Nearly half of the restaurants in the United States, England, Holland, Belgium and Israel and one third of the restaurants in France, Germany and Japan now feature "foreign foods", that is to say, cuisines that originated in countries other than their own. The cuisine of France is almost as well known among sophisticated diners in London and San Francisco as it is in Nice and that there are as many Japanese chefs working in Europe and North America as there are in the five major cities of Japan. Many have already learned that the best Algerian food can now found in Paris; the best Indonesian restaurants are in Amsterdam and Den Hague, and several of the very best German restaurants are located in Boston and New York City.

There is a change in the wind, however, for although fine French, German, Thai, Chinese and Japanese restaurants are in no danger whatever of losing their popularity, the latest trend is towards "regionalization". As diners become simultaneously more knowledgeable and more sophisticated, the direction of many restaurants at the turn of the millennium are focusing in on the sometimes drastically different regional cuisines offered within nations. With no lowering of standards or quality, many new restaurants have chosen to regionalize. What this means that instead of restaurants that feature broad and all-inclusive French menus, many establishments are currently choosing to focus entirely on the cooking styles of specific regions such as Provence, Normandy, Champagne, the Basque Country or Burgundy. In the case of Italian restaurants this means that we are finding more and more places where the menu is focused on the dishes of regions as Tuscany, Lombardy, Sicily, Piedmont or Calabria. In England, France and the United States, many Indian restaurants have eschewed too large, too general, too vaguely "Indian" dishes and now concentrate entirely on the cuisine of regions such as Madras, Kashmir, the Punjab or Gujerat; and wherever one travels today, it is possible to find Chinese restaurants whose menus are made up entirely of dishes that originated in regions with culinary styles as diverse in nature as those of Hunan, Szechuan, Guangdong or Shanghai.

It goes almost without saying that such regional restaurants have always existed. When one dines in Islamabad it will invariably be in a restaurant featuring the cuisine of northeast Pakiston; in Basque villages and cities one will almost always find the menus of restaurants composed almost entirely of dishes whose origins are in the Pyranee Mountains; and there are virtually hundreds of restaurants in the region surrounding Florence that serve nothing but Tuscan food. What is new is the trend to bring such regional cuisines to sophisticated cities and restaurants outside of those areas. There is no question that throughout Europe and the Americas regionalization is one of the main culinary trends of the times.

A Bit of Culinary Background

Culinary regionalization is merely the latest in a series of logical steps. Merely to glance at the three hundred and ten restaurant reviews that appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Boston Globe and the Manchester Guardian during 1950 is to realize that at that time the new rage among English and American diners was restaurants that featured something vaguely known as "continental cuisine". The Second World War was over, food writers were beginning to make a major impact on the dining habits of the people, tourism to Europe had started again and many people were once again becoming curious about the different culinary styles of Europe.

The truth is, however, that continental cuisine, which never attained a level of true sophistication, failed (then as now) to capture the true flavors of Europe. The dishes served at restaurants featuring such cookery were at best misunderstood, homogenized, watered-down, and badly executed imitations of well known French, Italian, Scandinavian and Austrio-German preparations. Intended primarily for a not very sophisticated audience of diners, the most European thing about most of these dishes were their foreign sounding names.

I recall, for example, a dining experience at New York City's then most popular continental dining spot, "Tofinetti's Restaurant" where my first course consisted of chicken croquettes in cream sauce, the second course was of "Spanish seafood soup" and the main course was of something referred to on the menu as "steak in the Italian style". The meal was no more or less continental or European than the Brooklyn accent of my waitress. The chicken croquettes were entirely American, the cream sauce, which was based entirely on milk and flour would have embarrassed any Frenchman, the shrimp soup had nothing in common with anything even vaguely in common with Spain, and the only thing that might have made my steak Italian was the use of tomatoes in the sauce.

Despite its clear limitations, continental style dining has never completely disappeared and may still be found in hundreds of mass-market restaurants and an equal number of hotel dining rooms around the world. Nor has it improved much in its level of sophistication. The cooking at such places may rely less on flour heavy sauces and tinned tomatoes, but it is no more genuinely French, Italian or German today than it was nearly forty years ago.

Only in the 1960s did American and English diners discover, largely because of increased tourism, that there were genuine French, Italian and other national cuisines. Chefs and restaurateurs responded to this new awareness and increasing need for sophistication and one witnessed the birth of far better, far more authentic restaurants. Because England and the United States were then undergoing the influences of vastly different social and ethnic backgrounds, developments in the two countries were not at all parallel. England, for example, was then undergoing a massive influx of immigration from nations that had formerly been part of the Empire. This meant that from Oxford to Nottingham, Indian, Pakistani and Jamaican restaurants sprung up as quickly as spring flowers. In the United States, on the other hand, the first wave of foreign restaurants was opened by Italians or Germans who were by now second or third generation Americans. Genuine French cuisine came to both England and the United States only in the 1970s, and this was imported either by French chefs who moved to those countries in order to open restaurants or locals who had worked and studied the culinary arts in France.

By the mid 1970s, London had restaurants featuring the cuisine of 34 different nations and New York City was represented by the cuisines of 25 nationalities. Diners even in such once provincial backwaters such as Vancouver, Atlanta, Denver and Toronto, could select from French, Italian, Japanese, German, Indonesian, Chinese, Thai, Pakistani, Middle-Eastern, and a dozen other national cuisines. Even more important, however, was the fact that many of what had been quasi-Chinese, phony French and imitation Italian restaurants were now serving genuine, world-class cuisine.

Although the 1980s saw continued development, especially within Europe, in both the number and quality of restaurants specializing in one foreign national cuisine or another, both the Americans and the English took time off to rediscover and improve their own national cuisines. In America, under the leadership of creative chefs, the simple, frequently country-style cuisines of New England, Maryland, New Orleans and California blossomed and attained international acclaim. Even the usually culinary staid British, finally deciding that they had heard enough nasty jokes about their own food, opened truly excellent restaurants that began to explore once again the best of traditional English cuisine. With the onset of the '90s, with no sign of abatement of the continued overall expansion of the restaurant industry, the new password has become regionalization.

Success and Failure

Many of the chefs and restaurateurs who have opened regional restaurants have placed far too much reliance on the need to be either "trendy" or outrageous. Because of this, with inadequate background or preparation, especially in the culinary area, they have spent a good deal of money on decor, advertising and public relations; opened in a flash of glory; received a few good reviews in local newspapers; have had several months of booming business and then, like Omar, folded their tents and disappeared into the night after having proven to be a commercial disaster.

While being too outrageous is to be avoided, there is no sin to being trendy, but being trendy is not, in and of itself, a path to success for a regional restaurant. In 1991, for example, a restaurant called "The Road to Mandalay" opened in San Francisco. Widely publicized as a "genuine Tibetian restaurant", the menu listed such dishes as "Tibetian hutsepot" "Goat Stew with Yak Butter", and "Turkey stuffed with Tibetian rice".

It did not take long for the public to realize that Mandalay is in Burma and not in Tibet; that instead of a thick, slowly cooked stew of beef, goat, goose, beef suet, onions, carrots and potatoes, the hutsepot they received was merely an adaptation of Jeiwsh cholent; that the yak butter was nothing more than a mixture of margarine and peanut oil; and that turkeys simply do not exist in Tibet.

During the first two months after they opened, despite a collection of entirely bad or mediocre reviews in the local press, people came out of curiosity. The decor of the restaurant was described by James Burdlow in "The San Francisco Free Press" as "part Chinese, part Japanese, a large part Walt Disney and not the least bit Tibetian" The food was described in a letter to this writer as "somewhere between funny, sad and outrageous, but certainly not tempting". The owner-chefs of the restaurant, who had visited Tibet for one month, simply had no idea of what either Tibet, Tibetians or Tibetian cuisine were all about and their restaurant stayed open for exactly three months before they filed for bankruptcy.

Fortunately, there are now enough highly successful regional restaurants from which one can glean the basic rules of success. In addition to the general rules that govern the success of any restaurant, there are two sets of considerations that apply especially to regional restaurants. The first deals with the special nature of the cuisine, and the second with ambiance, both of which are critical to success. From studying restaurants in four different nations (and with a concentration on the United States) one thing is certain - those restaurants that do not follow these general rules are basically doomed to failure.

The Cuisine

Because the people who tend to populate restaurants featuring regional cuisine are more sophisticated than most diners, it is critically important to success that the quality of the cuisine be consistent and consistently high. Equally important, the dishes served must be genuinely representative of the area represented by the restaurant. Taken together, these two basics imply that regardless of whether the region in question specializes in a highly sophisticated or basic, country-style cuisine, those in charge of preparing the dishes must have a thorough working knowledge of precisely how those dishes are made.

It should go without saying that chefs responsible for preparing the cuisine of a given region should either come from or have trained extensively in that area. In the most successful restaurants, the owners (even if they are not themselves chefs) have invariably spent a good deal of time in the area whose cuisine they have chosen to make their own. Even more than this, the owners, chefs and cooks and even those in charge of the service aspect of the restaurant, should make periodic trips to the region to investigate new trends, styles and dishes as well as to continually broaden their own experiences. The rate of failure of such restaurants where neither the owners nor the chef have an intimate knowledge of the region they are purporting to represent is extremely high.

Ingredients used in the preparation of regional cuisine must be as close to the original as possible. Especially in such restaurants, where client expectations are high, there simply are no acceptable substitutes for mascarpone cheese, Normandy butter, black bean sauce, Westphalian ham, Bresse chickens, Charolais beef. Nor are substitutes such as green onions for eschallots, corn oil for sesame oil, or Emmental cheese for Jarlsberg acceptable. Even though this may mean that a special (and often expensive) effort must be made to supply "the real thing", anything else will not suffice, and the owners/chefs of many such restaurants are careful to open and guarantee continued lines of delivery of whatever raw materials must be on hand. In many cases, even in Israel today, such supply lines are possible to develop. Where they are not, plans should be changed. Nor should one consider the possibility of a kosher regional restaurant. Because the requirements of kashrut require too many substitutions and commises, the idea of opening a Bavarian, Tuscanian or Burgundian kosher restaurant should stay at little more than the level of a bad joke.

Beyond the ingredients, successful regional restaurants all over the world offer only dishes that are fully representative of the area being presented. Osso Buco may be popular throughout Italy these days, but it should never be offered in any regional restaurant other than one of the Milan or Lombardy area in which the dish originated; the Indian dark-red mutton dish known as roghan josh should never be served in any but a restaurant featuring the cuisine of Northern India; Sole Dieppoise (poached sole served with a white wine sauce and garnished with mussels and shrimps) should be found in no French regional restaurants except those specializing in the cuisine of Normandy; and a restaurant specializing in the cuisine of Bavaria should never offer Kasseler Rippchen, a dish based roasted smoked pork which originated in Westphalia. No matter how popular lasagna may be one should never lose track of the fact that the dish originated in Naples and the area of Campania; and that Tripes in cider is an exclusively Normandy dish.

One must also be aware of the variations of different dishes as they manifest themselves in different locations. Russian, Ukranian and Georgian borscht are completely different dishes; Roman and Tuscany gnocchi are made from different materials in different ways; and that the dish known as bourride is prepared from different fish, different herbs and different spices in eleven different regions of Italy and France.

Before deciding to open a restaurant that features a specific regional cuisine, the potential owners and chefs should also ask whether this area has enough about its culinary style that is unique and large enough to build a menu. One would be hard pressed, for example, to open an exclusively Roman restaurant, for even though there are several uniquely Roman dishes (suckling lamb with rosemary; cannelloni; fettuccini Alfredo; gnocchi alla Romana; saltimbocca; spaghetti alla Carbonara; and zuppa inglese), the cosmopolitan nature of Rome for more than two thousand years has guaranteed that most real Roman restaurants actually specialize in the cooking styles of other regions within Italy. While it would not be at all difficult to build intelligent menus from the cuisine of Scotland or Northern Ireland, it would be almost impossible to open a purely Welsh restaurant; and although one could easily have a restaurant that featured the dishes of Bavaria, it would be difficult, if at all possible, to have one that served only the dishes of the Rhine Valley (an area which is said to never have invented a single dish of its own).

The Decor

Happily, the days are gone when one could open an Italian restaurant merely by setting out red and white checked tablecloths, putting candles in empty Chianti bottles on the tables and hanging a large photograph of the Leaning Tower of Pisa on the wall. Nor can a French restaurant appeal these days to an ever sophisticated audience simply because there is a background recording of Edith Piaf, a menu in badly spelled French, and waiters with long black aprons.

There are three basic patterns of decor that have proven successful for restaurants specializing in regional cuisine. In the first, where no attempt at all is made to artificially recreate the true atmosphere of the region, the decor is highly stylized, ranging in style from the art-deco to post-modern or even Bauhaus. In all such cases, however, even though it may be especially subtle, a major and often recurring theme is a reflection (as stylized as the decor itself) of the region. All of the woodwork at a post- modern Provencal restaurant in Denver, for example, are painted chalky-orange, light blue-gray, and dull green, the colors for which the city of Aix-en-Provence is noted; the bar at an art-deco Piedmontese restaurant in London is decorated with white plaster bas-reliefs of the heads of saints, similar to those found in the churches of Piedmont; and the tablecloths, napkins, and wallpaper in a restaurant in San Francisco are made from the kind of rough brown fabric worn by the farmers in the north of India, the foods of which are served there. Such restaurants rely on the subtlety of cultural hints as well as on the quality of their cuisine to make their statements.

The second style of decor for regional restaurants relies primarily on what might be thought of as a system of "decorational highlighting". This is not so much an overall architectural concept as it is one in which furniture, bric-a-brac, light fixtures, plates, and others of the accoutrements that contribute to the overall feeling of any establishment have been imported from the region in question. While some restaurants have had furniture and plates made especially for them in their own countries, most restaurateurs report greater customer satisfaction (and thus, economic success) when they have imported these items from their countries of origin. The message here is clear - that people who frequent their restaurants are sophisticated enough that they want originals and not copies. Restaurants who have chosen either this or the first method of decorating do not rely heavily on either photographs or paintings of the regions whose cuisine they are serving. If paintings are used at all, they are generally very large stylized murals (such as that found in New York's Remy) or on a few small, subdued prints or photographs that are displayed either in the bar, on a staircase or in an anteroom.

The third style is one in which the restaurant makes an all-out effort to actually appear as if it had been transplanted from the region. Because this almost always involves an aspect of pretense, this style of decor is found primarily at mass-market restaurants where, like the decor, the food is often not as genuine as it should be. Unlike those restaurants who have chosen one of the first two styles, and whose seating capacity averages between 30 - 65, these more obviously commercial enterprises often have as many as 200 couvertes. While such places may not appeal to the most sophisticated of diners, they do have broad public appeal, and it has already become clear that the "more real" the atmosphere seems, the greater the success of such places.

Four Examples from the Field

MADEO: 8897 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, California. Telephone (213) 859-4903. Before he opened his Tuscan restaurant in Los Angeles, owner, executive chef and host Bruno Vietina, had several successful eating places on the Tuscany coast where he was so well known for his focaccia and Tuscan white beans that people made long drives just for them. Vietina, who says he "dreams every night of what he will cook the next day", speaks little English, but, surrounded by friends who used to work for him in Italy, he seems to manage quite well. The restaurant is comfortable and warmly old-fashioned in the way such places were before design statements became mandatory, and the food served provides a genuinely Tuscan dining experience. The service, while thoroughly professional, is often a source of some humor, because most of the waiters speak even less English than the owner, and the place is a favorite of the large local Italian community as well as sophisticated diners who prefer their Italian dishes without California touches.

The long antipasto table features tempting platters of mussels, calamari, and ivory colored slabs of mozzarella cheese with basil, and just about any salad that has ever crossed any Tuscan table. Appetizers that can be ordered from the menu include marvelous raviolis that are filled with veal and strands of radicchio and come in a creamy sauce that contains porcini mushrooms; fagioli e aragostta - Tuscan white beans served with the tail meat of a lobster and dressed with olive oil, lemon and parsley; and carciofi e parmigiano, a salad of artichokes and parmesan cheese. The pizzas here are said to be the most ravishingly good in all of the United States, and the calamari affogati (calamari in pepper and tomato sauce) is said to be godlike.

One of the best known main courses of the restaurant is of veal that has been rubbed with rosemary, sage and spices and set to roast on the floor of an oak-fired oven for about 5 hours. The dish is served as it is in Tuscany, without sauce, because Vietina correctly believes that the meat, the herbs and the oak smoke should speak for themselves. Other main course house specialties include fish roasted in the oak fired oven; large steaks cooked briefly on the grill, sliced at the table and drizzled over with olive oil and then showered with black pepper; squid in pepper and tomato sauce; and mare caldo alla toscana, a warm salad of clams, shrimp and octopus seasoned only with lemon juice and Tuscan olive oil.

ROCKENWAGNER: 2345 Main Street, Santa Monica, California. Telephone (310) 399-6504. The large dining room with its wood beams, a large mural that might have been painted along the Rhine a century ago, logs that suggest a cabin in the woods, and a host of gold gilted cherubs that one finds everywhere in the area of the Black forest mark this popular eatery indelibly as German, and owner Hans Rockenwagner, who was born in Baden-Baden guarantees that the food will be absolutely genuine.

Even though Rockenwagner's cooking is the kind you found at Baden-Baden when it was still the major playground of Europe's wealthiest and most royal families, there is no escaping the peasant roots of the dishes served here. His endive salad with hazelnuts, his duck liver smoked and cured in his own kitchen, his smoked salmon with creme fraiche surrounded by a mixture of salmon roe, chopped egg white and tomato, are all house specialties for starting portions. His cold cream of cucumber soup with sesame crusted scallops and his potato soup, served with a mushroom-filled strudel are classic second courses and his lamb, roasted over layers of spinach and mushrooms, and his fine tenderloin of beef with red-wine sauce and red cabbage are among his better known main courses. As in the Black Forest area, potatoes are a leitmotif running through all of Rockenwagner's cooking. Served mashed with goat cheese, or as parchment thin slices baked in layers with fresh thyme, both are perfect accompaniments to many of the dishes that are served.

The desserts here are splendid and it is considered traditional to eat either the warm apple and almond tarte or his apple pancakes with the newest, yet unfiltered wine of the season.

DRAGO: 2628 Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica, California. Telephone (213) 828-1585. Celestino Drago grew up in northern Sicily and his fondest memories are of lunches with his mother's freshly baked bread, fresh mozzarella made from the milk of the family's cows, and tomatoes and basil from their large vegetable garden. Now that he is a chef, he has chosen to rely on those memories to please his guests. Drago left home at 13 to train in a restaurant in Pisa. In 1979, when he was 22, he came to California where he worked at different times at Orsini, Scalora and Chianti Cucina. In 1985 he opened his own restaurant, a general Italian restaurant, in Beverly Hills and three years ago he opened his current establishment, one that specializes entirely in the dishes of Sicily.

Among his appetizers are paper thin slices of proscuitto ham highlighted by melon balls that have been sprinkled over with Marsala wine; the venison with Gorgonzola; lobster medallions with balsamic vinaigrette and olive oil; salt-cod cakes with a compote of slowly cooked onions; and porcini mushrooms that are prepared by tucking slivers of garlic into slits cut in the huge mushrooms and then grilling them. His spaghetti al cartoccio, with clams, mussels, shrimp, scallops, squid and spaghetti in a white wine sauce, and his pumpkin-filled spinach tortelloni with sage and butter sauce; and his spinach tagliatelle with beef ragout are among his best known pasta dishes. Among the most popular main courses are the roast lamb with mint and balsamic vinegar sauce, and his roast chicken with artichokes, potatoes and rosemary; and his roast quail that is stuffed with sausage. Many also make a main course of his traditional Sicilian pasta con le sarde, which marries fresh sardines and wild fennel on a foundation of pasta with breadcrumbs, pine nuts and anchovies. His best known dessert is giardinetto, a well known Sicilian specialty made by building layers of strawberries, pistachio nuts and lemon ice cream. The dish goes marvelously with the magnificent dessert wine known as Regaleali Rosso that Drago imports especially for the restaurant.

LES HALLES: 411 Park Avenue South, New York City. Telephone (212) 679-4111. Imagine a French restaurant so regional that it concentrates neither on a social-geographic region nor on a city, but merely on a part of a neighborhood of a certain city, and you will begin to comprehend the concept of New York City's Les Halles. Although the trucks no longer rumble through the streets of Paris to end in the brilliant spectacle of the central markets, the Halles, it is the simple, bygone restaurants of olden days that this restaurant captures. An elaborate terrazzo floor, heavy ceiling beams and meters of old moldings give this New York restaurant the kind of oldness that one expects when thinking of Les Halles. The fact that a long butcher's block stands behind a display case of meats is the clue that most people come here to eat the kinds of meat that once could be so easily found in the dozens of Bistros that surrounded the old Paris market. Every dish is completely genuine. The fillet of beef with a hint of smoky flavor is served with a bearnaise sauce made with plenty of tarragon; thyme scented lamb chops; and calf's liver with a red wine and shallot sauce, are all served by a mound of crisp, golden brown French fried potatoes.

For truly serious Francophiles there are also excellent and completely genuine boudin noir (pig's blood sausage), as well as piping hot, boned pied de porc (pig's foot). Among starters (even though some will make full meals of them) are the marvelous onion soup (indispensable in a place named after Les Halles) which is dark and hot under a crown of bread and cheese; croutons spread generously with Roquefort cheese served with a salad of endive with bacon; delicious lentil salad; and leeks vinaigrette. For dessert, waiters bring to the tables a small tray with creme caramel, chocolate mousse and seasonal cakes and tarts. All are as plain and good as can be.

Five Recipes - Regional Beyond a Doubt

Tartines de Pistou et Poisson Fume
Grilled Country Bread with Pistou and Smoked Trout
A Provencal recipe from La Boutarde, 4 rue Boutard, Paris 8

For the pistou sauce:

1 cup loosely packed fresh basil leaves
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp. fresh pine nuts
2 medium cloves garlic, halved
salt to taste
25 gr. freshly grated Parmesan cheese

For the bread:

8 thick slices French country-style bread
8 thin slices smoked trout

Make the pisto sauce by combining the basil, oil, nuts, garlic and a very small amount of salt in a food processor. Process to a fine puree. Scrape the mixture into a small bowl, stir in the cheese and season with salt to taste.

Toast the bread and, while it is still quite hot divide the pistou sauce on the slices. Neatly trim the edges of the fish to fit the bread, place a slice of fish on each bread slice and serve at once. (Serves 4 or 8 as an appetizer).

Passa di Fagioli
Pureed Bean Soup
A Tuscan recipe by Giuliano Bugialli

1 1/2 cups dried cannellini beans (white kidney beans)
75 grams prosciutto ham
1 clove garlic, whole and unpeeled
salt to taste
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large slice Italian bread (for home use may substitute any heavily crusted heavy white bread)
1 Tbsp. rosemary leaves
125 gr. of dried small pasta such as shells
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Soak the beans overnight in a bowl of cold water. The next day drain the beans, rinse them and put them into a large pot with 7 cups of cold water. Add the prosciutto, garlic and 1 Tbsp. of salt. Place the pot over the heat and simmer until the beans are very soft (about 1 - 1 1/2 hours).

Drain the beans, reserving the water in which they were cooked. Place the beans in a food processor and puree coarsely. Return the beans and the water to the pot and simmer until the texture of the soup resembles a smooth cream.

In a frying pan heat the olive oil. Cut the bread in quarters and fry lightly on both side. Remove the bread from the oil and save for later use. Add the rosemary leaves to the skillet, let them saute for 3 - 4 minutes and then pour the oil containing the rosemary into the bean soup. Correct the seasoning generously with salt and pepper.

Cook the dried pasta in the soup until the pasta is al dente (10 - 15 minutes, depending on the pasta used), and then remove the soup from the heat and let stand for 10 - 15 minutes. Place one piece of the fried bread in each of 4 soup bowls and pour over the soup. Serve hot. (Note: The soup is especially good when served cold the following day. If you plan to serve the soup cold, add the bread to the stockpot at the same time you add the dried pasta). (Serves 4).

Rognons de Veau Sautes Stuffed Veal Kidneys
A traditional recipe from Brittany (Bretagne)
as collected by Albert and Michel Roux

3 veal kidneys, about 350 gr. each, trimmed and with the fat reserved
350 gr. bacon, in one piece
250 gr. baby onions
300 gr. peas, ideally fresh but may use frozen (do not use tinned)
8 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 Tbsp. Calvados or other apple brandy
300 ml. apple cider
1 small bouquet garni made by tying together two sprigs each of parsley and thyme and a bay leaf
60 gr. butter, cut into small cubes
salt and pepper to taste

Trim and remove the membranes of the kidneys. With a sharp knife, finely dice the fat of the kidneys and then half the kidneys lengthwise, cutting out the central white cores with the point of a knife. Cut the kidneys into 3 cm. cubes

Place the bacon in a saucepan and pour over cold water to cover. Bring to the boil and let boil for 10 minutes. Drain, rinse under cold water and then drain. Cut off the rind with a knife and then cut the bacon into long thin slices.

Peel, wash and drain the onions and set aside. If using fresh peas, remove them from their shells, cover with water and bring to a boil. Let simmer gently for 3 minutes. Drain, rinse under cold water and set aside. If using frozen peas, simply defrost them and have them ready for use when required.

Put 3 Tbsp. of the kidney fat in a large skillet and set over a very high flame, stirring with a spatula. Lightly season the kidneys and then the fat is very hot, throw them into the pan and cook quickly, stirring constantly for 1 - 2 minutes. Reduce the heat and cook the kidneys for another 3 - 4 minutes, so that they are still pink. Drain the kidneys and set aside.

In the same skillet in which the kidneys were cooked, heat the rest of the kidney fat. Add the bacon slices and brown them lightly, and then add the onions and unpeeled garlic. Sprinkle with the Calvados, add the cider and put in the bouquet garni. Cover the pan and simmer for 8 minutes. Add the peas and cook for 2 - 3 minutes longer. Remove the skillet from the heat and beat in the butter, a little at a time. Discard the bouquet garni, season to taste with salt and pepper, add the kidneys and return to a very low heat, warming the kidneys in the sauce for 2 - 3 minutes. Serve hot. (Serves 4).

Rogan Josh Red lamb stew
A traditional Kashmiri recipe
as presented by Madhur Jaffrey

700 ml. yoghurt
6 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 cinnamon stick, about 2 cm. long
1/2 tsp. whole cloves pinch of ground asafetida (optional)
3 kilos stewing lamb (shoulder and neck meat) cut into 5 cm. cubes
2 tsp. salt
4 tsp. bright red sweet paprika mixed with hot cayenne pepper to taste (1/4 - 1 tsp.)
1 Tbsp. fennel seeds, ground finely
1 1/2 tsp. dried ginger
1/4 cup garam masala (this spice mixture can be purchased in plastic containers in many supermarkets and delicatessens)

Put the yoghurt in a bowl and beat with a whisk until smooth and creamy.

Heat the oil in a large pot over a high flame. When the oil is hot, add the cinnamon and cloves. A second later, add the asafedida and immediately after that add all of the meat and the salt. Stir the meat and cook over a high flame for about 5 minutes. Add the paprika and cayenne and stir the meat well. Slowly add the yoghurt, stirring the meat vigorously as it is added, and continue cooking on a high flame until all of the liquids have boiled away and the meat is lightly browned. Add the fennel and ginger, stir the meat well and then add 850 ml. of water. Cover, leaving the lid slightly ajar, and cook over a medium heat for 30 minutes. Cover completely and continue to cook, now over a low heat, until the meat is tender (about 45 minutes longer), stirring several times during the cooking and making sure some liquid always remains in the pot. Remove the lid and add the garam masala. Stir well and serve at once. (Serves 4 - 6).

© Daniel Rogov