Bahir Dar

Situated on the southern tip of Lake Tana, Ethiopia’s largest lake, Bahir Dar was our first stop on our tour of the country’s northern historical circuit. The guide books describe Bahir Dar as a “booming business centre”. You soon learn to take anything the guide books say with a large pinch of salt while travelling around Ethiopia. To place the words “booming” and “business” in the same sentence to describe any town in Ethiopia is to demonstrate a great deal of imagination. Bahir Dar has two dirt roads running through it, continuously travelled by UNAIDS trucks, other NGO trucks, and the crowded minivans that serve as buses.

Having arrived in Bahir Dar a day late after our bmi debacle, we decided to take a raincheck on our friendly hotel host’s persistent offers of a boat tour and instead crash in our hotel room until 3pm, at which time we ventured in search of, yes, you guessed it, food. After some careful cross-referencing of guide books, our first meal in Ethiopia would take place at Tana Pastry, an inconspicuous, two-storey restaurant popular for its fresh fish dishes. Our first meal in Ethiopia would, in fact, turn out to be the best, and would be our introduction to real Ethiopian injera (a ubiquitous (no exaggeration), grey-ish, soft, steamed, hole-y flatbread made from fermented teff flour), and fir-fir, a stew of minced meat or fish cooked in a spicy berbere sauce.

Tana Pastry menu

Fish fir-fir and injera

Fish cutlet

Lake Tana is known for its many orthodox monasteries, almost all of which are dotted around the lake’s many islands. For a fee, a guide will take you around a selection of these, which you can enter (for another fee) and view with the help of the local priest. There are some, however, that allow entry only to men. The monasteries themselves are simple, round mud buildings with thatched roofs. Inside is a square structure, with colourful biblical scenes depicted on all four walls. The interior houses the “holiest of holies”, the most sacred part of the monastery, which only priests can enter. Some of the monasteries also house “treasures”, so it was with great intrigue that we were guided to the “museum” at the Bet Maryam monastery. The local priest made a great show of opening the doors of the museum for us, which constitutes a small glass cabinet with some silver crowns.

Bet Maryam museum of crowns

Monastery paintings

Goatskin book

Thatched roofs

Bahir Dar is also renowned for being close to the source of the Blue Nile, which travels northwest from Lake Tana to join the Nile in neighbouring Sudan. Your boat guide will also take you there, and point to something which he insists is the source of the Blue Nile, but which, as far as you can tell, could just be a bunch of reeds. Allegedly, you can also see hippopotami and crocodiles early in the morning, but we were too late to see these. The lake is also popular with bird watchers and our hotel, located right on the shore, was a perfect place to sit with an afternoon coffee and catch a glimpse of a whole host of colourful and unusual birds.

In Bahir Dar, we also learned of the Ethiopian obsession with gum. Meat and fresh produce may be in short supply, but there is certainly no shortage of gum, in any flavour you might care for, sold by enterprising children eager to make a buck.

Not surprisingly, one great disadvantage of being by the shore is the predominance of mosquitoes. Our hotel room conveniently came with a mosquito net. Unfortunately, it was full of holes, for which we had to devise some ad hoc strategies (tip: band-aids appear to be a popular method of sealing bednet holes. Trust me, it doesn’t work…..).

Things I’d rather do…

…than write my thesis.

1. Bake muffins…it seems that British people have been deluded by Starbucks and other similar chains into believing that ‘American muffins’ are sweet, calorific, cake-like concoctions with lots of chocolate and gooey, jammy fillings. When I first took banana muffins (authentic, Canadian-style ones) to work, my colleagues were incredibly enthusiastic. One person even offered to pay me to bake her muffins every week. It’s so much more exciting than writing a thesis…

2. Clean…anything, really. The bathroom, the living room, the kitchen. Even my previous intense dislike for dusting has disappeared during my recent thesis-writing adventures. As my friend Jill said, writing a thesis can make cleaning your bathroom with a toothbrush seem more appealing. So true…

3. Cook…as the ‘What’s Cooking’ link will illustrate, we’ve been creating lots of culinary delights in our kitchen. Okay, so we’re a little more obsessed with cooking (and photographing what we cook) than some, but if the options are to write or cook, well…the choice is clear.

4. Talk to my plants…having no outside garden, and limited window-sills means that I’m beginning to experiment with what I can grow indoors. Our two original orchids have become three after I re-potted them, and they need careful tending. A mysterious accident with a very old money plant (from C’s grandfather) meant we had to carefully re-pot it. All that shock naturally means it needs extra attention. Or so I like to tell myself…

5. Grow chilies…we picked up seeds for Serrano chilies at a Mexican restaurant recently (check it out at http://www.wahaca.co.uk/) and planted them. We now have 8 seedlings, which need extra attention in this cloudy climate. This means watching them regularly, turning the pot so they don’t lean too much into the sun, counting how many new plants we have every day, and checking periodically through the day for new sprouts. We eagerly await the day when we can harvest our bountiful crop of spicy goodness…

This list grows daily. So does my list of ailments that seem to afflict PhD students. With two of my fellow sufferers, I will be writing an important scientific article on the physical and psychological hazards of doing a PhD. Stay tuned for more details. Maybe if my research doesn’t get published, this will.

Who are the people on your train?

(With apologies to Sesame Street)…

Who are the people on your commuter train?

Oh, who are the people on your commuter train?

Who are the people on your commuter train?

The people that you meet each day?

Okay, ‘meet’ might be a stretch. You rarely meet people on the train. You observe people as they endure the daily commute.

There’s the pre-10am crowd, dressed in suits, carrying laptops, and all but 2% wearing long, black overcoats. Taking a train before 10am means giving up any sense of personal space. Literally nose-to-armpit with no room to manoeuvre.

The far more entertaining crowd stumbles onto the last few trains at Waterloo, some time between 11 and 11:30pm. Miss the last train home and you’re faced with a 2 1/2 hour bus ride home, IF there even is a bus to your home. Many people in the late-night crowd wouldn’t pass a breathalyser test if they had to take one. While you will get a seat on the late-night train, you’re likely to be assaulted by the smell of Burger King. There’s probably other fast food too, but it seems Burger King odours overpower all others. (Note – there’s no McDonald’s in Waterloo, which is why there’s no McSmell).

I was never quite sure about the late-night, drunken, french-fry eating crowd, but I’ve come to realize that they provide great entertainment. Take for example the couple behind our seats a few weeks ago.

Take one slightly intoxicated computer geek with his nose buried in a tech magazine of some sort (I couldn’t quite read the title as I looked through the crack between our seats) with a bag from, where else, Burger King.  Add a more intoxicated girl (definitely couldn’t see her face through the seat crack) who collapses into the seat next to Computer Geek. She is on the phone, relating the trying events of her evening, culminating with a sorrowful account of how she hadn’t eaten since lunch time and was literally about to collapse of starvation. Is Drunk Girl a bit of Drama Queen? Hard to say…. In comes Computer Geek, displaying a sort of chivalry and gallantry rarely seen these days. He offers Drunk Girl his Bacon Double Cheeseburger. She protests, he insists, she claims to feel guilty depriving him of his food, he responds by suggesting she needs it more than he does. And so it goes…and Drunk Girl eats the burger, eternally grateful, relaying the story to Friend on Phone the whole time. Computer Geek and Drunk Girl strike up a friendly conversation, culminating in an invitation from Drunk Girl to her Singles-Only Valentine’s Day dinner the next night. They exchange phone numbers, she tells Computer Geek that he really SHOULD take her up on the offer (after all, she says, he has nothing better to do, right?). It’s poetic…literally. She tells him that in 2008, Valentine’s Day was supposed to be great (and was everything but great), but this year, 2009, Valentine’s Day will be just fine. Using this logic, Computer Geek really should come to the party (says Drunk Girl).

We were tempted to follow them home (one of us certain that they’d go home together, the other a bit more sceptical), but Computer Geek got on a bus, and Drunk Girl went in the other direction. Did he text her, as he promised? Did he go to Balham for the party? We’ll never know. But the beauty of the late-night train is that there are always conversations like this on which we can eavesdrop.

Amman to Addis, via Cairo (with spoilers…)

OK, clearly we must  get things moving here. It’s been eight months and we still haven’t arrived in Ethiopia. And we have a whole bunch of Ethiopia blog posts that have been sitting in the ‘Drafts’ folder, waiting to be posted. So here, in non-movie script form, is a summary of the rest of our ill-fated journey.

So, like, this Australian doctor dude we told you about, he was like a total time freak, y’know? He was, like, paranoid he was gonna miss his flight, so on our tour of Amman, he kept saying to the driver make sure we, like, get to the hotel by 6pm, man, ‘cos our flight leaves at 10pm and we have to be at the airport by 8pm. And the driver kept saying, like, yes, yes, my friend, no problem, and then kept, like, driving us to all these souvenir stores to buy, like, dead sea exfoliating cream and mosaic jars and stuff. And then we get to our hotel and, like, this American dude on our flight who’d stayed in the hotel comes running out of the lobby and he’s like, guys, like, hurry up, the airline called and they’re, like, saying that they’re putting us on a flight that leaves at 8pm so we have to go to the airport right now! So we run up to our rooms and, y’know, like, shove all our stuff into our bags and run back down to the bus and at the airport, this bmi dude takes us through security and tells us to, like, line up at the royal jordanian check-in, and we’re like, why are we lining up at the royal jordanian check-in and he’s, like, just wait here, they’ll give you your tickets. So we, like, wait, and wait, and wait, and it’s like, 8pm now and we’re still waiting in the same spot we were when we got there, and we’re, like, totally starving, right? ‘Cos, y’know, we’ve, like, eaten nothing for eight hours, and we’re all scraping the bottom of our bags to find stuff to eat, and we’d, like, made some granola bars that we’d brought, so we’re sharing them out with 20 other starving people. And THEN, one of the guys says that they’re putting us on a flight to Addis, via CAIRO!! Like, Egypt, man, where the pyramids are and stuff! Unreal! So I’m, like, cool, maybe we’ll get stranded in Cairo, too, so we can see the pyramids! And G’s like, dude, that’s, like, so NOT funny! And then this American lady starts, like, totally ranting at the airline dude, ‘cos they wouldn’t give us boarding passes for our connecting flight from Cairo to Addis, and she’s like, well, when we get to Cairo, who’s gonna look out for us? Who’s gonna make sure we get on that flight? And they airline guy’s like, chill out lady! Everything’s gonna be A-okay. But now you must hurry, flight’s about to leave. So we’re, like, bombing it down through some more security to the gate, and we get herded on to this plane and two hours later we get to Cairo, and of course, nobody tells us where we’re supposed to go, right, so we just get on this shuttle bus to the terminal, and get off, and then someone’s, like, no, not here! So we get back on the bus and drive off somewhere else, and then get off, and then this Irish woman who’s travelling with us is, like, wait! my stroller, where’s my stroller! So she, like, has to go back to the plane to find her stroller, and we to through some other security check and join another line and get told to wait. So we, like, wait and wait and wait. And we’re asking this Egypt Air guy about our boarding passes and he’s like, I need to see your tickets, and we’re like, dude, we don’t have tickets, our flight was cancelled in Amman, and he’s like, wait here, and we’re like, that’s all we’ve been doing is wait here! And then 20 minutes later, he, like, pulls out a wad of boarding passes that have been sitting behind his desk all this time and he starts calling out our names and giving them to us! And the guy’s not even checking our passports or nuttin’! And then he says, now you must hurry, flight’s leaving soon! And we’re like, yeah, well if you’d given us our freakin’ boarding passes earlier we wouldn’t have to hurry. So we’re bombing it down through some other security check, make it on the plane, and we take off and we can see the pyramids at night and stuff and it’s all cool. But THEN, we get to Addis airport and we’d already missed our connecting flight to Bahir Dar with Ethiopian Airlines by a day, right, so we go to the Ethiopian Airlines desk and they’re like, well we can re-book you but you’ll have to pay a penalty and we’re like, but dudes! It’s not even our fault, right? And they’re like, well you didn’t  fly here with Ethiopian, so it’s not our problem, you’ll have to go through immigration and go to the bmi desk. So we go through immigration and look for the bmi desk and it’s, like, 3am by now, right? So we go to the bmi window and there’s some guy tapping at a computer and we start telling him our whole ordeal and he’s like, dudes, I don’t even work here, my flight got cancelled and I’m just helping myself to this computer to see if I can find another flight! But then this bmi woman comes up and she’s like, well our only responsibility is to get you here, so you’ll just have to pay the penalty and try and claim it back from bmi. So now we’re like, stuck in some airport in some strange country in the middle of the night, and we’re starving, and we haven’t slept, and there’s no flights out till 7.30am, right, so we’re like sitting on some crappy chairs, trying to get some sleep, and then I see some guy sitting at the Ethiopian check-in desk, so I go up to him and ask him if he can re-book our flights, and he’s like, I’m just security. So we’re waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and then at about 5.30am the check-in desks open and we ask the guy if he can re-book our flight and he says there’s a flight at 7.45am, but it’s full, so we have to wait until everyone checks in to see if there’s seats available. So we’re waiting, and waiting and waiting, and then finally he calls over and he’s like. I have two tickets for you, so now you take this paper, go over there, pay your penalty, come back here and I give you your boarding passes. So I pay, take the receipt back, get our boarding passes, and the guy’s like, but you must hurry now, flight’s about to leave! And I’m like, yeah, whatever…..

An Extreme Weather Event…

…or How London Came To A Grinding Halt.

Step 1: Forecast heavy snow for two days. Watch as some people act like the armageddon is coming. Watch as others treat it like another erroneous forecast from the Met Office. They are famous, after all, for issuing forecasts like ‘Bright and sunny with some cloud and some rain. Generally fine.’

Step 2: Witness large clumps of snow falling from the sky. The ground is lightly covered with white flecks. Canadians call this a mere dusting and get on with things. Britons say, ‘Wow, it’s really coming down hard!’ They walk around with heavy parkas and umbrellas. Umbrellas?!

Step 3: Wake up, look outside, and see snow everywhere. About 10cm of it. It’s eerily silent. Turn on the radio or the TV. All you hear about is the snow. There is no other news. Major roads like the M25 are backed up for 7 miles or more. Schools across the nation are shut. Trains cease to operate. London buses – yes, those large, red, double-decker things – are no longer running. The London Underground suspends most of its trains. My first question…isn’t the Underground, well, UNDER the ground? Turns out that it’s also partially ABOVE ground. If falling leaves can cause delays on the Underground, imagine what snow can do. And here’s just how much snow fell in this great city:

Outside our front door

Step 4: Turn on your computer and receive a flurry of emails from the university telling people to go home, or not to come in at all. Libraries are closed. Cafeterias across campus are closed because no groceries were delivered. The M25 is still backed up. London has become a ghost-town.

Step 5: Laugh, I mean, really LAUGH, when the BBC weather woman says that with the wind chill, the temperature in London will be a BITTERLY COLD -5C!!  Yes, that’s right. It was bitterly cold. HA HA HA HA…sorry…

Step 6: Think back to the great snow storm of 1999 in Toronto when they called in the army to help dig themselves out. The rest of Canada laughed and mocked Torontonians. Then again, they did have over 80cm of snow. London had 15cm at the most. This city, however, appears to have few snow plows. And despite the repeated forecast, sanding of roads appears to be a slow process. A BBC radio announcer on Day 2 of the Extreme Weather Event, in response to the wide-spread criticism about London’s lack of preparedness for the snow, says, ‘It is not beyond the wit of man to put grit on the roads.’ Only on the BBC…

Step 7: If there’s snow, then what choice do you have, but to play in it?! Here’s what we did in the London Snow Storm of 2009:

Aunt Jemima: aka How to brine a turkey

Despite my long-held desire to deep fry a turkey, I’m repeatedly told that it’s not a sensible thing to do, least of all in -20C weather. Dunk a turkey in a vat of hot oil hooked up to a propane tank. Really, I mean, what could go wrong…?

So we opted for the brining approach instead, having heard repeated testimonials of succulent brined fowl. Brining, according to the chef dude on the radio, involves soaking your turkey in a saline solution (1 gallon water: 1 cup salt: 1 cup sugar) for up to 18 hours before roasting. It’s meant to draw out the moisture and tenderize the flesh, helping produce a crisp skin and flavourful meat.

“Sounds like fun!”, we thought. And so thus was the fate of Aunt Jemima (our rather irreverently baptised turkey) sealed.

Brining a turkey does require a picnic cooler or  similar container large enough to hold your turkey, which was kindly provided by JK at great personal cost. Please note that this process requires lifting and handling of heavy loads that may result in personal injury.

Having left Aunt Jemima alone for a prolonged bath in her picnic cooler for some 14 hours, the next step was to rinse her thoroughly in the bathtub. We were warned that she might otherwise turn out very salty. Once rinsed and patted dry, the preparation can continue in the conventional way, stuffing and seasoning in your preferred manner. We opted for a sprinkling of orange juice and paprika, stuffing with a clove-studded onion and dressing with a generous rubbing of parsley butter applied sub-cutaneously.

The ceremoniously dressed Aunt Jemima was then roasted breast side down at 190C, half and hour per kilo plus an extra half hour at the end, basting regularly with the fat and butter drippings, which went mostly without a hitch with the exception of a minor emergency resulting from a leak in our disposable baking tray.

Et voila! That’s it. And the result? By all accounts, the best turkey everyone had eaten.

Brine bath

Do not disturb

Desalination

Sub-cutaneous butter application

The carving

Our man in Amman

Loyal readers, apologies for the delay in continuing the tales of our adventures in Ethiopia.  We’re not quite there yet, but stick with us, and in the mean time read on about Amman…

The intrepid young travelers you met in earlier blog posts ended up spending almost 24 hours in Jordan.  Despite wishing and hoping for a morning flight, they eventually found out that there was no way out of Jordan until the next evening (unless you wanted to pay $1000 – ha!).

What do you do when you and 20 other people are stuck in a hotel in the middle of the Jordanian desert for a day?  You go to the conveniently located travel agent (in the hotel lobby), who miraculously has a 6-hour bus tour of Amman and surrounding areas, and even more miraculously, they have enough room for everyone stranded by BMI.  I sense a back-room BMI business…

After ensuring we actually could leave Amman that evening, we signed up for the bus tour, and spent the next 5 or so hours in large vans, driving around the desert and the city of Amman.  Unfortunately for C, we never did see the Dead Sea up close, but our trusty man in Amman pointed out a hazy body of water in the distance and claimed it was the Dead Sea.  He also pointed to a hazy patch of land, and said it was Jericho, on the other side of the Israeli border.  We assume he was right…

Our tour included an old Greek monastery with beautiful mosaics, a visit to Mount Nebo (with more lovely mosaics) where Moses is said to be buried, and a tour of the city of Amman.  Oh, yes, and plenty of stops at ‘touristic’ shops, hawking all manner of Dead Sea beauty products, leather and mosaic patio tables.  I think these were primarily to allow our man in Amman to have a cigarette every 20 minutes.

The city tour began with a drive through the wealthy and ostentatious neighbourhoods (read: ugly and over-the-top).  There’s something amoral about lush lawns and gardens in the middle of an arid desert.  This neighbourhood is also home to the US Embassy in Jordan.  Where the other embassies are large, semi-well designed buildings, the US Embassy is a hideous fortress with a line of black Hummers parked outside the gates, and machine guns at the ready along the roof.

Our favourite part of the city tour, though, was the drive through what we like to call ‘real’ Amman.  This is the older and poorer part of the city, built on hills, with buildings that look like they’re piled on top of one another.  Narrow, steep roads are barely wide enough to accommodate modern vehicles, and the innermost parts of the city seem to be a warren of alleys.  We drove up to one of the highest points of Amman to look over the city.  As our eyes adjusted to the hazy sky and the stone buildings that seemed to blend in with the desert, we realized we were also looking at hundreds of kites.  It was an amazing sight…small kites bobbing up and down, scattered through the sky.  It was like gazing at a starry sky – the longer you looked, the more you saw, until the sky was filled with small, flying objects.  I finally understood what was described so beautifully in The Kite Runner.

Mosaics in Greek Orthodox Church

View of Amman

The good, the bad and the merely adequate…

A culinary review of 2008.

This blog is dedicated to our favourite recipes of the year, trusty recipes that got us out of a bind, and recipes that weren’t worth the ink they were written in.

We’ll start by saying that our most successful culinary experiments have come from Alford and Duguid’s Mangoes and Curry Leaves, with Nigella Express coming in a close second. Particular highlights from the former were Zinet’s chicken with tomato and greens, Colombo chicken curry (note that this isn’t called ‘Colombo chicken curry’ in Colombo. Trust me, I’ve asked…. I think they probably just call it ‘chicken curry’) – a brothy, zingy dish made with rice vinegar, yogurt, cilantro and lots of onion.  Also delicious were the ginger-lamb coconut milk curry, and Katchhi village potato curry. In fact, there hasn’t been a recipe that we’ve tried from that book that hasn’t been a resounding success, as this blog will prove.

Regardless of what you may think of cookbooks that promote the shortcut route, Nigella Express does have some handy tips for those office-till-late, crazy-commute-home, can’t-be-bothered-to-cook weekday evenings. Naan pizza has been one of our most popular recipes this year (the variations are endless….).  We’ve even gone as far as testing all the varieties of naan available from the major supermarket branches (branch T won out). We also loved her delicious pear and ginger muffins.

And as for those recipes that were, at best, merely adequate… Well, let’s just say that flaked haddock and Camargue red rice cakes may sound nice on paper, but in practice, these structurally unsound creations are not worth the aggravation and frankly, become rather tedious after the second one. And the second day. And the second week…..when they become simply inedible.  We may have discerning palates, but it takes a lot for us to declare a recipe as unworthy of repeating.

The disaster with the Camargue red rice cakes, however, did lead to the resounding success of the filo pie from another of Nigella’s cookbooks, which was actually improved by the substitution of Camargue red rice for plain rice.

Finally, for those trusty staples. Our standard granola recipe (from Mollie Katzen’s Sunlight Café) has undoubtedly been our most-used recipe, largely encouraged by any sane person’s refusal to pay £3 for a bag of Liz’s granola (to say nothing of the £8 you pay at Borough Market for 600 measly grams). And the gooey chocolate puddings – a recipe courtesy of SN – which are great backup in the event of a dessert emergency (every other day, really….).

What will 2009 bring? We’ll keep you posted. I peer over at the Culinary Institute of America’s Breakfasts and Brunches as I type (a recent addition to our collection)….

Sunlight Café granola

Naan pizza

Chocolate pudding

Don’t move your head!

…or ‘The Scary Russian and the Cheap Haircut’…

I recently had a comment about this blog…do you do anything besides eating and cooking?!  Yes, we’re rather fond of both activities.  But sometimes, one needs to attend to the more mundane things in life, like getting a haircut.

I have usually managed to time my hair cuts with visits to Edmonton, thereby saving myself at least $50 (not including the plane ticket home, of course).  This November, I finally agreed that perhaps I should find someone locally to cut my hair.  This is my slow way of admitting that I’m not here JUST for my PhD.  Through a trusted Canadian friend, I found out about a hair academy we shall refer to as T&G.  For a mere £5, you can have the pleasure of a 3-hour hair cut at the hands of a trainee stylist.  T&G run a tight ship, herding groups of 5 to 6 willing ‘models’ up to their training floors, sorted by the kind of hair you have and if you want your hair coloured as well.  Let it be known that this was the first time in my life that I was a ‘model.’  And likely the last…

My lovely trainee, E, assured me that she was a hairdresser in Moscow, so I had nothing to be worried about.  Perhaps her grim expression should have tipped me off.  That, and as a friend said, ‘Have you seen womens’ haircuts in Moscow?!’  Trainees have to tell their instructors exactly what they are planning on doing before they can take a pair of scissors anywhere near your head.  The plan seemed fine until…

E gave me a stern warning, ‘Do not move your head at all when I start cutting.  You must keep very still.  This is VERY IMPORTANT.’  Who’s to argue with a woman with sharp scissors and a hunk of your hair in her hands?  It took E about 90 minutes to trim 1/3 of my hair, with frequent requests to her instructor for help.  I was certain that nothing was really being cut off.  As time wore on, she seemed to become increasingly perturbed.  The force with which she combed my hair straight was enough to move my head off its perfectly aligned centre position.  Then came the warning, ‘Don’t move your head! (Pause).  Please.’  With every tug of my hair, the warnings became louder, ‘I SAID, don’t MOVE YOUR HEAD!’  I wanted to gently remind her that no normal human being can keep their head perfectly still while someone is tugging on their hair for three hours.  But I kept my mouth shut.  She was from Moscow, after all…

Three hours and twenty minutes later, I had slightly shorter hair, styled into a strange curly poof with a middle parting and flattened at the top.  E told me it would look better once I’d washed it.  Indeed…

All said, my hair doesn’t look that bad, and it was only £5.  But whether I’ll return to T&G Academy and put my hair into the hands of another scary Russian remains to be seen…

It’s not nut-loaf…

…it’s Nigella’s chickpea and courgette (zucchini) filo pie, and it’s SO much better than any nutloaf.  For those of you unfamiliar with the nutloaf phenomenon, let me explain.

The Sunday roast in the UK is a deep-rooted tradition.  Pubs everywhere have a Sunday roast special and with the changing tastes of Britons, the traditional beef roast has expanded to include lamb, pork and occasionally, chicken.  The widespread popularity of vegetarianism brought about the infamous nutloaf.  Think meatloaf…with nuts, vegetables, etc.  There’s nothing wrong with a good nutloaf, but I pity vegetarians who really only have one option at a Sunday dinner.

A few weekends ago we invited some vegetarian friends for lunch, and decided to try something a little different than the usual fare.  Enter Nigella.  To be accurate, enter Nigella’s How To Be A Domestic Goddess.  For a few years, I’ve harboured a secret desire to have this book on my shelf (more for the title on the spine than anything else), and my wishes were granted just days before the lunch party.  As usual, I spent a few hours reading the book and found this recipe, which sounded suitably tasty and unusual.

We made alterations – substituting French Camargue red rice for the Basmati rice – and next time would consider other types of squash instead of the courgette/zucchini and add more chili.  Making a pie in a springform pan out of filo pastry was lots of fun, and for any one with a fear of filo, be not alarmed.  Filo pastry is actually much less fiddly than rolling out dough.

This dish is definitely in the running for our Christmas meal (for the vegetarians, of course – the rest of ‘em can eat turkey)!