A friend of mine was telling me about her favorite roast chicken dish, which requires slathering a whole chicken with harissa and olive oil before roasting.  Sounds absolutely lovely – spicy, a bit tart and salty, with crispy skin.  She mentioned that, to make it, she picked up pre-fab harissa from the grocery store, so I investigated.  It’s upwards of $8 per bottle – exorbitant, I think.  It’s too easy to do at home and can be done for a fraction of the cost, so I’m giving you a delicious, homemade version.

Harissa is a hot chili paste that is a staple in North African cuisines, especially in Tunisian and Algerian foods.  Just like recipes in other cultures, harissa ingredients vary from household to household and region to region – some include cumin, others tomatoes, and even rose petals.  Yes, “rose” harissa – how amazing does that sound.  In Tunisia, harissa is served with every meal – as a condiment, rubbed on meats, incorporated into stews, mixed in with couscous…

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All of the bbq’ing this summer has me thinking about an ingredient that people don’t really make at home that much: salt pork.  What is it.  It’s effectively unsmoked bacon, a cut of pork from the belly, back, and/or sides that is cured with salt.  It differs a little from pancetta in that pancetta uses slightly different spices, has a longer cure time, and is hung out to dry, but they are pretty close.  This version is a mere 5-day affair, and, at the end of it, you can say you made your own unsmoked bacon.  Impressive.   I love it.

Salt pork is a flavoring agent.  I have no other words to use than that it gives a “salty” and “porky” flavor to whatever it is added.  And since it’s mainly fat, it subtly adds a certain mouth feel, a warmer, creamier texture to any dish.  I consulted my favorite butchery book, The River Cottage Meat Book, the first time I made this.  I have since modified salt and sugar amounts and added in a few extra spices for good measure.

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In all the times I’ve visited or stayed in London, I have never had the opportunity to check out Victoria Park in East London.  And it’s quite stunning.  It has a section for the Old English Garden, a deer enclosure, and a serene lake with a fountain surrounded by ducklings and swans.  A beautiful setting for a fantastic evening.

A few weeks back, some friends of mine invited me to join a group at Elliot’s in the Park. Elliot’s was a pop-up restaurant that was hosted at the Pavilion Café in Victoria’s Park every Friday this summer.  The chef recreated the five-course menu weekly, using locally-sourced and seasonal ingredients.  The full-time restaurant will be opening in October in Borough Market – a spectacular wholesale and retail food/green market (top 5 in the world).  This pop-up restaurant was a cool way for the chefs to do a little pre-marketing, and it worked: they were booked solid.

The evening started with some “fizz”, as they call it, and canapés on the deck – oat crisps, spiced popcorn, and chicken oysters in pine salt.  Bottle Apostle provided all of the wine pairings (one with each course) and had some incredible selections.   The fizz was one of the best champagne’s I’ve tasted – Champagne Gallimard Brut Réserve N.V. It’s made by a small champagne house and is exclusively from Pinot Noir grapes.  Dangerously good – fruity with rose-lychee undertones.  I’ve asked my local wine guy to find out if we can get it; he said no one imports here because of how small the purveyor is but is on the case!  It retails for the equivalent of $30 in the UK, which makes it even more dangerous.  Fingers crossed.

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Ice cream is somewhat of a problem for me.  You might find me on any given night at home, with a pint of mint chip or vanilla swiss almond on the couch circa 11 p.m.  Or walking in Soho, stopping at the Van Leeuwen truck for their earl grey.  Or at Cones grabbing some corn ice cream in the West Village.  Or inhaling mochi in single bites at Nobu.  Or…get the picture? In the winter, I crave the super creamy, bitter coffee flavors with chunks of chocolate, but the summer leads me to lighter, more subtle ones.  Therein lies the inspiration for a light-as-air, delicately-flavored, slightly floral melon-orange blossom gelato.

I’ve mentioned orange blossom water in a previous post, and it is a flavor that is found throughout Middle Eastern foods, particularly the desserts.  That said, it can be found in Mediterranean cuisine as well as French – it’s often used to flavor madeleines. The water is distilled from the blossoms of the sour orange tree, which is also known as the bitter orange or Seville orange tree.  Since it’s from the blossoms, the flavor is certainly more floral than fruity – quite exceptional, really.

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I know when “curry” is added to anything it’s as if the word, like the spice blend, takes over – the connotation of that powerful flavor is embedded in our brains.  That said, I cannot express in more uncertain terms than “curry leaves do NOT taste like curry!”

The fragrant curry leaf is found mostly in South Asian cooking (surprise!), particularly South Indian.  They get their name because of their use in curries, but the leaves can also be pan-roasted with a little oil to add flavor to a host of dry dishes.  Curry leaves are woodsy, lemony, and actually a little smoky, with no curry flavor whatsoever.  The flavor is subtle and deep all at the same time, a bit elusive for descriptive purposes, but a flavor that becomes easily embedded in taste memory.

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