Textures of Beetroot

Posted on June 13, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

Anyone that follows what I eat knows that I eat a lot of beetroot. I love the stuff. Not that awful prepackaged stuff – or the stuff that comes in a jar pickled in vinegar – but proper raw beetroot.

Roast it yourself (I always do mine in a halogen oven) and all the flavour just comes out – yummy. The books always tell you to wrap them in tin foil but I never do. They seem to come out just as well whether you wrap them up or not.

One big issue with this though is your cooking time – and the time it takes to get the food on the plate is increased by at least an hour. You can’t really roast a raw beetroot in less than an hour – and once you’ve waited for it to cool down so that you can peel the skin off, you are looking at 90 minutes before you’ve even started with the fun stuff.

Thinking a little outside the box I’ve started roasting my beetroots in the morning. Just stick them in the halogen oven for an hour and the oven turns itself off, the beetroots go cold while you’re at work – and presto – you come home and you’ve saved yourself 90 minutes!

Maria Ella presents four beetroot recipes in her book ‘The Modern Vegetarian’. They can all be served together ‘meze’ style and they go together beautifully. The four dishes are:

Beetroot Tsatsizi
Spiced Caramelised Onion and Bulgar Wheat Pilau
Beetroot Keftedes
Greek Beetroot Salad

All are pretty simple. All I’ll discuss in separate posts.

The first time I made this I spattered the pages with oil – resulting in a ghastly PDF once I’d despined and scanned the book!

I’ve made this many times since, but computer screens are far more wipe free than the pages of a book – so no further incidents have occurred.

As a complete meal I can thoroughly recommend these four dishes together. It looks beautiful (my photo doesn’t do the meal justice) and there are such variety of textures and flavours. All from one purple root vegetable!

Rosemary and Butternut Squash Polenta Chips

Posted on June 13, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

Now here’s a wonderful find. I don’t think I’d have been drawn to these if it weren’t for the really good photo that accompanied the recipe in ‘The Modern Vegetarian’ by Maria Ella. Basically the chips were arranged in a kind of Jenga tower and they looked very impressive. As you can see I didn’t copy that presentation!

I’ve decided that keeping a packet of polenta in the cupboard is a good thing! I’ve only ever made one thing with polenta – Polenta and Sage Pizza – but this is far cooler. I think I could even convince my six year old daughter to eat these – she’d never know they weren’t potatoes.

Making these is pretty easy – but not necessarily quick. There’s not a lot of cooking time – just a lot of waiting time for things to cool.

Firstly you dice some butternut squash very small and boil it with some rosemary. Then you add polenta – and when it thickens you pour it out into a greased tray (or one lined with parchment) and allow it to cool. You really need to season polenta well as it is broadly tasteless. I pressed a load of sea salt and pepper into the top of my slab.

When it is cool enough to put it in the fridge, do so – or do what I did and whack it in the freezer. As you all know by now I eat at stupid o’clock most evenings – we ate these past 10pm again – so the freezer was the quickest way to get this nice and solid.

Once it’s set – turn it out. It’ll look like this:

Cut it into chip sized errr chips, dust them lightly in plain flour and fry them.

I did mine in two different ways – in a halogen oven – and in a frying pan. It’s pretty hard to take a picture of the excitement inside a halogen oven – so here’s a picture of a frying pan!

I have to say the crispier chips came from the halogen oven. And they stayed hotter for a lot longer.

Once they are nice and golden and done, take them out and roll them in some very finely grated parmesan cheese. If you have one of those fancy microplanes like I do this really does the trick beautifully.

I served Freya’s chips with mayonnaise and my own with ketchup. I think mayonnaise was the better option!

The book suggests swapping out the butternut squash for either peas or sweetcorn. Both of which I plan to try. I have to say I couldn’t taste the butternut squash, nor the rosemary. I think it would be better not to add the rosemary to the butternut squash when you are boiling it – I just think it ruins the herbs. It might be better to add it in when you are stirring the polenta – just to keep it fresher!

I really liked these – I could eat a bowl of these anytime – even if they are really just a side. The slab was big – so we had these again the next day as a ‘starter’ while I cooked up our next dinner!

Denis Cotter – For the Love of Food

Posted on June 11, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

I wasn’t really successful getting through all the recipes of ‘The Modern Vegetarian’ – mainly due to some very long days at the boat, and lots of packing distractions for Freya’s parents. I was also a bit of a muppet and got excessively enthusiastic about packing – and packed all the food in the larder into a box and took it to the boat – rendering a lot of the recipes impossible to make!

That said, I’ve made most of the stuff I said I would – I just haven’t blogged it yet! I will – soon – promise!

So this weeks book I’ve decided not to find myself 10 recipes but limit myself to say six! If I get them all done I’ll pick some more.

The book is Denis Cotter’s ‘For the Love of Food’. This is a totally vegetarian cookbook. The Guardian say he’s ‘the best vegetarian chef in the British Isles’. Fair praise!

I love this book. I’ve cooked from it before and lots of the recipes are nice and simple. Many of them are very similar – especially the salads – but the slight differences between them make them very unique.

There are some challenging recipes in this book – I just haven’t chosen any of them for the coming week. I’ve got way too much stuff to do. And it’s Fathers Day on Sunday – where I’ll be out most of the day at Paradise Park in Hertfordshire with my six year old daughter.

For the coming week I am making:

spiced sweet potato pancakes
spiced halloumi on a warm puy lentil, spinach and beetroot salad
couscous salad with fresh apricots, broccoli, feta and a minted tomato dressing
sugar snaps with garlic, cherry tomatoes, shallots and basil
salad of roasted courgette, green beans and puy lentils with coriander mint and yoghurt dressing
salad of leeks, hazelnuts, fennel and watercress with a blackcurrant balsamic dressing
celeriac soup with walnut and green pepper salsa and goats cheese cream

Don’t they all just roll off the tongue. Denis doesn’t come up with pretty names for his dishes – he just tells you what’s in the dish!

This was one of the books that really inspired me to get into cooking again. Check it out – I think you’ll find the same.

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!

Butternut Squash Barley Risotto

Posted on June 10, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

It seems like ages since I posted something. I’ve been cooking – I just haven’t had the time to post the reviews!

Moving house and moving onto a boat all at the same time is a recipe for disaster. Especially challenging when you still have to go to work, and your new mooring is a very long way away from where you live. That said, only two weeks left and all these issues should be over!

Anyway – back to the cooking. This is another recipe from ‘The Modern Vegetarian’ by Maria Ella. I’ve made this before. I think in November last year and my memory of it made me want to make it again.

It’s not quite as spectacularly bright and colourful like the Spinach Pearl Barley Risotto I made some time ago – but it is as tasty.

One thing I noticed this time round is butternut squashes all look the same don’t they! But do they taste the same? To me, this risotto didn’t taste as ‘squashy’ as the one I made before. Maybe squashes aren’t really in season in May/June – and lack the taste of an autumn one.

One thing I’ve taken away from this recipe is ‘why use rice’. I’ve never found rice particularly fulfilling. You eat it – you get full – bloated in fact – you go do something and half an hour later you’re hungry again. Barley is a super substitute. It has three times the carbs, five times the protein, three times the calories and a whopping ten times the fibre. Basically you’ll get more energy from it – and you it’s better for you !

There are many steps to this recipe – and it seems very long winded – but it isn’t – and it is worth it.

To make this you peel a butternut squash, and put the peelings with some onions (peel and all), garlic, carrot and water in a big pan and boil it up to a stock.

Obviously you could cheat here and just use Bouillon or a vegetable stock – but for the effort, and the fact that you have the waste product anyway it seems silly not to. I think in hindsight here you could pep up your stock (if your squash isn’t that flavoursome) with something like that Knorr vegetable stock concentrate.

While that’s reducing down from something like 2 litres to 1 litre, you prep your squash. Dice and roast the end with the pulp with lots of olive oil. I did mine in a halogen oven (hence the round ring).

Next, fry off the other end of the squash in a pan. I messed this up last time I made it by not reading the recipe properly – I ended up roasting the whole squash. To be honest I don’t think it makes the blindest bit of difference. You fry the squash with shallots (I used some left over spring onions) and some spices.

Once you’ve done that – the prep is done.

From here on it’s all plain stirring. Fry the barley, some onion (I used red onions for added colour and the fried diced butternut squash and add some wine to get it going.

Once the wine is absorbed, gradually add your butternut squash stock – risotto style – ladle at a time until each ladle is absorbed. This took around 30 minutes for me.

Once the barley is to your liking (I like mine to have some bite) add the roasted squash (which you need to puree first) – and then some parmesan cheese (how much is up to you!).

I think this is a yummy, filling, wholesome dish which fills you up and leaves you full. I didn’t go overboard with the cheese – but you could if you wanted to – depends on how you like your risotto. I like mine to be a little sloppy and still have some of the liquid unabsorbed.

As I already said this dish is a little more labour intensive but it is worth it. Give it a go!

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.

The Modern Vegetarian – Maria Ella

Posted on June 3, 2014 by tenuoustoaster

After all the stresses and rushing around of last week I can now get back to doing what I like best – cooking!

Now our boat is moved (which went without a hitch) the pressure has really lifted and rather than eating crazy late every evening I can focus on getting home from work at a reasonable hour and taking my time preparing some really nice food.

My book of choice this week is ‘The Modern Vegetarian’ by Maria Ella.

I’ve cooked from this book before – and was very impressed with the general simplicity of the recipes and the impressive flavours, textures and colourful dishes that I’d selected. Sadly I hadn’t blogged or photographed any of them – but the general opinion was that everything from it was very good. So I’ve decided to cook from the book again.

The recipes I’ve selected are a mixture of those I’ve made before (and loved – especially the beetroot ones) and a few new ones that I’d missed first time round.

This week I plan to make (in no particular order)

Carrot pancakes with Houmous and a Feta Salad
Smashed Pea, Dill and Feta Crostini
Butternut Squash Barley Risotto
Spiced Swiss Chard with Butterbeans and Couscous
Fresh Borlotti Bean Cassoulet
Beetroot Tzatsiki
Spiced Caramelised Onion and Beetroot Bulgar Pilau
Beetroot Keftedes
Greek Beetroot Salad
Parmesan Polenta with Poached Eggs and Roasted Feta
Puy Lentil and Feta Tabouleh
Fennel Salad
Braised Broad Beans with Lemon and Dill
Rosemary and Butternut Squash Polenta Chips
Rosemary Popcorn
Dino’s Greek Peas

That quite a lot to make – but all the dishes are quick and easy. The four beetroot dishes are part of a ‘flavours of beetroot meze’ which is really quite special.

As always I’ve steered clear of nearly all the rice and pasta dishes and dishes with lots of cream – just because I want to keep my weight down and because I eat late most nights and don’t want to go to bed on a very full stomach.

This is definitely a book to own if you are vegetarian. You’ll certainly make most of the dishes in this book over time. The photography is really good too.

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.