Category: cumin

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cumin food garlic paprika potatoes turmeric

hei hei salt GBK style on sticky wedges

Here’s a recipe for hei hei salt GBK style.

I found myself in GBK at the weekend. It was supposed to be family lunch at Las Iguanas, but a few seconds of appalling customer service had me trundle a few steps down Lakeside’s Boardwalk to the burger parlour.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed it – a tasty “Capital” cheeseburger with standard accompaniments, a choice of brioche or regular sesame seed bun and all the monkey nuts you can eat. But the shoestring fries were great, particularly when you shake over their hei hei salt. Pretty much all American diner-style eateries in the UK coat the fries in a salty concoction, and I’d been meaning to make one of my own for ages. Serving up wedges this week meant this was a great excuse.

Hei hei salt, also known as black salt, is a type of Hawaiian sea salt that is mixed with activated charcoal, giving it a distinct black color. The salt gets its name “hei hei” from the Hawaiian phrase “heihei kai,” which translates to “sea chicken” or “flying fish,” as the salt is said to resemble the color of these sea creatures.

The salt is made by mixing sea salt harvested from the pristine waters surrounding the Hawaiian islands with activated charcoal, which is derived from coconut shells. The charcoal not only gives the salt its distinctive color, but also adds a slightly smoky flavor to the salt.

Hei hei salt is used in a variety of dishes in Hawaiian cuisine, including seafood, meats, and vegetables. It is also popular as a finishing salt, sprinkled on top of dishes just before serving to add a visual and flavour contrast.

GBK’s Hei hei salt appears to be a guarded recipe but appears to be a variation of chicken salt. This is my version based on what I could taste.

If you’re looking for an interesting salty-spicy mix to dust your chips or wedges, this is a great place to start. You can then of course add or remove other spices to your taste – a curry powder or garlic powder would be nice.

There’s two levels of seasoning here; in my experience of roasting potatoes the salt flavour simply disappears (where does it go?). So the initial salt is merely grist to combine the ingredients, whilst the second salting is the true seasoning of the wedges.

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Hei hei wedges

Seasoned potatoes like the ones they serve at GBK.
Course Side Dish
Cuisine Hawaiian
Keyword potatoes, wedges
Servings 2
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 4 - 5 medium potatoes Maris Piper or other fluffy variety

For the marinade:

  • 2 cloves garlic
  • ¼ teaspoon turmeric
  • 1 teaspoon cumin
  • 1 ham stock cube chicken would be fine
  • Large pinch salt
  • olive oil

For the seasoning:

  • ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
  • ½ teaspoon cumin
  • ¼ teaspoon turmeric
  • 1 teaspoon salt

Instructions

  • Preheat the oven to 200°C. Slice the potatoes into wedge shapes.
  • In a pestle and mortar, combine all the marinade spices and pound withe garlic until you have an orangey-brown paste. Add oil until you have a gloopy mixture and coat the wedges liberally. Arrange cut sides down on a baking tray and roast for 40 minutes, turning every ten minutes, until crisp and cooked through.
  • Combine the seasoning ingredients and shake over the fries as you serve. You'll probably have excess seasoning for another day.

Notes

This recipe would work really well in an air fryer or actifry too.
Categories
bread cumin lamb

grilled lamb with cumin flatbread

I love lamb. A quick count says I have 37 recipes on here alone tagged with lamb. When a very good friend was coming over around their birthday I asked them what they’d like for dinner: they said lamb. Another friend of mine won a burger competition with a cracking lamb patty. When Easter rolls around, as a nation we like nothing better than making sure there’s a leg of lamb on the table. At the other end of the spectrum, a boozy night out often ends with a pile of shredded lamb doner.

But perhaps surprisingly, this isn’t the case for our American cousins. Lamb is a mystery meat for them, eyed suspiciously as a greasy, grey mess. In 2014 the American ambassador couldn’t take it any more lamb. This isn’t personal to Mr. Barzun however, the American consumption of lamb is a puny 0.4kg per capita (in other words, each US citizen eats just 400g of lamb per year). In Europe it’s 1.9kg but in the UK we eat 4.7kg per person per year – a pretty staggering amount. We pale next to the mighty Greeks though, who chow down three times that amount!

Source: OECD (2016), Meat consumption (indicator). doi: 10.1787/fa290fd0-en (Accessed on 20 May 2016)

So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that this lamb recipe has it’s roots firmly in Greek culture. If there’s any nation that knows what to do with a sheep, it’s Greece.

This is very simple. Marinate some lamb in herbs and spices, then char on the outside. You can do it on a griddle pan or the BBQ. I’ve also tossed in some super-quick flatbreads here: a tip of the hat to my old chum James for the idea of adding cumin seeds which are just genius. If you’ve never made your own flatbreads then give them a try – they require so little skill and can also be cooked on a BBQ if you feel like it. Served with Greek style accompaniments this is a dead easy midweek dinner. Maybe we can show the Americans what they’re missing?

This recipe is part of the lamb recipe challenge. I was reimbursed for the ingredients.

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grilled lamb with cumin flatbread

Course Main Dish
Cuisine Greek
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 35 minutes
Servings 2
Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 2 lamb leg steaks
  • Pinch dried chill flakes
  • 2 cloves garlic finely chopped
  • 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano

For the flatbreads:

  • 150 g plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 heaped teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

For the salad:

  • 1/2 cucumber
  • 1 red onion sliced
  • 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
  • 10 - 12 black olives

To serve:

  • crumbled feta
  • houmous
  • salad

Instructions

  • Make the marinade for the lamb: mix the garlic, rosemary, oregano, chilli flakes with enough olive oil to make a paste. Season with salt and pepper and rub all over the lamb. Cover and refrigerate until needed.
  • For the flatbreads mix all the ingredients together with enough cold water to make a soft, springy dough. Cover to rest while you get on with everything else.
  • Preheat a grill or griddle pan to a medium heat and cook the lamb steaks on each side a total of 10 - 12 minutes until cooked to your liking. They will also need to rest for 5 minutes on a plate before serving.
  • Meanwhile, slice the cucumber and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Combine all the salad ingredients into a bowl and allow to marinate until serving.
  • For the flatbreads divide into two pieces and dry fry in a very hot pan until bubbling on one side, and then flip (this will take 2 - 3 minutes). Cook until browned.
  • Serve the lamb sliced with the flatbreads, strain the excess vinegar off the salad and serve on the side. Crumble some feta over the lamb. It's also pretty good with lettuce, tomatoes and houmous.
Categories
balsamic vinegar beef cumin food mustard ox cheek worcestershire sauce

sous vide ox cheek kebabs with houmous and red pepper salsa

Ox cheek can be an acquired taste. A great big slab of meat that can be quite irony and offally. Someone that doesn’t need convincing is our Kavey, who can wax on the subject for hundreds of words. If you haven’t joined the army of converts, maybe this sous vide ox cheek recipe will change your mind.

Continue reading “sous vide ox cheek kebabs with houmous and red pepper salsa”
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aubergine coconut courgettes creme fraiche cumin food lime rice tomato video

roasted vegetable chilli with parmesan wedges

Those lovely people at Vouchercodes.co.uk asked me to come up with a family-friendly money-saving recipe.  Just for them I made roasted vegetable chilli with parmesan wedges. They filmed it to boot. Watch the whole recipe below on YouTube:

Fun fact: I wasn’t going to make wedges, it was supposed to be polenta fingers. Unfortunately the wrong ingredients were delivered! Disaster. A quick rummage around the store cupboard and I settled on (what else) potatoes instead.

Make sure you pop along to see others in the series, such as Meemalee’s Burmese Chicken Noodles and Helen’s Blue Cheese and Fig Gnocchi.

My full recipe is below:

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roasted vegetable chilli with parmesan wedges

Author Gary @ BigSpud

Ingredients

  • 3 courgettes
  • 1 teaspoon fennel seeds heaped
  • 1 teaspoon cumin seeds heaped
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 1 red onion
  • 1 tin tomatoes
  • 2 red peppers
  • 1 teaspoon smoked paprika rounded
  • 1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
  • 1 tin kidney beans
  • 300 g long-grain rice
  • 1 tin coconut milk
  • 4 baking potatoes
  • 2 tablespoons grated parmesan
  • 1 lime
  • 300 ml creme fraiche

Instructions

  • First the veg prep: peel and quarter the onion, thickly slice the courgette, half the peppers and deseed, and quarter the lime. Cut the potatoes into wedges.
  • Get a large casserole dish over a low heat, the oven on to 180C, and a saucepan over a medium heat.
  • Lay the wedges in a single layer on a baking tray. Scatter over half the parmesan with a drizzle of olive oil and a pinch each of salt and pepper. Roast for 40 minutes, turning occasionally.
  • Put the fennel seeds, cumin seeds, garlic and onion into the food processor with a pinch of salt and whizz to a paste, then add the tomatoes to blitz further. Add to the large casserole pan. Add the paprika and chilli powder.
  • Add the courgettes and peppers to the baking tray, season with salt, pepper and oil and put in the oven for 20 minutes until softened.
  • In the saucepan, dry fry the cumin seeds for a minute to get nice and aromatic, then add the kidney beans and their juices. Allow this to simmer away. After 5 minutes add it to the tomato pan.
  • Wipe out the kidney bean pan and add the rice and coconut milk. Simmer until the rice is tender, then leave covered until needed.
  • 5 minutes before they're done, scatter the remaining parmesan over the potatoes and allow to crisp.
  • Roughly chop the griddled veg and also add to the tomato pan.
  • Check the chilli for seasoning and then serve with rice, potatoes, lime wedges and a blob of creme fraiche.

Video

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