I've been cooking again ...

Paprika spiced cannellini beans

Dice two onions and finely chop a couple of cloves of garlic. Cook slowly in olive oil to soften, not brown – no caramelising here, okay – soft and pale is how you want it to be. Add about three tablespoons of Paprika and the same of ground cumin. Stir and cook for a few minutes. Then add about three tablespoons of cider vinegar and a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar. Also add a stack of chopped tomatoes (I used some preserved organic cherry tomatoes from Organic Foods and Cafe) and squashed them up as they cooked. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for about 10 minutes. Then add a couple of cans of Cannellini beans.

Play around with the ratios – look at how much tomato you like with your beans or how many beans you like with your tomato – I went for two lots of tomatoes and two cans of beans ... Cook some more – maybe about ten to twenty minutes.

You can serve this with all kinds of things. Crumble over some feta cheese, add some chunks of avocado, serve with rice, or mop it up with bread. Pile on toast (bruschetta style) or serve with salad. For extra richness top with some sour cream. Use your imagination and have fun. The recipe is just the starting point.

Back to the kitchen

Today I ventured back into the kitchen. I long for a larger kitchen, an easier-to-work-in kitchen. But my kitchen is not enough to make me stop. So today I ventured back to make some Caponata.

Chop aubergine - a couple of them - organic ones are great because they are less spongy and water-filled than the others. Fry pieces in oil until golden - I do this in small batches so that the oil remains hot.

Finely chop onion and celery. Cook briefly in boiling salted water. Add to fried aubergines with the following:
tomato paste
salt and pepper
capers (I buy the salted ones, and then soak them for 30 minutes to get rid of the salt)
chopped green olives
white wine vinegar
sugar

For about 2 aubergines, I use 4 sticks of celery, a large onion, about 20 olives, 1 tablespoon each of tomato paste, sugar, vinegar and capers.

Cook this wonderful mixture for about 15 minutes and get ready to eat it. But don't eat it all now. It tastes even better over the next few days as it ages, and the vinegar preserves it. Lovely at room temperature with toast or on a spoon.

"Raw"

On Saturday I went to a cooking class. Nothing surprising there for those of you who know me. You know I love my ‘food porn’ – whether it’s magazines, TV shows, movies or live sessions. I saw the class at vegetarian fine dining restaurant Magnolia advertised on the web and decided straight away to sign up. After this class there was only one more before the restaurant closed for a couple of months. I emailed chef Gabriele Kurz, and got an email in response confirming my place.

At the appointed time I walked through the heat and arrived at Magnolia. I was greeted with some herb water, one of the restaurant’s specialities, and a moist cloth to wipe away the stains of Dubai’s heat. Chef Gaby came across to greet me, and dropped the biggest surprise of the day on me. I had thought we were going to be cooking. “Well, not so much cooking’ she said. “Today’s food is raw.”

Raw. As in uncooked. As in raw vegetarian. As in salad ... and fanatics. I know people who eat ‘raw’ food. They are seriously obsessed by what they eat.
So I looked at the menu list:
• Avocado Basil Emulsion (difficult to ruin those flavours)
• Iced almond milk (can’t comment on this one)
• Watermelon tomato salad (another one it would be tough to ruin)
• Raw Vegetable Lasagne (hmm. How is it a lasagne without pasta and cheese? Not sure about this)
• Herb Water (tasted these before and they’re great)

So there was nothing that sounded too bad and a few things that sounded very good indeed.

First up Chef Gaby prepared the tomatoes for tomato puree and tomato water. The tomato water would be used to flavour the avocado emulsion (this was sounding better and better) and the puree would be formed into a quenelle and place on the emulsion to serve. The interesting point was pureeing the tomatoes so finely to make the tomato water (I’d only ever chopped them roughly before) and adding some white balsamic vinegar for flavour. The tomato puree can be frozen and added to tomato water for a refreshing drink. Could be interesting to add a touch of vodka for a pale bloody mary.

Next up were ‘pralines’ – home made marzipan which was used to stuff dates and dried apricots. Then decorated with coconut and pistachios. The marzipan was sweetened with agave syrup and flavoured with ginger and lemon. I personally would omit the ginger in future, but that’s a personal taste. The ‘pralines’ were delicious. A bit fiddley but they looked impressive. Great for a dinner party finale.

The tomato and watermelon salad opened my eyes, taste buds and other senses to some new ideas. It hadn’t ever occurred to me before to chop up snow peas into tiny pieces. The joy of this approach was that my brain didn’t know what it was getting spoonfuls of before it tasted the food. There’s something interesting in mixed mouthfuls of tomatoes and watermelon.

When it came to the ‘lasagne’ it looked lovely, the tapenade that joined the layers was delicious but, for me, in the end it was a plate of raw vegetables sliced up thinly and layered. Sorry. I need the cheese, and the pasta. But if you’re being exceptionally healthy, want to add a variety of veggies to your diet, and have loads of time, this is a lovely main course.

This was my first consciously completely ‘raw’ meal and I did enjoy it. Do I want to eat ‘raw’ all the time? No. But a ‘raw’ day each week is a great idea, especially if you are wanting to raise the amount and variety of vegetables that you eat. It wasn’t quite the cooking class I expected, but it challenged me in ways that other classes have not.

More experimenting in the kitchen

Today I was inspired to experiment in the kitchen again. In my ongoing quest to create high protein vegetarian dishes I made drop scones. (Some may call them pikelets, or even thick pancakes - where I come from they are drop scones.)

Basic recipe

1 cup skim milk ricotta
4 eggs
pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 cup besan (chick pea flour)
1/8 cup soy flour
1/4 cup ground almonds

Whisk eggs and ricotta. Mix together with the dry ingredients.


Once I got to this stage I decided to make both savoury and sweet versions. To do this, I divided the mixture in half.

Savoury variation:
I added some grated cheese (with cumin) and some chilli powder.

Sweet variation:
Add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (never, never, never vanilla essence!)
1 packet splenda (artificial sweetener)

Melt some butter in a fairly hot pan. Drop spoonfulls of the mixture into the pan. Cook on one side until golden then turn and cook the other side.

Serve. The cheese ones are perfect by themselves. I topped a sweet one with no sugar added strawberry jam. Delicious.

The rest are in the fridge for later in the week!

Playing in the Kitchen

Today I decided to experiment to create a high protein vegetarian dish. I was inspired by the ending of an episode of Iron Chef America where one of the chefs created what she called Farro and Edamame Polpette. I searched for hours in vain for a similar recipe and finally had to resort to creating something myself, with a little guidance from Carluccio's Chef Guilio.

1/4 cup farro (spelt)
200 grams edamame (in their pods)
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
olive oil
besan flour (chickpea flour)
1/2 egg, beaten (well, of course you have to beat the whole thing!)
salt and pepper to taste
sprig of rosemary, chopped (about 1/2 tbspn)
sprig of thyme, chopped (about 1/2 tbspn)
soy flour (for tossing)
Your favourite tomato pasta sauce
Grated parmesan

Heat some olive oil and cook the farro for about two minutes. Add 1 1/2 cups boiling water and simmer farro until cooked (about 30 minutes).

Boil some water and cook the edamame in their pods for about 2 minutes. Remove from the pods (and yes, you throw the pods away) and chop the edamame in a food processor.

Fry chopped onion, taking care not to brown it, then add the garlic and continue frying. Add rosemary and thyme.

Drain farro and mix in a bowl with chopped edamame and onion mixture. Season with salt and pepper. Add the egg and mix well, then add as much besan as you need to form a mixture that you can roll into about 8 small balls. You want the mixture to be firm but not too dry as it will fall apart. Toss the balls in soy flour.

Heat some more oil. Fry the polpette (okay, it's pretentious to use the Italian name, but I can't think what else to call them - balls, I guess), turning regularly, until brown and crisp on the outside.

Put balls in a baking dish, top with the tomato sauce and cover with grated parmesan. Bake for about 10-15 minutes in a moderate oven (180 degrees C, 350 degrees F for my American readers).

Enjoy.

Mushrooms

After breakfast of mushrooms and scrambled eggs at Carluccios I decided to repeat a recipe I made earlier in the week - actually part of a recipe. For a pot luck lunch at the office I made crepes filled with a cheesy bechamel sauce and a fabulous mushroom concoction which proved more delicious than I thought possible.

So today I am repeating the mushroom part.

Saute some chopped onion in oil until brown and caramelised. Add torn up mushrooms - as many as you want. Soak some dried porcini in boiling water. When they are soft, drain them and toss into the mushroom and onion mix in the frypan. (My hot tip: if you want the porcini in smaller pieces, rather than cut them when they have soaked which can be really messy, rip them up before you soak them.) Add some red wine, some tomato passata, salt, dried chilli flakes, strained porcini liquid (strain this to remove any dirt) and simmer until the liquid reduces and mixture is thick.

I'm not sure what I'm going to serve this with this time. I think it will go nicely with some brown basmati rice, and it should be great with some pasta - maybe tagliatelle. Only problem is, if I have it for lunch at work, I can't enjoy a glass of red with it...