Inspired by a Thai place we used to eat at in those halcyon days, back in San Diego.

• 1-2 tablespoons of Chinese mushroom sauce. (This is that pseudo-oyster sauce you find at the good markets.)
• 2 limes, juiced
• 1 clove of garlic, minced
• 1-2 tablespoons of chili sauce/sriracha
• 1 teaspoon of dark sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon of water

1. Yes. You mix it all together.

The result is a dressing chocked full of umami. Slightly sweet, slightly spicy, mega-savory. We brushed this on some seared aubergines and courgettes to top a salad. Versatile as a marinade, dressing, sauce, what have you.

Marinated with The Dodos – Visiter

Yesterday (along with a bunch of punk rakas from Poke), I took part in my first ever cooking class, given by Ottolenghi at the Leiths School of Food and Wine. A deal was forged – something along the lines of: website we make, cook you teach. So now, Ottolenghi has a shiny new digital home, and we have bulging bellies.

Yotam O. was kind enough to conjure up a vegetarian main for the two veggies of the bunch to prepare. Following the Ottolenghi spirit, it’s a simple yet divine dish of baked aubergine wedges with yoghurt sauce and pomegranate. Now, aubergine and yoghurt – fine, we’ve done that before. But, the addition of pomegranate is visionary.

• 2 medium aubergines, cut into wedges. Cut them in half horizontally, and then slice up the wedges out of the two halves.
• A mixture of nice, fruity extra-virgin olive oil and some lighter olive oil. About 3 parts of the nice stuff to 1 part of the cheap stuff.
• Some yoghurt sauce. Figure it out. (Yoghurt, garlic, oil, lemon, herbs…you can’t go wrong.)
• 1 pomegranate, seeded
• Salt + pepper, of course.

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200C.
2. Arrange the aubergine wedges on a baking sheet and brush them very liberally with olive oil. Sprinkle on a hearty dose of salt and pepper.
3. Pop those puppies in the oven. It’ll take a while. So make yourself some yogurt sauce and set it aside. While your at it, get those pesky pomegranate seeds out.
4. Check your aubergine after 20 minutes or so, but it’ll probably take 30-40 minutes depending on the chunkiness of your wedges. They should be a healthy, dark brown. Give those beauties a little squeeze with your fingers to see if they’re properly done. They should feel pretty mushy.
5. Plate em up with some of the yoghurt sauce and pomegranate seeds. So very, very good.

We also prepared a cucumber + onion salad, bulghur wheat with caramelized onion and feta, and some crazy raspberry and passion fruit mess. All delicious.

Hola.  I’ve been muy intimidated by chile rellenos.  No longer.  These golden, fatty beauties come together quite easily and are muy, muy beuno.

• 2 long peppers (Poblano if you can find them – not so easy in London town.)
• 2 large eggs
• 2 tablespoons flour
• Salt to taste
• Enough semi-hard, melt-y cheese (like Monterey Jack) to stuff the peppers. Do the math, genius.

1. Roast the peppers over an open flame until the skins are uniformly blackened and smelling heavenly.
2. Place those burnt things in a paper bag and let them steam for a few minutes. Like 5 minutes, OK? When they’re cool enough to touch, peel em. Leave the stems intact.
3. Separate the eggs, and give your arms a workout whisking the whites until they are firm. For you bakers, you want soft peaks. Fold in the yolks, flour, and salt.
4. To prepare the chiles, make a slit near where the seeds live, running down the pepper, big enough to get your pretty little hands in there and remove the seeds. Don’t touch the stem, wise guy – you’ll want it to turn the peppers in the oil and keep things happy and leak-free.
5. Stuff the peppers with an ample amount of cheese and shut that slit you made with some toothpicks
6. Get some vegetable oil going in a frying pan. Shallow-fry is the operative word. No need to deep-fry these plumpers. You want the oil to be almost smoking.
7. Dredge the peppers in the batter and transfer them over to the oil. They only need a minute or two on each side and they’ll be a deep golden brown (thank you, egg).
8. We always let them sit on a plate covered in paper towels for a minute or two, but hey, you live your own fatty life.

There are a million variations (we counted – there were exactly 1 million), but a lot of the gorgeousness of this dish comes from the simplicity. Serve it with some homemade refritos, and a side of Mexican rice. La vida gordo.

Stuffed with: The Decemberists – Picaresque