|
28 July 2005: Curried pumpkin and cauliflower soup with garlic flatbread 
Yesterday was all toasty sunshine and warm breezes, perfect for cold beer and falafel and muhammara. Go to sleep, wake up in November, as Dave said at lunch - today I got soaked walking in to work in the sheeting rain, and shivered all day in my cardigan. Time for thick, spicy vegetable soup, served with hot, herby, garlicky flatbreads. The meal is inspired by this recipe - I've made the soup topping slightly more complicated, but the flatbreads substantially easier, so it all works out in the end. Those flatbreads - oh you have to try them. They're slighly crisp on the outside, soft and toasty on the inside, and deliciously limned with garlic, coriander and sea salt. And they take 4 minutes to prepare and 10 minutes to cook: bargain. Curried pumpkin and cauliflower soup
Peel and seed the pumpkin(s). Set aside about 400 g worth of flesh, and chop the rest into 2 cm chunks. Set aside about one fifth of the cauliflower, and chop the remainder into florets. In a large saucepan, heat some olive oil over low heat, then add the onion and cook gently for 10 minutes or so, until it is soft. Add the curry powder and cook for a further two minutes, then the honey and the cinnamon and cook another 30 seconds. Add the chopped-up pumpkin and cauliflower, stir together for a minute or two, then add the stock, increase the temperature to moderate, and simmer with the lid on for 35-45 minutes, or until the vegetables are very tender. Take the piece of pumpkin which was set aside, and cut it into neat cubes about 7 mm wide. Cut the cauliflower into tiny florets of about the same size or even smaller - it's cuteness we're going for here. Place the chopped pumpkin into a small roasting dish, and toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast in a moderate oven for 10 minutes, then add the cauliflower, toss well, and roast for a further 15 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender and browning, but not squishy. Remove from the oven, toss with the fresh coriander, and set aside. Puree the soup in a food processor, then return it to the saucepan and bring back to a simmer. Taste the soup and adjust flavourings - I added a little more honey and cinnamon to brighten the flavours a little, and some salt. Thin the soup with a little extra stock or water if necessary. Ladle the soup into bowls, and top with a couple of spoonfuls of roasted vegetable mixture. Serve with garlic flatbreads. Serves around 6. 
Garlic flatbreads In a small bowl mix together a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, 4 minced garlic cloves, and a palmful of finely chopped fresh coriander. Lay 3 or 4 smallish pita breads or other flatbreads on a baking tray, and spread the top of each with a thin layer of the garlic mixture, making sure to get it all the way to the edge of the bread. Sprinkle with crunchy flakes of sea salt. Bake in a moderate oven for about 10 minutes, until the garlic is becoming golden. Cut up and eat at once. I bet this would be great with other stuff in the topping too - finely chopped fresh chilli, or brown mustard seeds, or lightly toasted and roughly ground cumin and coriander seeds. Comments (7) | Permalink 27 July 2005: Muhammara 
Dinner: toasted pitas filled with warm felafel, a salad of rocket, cherry tomatoes and mint dressed with lemon juice, and muhammara - a Middle Eastern dip of ground walnuts, roasted red peppers and pomegranate molasses. Exceptionally good eating. 
There are recipes for muhammara all over the web; I adapted this one of Paula Wolfert's. I've never eaten it before, so I'm not sure if I've got the spicing quite right. Eaten as a dip it tastes slightly unbalanced, but with the felafel and so on it was brilliant. I'll see how it matures overnight, and report back.
Roast the peppers under the grill, turning now and then, until they are black and blistered all over. Transfer to a bowl, cover with cling wrap, and leave for 10 minutes. Pull the skins off, and remove the stems, seeds and membranes. Place on paper towels. Place the walnuts, breadcrumbs, lemon juice, pomegranate molasses, cumin, chilli, sugar and salt in a food processor, and whizz till smooth. Add the roasted peppers, and blend until you have a creamy puree. Stop once or twice to scrape the walnut paste off the sides of the food processor, to ensure it mixes in with the peppers. With the processor running, add the olive oil in a thin stream to make a soft paste. Taste, and adjust seasoning to taste. This improves if left overnight in the fridge, and keeps well for several days. Bring back to room temperature before serving. Comments (4) | Permalink 24 July 2005: Cool doings in the blogosphere Check it out, Euro food bloggers: Andrew at Spittoon is organising a European edition of Blogging by Mail, as started by BakingSheet in the US. Andrew's summary: "The process is simple. I will send you an address in which to send a small food parcel over the first weekend of August. You send out a parcel and receive one in return. What this contains is up to you, but a homemade food item is compulsory! If you can squeeze in a local product and or a regional speciality or combine all into one delicious item all the better." I'd love to join in, but I'm going to be away at the time. I'm just hoping that lots of other people participate, it becomes a stunning success, and a further round is held sometime I'm not travelling! What are you waiting for? Go sign up! Comments (1) | Permalink 23 July 2005: Next verse, same as the first 
Continuing with my (until now, unwitting) theme of the month - dishes that make Andrew go ewwwww (see here and here) - tonight I experimented further with the anchovy/sultana/slow-cooked onion combination. I figured that, since I liked it even when paired with cauliflower, a vegetable I just can't respect, it should be even better with something decent and wholesome, like peppers. And indeed, I believe we now have a new addition to our standard pasta rotation. I upped the anchovies to 6 fillets (but since these anchovies are demure, posh little things from a tiny glass jar, that could be overkill if you're using the rather more ferocious tinned variety). I had initially planned to leave the sultanas out, but tasted the sauce a couple of minutes before it was done and realised that it did actually need something sweet to balance out the salt. <Keanu>Whoa</Keanu>. Paradigm shift in my culinary tastes - excellent!
Heat some olive oil in a frypan over low heat, then add the onion and cook, stirring, for about 10 minutes, until it is sweet and soft. Add the garlic and peppers and continue to cook, over a slightly higher heat, for another 10 minutes or so, while you boil the pasta. Add the anchovies, pine nuts and sultanas to the sauce and stir, breaking up the anchovies with your spoon, for another few minutes. Drain the pasta and add to the frypan, along with some torn basil leaves and a good grinding of black pepper. Combine well, and serve at once. Serves 2. Comments (3) | Permalink 19 July 2005: Orgasmatronic 
Every now and then, you cook a meal that goes to 11. Ted and I are still sitting here grinning about the good food we ate tonight - a pleasure all the greater because it was dead easy to make. This stunner is a halved aubergine, seasoned with mirin and miso then baked until it's tender and the flavours have permeated the flesh, served with a sweet-sharp cucumber salad, pickled ginger and rice. Yes, yes, oh yes! Baked aubergine with mirin and miso
Slice the aubergine in half lengthways. Using the tip of a sharp knife, score all the way around the edge of the flesh, then score diagonally across the surface to make a wide criss-cross pattern. Tip the sesame oil into a little bowl, then use your fingertips to rub it all over the cut surfaces of the aubergine. Drizzle mirin over the surface, flexing the aubergine a little to let it drip into the cuts. Use a knife to thinly spread the miso over the surfaces. Sprinkle with sesame seeds (next time I'll use fewer than in the photo above - they obscure the sexy cross hatching, and don't add a great deal in the way of flavour). Place the aubergine halves in a baking dish and bake at 180C for about 40 minutes, until the flesh is tender. Adapted slightly from a recipe by Jennifer Harvey. Japanese cucumber salad
Top and tail the cucumber, cut in half lengthways, then slice very finely on a sharp angle. Place in a bowl. In a small bowl, mix together the rice vinegar and sugar and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved, then mix in the ginger. Tip the dressing over the cucumbers, and toss well. Leave in the fridge for about an hour, then toss again and serve. Sorry for the vague measurements with this one - I just tipped ingredients in without measuring. Comments (4) | Permalink 18 July 2005: Corn cakes 
Tonight's dinner was lifted whole from The Red Kitchen: fritters of fresh corn, spring onions and coriander, served with roasted cherry tomatoes and blanched green beans tossed with garlic-infused olive oil. Tasted great, but you can see that the fritters aren't as fluffy as one could wish. Kitschenette's look lovely - I wonder if I over-beat mine? Comments (2) | Permalink 17 July 2005: Blackbean stirfry 
I love tofu in all its forms, but I know the majority of the population feels differently. Ted reckons that if tofu were sold in the dark meaty brown colour imbued by this sauce it'd be a lot more popular.
Soak the black beans in water for 5 minutes, then drain and discard the water. Mix together the beans, soy sauce, rice wine, sesame oil and sugar. Heat a little peanut oil in a wok, then add the broccoli and pepper and fry for a couple of minutes. Add the tofu, ginger and chilli and cook a further couple of minutes, until the vegetables are tender. Next add the black bean and soy sauce mixture, and toss together until everything is well coated. Finally, add the cornflour mixture, stir well, and cook a further minute until the sauce has thickened. Serve at once with rice or noodles. Comments (0) | Permalink 12 July 2005: Anchovian revelation 
When I started eating fish again, almost a year ago, anchovies just didn't make sense. That catfood reek! That all-enveloping, tastebud-deadening, unsubtle flavour! What was the point? Tonight, I finally understand. In this Sicilian-style dish of pasta with cauliflower, anchovies, sultanas and pine nuts, the anchovies dissolve into the sauce, leaving a back-note of salty fishiness to contrast with the sweetness of the slow-cooked onions and sultanas. Mmmm, delicious.
Steam the cauliflower for 5 minutes, until just tender, then set aside. Heat a slug of olive oil in a frypan over low-medium heat, and add the onion. Cook, stirring, for 10 minutes, or until it is just turning golden and is soft and sweet. Add the garlic and anchovy fillets and cook, stirring and breaking up the anchovies with the spoon, for a further couple of minutes. Add the pasta to a large pot of boiling salted water, and cook until al dente. Add the cauliflower, sultanas, pine nuts and about 1/4 cup of water to the onion mixture, and cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring well. Drain the pasta, and combine in the pan with the cauliflower mixture, chopped flat-leaf parsley, and freshly grated black pepper. Serves 2. Comments (2) | Permalink |
|