Green Pancakes and the East End Gangster Cookery Show

Posted on May 12, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

There’s a woman from the US who has a cookery show. We think she’s a fake – acting as an Italian gangster’s wife and she cooks everything in character. Her name is Nadia G. and her show is called Bitchin’ Kitchen. Hopefully it’s all tongue in cheek – I’ve never really watched it – but it got Freya to thinking; maybe I should record some YouTube videos and cook in the style of Bob Hoskins or another East End Gangster. She’s often mocking my accent – being born in Ilford there’s still a bit of Cock-er-knee in there sometimes!

You could imagine it couldn’t you – ‘ere we ave some nice apples and pears with a raspberry veloute – blindin’.

She seems quite keen for me to do it. Not sure I could keep a straight face! We shall see.

Anyway – this recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi.

I like making this kind of pancake – and Ottolenghi has many variations on a style. I’ve made them with Sweet Potato and I think also with sweetcorn – and these with Spinach are equally nice.

The pancakes are quite small – and you can make lots of them – so you have enough to eat for now and snacks or seconds for later.

Essentially its just a pancake batter with spices – and then some cooked, squeezed and shredded spinach is added before frying them in olive oil. You’re supposed to use self raising flour but I didn’t have any – so I added 2 tablespoons of baking powder. You also fold in a ‘beaten to soft peaks egg white’ which made the pancakes quite fluffy.

I made the mistake of buying Natoora Spinach from Ocado. I usually just buy the baby spinach from Ocado, but Natoora do some amazing pomegranates, lemons and tomatoes – so I thought I’d give their spinach a go. Unfortunately, from a 400g bag of their spinach I only ended up with 200g after removing all the stalks. It was very stalky indeed !

I fried these two at a time in an omelette pan and ended up with 12 pancakes – perfect to stack in a pile of three – it doesn’t look like there is much spinach in them – but there is and you can certainly taste it.

That said – when I make them again I’ll probably add even more spinach to them.

You eat these with a chilli and lime butter – which you make by creaming some butter, adding lime, coriander and chilli and then resetting it in the fridge in a sausage of cling film.

These are really nice. We had three each before going out to the Goth Club ‘Electrowerx’ in London to listen to Ivardensphere. And another three each when we got home at 1 in the morning. Yummy!

Plenty – Yotam Ottolenghi

Posted on May 12, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

When I first conceived of the idea of stripping, despining, scanning and tossing all my cookery books, the first book I stripped was this one. It just happened to be on the top of a pile of books that didn’t quite find their way onto the bookshelf due to lack of space.

Heartbreaking as it is to cut up books with a craft knife (and a little dangerous I might add) there really isn’t an optimum way of laying out a book and photographing the pages. You’ll always get shadows, and then of course you’ve got to OCR the pages to recognise the words. It’s a pain.

When I scan the pages into my Mac, I use ReadIris Pro to recognise the pages and format them to PDF. They are then searchable, making it easy to find recipes based on ingredients. Genius or what !

Anyway back to the book.

I couldn’t have chosen a better book to start with. I don’t think there are many recipes in this book that you’d leave out. First time round (before Christmas) I made maybe 15 recipes from this book. I just wasn’t blogging then. This time round I have chosen 10+ dishes that are different from last time. Hopefully I have photographs from the lap of the book; if I do I’ll share them with you.

For those of you that have not heard of Yotam Ottolenghi, he is the master of all things Middle Eastern. He has has a couple of TV series and has featured on Australian Masterchef, The Taste, and often writes in the Guardian. He’s not a vegetarian but his recipes clearly reflect his preferences towards eating less meat and more vegetables and pulses.

He uses lots of traditional Middle Eastern ingredients like dried limes, freekeh, sumac, za’atar, moghrabieh and pomegranate molasses. The ingredients aren’t always readily available from supermarkets but I didn’t have to look too hard to find most of them online. I was also lucky enough to get an Ottolenghi cook box for Christmas from Freya’s mum with lots of ingredients in it. Which kind of made it easier.

Nothing in this book takes long to make, and he always precedes each recipe with a tiny tidbit about how the recipe came into his hands and why he likes it. It’s a very special book – it was a shame to cut it up.

This week – I’ll try and make:

Dates and Turkish Ewes Cheese
Figs with Basil, Goats Curd and Pomegranate Vinaigrette
Freekeh Pilaf
Barley and Pomegranate Salad
Avocado, Quinoa and Broad Bean Salad
Asparagus, Fennel and Beetroot with Verjus
Green Pancakes with Lime Butter
Garlic Soup with Harissa
Black Pepper Tofu
Sweet Potato Wedges with Lemongrass Creme Fraiche
Spicy Moroccan Salad
Sweet Potato Cakes
Brocollini and Sweet Sesame Salad
Brussel Sprouts and Tofu

I hope they are as good as they look!

Roasted Parsnips and Sweet Potatoes with a Caper Vinagrette

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We were in a rush to cook something quickly before going Rock’n’Roll dancing and I realised when we got home that I was pretty much one ingredient short on almost all the recipes I wanted to make.

Fortunately I had all the ingredients for this – Roasted Parsnips and Sweet Potatoes.

Unfortunately I didn’t have enough time to make it – so I had a choice – go dancing and not eat – or eat and not go dancing. Dancing won the day ! And it’s good we went everything seemed to fall into place and we started getting the moves right. Superwoman’s, flat hand pushes, and ‘the ladies rest’ all seemed to come together beautifully. Happy days. Now we have three moves – the sky’s the limit!

We got home around 11pm and I resumed the cooking – and finished it this morning – so we’re having it for lunch today.

Essentially you roast some parsnips, red onions and sweet potatoes in garlic, rosemary and thyme and towards the end throw in some cherry tomatoes. After a 90 minutes roast (from start to finish) you dress the roasted vegetables in lemon juice, olive oil and capers. It’s very easy – just takes time in the oven. Even the prep is easy as you don’t even need to peel the vegetables!

If you were a roast dinners kind of person this would be a very nice twist on some otherwise plainly roasted vegetables. I think it is a great dish in its own right – the lemon juice and capers really brings a whole new flavour to the vegetables.

You really can’t go wrong with Ottolenghi.

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.

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.

Gorgonzola and Walnut Crostini

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I’ve been waiting to make this for a few days but didn’t have any bread !

We got the munchies on Sunday whilst tidying up – so I decided to put this together. And it’s pretty easy.

Brown some onions slowly so they get nice and brown and sweet – and then add some rosemary and leave to cool down.

Toast some bread on both sides – then add the gorgonzola, walnut halves and onion – and grill again until the cheese melts.

I didn’t have any crostini – so I just used a sliced up baguette – but it was very good. Definitely one to do again. Another awesome Ottolenghi recipe.

Fried Leeks

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This seemed good until I read the recipe a bit closer and I was dubious that it would work.

After boiling some leeks until they are soft and patting them dry, you dip them in egg and breadcrumbs and fry.

You also make a pickled red pepper topping – and a yoghurt, sour cream sauce. You then plate the fried leeks with some sauce and peppers – and a few chopped spring onions.

Unfortunately leeks aren’t good carriers of egg – and in the end the breadcrumbs and eggs just ended up being separate entities in the pan.

It still tasted good – very good in fact – it just didn’t look great. I don’t think I’d make them again just because I like my food to look good.

I still haven’t made an Ottolenghi dish I haven’t enjoyed – I just didn’t like the presentation of this one – but that’s probably just my fault.

Sweet Potato Fritters

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I love sweet potatoes. They are colourful, sweet, and have nowhere near as much starch as a regular potato.

This Ottolenghi dish is quite different in preparation to the leek fritters I made the other day – even if they do look the same.

I roasted my sweet potatoes until they were soft (I find you get a more intense flavour). I think the book suggests you boil or steam them.

Once you’ve drained and let the potatoes cool down you add a spice/chilli mix and mash to a quite thick puree.

You then fry them in 5cm wide x 1cm thick patties (mine are always larger) until they really brown – almost to the point where they look burned (like a good bubble and squeak).

You serve them with a yogurt dip (like most of the street type food in the Plenty book).

These are awesome – you really should make these. If they were just for me I’d add more chilli.

Two Potato Vindaloo

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Most people see the word Vindaloo and think – HOT!!!!! – I don’t want anything that hot. Unless you’re like me and buy insanely hot chilli sauces just so you can inflict them on your friends and colleagues.

If you go on the title you’ll probably avoid this dish – until you check the ingredients list and realise it can’t possibly be hot. Yes there are spices – and yes there is one red chilli – but it’s just a regular red chilli – not a Scotch Bonnet or Ghost Pepper.

Vindaloo – means Wine and Potatoes. (vin = wine) (aloo = potatoes) and was created by the Portugese (and not the Indians as you might originally have assumed. The dish evolved and the wine was typically substituted for vinegar.

This dish conforms to all those rules – only in this case we have sweet potatoes and waxy potatoes (mine were new potatoes) cooked in a tomato and spiced sauce with garlic and white wine vinegar – along with a red pepper.

I made a lot of this. More than 3 meals worth and – as it says in the book – it just gets better the longer you leave it. This is the third day – and the spices have just made the dish even better.

Ottolenghi has some amazing recipes in the Plenty book – it’s one of the best books I own. This dish is excellent – although I think a contrasting dish alongside would be good.

Leek Fritters

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So we ran out of food midweek. This only ever happens when we are oncall for work and can’t go out !

Anyway I decided to dig out my copy of Yotam Ottolenghi – Plenty.

This was the first book I scoured for recipes and struggled to eliminated anything I didn’t want to cook. In the end I made half the things in the book – including the Leek Fritter dish. Sadly I forgot to take a photo at the time – hence me making it again.

This isn’t a quick dish – but it is worth the effort. It certainly fills a hole and is very tasty.

All you do is sauté some leeks and shallots and once they have cooled down toss them in a spiced batter and egg white mixture.

Fry them like pancakes and they go all fluffy in less than 5 minutes – mainly due to all the self raising flour and baking powder.

These are really yummy – especially with the yoghurt and sour cream dip which has been blended with garlic, coriander, parsley and lemon juice.

They must be good. My mother in law loved them!

A definite keeper – and you can make these in advance – and take them to work the next day and reheat.