The biggest beneficiary of bookshops made famous in film is probably the Crayola blue storefront in Notting Hill. This context alone would have been enough to make it a candidate for the new series – now titled Cooking the Books, credits again to Rachel who is turning into the blog's brand name generating muse – but it had to wait for another day, for I had a more immediate box to tick across the road.
It shouldn't have taken me until now to hear of a bookshop call Books for Cooks, especially one which has been around for 40 years. It took our eyes some time to adjust to how the cookbooks were grouped, a combination of national/regional and topical (breakfast, bread, dessert, vegan, antique). Themed porcelain shared shelf space. A test kitchen at the back where recipes are cooked and served wasn't going to open until later in the month, so my inspiration for what to cook had to come from the racks. Wife thumbing through a Central Asian cookbook pointed at the Georgian mushroom khinkali.
I tipped two cups of flour into a mixing bowl. I sprinkled salt and poured a dribble of 
oil. I added warm water and kneaded. I left the dough to rest for about 30 minutes.
I finely chopped 250g of mushrooms. I added a splash of oil into a pan. I added the mushrooms, salt, pepper, garlic powder, coriander powder and dried savoury. I cooked until the mushrooms had lost their water but still retained a wet look. I left them to cool.
I rolled out the dough into thin 10-12cm circles. I spooned the mushroom filling in the centre. I lifted one side of the circle, pleated the dough all the way around, then twisted and pinched the top to seal. A couple of misshapen 
results aside, this drill was seen through without incident.
I boiled the dumplings in two batches in a pot of salted rolling boiling water. They floated to the surface in a few minutes. I sprinkled with black pepper and served.
The khinkali were eaten Georgian style, holding the seal as a handle and biting around the base of the dumpling. Gemrielia!
Krishnan
No comments:
Post a Comment