Author Archives: Nevenka

Pomegranate & Buckwheat Salad

23 Thursday Jul 2020

Posted by in Main Courses, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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After the, for southern Spain, very wet spring that we have had, all the fruit trees have super abundant crops this year. The little pomegranate tree must have at least 70 fruits on it , the ripest of which are splitting open. With so many fruits they are small, I should have thinned them out earlier in the season, and the jewelled seeds are small and not so sweet but so tasty, and lovely for salads.

For 4 servings

100 grams buckwheat

seeds from 1 large or 2 small pomegranates

1/2 green pepper

2 large tomatoes

1 avocado

1/2 cucmber

1/2 sweet salad onion or spring onion

1 stick celery

chicory leaves – cut into thin strips/ watercress / mache salad

extra virgin olive oil

cider vinegar

good bunch of basil leaves

juice of 1 small or 1/2 large lime.

I like to soak the buckwheat in cold water overnight in which case it only takes five minutes to cook in salted water, but if you haven’t time to soak it, don’t worry, it will just take 10 – 15 minutes longer to become tender.

Once just cooked, drain the buckwheat and let it cool.

Peel the cucumber and cut into small dice.

Cut the green pepper, tomato, avocado, onion, and celery into small dice. Put into a salad bowl with the cucumber and cooled buckwheat.

Add the salad leaves and coarser chopped basil leaves. Mix well.

Dress the salad with the olive oil, lime juice and cider vinegar.

Oriental Rice Pudding

19 Sunday Jul 2020

Posted by in Sweet Things, Vegan

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This pudding is in need of a name, so I would be grateful for any suggestions, or should I just stick to Oriental Rice Pudding? I was looking for a light dessert to follow the Gado Gado which I served for lunch, and remembered an Indian milky dessert called Sheer Korma. That is made with a very fine wheat vermicelli, seviyan, cooked in sweetened milk with nuts and flavoured with saffron, so I thought to make it more in tune with an Indonesian dish, and to make it vegan, to substitute the wheat vermicelli for fine rice noodles and use coconut milk instead of cows milk. I think it worked very well.

For 4 servings

80 grams rice vermicelli

160 ml can full fat coconut milk

40 grams pistachios

25 grams flaked almonds

25 grams broken pecans

75 ml agave syrup / honey

few strands saffron

For lime sherbet topping

2 tablespoons caster sugar

1 lime

Start by making the lime sherbet as you have to do this a day in advance so it can dry. This amount is more than you need for garnishing this dessert, but the sherbet keeps well for a couple of weeks in an airtight jar and is lovely on plain ice cream and fruit salad.

On a flat plate or tray sprinkle the sugar in an even layer.

Using the zester on your grater, grate the zest of the lime in an even layer over the sugar, then with your fingertips lightly mix the two together still leaving the mix spread out.

Leave in a warm dry place for several hours or overnight until dry and crunchy.

So for the rice pudding –

Soak the rice vermicelli in cold water for an hour.

Drain and cut into shortish lengths.

Put into a saucepan with the rest of the ingredients and bring slowly to a simmer.

Simmer for 5 – 10 minutes until slightly thickened. Leave to cool.

Serve at room temperature with the lime sherbet sprinkled over the top.

Gado Gado

18 Saturday Jul 2020

Posted by in Food for One, Main Courses, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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This Indonesian salad dressed with the satay sauce from my pervious post, is perfect summer eating. Like many salads its an assembly rather than a recipe. Gado Gado means mix mix, so there are core ingredients that make it typical, and then the variable ingredients depending on the season and what you have in your vegetable garden or fridge. 

 

The core ingredients –

Boiled eggs

Tofu or tempeh – lightly fried in sesame oil with garlic and ginger

potatoes or sweet potatoes – cut into long pieces and steamed

prawn crackers

The rest of the ingredients can be either cooked or raw, choose a variety for both their flavours and colour. Today I had –

french beans – steamed

green asparagus – lightly steamed

sweet corn slices – lightly steamed

edename beans – I buy these frozen and ready blanched

red and green peppers – cut into strips

cucumber – cut into strips

carrots – peeled and cut into strips

tomatoes – cut into thin wedges

Other ingredients that would work well together are –

bean sprouts

broccoli florets – lightly steamed

Any of the green leaves – pak Choi, mizuna, radicchio would add a nice slight bitterness, spinach

radishes

Fresh coriander and basil

Have your satay sauce on the side to spoon onto the salad and to dip into as you eat.

Satay Sauce, my version

17 Friday Jul 2020

Posted by in Sauces, Vegan

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I have been trying various recipes for Satay Sauce and am now at my definitive version I believe, my friends can’t stop eating it when I serve it, which is always a good sign that you have the recipe right!

2 cloves of garlic – roughly chopped

2 x 2 x 4 cm piece of ginger – roughly chopped

fresh green chillis – this sauce wants to be pretty picante, so you are going to have to use your judgement on this. I’ve got some fiercely hot Padrón peppers in the garden, so I used a whole one of these, probably the equivalent to 3-4 birds eye chillis

50 ml  coconut milk

50 ml ketjap manis – Indonesian sauce

50 ml water

juice of one medium or 2 small limes

150 ml unsweetened peanut butter – give it a good stir to blend in the dense paste at the bottom of the jar before measuring.

Put the garlic, ginger and chilli into a small food processor and blitz to cut up.

Add the coconut milk, ketjap manis, water and lime juice. Blitz again to obtain a smooth purée.

Add the peanut butter and blitz yet again until you have a smooth thick purée.

Serve with Gado Gado Salad, recipe to follow in next post, or anything else you fancy!

Banana, Coconut & Cardamom Buns

01 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by in breakfast, Sweet Things, Vegan

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These slightly sweet breakfast buns were inspired by an article on what to do with bananas that had got too soft. In the piece one of the cooks suggested making banana and cardamom puris. I just love anything flavoured with cardamoms and the idea of mixing the spice with bananas was very appealing.
Puris are made from a rich yeast dough, which of course can be baked as well as fried. I replaced the butter and milk in the puri recipe with coconut cream, some slivers of fresh coconut would add to this flavour, but I thought of that after I had made the buns. I was forgetting that I have some coconut flesh in the freezer, so next time…

250 grams whole meal spelt flour

7 grams fresh yeast / 3.5 grams powdered yeast

6 green cardamom pods

2 medium sized ripe bananas

120 ml coconut cream

2 teaspoons soft brown sugar

Egg white and more sugar for a topping

 

Put the flour into a large mixing bowl.

Add the seeds from the cardamom pods, the sugar and the yeast. Mix well.

Peel and either mash or pulse the bananas in a food processor. You don’t want a purée but some texture remaining.

Add the coconut cream to the bananas and mix.

Make a well in the centre of the flour mix and pour in the banana and coconut cream. Mix in to form a sticky dough.

Cover the bowl with a clean tea cloth and leave in a warm drought free place for a couple of hours until it has doubled in size.

Flour your work surface and tip the dough onto it. Knead the dough for a few minutes then divide into 8 equal balls.

Place on a baking tray and again in a warm drought free place leave to prove for 30 minutes.

Heat the oven to 175 C and bake the buns for 10 minutes.

Turn the oven down to 150 C and bake for another 5 minutes.

Take the tray out of the oven and brush each bun with egg white then sprinkle on a little brown sugar. Put the buns back in the oven for 7-10 minutes until the tops are nicely browned.

Maccheroni al Piselli

13 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by in Main Courses, Starters, Vegan

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Or pasta with peas…….and tomato sauce.

I’ve had a tray of peas sprouting on the kitchen windowsill for the last few days, and now the shoots are ready for cutting. The flavour of them is stronger than I expected, and stronger than that of the sweet peas I have, so I thought the two together would make a well flavoured sauce for the swirly maccheroni I have. And it did…….

For 2 portions

200 grams maccheroni

1/2 onion – finely chopped

2 cloves garlic – finely chopped

3 tablespoons olive oil

250 grams tomatoes -either fresh or tinned – peeled and chopped small

120 grams tomato Frito or passata

400 grams sweet garden peas – either fresh or frozen

bunch of pea sprouts – cut in half if long

4 large sprigs of fresh basil – roughly chopped

salt and freshly ground black pepper

olive oil for drizzling

Heat plenty of water seasoned with salt and olive oil, and when boiling add the pasta.

Once back boiling, turn the heat down to a brisk simmer and leave the pasta to cook to al dente. For this pasta it was about 12-15 minutes.

Heat the oil in a deep frying pan and add the onion and garlic. Fry gently until translucent.

Add the chopped tomato, Frito and peas. Cook uncovered for 10 minutes stirring from time to time. You want the sauce to have reduced, thickened and the flavour to have intensified, so if you are using fresh tomatoes that are watery, the sauce may need longer cooking.

Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

Drain the pasta once it is cooked.

Add the pea shoots and basil to the tomato sauce and stir in, then stir in the pasta making sure that it is nicely covered with the sauce.

Serve with an extra drizzle of olive oil over the pasta, and enjoy!

Salad Days

20 Wednesday May 2020

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Today the first of the tender summer beetroot were ready to pick……..and its hot! So a trio of salads for lunch…….

Warm potato salad dressed With olive oil and white wine vinegar. The sweet salad onions and dried dill I soaked in the dressing for half an hour before adding the warm potatoes.

A mixed salad of tomatoes, straight from the garden lettuce and radishes, cubes of bread and left over grilled vegetables.

And the lovely beetroot and it’s tender leaves in a lightly marinated raw salad.

2 small beetroot, peeled and cut into fine julienne.

1 tablespoon/ 15 ml green pumpkin seeds

1 tablespoon / 15 ml balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon / 15 ml balsamic syrup

1 tablespoon / 15 ml extra virgin olive oil

1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

plenty of freshly ground black pepper

Mix all the ingredients together and leave to marinate for an hour or so.

Sajur Lemeng

16 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in Fish, Main Courses, Vegan

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This Indonesian vegetable curry is adapted from one of my old cookery books, South East Asian Food, written by the Australian academic Rosemary Brissenden who fell in love with Indonesia and its cuisine as a student in the 1960’s.

I made this as a vegan curry which was delicious, the original recipe was with prawns and prawn paste so I will give amounts of those for making the non vegan version.

For 2

about 250 grams in total of various vegetables. You can choose between red and green peppers, green beans, aubergine, bean sprouts and the following that I used on this occasion –

asparagus

leeks – cut into thin strips

courgette – Cut into bite sized chunks

mange toute peas

small green peppers

mizuna and Pak Choi

1 red fresh chilli – chopped

2 cm square, more or less, fresh ginger or better still galangal – chopped

2 garlic cloves – cut in half

1 small sweet onion – roughly chopped

5 macadamia nuts / 10 hazelnuts

1 teaspoon / 5 ml ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon shrimp paste – if making a vegan curry omit this

1 tablespoon / 15 ml coconut oil

400 coconut milk

First make a curry paste. In a small food processor whizz together the chilli, ginger, garlic, onion, nuts, shrimp paste and coriander together with the coconut oil.

Gently fry the curry paste in a large wok for 5 – 10 minutes until it is cooked.

Add the coconut milk and heat to a simmer.

Add the vegetables that need the longest cooking first, then after a few minutes the more tender vegetables and the prawns if using. Simmer until the vegetables are just done with some bite remaining and the prawns cooked through.

Serve with jasmine rice or sesame sprinkled rice noodles.


Patatas Bravas & Huevos Rotos

06 Wednesday May 2020

Posted by in Food for One, Main Courses, Vegetable Dishes

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SPICY ROAST POTATOES WITH BROKEN EGGS

This recipe is super easy, a variation on the oven chips, the only special ingredient needed is Picante Smoked Pimenton or Paprika. The potatoes come out of the oven with a crispy, garlicky, spicy coating, and the eggs make a thick tasty sauce.

Put a large baking tray in the oven and warm it to 190 C or equivalent. The potatoes need to be in a single layer with a bit of space between each one so they can crisp up, so if you are making a largish amount use two trays.

Peel the potatoes and cut into bite sized chunks and put into a bowl.

Crush a clove of garlic per person with a pinch of salt, then mix into 2 tablespoons of oil per person. Add to the potatoes and mix well.

Spread the potatoes on the hot baking tray and put in the oven for 30 minutes by which time they should be almost cooked a a bit brown round the edges.

After the 30 minutes take the tray out of the oven and toss the potatoes with a fish slice. Sprinkle over the pimenton, about a teaspoon per person, and toss again.

Put back in the oven for 10 minutes to finish cooking.

Meanwhile poach 2 eggs per person.

Serve the potatoes with the eggs on top, cutting the eggs to let the lovely hot yolk dribble over the potatoes.

Spicy Aubergine Salad

02 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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Do you ever read a recipe and think how interesting it sounds, and then when you go back to make it the recipe some days later, what you have in your head and how you desire it to taste only bears a faint resemblance to the original recipe? This is what happened with this recipe, but I went ahead and made the recipe that I had imagined which turned out super tasty and delicious.

1 large aubergine

1 clove garlic

4 tablespoons / 60 ml of olive oil

1/4 teaspoon / 1.25 ml sea salt

2 cm cube tamarind paste

1 tablespoon / 15ml sugar/ honey / agave syrup

1 tablespoon / 15 ml cider vinegar

1/4 teaspoon / 1.25 ml picante smoked pimenton or paprika

fresh coriander leaves, chopped

Break the tamarind paste into as small pieces as you can and put in a small container with about a tablespoon of boiling water. Leave to macerate.

In a pestle and mortar or a small bowl crush the garlic with the salt until you have a paste.

Add the olive oil and mix well.

Cut the aubergine into thickish slices and then brush with the garlicky oil. You can either grill them or bake them in the oven. As you can see I baked mine this time with a sweet potato at 190 C

While the aubergines are cooking and cooling, prepare the dressing.

To the leftover garlicky oil add the rest of the ingredients. The tamarind will need to be mashed into its water and any seeds removed.

Put your aubergine slices into a shallow salad dish, pour over the dressing and gently toss. Leave the salad for half an hour for the aubergine to absorb the dressing, sprinkle over the fresh coriander and enjoy.