Burundi

Steve’s house, Streatham

13 May 2014

I’m afraid we don’t remember much about this meal – even the photos don’t look familiar. The starter was probably by Sophie, and was a Burundian bean soup, which looked like this and was presumably hearty.

Burundian Bean Soup

Steve’s main course was mackerel with plantains and kidney beans. I think this must have been made up, based on the general information about Burundi food made on this page: http://globaltableadventure.com/2010/08/10/about-the-food-of-burundi/

Finally, for dessert, Joe made Bananas Burundi – banana in orange syrup with banana crisps. This was also a bit suspect, the only source being this page http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Burundian_Desserts, which claims “The bananas Burundi is made with cinnamon, orange juice and flavored with Curacao or apricot, all garnished with sweetened sour cream and brown sugar.” Joe says “despite appearing nowhere else on the internet, that’s good enough for me. We all know there are no real Burundian desserts, and this is no more spurious than the “Banana and Date mix” that appears everywhere else.”

Scores

Food 3/5

Recipes

Burundian Bean Soup

• 1/2 tin  lima beans (I used black eyed beans)
• 1/2 tin white beans
• 1/2 tin pink or red beans
• Stock to cover ingredients
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 green pepper, chopped
• 1/4 tsp red chilli flakes
• 4 sticks celery, chopped
• Handful parsley, chopped
• Handful of basil, chopped
• 2/3 tbsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp salt
• Handful unsalted peanuts ground to a powder

1. Add the stock to a non-stick saucepan and add the onion and pepper.

2. Cook until softened then add the celery, herbs and spices and cook for 3 minutes.

3. Add in the beans and cook, uncovered for 30 minutes. When almost ready add the peanuts and cook for 15 minutes more.

4. Season and serve in bowls.

Mackerel with beans and plantain

• 500g kidney beans
• 6 plantains, sliced
• palm oil / groundnut oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• salt & pepper
• 3 whole mackerel
• White rice

Heat oven to 200°C. Fry onion in oil. Add beans, plantains, onion and seasoning, plus 50ml water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 30 mins.

Bake mackerel in oven for 20 mins. Serve on top of plantain/bean mix and rice.

Bananas Burundi

(Serves 3)

• Bananas x 3
• Stick cinnamon
• Fresh orange juice 150ml
• Brown sugar 50ml
• Cointreau or Curacao or Grand Marnier, measure
• 4 fresh apricots (or 6 dried)
• Sour cream
• Icing sugar tsp
• Sweet plantain chips

Stone the apricots and cut into quarters.

Put the orange juice, cinnamon and sugar into a pan and bring to the boil. Seethe, stirring continuously, until it thickens into a light syrup. Then stir in the Cointreau. If it gets too thick, add a little water.

Stir icing sugar into sour cream.

Slice the bananas lengthways, scatter apricot pieces on top, pour the syrup over them, and serve with sour cream on the side. Sprinkle plantain chips on top.

Burma

Mandalay, 444 Edgware Road, London W2 1EG

19 March 2014

Once you realise that “Burmese food can best be described as a fusion between Chinese and Indian cuisine with a slight influence from Thai food” (1), you know that you are in for a good time.

Mandalay is unprepossessing from the outside, and might be easily passed over for the shiny Azmar restaurant next door, but it is certainly worth going in. It’s a smallish place, unmistakably Burmese with large photos and pictures of distinctive golden temples, and fabric wall-hangings with embroidered maps of the country.

We asked the waiter for something specifically Burmese, and he explained (with a certain amount of pride) that while there are certain dishes that might be considered ‘national dishes’, in fact the Burmese cook dishes that may be familiar from other nations in their own distinctive way. For example, they might serve a curry, but they won’t use cinnamon or cardamom, so the flavour will be quite different from an Indian one. In other words, we could order what we liked and remain authentically Burmese.

For starters we tried the bottle gourd soup, the “dozen ingredient” soup, and a variety of fritters including calabash, bean sprout and ‘leafy green’. All of these were excellent, apart perhaps from the bottle gourd soup which was very peppery but had little else going on. We couldn’t work out what the leaves were in the leafy green fritter, but they were delicious; this delicately fried fritter was almost like seaweed tempura.

Beansprout, calabash & ‘leafy green’ fritters

For main courses, Steve had chicken and lemongrass with coconut rice. “Good choice” said the waiter, and it was. I’ve cooked with lemongrass myself a number of times but never managed to get the beautiful lemony flavour out of it that was present here. Joe had the “twice-cooked fish” with lentil rice, the meaty fish delicious in a rich sauce that probably involved some tamarind. (We couldn’t see any lentils, but the rice was good.) Sophie had the special fried noodles, which were more of a standard stir-fry, but still good.

Twice-cooked fish and lentil rice, with lemongrass chicken in the distance

Often on these evenings, we come to pudding with a certain weariness, having stuffed ourselves in the earlier courses, and with a growing realisation that most nations on Earth don’t seem to be that crash-hot at pudding. However, Burma excelled again. Steve’s semolina didn’t promise much but turned out to be a firm, warm block of the stuff, soaked and surrounded in a light syrup. Sophie had banana fritter and ice cream, and Joe got ‘faluda‘, a drink common to the whole Indian subcontinent, but presented here in its special Burmese form. It’s a sort of milkshake, flavoured with rose syrup and strawberry ice cream, thickened with agar and also featuring tapioca, basil seeds and vermicelli.

Burmese Faluda

Burmese food rules. This place is a definite recommendation.

Scores

Food: 4/5

Atmosphere: 4/5

Burkina Faso

Joe & Sophie’s

21 February 2014

The name Burkina Faso means “Land of Honest People”, using words taken from the most widely-spoken Moré and Dioula languages. This good idea comes from the first president of the independent nation, Thomas Sankara. He was also responsible for the national anthem; that’s not so good.

Joe cooked Boussan Touba, a.k.a. Burkinabé Samsas, as a starter – delicious bean fritters (made in this case from cannellini beans) served with a tomato sauce.

Steve’s main was Riz Gras sans Riz: Chicken breasts in tomato, onion, chili and garlic sauce, cooked in palm oil. This was served alongside Le Tô Sauce Gombos. Tô is our old friend fufu masquerading under a different name, and so there’s nothing much to say about that, but the Gombos sauce, made with okra, chili and peanuts was quite good. I left the rice out of the riz gras, figuring that the Tô would provide quite enough stodge on its own.

Sophie’s dessert was welshcakes made with couscous, served with banana and yoghurt. The cous cous replaces the West African grain ‘fonio’ which is not easy to come by in the UK. These were pretty good too.

Scores

Food 3.5/5

Recipes

Boussan Touba

See: http://travelbystove.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/recipes-from-burkina-faso.html

Riz Gras (sans Riz)

Sources

• http://travelbystove.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/recipes-from-burkina-faso.html
• http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-riz-gras-poulet

Ingredients

• 2 red chillis
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped (but save a few rings for garnish)
• Tin chopped tomatoes
• 100ml palm oil
• 400g chicken breast, cubed
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Whizz the chilli, onion, tomatoes and garlic into a paste. Cook this in the palm oil. Meanwhile, fry the chicken in olive oil until it colours. Rinse the food processor with a little water, then add that to the chicken and cook for a few minutes. Finally, add the tomato paste and cook the whole lot for 20 mins. Garnish with onion rings.

Le Tô Sauce Gombos

Sources

• http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-to
• http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-le-to-sauce-gombos

Directions

• 300g corn meal (should be millet flour)
• 1l water

Boil 200ml of water, and start to add corn meal to it and stir. Keep adding more corn meal and water and stirring, until it becomes a firm malleable gunk.

For the Okra Sauce:

• 12 okra
• 1.5 large onions
• 1 chilli, finely chopped
• Handful salted peanuts
• Tsp cinnamon
• Tsp nutmeg
• Tsp ground ginger

Blend the okra and peanuts together into a paste. Separately blend the onion, garlic and spices. Fry the onion mix in oil for 2 minutes, then add the okra mix and cook for another 10 mins. Add the chilli and cook for another 5 minutes.

 

Bulgaria

Perpericon, 16 Greyhound Lane, London SW16 5SD

29 January 2014

Conveniently right next to Steve’s house, Perpericon started out as a pizzeria but over the years has allowed its Bulgarian essence to emerge. You still wouldn’t know it from the website, which advertises itself as an “Italian takeaway” and hides its Bulgarian dishes under a discreet “Non-pizza menu”. But Perpericon is hiding its light under a bushel, because the food on that menu is delicious, and the best thing they have to offer.

We ate so much, I cannot remember all the dishes, but here are a few: Lyutenitza, a dip made from red peppers, wonderfully light and flavourful; excellent flatbreads; baked cheese cubes; Snejanka, a dip similar to tzatziki; kebapche and kofte, which seemed to be the same grilled meat in different shapes; and best of all, the Smolian potatoes. This was a red-hot pot of grated potato with feta and cream, topped with an egg and baked. Absolutely fantastic, worth the visit on its own.

The restaurant is also attractively set out in dark colours, and the owner is very friendly and informative once you engage her in conversation. Although we would suggest you steer clear of the subject of gypsies.

 

Ratings:

Food: 4/5

Atmosphere: 3/5

Brunei

Steve’s house

14 January 2014

I’m afraid the entry for Brunei is a little sparse, probably because we’ve blocked out the experience from our memories. The evening was somewhat ruined for everyone by a mishap with the shrimp paste.

Shrimp paste smells the way Hell must smell. It stinks so badly that you can smell it through the jar. That’s right, a smell so strong that it can penetrate glass. And if you think it smells bad in the jar, that is nothing compared to the smell it makes when you put it into a hot pan. Subsequently, we learned that the way to use shrimp paste is to add a tiny, tiny amount; “enough to coat the end of a chopstick” was some useful advice that I received too late.

Instead, Sophie took a big spoon of the stuff and whacked it into the frying pan, unleashing an unbelievable stench that quickly infested all of my soft furnishings and remained there for weeks. I wondered if I would have to throw away everything I owned in order to be rid of this horror.

Sambal Udang, sort of

So we ate some Bruneian foods and I’ve got some photos but we can’t really remember what they were. Steve’s starter was an attempt at Sambal Serai Udang Bersantan, i.e. prawns in a sauce of lemongrass, chili and tamarind. Unfortunately it looks nothing like the other photos of that dish on the web.

Sophie’s main course, apart from the shrimp paste horror, looks like it might have been a chili chicken dish with greens and Ambuyat, a traditionally Bruneian form of sago rendered into a tasteless paste.

Not sure what this was

 

For pudding, Joe created Bubur Ketan Hitam, a dessert made with coconut, pandan leaves and black rice. From the photo you can see that the rice resembles Damien Hirst’s dead-fly-montage Armageddon, but in fact this was the most palatable aspect of the whole evening.

Black rice cooking for Bubur Ketan Hitam

I doubt we have done the slightest justice to Bruneian food, but this was a truly dreadful culinary experience, and one I was forced to relive each time I came home for the rest of January.

Ratings:

Food: 1/5

Recipes

Sambal serai udang bersantan (Prawns in lemongrass Santan sauce)

Sources

• http://www.bruneitourism.travel/cultures/specialty.html
• http://nyonyafood.rasamalaysia.com/sambal-udang-recipe-prawn-sambal-recipe/2/
• http://indonesiaeats.com/sambal-serai-udang-prawn-lemongrass-sambal/

Ingredients

500g tiger prawns

1 lime

100ml cooking oil

5 cloves of garlic (minced)

10 shallots (diced)

2 fresh red chillies

7 dry chillies

3 pieces of lemongrass (finely minced)

125ml tamarind water

3 kaffir lime leaves, sliced (optional)

Salt to taste

1 tsp sugar

25ml of coconut milk

Directions

Squeeze lime and sprinkle salt over the prawns. Marinate for 15 minutes.

Heat the cooking oil and fry the shallots, garlic and chillies. Add the lemongrass and tamarind water. Next, add the prawns, lime leaves, salt and sugar. Cook for 2-3 minutes until shrimp are pink. Finally, add coconut milk and stir until thickened. Add water if a thinner sauce is preferred.

Bubur Ketan Hitam

(From http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/miscellaneous/fetch-recipe.php?rid=misc-bubur-ketan-hitam)

225g black, glutinous, rice (available from Asian stores)

2 pandan leaves, pounded to a paste

1.2l water

120ml palm sugar syrup

pinch of salt

360ml fresh coconut cream

Rinse rice well (at least 2 minutes) then transfer to a pan along with the water and pandan leaf paste. Bring to a boil then simmmer for 40 minutes, or until the rice is tender. Add the palm sugar and continue to cook gently until the mixture is almost dry. Season with a pinch of salt then take off the heat and allow to cool. Transfer into serving bowls and garnish with a generous swirl of coconut cream.

Brazil

Rodizio Rico, 111 Westbourne Grove, London W2 4UW

17 November 2013

This game is so much easier when you have a reliable contact from the target country to advise you; in this case Joe & Sophie’s neighbour Roberto was That Man from Rio. He insisted that the signature Brazilian dish was feijoada, and that to find this we should head for a branch of Rodizio Rico. This has become something of a chain restaurant, with 4 branches in London and another in Birmingham, but it still promised a measure of authenticity.

Upon arrival it looks the part; Rodizio Rico is a churrascaria, meaning barbecue, and rows of skewers of meat are constantly rotating in the open kitchen area. These skewers are taken by the waiters from table to table, and slices of meat carved off on request. A different skewer arrives approximately every time someone breathes, so you are provided with a traffic light system (below) to stop them offering you yet more meat. Not that this really works: they offer you more meat anyway, and for some reason you keep saying yes, despite the pile you can’t finish that’s already on your plate. The meat is delicious, including grilled steak of various different types (including picanha, a very specific cut of beef also known as “small rump cap”), pork leg, lamb leg, chicken wings, a chicken sausage of wonderful consistency, and a pillar of chicken hearts which are popped off onto your plate until you tell them to stop.

Green for go, red for … go

It’s not just meat. There is also a Harvester-style salad bar and a row of stews and other dishes that you can help yourself to as often as you can manage. Here we found the fabled feijoada, which seemed to be made from black beans, chorizo (chouriço, rather) and pork belly. It was delicious, as were the other offerings here, including tropeiro beans (beans and egg), banana croquettes, cheesy breadballs, lasagne (bizarrely), sweet potato and pineapple salad, and finally chayote salad. We couldn’t work out what this was, suspecting it of being some sort of cactus, but it turns out to be a type of gourd. To finish off this huge mound of food, there was also cassava flour which could be sprinkled on top and make everything pleasingly crunchy.

Nice food, shame about the photo

Writing this, I cannot understand how we were able to contemplate pudding, but contemplate it we did. These were a bit less exciting: a sort of crème caramel and a chocolate pudding that was apparently very Brazilian but also rather uninspiring. Still, no points lost for that, since the preceding courses had been so excellent. Drinks were also good: decent caipirinhas, Brahma beers and a Brazilian red called São Monte that was perfectly drinkable.

This was just the sort of restaurant trip that I was hoping for when starting this project – unusual but delicious food, in an unusual and exciting setting. Could this be the Best of the Bs?

Steve

Scores

Food: out of 5

Atmosphere: out of 5

Botswana

Joe & Sophie’s house

17 July 2013

While there are several “Southern African” restaurants in London, they lean heavily towards South Africa, and we were unable to find anything specifically Botswanan on the menu. So, back to the kitchen we go, for another home-cooked meal at Joe & Sophie’s.

While looking for ingredients for my pudding in New Cross’ Sainsbury’s, I get a slightly panicked phone call from Sophie. It seems that Joe has managed to source some genuine sorghum for his main course, which he considers something of a triumph, until it begins moving of its own accord.

Sorghum

This genuine sorghum comes with genuine weevils, in great quantities. The weevils are either “tiny, smaller than ants” or “massive beetles”, depending on whose eyewitness testimony you want to believe, but either way they are unwelcome, and the sorghum goes in the bin. Joe substitutes polenta for the sorghum, which is not exactly Botswanan, but it’s as close as we’re going to get and I dare say you can get it in Gaborone.

Weevil!

Sophie’s starter is vegetable potjie; a chunky soup with swede, celery, sweetcorn and other good things, stewed together for an hour. Simple but tasty.

Vegetable potjie

Then comes Joe’s main course which is really rather good. The substitute polenta works really well as a bland counterpoint to the strong flavours of the chicken and bacon dish, which is flavoured with chili, spices, red peppers and gherkins.

Chicken with bacon and mock bogobe

Finally, Steve’s Malva Pudding is also a success. This is South African in origin (Cape Dutch to be precise), but is apparently popular in Botswana as well. It seems like a fairly failsafe pudding to make, and when the vanilla custard soaks into it, it really is delicious.

Malva pudding

Drinks are ginger beer throughout, since that is a popular Botswanan drink. So is Rooibos tea, but we forget to make it, and anyway it is far too hot a summer’s night for that.

Scores

Food: 3.5 / 5

Recipes

Chicken with bacon and mock bogobe

210g sorghum
2 tbsp oil
160g bacon lardons
2 chicken thighs, skinned, boned and cubed
1 red pepper, chopped
3 large gherkins, sliced
70g sweetcorn
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp chilli paste
1 onion, chopped

Bring a pan of lightly-salted water to a boil. Add the sorghum grains. If your sorghum begins to crawl, shout ‘weevils!’, and throw it in the sink. Go to Plan B.

If not, cook the sorghum for about 30 minutes, until tender. Drain in a colander, rinse under cold, running water and set aside.

In a frying pan, heat the oil. Add the bacon and chicken and fry on a medium-high heat until the meat begins to brown. Stir in all the remaining ingredients and half a cup of water – about 125ml. Bring to a gentle simmer and cook for 10 minutes; the liquid should reduce and infuse with flavour. Stir in the sorghum and allow to heat through. Turn into a warmed dish and serve immediately.

Plan B
For a delicious replacement for your sorghum (and not unfaithful, since it is maize-based; the other Botswanian staple), make a soft polenta. This worked really well with the other ingredients:

400ml milk
Sprig of thyme
A few peppercorns
2 garlic cloves, bashed
150g quick-cook polenta
20g butter
1 tsp chopped rosemary
20g hard goat’s cheese or other well-flavoured hard cheese, grated

Put the milk and 200ml water into a saucepan. Add the rosemary, thyme, peppercorns and onion/garlic. Bring to just below the boil, then set aside to infuse for 20 minutes. Strain the infused liquid (or scoop out the flavourings with a slotted spoon). Bring to a simmer, then pour in the polenta in a thin stream, stirring as you do so. Stir until the mix is smooth and then it let it return to a simmer. Cook for just 1 minute, then remove from the heat. Stir in the butter and cheese, then season with salt and pepper, to taste. Serve immediately, with the chicken, bacon and vegetables on top (it won’t keep long).

Malva pudding

• 180g caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tbsp apricot jam
• 150g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 large tbsp butter
• 1 tsp vinegar
• 100ml milk

For the sauce:

• 200ml double cream
• 100g butter
• 100g caster sugar
• 100ml hot water
• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Heat oven to 170°C, grease 18cm square oven dish. Beat sugar and eggs, when mixed add jam and beat that in too. Melt the butter, and add it with vinegar to the bowl. Mix flour, baking powder and salt and beat this into the mix. Pour into the oven dish and bake 30 minutes.

Shortly before the pudding is done, melt the butter for the sauce, and mix in all other ingredients. Pour this over the pudding as soon as it comes out of the oven. Stick a knife in the pudding in a few spots, and leave for 10 minutes to soak in. It will sit on top for a while but eventually seeps down soaks in from the bottom.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Cafe Resentin, 170 Goldhawk road, W12 8HJ

22 June 2013

I’m tempted to say there’s plenty to resent in this café, but that’s a bit unfair; a bit pun first, ask questions later. It is fiendishly difficult to find specifically Bosnian-Herzegovinian food in London. Despite the recent diaspora, and rumours of a Bosnian community around Bayswater, you’ll mostly find less specific Balkan restaurants in London, serving a melange of dishes from the peninsula. It seems the cataclysm of the 1990s hasn’t extended to ex-pat eateries. So, a relatively young country with fuzzy food boundaries presented a very particular problem. How could we be sure we were eating something Bosnian, rather than Balkan?

Failing a restaurant called Sarajevo Spice, what we needed was a Balkan place run by Bosnia-Herzegovinians. Explosive arguments online over the names of dishes presented a clue. The way forward, we decided, was in dish nomenclature. There was the pleasant-looking Mugi’s in Ealing, but a late intervention (“it’s Serbian! Look at their website!”) put paid to that. I had, however, found the little known Café Resentin on Goldhawk Road, which promised Sarajevski Ćevapi and Sirnica, giving a temptingly Bosnian air to its mixed-Balkan-and-beyond menu (Serbian White Bean Soup, Hungarian Goulash, etc). Surely a hint that our chef is thinking of home?

A bracing stroll from Shepherd’s Bush, Resentin is predominantly a coffee place that does some main meals. A large city-scape covers one wall (“Where is that?” “It must be Sarajevo”), little tables and little chairs are dotted around, a glass counter is full of snacks and sandwich fillings, and shelves in one corner display packets and tins from back home. We sit down with a coffee and await Steve, late as usual.

Sirnica

The menu is displayed on a board on the wall. In the event the wished-for Bosnian-Herzegovinian selection has been streamlined and diluted with more local fare, including the ubiquitous Full English. There is no sirnica listed, but I spot the last one in the shop nestling sulkily beneath the glass counter. It is a small coil of flaky pastry, filled with salty cottage cheese, like meat-free burek. it is a bit soggy but not unpleasant, and we share it between the three of us.

Pljeskavica – burger shaped meat

Cevapi – sausage shaped meat

For the main course we order the Sarajevski Ćevapi and the Pljeskavica. There’s nothing particularly interesting to drink, so we settle for cokes. The Ćevapi is a large collection of small, spiced, merguez-like sausages, served in a nice, airy somun flatbread, somewhere between naan and pitta. It comes with minimal adornment, save for a cleansing yoghurt dip and some thinly sliced red onion. It tastes pleasant enough, but is hamstrung by its sheer size and lack of variety in terms of texture and flavour, so that eating it becomes a chore somewhere around the halfway mark. The Pljeskavica, daringly, is almost exactly the same – the same fluffy flatbread, the same yoghurt and onion sides, and apparently the same meat, but now pounded into a large, flat burger shape. Perhaps they were hoping nobody would ever order both at the same time. All in all the food leaves us full but uninspired. Still, at least we’d managed to find truly Bosnian-Herzegovinian-Balkan food. Hadn’t we?

There’s just time for a quick chat with the friendly waitress before we leave:

“So, where’s that picture of?”
“Which one?”
“The big city photo covering the wall over there.”
“That? It’s Novi Sad. Serbia.”
“Ah… well… it’s lovely.”

~ J

Food: 2 / 5

Atmosphere 2.5 / 5

Bolivia

Parrilladas del Sur, 186-188 Old Kent Road  London SE1 5TY

8 February 2013

A Friday night in February took us to Parrilladas del Sur (‘southern barbeque’), for an enjoyable slice of Sucre-cana. The Old Kent Road is still a goldmine of interesting cuisine for anyone not too cowardly for the trip, and is well worth exploring since a number of eateries there aren’t listed online. Parrilladas del Sur stays open late, and proffers a glimpse of shack-chic dripping cisterns and urinals behind a clear perspex patio door on the way to the entrance. It’s quiet inside, and we are greeted by the charming host-cum-waitress in a padded red jacket. It’s not cold. In the corner a young couple chat in Spanish and throw dice. A child swings on a chair beneath a television, jammed on Bolivian MTV, and a sign above a glass-fronted fridge offers bottled Paceña beer. Everything is at ease. Our hostess is charming and eager to please, recommending much of the menu before we finally make up our minds. There’s a wide range of dishes, Bolivian in origin and happily not altered noticeably in their journey across the Atlantic. Sadly, there’s actually no Paceña available – or indeed any Bolivian drinks – so we have to settle for a bottle of wine. As we order, our choices are called out to the chef behind the counter, and the food is plated up quickly.

Our starter, simply ‘peanut soup’ on the menu, turns out to be an excellent nutty broth swimming with a chunky blend of carrots, potatoes, peas, parsley and chicken thigh, with a spicy chilli sauce on the side. Well seasoned and comforting, it is the type of food you could eat every day, and would have served well as a main course.

Warm of stomach and with expectations running suddenly high, the mains arrive. Steve and I go for pique macho; Sophie has chicharron de cerdo, and things take a turn for the worse. On paper pique macho sounds promising: a melange of tender beef, sausage slices, tomatoes, red onion, potato wedges, boiled eggs, barbeque sauce and mayonnaise. As I load my fork, I notice the host-cum-waitress-cum-owner glancing expectantly at me from across the room, in a motherly way. Dutifully, I bite, chew, and smile happily. But I didn’t really mean it. Meat, vegetables, sauce. What’s not to like? Well, true, but in this case it is a menacing mountain of meat as big as a human head, interspersed with chips and tomatoes and absolutely smothered in ketchup and mayo. Again, what’s not to like? Well, true, but the sheer quantity of very oily meat and the liberal use of sauce here leave the eater with the same post-gorging guilt hitherto the sole preserve of bad kebabs.

The chicharron de cerdo’s problem isn’t guilt; it’s as dry as the Siloli, and the pork that forms the centrepiece of the dish (again in large quantities) is as tough as leather. It comes with plantain, roast potatoes and white maize, all crying out for some sauce. The white maize at least is interesting; an unusual ingredient over here, with the appearance of giant, anaemic sweetcorn and the texture of butterbeans, but it isn’t enough to maintain anyone’s interest.

Pique Macho

Given the strength of the starter, the mains are a real shame, leaving us very full and a bit angry. We’d be foolish to write off Bolivian cuisine, however. I could see pique macho being delicious if handled with more care, and perhaps Parrilladas del Sur’s chicharron de cerdo (‘cerdo cuero’?) is more tender earlier in the day.

Parrilladas del Sur is worth a visit. It feels homely, and Bolivian food has plenty of exciting flavours. Go there to try peanut soup; you won’t be disappointed, and while the mains have a lot of ingredients in common, there are plenty of variations on the menu. Just don’t expect a hit every time. ~ J

Food: 3/5

Atmosphere: 4/5

Bhutan

Joe & Sophie’s, Deptford

16 January 2013

Tiny Himalayan Bhutan was never likely to have a representative restaurant in London, although we were briefly seduced by the Tibetan place in Woolwich, before deciding that Bhutanese food was sufficiently distinct that this just wouldn’t wash. So we convened at Sophie & Joe’s for another do-it-ourselves session.

The menu began with momo dumplings, which are dim sum as far as I’m concerned. Joe made them with beef and onion filling and a dip of soy, coriander and chili, and they were delicious. So far the evening didn’t feel distinctively Bhutanese, apart from the Bhutanese music provided by Spotify (plus their excellent  national anthem).

Dumplings

That situation was rectified by Steve’s main course, which I doubt we would have eaten under other circumstances. Ema datsi is basically large chillis and cheese, boiled together into a stew. The chillis are supposed to be explosive Bhutanese red ones, and the cheese a sort of cottage cheese, but we replaced these with a mix of jalapeños and those big mild green ones you get in kebab shops, and various mild white cheeses. This was served with a side order of kewa datsi, i.e. potatoes and (more) cheese with red onions, and red rice.

The slightly worrying looking Ema datsi

There are different types of red rice and I didn’t want to get the Camargue stuff which is like risotto rice and not really like the Bhutanese stuff. When Sophie managed to find some red rice in a Deptford store, we convinced ourselves that this was probably more or less like the real thing. However it seems there is a third form of red rice – Thai cargo rice – and this is  probably what we had. The Thai rice is long-grain, unlike the Bhutanese stuff which is more like Japanese rice.

Anyway, the red rice was delicious, the kewa datsi really quite good, and the ema datsi surprisingly edible given the method of preparation. The chillis become quite mild through boiling, and the cheese pleasantly stringy. We all went back for seconds.

ema datsi, kewa datsi and red carmague rice

 

There’s precious little evidence of Bhutanese puddings online, so for dessert Sophie resorted to a cocktail of fruits that are apparently available in Bhutan – papaya, banana and mango – though the author has his doubts that all of these actually grow there…

Accompanying dessert was another Bhutanese speciality, butter tea. This is what it sounds like: tea with butter in it. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant either. We should probably have used yak butter.

Food: 3/5