I’ve just given a talk at work entitled “What do you eat? (How to feed a vegan)”. (It was part of our training on giving presentations). Just thought I’d post a copy of the slides.
They’re probably not the most enthralling thing in the world if you weren’t attending the presentation (which was, of course,
Gosh? Is this thing still here? I suppose I’d better post something to it then. :-)
I’ve been lacking the energy to play recently, but some new kitchen toys and a renewed attempt at acquiring the energy may result in more posts in the near future.
Yesterday I had a problem. Two problems in fact.
1) My kitchen was resplendent with several exciting new sharp implements (Remember: A well armed kitchen is a polite kitchen) which were not being used. Not least among these was a food processor with more attachments than your average Swiss army.
2) For reasons which are beyond the scope of this article, I had an awful lot of avocado which were getting very ripe.
Obvious conclusion: Guacamole!
Now, I was far from my cookbooks (ok, I was 5 minutes walk from my cookbooks, but I was in Sainsburys and they weren’t), and I’ve never made guacamole before in my life. What to do, what to do… Enterprising young chef that I am, I hit upon a cunning plan.
Ok, it wasn’t very cunning. I picked up a tub of Sainsburys own brand guacamole and looked at the label.
But it could have been a cunning plan.
Tomatoes, coriander, lemon, chilli, sour cream, a little bit of avocado, etc. No great surprises. I set off to raid the store for ingredients.
First hitch, coriander. They had plenty of coriander. However, it looked really sad. And I mean *really* sad. This isn’t “Kicked puppy” sadness so much as “I’ve just read the entirety of war and peace in one sitting and have now lost all will to live” sadness. It was that sad. So, substitution time. I picked up a pack of flat leaf parsley instead.
Next substitution: They were out of sour cream. This time War and Peace was inflicted upon me. Visions of guacamole receded into the distance, laughing as they ran.
Oh well. Creme fraiche is almost like sour cream, right?
A quick detour via the checkout and time to run gleefully home to attack my new purchases with spinning blades (of doom).
3 largeish and very ripe avocados
4 smallish and rather pathetic looking not very ripe tomatoes
1/2 a medium sized red onion.
1 lime
1 lemon
3 small cloves of garlic
A medium sized bunch of flat leaf parsley.
half a tsp of powdered chilli
2 tsp salt
2 tsp brown sugar
250ml Creme Fraiche.
It’s not really rocket science. :-) The short answer is “Blended everything until it was thoroughly gooped”. You can skip the rest of this section now.
Here’s a quote from immediately after making this:
< David > That is a) An awful lot of guacamole and b) An awful lot of really damn good guacamole. :)
I don’t really have much further to add to that, except that maybe it would be worth cooking the onion first next time – the recipe doesn’t taste too oniony, but it has quite a strong aftertaste of it. Some cumin might not go amiss either.
Recipe by request. This recipe makes 3-4 pancakes. It’s a medium sized breakfast for one person. If you want more, just multiply up.
Ingredients:
These are only approximate. You can fiddle them a bit in either direction and it works fine.
1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup of yoghurt
1/4 cup of milk.
1 egg
1 tsp vegetable oil
Process:
I use a single fairly large measuring jug to do all the mixing in. It’s convenient, saves washing up, lets me pour the mix directly onto the frying pan, and lets me measure as I add things in.
Add all the liquid ingredients into the measure cup. Stir until reasonably well mixed. Add all the dry ingredients in. Stir again until reasonably well mixed (you don’t need to get all the lumps out – just the big ones). And you’re done. Time to cook. :-)
Cook them on a nonstick frying pan (no oil!) on a medium-low heat. You can cook them on a higher heat if you want (I do, but that’s because I have a gas hob and can’t *do* medium heat), but you’ll need to flip them fairly constantly. On the medium low heat you can wait until the pancakes start to bubble and then flip them the once.
The end result should be a golden brown colour on both sides, not too dark, and not still uncooked inside.
Total cooking time: The mix takes about five minutes, the cooking maybe 10-15.
So, I’ve been incredibly lax about posting recently (where by recently I mean ‘for the last six months or more’). I’m going to try and fix that, but to be honest I’m going to fail. Still, here’s a post.
Part of the reason for the lack of post is I haven’t been cooking very well recently. Lack of energy. Tonight I really felt the need for a good meal, but I wanted something simple owing to aforementioned lack of energy. Here’s what I came up with.
Olive oil (unspecified quantity – enough to cover the bottom of the pan)
3 sweet peppers (2 yellow, 1 red)
1 red onion
3 cloves of garlic
6 smallish tomatoes
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp powdered red chilli
1 cup durum wheat
1.5 cups water
Err. Not much really. :-)
First, the durum. This is trivial. Put 1 cup durum wheat and 1.5 cups water in a rice cooker. Press the ‘on’ button. Leave to cook.
I thinly sliced the onion and sweet peppers and fried them with the olive oil, garlic, sugar and salt. I started the onions a few minutes before the peppers. I coarsely chopped the tomatoes and, once the peppers were looking reasonably cooked, added them and the chilli to the mixture. I left this to cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomato reduced to a thick sauce and the peppers tasted cooked.
Nice, simple, effective. I’m a big fan of durum wheat at the moment – it’s like cous cous, only much harder to go wrong with. It’s nice for dishes that I would normally have with rice.
The peppers were very good. I think they needed frying for longer before adding the tomatoes (peppers don’t cook very well in liquid), but other than that I can’t think anything I would have done differently. Maybe slightly more chilli and less salt.
In my weekly trip to the local second hand bookstall I recently picked up a new cookbook, entitled Balti: The complete cookbook, by Lynette Baxter. To be honest, I’m not very impressed with it, but at two pounds if I get one recipe from it that I cook on a regular basis then I’ll be satisfied with my purchase.
The following is approximately from it. The ingredients list bears a passing resemblance to a recipe of the same name in the book (I forget how much resemlance it actually bears – I didn’t do much more than scan the recipe). I’m pretty sure the actual cooking method doesn’t. It needs some work, but given that it will probably prove to be a nice easy recipe to cook when I don’t feel like putting much effort into it.
1 Red Onion
3 cloves garlic
5 smallish tomatoes
2 cans of chickpeas
250g closed cap mushrooms.
1 fresh birds eye chilli
1/2 cup water
Sunflower oil
Salt
Brown sugar
1tsp Fenugreek seeds
2tsp Cumin seeds
1tsp Cardamon seeds
2tsp whole black peppercorns
1cm of cinnamom stick
I began pretty much as usual. Toasted the spices, ground them up in a mortar and pestle and then put them aside. I then chopped up the onion and garlic quite finely and fried it with a bit of salt and sugar in the oil. After about 5-10 minutes I added the spice to the mix and continued frying.
While that was frying I cleaned the mushrooms and chopped them up fairly coarsely. After the onions had been frying with the spices for a few minutes I added them and continued frying until the mushrooms were fairly well cooked, stirring it pretty thoroughly so that the mushrooms were properly coated with the spice and onion mix.
Meanwhile I chopped the tomatoes and, once the mushrooms were cooked, added them to the mix. I turned up the heat and let it fry for a few more minutes then added half a cup of water and simmered until the tomatoes had reduced to a sauce. I drained the chickpeas, added them to the mix and stirred thoroughly, letting it cook for another five minutes or so. The end result was enough sauce to coat the chickpeas, but not enough that they were swimming in it.
So, pretty much what you’d expect given the ingredients list. I think it’s not what was suggested in the cookbook, but clearly my way is better. :-)
This was pretty good, but the spice mix was a bit odd. It didn’t quite work. I think it needed to lose the cinnamon and possibly include some mustard seeds, coriander and more cumin.
I served it simply over brown rice. It could probably use some sort of simple vegetable side dish to go with it.