreneur who made and lost a fortune with his affordable washing machine at a time when such an item was considered a luxury in many British homes. His problem was in servicing the machines, and it was this that led to his downfall. He eventually ended up at the Old Bailey accused of fraud and at this stage Fleet Street started to look into his other business ventures – including the development of a holiday resort on the Black Sea in Bulgaria.

I was asked by the Daily Mail to go to Sofia (I was living in Belgrade at the time) and look into the Bulgarian connection. My contacts in Sofia (both from the Bulgarian Ministry of Information -- or Misinformation) flew with me to coastal resort of Varna where they proudly showed me around the concrete shell of what was supposed to be a hotel complex and yachting marina. It was, according to my Bulgarian government contacts "very close to completion" -- and to hear them tell it, the world’s yachties would soon be setting a course for this new ‘Black Sea sailing paradise.’ I was far less optimistic, but said nothing.

Back in Sofia that evening, we headed for the Writers Club, usually a good place to eat in any Communist capital in those days. However, it was late and the kitchen was about to close. So we shared a Shopska salad and several bottles of full-bodied Bulgarian red wine.

After a few drinks one of my contacts asked why the British press was so interested in the Black Sea venture and I told them about the ongoing court case in London. There was a deadly silence, followed by a colourful outburst of Bulgarian vernacular, and then they were on their feet and dashing out of the Writers Club – leaving me to pay a fairly hefty bill.

I never saw them again, so I did not find out the reason for their anger, my only conclusion being that they had some personal interest in the venture. As it turned out, the Old Bailey fraud case was dismissed that week and the paper dropped the Black Sea story. The concrete shell of the yachting marina and resort remained as a Varna eyesore for several years.

My expense account for the Sofia saga included (in true Fleet Street style) an item for “Dinner at the Sofia Writers Club with two local contacts. One salad and 12 bottles of wine.” The expense account was queried -- not the amount of wine consumed, but the fact that we had shared one salad. Fleet Street had its good days.


SHOPSKA SALAD

4 red chilli peppers, washed, with seeds and ribs removed
1 medium cucumber, skinned, sliced and with seeds removed
500 g tomatoes, chopped
2 small onions, finely chopped
2 teaspoons olive oil
150 g goat cheese, crumbly variety
chopped parsley, fresh dill, salt and black pepper

Arrange vegetables in overlapping circles, sprinkle with olive oil, vinegar, parsley, dill, salt and pepper. Crumble the cheese on top.

Another spicier version uses only the red chilli peppers, tomatoes and cheese, which are mixed in together.

Serves 4

BREAK AN EGG

It was often said in the days when Tito ruled Yugoslavia that the country was one hundred per cent Marxist – fifty per cent Karl and fifty per cent Groucho. On the one hand the independent communist state was careful not to annoy the Kremlin too much, while on the other it went out of its way to attract Western investment, often of a kind that would seemingly be out of place in a proletariat state. Take casinos for example, which at the end of the Sixties were sprouting up all over the country.

I was at home in my Belgrade villa in the then diplomatic ghetto of Dedinje one evening when I received a call from Reno, Nevada. It was from a well-known casino owner who told me he was about to expand into Yugoslavia and open up shop at a former royal palace on the coast in Montenegro. To launch the new casino he was flying in a plane load of ‘high rollers’ and he was inviting me to join his guests at the ‘grand opening’.

I am not a gambler (at least I am not a heavy gambler), but it was an offer I could not resist. What did a ‘high roller’ look like? Who would fly all the way from the United States to Yugoslavia of all places to play at a blackjack or roulette table? I was soon to find out.

Among the many guests who flew in on the chartered jet was Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Startrek and his wife, a plastic surgeon who claimed he had ‘changed the face of Hollywood’, a part-Navajo horse breeder from Arizona, an American-Chinese antique dealer with his astrologist girl-friend from Toledo, Ohio and a chain-smoking, blue-rinsed columnist from New York’s Women’s Wear Daily.

As I have always had a more than average interest in food, the one of the characters who sticks out most in my mind was a rotund Californian lawyer who travelled with a briefcase specially fitted out to carry no less than eight bottles of his favourite ketchup. The briefcase would be with him whenever he ate, nudged between his feet at the table. During the four days I spent at the new casino resort, I watched this man desecrate meal after meal with his ketchup – including one of my favourite dishes from the area, the Montenegrin omelette. If you make it, promise me you will not smother it in ketchup!

MONTENEGRIN OMELETTE

For the omelette

8 eggs
3 tablespoons milk
½ teaspoon salt
white pepper to taste
¼ teaspoon dried thyme
3 tablespoons butter

For the sauce

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 green chilli pepper, seeds and rib removed and finely chopped
2 sticks of celery, finely chopped
500 g can of tomatoes, drained and chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ cup red wine
2 tablespoons slivovitz (or brandy)

Make the sauce first by heating the butter and oil in a large frying pan, then add the garlic and all vegetables apart from the tomatoes. Cook for 5 minutes on a moderate heat, then add tomatoes and seasonings and cook for another 5 minutes. Add the wine, stir and simmer, covered, over a lower heat for 10 more minutes. Uncover, add the slivovitz (or brandy) and simmer for a further 15 minutes, stirring from time to time.

Meanwhile, beat the eggs, milk and omelette seasonings. Heat the butter in a large pan and add the egg mixture. Cook until golden brown on one side, then turn over and cook the same on the other side.

Cut the omelette into 4 to 6 pieces and serve covered with sauce.

This dish can also be eaten cold, or with cold omelette and warmed up sauce.

Serves 4/6

DRACULA AND LAMB

One day in early 1972 I found myself sitting over lunch at the Bucharest Inter Continental hotel with a couple of dark-suited Rumanian Ministry of Information officials (all Rumanian officials wore dark suits and worked in pairs in those days) discussing the possibility of travelling to Transylvania. It was the 60th anniversary of the death of Bram Stoker and I wanted to visit the area he had made legendary as the home of Count Dracula. These were still the heydays of Ceaucescu's communist fiasco, and the country was not easy to travel around -- especially if you had media connections.

The Inter Continental was the best place to eat in Bucharest in those days (one of its lamb recipes is given below) and I hoped that by entertaining these Rumanian government officials I would stand a chance of being allowed to explore the vampire trail.

Modern Transylvania sweeps southeast from the present-day Hungarian border to central Rumania and is a major industrial area, rich in minerals and natural gas -- a region that the ever-suspicious Rumanian government of the time was not keen on being visited by inquisitive Western journalists. To my surprise, my request was later granted – but that day I was only given a history lesson.

“This Dracula of yours never existed,” insisted the younger of the two ministry men, enthusiastically tucking into his lunch.

His colleague nodded his head silently in agreement. The younger man was obviously the senior of the two.

“Bram Stoker based his character on Vlad Dracul, a Rumanian folk hero,” he added, obviously not finding it necessary to mention that Vlad Dracul was better known to the world as Vlad the Impaler because of his nasty habit of nailing his enemies to the wall by their heads.

“Of course, Vlad Dracul was not a vampire,” he continued, “That was a Hungarian Countess. She was the real vampire. She kidnapped hundreds of young virgins, killed them and then bathed in their blood.”

At this point the second ministry man leaned over, put his hand on his colleague’s arm as if to restrain him, coughed gently, and said “Of course, you must understand, this was all in the days before Socialism.”


LAMB WITH TARRAGON

1 kg lean lamb fillet, diced
3 tablespoons sunflower oil
2 bunches of spring onions, chopped
3 sprigs of fresh tarragon
3 teaspoons of flour
1 cup of stock
salt

Braise the meat in a little oil, sprinkle with salt, then flour and mix well. Add the onions, both white and green parts, and the leaves of tarragon. Slowly add the stock, stirring. Simmer until meat is tender and sauce has reduced by about a third.

Serves 4

ARMY RATIONS -- SERBIAN STYLE

Living in Belgrade in the late Sixties and early Seventies was quite an experience. Officially I was the local correspondent for the UK’s Daily Mail and America’s Copley News Service, for whom I wrote a regular weekly column that was syndicated to some 300 newspapers around the United States – ranging from the Sacramento Bee (a wonderful name for a newspaper) to the more influential San Diego Union.

During my Belgrade days, I spent a lot of time travelling around the Vojvodena, a rich farming region that borders Rumania and Hungary. As I speak Serbo-Croat it was fairly easy to get to know the locals and learn a little about their cuisine. I was often invited to a pig-killing to celebrate a saint’s day, a fairly regular ritual in the countryside – but not an event to be recommended to the faint hearted. Don’t worry. I am not going to give a recipe that starts: “first kill a pig”, but will instead give a couple of dishes that are filling and highly recommended for a cold winter’s day.

The recipe for pasulj was given to me by a cook at an army garrison in Subotica on the Hungarian border, and I sincerely hope he was not divulging military secrets in doing so. The recipe for bean ciorba comes from the Writers Club in Belgrade, and is more or less a vegetarian version of pasulj. Both dishes improve in taste if left to stand in a fridge for a day or two and slowly warmed up.

PASULJ

350 g smoked pork
300 g dry white beans
2 large onions, chopped
4 carrots, diced
2 cloves of garlic
parsley
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon flour
50 g pork fat
2 tablespoons tomato ketchup
1 red chilli, sliced with seeds and ribs removed
salt to taste


Soak beans overnight. Drain then cook until tender in 1½ litres of water with the vegetables, garlic, meat and bay leaf. Make a roux with the flour and fat, dilute with some soup, add the tomato ketchup and chilli pepper and put in the pan with the beans, meat and vegetables. Leave to simmer for 15 minutes, or longer.

Serves 4/6


SERBIAN BEAN CIORBA

250 g dry white beans
2 carrots, sliced
1 parsnip, sliced
1 onion, sliced
1 tablespoon sea salt
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon butter
2 tablespoons flour
4 cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon paprika
½ tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 cup of yoghurt
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Soak beans overnight and cook in lots of fresh water until almost tender. Add the vegetables and cook for 10-15 minutes, or until both beans and vegetables are soft. Season with half the salt.

In a separate pan, heat the oil and butter together, stir in the flour and cook for a couple of minutes on a low heat. Add the garlic, crushed with the rest of the salt, and then the paprika and cayenne pepper. Dilute into a smooth sauce with ½ cup of cold water and add to the beans and vegetables. Mix well and simmer for 15 minutes, adding more water if the soup is too thick.

Just before serving, dilute the yoghurt with a little hot soup and add to the pan. Add the lemon juice, taste and adjust seasoning.

Serves 4/6

RABBITS FROM TUSCANY

Coelho, conejo, coniglio, iepure, kanin, kaninchen, konijn, kouneli, lapin or liebre – no matter how you say it, I have found recipes for preparing rabbit wherever I have travelled.Those who know their rabbits will tell you that flavour depends on age and diet – a young bark-eating rabbit eaten in winter being the most delicious. Wild rabbit is at its best when shot rather than snared. Tame rabbits reared in hutches are larger and fatter than wild rabbit and have a milder flavour. It's well worth remembering.

The Portuguese favour rabbit (coelho) stewed simply with onion, garlic, pimentos and white wine, while some time ago in Spain I came across a more complicated recipe from Navarre that calls for baking the rabbit (conejo) in a potato pastry. An unusual Rumanian rabbit dish (iepure) that I once enjoyed in Timisoara included black olives and a sweetish red wine in its preparation and was eaten cold with a hot maize porridge called mamaliga. In Oslo I have enjoyed roast rabbit (kanin) served with red cabbage, while in Munich I found kaninchen simmered with prunes in a local beer to be a mouth watering dish.

Two of the best rabbit meals I have had, however, were made with Italian recipes: coniglio in tegame from Florence, which relies on a mixture of herbs to bring out the best of a simple Tuscan stew, and coniglio alla’aullese, another Tuscan dish prepared by cooking the rabbit with capsicums.

With both of these recipes, rabbit can be substituted with chicken. If so, disregard the stage of overnight soaking in vinegar for the Roman rabbit with peppers

TUSCAN STEWED RABBIT

4 large rabbit joints
7 tablespoons olive oil
1 sprig of rosemary, chopped finely or ½ teaspoon dried rosemary
6 fresh sage leaves, chopped finely or ½ teaspoon dried sage
6 juniper berries, crushed lightly
juice of 1 lemon
salt and pepper

Cut each rabbit joint into 3 pieces. Lay them in a deep saucepan. Mix all the other ingredients, season with salt and pepper and pour over rabbit. Cover and marinate overnight.

Place the pan over a medium heat and bring the contents to a slow boil. Mix carefully and add more oil, or a little water, if necessary. Turn down the heat, cover the pan and simmer for 30 minutes. Serve immediately. This dish goes well with boiled potatoes.

Serves 4

TUSCAN RABBIT WITH PEPPERS

4 large rabbit joints
2 tablespoons of olive oil
75 g streaky bacon (Italian pancetta is preferred if available), chopped finely
2 sticks of celery, chopped
2 carrots, diced
400 g onions, sliced finely
500 g yellow capsicums, de-seeded and sliced into strips
400 g canned tomatoes, roughly chopped
salta and pepper

Soak the rabbit joints overnight in an even mixture of cold water and vinegar. Drain the rabbit, rinse and dry carefully. Cut each joint into 3 pieces.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan and fry the bacon (or pancetta) celery and carrots on a moderate heat until the celery is transparent and soft. Add the onions and capsicums and cook for 5 minutes. Add the rabbit pieces and brown them all over. Add the tomatoes and the wine and stir while the alcohol burns off. Season with salt and pepper to taste and cover the pan. Simmer gently for 1 hour.

Serves 4

WIVES AND MOTHERS

Chopped liver, chopped liver and more chopped liver – that’s all my mother ever makes, complained my Jewish mate Max regularly, forgetting for a moment his mother’s chicken noodle soup, chicken noodle soup and chicken noodle soup.

Max’s mother was a lovely lady, ever proud of her highly successful lawyer son -- the fact that his client list was made up mainly of the upper crust of London’s East End villains doing nothing to lessen her pride. Along with her husband, Max’s mother was a pillar of the local Jewish community, and whenever there was a charity bazaar, she was there with her chopped liver.

It came as a great surprise (and that is putting it mildly) when out of the blue Max announced his engagement to an Italian girl – well, actually she was an Essex girl from Romford, but her parents were from the old country.

For the first few weeks after the wedding, Max looked a different man. He survived going ‘cold turkey’ on chopped liver and was showing no apparent withdrawal systems brought about by a lack of chicken noodle soup.

But then came married life’s first major problem. Shortly after the wedding, the true Italian woman came out in his wife Tina – she began to cook. Was she trying to impress her mother-in-law? Possibly, as the very first dinner she prepared for Max was none other than tagliatini with chicken liver.

I am glad to say that the marriage has survived, and these days even Tina’s mother-in-law raises the white flag and turns up for a family dinner on occasion – and there’s no prize for guessing what’s usually on the menu those nights.


TAGLIATINI WITH CHICKEN LIVERS

75 g chicken livers, trimmed, washed carefully and roughly chopped
½ small onion, chopped very finely
50 g butter
5 tablespoons dry white wine
250 ml of well-flavoured chicken stock
375 g fresh tagliatini, or any other flat ribbon-shaped pasta
75 g freshly grated parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Heat 25 g butter in a saucepan and fry the chopped chicken livers and onion for 5 minutes. Add the wine and raise the heat to burn off the alcohol. Lower the heat, slowly pour in the chicken stock while stirring, then let the livers simmer gently for another 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring another saucepan of salted water to a rolling boil. Add the pasta and stir to separate the ribbons. Boil on high heat for 2-3 minutes, depending on fineness of pasta, then drain carefully.

Return the pasta to the saucepan and add the chicken livers. Add the meianing butter and toss well. Serve in a warmed serving dish or bowl. Sprinkle with parmesan.

Serves 4

SRI LANKAN TIME WARP

The Hill Club in Nuwara Eliya is located in a Sri Lankan time warp, taking guests back to the heydays of Ceylon’s colonial tea-planting era. The Hill Club may be anachronistic, but it enjoys a jovial ambience and has (or had) a more than generous bar steward.

Its food, however, is not a lot to write home about -- and never has been according to comments made in the club’s voluminous Complaints Book, which dates back to 1884, some seven years after the club was established.

“16th April, 1884: I came to breakfast at 11.30 and could get nothing to eat so had to order a tin of mushrooms. H. Montague Philby”

“20th September 1891: Nothing to eat for early tea, asked for herrings – “None”, asked for ham or sausages. Butler replied ‘Chief Clerk taken store key and gone out’. Quality of food at breakfast and dinner on 19th most inferior – even the pepper and toothpicks are musty. Chas. H. Bagot.”

My favourite entries were made in 1914, when on February 10, a positive comment was made by ten members:

“The management deserves great credit in the excellent dinner tonight.”

This, however, is followed by the remark of another member who wrote:

“I don’t remember a great dinner.”

I hope the lapse of memory was the fault of a generous bar steward.

My thoughts turned to Montague Philby, Chas Bagot and other long gone planters when I attended a very lively Gala Centenary Dinner at the Nuwara Eliya Hill Club in late 1977. Overall the food lived up to the club’s standards -- the highlight being a rather dry roast turkey, served with a fruity Slovenian Welsch- Riesling.

Here is the Hill Club chef’s recipe for the tasty cauliflower with coconut sauce, which accompanied the turkey that night – a vegetable dish that saved the bird and therefore deserves recognition.


CAULIFLOWER WITH COCONUT SAUCE

1 can of coconut milk (400 ml)
1 cauliflower, florets separated, stalks sliced thinly on the diagonal
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 onion, chopped finely
2.5 cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
2 teaspoons ground coriander seeds
¼ - ½ teaspoon chilli powder (according to taste)
¼ teaspoon turmeric
salt to taste

Serves 4

GADDI'S REMEMBERED

My first of many visits to Hong Kong was way back in 1964. Things were vastly different in those days -- the place had a lot more character, I arrived at the old Kai Tek airport on a hot and sultry summer afternoon and was whisked immediately to a gleaming white Rolls Royce. I felt like a true taipan as the limousine weaved its way through the bustling narrow streets of Kowloon to the historic Peninsula Hotel -- an experience I enjoyed several times during the early Sixties.

A string quintet was playing Gershwin in the hotel lobby and floral-frocked expatriate wives and elegantly-clad Hong Kong Chinese were enjoying afternoon tea colonial-style: devouring huge cream cakes and sipping Darjeeling tea.

Gaddi’s at the Peninsula Hotel was without doubt the finest restaurant in the colony, and one of the best in the whole Far East -- and I am glad to hear that it has maintained its eminence since the changes to Hong Kong's status.

I was privileged to be invited by the hotel management to fly out first class from Europe in 1988 with Cathay Pacific for the hotel’s 60th anniversary dinner at Gaddi’s.

I kept the very ornate personalised menu from the evening: quail salad, endive soup with capsicums and Balik salmon, steamed fillet of sea bass, roast veal stuffed with bone marrow in a light tarragon sauce and a decoratively glazed pastry served with mango sherbet. We drank a Louis Latour Bâtard-Montrachet 1985, a Château La Conseillante 1979 and a Deutz Cuvée du 150e Anniversaire.

During dinner I was seated next to a young lady charmingly named Heidi Ho who turned out to be a mine of information on the Peninsula’s history. I discovered that officers of my father’s regiment, the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, had been billeted at the Peninsula while on their way to Shanghai shortly before the hotel opened. I never knew my father, who tragically was among the many to disappear in the Burmese jungles during World War II, but I did know he had earlier been to Hong Kong and Shanghai. The dinner took on another dimension knowing that he had probably also ‘put up at the Pen’ back in the late Twenties.

The kitchen at Gaddi’s had (and doubtless still has) a knack of transforming vegetables, spices and herbs into true culinary delights. Here’s a couple you might like to try.

CARROTS WITH ORANGE AND CARDAMOM

1 tablespoon cardamom pods
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
375 g carrots, sliced thinly on the diagonal
5 cm piece fresh ginger root, peeled and finely chopped
2 teaspoons caster sugar
finely grated rind and juice of 1 large orange
2 teaspoons lemon juice
salt

Remove the seeds from the cardamom pods and crush.

Heat the wok until hot. Add the vegetable oil and heat using a moderate heat. Add the carrrots and ginger and stir-fry for 2-3 minutes. Add the crushed cardamom seeds and stir-fry for a few seconds.

Add the caster sugar, orange juice and rind, lemon juice and salt to taste. Bring to the boil and stir-fry for 1 minute, or until the liquid is reduced. Serve at once.

Serves 4.


MANGETOUT WITH GINGER AND MINT

2 tablespoons olive oil
5 cm piece of fresh ginger root, peeled and cut into matchsticks
500 g mangetout
2 teaspoons chopped fresh mint
salt and pepper
mint sprigs to garnish

Heat the wok until hot. Add the olive oil and heat over a moderate heat until hot, but not smoking. Add the ginger and stir-fry over a gentle heat for 1-2 minutes.

Add the mangetout and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice and mint. Add salt and pepper to taste. Decorate with mint twigs and serve at once.

Serves 4