feastFEASTHow halal is your meat?

Traditional familyrecipes

3 exotic ingredients you should try

The alternative festive feast

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Katie Harris @katieeliza_beth

“I love trying out new recipes from all over the world; it’s a fascinating way to experience different cultures.”

Angela Hui @Angela_Hui “I adore Chinese street food in Hong Kong, the smells and sites are just out of this world. It’s like a second home.”

Lucy Trevallion @ltrevallion

“Winter is the perfect season for spicy food, even the smell of it can transport you to somewhere warm and exotic.”

Ashley Quinlan @AshProJourno

“For me, nothing beats an authentic Spanish paella, and memories of sitting by the sea on holiday in Catalonia”

Cont

ents

Page 3 - Family Recipes Page 4-5 - Alternative Festive Dinner

Page 6 - Halal

Page 7 - Reviews

Page 8 - Spice

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Passed down from generations to generations. Feast magazine brings you traditional family recipes from all around the world

While Christmas has hit Cardiff, there’s many other ways to get together and enjoy your festive feasts

A look at the growing trend of halal produce in Cardiff

The Feast Team gives you their two cents and visit local international restau-rants serving multicultural cuisines

Can you handle the heat? Discover exotic new spices that you’ve never heard of before

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Family Recipes

Egg fried tomatoes

Chen Xu is from Gansu in the north of China. Currently living in

Cardiff, she is a PhD student at the university. She speaks to Feast about one of her favourite Chinese dishes – egg fried tomatoes. “This dish is popular all over China; everyone knows about it,” she says. “I often prepare this dish because it’s very good for you – it’s a nutritious combination of protein and vegetables. It is simple and delicious and ideal to make after a long day in work.”

Ingredients4 tomatoes, halved3 eggsOilSaltSugarSoy sauce1 chili, finely chopped

Method1. Heat some oil in a pan.2. Lightly whisk the eggs together in a bowl.3. Add the whisked egg to the pan and fry on a medium heat for a few minutes. When the eggs become solid, place them in a separate bowl.4. Add a little more oil to the pan and fry the tomatoes for five minutes until they become mushy.5. Sprinkle the tomatoes with salt, and add a pinch of sugar and a liberal splash of soy sauce.6. Add the egg to the pan and fry with the tomato juice for two minutes.7. Serve with rice.

Gajak

Rajkanwal Tatla, is from Punjab in India. She tells us about this

sweet sesame treat, served at the agricultural winter festival Lohri.

“In the morning children go from door to door demand-ing the Lohri ‘loot’ in the form of money and eatables like Gajak. They also sing in praise of Dulha Bhatti, a Punjabi avatar of Robin Hood who robbed the rich to help the poor. With the setting of the sun, huge bonfires are lit in the harvested fields and people gather around the rising flames, throwing puffed rice, popcorn and other munchies into the fire, shouting ‘Aadar aye dilather jaye’ (May honor come and poverty vanish!). This is a sort of prayer to the fire god, to bless the land with abundance and prosperity,” she explains.

Ingredients1 cup Sesame seeds Jaggery/ sugar syrup

Method1. Toast sesame seeds in a large pan, stirring continu-ously.2. Heat jaggery until the syrup is consistently thick.3. Add roasted sesame and stir into an even paste.4. Push flat in a shallow bak-ing tray, let cool.5. When cool and hardened cut into squares.

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Feast speaks to four individuals from different countries about their own culinary traditions in the festive season.

An alternative

Spanishcelebrations

Rocio is a 38-year-old mother of two from Se-ville in southern Spain.

Currently residing in Cardiff, she speaks to Feast about a typical Spanish Christ-mas dinner in her family.

“We start with tapas,” she says, listing a vast ar-ray of little dishes: prawns, crab, ham, chorizo, pate, la Mancha cheese, olives and bruschetta. “Everyone sits around the table and we pick at the food with our fingers. It’s really sociable”.

For the main course, they eat roast turkey with gravy – but no vegetables. “By the time we start on the turkey,

we’re al-ready too full,” Ro-cio laughs. “Everyone agrees that the first bit – the ta-pas – is the best bit”.

A selection of desserts rounds up the meal. “Man-tecado is one of my fa-vourites,” says Rocio. “It’s a delicious, crumbly Span-ish shortbread made of flour, sugar, milk and nuts”.

In Spain, it is traditional to eat Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. It usu-

ally starts at 9pm and con-tinues until about 2am the following morning.

“It’s often the only time my family come together, so it’s a really special time,” says Rocio. “There’s always lots of talking and laughing. It’s impossible to eat eve-rything – we carry on with the dishes the next day!”

Chinesejubilations

Chinese people don’t usually eat the tradi-tional festive meal of

turkey with all the trimmings as they find it too stodgy and don’t always like the taste. Instead, they generally opt for something to warm themselves up. One popular traditional meal is called ‘Da Bin Lo’, which literally means ‘to hit the edge of the fur-nace’. It is more commonly known in English as ‘hot pot’.

Jin Tian Hui from Guangzhou, South China,

who has lived in Llantri-sant, South Wales, for more than 20 years, says: “The great thing about Da Bin Lo is that it’s a great big com-munal feast. Everyone cooks their own food and there’s a giant pot which is set in the centre of the table.”

The foods typically served in a Chinese hot pot are all raw ingredients, from noo-dles to vegetables to sea-food. Everyone sits around, putting the ingredients in the pot. As the food slowly

cooks, everyone chats; it is a very sociable occasion.

“I much prefer eating this way, as it’s less stress on mothers, because they don’t have to slave away for hours,” says Jin Tian.

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“We celebrate H a n u k k a h , not Christ-

mas,” says Ronnie, owner of the Falafel Café in Cardiff.

Originally from Israel, Ron-nie explains that Hanukkah celebrations start on the 25th day in the month of Kislev, which may occur at any time from late November to late

D e c e m b e r. The main event takes place on the night before the eight- day celebra-tions begin.

R o n n i e says, “We

play a spinning top guess-ing game, give the children presents, sing traditional songs, drink wine, and tell the story behind Hanukkah”.

Hanukkah, meaning red-edication, commemorates a miracle that the Jews believe happened over 2500 years ago. The story goes that when

a small group of Jews, called Maccabees, recaptured Jeru-salem their first task was to repair their temple. Amongst the ruins they found a small jug of olive oil, enough to light the candles for one day. But extraordinarily, the oil lasted eight days. Now, one candle on the eight-stemmed Hanu-kiah is lit each day of the cel-ebration, symbolising God’s care through difficult times.

But food is also central to this modern day remem-brance celebration, “We eat a lot of eggy type things, some spicy with parsley and tomato and some mixed with sugar for the kids,” Ronnie describes.

festive dinner

Hannukahfestivities

Australian

Christmas in Australia is a dream for some. Apart from being on

the other side of the world, Australia celebrates Christ-mas in the height of sum-mer. “Christmas day in Aus

we spent most of the day in the lounge with the air con-ditioning on full, outside was between 40 and 45 degrees,” says Kerri-Anne, now a resi-dent in Cardiff. “It’s usually too hot to go out unless you happen to be near a beach!”

It’s in stark contrast to the cold and invariably wet win-ters we have in the UK, but at least some things stay the same: “Before lunch we would munch on Allen’s Minties and Fantales, Twisties, melted Santa chocolates, candy canes from the tree, and fruit balls.”

Kerri-Anne recalls how

lunch was cooked on the BBQ on her family’s patio, with beef steaks, kebabs, chicken wings and corn on the cob. The remainder of the meal would be a selec-tion of salads like potato, cabbage, mixed bean, mac-aroni and Caesar salads.

“Deserts are always served later in the afternoon and we had so many when I was little to choose from I have no idea where to begin. Af-ter, my brother and I would fall asleep in the living room while watching Christmas films, stuffed on the BBQ.”

Image by Paul Keller, Creative Commons

revelries

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Cardiff is nothing if not a mulitcultural city. The recent 2011 census

provided statistics of an over 11,000-strong Muslim population in the city, and has caused an under-the-radar arrival of halal meat standards to aberttoirs and butchers.

In the UK, meat-eating habits have become more and more controlled over the past two decades. Those with longer memories will remember the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis in the 1990s, and perhaps younger readers will recall instances of foot and mouth disease in the 2000s, all of which took a substan-tial toll on the animal farming industry.

It is testament to the di-

versification and adapt-ability of the animal cultivation industry that a traditional butcher with 30 years experience has so read-ily adopted the halal methods of cultivation into his daily work, therby serving the Cardiff Muslim popula-tion.

“Much of the halal principle regarding the care of animals is reminiscent of free-range produce that I’ve sold here for years. The standards are the same if not better, so why shouldn’t people readily accept aspects

of it into their

diets,” asks Brian Morgan.Halal is a religious concept

that promotes the slaughter-ing of animals in the most painless and humane way possible. It is a belief that is centred around the caring for and rearing of the animal, much in the same way that free-range products do in the mainstream market.

Afzal Kahn, owner of the Spice Route brand in Cardiff,

has even been moved to claim that halal food is better in taste and quality,

and might partly explain why all manner of restaurants are now including halal produce on their menus, alongside the now 11,000-plus Muslim population the market must cater for.

Of course, for western tastes, the lack of pork on the menu is a limitation, and might put off those who en-joy the full spectrum of meat the UK market traditionally offers. However, it has not put off ‘traditional’ butchers in Cardiff from integrating halal where appropriate into their daily businesses.

Principles of Halal

• No pork or pork by products

• No animals dead prior to slaughtering

• No animals slaughtered ‘unethically’

• No blood and blood by-products

• No carnivorous animals

• No birds of prey

• No land animals without external ears

Prohibited foods and ingredients are called ‘haram’,

meaning ‘forbidden’ in Arabic.

Middle-eastern meat moves westwards

“99% of the lamb is halal and around 98% of the chicken is too.”

Cardiff Market butcher, Brian Morgan, talks

about the adoption of halal meat into everyday

Tenkaichi

Situated on Salisbury road in Cathays, Daiquiri’s is an

independent Mexican res-taurant that offers a varied menu and brilliant value for money.

The atmosphere is vibrant: enormous Mexican hats, framed pictures and woven rugs jostle for space against the brightly coloured walls. The menu is stuffed with classic dishes (fajitas, enchi-ladas, burritos and tacos), as well as various paellas.The wait is very short and portions are enormous. The quality of the food is reason-able but somewhat lacking in the intense flavours one would expect from Mexican food. Recommended – but bear in mind that the mantra does seem to edge towards quantity over quality.

Right on the busy main street of City Road in

Roath lies a little Japanese sushi and noodle bar called Tenkaichi.

The restaurant offers authentic Japanese cuisine from bento boxes to oodles of noodles all at a reasonable price. The service was aver-age and a bit slow, but that is not enough to take anything away from the delicious food with lots of choice on the menu, and decent portions.

The layout of the restaurant has a canteen/bench style seating which may not be to everyone’s tastes, and is often busy so may be a tad crowded at times, but it’s the Japanese way.

One can expect many things from food in

Cardiff, and true authenticity is one of them.

Tucked away on Whitch-urch Road, is this extremely well turned out restaurant offering the best in Greek cuisine. The service, which some may find lengthy, was excellent and in keeping with true Mediterranean culture; dinner is more than a meal, it’s a social event

The food too was of high quality, with the Stiphado a particular highlight. Add in true Mediterranean-style seasoning and it makes for a flavourful meal that lingers on the palette and weighs lightly on the wallet. Highly recommended.

Food: Service: Value:

Food:Service: Value:

Food:Service: Value:

Aegean Daquiri’s

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Tumeric:

Part of the ginger fam-ily, native to tropical South Asia. It was

widely used in Medieval Europe as widely used as an alternative to the very ex-pensive saffron spice. When not used fresh, the rhizomes are boiled for several hours and then dried in hot ovens, after which they are ground into a deep orange powder commonly used in curries.

Tumeric Pilau Cook 400g of basmati rice for 6 mins and drain. Heat 4tbsp of olive oil in a large wok and fry 1 tsp black mustard seeds until they start to pop. Add 2 sliced onions, then cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are tender and golden. Stir in 1tsp turmeric and 2 deseeded red chilli’s, and cook for 1-2 mins more then serve.

Fenugreek:

Largely produced in India, the plant has small round leaves,

is cultivated worldwide as a semi-arid crop, and is a common ingredient in dishes from the Indian Subcontinent. It is known as methi in Hindi, Urdu, and Nepali. Studies have shown that fenugreek is a potent stimulator of breast milk production and its use was associated with increases in milk production.

Aloo Methi Boil 1 cup of potatoes and cut into small pieces. While they are boiling, sauté ½ tsp of cumin seeds, 1 inch minced ginger and 1 clove of minced garlic for 2 min-utes and then add 1 cup of methi leaves and ½ tsp of red chilli powder and saute for 3 minutes. Add the cut up

Kalonji:

Alter-natively known as the seeds of the

plant Nigella sativa or black cumin plant, the prophet Mohammad report-edly said that these seeds could cure anything but death itself. However, black cumin does in fact have remarkable health benefits, containing vitamin B1, B2, B3 and folic acid, calcium, iron, copper, zinc, and phospho-rous amongst others.

Try Tea Brewed with Black Cumin Seeds, Place one tablespoon of seeds in a tea strainer. Pour boiling water over the seeds. Let steep for about ten minutes.

Try something new

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