Budapest is full of courtyards, beautiful corners hidden in plain sight and joining magnificence with a bit of romantic decay. I am a sucker for this kind of architectural detail and when a tenant arrived and took an old lift up to one of the upper floors, I imagined living in such dubious splendour. The courtyard was typical of our Budapest trip – although we certainly enjoyed the fancy restaurants and the famously splendid buildings, the best parts were the slightly down-at-heel places and the simpler eateries. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think we uncovered insider’s secrets or got totally off the touristed paths. We were only in the city for a few days and Mama Lemur quite reasonably has less relish for trekking down alleys than I do. If we turned off the main trails, it wasn’t by far. Still, it’s an illustration of how easy it is to find moments of quiet beauty in this city, as well, as it turned out, of sublime meaty enjoyment.

One place I was dying to visit was the Mangalica és Társai Húspatika, a delicatessen and cafe dedicated to the Hungarian mangalica pig. The mangalica (or mangalitsa in English spelling) is a traditional Hungarian breed that has been compared to Ibérico pigs. It almost died out in Hungary in the twentieth century but has rescued in the last decades and is now quite widely bred for its fatty meat and delicate flavour. Mangalitsa pork is darker than regular pork, closer in colour to wild boar meat, and it is also healthier, full of monounsaturated fat rather than having the high saturated fat content typical of farmed meats. Mangalitsa pork is turned into an array of sausages, salamis and terrines, as well as producing top notch lard. After almost getting caught in an apocalyptic rainstorm, we made it (just) to the Mangalica house. The other Lemurs thought I was crazy and we should stop off in some random cafe, but I was determined…and clearly I was right to insist, weather be damned. The second we stepped inside and caught the beguiling scent of mangalitsa proscuitto, we knew we were at home.

It will come as no surprise that I went home with a suitcase full of mangalitsa products. Salami, paprika-coloured sausage, thinly sliced jamón, and a packet of what Americans call ‘head cheese’ – a chunky terrine in which bits of ear are visible. It’s lucky Hungary is in the EU and we’re allowed to import meat or we’d never have made it past the sniffer dogs with that lot.

As well as the deli counter, there is also a lovely cafe and we waited out the rain with some delicious mangalitsa sandwiches. I had mangalitsa steak with pumpkin seed pesto and tomatoes. It was simple but oh so good. The fatty meat is quite the revelation and I say this as someone who has obviously eaten a lot of pork in her time. The other Lemurs had mangalitsa burgers and seemed equally content.

The theme of animal fat contined when we went to Fülemüle, a Jewish-Hungarian place just south of the old ghetto neighbourhood. I ordered the roasted goose leg with cholent, while Mr Lemur went for the goose leg with latkes. This was one of those occasions that happen to food bloggers when the food looks so enticing that you eat it before you remember you were meant to be taking pictures. Oops. It’s a testament to the allure of goose fat, really, that we totally forgot the whole camera thing when we saw that crispy crispy skin. And the fat…Lemur friend K thinks I am letting the side down by not having realised before now just how sublime goose fat is. This may be true. Perhaps everyone else in the world knows this except me, but in my defence, although potatoes roasted in goose fat are very nice, they do not compare with eating mouthfuls of the stuff, perfectly suspended between rich meat and crunchy skin, cooked by experts in the anserine arts. We swooned.

The relationship between past and present in Budapest is clearly fraught. For every heritage pig breed rescued there’s a beautiful old building in disrepair, and as much as the city trades on Jewish tourists looking for their own heritage, the presence of anti-Semitism and racism isn’t hard to find. We narrowly avoided an anti-Roma demonstration, seeing barricades and police dogs in cages not far from the gorgeous old synagogues and homey Jewish restaurants of the ghetto. Visiting the semi-ruined Rumbach synagogue, we could feel the continuing tension between the richness of its decoration (designed by major Austrian secessionist Otto Wagner) and the historical reasons for its decay. It’s being renovated, but the money is clearly not there for a full-scale project.

It might be trite to see food and eating as a way into these complex politics but for someone with not a word of Hungarian, it’s as good an entrypoint as any. More cheeringly, on our last night, I enjoyed another cherished product of Hungary’s cultural heritage – a glass of Tokaj. We went to Klassz, a bistro run by the Budapest Wine Society. The food was nice, modern, unremarkable, but the wine was spectacular. I had a glass of Oremus 3 Puttonyos Aszú Tokaj from 2006, and it was truly one of the best wines I’ve ever had.  The perfect end to a trip to a new and beautiful city…

Klassz, 41 Andrássy Ut., 1061 Budapest

Fülemüle, 5 Kőfaragó St, 1085 Budapest

Mangalica és Társai Húspatika, 50 Béla Bartók Ut, 1111, Budapest

For a starter, Mr Lemur had the Bocuse d'Or winning goulash soup. Of course, goulash is a Hungarian classic and, unlike its bastardised form in the West, it is a soup rather than a stew. This dish was an updated version, with a ravioli of beef and slices of sautéed potato floating in a beef broth, studded with finely diced capers. I tasted the broth, which was somehow both utterly light and richly meaty.

Mama Lemur and I had a starter of white asparagus with a bone marrow sabayon. The asparagus was perfectly cooked, quite al dente, but the star of the show was the bone marrow sauce. The sabayon was velvety smooth with an umami kick from the bone marrow. It was actually quite subtle in flavour but dreamy.

We all had the same main course, which was lamb rolled in pastry, with mushroom sauce, wild mushrooms, parsley pesto and lamb jus. We're at the tail-end of the morel season here in Budapest so I was excited to have something made with these most decadent of fungi. It sounds a bit poncy to say the dish was a celebration of the mushroom but it truly was. The wild mushrooms were meaty and golden, and the foamy sauce was sensational. Not that the lamb was an afterthought – the meat was delicate and the whole thing condensed so much flavour we could hardly talk about anything other than how amazing it was.

Desserts were perhaps less inspiring, although it could be just that I have less of a sweet tooth. I had the cheese dunpling with home-made strawberry jam, which may have been as good as a cheese dumpling can be. It was enjoyable but not life-changing.

Mr Lemur had the intriguingly-named Citrustextures, which transpired to be a series of elegant blobs. The pool is lemon curd, then there is some kind of panna cotta, yuzu ice cream, meringue and some other bits of lemon, grapefruit and orangeyness. It went down pretty well (Mr Lemur is never going to be unhappy with a plate that begins with a pool of lemon curd) but again, didn't garner quite the raves of the other courses.

Onyx may have rescued the concept of Hungarian cuisine for us. It was a fantastic meal in an utterly gorgeous setting and the price was truly reasonable. The prix fixe comes in at under £20 for three courses, and even with wine pairings, drinks, coffee etc we paid £30 a head. After all that indulgence, tomorrow we are off to the spa for some therapeutic treatments…

Onyx, 7-8 Vörösmarty tér, Budapest

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Things have been a bit quiet on the blogging front as it has been a busy old time, chez Lemur. Mr Lemur has been finishing a major project and I have been organising a series of events that have eaten up a good deal of my usual cooking time. But we’re finally into Spring break and I thought I should come back with a bit of a culinary experiment. And what’s better to get the juices flowing than pigs’ ears? No, really, you have to trust me on this: pigs’ ears are totally delicious.

I’ve always enjoyed cold pressed pigs’ ears in Sichuan restaurants; the softness of the outside skin followed by a just yielding crunch of cartilage is a pleasing texture sensation and the long slow braising imbues the slices with deep umami flavours. When I was in my lovely local butcher the other day buying some pork shoulder, I noticed his assistant breaking down some pig legs at the back of the store. I remarked how nice it was to see the butchering being done right there and my butcher said, yes, we got three pigs in this morning. Maybe those amazing Sichuan restaurant ears popped into my head, because I asked him, without thinking, ‘do you have ears then?’ ‘Sure,’ he replied, ‘how many do you want?’ Then, he went off to the back of the store and came back a few moments later with a some ears wrapped up in paper. He didn’t even charge me for them! So off I went with my little bag of ears: what an adventure!

I did a bit of research on how to cook the ears, and the first thing I learned was the hilarious disparity between how westerners view the task and how Chinese people do it. Since I don’t speak Chinese, most of the recipes I found were by British or American bloggers. All recommended simmering the ears in water or stock for upwards of two hours, and some suggested 5-6 hours. Then I found a translation of a Chinese recipe that told me twenty minutes would be plenty of cooking time! I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a range of cooking times for the same ingredient. How do you cook pigs’ ears? Oh, you know, just boil them for somewhere between twenty minutes and six hours…

So who is right? I think the answer lies in different expectations about what the ears should turn out like. I suspect that the Anglo bloggers want soft meat and are put off by the central layer of cartilage that runs through the ear. Thus, they are attempting to cook the little buggers for as long as humanly possible in an attempt to soften the entire ear. The Chinese blogger, by contrast, valued the crunch and wanted to retain it. Granted, twenty minutes seemed a bit light, but for my purposes, several hours was just crazy talk. I cooked the ears for an hour and they came out perfectly: soft with that addictive little bite in the middle.

I followed Kake‘s suggestion to cook the ears in lo sui, or Chinese master sauce, and played around with her recipe for a traditional Sichuan dish of pigs’ ears with cucumber.  I wanted to make a substantial main dish salad rather than an appetiser, so I added more julienned vegetables and altered the dressing. However, the core of the dish is still that Sichuan favourite of shredded pigs’ ear in chili oil.

Soy-braised pigs’ ear salad with chili oil

• 2 pig’s ears
• 1/2 cucumber
• 1 carrot
• 4 radishes
• a handful of radish leaves
• 1 tbsp white sugar
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 tbsp Chinese black vinegar
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce

For the chili oil:

• 1 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns
• 12 dried red chilies
• 1 cup sunflower oil (don’t worry, you won’t use it all)

For the master sauce:

• 1/3 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp palm sugar
• a glug of Shaoxing wine
• 1 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns
• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• 2 dried red chilies
• 1 few sticks of cassia bark
• 4 thick slices of fresh ginger
• 2 star anise
• 2 cloves
• 2 scallions / spring onions, sliced
• a piece of dried mandarin peel
• 1 – 1 and 1/2 litres water

Your first order of business is to make the master sauce. This is a deeply spiced braising stock that you can strain, freeze, and use again once you’re done. It starts off with making a caramel, which can go wrong if you’re not careful. Full disclosure: I am terrible with sugar cooking and I had to make this caramel three times. The first time, it just went horribly wrong and produced weird snow crystals. The second time, I took my eye off it and the stupid thing burnt black. Now I recommend following Delia’s instructions To. The. Letter. So, it’s 1/3 cup of sugar in a small pot, don’t touch it till it starts to dissolve around the edges, then shake the pan. Again, leave it alone till it’s a quarter liquid, then you can stir with a wooden spoon. Cook till it is an orangey shade, no darker, then take off the heat and carefully (it’ll spatter) add about a cup of water. It will now be thinner than if you were making creme caramel with it, but that’s ok. Now add the syrup to a large pot with all of the other ingredients and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 1/2 hour, strain out the solids, and voila, you have master sauce. (Sunflower has a good guide to making and looking after your master sauce.)

While the master sauce is cooking, prep the ears. Wash them thoroughly and shave off any hairs with a razor. This bit is kind of abject, I must admit, but courage. Now bring a pot of plain water to the boil and boil the ears in it for a good 5 minutes. That way, you can remove any scum that floats to the surface, and be sure of boiling off any remaining dirt or bacteria. Hopefully, you’ve bought your ears from a good butcher and don’t have to worry, but I think it pays to be careful.

Next, braise the ears in the master sauce – drop them in, raise the heat till the stock is boiling, and then turn it down as low as possible to a gentle simmer for an hour. The ears will turn a luscious dark brown colour and all those flavours will seep right in. When cooked, remove the ears and cool before slicing thinly.

While the ears are cooling, julienne a carrot and half a cucumber. Put them in a sieve and sprinkle 1 tbsp sugar over them. Leave for 5-10 minutes, until the carrot softens. Meanwhile, make the chili oil by gently heating the sunflower oil with the dried red chilies and Sichuan peppercorns until the oil is fragrant and the chilies just beginning to change colour. You don’t want to overheat here, as the oil will turn bitter. Strain out the solids and let the oil cool. It won’t be terribly spicy, just nice and roasty with a kick of heat at the end.

To make the dressing, crush garlic in a mortar and pestle. Add vinegar and soy sauce, then two tbsp of the chili oil and emulsify. Taste for balance – you might well want to add more soy or vinegar.

Thinly slice the radishes with a mandoline and wash some radish leaves.

When the carrots are softened, rinse and dry them off, then assemble sliced ears and vegetables in a bowl. Toss with the chili dressing and serve with rice.

Serves 2 as a main dish, 4 as an appetiser.

I’ve been spending a bunch of time cooking from Fuchsia Dunlop’s fantastic Every Grain of Rice, especially its vegetable and tofu sections, but some of the cold dishes seem a bit labour-intensive for everyday cooking. I was pondering the Sichuan Numbing and Hot Beef, a party dish, really, that requires slowly simmering a whole beef shin before slicing it thinly for a crowd. And even this is Dunlop’s simplified version of an original that featured various cooking methods of tongue, heart and tripe. I love the combination of Sichuan peppercorn, cilantro and sesame but I wanted something for a weeknight dinner for two, not an impressive party platter. It struck me that, because the original is a cold dish, it might be susceptible to transformation into a yam, or Southeast Asian salad. Regular readers will know of my obsession with Thai and Viet main-dish salads, which can be quite hearty meals, but emphasise herbs and bright spicy flavours. I decided to commit what is probably a shameful bastardisation of a classic dish, and to experiment with a bit of fusion. I replaced the beef shin with a nice rare steak and the cooked sauce with a creamy sesame dressing. I think it ultimately turned into something quite different, but the result was  addictive. The recipe could probably do with some revision – knock yourselves out if you have ideas for improvement – but as experiments go, it was pretty successful.

Numbing and hot sesame beef salad

• 1 thick-cut steak
• 1 tbsp sesame seeds
• 1 inch knob of ginger
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4 tsp toasted and ground Sichuan peppercorns
• 1/2 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp chili oil with some sediment
• 1 tsp pure sesame oil
• large handful of cilantro
• 1 tbsp roasted peanuts
• 1/4 cup finely cubed cucumber
• 1 tbsp spring onion / scallion greens

To make the dressing, begin by toasting the Sichuan peppercorns and then (separately) the sesame seeds in a skillet until fragrant, and the sesame seeds are lightly golden. Cool and then grind in a mini-prep. You want the sesame to turn into a soft sandy consistency.

Put the sesame and peppercorns in a serving  bowl and add soy sauce, chili oil, sesame oil and Shaoxing wine. Pound the garlic and ginger in a mortar and pestle and add to the dressing. Mix well and salt if necessary.

Next grill the steak to your liking – but it should be on the rare side.

While the steak rests, prepare the toppings: chop the scallions thinly, cube the cucumber and toast the peanuts then lightly bash them into smaller pieces. Then slice the beef thinly (taking care to capture any juices) and add to the serving bowl along with the scallions, cucumber, peanuts and cilantro. Toss well and serve with rice.

Serves 2

Loosely based on Fuchsia Dunlop’s recipe.

Ok, the island I’m referring to is Manhattan as much as Jamaica, but still. I have been to Jamaica and I ate really well, but most of my Caribbean-food-as-comfort experiences come from a place on 14th St that the Lemurs used to frequent with our old boss Miss L. With a Jamaican-Cuban background, Miss L knew all the best Caribbean joints and how to charm little extras from the staff. A dumplin here, a plantain there: we gossiped about our workmates in style when we ate with her. Anyway, Caribbean food is sadly no longer part of my everyday routine (although this reminds me I need to get my ass back to the Brixton market soon). I was pretty excited, then, to see a Jamaican storefront had opened near to the Duke of York’s cinema in Brighton and we took the first opportunity to try it out for lunch.

Now, I should say, it’s a takeout place mostly, classic hole in the wall, so it doesn’t look much. More than that, it has a name that strikes me as mildly unfortunate, though it’s probably some Jamaican reference I don’t get. There are two branches in London, too, so it’s kind of a fast food mini-chain. Let’s just say you’re not going to eat here for the aesthetic experience and leave it at that.

As soon as we walked in, we knew it was going to be good. Firstly, it smelled delicious, redolent of long-braised meat and allspice. Secondly, there was a little girl behind the counter, arranging home-made cakes. When we came in, she shot in back to alert her grandma or whatever older relative was cooking back there that there were customers. Thirdly, there was a blackboard of specials, offering Jamaican classics like callaloo, saltfish dumplins and veggie rundown. It just felt like a real family business: it might be fast food when you eat it, but it is clearly prepared with love. Looking at the dishes on offer, we decided on a modest repast of curry goat, ackee and saltfish, rice and peas, and saltfish dumplins. It was only lunch after all.

Ackee and saltfish is one of those dishes I can never get past on a menu. I love it to an unreasonable degree. I actually ate this for breakfast the entire time I was in Jamaica, probably because it is a savoury breakfast that doesn’t include eggs. Egg eaters tell me that it offers some of the same pleasures as the egg (shudder). It is soft and creamy, custardy even, rich in mouthfeel but mild in flavour. It’s hard to credit that ackee is a fruit, but somehow it is and when sautéed with salt cod it’s just delicious. Mr Lemur is not normally a huge fan of this dish but he thought this version was the best he’d ever eaten and it was actually quite hard to prise the plate away from him.

The curry goat was similarly fab – that’s the picture at the top of the post. The goat wasn’t at all goaty; I actually don’t mind a bit of goatiness but some people find it too strongly flavoured – here it was tempered by loooong slow cooking. The curry looks quite plain but it had layers of flavours, a careful hand with the spicing and all the pleasures of biting choice meat off of bone. A bit of bone marrow too – result!

We knew we didn’t really need more food than that, but one of the cooks came out to tell us about his saltfish dumplins and, well, we could hardly say no, could we? When they arrived they were comically enormous, giant fluffy monoliths of dough and fish. They would have been perfect to dip in a coconutty veggie rundown, but as it was we were too full to do them full justice. They were serious dumplins though.

Washed down with a glass of Ting (what else?), we left in a state of complete Caribbean food happiness.

Cummin Up, 2A Preston Rd, Brighton BN1 4JQ

As a film-loving Brightonian, I’ve long been a fan of the Duke of York’s cinema, but it has always struggled with the size limitations of the admittedly lovely building. Late last year, they opened up a new space at the Komedia with two screens and a cafe-bar and I was thrilled to hear that they now have a kitchen serving snacks and more substantial meals. I’ve always thought that more cinemas should serve proper food: I often want to eat something before a film but don’t necessarily want an elaborate ‘dinner and a movie’ situation. Being able to meet friends for a drink, a light meal, and a film all in one place is a no-brainer and happily the Duke’s at Komedia has pitched it just right. There’s a varied menu but their central concept is the hotdog: not the questionable Coney Island variety but the modern, reinvented hipster dog with locally-sourced sausage and inventive punchy toppings. Its rare to see American food done well in the UK so clearly I had to investigate…

Now I know it’s unusual for me to value some recent fashionable variant of a food over the traditional version, but I find ‘traditional’ American hotdogs to be alarming at best. I know they’ll have their adherents out there but sorry, I think they’re kind of nasty. But in recent years there has been a boom in updated hotdogs. My favourite New York version of this trend is the fake-speakeasy in the East Village where you have to go into a phone booth inside a hotdog store and talk on the phone to get access to the cocktail bar…where they will seat you and bring you the hotdog menu. Yeah, ok, it’s a bit precious but it’s all about the contrast of downscale with upscale and that’s what the Duke’s at Komedia are playing with too.

The dogs are all made with Sussex free-range pork, or you can have anything on the menu with vegan Tofu Not Dogs. Options include the Mushroom Dog, with marinated mushrooms and balsamic red onion toppings, the St Bernard’s with apple and brandy sauce and blue cheese, or a conventional version with mustard and ketchup. We went for the Chica-Chicarto, which came with lime-jalapeño pesto, cheese and chipotle salsa. It was insanely good – a juicy (yes, non-traditional) pork sausage on good bread with a nicely smoky chipotle flavour and a hit of citrusy heat form the pesto. On the side we had a thick chutney with figs and a sweet-smoky tang that was so addictive I started slathering it on everything. As a side, we went for the sweet potato wedges, which were thickly cut, sweet-salty and also delicious.

As addictive as the dogs are, the menu also offers a range of international main dishes. We tried the chicken tagine with preserved lemon and olives (also available as a vegetarian version with aubergine), a tangle of long-cooked vegetables which sang with wonderfully sour little mouthfuls of lemon among the sweet onions. The Tex-Mex vibe is also continued here with a nacho lasagne, actually closer to a Mexican budín, layering tortillas with bean chili, scotch bonnet salsa, the same lime-jalapeño pesto found in the Chica-Chicarto and smoked-paprika cashew “cheese”. I thought this dish could have been a bit saucier and upped the amount of chili – the ratio was slightly off and risked being dry – but that said, the flavours were good and the cashew sauce was one place where a vegan not!cheese actually works on its own terms, not as a replacement for something else.

We ended our meal with churros, which you can take into the theatre with you! (Warning: dipping churros in a darkened room risks the occurrence of a Chocolate Incident. Not that I’d know about that.) These churros were a bit different from the ones you often get in Britain at street festivals, which I often find too insubstantial and overly sugary. By contrast, the Duke’s churros were denser and not ridged in shape, closer to doughnuts. In this latter regard, they are not quite traditional, but the balance of crispy fried surface to soft inside is spot on. They were dense but not heavy, slightly chewy but not greasy. The dipping chocolate is really very good, shiny as a ganache and not too sweet. Now, you’re not in an American dive bar but an early-morning caff in Madrid.

The Duke’s has always sold fantastic cakes– including a range of vegan and gluten-free treats–and the new cinema seems to be expanding on this interest in quality desserts. They also have icecream and sorbet from Boho Gelato, which I haven’t had the chance to try yet but which looks very intriguing. There was one flavour with salted caramel and popcorn which has to be amazing…

After all this excitement, it was a shame that the film we went to see was Lincoln, which the Lemurs found to be rather long and turgid, but you can’t win them all. The dogs more than made up for the movie.

Duke’s at Komedia, Gardner St, Brighton BN1 1UN

I’ve been feeling a bit sorry for my vegetarian and vegan readers–who impressively continue to read despite my love for all things porcine–so I wanted to post a little something meatless to start the week off. Lemur friend the Geek Goddess gave me Fuchsia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice as an un-birthday present (because she is the kind of awesome friend who knows you are stressed out and responds with cookbooks!) and it has a brilliant range of vegetable dishes from Sichuan province and beyond. I particularly loved her simple meatless version of ma po tofu: meat works more as a flavouring than as a main component of the dish in its traditional form, so it is actually relatively easy to replace the meat with other umami flavours. The real pleasure of ma po tofu for me is the contrast of soft, cooling tofu with the fiery, oily, tingling chili and Sichuan peppercorn sauce and this version focuses your attention on precisely that experience. I know there are people out there who are yet to be converted to tofu and I think this might be one of the dishes to do it. It’s making my mouth water just looking at the picture.

I think that ma po tofu needs something with a bit of bite to go alongside it, and Dunlop’s book has absolutely scads of vegetable recipes. I decided on runner beans with black bean and chili, largely because it contains fermented black beans, which are one of my storecupboard favourites. It also makes sense for the winter, when the range of vegetables is meagre and there is only so much cabbage a person can eat. I pass over runner beans oftentimes, because they can be fibrous and stringy, but recently I’ve started to see stringless runner beans at the grocery store and I have to say it makes all the difference.

So, no recipes this time, as I didn’t really change anything, just made Dunlop’s recipes straight. I strongly recommend the book, though, which is full of simple and delicious looking dishes. Hopefully, this will motivate me to make some more veggie awesomeness this week––time to go shop for soft tofu…

I’ve long been a fan of XO sauce, possibly because Dim Sum Go Go restaurant in New York makes an amazing spicy-fishy-umami version to slather on its otherwise light and delicate shrimp dumplings. As a 1980s invention designed to connote luxury, it’s probably a terribly déclassé aspect of Hong Kong food culture, but I don’t care, I love it. Still, I’d never have thought to make it if not for a coincidental series of events. First, I was given the Momofuku cookbook for Christmas. It’s a fascinating read and a lovely book but incredibly cheffy: many of the recipes require you to have made a bone stock that takes three days and some special dashi before you even begin. It’s unapologetically impractical. But one thing did stand out – a recipe for XO sauce that required two things I just happened to have: lots of good quality dried shrimp and lots of good quality leftover ham. As it happened, I had a big bag of plump pink shrimp I’d brought back from Vietnam and a vacuum-sealed pack of 5-acorn Serrano ham scraps I brought from Barcelona. It was kismet! Thus began the XO sauce experiment.

Dried shrimp are pretty easy to come by in your local Asian store. Look for the biggest ones you can afford and try to select pink ones rather than brown, old-looking ones.

David Chang uses American country ham in his recipe but I barely know what that is and certainly don’t have access to it. Besides, not to besmirch the American ham tradition but we have Spanish ham over here, so you know…We bought this little bundle of joy in the main market in Barcelona – just €4 for a pack of ends chopped off of the giant pig legs hanging above. I was excited to find such a perfect use for it.

But one thing I didn’t have from the recipe was dried scallops. These are pretty expensive but I was willing to splash out a bit, since everything else I needed was incredibly cheap. Sadly, they were not to be found in Brighton’s Asian markets. I know you can buy them in London – and if I was willing to wait a while, they’re cheaper in New York – but I wanted to make XO sauce now, damnit! I decided to try an alternative: dried squid.

This was a really beautiful dried whole squid, and on the whole I think it made a pretty decent cut-price alternative to the scallops. If you think about it, while squid doesn’t taste like scallops, they do offer somewhat similar pleasures. However, the squid did prove harder to wrangle than its fancier cousins. Here’s what I’ve learned – squid cannot be fluffed in a food processor. Even if you chop it up beforehand, it is comically resistant to blades. At one point I had to stop and unwind tentacles from the central axle of my mini-prep! Lesson learned: chop the squid by hand next time.

Anyway, you might be asking what’s the point of XO sauce? Its punchy savoury flavour livens up steamed vegetables, and pairs really well with white fish and seafood. It’s a great condiment for Asian food and it could be good with roast pork too. It lives in the fridge more or less forever, so if you make a batch, it’s a nice thing to have on hand for when the cupboards are bare. It’s intentionally dry and not really saucy, but if you melt a knob of butter, you can spoon in a dollop of XO and a glug of water to make a decadent sauce for vegetables.

Not Quite David Chang’s XO sauce 

• 55g dried shrimp
• 55g dried squid
• 70g garlic cloves peeled
• 50g ginger peeled
• 140g Serrano ham scraps
• 1tbsp dried chili flakes
• 125ml vegetable oil

Combine the shrimp and squid in a bowl, cover with room temperature water and let sit out overnight to rehydrate. I will warn you that this is the point that your house will come to smell quite powerfully shrimpy. It doesn’t smell bad but good grief, it was strong.

The next day, process your garlic and ginger in a mini-prep until finely chopped. Scrape into a bowl. Now do the same with the shrimp – they’ll turn into a lovely fluff – and add to the bowl. If you have scallops, do the same but if you’re using squid, I found it better in the end to use a mezzaluna to chop them small. Lastly, fluff the ham in the mini-prep, but save it in a different bowl.

Heat the oil in a frying pan and when it is quite hot, put in the ham and fry for 3-4 minutes until it is starting to darken in colour. Mmm, frying ham. This part smelled really really good.

Next add the chili flakes and cook for another couple of minutes. Then turn the heat down low and add the rest of the ingredients. Cook over a very low heat for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. It should end up relatively dry and the garlic and ginger bits should be a golden colour.

It doesn’t look especially exciting but it tastes dynamite! To serve, I steamed a whole bream then topped with XO sauce, and for added deliciousness, stir fried a bunch of Chinese greens and added butter and XO sauce to the wok.

Lovely lemur friend M gave us some dried chilies for Christmas and when the cold snap hit, it seemed like the perfect time to use them in something deeply warming and savoury. It turned properly cold here last week and I think everyone had some version of the same idea: comfort cook meats! There was an unprecedented queue at the local butcher and he told me everyone had been buying braising meat to the point that they had actually run out of pork belly. I swithered a bit and decided on a chicken and a few plump house-made chorizos. Nothing makes me feel quite so thrifty as using every part of a chicken and the chorizos reminded me of the Mexican chilies awaiting me at home.

Red rice is a hearty and very unassuming dish. It can be as simple as rice cooked with a tomato-based salsa and as such, you might think of it as a side dish rather than the main event. But it’s a palette made for variations and additions, and I like to add a bit of meaty flavour and a load of dark greens (it absorbs seemingly limitless amounts of them) to turn it into a one-pot meal. Besides, Mr Lemur has a bred-in-the-bone Latin American love for plain rice dishes and, after all, some of the world’s great dishes begin from nothing more than rice and chicken. This is one of those dishes that seem to involve a lot of steps but few of them call for close attention. It takes more time than effort so it’s the perfect thing to make over a weekend and it will feed you happily for days.

Mexican red rice with chorizo and chicken

• 3 chorizos (uncooked)
• 1  chicken
• 3 dried chipotles
• 6 dried costeno roco chilies
• 1 tin of tomatoes
• 1 medium onion
• 2 red peppers
• 2 cups rice
• 1  head of garlic
• 1 lemon
• 1 blood orange
• 1 large bunch of kale, chopped
• some butter

Your first order of business is cooking the chicken. If you want, you can do this the day before and eat half of the chicken in a different form. You don’t need all of the chicken’s meat for this dish and in fact it’s a great use for day 2 of a roast chicken. But if you’re starting fresh, then begin by heating the oven to 200 C / 400 F / gas 6. Cut the garlic head in half across the middle and half the lemon. Stick half the lemon inside the bird and put the rest in the pan. Rub the chicken all over with butter and roast for about 90 minutes (depending on the size of your bird of course), basting occasionally, until its juices run clear.

Toward the end of the chicken cooking time, start your chilies. Cut them in half, remove the seed pods, and toast one at a time for a few seconds per side in a cast iron skillet, then soak in a bowl of hot water for 20 minutes.

While they soak, remove all the meat from the chicken, reserving about half of it for another use. Keep the roasted garlic and chicken juices too – you’re going to want them. Pop the bones into a big pot, fill will water and bring to the boil. Simmer those while you work on other things – it will be chicken stock before you know it. When it has cooked down to about half its original amount of liquid, sieve out the chicken bones and reserve the stock. (If you do this part the day before, you can put the stock in the fridge overnight and then scrape off the fat the next day. Or, you know, not…)

When the chilies are nice and soft, chop them a bit and then blend in a mini-prep till they are as smooth as you can make them. You might need to add a spoonful of water. Pass the pulp through a sieve to remove the skin pieces. You should be left with a thick, silky dark puree that is spicy, smoky and a little bitter.  In a large bowl, mix the chilis with the tomatoes. Squash the garlic out of its cloves and add this too, along with the juice of the blood orange and a teaspoon of salt. Mix well.

Now to the actual rice cooking part! Heat the oven to the same temperature as before. Chop or tear up the chorizo into pieces. In a large, heavy bottomed and oven-safe pot, sauté it for a few minutes over a low to medium heat until it has rendered out a bunch of its fat and is beginning to brown a little. Finely dice the onion and red peppers and add these, frying until the onion is softened and starting to colour. Add the rice, and stir for several minutes. The idea is to coat all the rice in the fat and to get all the grains to turn white. When that happens, add the tomato chili mixture – it will spit and sizzle as the pan is very hot at this point! This is good as you want the salsa to cook a bit at this high heat. (This is a classic Rick Bayless trick to intensify the flavours of cooked salsas.) Mix in the rice well and stir for another minute, then add 2 cups of chicken stock, the chicken meat, the juices from the roasting pan and the kale. Add a bit more more salt at this point. Bring to the boil, then turn off the heat, put a lid on the pot and put it in the oven. Cook for 20-25 minutes. It will cook a bit more after you take it out of the oven, so taste after 20 minutes.

Serves 4 (at least, ours seemed to last forever)

The Lemurs spent the holiday season home in Glasgow and while it’s nice to relax in the bosom of one’s family, it’s also really important to me to get out and spend some time in the city. We were en route to a festive party but wanted to have dinner first – we anticipated a long and alcohol-fueled night and didn’t want to drink on empty stomachs. Sadly, we failed to realise that our host was making vast piles of delicious food, so we ended up eating twice, but that’s another story. We fancied Malaysian food and we’ve eaten at both formica-tabled Rumours Kopitiam (famously rude staff but good roti canai and laksa) and the slightly classier Asia Style (good, but tones down the Malaysian flavours). Neither were quite what we wanted, but I discovered that a new Malaysian restaurant has opened in the last year or so, called Banana Leaf. It’s been getting good notices online, and, located on Cambridge St, couldn’t be more convenient, so off we trotted.

The space is immediately convivial, with a dark green, banana leaf colour scheme and loads of Chinese paper lanterns. It still looks a bit like a canteen with small tables and loads of students, but the kind of canteen that has given careful thought to how everything looks and feels. It’s a family business and it feels like it – staff want you to be happy. One of the critiques I saw on a couple of reviews is that the menu is too large and overwhelming: it is fairly large but I suspect this response comes from a lack of familiarity with Malaysian and Malaysian Chinese cuisine. It’s still relatively unknown in the UK and it’s probably just a gradual process of getting to know what you like. Meanwhile, the waiters were happy to offer advice and there was also a prix fixe that would work well if you weren’t sure what to choose.

We ordered a curry laksa, morning glory with belacan, and the very exciting sounding stir-fried pork maw with chili, curry leaf and dry curry sauce. The waiter came back from the kitchen with a message the Lemurs have heard often: “Are you sure you want to order that?… Your order is very authentic …” We reassured our waiter that we were quite happy with our choices and we were fans of authentic Malaysian food. Of course, it’s always nice in a smug kind of way to hear that we’re not ordering like white people (sorry, white people, it’s a fact that we have a reputation for liking bland food) but I also like to think of it as tiny, incremental activism to persuade restaurant owners that there is a wider audience out there for their food and they should have faith in their customers.

The laksa was first of all enormous – a bucket of soup with an encouraging number of objects bobbing on its surface. Happily, it wasn’t just about size but was layered with flavour; spicy, fishy, meaty, sweet, and a little coconut to round it off. The fish balls were springy and the noodles were toothsome. We could have dined cheerfully on this alone, but then came the stir-fried pork maw which is the picture at the top of the post. Sitting proudly on its banana leaf, it looked about as refined as a pile of tripe can look. The sauce was intensely spiced, with its use of curry leaves and black pepper nodding to the significant Indian influence on Malaysia. Nestled with the tender stomach were pieces of meltingly soft aubergine and okra, both providing unctuous texture as well as flavours. The dish was really a triumph of Malaysia’s fusion of Indian, Chinese and Malay cultures.

To finish, we had to try the bubur cha cha, a soupy dessert of coconut milk, sweet potato and tapioca, with a generous dollop of coconut ice cream on top. It doesn’t look much, but it was rather moreish, especially with the incentive to neck it before the ice cream entirely melted into the soup.

We staggered out into the rain, stuffed full and filled with chili-shrimp paste-coconut happiness. I hope Banana Leaf does well: if they keep up the combination of friendly service, authentic flavours and eagerness to build new audiences for their cuisine, I’m sure they will thrive.

Banana Leaf, 67 Cambridge Street, Glasgow, G3 6QX