Creole jambalaya for the credit crunch

Thinking of you, US of A,
with your Freddie Mac, and your Fanny Mae.
I’m no Du Fu. But seriously, since food-inflation has neared 10% in the UK, our household has only been eating meat every second night. We also eat a lot of cured pork, which is cheap because it goes farther in smaller [...]

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Tamil Rice and Yogurt Salad

Thayir sadam, or (yogurt) curd rice, is a delicious chilled rice dish common throughout southern India, and it is a great strategy for preserving leftover rice for the next meal. Thayir sadam can be made quite thick and chunky, as I have here, or mashed to the pudding stage, or thinned with milk through [...]

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Nicaraguan Red Beans and Rice

Gallo Pinto is the speckled rooster, the omnipresent beans-and-rice dish for Nicaraguans, a comfort of every day, sometimes at more meals than one. Nextdoor, the Costa Ricans have a speckled rooster of a different colour, made with black beans, but the red rooster belongs to Nicaragua. Unlike a pilaf, the rice in this dish [...]

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Uzbek Plov

Plov, the Uzbek pilaf and unofficial national dish of Uzbekistan, comes in many versions, but it is usually rich with meat, sweet with a great deal of onion and shredded carrot, and spiced heavily with cumin. But many additions are possible, and everyone’s grandfather makes the best. Although not the traditional rice, basmati [...]

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