Rosemary Popcorn

Posted on June 16, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

Is popcorn cooking? probably not. Although you can burn it and it might not pop if you do it wrong!

This recipe came from Maria Ella’s – The Modern Vegetarian. It’s not really a recipe when you say ‘pop some corn’ – much like another cookbook I have where they tell you how to make a shandy by pouring lemonade onto a beer.

We have bucket loads of popcorn kernels. When you visit a health food shop and see ‘Buy one get one half price’ you really do believe that ‘yeh I will eat that much popcorn’. Trust me you won’t!

A 1 kilogram bag of popcorn will feed a small country for about 20 years. So be prepared to have your spare bag of popcorn move house with you – much like the unused ‘fenugreek seeds’ and all the other Bart spices that you thought were a good idea at the time!

True story: when Freya moved in with me in Gamlingay, we sorted through my kitchen supplies and she found a Schwartz tub of Hot Chilli Powder that was older than she was! I bought it from Costco when I moved out of home in the 80s – thinking giant tubs of spices were great value for money – and it has taken up space in my kitchen cupboards for over 20 years!

Anyway – back to the popcorn! All you have to do here is melt some butter, or oil in a pan with some chopped up small rosemary. It’s probably a good idea to have a lid on your pan or you’ll be making a bit of a mess. It’s also a good idea to have a heavy based pan or it’s going to blacken and burn. I have cast iron Le Creuset pans – which are more than heavy enough !

Get the pan hot – add a layer of popcorn kernels (which really isn’t a lot at all) and put the lid on. It’ll pop in less than a minute. Once the popping abates turn off the heat – and let the remaining kernels pop. Take then out of the pan – put them in a bag with some sea salt and shake it. Job done!

Whatever you do – don’t be impatient. Take that lid off too early and those kernels are gonna be all over your floor.

I made three pans worth – about the size of a large freezer bag – and we couldn’t eat it all. I ended up feeding the left overs to the ducks!

Fresh Borlotti Bean Cassoulet

Posted on June 10, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

Does anyone know where to get Fresh Borlotti Beans? I don’t so I couldn’t really make this as per the recipe. If I’m honest I only chose this recipe because I found a couple of tins of them whilst packing up our food as part of our house move and figured I could swap them out without much fuss.

This dish is also from Maria Ella’s ‘The Modern Vegetarian’ – and was pretty easy – and is really just one of those ‘throw it all in a pan’ affairs. The end result is ‘posh beans on toast’ (if you serve it with toast!).

This was nice and quick and took me less than 30 minutes to make – although the recipe suggests that the longer you leave this to infuse the more tasty it will become! We ate really late last Sunday (when I made this) so the flavours didn’t have a chance to infuse. That said the leftovers were definitely more tasty when we had them at work the following day.

To make this you simply fry celery, onion, carrot and garlic (all diced very small) into some olive oil. Once soft add bay leave, sage and oregano, the beans (I used two 400g tins), chopped fresh plum tomatoes (I had a lot of Heritage ones that were very very ripe so I favoured these) and cook.

Now ordinarily in the recipe you would add water to cover the beans and cook for 50 mins or so. But my beans were already cooked so I didn’t bother with this step. I just added enough water to keep the consistency of my beans similar to that of a tin of baked beans.

When it’s all ready you remove from the heat – add lemon zest and lemon juice and some basil and serve with some toasted bread.

As quick dishes go – this was very quick. But I did cheat. This would take far longer if you used fresh beans.

This is quite a nice go to dish if you’re short of time. And it is far better than a tin of baked beans!

Smashed Pea, Dill and Feta Crostini

Posted on June 4, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

I love green food. I love peas. Fresh peas. And this dish from Maria Ella’s ‘The Modern Vegetarian’ caught my eye whilst I was shortlisting things to make this week.

If you leave out the bread, this is a raw dish. No cooking. Very very simple. Toasting bread isn’t cooking anyway – unless you are one of those toast burners out there. So this really is a no cook dish.

It was another quite late dinner for us as I foolishly placed an Ocado delivery for 8pm. I chose this recipe because it was the quickest and I was hungry. Very quick to make this one!

You can make this in less than 10 minutes. And here’s how:

smash some garlic in a pestle and mortar
smash some dill and salt into the garlic
smash some fresh peas into mix
add olive oil, keep smashing
add lemon juice keep smashing
add parmesan and smash a bit more
add crumbled feta – ease off on the smashing
toast some ciabatta – try not to smash it
serve with some pea shoots on top – if you can find them

You want a texture a bit like this – rather than a massive mush!

One thing you must be careful not to do is watch the last five minutes of Season 4 Episode 8 of Game of Thrones whilst doing all this smashing. It just doesn’t sit well !

This is a great simple easy dish – looks lovely – tastes amazing – and you can adjust the amount of parmesan (or leave it out all together) if it’s too cheesy for you.

This was supposed to be a starter for us – but it was filling enough that we didn’t need to eat anymore.

I’m sure this will be one of those go to dishes when I’m time starved or just want a quick bite.

Shakshuka

Posted on May 27, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

Some dishes taste better than they look. This is one of them I think.

This dish is a typical Middle Eastern breakfast dish – but yet again because we were late back from the boat – 10:30pm this time – I ended up throwing this together in about 25 minutes.

It rained all day on Sunday so we decided to take a trip to IKEA to pick up two small sofas to go in the wheelhouse of our boat. Sadly – we did the bad thing which was changing our minds on what we wanted – picked something a little bit bigger and found it didn’t fit ! It was a real shame as it meant we just lost a tonne of time driving all the way back to IKEA to return the oversized items and then had to queue for a refund and buy what we had originally planned to buy. By the time we’d done these two trips (from Maidenhead to Wembley) and assembled, dismantled, reboxed, returned, then assembled the smaller sofas it was very late indeed.

We were happy with what we should have bought in the first place though so it really doesn’t matter. Just lost lots of time!

Anyway, this dish is basically poached eggs in a tomato and red pepper sauce. Very simple and very tasty.

After dicing a couple of red peppers and chopping a good half kilo of ripe tomatoes, you fry them off with some Harissa (again!) garlic, cumin and tomato puree until you get a nice thick sauce.

At this stage you make some wells in your sauce and crack eggs into them – then cook until they are done. While they are cooking you wiggle the whites into the sauce a bit – and that’s it!

You serve this dish with Labneh or a thick yoghurt. I used creme fraiche – given I hadn’t made any Labneh (it does take at least a day to make it) and wanted to keep our yoghurt for something else.

Basic, fast, and very tasty. A definite dish to have in the bag when you have no time on your hands.

We definitely have to get out of the habit of eating so late. It’s not good for us! But better than eating nothing and going to bed on a rumbly tumbly.

Spicy Carrot Salad

Posted on May 27, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

One thing I really struggle with is taking photographs of Orange food with an iPhone. All the pictures on this site are taken with my iPhone – and nearly all of them look acceptable – apart from the orange and really purple things. No idea why! Anyway – apologies for the photos of this dish!

On Thursday we got home a little too late and all I could think of making in a short span of time was this. Another dish from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem book.

This is essentially some steamed carrots mixed with some spices. Very simple but very tasty. Another dish I made in less than 30 minutes !

While the carrots are steaming (or boiling as it says in the book) you fry some onions with some harissa, cumin and caraway seeds. Once the carrots are done you slice them, add them to the onion and spices, with some cider vinegar and sugar.

Then you just serve them with some rocket. It is recommended that you leave this dish for a while for the flavours of the onion and spice mix to infuse into the carrots.

It doesn’t get simpler than that really. In reality this is just a side dish – but given the time of day this ended up being our main meal. Typically this would be a meze dish and as Ottolenghi says you could experiment and substitute the carrots for either pumpkin or butternut squash.

The recipe calls for Pilpelchuma (or Filfel chuma if you are searching wiki) – which is very similar to harissa anyway – although it is implied it might be a little more spicy. There’s a recipe later in the book to make it yourself but I just didn’t have the time – maybe some other time!

Freya thought this was too spicy. I really liked it.

One thing I’d change is to lightly crush the carrots. I don’t like the appearance of carrots when they are just sliced – reminds me of Sunday Roasts and school dinners – they look a bit primitive this way – whereas the crushed look is far more trendy and visually appealing.

Parsley and Barley Salad

Posted on May 27, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

Cooking seems to have been put on the back-burner (pardon the pun) this week. We’ve just been so busy that eating seems to be the least of our worries. After this week things should settle down and I can get back to cooking properly again.

This very very simple salad is pretty much all I could manage on Friday after I had picked my daughter up from her ballet class, a mere 100 miles away from where I live! Another late dinner – it was definitely past 9pm by the time we ate this. Which isn’t good for you I know. Still it was quick and easy – you can make it in less than 30 minutes – easily!

This is another Yotam Ottolenghi recipe from Jerusalem. I seem to have messed up somewhere and not reviewed his book. I’ll do that soon – as there is so much in that book I want to make. I just don’t seem to be focused on much more than getting our boat relocated to Brentford this week – so my head is in the clouds.

All you do with this recipe is boil then simmer some pearl barley – and not much either – and while it is getting ‘al dente’ chop some parsley, green pepper and spring onion. You also toast some nuts (I overdid mine quite a bit – but it didn’t seem to matter).

Once the pearl barley is to your liking you drain it and let it cool – and then mix with all the other ingredients, some lemon juice, oil and then crumble in some feta.

This dish is so fresh and really delicious. And it keeps pretty well too.

I’ve made this before – as has Freya – and we both keep coming back to it – so it must be good.

It’s a shame the parsley from Natoora was so leggy. Much like the recent batch of spinach from them, the parsley was all stalks and little parsley – and the parsley itself was very papery. I wasn’t overly pleased – which is a shame because usually Natoora are my go-to vegetable and fruit supplier at Ocado.

Pureed beetroot with yoghurt & za’atar

Posted on May 22, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

The countdown has begun and we are beginning to panic. We move the boat a week today – and we are very nervous. There is so much to do – and not enough time to do it. This weekend is a write off due to family commitments – so we are going to the boat after work and working until there is no light left. Last night we worked until 9:15pm – got home at 10pm – and then I started cooking. This was part one of our dinner.

Fortunately I’d already roasted the beetroots for this dish the previous day – so this could be made in less than 20 minutes. Very simple indeed.

Whizz the beetroot, Greek Yoghurt, Garlic, Olive Oil , Za’atar and a Red Chilli in a Magimix – until blended. Don’t blend it too much as you want it to remain coarse.

In the book it says thicken it with mashed potato if it is too runny. As luck would have it I had 4 potato and spinach cakes that I hadn’t cooked yet just sat in the fridge – so I blended them in too to make it thicker. It didn’t change the flavour at all – just made it thicker!

Once blended to the consistency you want you top with roasted hazelnuts, spring onions and goats cheese. Very very simple.

Freya popped over to her parents and pilfered a couple of slices of bread – which we toasted and dipped into the puree. It was very late when we ate dinner – almost 11pm. Not ideal to go to bed straight after work but we were both exhausted. It had been a long day! We made lots of this – and took the rest to work and shared it with our colleagues at lunchtime.

Za’atar appears in a number of Middle Eastern dishes. Wiki says – ‘Za’atar is using a mix of ground dried thyme, oregano, marjoram, or some combination thereof, mixed with toasted sesame seeds, and salt, though other spices such as sumac might also be added’. My pot of Za’atar came from my Ottolenghi ingredients box that Freya’s mum bought me. It smells lovely – and really brings the beetroot to life.

This recipe can be found in Jerusalem – another great book by Yotam Ottolenghi.

I think this would be really good as part of a Meze, or with pitta bread – a really good substitute – or rival for Houmous.

I’m guessing tonights dinner will also be a very late one. But at least the end is in sight – and in a week we can take a well earned rest!

Dates and Turkish Ewe’s Cheese

Posted on May 22, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

After three days of eating bread and cheese (our go to lazy eating solution when we are at the boat) we got back to work and made this for lunch.

Another Yotam Ottolenghi recipe from the book Plenty. This very simple salad is both very quick to make and incredibly tasty. I think it looks pretty awesome too.

I can’t imagine many people will find Ewe’s Mozzarella in their local supermarket. Ottolenghi himself goes to a cheese specialist not far from his restaurant in London. I used a good quality Buffalo Mozzarella as I didn’t have the time.

Ottolenghi does this a lot. A green thing, a nut thing, a fruit thing and a cheese thing – with a dressing. And I have to say it seems to work everytime (except with Verjus !).

This one is rocket, mozzarella, almonds and Medjool dates. The dressing is olive oil and pomegranate molasses. There’s some basil and dill in there too.

I love this – very fresh – very summery – looks beautiful – and got me back in the mood for cooking again.

Lovely.

Barley and Pomegranate Salad

Posted on May 14, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

This incredibly simple salad is lovely. Yotam Ottolenghi makes amazing salads – this is another one from Plenty.

Simply prepare some pearl barley (boil it until it is tender and has a little bite to it) and then drain and cool under the tap. When it is done throw in some pomegranate seeds, diced celery, coriander, dill and a dressing. Couldn’t be easier than that. If you buy untrimmed celery, keep the celery tops (the leaves) and add them at the end too.

You could probably make this in less than 30 minutes.

I knocked this up in next to no time and it really tastes so fresh, crunchy and filling. I only made this to keep us going while I made something else – but turns out I needn’t have bothered. I was surprised at how full I was after only one bowl. Plenty of leftovers meant we had it for lunch at work the next day too.

As a child I thought pearl barley was something cheap you used to pad out a stew. How things have changed. It crops up in many of Ottolenghi’s dishes – and other Middle Eastern themed cookbooks.

It’s another great substitute for rice (much like freekeh) and has five times as much protein.

I usually have all the ingredients for this knocking about – so I’ll be sure to make this again