FRONM THE LAND OF "SAUDI ARABIA"
What better way to start our adventure in this Holy Month of Ramadan than with a recipe from the Land of the Holy Mosques. At one time, the people of the Makkah Region, around the Holy City of Mecca would have used mainly meat in their dishes, particularly lamb and chicken. As trade developed with the people of the coastal regions, fish featured more widely in their diets and recipes were adapted to reflect this. The origin of this dish is somewhat blurred, as is the case with many of the recipes from the Middle East. As nomads moved from place to place, so did their ways of cooking. The tribes and the regions would discover new methods and ingredients, resulting in many variations of the same dish.
Although Kabsa can be found throughout the Middle East, where it is also known as makbus, it is widely regarded as a national dish of Saudi Arabia.
What you need:
Serves 4-6
4 tbs butter
6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 white onion, finely chopped
1/2 tbs kabsa spice mix
1 kg white fish fillet cut into large pieces
2 tbs tomato paste
390 g basmati Rice
1L water
1 vegetable stock cube or stock pot
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
35 g pine nuts
Handful chopped coriander
How to make:
Use a large pan over a medium heat, add the onions, garlic and butter.
Cook until the onions are tender.
Add the Kabsa mix and stir well.
Lower the pieces of fish gently into the pan and cook on both sides until the fish is white.
Remove the fish from the pan and set aside.
Add the stock cube, tomato paste, rice and water to the pan.
Increase the heat until the water is boiling then cover the pan and turn the heat to low.
Cook for 20 minutes.
While the rice mixture is cooking, toast the pine nuts in a dry frying pan until lightly browned.
When the rice is cooked, return the fish to the pan on top of the rice and allow to heat through for 5 minutes.
Arrange on a serving platter and sprinkle with the toasted pine nuts and chopped coriander.
Serve with a fresh salad.
Kabsa mix from scratch
Kabsa mix can be purchased ready made from many supermarkets and spice merchants, or you can make your own as follows:
What you need:
1 tsp. turmeric (or 2-3 strands of saffron)
1 tsp. coriander seed
1 tsp. black pepper corns
1 tsp. cardamom seed
1 tsp. ginger (ground)
1 tsp. fennel seed
1 tsp. cumin seed
How to make:
Grind the ingredients together using a pestle and mortar, or use a coffee/spice grinder if you wish to give your muscles a rest.
Store the mix in an airtight jar in a cool dark place.
The journey we are undertaking finds its roots far earlier than my childhood, when I helped my mother to bake. In fact we need to go back to 1873 when something occurred that would influence me as a child and throughout my adulthood. It took almost a hundred years for there to be any effect on my life, but that happened when as a child I was allowed to borrow some books from the adult section of the library. The first was ‘Around the World in Eighty Days.’The author, Jules Verne, was a great visionary in his writing, with prophecies of going to the moon, and travelling vast distances under the sea. But it was the journey of Phileas Fogg that first captured my imagination, inspired me to write, and gave me a yearning to travel which is still with me this day.
I am not a professional cook or chef; I am an aircraft engineer by trade, as well as an author of crime fiction. From an early age I had an interest in the preparation and consumption of food (particularly the consumption!), often helping my mother bake. As I grew older, I tried making my own variations of recipes, sometimes with disastrous results, but on occasion something edible emerged.
So it seemed the most obvious thing to do would be to combine my love of food with my desire to travel, and embark upon a journey of discovery of the foods and people of the world.
Welcome to my ‘Around the World in Eighty Dishes.’
Glen R Stansfield.
Author, biker and nutcase.
