It was a book on Indian cooking, this one to be exact, where I first read about this technique to flavour meat, usually for Indian curries. Basically, to add flavour to chicken or lamb before adding to a curry, fry in a few tbsp of oil to which some paprika, turmeric and salt has been added. The meat takes on a delicious savoury coating and a beautiful vivid orange which adds an extra note to the finished curry.
This meal idea comes from another great book, where the flavours are similar but the geography very different. Moroccan cuisine is bursting with the tastes I love, rich, earthy, spicy, cumin, paprika, saffron and turmeric. Chunks of meat marinated in this kind of mixture, singed and charred under the grill or on a barbecue until the edges are crispy, appeal to me more than any type of cooking. Add to that a zingy, earthy salad of beets, carrots and onions, scented with a little sweet - sour pomegranate molasses and lemon juice and a spicy sweet tomato and chili sauce and you have one of the best dinners I've made for quite a while. Neil even commented that he was looking forward to having the same again and didn't have one single criticism. This is high praise indeed.
