Category Archives: Vegetarian

Simple Tomato & Chickpea Curry

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I actually made this um, months ago, and had completely forgotten about it have been saving it up specially.

I like to have a few tricks up my sleeve to make a filling, healthy, comforting meal at short notice, and to make said meal from a few cheap ingredients that are always in my pantry. These recipes are my best friends on hungry and/or grumpy and/or flustered and/or busy evenings when I just need to Eat. Something. Now. Or. Will. Fall. Over. I think that no matter how amazing your life is, you always have days like this. And if you don’t, you really ought to share the secret with the rest of us in the comments section.

There are loads of tomato and chickpea curry recipes out there – I can’t claim this as an original idea. Most recipes are a variation on tinned tomatoes + chickpeas + spices = good. So as long as you have those things in the cupboard, and bonus points for an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic, you can be munching through this in a lot less than half an hour.

Tomato & Chickpea Curry
My recipe notes that this is supposed to serve four, but from memory, that assumes you are serving it with bread or rice. Serving just the curry, Mr. J and I got through the whole lot on our own! So if you have a large and hungry family, it would pay to at least double the recipe. If you end up with too much, you can always welcome it back for lunch tomorrow, or freeze it and enjoy it on another hungry,flustered and busy day.

Another note – if you’re missing one or two of the spices, don’t worry, just press on ahead!

small dash of rice bran or canola oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp chilli powder (or adjust quantity to taste, or leave out altogether)
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp garam masala
1x 400g tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed (or dried chickpeas, soaked)
1x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
5cm piece of fresh ginger, finely grated
chopped fresh coriander, to serve
Heat the oil in a large saucepan or frying pan. Add the chopped onion and garlic, and cook gently until softened, and just turning golden. Add the spices and stir for a couple of minutes, coating the onion with the spices.
Add the drained chickpeas, and stir to coat them in the spices too, then add the tomatoes. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the ginger and stir through.
Serve with crusty bread or, ideally, brown rice, and garnish with chopped fresh coriander. You may also like to add a dollop of low fat natural yoghurt.

Fennel with Walnuts and Oranges

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Happy New Year, everyone!

I hope you had a lovely Christmas with friends and family, a good break, some great food, and a fun New Year’s Eve yesterday! We spent last night at Osteria del Toro in Wellington. Really good cocktails and gorgeous food (at extremely good prices, by the way). Even if the weather was so rotten the fireworks were cancelled!

And now we have 2012 to look forward to. What do you hope for from the year ahead?

I’m going to focus on enjoying life, as it is. Taking good care of myself and my family, eating well (and feeding others well), keeping fit and healthy, and having more fun instead of getting hung up on details! I’ve got a few things to tick off my Thirty By Thirty list (starting tomorrow with a nervous visit to Adrenalin Forest in Porirua), too.

I’m looking forward to conquering new frontiers in my kitchen, but also to preparing simple food with delicious ingredients. Like this salad of Fennel with Walnuts & Oranges.

The recipe comes from The Silver Spoon, one of Italy’s best selling cookbooks. It has quite a focus on authenticity, and while I haven’t cooked from it a lot, anything I have cooked has been delicious, and well worth a repeat effort.

I had blood oranges to hand, so used them instead of the more standard variety. They’re such a creepy fruit! Beautiful orange skin with red speckles of warning, hiding flesh that really does look… bloody. They are perfectly named. Surely, I thought to myself, there are good jokes to be played on children who have never come across blood oranges before.

Enjoy the salad, and there’ll be more posts to follow later in the week. Have a happy 01/01/12!

Fennel with Walnuts & Oranges
from The Silver Spoon. Serves 4.

4 tender, round fennel bulbs, trimmed and thinly sliced
olive oil, to drizzle
salt and pepper, to taste2 oranges
6 shelled walnuts, chopped

Place the fennel slices in a salad bowl, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Peel the oranges and cut off pith, then slice and add to the fennel (I was happy segmenting mine). Add the walnuts, mix and serve.

Couscous with Grapes & Nuts

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My kitchen is in a calm before the storm. The advance Christmas cooking and baking is all out of the way. In another 4 days I’ll be preparing Christmas dinner itself. But in the meantime, we’re snacking on salads and lean barbecued meat. Specially with the weather turning out so nice this week, sharing the kitchen with a hot stove has not been a high priority.

This couscous salad-y dish has been on the menu a couple of times. It requires very little time and energy, and is a nice way to use the gorgeous seedless grapes we’re getting at the moment!

The recipe comes from The Best of Annabel Langbein: Great Food for Busy Lives. I got this book for my birthday this year and I haven’t cooked a lot from it, but whatever I’ve cooked has turned out well. It’s a huge book so it will take me some time to cook my way through it ;)

Chilli Lemon Couscous with Nuts & Grapes
from Annabel Langbein’s Great Food for Busy Lives

Mix together 2 cups boiling water with finely grated rind of 1 lemon, 2 tsp Thai Sweet Chilli Sauce and 1 tsp salt. Add 2 cups couscous and leave to absorb for about 10 minutes. Fluff up with a fork, and mix in 1/2 cup toasted nuts (e.g. pine nuts, pistachios or almonds), 1/2 cup chopped mint or coriander (or a mix), and 1 cup chopped grapes. Serve as is, or if you prefer to heat it first, cover and microwave for 3-4 minutes just before serving.

I hope your lead-up to Christmas is going well and not too stressful!

Tabbouleh

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Me: OK, think of something to write about tabbouleh.

Me: Gotta make it sound fresh and interesting. OK.

Imaginary Pen: Tap, tap, tap.

[awkward silence]

Me: Well, let me think. It’s a salad. It has a filling cracked wheat component. You can take it to barbecues.

Brain: Yeah, loving all that fresh-and-interesting-ness.

Me: Do you have a better idea?

[awkward silence]

Me: I thought not. Maybe I’ll just let it speak for itself.

Brain: Mondays are hard.

Tabbouleh
Serves 6-ish 

1 cup bulgur/cracked wheat
4 spring onions
1 onion
3 tomatoes
1 cup finely chopped fresh Italian parsley
½ cup chopped mint
¼ cup slivered almonds
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup lemon juice
large pinch chilli powder

Place the bulgur in a heatproof bowl, and pour boiling water over it (enough to cover the wheat). Place a plate or a lid on top and leave it for 15 minutes (like how you prepare couscous, just left for longer). Drain and rinse the wheat in cold water, drain again and set aside to cool.

Prepare the other salad vegetables – finely chop the spring onions and onion, dice the tomatoes and chop the herbs. If you’re using almonds (highly recommended), dry toast them until they’re just fragrant. Mix with the cooled wheat.

Whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice and chilli powder, and season to taste. Toss through the salad to coat and serve.

Side note: while I was thinking of things to write about tabbouleh, I googled it and came across this article on David Lebovitz’s site. Turns out this kind of tabbouleh bears little resemblance to the traditional Lebanese dish. Two thoughts – firstly, this salad is still nice and a dish worthy of being made anyway, secondly, let’s try the traditional Lebanese way next time :)

Asparagus with Roasted Tomatoes

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I came across this recipe in Dish magazine last year. I actually cooked it as part of my Christmas dinner last year, it was perfect with the vibrant red and green! It looks impressive and tastes amazing, but it’s pretty easy… it’s hardly a recipe – more like assembly instructions.

I’ve started thinking about what I’ll cook for Christmas dinner this year (I know, spot the obssessive planner). This one will probably make the cut second year running!

Asparagus with Roasted Tomatoes and Mozzarella
Adapted from Dish magazine. Serves 3-4

6-8 vine tomatoes with stalk attached
half a punnet cherry tomatoes
1 bunch asparagus
60g mozzarella
2 Tbsp pesto
fresh basil leaves
sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°(c).  Line a baking tray with baking paper.

Place the tomatoes on a lined baking tray, sprinkle over sea salt and ground pepper. Roast them for 10-15 minutes, until their skins start to split, then set aside to cool. I didn’t use cherry tomatoes, but if you’ve got them, it looks nice having tomatoes of different sizes on the plate.

Snap the tough ends off the asparagus. Steam it in salted boiling water until JUST tender; you still want it crisp, not limp and slimy. Drain the asparagus and Dish suggests refreshing it in iced water. Assemble the drained asparagus on a serving platter.

Drain the mozzarella if it’s in whey. I had bought supermarket stuff in the fridge, but for Christmas I would definitely use lovely fresh mozzarella. I might even get off my chuff and make my own. Slice the mozzarella and arrange it over the asparagus. Arrange the roasted tomatoes over the platter too.

If your pesto is really thick, add a little water to loosen it up. Pop spoonfuls of pesto over the mozzarella and tomatoes. Scatter over fresh basil leaves and season with more sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

You say frittata, I say frittata

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I haven’t posted any of the dishes lately, but I have still been trying to cook at least one ‘proper’ lunch every weekend. No grand three course meals here, but just simple bruschetta, quiche, fancy toasties and what not.

This week I made these little spring vegetable frittata (or is that frittatas?). It’s a simple recipe – although I don’t have a fancy pan that can work on the stove top and in the oven, so I’ll admit I did end up with more dishes than I’d like on a Saturday afternoon.

It was worth it.

You could use almost any vegetables you like in this. I’d suggest keeping the potato, or even swapping it for kumara. A starchy vege anchors a frittata. Then you can really add what you like – I think courgette and asparagus are nice in spring, but let your tastes, budget, fridge contents and energy levels guide you!

Easy Spring Frittata
Serves 2

1 small-medium potato, scrubbed and chopped into small cubes
½ onion, finely chopped
½ capsicum, diced
½ a courgette, coarsely grated
4-5 spears asparagus, woody ends removed, chopped into 3-4cm lengths
handful spinach leaves, roughly shredded
3 eggs (or I used 2 eggs plus 1 white) , lightly beaten
small handful grated cheese
salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat your grill to about 200°(c). Heat a small frypan over medium heat. Cook the potato first – you have a couple of options here. You can cook it in the frypan until tender, and then add the other vegetables. Or, I was impatient, so just zapped the potato in the microwave for a couple of minutes, and then plonked it into the heated pan along with the onion, capsicum, courgette and asparagus. I found I didn’t actually need any oil; the moisture from the courgette created a bit of steam and that was enough to get the party started.

Cook for just 3-4 minutes, until the asparagus is tender. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Add the shredded spinach and stir for another minute or two, until it wilts. Then pour the lightly beaten eggs over. As I said, I don’t have a multi-function frypan, so I just kind of stirred the mixture around in the hot pan to start the eggs cooking, and then split the mixture into two ovenproof dishes. If you can leave yours in the frypan, cook it kind of like an omelette, tilting the pan to let the uncooked egg to run underneath, until the base is golden. Sprinkle your frypan or little dishes with grated cheese, and place in the oven. Grill until the frittata is golden and just set firm. You can serve hot or cold – it’s yummy with a bit of relish.

Catalan Tomato Bread and Catalan Spinach

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These are two recipes from my Spanish tapas and paella dinner a couple of weeks ago. These rounded out the ‘something green’ and ‘something carby’ requirements of my menu.  They also ticked an extra box, ‘something Catalan’.

 I mainly came across Catalonia in my linguistics studies. It’s a politically and culturally autonomous part of Spain, and includes Barcelona. The Catalan language has had a somewhat troubled past but seems to be getting a boost from the Government these days – public education is in Catalan, and businesses have to use Catalan as well as Spanish in menus, and posters etc, or they can face fines. Catalan public television broadcasts only in Catalan. It’s also the only official language in Andorra, a tiny little country nestled between Spain and France (thanks, Wikipedia!).

So, back to the dishes. I found this Ray McVinnie recipe for Catalan Tomato Bread – not a recipe for the bread itself, but instructions on rubbing tomatoes on lightly toasted bread, so the bread gets covered in tomato juice and seeds and little bits of flesh. Sure, I thought. That looks nice. But we need more tomatoes. So I made semi-dried tomato bread. The recipe comes from Simon & Alison Holst’s New Zealand Bread Book, which I bought when we got our breadmaker. I really like the book actually, it’s got every kind of bread I can think of, and all their recipes have breadmaker and by hand instructions. So you can make your bread entirely by hand, or get the breadmaker to do the donkey work on the dough before you shape the bread yourself and bake it in the oven, or the breadmaker can do the whole dang thing.

When I’m feeling authentic and virtuous I make the bread all by hand. But that doesn’t happen very often. And it certainly didn’t happen on this day. So Panasonic came to the rescue.

As for the Catalan Spinach, it’s really just steamed spinach with toasted pine nuts and raisins. It doesn’t sound that incredible but it’s funny how such a simple addition can really lift plain spinach and turn it into something special. It was goooooooooood! And healthy. Bonus. 10 Points.

Home Made Catalan Tomato Bread

 Semi-Dried Tomato Bread – from Simon & Alison Holst’s New Zealand Bread Book

3 tsp surebake yeast
1 cup warm water
¼ cup tomato paste
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 cup wholemeal flour
2 cups high grade flour
¼ cup chopped semi- or sun-dried tomatoes
1 Tbsp chopped fresh basil (optional)

By machine: Measure all the ingredients into your bread machine in the order the manual tells you to. Set to NORMAL cycle, and choose your crust etc, and hit START. Or, you can set it to dough and shape the dough yourself, then bake it (as in the by hand instructions). I have a Panasonic breadmaker and set it to LARGE loaf.

By hand: Measure the yeast, water, tomato paste, sugar, salt, oil and wholemeal flour into a large bowl and mix thoroughly. Cover and leave for 15 minutes in a warm place. Stir in the high grade flour, tomatoes (and the basil if you’re using it). Make a soft dough just firm enough to knead. Knead for 10 minutes, until the dough forms a soft ball that springs back when gently pressed. Turn the dough in 2-3 teaspoons of oil in a clean, dry bowl. Cover with cling film and leave in a warm place for half an hour.

Lightly knead the oiled dough for 1 minute. Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, then pat it into a cylinder that will fit in your loaf or bread pan (or shape it round and bake it in a cake pan). Place it into the greased loaf pan and leave it to rise for about 1 hour or until doubled in size. Brush with milk (if you like) and bake at 200°C for about 30 minutes.

 To make it into Catalan Tomato Bread – a Ray McVinnie recipe from Cuisine

1-2 cloves of garlic, peeled and cut in half
1 very ripe tomato (a vine-ripened one if you can), cut in half
extra olive oil and salt, to serve

Slice the bread into 15mm slices and lightly toast. Rub each toast slice with the cut clove of garlic, and then with a tomato half, so that you leave plenty of tomato juice and seeds on the bread. Drizzle with olive oil and serve sprinkled with salt.

Catalan Spinach – from this recipe I found randomly

1 Tbsp olive or avocado oil
1 Tbsp pine nuts
2 Tbsp raisins
1 bunch spinach, washed and stems trimmed
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

Heat the oil in a large saucepan, and add the pine nuts. Watch them carefully; it’s a fine line between aromatic and burnt. As soon as they smell lovely, add the raisins, and let them plump for 1 minute. Add the spinach. Toss for a minute while the spinach wilts. Splash in the balsamic vinegar and toss for another 30 seconds. Season to taste and serve straight away.

Mushroom Bruschetta

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We had bruschetta for lunch recently on a sunny Sunday. Such a sunny Sunday, in fact, that most of my photos are a bit overexposed! But they give you an idea of what a nice day it was.

I love bruschetta for a weekend lunch; it feels Italian-y and a bit special (depending on what ingredients you use), but is actually really easy. At its core, it’s fancy tomatoes on toast.

Annabel Langbein’s Great Food for Busy Lives has a recipe for mushroom bruschetta topping, which I borrowed for this lunch. And the nice thing about bruschetta, like pizza, is that you can use up ingredients lurking in the fridge.

Note – I’ve updated this part of the post, after some tips from Alessandra Zecchini on the best authentic bread for bruschetta. I had read a bunch of recipes suggesting ciabatta, but as Alessandra notes, a Tuscan-style compact loaf is best. I am happy to be put right as I had used a good dense grainy bread (I think it was McKenzie country stuff). My original choice would have been our homemade sourdough (the starter is still going well, by the way), and I can now confirm that would also be a suitable choice. Thanks, Alessandra!

Mushroom & Artichoke Bruschetta (adapted from an Annabel Langbein recipe)

olive oil
as many slices of ciabatta as you need
1 tsp sesame oil
about 1 cup mushrooms, sliced
1 clove garlic, crushed
1-2 Tbsp unsweeted greek yoghurt
squeeze lemon juice
1 Tbsp chopped Italian parsley
spready options – harissa paste, tahini paste, or olive tapenade
cherry tomatoes, halved
canned artichoke halves, drained and chopped (optional)
extra Italian parsley, to garnish

Preheat the grill. Brush the bread with olive oil (if you want to keep things a little healther, I actually sprayed my bread with olive oil spray), and grill it lightly, just until it’s beginning to toast. Once it’s done, take the bread out and turn the oven to bake function, at 180°.

Heat the sesame oil in a frypan, and cook the mushrooms and garlic until the mushrooms have softened and reached that delicious-smelling, melty stage. Mix them with the yoghurt (you could also use mayonnaise), using just enough to bind the mixture and make it spreadable. Add a squeeze of lemon juice and the parsley.

You don’t need to spread anything on the bruschetta before adding the mushroom topping, but I used a little tahini paste on some, and a little of my harissa paste on others (tip: spread very thinly, that stuff can be quite hot!). If you have it on hand, try a black olive tapenade.

Spread the mushroom mixture over the bruschetta, and top with artichoke hearts and cherry tomato halves. Bake for 12-15 minutes, until the bruschetta are starting to crisp at the edges.

Spinach & Silverbeet for Lunch

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I’m trying to get into the habit of cooking one vaguely ‘proper’ meal for lunch over a weekend, so we sit down to eat together. Nothing fancy - soup, pie, quesadillas, bruschetta, that sort of thing. A little more effort than toast and vegemite.

It’s nice to have a hot lunch over winter, it’s nice to have an extra meal together, and it is an excellent way for me to find new uses for whatever veges are still left at the end of the weekend.

This week, it was time for a … pie? quiche? flan? tart? I can’t decide! I don’t really know the difference between them, so that means I get to choose, right? Quiche, I think. I’m in a French sort of mood today.

The spinach and feta combination is nothing new. You may remember it from, um, almost every cafe in the late 90s. But I’m a big believer in not fixing what ain’t broke. Oldies are often goodies. This time I added silverbeet, which usually works well where spinach works well. Plus, to make it a bit healthier, I pulled back on the cream and feta and added cottage cheese, which is still nice and creamy, but not so fatty and salty. Enjoy!

Silverbeet & Spinach Quiche

olive oil
1 small onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 bunch spinach, washed
4-5 silverbeet leaves, washed and white stems trimmed off
2 tsp mustard
2 eggs, lightly beaten
80g feta, roughly chopped or crumbled
150g light cottage cheese
1/4 cup light evaporated milk (or trim milk will work too)
2 Tbsp parmesan
salt and pepper to taste
4-5 sheets filo pastry
olive oil spray

Preheat oven to 180 (c). Heat a small dash of olive oil in a fry pan, and gently cook onion for 5 minutes or so until softened. Put the onion in a large bowl and set aside. Put the silverbeet and spinach in the fry pan, and add a splash of water. Steam until they wilt. Drain, cool, and squeeze out excess liquid. Roughly chop it up and place in the bowl with the onion.

Add the mustard, eggs, feta, cottage cheese, milk and parmesan, and mix well. I had run out, but if you have pinenuts, chuck a handful of those in too. Season to taste – for me, the feta is salty enough, but freshly ground pepper is welcome. Set aside for a moment.

Lightly spray a loose-bottomed quiche or tart pan with cooking spray. Place one sheet of filo pastry down to line the dish, spray again and add another sheet, repeating until the sheets are stacked up, overlapping, so that the pan is lined. Spread with the pie filling mixture, and scrunch the edges of the filo shell around to make a funky crust.

Bake for about 25 minutes, until the filling is set. Serves 4 for lunch if you make a salad to go with it. Bon appetit!

 

 

 

Best winter lunch…French Onion Soup

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French Onion Soup seems to have been popping up all over the place for me this winter. I’ve been seeing it in magazines, on blogs, on menus… must be the soup du jour this year. We had it for Sunday lunch this weekend – it’s now on my favourite food list for winter.

French Onion soup recipes don’t seem to have a lot of variation – basically heat olive oil, add thinly sliced onions and cook them gently until they soften and brown, add beef or vege stock and a bit of white wine, and simmer for 30-40 minutes. Quantities are pretty much all to taste! I followed an Alison Holst recipe which also had a splash of balsamic vinegar and fresh thyme over the onions as they started to brown. Cooking the onions nicely is the important bit – it’s where all the yummy flavour comes from.

As for the croutons, I sprayed one side of slices of french stick with cooking spray and grilled for a few minutes. Then took them out, turned them over, and sprinkled liberally with cheese (I only had parmesan but gruyere is the holy grail). Grill them on that side and plonk them in the soup. Voila!

We had a beautiful day in Wellington today – not just sunny, but also mild! This was the view from near our house.