My Kitchen

Posted on April 2, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

I don’t really have the conventional kitchen. Most people would expect that I have a fancy oven and all the gadgets that come with it. But I don’t.

Freya and I live in a converted garage that didn’t get proper planning permission. Consequently the garage to house conversion ended up being a living room and a bedroom. No kitchen! So I made one. Sort of…

We had some old IKEA bedroom stuff knocking about so I constructed a base from this, then I added some ‘legs’ on top of the base – and then a desktop balanced on the legs. It kinda works – check IKEAHacks for other ideas!

As for appliances – all we have is:

A combination microwave oven
A round Andrew James Halogen Oven
A portable induction ring
A Magimix

That’s it for appliances!

So when you see me cooking in a linear fashion – and not multitasking – it’s because I can’t. I only have one ring and the confines of a halogen glass bowl!

Couscous and Moghrabieh with Oven Dried Tomatoes

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Moghrabieh is big couscous. I got some in my Ottolenghi food box for Christmas this year – and this is the first time I’ve used it. I have some dried limes too – I just haven’t found a recipe that uses them yet!

You can find this recipe in Yotam Ottolenghi’s – The Cookbook, BTW – the book is full of awesome recipes which I will hopefully come back to sometime soon.

I wasn’t intending on making this yesterday – but it was one of very few things where I knew I had all the ingredients. Both of us were off work with ‘the flu’ and spent most of the day sniffing and coughing and feeling sorry for ourselves. By 4pm we realised we really should eat something but the cupboards and fridge were somewhat bare. We’d made a mistake in not doing our shortlisted order with Ocado on the Sunday and were paying the price today. We’d have to wait until tomorrow for a grocery delivery. Modern day shopping really does make you lazy! We have a reasonable excuse. Our nearest grocery store is 12 miles away in Henley and you just can’t beat the quality of the groceries that Ocado delivers.

This is quite easy to make – but will take two hours to be ready (minimum). Even longer if you make the Labneh that is recommended as an addition. Labneh takes a day to make at least – I cheated and used some feta. Feta is a handy swap for some cheeses as it means you can reduced the amount of salt you put in food. And I always have feta.

You have to slow roast a lot of tomatoes in a balsamic glaze and wait for them to ‘dehydrate’ – I left them on the lowest setting of my oven.

While you wait for the tomatoes, caramelise some onions. Then prepare the Moghrabieh until it is al dente. Drain and leave to cool. Then prepare the couscous in some vegetable stock. You have a lot of time to do this. Those tomatoes take a long long time! We even went for a nap.

Once the tomatoes are ready, mix the couscous, moghrabieh, onions and tomatoes in a serving dish – including all the tomato juice and some Nigella seeds and mix a little. Add some Nigella seeds and more Olive oil as a topping and you are done. Dress with cheese if you want !

This makes a lot of food. So either reduced your quantities, invite your friends round – or be prepared to eat it for a few days!

I swapped couscous with bulgar wheat – because I forgot to check I had all the ingredients. I don’t think it makes any difference – they are quite substitutable apart from the preparation time.

This is one of those recipes that you should be able to make any time of year as there are no seasonal ingredients to worry about. It’s also great because you will always have leftovers for work the next day! Just make sure you get really tasty tomatoes!

In hindsight I should prepared more tomatoes. They are the centre of the dish and I don’t think I had enough of them in relation to the grain. Other than that this dish is spot on.

Slow Roasted Tomatoes

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I knocked this up as a snack during the day yesterday. I had gone to the fridge to see what I could possibly make for dinner and there really wasn’t much in there. This week’s selection of recipes had yet to be ordered from Ocado so we were somewhat short of food. I did however have a lot of tomatoes!

I couldn’t remember what I’d even bought them for and then remembered that Natoora had an offer so I’d bought them without a real use in mind. That said I love tomatoes so they weren’t going to be wasted.

These Slow Roasted Tomatoes are from the ‘One Good Dish’ cookbook by David Tanis – and they are very easy – they just take a long time to be ready.

Cut some tomatoes in half. Drizzle with Olive Oil, Sliced Garlic and Basil and bake until they are done. I did them at 150 degrees C for and hour in a Halogen oven and they took on a really sweet taste.

You’re supposed to have them with fish, but we just munched them while we waited for our ‘proper’ dinner to be ready.

Tasty things don’t need to be difficult. This was easy – you just need good tomatoes – like Natoora!

Plenty – Yotam Ottolenghi

Posted on April 2, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

Most people I know swear by Jamie Oliver for their quick easy recipes. I swear by Yotam Ottolenghi.

Why? Well Jamie does do a lot a good food but my personal opinion is you aren’t going to keep your weight down. He makes lots of things with pasta and potatoes – especially in his 30 minute meals book. Also – Jamie cooks mainly with meat. Not exclusively – just mainly.

We are by no means vegetarians – at least we weren’t! Freya (my fiance) probably won’t go back to the dark side. We just decided that the only way to get Freya’s vegetarian mum to eat better was to adorn her with lots of yummy vegetarian things that were easy to make – and hope that it rubbed off.

Plenty – one of the Holy Trinity of Yotam Ottolenghi’s cookbooks – is not exclusively vegetarian. That said – there are enough vegetarian recipes in this book that you won’t have to search for the Sides section and hope you can turn the dish into a main meal.

I’ve made almost every vegetarian recipe in this book and on the whole they are all incredibly easy, tasty and versatile. Only on a few occasions did I have to go to specialist shops for ingredients.

I can’t recommend this book enough. There is a lot of ‘foody talk’ in this book – and I generally don’t read the ‘blah blah blah’ – having been put off by Nigella’s half page introductions to almost every recipe. You will read this though. The man knows his stuff, he’s interesting, relevant, passionate and keeps things simple.