Mung Bean Casserole

Posted on April 7, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

There are some days when you just can’t be bothered. Today is one of those days.

In fairness the reason I can’t be bothered is I took the day off work to sand and paint the outside of our boat and it has been raining since yesterday evening. You can’t really sand in the rain. Electricity and water don’t mix particularly well. Even if it stops raining, the sanding disks just clog up with damp paint so it’s a fruitless task.

So. Eleven I clock came round and I figured I should make something for lunch and just hope that the rain goes away. I wanted something warm – salad wouldn’t cut it this time.

The mung beans I ordered from souschef.co.uk arrived at the weekend so this seemed like the most appropriate Winter warmer to make for such a wet day.

This is a one pot affair. Just make sure you have a big one. A lot goes into the pot.

After frying off the vegetables and spices and chillis, you add the mung beans, potatoes and capsicum peppers and simmer until the beans are done. You then add an inconceivable amount of spinach, tomatoes and lime juice and it’s done.

It’s pretty easy and it tastes so good.

It makes ever such a lot. I reckon we will be eating this for a while. It has a lovely warming flavour but it isn’t spicy even if it does have a Scotch Bonnet chilli within.

This is the best thing I’ve made from Veggiestan so far. I really like thing kind of ‘curry’. It’s not really a curry but it could easily pass one.

The recipe suggests you might want to eat it with rice but I can’t see why you’d want to have it with anything. It’s a meal all by itself.

Well it seems to have stopped raining so off I go to the boat!

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.

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!

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.

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.

Radishes a la Creme

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This isn’t cooking in any sense of the word. It’s cutting up some radishes and putting a blob of creme fraiche next on top.

If you don’t have a watermelon radish, or daikon it’s not going to be particularly exciting. That said – if you do it really works !

The combination of the three radishes (salad, daikon and watermelon) offers different textures and crunches.

Dressed with some whipped up Creme Fraiche and salt and pepper – this dish couldn’t be simpler or quicker provided you have a very sharp knife.

You never know what you are going to get when you buy a watermelon radish. Sometimes they are really colourful inside and look amazing. Other times (like this time) they just don’t offer the amazing contrast on the plate.