Author Archives: david

Persian Rice and Lentils

The cookbook I approximated this from was “Persian cooking for a healthy kitchen” by Najmieh Batmanglij (whose name I freely admit I couldn’t pronounce if my life depended on it).

I’m afraid I’ve been rather bad with this one. I actually cooked it almost a week ago and never got around to putting it up. Thus my memory might be a bit shaky on the details.

What I used:

3 cups basmati rice
1 1/2 cups brown lentils
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped dates
Two medium red onions
Lots of olive oil
1 tsp cardamon seeds
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp cumin seeds
Half a stock cube
Salt
1tbsp Brown sugar
Juice of one lemmon

What I did:

I started off by cooking the rice in the usual fashion.

Well… almost the usual fashion. The usual fashion doesn’t involve starting to set up the rice cooker and suddenly thinking “Hmm. That tingles. Actually, you know, that’s rather painful, ’cause I’ve JUST PLUGGED MY HAND INTO THE MAINS.” This was followed by several minutes of cursing, resetting the circuit breaker and throwing away the broken rice cooker.

So, cooking it on the stove top instead. Still, business as usual – I didn’t have a rice cooker . Repeatedly washed and soaked it in cold water, drained it and then brought cooked on a high heat with 5 cups of water until it was nearly dry. Then I drained off what water was left and set it aside.

While I was doing this I covered the lentils in water, added the half stock cube and cooked these until they were soft. Then I drained them and kept the cooking water.

I dry fried the cumin and cardamon, then crushed them in a mortar and pestle (which is more work than one might expect). Then I fried the onion with some salt, the sugar and plenty of olive oil. I added the crushed spices and the cinnamon. Once the onions were softening I added the raisins and dates. I continued frying them until the onions were properly cooked, then added the lentils and about 2/3 of the remaining rice and fried for a few minutes longer before taking it off the heat.

The next step of cooking involved baking the mix. I took the remaining rice and mixed it with some of the oil and cooking water from the lentils and used it to coat the inside of a deep ceramic baking dish. This was meant to form a nice crust around the main dish. I then packed the rice/lentil/everything else mix tightly down on top of it, poured on a bit more of the cooking water and the lemon juce then drizzled the top with oil.

I then baked it for about 45 minutes in a medium-hot oven. I served this with roast butternut squash and a salad.

Conclusion:

This was basically a good recipe. There were some problems though. First of all, the attempt to make the crusty outside failed completely. It’s possible that if I’d cooked it on a higher temperature it would work, but really I’m not sure it’s needed. Also the recipe could have used a bit more cumin and more salt. Finally, I thought the rice dominated too much over the lentils. I’d probably take out about half a cup of rice and add in another half cup of lentils. This is probably because it’s originally meant to be served with meat rather than as a main dish in its own right.

The recipe called for candied orange peel, but we didn’t have any to hand when I made this. If I make it again I’ll definitely include it.

Overall though, definitely something to make again. The sweet flavour offset the lentils nicely, and it was a nice slightly exotic dish for not too much work, electrocution aside.

Announcement

I’m going to stop writing the super-real fields series for now. It’s still interesting me, but there are some other subjects which have been bumped up my priorities list recently that I want to learn first. I may well make some posts about them later.

Vegetarian Mole

Yeah, I’m experimenting with the chocolate and chilli combination again. This time as a main meal. I’d recommend not telling people what’s in this until after they’ve already finished – my dad liked it, but once he realised the flavour was chocolate he found it a bit odd.

By the way, if you’re wondering why I always use red onions, it’s not because of any flavour preference. Our crop of red onions was good this year while our white onions failed rather dismally.

What I used:
Sunflower oil
2 medium red onions
2 red chillis
Lots of salt
1 tsp garam masala
1/3 cup cocoa
1/4 cup treacle
About 3tbsp brown sugar
2 cans of kidney beans
Boiling water.

What I did:

This is about as embarassingly simple as you’d expect. I chopped up the onions, fried them in sunflower oil with the salt for 5 minutes. I then diced the chillis and removed most of the seeds (I needn’t have bothered. I keep forgetting how unspicy these chillis are) and added these to the mix. I let it cook for another 5 minutes before adding the garam masala and cocoa. (I added a little bit of water as well to keep it moist at this point).

After a few more minutes I added the beans, stirred until the beans were thoroughly coated and then added the treacle and sugar, covered everything with water and transferred it to the oven. I cooked it there for about 30 minutes.

Conclusion:

I liked it. I will agree with the assessment that it was a bit odd, but I thought it worked. That being said, it probably won’t go on my list of meals to cook on a regular basis.

It could use being a bit spicier (this is a function of the chillis I used) and to have slightly less water – I didn’t think the sauce was thick enough. I served it with white rice, pan fried squash and a broccoli, chickory and sesame salad.

Pseudo-African Peanut and carrot stew

This was (very) loosely based off this recipe.

What I used:

Lots of sunflower oil
3 small white onions (close to shallot size)
1 medium-small red onion
4 cloves of garlic
1/2 tbsp of cumin
1/2 tbsp of brown sugar
1/2 tbsp of dried crushed chilli
3 cups of salted peanuts
8 medium-large carrots
1 can of chopped tomatoes
1 kallo yeast-free vegetable stock cube
Water

What I did:

I needed to use the food processor for the peanuts anyway, so I decided to be very lazy with this recipe and use it for all my chopping purposes. So I shoved the onions and garlic in the processor, pulsed it for a bit until they were fine and started frying them in oil as per usual. I added the sugar, cumin and chilli here.

I fried them for about 5 to 10 minutes, and while they were frying I pulsed the peanuts and the carrots in the blender (seperately). I then added the peanuts, fried for a bit longer and added the carrots as well. I continued to fry this for another 5-10 minutes, then added the tomatoes, stock and boiling water to cover it.

I simmered this for about 20 minutes before deciding it wasn’t cooking fast enough. I then transferred it to the hot oven on the aga and left it for another 20 minutes. When I took it out almost all the water had evaporated, so I added a little more, stirred it and stuck it in the simmering oven to keep warm and cook slightly more. It was probably in there for 10 minutes before we ate. I served this with whole wheat African chapatis, which are like Indian chapatis except that they’re from Africa. (I’ll include a post on chapatis some time – I’m really struggling to get the damn things right).

Conclusion

I’d say this was a success. It wasn’t perfect, but it had a nice flavour to it. Simple, but slightly unusual. I’d probably use fewer peanuts in future – maybe two instead of three cups. Possibly a touch more chilli as well.

Mombasa Pumpkin Desert

Rather than given an account of this one, I’m just going to refer you to the original recipe.

The only major change I made to this was that I added some water to it. This was a mistake – the pumpkin gives off a huge amount of water on it’s own, so this made the sauce way too watery.

That being said, it tasted quite nice. The pumpkin was overcooked when I did it, but that’s because I was trying to reduce the overabundance of liquid. I think it could use being slightly less sweet though – I’d probably use about half a cup less sugar. Alternatively, I used about a kilo of chopped pumpkin for the amount of ingredients suggested. Using maybe half again this much would probably be advisable (but given that the sweetness was in the sauce, this probably wouldn’t make it less sweet – you’d just be getting less sauce per pumpkin bit).