A great book and a lovely store cupboard recipe.

 

Once in a while in an ocean of cookery books, something floats by that makes you take stock of how you cook. Either showing you a technically different cooking style or a book that introduces you to exciting new flavour combinations. The current book by Anna Hansen called The Modern pantry is certainly a journey of wonderful, new and unique food combinations that I have not seen before.
Yes some of the ingredients are very hard to find even online and I live somewhere fresh Curry leaves are not growing next to Uncle Johnny's prized allotment leeks ! In fact its probably easier to find a green house in Ashington growing cannabis plants rather than kaffir lime leaves !
Anna is a New Zealander and has a restaurant in London called the Modern Pantry. She worked with another chef called Peter Gordon who introduced what is known as fusion cooking, which is basically mixing recipes from different cultures in the hope of making wonderful new dishes.
I did an agency job in Middlesborough for a while in a Car Mechanics training centre. The chef their had his own take on Fusion cooking. On Friday it was fish and chip day but most Monday to Friday industrial canteens will try and use up anything thats left in the kitchen to avoid waste. So super Chef Ronnie used to mix his left over pasta sauce with his left over curry sauce, then cooked some dried pasta off and served it with a popadom  "just like mama used to make ! " Well I could not believe it but it was the first thing we sold out off every time !
Anyway like any fashion fusion cooking became unfashionable eventually and was known as "Con-fusion cooking "
Nowadays Anna describes her food as " Modern with a twist " I am going to do some more recipes from this marvellous book over the coming weeks but picked this very easy store cupboard tomato relish to put together today mainly because this year due to the weather my mate Emily at Meldon Park did not have enough chillis for me to use for some wonderful chilli jam and I need something to go with all the cheese (and pickled eggs...I know its a problem for me !) I am going to eat at xmas.

Anna Hansen's Tomato Relish

Toast the cumin and Mustard seeds to release the oils and flavour.
I mixed these together but then could not find my pestle and mortar to grind to a powder. How much difference it will make to the relish I will not know until I make the next batch. (hopefully my flipping mortar will have turned up ! ha ha ! )

Add the oil then the chills, grated ginger, turmeric, to the pan of spices until all the flavours have infused.

Add all the remaining ingredients and simmer until thick ! About 40 minutes should do it.

Reduce to a nice thick consistence.

I had a little taste of the relish while it was hot and I think in a few days time when it has settled and all the flavours have bedded in nicely it is going to be a wonderful accompaniment to anything I can smear it on and as to the Modern Pantry cook book if you excuse the pun its something I am going to relish over the coming months. (boom boom !)