My neighbor is Filipino-Californian (is that how you say it?), and when he hosts spontaneous dinner parties in his kitchen, not only are the people around the table a colorful mix (Turkish, Italian, Indian, French, Scottish, Swedish, American, and German), but so are the unforgettable meals he serves us. Recently, we had homemade wild garlic pesto made from hand-picked wild garlic from the nearby Plänterwald forest with roast beef and gnocchi, spicy chicken burrito with coriander and cilantro, and deep-fried polenta with mushroom ragout...
These inspiring evenings with their creatively composed food combinations have certainly made me want to try a cross-border crossover dish for our recipe of the week. So today we're serving lentil and leek kedgeree, a dish from Anglo-Indian cuisine with warming spices, making it perfect for this uncertain weather (it actually snowed the other day! In April!), made with green French lentils, Portuguese smoked mackerel, and free-range eggs from Brandenburg.
Ingredients:
- 3 tbsp vegetable oil
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 500g dried green lentils – e.g., the famous Puy lentils . I used the slightly lesser-known green Berry lentils.
- 1 - 2 leeks, finely sliced
- 8 crushed cardamom pods, or 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 2 cloves
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 4 bay leaves
- 2 tsp allspice (I must confess that I didn't look up the translation for "allspice," which was given at this point in the original English recipe, and instead used an Indian spice blend that seemed appropriate to me... – so I would simply recommend adding whatever you like)
- 2 tsp curry powder
- Salt
- Pepper or Piment d'Espelette
- a handful of flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
- 2 cans of smoked mackerel
- 3 large hard-boiled eggs
- Spring onions, finely sliced
- 1 lemon
- 8 tbsp sour cream, crème fraîche or crème épaisse
Preparation:
- Briefly heat the vegetable oil in a large pot, then sauté the lentils, leeks, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, allspice (or another spice of your choice) and curry powder over low heat for about 20 minutes.
- Add 700ml of water and then simmer the whole thing with the lid on for another 30 minutes until the water runs out. If you find your lentils are still too firm, simply add a little more water and continue cooking.
- Remove the bay leaves, cloves, and cinnamon, and season with salt and pepper or other spices to taste. Then add the 2 tablespoons of olive oil and the lemon juice.
- Allow the lentils to cool slightly before adding the parsley, shredded mackerel, egg, spring onion and crème fraîche or épaisse.
- Serve and enjoy. Bon appétit!
My tip: While it looks nicer served separately, this dish—like bibimbap (to complete the crossover fusion round here)—tastes ten times better when you mix everything together and taste all the amazing flavors at once. And like all dishes of this kind, it tastes even better after a full night's rest!
Our wine recommendation: Cuvée "Le monde en parle" , a spicy-peppery wine with berry notes.
For dessert, we treated ourselves to ricotta with acacia honey from the Pyrenees and the incomparable Piedmont hazelnuts ... I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...
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The original recipe comes from Harry Eastwood, who published it in his book "A Salad for All Seasons," published by Bantam in 2013. I found it on the cooking blog "Valentina's Cookbook."
