43Things Cookbook

My mum emailed me this this morning, as we’re not going to hers this year so I’ll have to make my own. I think it’s from a Rose Eliot book.

I’ve been veggie since my early teens, and my mum has made this for me every year to sit in the place on my Christmas plate which would normally be reserved for turkey or duck or whatever. I only ever have this at Christmas, so it keeps it special, and what I love about it is that it goes brilliantly with all the usual Christmassy things like bread sauce, gravy, roast spuds and cranberry sauce. Being a veggie, it’s really important to feel included in the traditions. Nothing worse than being faced with a boring old bowl of mushroom risotto or a veggie lasagne when everyone else is enjoying a traditional roast and all the trimmings.

It’s super-delicious, and all the omnivores wind up having a big ol’ serving too. In fact there is almost never any left. But if there is some left over, it’s great in sandwiches with cranberry sauce and Stilton cheese. Mmmmmm.

Layered cashew, parsnip and mushroom roast

1 tablespoon oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees / gas mark 4

Fry onion & garlic in oil till soft.
Cashew layer: Mix ground cashews & breadcrumbs. Beat egg and add it to the mixture. Mix in mashed parsnips & herbs. Add fried onion and any oil left in pan. Dissolve yeast extract in stock, add to other ingredients, season well and mix thoroughly.
Mushroom layer: Melt butter, sauté chopped mushrooms till soft.
Grease loaf tin, press in half cashew mix. Cover with mushrooms, then put rest of nut mix on top.
Cover with foil. Bake for one hour.
Leave to stand for a few minutes before you turn it out. (Sometimes it refuses to turn out and has to be served out of the tin).

OMG I am addicted to this yogurt drink. I discovered it the other day when I felt a bit iffy and couldn’t face real food, but needed sustenance and had yogurt and grapes in the fridge that needed using up – it was like the stars aligning. It made a fabulous liquid lunch. This makes three glasses. I have made it with no sugar and with only one tablespoon of sugar – I reckon four would be way too sweet.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 1/2 glasses (roughly 250 ml capacity) of fresh creamy unsweetened yogurt
• 1 cup crushed ice
• 4 tbsps sugar
• 1 cup seedless grapes – red or green – chopped fine
• A pinch of salt

Preparation:

• Heat a pan or griddle on medium heat and roast the cumin seeds till slightly darker and aromatic. Remove from heat, grind to a fine powder in a clean, dry coffee grinder.
• Put the cumin powder (reserve a small amount to garnish the drinks), yogurt, crushed ice, grapes (reserve a small amount to garnish the drinks) sugar, salt into a blender. Blend till smooth.
• Pour into tall, chilled glasses. garnish with chopped grapes and a sprinkling of cumin powder and serve!

From a video podcast I subscribe to comes this gorgeous summery salad. The exact recipe is available here but basically it’s spinach, quartered strawberries, spring onion (red onion in the original) and walnuts (pecans in the original) with a lightly-sweetened vinaigrette featuring sesame seeds (and poppy seeds in the original, but I didn’t have those either).

I never would have believed it if I hadn’t tried it, but the suggestion of throwing in strawberries where you’d normally put tomatoes works astonishingly well. I had this for tea last night, and I’m having it again today.

I was craving these the other day – hadn’t had them for years. Simple, but so so tasty. I made a half quantity of this, and it was enough to serve two as a main meal (with baked feta and crusty bread) with a big bowlful left over which I’ve just had for lunch with a slice of bread and a blob of Greek yogurt.

Copied almost wholesale (I edited a bit) from here.

“• 1/2 cup olive oil (seems like a lot, but it’s part of the flavouring too)
• 1 pound onions, sliced
• a few cloves of garlic, sliced or roughly chopped
• 6 whole peppercorns
• 2 pounds tomatoes, chopped or grated, (about 4 cups) or an equal amount of canned tomato sauce (I just used chopped tinned tomatoes)
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground pepper
• 1 pound potatoes, sliced rather thickly
• 2 pounds green beans
• 1 bunch parsley, washed and coarsely chopped (I used some marjoram too, cos I had it)

Slice or chop the garlic. Grate the tomatoes. Wash and chop the parsley and onions. Cut the ends off the beans, rinse and drain the bean middles. Peel the potatoes and slice them rather thickly.

Cover the bottom of the pot with olive oil, about 1/2 cup. Heat the oil on high, add the onions and sauté them for about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, peppercorns, and half the parsley, and sauté for another 5 minutes. Then add the tomatoes, salt, and pepper, and bring to a boil. After boiling the tomatoes for 5 minutes or so, add the potatoes and stir them into the sauce. Put the green beans on top. Do not stir them in! Keep them as a layer on top of the potatoes!

Make sure the liquid comes up past the potato layer to approximately the middle of the green bean layer. If not, add water till it does. It’s OK if the liquid even comes up to the top of the green bean layer, better to have the dish a little soupy than to have it not cook up properly, or even burn. Sprinkle with remaining parsley. Don’t stir! Leave the ingredients in layers! Cover and simmer vigorously for approximately 1 hour.

Note: If you’re using a nonstick pot, you can simmer pretty vigorously. If you’re using a good heavy-bottomed pot that’s not nonstick you can simmer pretty vigorously but you’d better check every 15 minutes or so to make sure the dish isn’t sticking to the bottom. If it is, you need to stir it a bit and maybe turn the heat down some. If you have to keep the heat lower to keep the dish from sticking, you might need to plan on an extra hour or so of cooking. And if you’re using a crappy thin-bottomed pot because that’s all you have, you can still make a great pot of beans, but make it a day ahead of time so that you can cook it slowly for as long as necessary.

You are not aiming for crisp, bright-green beans with this recipe. The beans should be soft and sweet. Be sure to soak up the delicious sauce with some bread. This dish is just as good the next day.”

Israeli couscous is my latest obsession – it’s like couscous for giants. It’s made from hard wheat flour and then toasted, which gives it a nice nutty taste. It’s more of a pasta, really, a bit like orzo or fregola sarda. Each grain is several times the diameter of normal couscous, and you can use it anywhere you might use rice or pasta. Or couscous. It has a few other names – ptitim, giant couscous, Iranian couscous… I forget the rest.

It can be a bugger to find. Having searched high and low, I finally found it in a Kosher shop just along the road from me. Should have gone there first, really. Duh. I’ve attached a pic of the packet so you know what you’re looking for should you decide to hunt it down.

I found this recipe on Apartment Therapy and adapted it a bit. It was delicious, spicy and simple, and could probably be adapted with other kinds of greens – kale, spinach etc.

serves 2

1 3/4 cup vegetable stock
1 1/4 cup Israeli couscous
Drizzle olive oil
3 large cloves garlic
1 teaspoon whole white cumin
1 dried red chilli pepper (optional – I used dried chilli flakes)
4 cups chopped chard (remove the ribs first)
1/4 cup vegetable stock
1 teaspoon coarse salt
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Heat the vegetable stock to boiling in a small saucepan. Stir in the grains and lower the heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes. Remove the lid and set aside.

Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy skillet over medium-low heat. Sliver the garlic and cook it on low heat with the cumin and chili pepper until soft and fragrant. Don’t let it brown.

Add the chopped chard and turn the heat to medium. Sauté for about 5 minutes, or until it is beginning to wilt. Add the cooked couscous and the 1/4 cup of broth. Cook for another five minutes, stirring, until the broth has cooked off and the chard is fully wilted.

Add salt to taste, and vinegar, and serve.

Can you tell we had a big cauliflower in the veggie bag this week?

Piccalilli might be a UK thing, I’m not sure. It’s a relish made of chopped up veggies and a mustardy dressing, usually sold in jars and beloved of old people. I don’t believe I’ve ever actually eaten the traditional stuff, but this salad is currently sitting in my fridge marinating, and I keep going back for forkfuls.

Recipe from somewhere in the Guardian, but I can’t find it.

Change the quantities to taste.

Raw cauliflower florets (quite small)
Capers
Chopped up gherkins
Finely chopped onions, red for preference
A mustardy vinaigrette made out of English mustard, olive oil, wine vinegar, salt ‘n’ pepa.

Toss it all up together and leave to sit for a couple of hours, if you can, for the flavours to meld. Apparently it goes well with sausages and stuff like that, but I’d probably just eat it on its own.

Deceptively tasty for a one-pot vegan dish with hardly any ingredients. From the BBC.

This recipe is for four people. To serve two, I halved everything and used 600ml water and about 100ml tinned toms that were left over in the fridge as the liquid element, and it was fine. The portions are huuuuuuuge though.

Also, I didn’t have any cashew nuts but I put a blob of crunchy peanut butter in it which gave it a nice creamy satayish edge. And I put a blob of natural yogurt on the top, too, which obviously de-veganated it.

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp sunflower oil
• 1 onion , chopped
• 2 carrots , chopped
• 200g basmati rice
• 50g red lentils
• 3 tbsp curry paste (I used balti)
• 1 head cauliflower , cut into florets
• 100g frozen peas
• few toasted cashew nuts, to serve

1. Heat the oil in a pan, add the onion and carrots, then fry for 5 mins until lightly coloured. Stir in the rice and lentils, cook for 1 more min, add the curry paste and 900ml water, then bring to the boil. Cover, then simmer for 10 mins.
2. Stir in the cauliflower, then cook for 10 mins more until the rice and lentils are tender. Add the peas 2 mins before cooking time is up, stirring through. Top with the nuts, then serve with yogurt and mango chutney in bowls.

This was on a blog I read, and initially made me go “Urrr! No way!” But curiosity won me over and now I am addicted. I didn’t have honey, so I used agave nectar, and this may well be the most middle-class sentence I have ever written.

Makes two sandwiches.

4 eggs
3 T milk
salt & pepper to taste
1 T butter
1/2 T olive oil
1/3 c shredded cheddar cheese
4 slices of sturdy whole grain bread, toasted and buttered
1 T honey
1 tart apple, sliced thin

Whisk the eggs with the milk and salt & pepper and set aside. In a medium skillet, heat olive oil and butter together over medium-high heat. Add in eggs and scramble until nearly set, about 3-4 minutes. Turn off heat. Sprinkle cheese over top, do not mix in.

Spread honey thinly on toasts and divide the apple slices equally over top. Grind some pepper over the apple. Divide the eggs in half and place on the apple slices. Top with remaining toast and eat up.

My favourite go-to speedy-speedy comfort dinner at the moment. You can chuck it together in ten minutes flat.

Per person:

As much dried pasta as you are hungry for (any kind, I like tagliatelle)
A chunk of feta (about 50-75g), crumbled or cubed
A few black olives, sliced
A big handful of peas
If you have it, a few leaves of fresh mint (basil’s good too), torn up.
A lemon or just some juice from a bottle
Olive oil, if you like

Put the pasta into boiling water, and when it’s about four minutes till it’s done, chuck in the peas.

While the pasta cooks, chop/slice/crumble the relevant ingredients.

When the pasta/peas are done, drain them, put them back in the pan and quickly chuck the feta in while it’s all still nice and hot. Stir like buggery and it will melt and coat the pasta, leaving little feta-y lumps. Then stir in the olives and mint/basil, and add a glug of lemon juice/zest if you have it, plus a glug of olive oil if you fancy.

Pile it into nice wide bowls and dig in. You probably won’t want extra cheese on this, and watch the salt as it’s already quite salty.

I had this for tea last night, and will probably have it again tonight.

I found this banana bread here last weekend when I had three overripe bananas to use up. And it’s awesome – not too banana-ey, and super moist. It’s kept all week really well, and just seems to be getting better.

Because I had it to hand, I used dark brown sugar, which is I think what made it so stickily delicious, and I could probably have got away with using less – American recipes are often a little too sweet for my British tongue. I also used only a couple of spoons of choc chips cos it’s all I had, but instead added loads of bits of dried fruit I had hanging around – sultanas, some walnuts, dried sour cherries, probably some other bits and bobs. And I used a loaf tin, not a square tin, and cooked it for a bit longer than specified.

It’s dairy free, but it does have eggs in it, though I’m sure it could be veganised.

3 really ripe bananas, mashed
2 large eggs
1 1/2 c flour
1 1/4 c sugar
1 t baking soda
1 t vanilla
1 T cinnamon
1 c chocolate chips
1/4 c sugar mixed with cinnamon

1. Mix bananas with eggs and stir well. Add flour, sugar, soda, vanilla, and cinnamon and mix well. Add 3/4 c of the chocolate chips into the batter.

2. Pour batter into a buttered square cake pan. Sprinkle with the cinnamon-sugar mix and the remaining chocolate chips.

3. Bake at 375 for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean.