Crunchy Fennel Salad with Pomegranate, Mango and Walnuts

Posted on April 20, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

Another ‘no-cook’ recipe – unless you count toasting some walnuts for a few minutes, this salad is very nice indeed – very refreshing and pretty simple to make.

One thing that always puts me off salads with mango is I am rubbish at breaking down a mango. I always make a mess and end up gnawing on the stone like a dog with a bone – just because I don’t like wasting any of it. Mangoes are a very inconsiderate fruit. I mean why put such a large stone in a fruit that big. Once you’ve removed all the flesh, julienning it seems to be just one step too far. Although on this occasion I seem to have done quite a good job.

Pomegranates are another one of those fruits that makes you just want to buy a pot of the seeds. That said the seeds are never as juicy as buying a fresh pomegranate, cutting it in half and whacking the back of it with a heavy spoon (or my preference the pestle from my glass pestle and mortar). All I’d say is whack them into a separate bowl rather than over the fennel like I did – as the juice splashes everywhere and makes the fennel look like it took part in a horror movie.

That’s as hard as the prep gets though. Just add the mango and pomegranate to some sliced fennel, sliced red onion, red chilli and the toasted walnuts. Toss it all together with some lime juice, coriander and lemon thyme.

This is a wonderful salad and can be found in ‘Friends Around the Table’ by Acland Geddes and Pedro da Silva. This was again taken from a pullout from the Times Eat Magazine.

Orange Salad with Dates, Chillies and Preserved Lemons

Posted on April 20, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

This dish had potential but it failed for one simple reason. You need sweet ripe oranges. Mine weren’t sweet enough. They were actually pretty bland as oranges go.

I’ll probably give it another go as the concept was good. Sliced oranges, sliced dates, sliced preserved lemons and a red chilli – it should have worked. But I think the addition of orange blossom water made it a little bit too floral – and with the oranges not being sweet Freya felt it was a bit ‘soapy’!

This did take next to no time to make. Just slice up all the ingredients and serve it.

The recipe came from ‘Flavours of the Middle East’ by Ghillie Basan. I don’t own the book – I’ve got way too many already. This book was featured in ‘Eat’ – The Times Magazine recipe section.

A Well Earned Dinner

Posted on April 20, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

Finally I get the time to cook something nice.

It’s fair to say we’ve both been working out butts off on the boat the last few days – and not without one or two sacrifices.

We were supposed to go to the annual Industrial Goth-fest that is Resistanz in Sheffield this weekend but decided the boat came first. We are moving it next Saturday and the boat just isn’t finished. So we’ve been working some very long days – until around 8:30pm and just grabbing a snack or skipping dinner all together.

We said we’d compensated by going Rock’n’Roll dancing at Kicking the Boogie in Uxbridge but that didn’t play out either – Freya got covered in enamel boat paint and I was just exhausted from all the up and downing that is getting in and out of a 1920’s cast iron Dutch Barge.

So this was dinner today: roasted potatoes, orange salad and fennel and mango salad. It was all pretty yummy – apart from the orange salad that had mixed reviews.

All these dishes came from the pull outs of either the Times or the Telegraph. In the past I’ve been disappointed with magazine pullout recipes – they are usually a bit boring. The ones in the Times – Eat I think – are usually taken from a recently released cookbook – so they stand more chance of being a bit more special.

Hopefully I’ll find some time to cook in the next week – but we are both off – trying to get the boat painting finished before we move it to our new mooring. Mind you – if the weather was anything like today, there’ll be no painting. It hammered down all day and didn’t let up.

Anyway – back to my Gin and Cranberry juice!

Herby Omelette Thingies

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Funny name for this granted – its kind of an omelette, kind of a frittata.

I knocked this up on Monday when Freya said she was hungry and it was way too late to eat. The cupboards were pretty bare but I knew I had the ingredients for this and it was very quick and easy to make.

I’m not convinced the recipe in the book is the smartest way to make this. Basically, you fry some herbs in butter/oil and after a short while you pour a batter of eggs, flour and baking powder over the top and cook on low for 10 mins until the eggs set.

The problem with this is the herbs will burn. They get trapped under the eggs – get all the direct heat and lose all their flavour and don’t look at all appetising. The herbs lost a lot of their flavour too.

The picture I’ve taken with this was my take on the same dish. I can’t see the point of frying fresh herbs – so I make the recipe differently as follows:

Crack 3 eggs into a Magimix
Chop a bunch of mint into a Magimix
Add a cup of frozen peas into a Magimix
Add 10ml Plain flour and 1/2 tsp baking powder to a Magimix
Season
Turn on the Magimix for 5 seconds
Pour the omelette mixture into a medium heated pan
Cook on a low heat for 10 mins
Either flip it and cook for a couple of minutes more – or slide under a grill
Serve

That was a much better solution as the herbs retained their flavour and nothing looked burnt.

For added awesomeness – add cubes feta cheese – that really does make an awesome snack.

Tomato, Fennel and Arak Soup

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Gee it seems like ages since I made anything. But it has only been a couple of days.

We’ve been under a lot of pressure to get the boat finished and have basically been eating shop bought dips and cheese and bread for 5 days while we put in lots of hours sanding and painting – desperately trying to get it finished before we move it next Saturday.

That said – there were some ingredients in the fridge that needed using up – and there were still three recipes left to make from Veggiestan – so I made this.

Just in case you’re wondering, Arak is an anise-flavored distilled alcoholic beverage traditional to Lebanon, Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries. Ouzo, Pernod, Rakir are acceptable substitutes. I have Rakir and Pernod – but for my soup I used Pernod as I figured it had more of an aniseed taste.

I don’t usually make soups – especially when the weather in the UK has been pretty good and salad inducing. I leave soups to my mother-in-law. She has a Thermomix (which I bought her a year ago) and this makes amazing soup with next to no mess – so generally soups are left to her. This one caught my eye simply because it contained alcohol.

It’s trivial to make this. Chop some red peppers, fennel, tomatoes, onions, garlic and soften. Add some stock, spices and alcohol and simmer until it’s done.

This is really chunky and really tasty. Fennel is an amazing vegetable and people just don’t use it enough. I stirred in some creme fraiche at the end and I think it spoiled it a bit – so the second bowl I left it out and it was much better.

The ingredients for this recipe are often left over after a weeks cooking – so I think I’d probably contemplate making this each time – it took less than an hour – and I imagine it’ll keep quite well. It might even be good cold as a kind of Gazpacho.

Afghan Leek Pies

Posted on April 9, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

I don’t usually make this sort of thing as I’m not a big fan of shallow frying things in lots of oil. They just can’t be healthy. That said they caught my eye so I thought I’d give them a go.

These are pretty simple to prepare – but take quite some time to fry. I think the proportions are all off in the recipe too as I have over half the filling left over after using up all the pastry!

This is basically a flour, salt and water dough – cut into thin circles (I used a cocktail shaker which had a handy 9cm diameter !) and filled with a mixture of mashed potato, leeks and spices.

The recipe says you’ll make 20 but I made nearly 40!

They are quite nice and we tried them with an assortment of dips from Creme Fraiche to Ketchup to Garlic Jam (from the Isle of Wight Garlic Farm). I think keeping it simple with something like yoghurt or creme fraiche is best. Ketchup overpowered them even though they were quite spicy.

There is clearly a lot you could change here – any filling would probably work as long as it was quite solid.

It wasn’t the best choice of dinner as these are really better placed in a buffet or in the middle of the table in a meeting at work (that’s where the 30 left over ones are going). Eating five each was enough – and we usually eat much lighter food than this.

That said – if these were in front of you and you were distracted with a good film – or like we were with the first episode of Season 4 of Game of Thrones – then you might just munch your way through all of them without realising it.

I had another one of these before going to bed (just like Nigella might) and they weren’t as crisp as they were when they were freshly fried – but the recipe does say they keep well – so we’ll see tomorrow.

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.

Pomegranate and Cucumber Salsa

Posted on April 7, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

Another late dinner for us. – way past 9pm. And there was a choice. More Mung Bean Casserole (see previous post) or something else. Something else won the coin toss.

This is another dish from Veggiestan by Sally Butcher.

Once I’ve made more than half a dozen things from a book and liked them I can safely recommend the book. Apart from the shocker that was Figs and Fried Eggs, everything else has been awesome – and there’s still half a dozen things I haven’t made yet.

The keen eyes amongst you will realise as I did that this dish could have been called anything – there are a lot of ingredients in this dish other than the two in the title. Pretty much every ingredient in this dish is in equal proportion. Pomegranate, cucumber, tomato, peppers, spring onions, mint, coriander – lots of very fresh ingredients. There is also a hot chilli pepper to give it some kick. I added a Scotch Bonnet. There’s even more zinginess from the juice of some limes.

This recipe is in the Meze section of the book and is supposed to be part of many other dishes. We had it on its own as it was getting late and I realised I had missing ingredients for the other things I wanted to make. It is very enjoyable on its own anyway.

I never feel bad eating salad late at night – it’s hardly going to pile on the pounds. In any case we can dance it off tomorrow night when we go Rock’n’Roll dancing!

Fattoosh

Posted on April 4, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

When it’s 9pm and you haven’t eaten yet you have a choice. Don’t eat, or knock up a fattoosh. I made this in less than 15 minutes!

I’ve made a number of fattooshes (fattooshi? not sure what the plural is). Ottolenghi’s fattoosh has a buttermilk dressing and is diced smaller. This one is very chunky – those cucumbers and tomatoes in the picture are 1.5cm dice.

Fattoosh belong to a family of dishes known as fattat – which tends to use stale flat bread as a base – which usually has sumac over it to give the dish a sour taste and it will usually have parsley in it.

Fatt means crush! oosh is just a suffix – so fattoosh I guess means crushed.

This dish – like a number of dishes in Veggiestan – has a lot of fresh herbs. This has a handful of parsley, coriander and mint (well it’s supposed to – I always put more – much better than throwing it away).

This is incredibly zingy, crunchy, fresh and tasty. The olive oil, garlic and lemon juice dressing really gives it a kick.

Also in the dish are peppers, black olives and spring onions.

And I really love the toasted bread in olive oil, dusted in sumac. Sumac is amazing – it always brings toasted bread to life.

The recipe calls for pitta – but I didn’t have any so I just diced a french stick and did it with that.

The other good thing about a fattoosh salad (we just decided the plural of fattoosh is ‘fattoosh salads’) is that – even at 9:30pm – you can stuff your face with this endlessly and never feel full up.

Veggiestan Waldorf Salad

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When I read this recipe in Veggiestan I thought ‘hmm, might be a bit boring’. How wrong could I be.

This is a very exciting take on a Waldorf Salad and would make the perfect side to anything from fish to chicken to Halloumi – I could go on.

We both thought that it could be made into a perfect main with the simple addition of some bread (maybe pitta or garlicky croutons) and some cheese (maybe shaved parmesan – or Freya’s preference Stilton).

I like this kind of dish on a work day because you can take all the ingredients to work in their raw state and just prepare it when you want to eat.

There’s nothing worse than preparing a salad in the morning, popping it in some Tuppaware and then seeing it degrade before you get to eat it. You can prevent this somewhat by keeping the dressing separate but as soon as you start cutting apples or such-like they will lose their colour – so it’s best you just do it when you want it.

A traditional Waldorf salad is made from fresh apples, celery and walnuts, dressed in mayonnaise, and usually served on a bed of lettuce. This dish differs slightly with the addition or raisins, chopped coriander and chopped mint, green pepper and onions. Also there is no mayonaisse. The dressing is made from yoghurt, oil, saffron, seasioning and cider vinegar.

I used some really colourful little gem lettuces (with nice purple tinges), and red onion in my version to make it look less green.

I love this. It packs a punch and has lots of different textures and flavours running through it. It’s a great salad – and it’s made with ingredients I usually have knocking about. I’ll never make a traditional Waldorf again.