Aubergine and potato winter stew

Once when I was still a student, me and my fiancee decided to check out a Turkish restaurant down the street from my flat. There was nearly no-one in there, but the food was excellent. One dish I still remember was an aubergine stew that was so tender and meaty it made me forget all the bad ratatouille I had ever had.
The tomato sauce it was sitting in reminded me of  a simple and beautiful dish I had in Antwerp one summer in what was then advertised as the cheapest restaurant in town. Basically, it was potatoes that had been stewed in tomato sauce until they nearly fell apart. Inspired by both dishes, I've made a hearty winter stew. It's vegan, but only by accident. If you do want to have some meat in it, try adding some cubed, fatty lamb neck or shoulder when you add the potatoes and add another 20 minutes to your simmering time.

Ingredients (serves 4)

An aubergine

4 medium-sized white potatoes
1 aubergine
2 400ml tins of peeled tomatoes
400ml can of cannellini beans
1 medium-sized onion
2 cloves of garlic
125 ml red wine
1 tbsp paprika
1 tsp cumin
3 tbsp olive oil

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Slice the aubergine into 1 cm thick slices and put on a plate. Sprinkle generously with salt in order to drain them of some of their bitter juices and make them more tender. This takes about 30 minutes. Just before this is done, roughly chop the onion and garlic and fry these on a medium heat in a large casserole pan in 1 tbsp olive oil. Peel the potatoes and slice into 1 cm cubes. When the onion is softened and slightly browned add the potatoes and the rest of the olive oil. Now carefully remove the salt and the juices from the aubergine with some paper kitchen towels. Slice the aubergine into 1 cm cubes as well, and add to the pan. Stir occasionally, and wait for the aubergines and potatoes to colour a little. Then add the peeled tomatoes, cannellini beans, wine, paprika and cumin. Once the stew comes to a boil, turn down the heat a little, put the lid on the pan and simmer for about 60 minutes. Serve with crusty bread (I used ciabatta).

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.