Well-researched Pea Soup

Like I blogged a couple of days ago, I got a food processor for my birthday. But there were some other presents that went along with it, one of which deserves a recipe of its own -- The Flavour Thesaurus, by Niki Segnit. Highly recommended! Segnit has looked at 99 different ingredients (from cauliflower to caviar) and tried them in pairs to see what goes well with what. This results in some pretty nice-sounding combinations I've never tried before, so it's a great source of inspiration. The book doesn't include many recipes, so you're pretty much left to your own devices -- in my particular case, a pretty spiffy new device, the food processor! ;-) I'll be honest with you, I was at a boring meeting today and by the end of it all I could think about was how to use my new-acquired flavour knowledge in a recipe. This is the result: a hearty pea soup.

Ingredients (for about 1.5 litres of soup)

2 parsnips
1 medium onion
150 grams of potatoes
750 grams of frozen peas
1 chicken stock cube, dissolved into 500 ml of boiling water to give 500 ml of chicken stock
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
some rashers of streaky bacon to serve

Slice the cleaned parsnips, onions and potatoes thinly and fry them in a large pan with two tablespoons of olive oil. (If they stick to the bottom of the pan, add a few tablespoons of water.) Once the onions have softened, turn down the heat and let these vegetables stew in their own juices for 10 minutes.
Add the stock and season well, then add the frozen peas. Turn the heat up, bring the soup back to the boil, then turn down the heat again. Now let the soup simmer until all the vegetables are easy to pulse in your food processor. (For a more rustic version, you could leave the soup as-is, without pulsing it.)
Fry the rashers of bacon in a hot frying pan until crispy and put them on the soup as croutons when you serve.

Spinach and ricotta lasagne

I made this lasagne because I really like spinach and wanted to focus on that flavour alone. It is a very easy recipe: you don't even need to make a bechamel sauce. I left the bechamel sauce out because I wanted this to be a relatively light dish, compared with the stodgy bechamel lasagnes you can buy ready-made. And on top of this, it's very quick! If you're multitasking you can have the lasagne in the oven within 15 minutes, and then it only needs about 25 minutes to finish cooking.

Ingredients
4 rashers of smoked streaky bacon

500g (frozen) chopped spinach
200g ricotta
1 big ball of mozzarella
1 clove of garlic
1 medium onion
200g dried (egg) lasagne sheets
nutmeg
olive oil
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Parboil the lasagne sheets by first bringing water to the boil, adding the sheets and then letting them cook for about 5 minutes. Drain and add some olive oil to separate the sheets. Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a frying pan large enough for all of the spinach. Chop the onion and garlic finely and slice the bacon into inch-long bits. Add to the pan and wait for the onions to soften and the bacon to brown a little. Add the spinach and stir continuously, until either the spinach has wilted (if you're using fresh spinach) or melted (if you're using frozen spinach). Season well with the nutmeg, salt and pepper. Then keep on a high heat until all the excess water in the spinach has evaporated and you're left with quite a dry mixture. Now assemble the lasagne: use some olive oil to grease an oven-proof lasagne dish. First put in a layer of spinach, then a layer of lasagne sheets (covering the spinach completely), then a thin layer of ricotta (spread nicely using the back of a spoon). Repeat. The top layer should be spinach. Slice or rip pieces of the mozzarella ball to cover the dish. Put in a 200C oven for 20 minutes. Once the mozzarella has completely melted and the lasagne sheets are quite soft, turn on the grill of your oven and grill the lasagne for about 5 minutes. This will make the top layer nice and brown. Keep checking though, you don't want to burn the cheese!

Parsnip and nutmeg soup

This is a very simple soup, combining the earthy flavours of parsnips and nutmeg. This is the first dish I've made with my lovely new piece of kitchen equipment, a 1.4 litre food processor. Yay! I am insanely happy with it, a birthday present from my mum.

Ingredients
2 carrots
2 sticks of celery
2 onions
2 parsnips
a generous serving of grated nutmeg (about 3 tsp)
500 ml chicken stock, or 1 chicken stock cube
cream
olive oil
cracked black pepper
sea salt

Roughly chop the carrots, celery, onions and parsnip. Fry them in a little olive oil until everything is soft. Add 500 ml of chicken stock (or, simply 500 ml of water and a stock cube), the nutmeg and the seasoning. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and let the soup simmer. Just before serving, whiz the soup up with your NEW FOOD PROCESSOR. Alternatively, you could use a masher, but the soup won't be as refined. Serve with a little splash of cream.

Next week

While I'm getting over a cold by eating a spicy Indian lentil soup, made from ingredients in my cupboard, I'm online ordering groceries for next week. I love doing that, it allows me to plan my meals ahead and budget things a lot better than in my days as a student, when I went out to get groceries nearly every day. For the coming week, I've managed to find a few ingredients that I'll use for several meals. I've also decided to try out a new cuisine: I've bought the ingredients for Chinese egg fried rice and crispy pork belly. I love Chinese food, but I've never cooked it before, so that will be exciting!  Of course as I'm cooking for two, a 800g pork belly is far too much for one night; I've decided to split the pork in half and use the other half for a roast pork belly with apple confit, kale and potatoes. Another new recipe that has the same autumnal feeling is a parsnip and ginger soup. Then, I'm going Italian with a spinach lasagna, a tagliatelle with creamy mushrooms, and some veggie pizzas. Last this week I'm going back to lentil soups, making one with red and green lentils and some cannelini beans. Yum! I'll put some of the recipes online when I've tried them, dear readers :)

Indian-style vegetarian burgers, plus a carrot side salad

Yesterday I made Indian-style vegetarian burgers again, this time with a curry paste spice mix and 1:1  chickpeas to (what my supermaket calls) 'mixed beans and pulses' (this includes black eyed beans, soy beans, kidney beans etc). They turned out quite well, the beans made them a little softer than my other veggie burgers.

Indian spice veggie burgers
Ingredients (for 8 small burgers or 4 persons)
an inch-long piece of root ginger
3 cloves of garlic
1 tsp garam masala (an Indian spice mix)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground, dried coriander
2 tsp whole yellow mustard seeds
1/2 - 1 red chili
the stalks of a 40g bunch of fresh coriander (you use the leaves for the side salad - see below)
a 400g tin of chickpeas, drained
a 400g tin of 'mixed beans and pulses' (or just some beans you particularly like - I'd suggest mellow-flavoured ones though, like kidney beans -- black beans are probably a little too strong in flavour and colour)
1 egg
flour for dusting

sunflower oil


Chop up the coriander stalks, ginger and garlic very finely. Add these to the spices and pour in about 2 tsp of the sunflower oil. Make a curry paste out of the mixture, either by whizzing it in a food processor or by using a pestle and mortar. (If you're extra keen you can first heat the dry spices in a dry frying pan to release the flavour...)

Put the curry mixture in a large bowl and put aside. Now, ground up the chickpeas and beans in either a food processor or using the pestle and mortar. Do it in batches if you're not sure it will fit. Now, add the ground up chickpea-bean mixture to the bowl with the curry. Add an egg. Form 8 small patties out of the mixture, dust these with flour and put in the fridge for 30 minutes. Heat up about 4 tbsp of the sunflower oil in a frying pan and fry 4 of the patties for about 6 minutes (3 on each side) or until golden brown and hot. Repeat for the other 4 patties. Serve with chunky chips and a fresh side salad like the one below.

As a side dish I made the following.

Indian-style carrot side salad
Ingredients
4 large carrots
peel and juice of half a lemon
olive oil
the leaves of a 40g bunch of fresh coriander
40 grams of shaved almonds

Heat a dry frying pan and add the almonds, shaking continuously so that the almonds don't burn but just turn a nice golden brown. Grate the carrots very finely. Add the coriander leaves and lemon peel. Make a dressing 1:1 of lemon juice and olive oil and dress the salad with that. Scatter over the almonds. Enjoy with the veggie burgers (alternatively, this is a nice fresh side dish to go with a curry).

Mushroom and bacon wraps

Autumn! Seems like there's more yellowing leaves every day. We have a tree in front of our window now that we've moved, which is brilliant because it's a constant reminder of the season. It makes me want to cook rich, flavourful dishes: pies, soups, stews. And this wrap, a very simple recipe that has a lot of autumnal flavour.

Mushrooms!

Ingredients (2 persons)
300 grams of mixed mushrooms; I used a 1:1 ratio of chestnut and oyster mushrooms
100 grams of smoked streaky bacon (in rashers)
1 red onion
4 (wholemeal) wraps
1 tbsp paprika
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan. Chop up the onion very finely and fry. Add the rashers of bacon. Fry until the onion is caramelized somewhat. Meanwhile, slice the chestnut mushrooms and roughly chop the oyster mushrooms into bite-sized chunks. Add to the bacon and onion. Now add the paprika and season to taste. You don't need much salt because you're using bacon! Fry until all the excess liquid of the mushrooms has bubbled away and the mushrooms have browned a bit. Heat the wraps in a microwave (should take about 20 seconds). Put the mixture on your wraps and serve, perhaps with some refried black beans.

Tofu?! Yes, you can.

Whilst my noodles are soaking in hot water, and the rest of my prep is just waiting for me to heat up the stove and start cooking, I thought I'd update what I'm making today! It's really nice because it involves tofu. Most people I know fall into either of two categories. The first kind of people are not vegetarians themselves, so would never dream of cooking with tofu. But one of these days, they're going to have to cook for a friend or family member who is vegetarian, in which case they're going to serve a delicious 'tofu crumbled through tomato sauce served with spaghetti'. You know, because tofu is just like meat, only squishier. Yuk. The second group are vegetarians, who think tofu might be nice to add to a dish but feel a bit timid when they have to face one of those big blocks of processed white stuff, so rather opt for stuff made from tofu. Like smaller blocks. Today, I am going for a third option: I, a non-vegetarian, will face the processed block, and transform it! Make it delicious! It will be magical.

Ingredients
3 tablespoons of sambal (or, alternatively, of ground up whole medium hot chilis)
Enough oil to cover about a quarter inch of your wok
1 scary-looking block of tofu

Make sure the tofu is at least a little dry. You can do this by folding it into a clean tea towel and putting a brick on top of it (or just squeezing gently yourself), or you can do it with kitchen towels if you prefer. I squeezed the tofu, and I am proud of it.

Slice the tofu into finger-sized pieces, about a quart inch high. Heat up the oil in your wok, add the sambal and stir until you have a chili-flavoured oil with little chili seeds floating in it. Watch out for the hot oil! Now add the first batch of the tofu pieces, just so many as will cover the bottom of your pan with a little room to flip them over later. After about 5 minutes (depending on how hot your oil is!), the bottom of the tofu will be crispy and chilicious, so you can flip the tofu. Wait another 5 minutes or until the rest is crisp and transfer this batch onto a plate lined with kitchen towels. That way, you'll drain the oil. Now do the next batch, until you end up with the tofu in the photo!

Hurray, you've conquered the tofu! Make a stir fry with this, some bok choi, water chestnuts, ginger, coriander, garlic, sesame seeds, soy sauce and noodles - it will be delicious.

A decent curry

I've just come back to the UK after a long holiday. I've also moved into a new studio, with (finally!!) a a proper kitchen that has room for all of my cooking equipment, the different kinds of flour I have, all the herbs and spices, and (most importantly) I can now give my pestle and mortar a prominent in-view spot on the kitchen counter. So what else could I cook, in my very own new kitchen, than a curry? This one's simple, but you make it from scratch so it feels pretty impressive.

My curry when it just started to boil

Ingredients
A 2-inch piece of fresh root ginger
2 cloves of garlic
2 tsp dried cumin
1 tsp dried coriander
1 tsp mustard seeds
2 tsp of tomato puree
A small bunch of fresh coriander
2 tomatoes
200 grams of chickpeas
2 tsp oil (neutral in taste)

Peel and roughly chop the garlic and ginger. Roughly chop the fresh coriander, stalks included. Put the garlic, ginger, fresh coriander, spices, tomato puree and oil in the mortar and crush everything with the pestle until you get a fine paste. The leaves of the coriander will probably just wilt, don't worry if they still show as little green specks in your paste. Heat a frying pan on medium heat, put in the curry paste you've just made, add the chickpeas and about 200 ml of water. Slice the tomatoes into quarters and add this to the curry. Bring to the boil and wait until the water has evaporated and you're left with tender chickpeas. The tomatoes will break down, so you can pick out the skin of the tomato before eating. Serve in a bowl with rice or naan bread, or just eat as-is, enjoying your new kitchen :-)

Breakfast of (Hungover) Champions

After writing the black bean nachos recipe a few months back, I've been coming back to that recipe to make slight changes so that I can eat black beans more often. Today, they made for an excellent spicy breakfast. To keep it simple, I always keep some fried black beans in one-person portions in my freezer. I added some squash leftovers from last night (recipe coming soon!) and sprinkled over some feta cheese - voila, a breakfast of (hungover) champions. (Incidentally, try a web search for breakfast of champions - I find you either see incredibly healthy wholegrains or something extremely fatty. For shame, internet!)

Prep
As with the nachos you need to boil the black beans in water with a few bay leaves, an onion, some garlic and salt; then, you fry the beans in a little olive oil with (fresh) shallots and garlic, and sprinkle over some fresh lime juice. In this case, I would advice you add a (few) chili(s) to the fry-up with the shallots and garlic to make the breakfast nice and spicy. Then, you freeze this in one-person batches.

The squash side I made by peeling a squash, chopping up its flesh in 1 inch cubes, adding 4 tablespoons of tomato puree, and frying this in olive oil. After a few minutes, I added two cups of water and some freshly ground pepper and sea salt. After letting this simmer for at least 45 minutes (or until the squash is soft enough to easily bite through), I added a few sprigs of fresh curly parsley.

Ingredients
1 portion of frozen fried black beans (about half a bowl)
1 portion of leftover squash (about half a bowl)
75 grams of feta cheese
A few sprigs of fresh curly parsley

Defrost the beans in a bowl in your microwave. Push to one side of the bowl, add the squash, and sprinkle over the cheese. Put in a full power microwave for another 2 minutes or until the food is piping hot. Sprinkle over some fresh curly parsley. Enjoy!

Quick spinach, cream and lemon spaghetti

There's nothing better than my new pestle and mortar. With it, I made the following quick recipe. It takes about 10 minutes to prepare. If you don't have a pestle and mortar, you can use fine sea salt and freshly ground peppercorns. Make sure the peel of the lemon is grated very finely. Press the garlic. Mix these. It is not half as satisfying as mashing stuff with a big blunt instrument, though.

Ingredients (for 2)

1 clove of garlic, peeled
1 tsp of whole peppercorns
1/2 tsp of coarse sea salt
Grated peel of half a lemon
100 grams of creme fraiche
3 handfuls of well-washed baby spinach
125 grams of spaghetti

Cook the spaghetti until al dente. Make sure to keep a cup of the cooking liquid (easiest by just submerging a cup in the pan while you're cooking the pasta - make sure it's nice and starchy before you do this). Mash the garlic, peppercorns, sea salt and lemon peel into a fine paste using the pestle and mortar. Mix with the creme fraiche. Drain the spaghetti, then add the paste and creme fraiche and the preserved cooking liquid to the pan. Mix until covered. Add the spinach and stir until wilted. Serve quickly.

Squash & Black Bean Tortillas

Squash is a tricky ingredient. It needs to be peeled, diced and the seeds need to be taken out. Somehow, though, I find the entire exercise quite satisfying (and not as disturbing as, say, chopping up an entire chicken). It feels as if I've made an effort. It's not really that much work - five minutes tops, if you have a sharp knife. And once you have some tasty bite-sized dice of squash, you can make some lovely things. This is a filling for tortillas.

Ingredients (serves 3-4)
2 shallots, finely sliced
1 butternut squash (approx. 1 kg), diced into bite-sized chunks
250 grams leftover boiled black beans

olive oil
2 tbsp tomato purée
3 dried bay leaves
3 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp dried chili flakes
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
sea salt
freshly ground pepper

150 grams feta cheese
plain flour tortillas

Fry the shallots with the bay leaves in plenty of olive oil until softened. Add the squash and tomato puree and stir until everything is covered in the puree. Add the beans, cumin, chili, vinegar, salt and pepper and 400 ml of water (two glasses). Stir and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium. Let the mixture boil for about 30 minutes or until the squash has softened. Serve in heated tortillas sprinkled with feta cheese.

The Accidental Vegetarian - Black Beans Nachos

Black beans! Such amazing things. I put 250 grams of stone-hard tiny black beans in water to soak overnight and the water turned a deep purple, the beans swelled up to twice their normal size and when I boiled them for about an hour they turned into deep purple soft little creamy bites. Yes, it takes some time to get them where you want them - but then they're very, very tasty indeed.

Top left: dried beans; top right: swollen beans;
bottom left: boiled beans; bottom right: black bean nachos.

Ingredients - for two

Boiled black beans

175 grams of dried black beans

3 dried bayleaves

1 onion, peeled and quartered

3 cloves of garlic, squashed but still in their little jackets

2 tsp salt

Fried black beans

The cooked beans (see below)

2 shallots, finely sliced

1 clove of garlic, finely chopped

olive oil

half a lime

Salsa

2 tomatoes, finely chopped

1 green chili, finely sliced

olive oil

half a lime

Extras

1 avocado, skin and pit removed, halved and sliced finely

100 grams of feta cheese

2/3 bag of tortilla chips

Cooking the beans (start the evening before)

Put the beans in plenty of cold water to soak overnight (I used half a litre). They will swell up. The next day, drain the beans and put in a pot with a litre of fresh cold water, the bayleaves, onion and garlic. Don't put in the salt yet (this will apparently keep the beans from going soft). Now bring the water to the boil and leave it boiling for 20 minutes. Then turn the heat down to low, add the salt and let the beans bubble away for another half an hour. Drain, then take out the bayleaves, onion and garlic.

Frying the beans

Heat up some olive oil in a frying pan. Fry the shallots and garlic until soft, then add the beans. Stir for a few minutes, then turn down the heat. Add the juice of half a lime. 

Serving

While the beans are frying, divide the tortilla chips over two plates, evenly covering the surface. Top with crumbled feta cheese. Put each plate in the microwave for 25 seconds at full power. Mix the tomatoes, chili and lime. Top the plates with the chips with the beans, avocado and tomato mixture. Serve and enjoy!

Pre-weekly Links & Recipe Tips

I order my groceries online, which makes it very easy to complement dishes and remember every ingredient. It takes me an hour, mostly spent looking into cookbooks and websites for crazy new ideas. So, as if I'm an organised person, I can tell you that next week, I'll eat:

Indian & Vegan
Chickpea, Potato & Spinach Jalfrezi with Chapattis & Poppodums

Mexican
Black Bean Tostadas with Avocado (from Thomasina Miers's Mexican Food Made Simple)
Corn Tacos with Squash, Chorizo & Pickled Pink Onions (same book)

Quick Vegetarian Pastas
Fresh Tagliatelle with Chestnut Mushrooms & Stilton (my own recipe - coming up soon!)
Fresh Tagliatelle Alla Putanesca (from Valentina Harris' Perfect Pasta)


Easy Oven Weekend Food
Baked Cod with Lemon Potatoes & Greens
Pork Belly Roast with Baby Potatoes (my own recipe - coming up soon!)

Already looking forward to it!

The Accidental Vegetarian - Sweet Potato Bhaji

Never having heard of bhaji myself before I found them in the fast food isle of a supermarket, perhaps a little introduction is in order. Bhaji are Indian deep-fried onion & vegetable balls that you can eat as a snack or accompaniment to curry dishes. They're a little fatty (yum), and the supermarket version can be very dull, but when you make them yourself they're absolutely amazing. As always, this is my own interpretation, making it the simplest dish to cook, with very limited equipment needed.

The bhaji mixture and I.

Ingredients (for 12 bhaji)
1 sweet potato
1 onion
1 ten centimetre piece of fresh ginger
125 grams of self-raising flour
100 ml. cold water
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground coriander
500 ml of sunflower oil

Grate the sweet potato and ginger. If you don't have a box grater (somehow mine was misplaced during our move) just chop up the ingredients really finely. Finely slice the onion. Put all this in a large bowl and add the spices. Mix. Now add the self-raising flour and mix again. Slowly add the water, in three or four attempts, mixing carefully after each measure is added and testing the doughy mixture. Stop adding water as soon as you can shape little balls of the mixture between two tablespoons.

Heat up the sunflower oil in a wok or deep frying pan. It needs to be about 180 degrees centigrade for the bhajis to form so wait a while. Test the oil is hot by adding a piece of sweet potato and testing if it comes up bubbling right away. Once the oil is hot, shape the little balls between tablespoons and add as many of them as will fit comfortably in your pan (mine held about 6). Turn the balls after about 2 minutes and take the balls out as soon as they're golden and crispy on all sides. Put on a plate with some kitchen towels to soak up the extra oil. Enjoy, but be careful, they're hot!

Quick Spiced Egg Noodle Soup

Remember the Indonesian spiced eggs? I was feeling peckish yesterday so I made four, two to eat right on the spot and two to keep in the fridge. Today I found out what you can do with any spiced eggs leftovers by improvising the following simple soup.

Ingredients
1 Indonesian spiced egg
2 tbsp of the sauce these eggs are cooked in
The green bits of 1 spring onion, finely sliced
1/2 a chili, finely sliced
A tiny piece of ginger (half a centimeter, tops), finely sliced
1 nest of medium egg noodles
1/2 a vegetable stock cube

Boil some water. Put the (hard) egg noodles and stock cube in a bowl and add the water. Add the egg and its juice. Sprinkle over the spring onion, chili and ginger. Wait until the noodles have softened up (that takes about 5 minutes) and eat. Enjoy!

Refried Beans

I am not Mexican and have never been in Mexico. The only reasons I would be vaguely interested in Mexican cooking in the first place are twofold: first, my interest in tequila, and second, my memories of going to a Mexican restaurant which shares my name in my family's tiny Dutch home town. Both tequila and the restaurant's dishes were delicious enough to convince me to by a book on Mexican cooking a few weeks ago (Thomasina Miers' Mexican Food Made Simple, which you can buy here). So far I've tried my hand at two dishes: refried beans and quesadilas filled with said refried beans and cheese. Both were delicious! I'll give you the recipe for refried beans here. They were amazingly simple.

Ingredients
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 red chili
4 dried bay leaves
1 tbsp chopped coriander roots
(A tin of) 400 grams black beans, including their juice
50 grams butter
Salt and freshly ground pepper

Smash the beans in their juice with a fork until you get a paste-like structure (or use a food processor if you don't mind the extra washing up). Chop the onion and garlic finely, slice the chili thinly. Melt the butter over a high heat until it starts to bubble up. Add the onion and bay leaves and sweat until the onions are soft (about 10 minutes). Add the garlic, coriander roots and chili. Turn the heat low. Add the smashed beans, continually stirring. Season well. Let this simmer until the bean mixture has less moisture in it (the book recommends waiting until it easily falls of the back of a wooden spoon).

You can serve the beans as a dip with tortilla chips and some creme fraiche. And tequila!

The Best Sandwich

My friend and I had a little tradition going: two years in a row, we made a High Tea for Towel Day, thinking both Tea and Douglas Adams the Penultimate of Britishness. For our first get-together, I made this sandwich and it's been on my menu ever since, even though I suspect it's actually more typically American. People seem impressed - but it's simple food to cook.

Ingredients

1 avocado

Leftover roast chicken meat (dark and white, about 1 chicken breast's worth; or 1 cooked chicken breast)

100 grams thick smoked bacon
Mayonnaise

Freshly ground pepper

Good bread (I like this on multi-grain bread or bread with sesame seeds)

Fry the bacon until crispy (you don't need oil, the fat from the bacon is enough). Transfer to a plate, but leave the pan on the hob to warm your chicken meat in (and coat it in the delicious bacon juices!). Halve the avocado and thinly slice it avocado. Spread the mayonnaise on the bread. Put on a layer of avocado, bacon, and the chicken. Ground some pepper over this. Enjoy!

The Accidental Vegetarian / Mushroom & Plum Sauce Stir-fry

A nice healthy recipe to balance yesterday's chicken mania. Luckily, it's vegetarian wholly by accident, and so it contains no dried exotic pulses, fake meat, barley or condescension.

I wanted to add a picture of condescension and couldn't find one, so here are some oyster mushrooms.

Ingredients (serves 2)
4 eggs
1 orange pepper
3 spring onions
200g close capped button mushrooms
200g oyster mushrooms
200g medium thin egg noodles
2 tbsp soy sauce
4 tbsp plum sauce
A large gulp of sunflower oil

Heat the sunflower oil in a wok. Whisk the eggs with the soy sauce and pour into the oil. Wait until the bottom side of the omelet has cooked and flip. Wait half a minute more and transfer the omelet to a plate. If you're keen on reducing your fat intake, you can drain the omelet on some kitchen towels. Slice into small strips and set aside.

Cook the egg noodles according to package instructions. Drain and set aside.

Now, thinly slice the pepper, onions and mushrooms and fry in the left over oil. Stir-fry until the mushrooms have softened. Add the plum sauce and stir. Add the noodles and use tongs to mix them with the vegetables. Now take the pan of the heat and add the omelet strips. Serve and enjoy.

Fat, Salt (and Everything Nice)

I am an absolute genius. No, you can say what you like, but this meal is heavenly. It is absolutely mindboglingly amazing. I think it's all the double cream, salt and chicken fat that does it. Taste and enjoy; my boyfriend exclaimed, with the first bite he took: "I will never eat a saltless diet! Even if it shortens my life span, I want to eat this chicken." He's on to his third piece now... if I hadn't polished off the rest myself he'd probably keep eating.


Ingredients
For the chicken
Free range chicken legs and thighs (5 pieces)
Salt
Pepper
Olive oil
5 cloves of garlic

For the parsnip 'hutspot' (mash)
1 large onion
1 stock cube
750 grams potatoes
500 grams parsnips
50ml double cream
Salt

In a quick Google search for fat and salt, this is the yummiest photo that came up.

For the mustard sauce
25 grams of salted butter
25 grams of plain flour
10 tbsp of the hutspot water
100ml double cream
1 tbsp dijon mustard

First, preheat the oven to 240 degrees C. Rub the chicken all over with the olive oil and place on a baking tray, skin side up. Sprinkle half a teaspoon of salt over the skin, ground some fresh pepper over all pieces. Throw the cloves of garlic around the chicken. Put in the oven and immediately turn down the oven temperature to 190 degrees C. Leave the chicken in the oven for at least 35 minutes; check whether the chicken is cooked through by pricking the fattest bits with a fork and look whether a clear liquid comes out.

While the chicken is roasting in the oven, peel your potatoes and parsnips and chop them in rough pieces. Peel away the outer layer of the onion and chop up in eights. Put the veggies on in a pot of water, add the stock cube. As soon as the vegetables are all tender (this takes 20 minutes or so), drain and mash. Add the double cream and salt (to taste).

While the veggies are cooking, quickly make the mustard sauce: melt the butter on medium heat, take the pan off the heat and add the flour. Mix until you get a doughy consistency and the butter and flour are mixed well. Add some of the veggies' cooking liquid and the double cream. You should get a silky, slightly thick consistency. Add the mustard and stir.

Serve the 'hutspot' with a piece of chicken on top and the sauce spooned around. Enjoy!

Ratatouille Pasta with Secret Ingredients

Let me just say this outright, once and for all: I don't like courgette. It has a weird texture. I don't see the point of courgette. In fact, I wouldn't mind if courgettes died out, so no one will ever again get away with serving it. Especially the vegetarians. 

So, my 'ratatouille' pasta has a different balance. The emphasis lies on the aubergine, the texture of which I do love (when it's cooked right). When stewed slowly in tomato sauce it can get a meaty, hearty, but silken texture that is to die for. It's a perfect ingredient for a Turkish or Greek stew, for an Indian curry, or even for a basic pasta sauce.

Ingredients (plenty for 4)

2 onions

4 cloves of garlic

2 tomatoes

2 aubergines

2 peppers (somewhere on the red/yellow spectrum)

200 grams of close capped button mushrooms

200 grams of chopped tomatoes (tin/carton)

A tablespoon of tomato paste

Olive oil

Italian seasoning (basil, oregano)

Half a teaspoon of salt

Pepper

500 grams of (dried) rigatoni pasta

Secret Ingredients

1 stock cube

A knob of butter

100 grams of a mixture of Parmesan and (organic) cheddar cheese

Heat the olive oil in a large pan to medium heat. Chop the onions and garlic and stew until the onions are soft and translucent. Meanwhile, chop up the (fresh) tomatoes, aubergines and peppers into 1-inch cubes. Put in the pan and add a generous helping of salt (it helps extract water from the aubergine, which makes the texture nicer), some fresh pepper and the Italian seasoning. Add some more oil and stir. Now chop up the mushrooms into quarters. Add the mushrooms, the chopped tomatoes (from your tin/carton), tomato paste and stock cube to the stew. Stir again. Turn the heat up until the sauce starts bubbling away and then reduce the heat. Let the sauce simmer for 20 minutes (or more). Drink a bottle of red. Return to your cooking. Cook the pasta with a bit of salt. Drain. Add the pasta to the sauce. Grate in the cheese. Add the butter. Stir. Serve.

Maple Syrup & Date Crumbs

While my lamb shoulder rogan josh curry is slowly bubbling away, a short update on what no one in their right mind would call cookies. They're more like crumbs. Delicious, sugary buttery crumbs you have to scrape off the baking tray. Mmmmm....


Ingredients (makes 16 slices)
125 grams salted butter
100 grams of white granulated sugar
1 large egg
50 grams self-raising flour
75 grams (porridge-quality) oatmeal
A little maple syrup (or use maple syrup flavoured oatmeal instead!)
10 dried dates
Plastic sandwich bag

Warm the butter in the microwave (5 seconds at full power, don't let it start to melt too much). Mix in the sugar with the butter until you have a homogeneous mass. Add the egg and beat. Now add the flour and oatmeal. Mix, make sure there's no flour left in the edges of your bowl. Finely chop up the dates and add to the mixture, stir until distributed evenly. Spoon the dough in a plastic sandwich bag and knead into a cylinder of about 5 cm in diameter. Put the dough in the freezer until hardened (about 30 minutes will do).

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C. Take the dough out of the plastic bag and cut into 1 cm slices. Squash the slices a little bit until the centre of the slice is thicker than the edges. Put on a baking tray. Repeat. Make sure you leave some space between the slices - they'll spread out tremendously. Put in the oven and bake for 10 minutes or until the edges of the slices are brown. Take the slices out of the oven and carefully lift them off the baking tray and onto a wire rack (this is easier when the baking tray is still warm). Leave them to cool. Chances are about half of your slices will bend, break or crumble as you lift them, leaving you only with crunchy, buttery, sugary bite-sizes crumbs... That is your intention.

Chicken Three Ways

In the cooking shows I watch they love it when a contestant cooks something Three Ways. It nearly always means they've done something complicated, like made a duck sausage stuffed in the duck's neck, duck sousvide, and crispy duck skin. However, the chicken I used for three meals last week is simple, yet certainly cooked three ways. This chicken will be enough for two.

Day 1 - Roast Chicken

Ingredients
A big chicken (2 kg)
A lemon
A few sprigs of rosemary
Half a bulb of garlic
An onion
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Preheat the oven to 240 degrees C. Prick the lemon all over and put it in the microwave for 40 seconds. Half the onion and take the cloves out of the bulb of garlic (don't peel). Stuff the chicken with the lemon and the rosemary and rub the olive oil all over the chicken, inside and out, and in the folds. Sprinkle over a decent amount of salt and pepper. Put chicken, onion and garlic cloves in a roasting tray. Put this in the oven and immediately turn down the temperature to 200 degrees C. Roast the chicken in the for at least the time recommended on the packaging (for a 2 kg bird, my supermarket recommended 105 minutes). Baste the chicken every 20 minutes or so (drizzle the juices in the roasting tray over the chicken, especially the legs and breast, so that the legs don't dry out and the skin becomes extra crispy). Take the chicken out of the oven and leave to rest for about 30 minutes. Take the rosemary and lemon out of the chicken and throw these away. Serve the legs and thighs of the chicken with boiled baby new potatoes and a simple salad.

Why this is simple - apart from getting over the possibly scary "I have to handle a dead whole chicken!" moment, preparation will take you less than 20 minutes. Then, while the chicken is roasting and resting, you have two hours to watch someone stress over their duck sausage masterpiece on TV. Excellent.


After dinner - make chicken stock for the next day (see below), or if you're fed up with cooking, at least put the chicken, roasting tray with onions and garlic and all, in the fridge covered in cling-film.


Day 2 - Chicken Soup
Ingredients
Yesterday's chicken, onion and garlic
2 vegetable stock cubes
100 grams of bean sprouts
200 grams of corn
1 leek
100 grams of dried egg noodles, broken up in small pieces
Salt
Pepper


You now have a chicken without its legs and thighs, but otherwise still fine. Cut off the breasts and put these in a container in the fridge (you'll use them on day 3). What remains is a chicken carcass with some bits and bops of meat on it. Cut this in half and put in a large pan with the onions and garlic. Cover with 2 litres of water and the stock cubes. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and leave to simmer for at least two hours. Then take out the onion and garlic and throw them in the bin. Take out the chicken carcass pieces and start doing the fun job: tear the pieces of edible flesh (and offal, if you like it) off the bones with your bare hands and set these aside. Throw out fat, skin, bones and other nasty bits. Put the chicken flesh back in the stock. Clear your worktop because it's a huge mess now. Then chop up the leek thinly and put it in the soup with the corn and egg noodles. Leave this soup to simmer for another half hour. Then add the bean sprouts and serve.

Why is this simple - well, again, you have over two hours to watch TV. And there's the nice simple relaxing bit of tearing up chicken flesh.

Day 3 - Chicken enchiladas
The chicken breasts
2 avocado's, sliced
100 grams of creme fraiche
Tomato salsa
4 plain flour wraps
100 grams of cheddar cheese, grated
Olive oil
Mexican spice mix (cumin, chili, garlic, cayenne, smoked paprika, oregano)

Fry the chicken breasts with the spices until hot. Serve in the wraps with the sliced avocado, a dollop of creme fraiche, salsa and cheese. Enjoy!

Why is this simple - there's no waiting time, but the actual instructions are short and before you know it, you can laugh at the guy on TV who went all out with the duck three ways.

Burritos for a Rainy Day

It's a rainy day and I couldn't focus on  the dreadfully dry economics textbook I was reading. But when my lovely partner requested burritos I brightened up! I made him some oven baked flour tortillas with a chili con carne filling, mature cheddar cheese on top and an acidic tomato salsa and creamy chunky guacamole as accompaniments.

Ingredients (for 2, with leftover sauces!)
For the guacamole:
2 ripe avocados
3 tbsp creme fraiche
Half a lime
2 tbsp freshly chopped coriander leaves
Half a clove of raw garlic, finely chopped
Salt
You can also choose to add finely chopped tomato or green olives.

For the chili con carne:
200 grams of lean beef mince
2 small onions
2 cloves of garlic
2 small potatoes, peeled
400 grams of chopped tomatoes (tin/carton)
400 grams of mixed beans in chili sauce
Mexican spice mix (cayenne, smoked paprika, cumin, oregano)
Olive oil
Salt

For the burritos:
Chili con carne
75 grams of mature cheddar cheese
4 plain flour tortillas
A little olive oil

Start by making the chili. Heat some olive oil in a large frying pan. Fry the onions and garlic until soft, add the mince, salt and spices and brown. Chop the potatoes into half inch cubes. Add the mixed beans, potatoes and chopped tomatoes to the chili. Stir. Leave to simmer on low heat.

While the chili is simmering, make the guacamole and the salsa. For the guacamole, spoon out the avocado flesh and mash with a fork. Add the creme fraiche and juice of half a lime, the coriander leaves, garlic and salt (and tomato or olives if you're using them). Mix. Set aside.

Grease in an oven dish with some olive oil. Fill the tortillas with the chili and fold. Put in the dish and grate over the cheese. Grill for about 5 minutes until the cheese is melted and the top of the tortillas is golden. I guarantee you your rainy night in will brighten up!

Copyright, Potato & Aubergine Curry

In her book Eastern Vegetarian Cooking, Madhur Jaffrey gives the following recipe, passed on to her by Neela. I feel lucky that the book has passed it on to me, so now I pass it on to you! This might be the modern technology version of a family recipe... (This remark might contain a lesson about dealing with copyright issues.)

Ingredients for 4 servings

2 tsp mustard seeds
500 grams peeled, diced potatoes
500 grams diced aubergine
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground tumeric
1/2 tsp cayenne
2 tsp salt

To serve
4 tomatoes
Salt and pepper
A bunch of fresh coriander
Natural yoghurt
Naan

Heat the oil in a large wok or casserole pan on medium heat and add the mustard seeds. Toss around for a few seconds. Add the potatoes and aubergine an all the spices. Add the salt. Toss to coat the potatoes and aubergine in the spices, then add a splash of water. Put a lid on and turn down the heat. Let this curry simmer for at least 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender and the aubergine melts in your mouth.

Slice the tomatoes and season well. Chop up the coriander. Put the curry on a plate with the tomato, naan and yoghurt. Sprinkle the coriander over the curry. Serve. Thanks Madhur, thanks Neela!

A Real Vegetarian Burger

By now you know that I don't really fancy store-bought vegetarian burgers. So, yesterday, I tried a home-made version and I loved it. So, maybe you will too!

Ingredients
800g canned chickpeas
1 red onion
2tsp ground coriander
2tsp ground cumin
6 tbsp plain flour
4 tbsp olive oil
1 lime
Salt and pepper
A lot of frustration about bad burgers

Use the frustration to mash the chickpeas to mush. Finely chop the red onions, then zest and squeeze the lime. Add the zest, juice, coriander and cumin to the mushed chickpeas. Mush a little more. Get your hands in and make four patties. Coat in the flour. Heat the oil in a large frying pan and cook the burgers on both sides until they are golden brown and crispy. Serve with home-made tomato salsa and creme fraiche on burger buns (lightly toasted under the grill).

Vegetarian Burgers: Preview

Usually the vegetarian burgers you can buy in the shops are bland, boring and dry. They pretend to be something they're not. So when I found a recipe for homemade chickpea burgers, I thought I might as well give it a try! I'll put the recipe up later, but here's a preview photo.

Lazy Caesar

This Lazy Caesar took me no more than 10 minutes.

Caesar approves of laziness.

Ingredients
150 ml Caesar dressing
2 heads of Romaine lettuce
2 large eggs
75 grams of Parmesan cheese
1 prebaked garlic baguette

Bake the baguette and tear into pieces. Soft-boil and peel the eggs. Roughly chop up the lettuce. Grate the cheese. Mix the lettuce, cheese and dressing. Serve with the baguette and a halved egg on top.

Unsolicited Advice and Cauliflower Soup

The world's full of unsolicited good advice. My crisps have a label on them that tell me I shouldn't eat them every day, the cheese I buy comes with a red warning label that makes me feel as if I'll die tasting it and the veg I buy scream out 'Nice try, but you should eat 5 portions of us!'. It's starting to feel like a  competition - can you meet the requirements every day? (Funnily enough, this man tried and nearly died.)

That is not to say of course that this advice is all rubbish. Some of the arguments out there make a lot of sense. I particularly like this one, a talk by Mark Bittman about our eating habits. He promotes eating less meat (for reasons explained well in his talk) without becoming a vegetarian completely (basically because it's so tasty). 

Cutting back on meat is what I try to do, too. (It all started when I read this book.) Next week, I'm going to take this to the next level by trying to cook only vegetarian meals for me and my partner. A huge feat, but after buying this book by Madhur Jaffrey I got inspired. She is all about accidental vegetarian food, taken from countries in the East. Next week I'll try one of her dishes, plus a couple of exotic others from this fun volume:

Indian aubergine and potato curry with naan (from Jaffrey's book)

Halloumi skewers on a fennel and white bean salad with flatbread

Tofu and pak choi stir-fry with egg noodles

Falafel burgers on buns

Tacos with chickpea salsa and home-made guacamole

I'll keep you posted about the results! Until then, how about this nice veggie soup?

Ingredients

1 cauliflower

2 large potatoes

200g carrots

2 large onions

2 cloves of garlic

200g mature organic cheddar cheese (yes, the one with the red warning label)

1 tbsp English mustard

2 veg stock cubes

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Clean the vegetables, remove the green bits from the cauliflower and the eyes from the potatoes. Dice the potatoes, carrots and onions finely, chop up the garlic and slice the cauliflower in thin slices (about 1cm). Heat some olive oil in a large pan and put in all the vegetables. Fry until the onions are soft and yellow, making sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan. Meanwhile, bring a litre of water to the boil. Add the water and the stock cubes to the vegetables and bring to the boil. Then, let the soup simmer until the vegetables are nice and soft. Use a masher to mash the vegetables. Grate the cheese and add the cheese and mustard to the soup. Season to taste. I served this with garlic bread. 

From Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food book. I did not use celery and I did not pulse the soup. I also used less water.

Boring Old 2005 Burgers

Tonight I made a pretty boring dinner. Or at least, it would have been pretty boring in 2005. In that year, I moved into a place of my own and I didn't know a thing about cooking. (So one of my best dishes (honestly) consisted of putting oil, frozen veg, pre-boiled potatoes and a can of fish in a pan and turning on the heat. Woo!) So had I bought these vegetarian burgers, corn on the cob and two huge baking potatoes for dinner then, that could have ended badly...

Ingredients
Vegetarian burgers
Corn on the cob
2 large baking potatoes
Butter

As you know, I'm not a big fan of things that pretend to be meat. But I decided to try these, they looked nice. They weren't, really. (Always trust your instincts.) So what to do? In 2005, I guess I would have tried ketchup (woo!). Today, I tried this:

Fry the burgers in some olive oil. Meanwhile, microwave-baked the potatoes. Yes, that is a thing - it's actually a lot easier than baking them in the oven. Just prick them with a fork and place them in the microwave at maximum power. Ten minutes will do, just turn them around halfway through. Keep checking, the microwave time of course varies if your potatoes are slightly bigger or smaller. And, meanwhile, put the corn in boiling water with some salt and cook for about 8 minutes. Then, make the following little side dishes.

Ingredients
Mushrooms
Mexican spice mix (smoked paprika, crushed cumin seeds, garlic powder, oregano, chili powder)
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

Chop up the mushrooms, fry them in a little olive oil and sprinkle over the spice mix, salt and pepper. This really masked the dull taste of vegetarian burgers!

Ingredients
Half a small onion
Half a chilli
100 grams of cherry tomatoes
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 clove of garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
Smoked paprika
Cumin
Oregano
Salt and pepper

Chop up the onion, garlic and chilli really finely. Chop up the tomatoes. Mix these together with the lime juice and olive oil. Add all of the spices. This makes for a nice and tangy, spicy salsa.

To serve, put everything on a plate and put a small knob of salted butter on both the corn and the baked potato. Enjoy your dinner reminiscing about 2005: the World Year of Physics, the year the Kyoto Protocol came into effect, the year with the first leap second since 1998 (December 31st, 23:59:60) and the year I moved out of my parents' house.

Next time, I swear I'll try to make my own veggie burgers!

Spicy Spanish soup for lunch

I'm not a big bread person, so I love to have soup for lunch instead. Most of the time I just buy read-made soup pots, but today being Sunday I decided to cook my own Spanish-style potato and sausage soup. The most important element of this dish is the chorizo, you really can't get the same taste without it. Not bad for the first non-vegetarian dish on this blog! (If you do want to leave it out, try adding a lot of paprika for the smoky flavour).

Ingredients
500 grams of sweet potato

2 medium onions
2 cloves of garlic
2 sweet pointed peppers
150 grams of carrots
150 grams of celery
100 grams of chorizo (a spicy Spanish sausage)
1 red chilli
2 vegetable stock cubes
salt and pepper
olive oil

If you're extra-keen, skin the pointed peppers. In any case, remove the core and seeds from the peppers and the chilli. Finely chop the peppers, chilli, onions, garlic, sweet potato, celery and carrots; slice the chorizo thinly. Fry these ingredients in a big soup pan in a little olive oil and let them soften for about ten minutes. Bring a litre of water to the boil. Crumble up the stock cubes and add them to the soup with the water. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and let the soup simmer for another ten minutes. Just before serving, squash the vegetables with a masher. Serve with chunky bread, if you're that kind of a person.

Not Actually Crumble

Yesterday I had three hard-working men for dinner. I had some indication when they'd be round, but not exactly, which made timing the dinner a bit complicated. I decided to buy ingredients for a 15-minute pasta dish to cook when they arrived, but I still wanted to impress, so I went all-out on the dessert instead. I had a vague notion of what I wanted to do: there was a big bag of frozen fruit in my freezer, flour and dark sugar in my pantry and a package of salted butter in the fridge. So I did a sort of crumble, making it up as I went along.

Ingredients
400 grams of frozen raspberries, blackberries, blackcurrants & redcurrants (or other summer fruits)
100 grams of salted butter
100 grams of dark brown sugar
150 grams of plain flour
Double cream

Pre-heat your oven to 180 degrees centigrade. Grease a casserole, set aside. Cut the butter into tiny, tiny cubes (this is my way of making sure I can work with hard, cold butter - probably not the right way, but you warm it up with your hands and all goes well). Mix with the flour in a big bowl, using your hands, until the butter/flour mixture gets the consistency of breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and mix a bit.

Put the frozen fruits in the casserole and pour over the crumbs. Put in the oven for about 40 minutes or until the top layer of crumbs is golden, just while you're preparing the rest of the food and waiting for people to arrive. Leave in the oven (mine makes sure the temperature goes down as soon as the 40 minutes are over) until you serve it. After serving, pour over some double cream.

Say it was a crumble experiment!

Long Day at the Office

OK, OK, technically I don't have an office. I do, however, spend long days working so it's nice to be able to put up an essy, yet tasty dish when I get home. My partner has it even worse - during the week, he has the most terrible commute, so I end up cooking most of the time. Luckily I find nothing more relaxing than cooking!

Today I decided to do a pasta dish with fresh tagliatelle and spinach.


Ingredients
200 grams of fresh tagliatelle (store-bought for convenience!)
a knob of butter
1 small onion
2 cloves of garlic
250 grams of fresh spinach
100 grams of ricotta cheese
Zest of half a lemon
100 grams of parmasan
freshly ground black pepper
plenty of salt

The tagliatelle only takes a small while to cook, so be careful about your timing. Boil some water with a pinch of salt and put in the tagliatelle (check the package for the required time). Meanwhile, chop the onions and garlic very finely and put some butter in a hot pan. Add the onions and garlic. 4 minutes before your pasta is cooked, cook the spinach.

Cooking the Spinach, an Alternative
Because I hate watery spinach (and so should you...) I microwave mine. It only takes 3 minutes. If your spinach comes in a plastic wrapping bag, pop some holes in it and put that in the microwave (careful, it will get hot!). If you have bought loose fresh spinach, put it in a (microwave safe) bowl, cover it, and microwave for the same amount of time.

Now that the spinach is cooked, add it to the pan with the garlic and the onion. Add the ricotta and lemon zest. Drain the pasta, add the pasta to the pan and mix the ingredients. Shave over the parmasan and taste. Season well - this dish needs quite a bit of salt and pepper.

Mmm, Soup!

A couple of years ago, I came across a lovely cooking ingredient in a small whisky distillery. They sold mustard that they had infused with the taste of their fairly smokey, unfiltered and unblended whisky. I decided to add some of it to soup, together with fresh mixed mushrooms and mascarpone and thus the triple M soup was born! You can make it with your own favourite type of mustard; in the recipe I've used a course grain French mustard.

Ingredients
600 grams of fresh mixed mushrooms (such as chantarelles, oyster mushrooms, chestnut mushrooms, button mushrooms)
4 tbsp coarse French (whisky) mustard
150 grams of mascarpone
3 fresh stalks of rosemary
2 cloves of garlic
1 litre of vegetable or mushroom stock (from a stock cube)
A knob of butter
Freshly ground pepper
Salt

Chop up the mushrooms into bites small enough to eat, but make sure you can still discern the different types. Finely chop the garlic. Fry the mushrooms and garlic in the butter until soft, then add the stock. Put in the rosemary and mustard to add some flavour and bring to a boil. Once the soup is boiling, return to a low heat to simmer for 30 minutes. Before serving, add the mascarpone and stir. Check if the soup needs seasoning and add pepper and salt to taste.