Potato & Vegetable Quickie

This is a very quick & easy dish using potatoes from the day before – or freshly boiled ones.

1. Slice potatoes & seasonal Vegetables.

2. Layer cheese on top (I used own brand budget mild cheese and own brand budget camembert) and put into the oven.

3. When it looks like this (after about 10 mins), take out of the oven and eat. The potatoes will be nice and soft and the veg will be fresh and crispy. Goes well with a bit of bread, and if you are into sweet & savoury, you could eat cranberry sauce, chutney or onion jelly with it!

Hot Banana Muesli Thingy (also known as Banana Porridge)

I came home late and hungry from playing a gig with my band in Camden. I did not have much in the house, so I just went for the first two things that caught my eye: bananas and porridge oats. As I wanted something warm and filling I decided to toast the oats (with a bit of added muesli – I guess you could, if you had, nuts and raisins) in butter. While the oats were in the pan, I quickly chopped the banana into pieces. I poured the oats over the bananas and quickly poured some milk into the empty pan. The milk heated very quickly and could be poured over the oats. I finished the improvised ‘dish’ off with a bit of sugar and cinnamon and ate it so quickly that I actually could not take a picture! So I naturally had to make another one…

Update: also tastes nice with a bit of chocolate milkshake powder on top…

Local London News – Grow Your Own And Recycle Ass

A big thank you to the person who cheered me up on the bus coming back from one of my Oriental City trips. Feeling pretty shit about work stuff and the impending closure of my favourite London hangout, the ‘ass recycling’ station really made my day!

My housemate just alerted me to these people who help you grow stuff on your balcony/in your garden/in your London/Greater London home. Some of you might be interested in this. Their mission is
‘To partner with the people of Greater London to promote and initiate the use of front gardens and balconies to grow and share healthy, natural food. This will reduce food miles and dependency on supermarkets, whilst increasing self-reliance and community empowerment’. You can also volunteer there if you know about gardening and want to convert more people to it. My gardening method is usually: get hold of some sort of soil, plonk some seeds into it, water occasionally, see what happens. Sometimes I have luck (great beetroot, tomatoes, chillies, salad), sometimes I don’t (leeks, spinach and coriander don’t seem to be any good for either balcony pots or my gardening ’skills’!).

Easter Cookies

Today, I made some Easter Cookies with stuff I found in my cupboard and some cookie cutters my mum sent me.

The recipe that came out of it:

150g butter
150 sugar
approx. 200 g plain flour
approx. 50g ground almonds (you can leave those away and use 250g flour)
1 egg
orange flavouring
ground cardamom
ground coriander
lemon peel
pepper
salt

The cookies taste delicious. I just brushed them with egg and put some almonds on them, but they will also taste great with a bit of icing on them.

Flavouring Rice

In this image: Hot salt water with cardamom pods, cinnamon and tumeric (and way too much foam! ). When tumeric is added to the water, it first turns the water a mesmerising deep red. As soon as you add the rice, it changes to a dull yellow.

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One day at work me and my Indian co-chef got bored with the prescribed menu and started sabotaging it – gently. We started with the rice. She added spices to the water such as cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods, and I added salt and colour in the form of tumeric (I thought it might work the same as saffron – but sadly you won’t find saffron in a care home). The result was not only a successful culinary treat in our eyes but also in the eyes of the people we served it to. Thus began my journey of experimenting with this playful and versatile protein source. Imitating my co-chef I started adding different things to the water such as caraway or cumin seeds, allspice berries, coriander seeds. Anything seemed to work just fine! I also ‘interviewed’ chefs of different nationalities about their countries’ signature rice dishes: Turkish and Russian pilaf, Carribean cocount rice, Iranian ‘crispy bottom’ rice, Indian pilau rice, Jollof rice, Paella, Risotto, Risi Bisi, Cabbage Rice & Beans (especially great with raisins added to the peanut and chilli sauce!) – I’ll need years to try them all out! Luckily most people provided me with tasters, and some we make at The Food Chain where I volunteer.

The other great thing is that you cannot only flavour rice that is boiling or steaming away in water. You can also flavour rice puddings! For a start, you can boil rice in lots of liquids such as milk (e.g. kheer, chocolate rice pudding, raspberry rice), almond milk (almond rice), fruit/fruit purees/fruit juices (elderberry and apple rice). These other liquid/rice combinations you can then flavour with spices and add a variety of ingredients such as almonds, dried fruit, coconut flakes etc.

Last week I happened to make three rice dishes:
- buttered brown (and coloured) pilaf rice with a weird combination of spices (somewhere along the lines of tumeric caraway, cardamom, bay leaves, juniper berries, nutmeg, allspice berries and salt) to go with the Tarragon Hot Pot
- German rice pudding (the one with sugar and cinnamon, not the one with boiled cherries or other fruit) some of which I left without cinnamon to recycle it for…
- …Kheer (flavoured with cardamom mainly with added almonds, coconut flakes and raisins)

I think that’s enough rice for a while…

… wait a moment, didn’t I want to explore the big Chinese supermarket near Colliers Wood tomorrow? I looove Chinese vegetable fried rice!! Argh!

Tarragon – Weird & Tasty

I love the word tarragon. If I ever have a pet it’s gonna be called after this wacky herb. What I also love about it is the description given on many cookery blogs: ‘tarragon tastes like a cross between liquorice/aniseed and vanilla’. Often, this is followed by a clear warning: ‘use sparingly’. Until recently, I had only come across tarragon at work in its bland freeze-dried form in which it strongly resembles woodruff flavour (in case you know what woodruff taste like – i just happen to come from a woodruff crazy family). I found out that it tastes great in salad dressings. So until last week, exploration of tarragon in its fresh state was hampered by a lack of tarragon in the reduced to clear pile and the thought ‘how am I going to use ALL of that?!’.

Then the opportunity presented itself to make a big vegetable casserole. On the market I found some good peppers, so I thought: wait a moment – can’t I use the elusive tarragon in this….? And so I bought some. Back home, I skimmed the weird world web for vegetarian recipes using tarragon. I did not exactly have a high turnout. Some recipes even warned (!) of using tarragon other than with certain French meat or salad recipes. How odd I thought. I decided to start experimenting ‘tout de suite’ to remedy this situation. And I have to say, my Tarragon Hot Pot was the best casserole I’ve ever made! What did I put in it? Lots of boring old stuff really, but somehow it got magically transformed into great tastiness…

Oil
Onions
Garlic
Lots and lots of red peppers plus one green, one yellow pepper
Other vegetables, e.g. carrots, courgettes, mushrooms
A tin of borlotti beans (I think)
Tomato puree, tin tomatoes
Veggie mince
Salt, pepper
bayleaves, juniper berries
A bit of chilli
Lots of fresh tarragon!

I made the casserole the night before, so that the flavour can unfold. The next day I added more tarragon, heated the whole thing gently and served it with buttered brown pilau rice and some sort of eastern style coleslaw. It was very a very intense flavour experience!

Seasonal Food: Purple Sprouting Broccoli (Calabrese)

I am always happy when I can make a new discovery at my local market stall. And the gentleman who sells the vegetables even has recipes to go with every imaginable plant matter! Today, my discovery was purple sprouting broccoli. What a name!! Apparently not many people know it, because it has a very short season, not many people grow it and not many supermarkets carry it. Luckily, that does not stop it from existing – yet!

So what can you do with it and what does it taste like? First of all, you don’t remove the leaves. Imagine cooking it a bit like asparagus and a bit like kale. That’s actually what it tastes like other than of broccoli. I had a look on the net and found that most recipes mix purple broccoli with all sorts of other ingredients. For me it would be a shame to kill off its delicate and distinctive taste by smothering it with lots of pretend-posh stuff. I found that having a crap budget and good taste in this case really works well together: just gently simmer it in a bit of salted butter – maybe even until it browns a little – and then serve it with either boiled or roast potatoes topped with some more salted butter. That’s it. Perfect!

Actually, this reminds me of a quote I once saw in the British Library canteen. It was something like ‘England has more than sixty different religions, but only one sauce: melted butter’. Nowadays melted butter seems to have been replaced by the ever-present horror of bisto. Don’t do it….

Buckwheat & Cranberry Synthesizer/Gateau

I guess Buckwheat & Cranberry Gateau is something like a signature cake of the area I come from. It is not easy to get hold of anything buckwheat in the UK, unless you happen to live near some Eastern European shops, which I do! I am quite crazy about buckwheat, because of its strange nutty taste. But that may just be bred into me Anyway, I don’t normally spend my nights making gateaux (they are such a mess to handle on public transport or bicycles…), but a few weeks ago I turned 30 and thought it was about time I tried making one! I found out that they are actually quite easy to make and as I still have lots of flour left over, I keep on producing new ones for various occasions… Of course, there are other things I will eventually do with the remaining buckwheat. Images of pancakes, porridge, bread, biscuits, fruit & grain salad come to my mind. Or just more gateau variations (there is a nice one from Austria, but try getting rosehip puree in the UK!)! At this point you may have noticed: making gateaux instantly gives you an aura of decadence (‘let them eat cake’)!

If you want to immerse yourself in this decadent wrongness and try recreating this creamy gem – here is the recipe:

For the sponge:

6 eggs
150 g sugar
Lemon peel
Vanilla sugar or flavouring
Salt
150 g buckwheat flour (you can also add ground hazelnuts)
Baking powder (amount for a sponge cake)

Filling and topping:

About 1 ½ glasses of cranberry sauce (with as much fruit content as possible – I use the one from Aldi or Lidl) and
About 1 ½ pots of whipping cream
Optional: chocolate decoration

Separate eggs and beat the egg white first. Beat the egg yolk with about two thirds of the sugar until it’s fluffy. I’ve learned to beat it over a pot of boiling water, but it should be fine if you do it the normal way. Add the rest of the sugar, the vanilla flavouring, and egg yolk mix to the beaten egg whites. Mix the buckwheat flour with the baking powder and stir in as well. Fill everything into a round or square cake tin (preferably with some parchment as the sponge is extremely sticky!) and bake approx. 30 mins at
180°C/ Gas Mark 4.

Leave to cool and peel off the baking parchment. I usually bake the cake the day or night before, casually assuming that it improves the flavour But you can fill it as soon as it’s properly cooled down.

Next, you cut the cake into 3 layers. You can just do that with a knife, or, if you are geeky enough, you make a small incision all around where you want the layer to be and then use a thread which you cross over and pull through. Once you have somehow achieved in cutting the thing apart, you can now fill it with spoonfuls of cranberry sauce and a few dollops of whipped cream. After you have successfully filled the cake you can now cover it (as evenly as you wish) with whipped cream and decorate it with cranberries and chocolate sprinkle or shavings to your heart’s delight.

Pear and Vanilla Pudding

This is one of my random creations from ‘anything’ again: I had to use up 4 ripe pears and 1/3 madeira cake. I also had a packet of posh organic vanilla pudding powder, kindly donated by my friend & fellow blogger Rosa of Schnuppensuppe fame (yes, it was my birthday two weeks ago and lots of people brought or sent me food, yey! ).
As I had enough milk to make that pudding, I just chopped the pears up, put them into bowls on top of the madeira cake (or just into bowls with the madeira cake on a separate plate), made the pudding and poured it over the pear chunks. I waited for a bit (impatiently!) and then ate 1 pudding and gave another one to my housemate. The last pudding I ate a few hours later. Greedy me!

How to not get tired of eating tortellini if you’ve got more that 8 packets of them

A friend of mine just bought a stack of tortellini packets, because they were on special offer. She then asked me how she could vary them. I took a few off her (see where this goes? ;D) and started reporting my findings. From previous experience I knew that the following works as a dressing for hot tortellini:

Olive oil
Pesto
Or olive oil/pesto with one or more of the following: lemon juice, pepper, rocket, parmesan shavings, sundried tomatoes, cold roast vegetables, parma ham, fresh herbs, mushrooms.

Most people seem to just dump them into

Tomato, mushroom, white wine or cheese sauce.

I tried putting them into soups (bouillons) with some chopped in vegetables, which was very successful. E.g. spicy leek & carrot soup with tortellini (see above image). I wonder whether they taste any good in salad or omelette

Generally, pasta can be combined with a large number of ingredients, which helps you not to get bored of it: Sauces, Freid/Raw/Roast Vegetables, Pesto, Garlic Oil, Butter, Nuts, Raisins, Scrambled Egg and Onions, Halloumi, Quorn, Mince Meat, Meat Chunks, Meat Balls, Bean Salad, Peaches and Cinnamon Cream… and I am not even gonna go into this tuna-pasta-salad abomination I have to make at work!

Peaches and Cinnamon Cream you may ask? Yes: Boil Pasta, leave to cool a bit. In a bowl, mix cream with cinnamon and sugar. Add tinned peach slices and pasta. Bake for a while. Eat as hot main course or (hot or cold) dessert.

There are many sweet pasta dishes, e.g. the South Indian dessert Payasam is possibly the best use of pasta on this planet: milk, cardamom pods, dried fruit, nuts/almonds, sugar, vermicelli: what more could you want! Okay, maybe some added coconut milk goodness