Category Archives: Vegetable Dishes

Linguini with Fresh & Sundried Tomatoes, Green Olives & Basil

04 Friday Sep 2015

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I was inspired by the tomato pasta of my last post to cook something similarly fresh tasting. So this quick to prepare dish is the result, using ingredients that I already had in the store cupboard. I give you the recipe exactly as I did it, but of course if you don’t have Aliolli and/or Chilli Jam in your cupboard, change for fresh garlic and chilli to taste.

A perfect lunch for one or a light colourful starter if you halve the amounts per person.

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LINGUINI WITH FRESH & SUNDRIED TOMATOES, GREEN OLIVES & BASIL

Per person –

30 gms linguini

10 ml olive oil

1 large tomato

3 sundried tomatoes

6 green olives

1.25 ml aliolli

2,5 ml chilli jam

Fresh basil leaves

Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Get a pan of water heating up for the pasta. Add to it 5 ml of the olive oil and half a teaspoon of salt.

When the water is boiling, add the sundried tomatoes to the water and let simmer for a couple of minutes. Scoop out and leave to cool.

Add the linguini to the water and leave to cook at a medium simmer.

Put the other 5ml of olive oil in a shallow pan. Add the aliolli and chilli jam.

Slice the sundried tomatoes and add to the pan.

Remove stones from the olives and cut each olive in half. Add to the pan.

Halve the tomato across its equator and using a fine grater grate the pulp into a bowl until you are left with just the skin in your hand. If the grater is fine enough it should sift out the majority of the seeds. If the odd seed makes it into the sauce, it is not the end of the world.

Add the fresh tomato pulp to the shallow pan.

Roughly chop the basil leaves.

When the pasta is two or three minutes from the al dente stage of crookedness, slowly heat the sauce stirring to mix all the ingredients.

Once the pasta is cooked, drain and add to the sauce. Mix well to coat the pasta with the sauce. Season with salt, freshly ground black pepper and two thirds of the basil leaves. Turn again to mix in.

Turn into a pasta bowl and garnish with the rest of the basil leaves.

Enjoy!

Two Cabbage Salads – My Coleslaw & Bavarian Cabbage Salad

04 Saturday Apr 2015

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I have always made Coleslaw for myself with the oil and vinegar dressing as in the recipe below. For me the mayonnaise masks the flavour of the vegetables, while the French dressing brings it out. Having recently converted a couple of friends to this style of Coleslaw, including my sister who I had assumed made it this way already, I thought you, reader or two, would like the recipe too.

The Bavarian Cabbage Salad may not be Bavarian at all, but the making of it was demonstrated to me by a friend from that region, so that is what it is called in my recipe book. I had eaten it at her house several times and loved it so had to have the recipe.

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MY COLESLAW

Quarter of a medium sized white cabbage

1 red apple

2 medium carrots – peeled

30 grams peanuts – dry roasted

50 grams small raisins

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

 

Remove the outer tough leaves from the cabbage and discard.

Cut the cabbage into very fine slices, and put into a largish salad bowl.

Finely grate the carrots and add to the cabbage.

Quarter the apple, remove the cores, cut each wedge in half lengthways, then into thin slices.

Add to the cabbage and carrots.

Add the nuts and raisins, then the oil and vinegar. Mix well.

Season to taste.

If eating the same day, leave for at least two hours at room temperature for the flavours to meld.

This salad will keep for two or three days in the fridge.

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BAVARIAN CABBAGE SALAD

Quarter of a medium sized white cabbage

100 ml stock

Quarter of a teaspoon of caraway seeds

50 grams finely cut bacon lardons – can be smoked or not

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

 

Finely slice the cabbage and put into a salad bowl.

Put the stock into a small saucepan with the caraway and heat until boiling.

Pour over the cabbage and mix with a spoon, then with your hands mix and squeeze the cabbage to break it a bit and help it absorb the stock a little.

Fry the lardons in the olive oil until nicely lightly browned.

Add to the cabbage and mix well.

Add the vinegar and seasoning. Mix well again.

Again if you are eating the salad the same day, leave covered at room temperature for at least two hours for the flavours to meld.

If you store the salad in the fridge for any length of time, let it come back to room temperature before eating.

 

 

A Mid-Week Dinner – Continued

27 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by in Starters, Sweet Things, Vegetable Dishes

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For the – probably one of you – who has been waiting for the rest of the recipes for this dinner, here at last they are. IMG_1518 SPINACH WITH PINE NUTS AND RAISINS

For 4

25 grams pine nuts

A good bunch of fresh tender spinach

Olive oil 25 grams small golden raisins

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Firstly toast the pine nuts until a golden brown in a thick based pan over a low heat. Shake the pan from time to time to turn the nuts.

Wash and drain the spinach.

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a shallow pan. Add the spinach, cover and let wilt for a couple of minutes over a low heat.

Add the pine nuts and raisins and stir to mix.

Season then cover the pan again and leave to cook for about five minutes.

Serve on hot plates.

PRAWN WITH GARLIC, LEMON AND PARSLEY

For 4

20 medium sized peeled prawns

1 large clove garlic

Olive oil

Juice of half a lemon

Chopped flat leaved parsley

Heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a frying pan.

Add the chopped garlic and fry until light brown.

Add the prawns and cook quickly on a high heat until opaque and slightly browned.

Squeeze in the lemon juice and stir to collect any brownings at the bottom of the pan.

Sprinkle in the parsley and serve immediately on a hot dish.

IMG_1525 CARAMELISED FIG CUSTARDS

FOR 4

The only remotely complicated thing about this recipe is remembering to cook the custards early enough that they can cool completely. You can of course cook them the day before they are needed.

I will point out also that it is not an error that the custard does not have sugar added to it. There is enough sweetness in the caramelised fig to balance the less sweet custard.

4 tablespoons caramelised fig jam

Butter for greasing your pots

2 eggs

200 ml full fat milk

Few drops vanilla essence

Preheat the oven to 140C

To cook this you will need individual ovenproof pots for the custard. Most crockery is oven proof provided you don’t heat or cool it too rapidly. I used some glass coffee cups to cook my custards.

Grease the pots with butter and then put a tablespoon of the fig jam in the bottom of each.

Break the eggs into a jug and whisk lightly to mix.

Add the milk and vanilla essence and whisk a bit more to mix this.

Pouring through a sieve to remove any solid bits in the egg, pour the custard into the pots.

Put the pots into a deep baking dish and add boiling water to the dish to come about 2cm up the pots. This prevents the custards getting too hot and burning on their bases.

Put in the oven and leave to cook for about an hour until the custards are just set.

Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely.

To serve slide a thin knife around the edge of the custard, put a small plate on top of the pot and invert the whole lot. You may have to give the custard and encouraging shake. If any of the jam stays in the pot, simply spoon neatly on top of the custard.

MINI CARDAMOM SHORTBREADS

100 grams plain flour

40 grams fine semolina

Quarter teaspoon ground cardamoms

30 grams sugar

100 grams butter

Put all the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix.

Cut the butter into small pieces into the flour mix and rub in.

Bring the mix together in a firm dough.

On a floured surface roll the dough out to just under a centimetre thick.

If you have a very small round cutter – ideally about 3cm diameter – then cut into small biscuits. Otherwise cut into small squares or lozenges.

Bake at 150C for about an hour until pale golden.

Parsnip Casserole

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Main Courses, Vegetable Dishes

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I love all vegetables, but have extra affection for the chosen few. I don’t know if it is the scarcity here of parsnips, and the few that we do get tend to be small and woody, but the sight of the plump white roots in the vegetable stalls at my local market in London have me yearning for roast parsnips all crisp brown and caramelised around the edges, or parsnip patties with a sharp sweet and sour sauce, or this casserole which perfectly brings out the flavour of these sweet roots.

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PARSNIP CASSEROLE
Serves 4 as a side vegetable and 2 as a main course
About 500 grams parsnips
4 medium sized tomatoes
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
200 ml single cream or crème fraiche
Parmesan/pecorino/mature hard cheese to grate

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Peel the parsnips and slice thinly.
Thinly slice the tomatoes.
In an ovenproof casserole, layer the ingredients. Start with a trickle of cream, then some parsnips layed side by side, then tomato slices, another trickle of cream, salt and pepper and finally a little grated cheese.
Continue layering until all the ingredients are used ending with a layer of parsnips topped with cheese.
Cover and bake at 175 C for an hour and a half.

An Autumn Lunch

12 Wednesday Nov 2014

Posted by in Main Courses, Starters, Sweet Things, Vegetable Dishes

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At this time of the year my southern Spanish vegetable garden is lush with green vegetables that in the north are considered spring vegetables. There are several varieties of lettuce and endive, Cima Di Rapa, crispy dark green chard, french beans, Mange-Toute and the sweetest baby courgettes……… So I want to feature this abundance in my meal. I dither between choosing to prepare a composed salad, or grilling some of the vegetables. In my other veg patch I find some small purple and white striped aubergines and a few asparagus spears. That helps me to make up my mind, grilled vegetables with a sweet and spicy pepper sauce. IMG_1390 My regular readers will know that I preserve whatever surplus I have of garden produce as I go along, so the sauce is based on a couple of these, the recipes for which you will find on previous blogs. SWEET AND SPICY PEPPER SAUCE Half a small jar of Red Pepper Salad 2 tablespoons Chilli Jam Juice of half a lemon Simply whizz together in the food processor The main course was Orechiette Pasta with Beef and Tarragon Meatballs in Mushroom Sauce. IMG_1389 BEEF & TARRAGON MEATBALLS WITH MUSHROOM SAUCE FOR 6 400 grams lean minced beef 2 garlic cloves – peeled 1 medium egg 25 grams dried breadcrumbs – preferably from good bread that you have dried and crumbed yourself Half a dozen sprigs of fresh tarragon Salt and freshly ground black pepper Plain flour Olive oil 100 grams fresh mushrooms, preferably ceps, but chestnut or oyster will do 20 grams dried ceps 300ml chicken stock Put the dried ceps in a small bowl and pour over enough boiling water to just cover. Leave to reconstitute. Crush the garlic cloves with a small amount of salt. Take the leaves off the tarragon stalks and chop finely. Put the minced beef in a bowl with the garlic, tarragon, breadcrumbs and egg. Mix thoroughly. Season with black pepper. Leave for about half an hour for the breadcrumbs to absorb moisture and bind the mix. Take small amounts of the minced beef mix and roll into balls and then roll in the flour. It is tedious to make the balls small, about 1.5 cm across is ideal, but they mix so much better with the pasta and are a perfect little mouthful this size that it is worth the effort. Heat some olive oil in a large frying pan and fry half the meatballs in one batch over a medium heat, turning from time to time to lightly brown them on all sides. Remove to a dish and fry the other half of the meatballs. Remove these too. While the meatballs are browning cut up the mushrooms into quite small pieces. Once the meatballs are out of the pan, add the mushrooms to it together with a little more oil if needed and gently fry them for about five minutes. Add the stock, soaked dried mushrooms and their liquid and bring to a simmer. Simmer for five minutes then add the meatballs and any juices that have seeped out of them. Simmer for five to ten minutes. Serve with pasta and parmesan cheese. For dessert, the Spanish classic, Cheese with Honey and Walnuts, the recipe appeared in a previous post. IMG_0389

Nicoise Salad

09 Tuesday Sep 2014

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

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Composed salads with their mixture of textures, tastes and colours are very close to being perfect food, and a Nicoise Salad is one of the great classics in this category. Its mixture of green leaves and French beans, red tomatoes and peppers, black olives, white and yellow egg and the pinky brown of tuna make it a delight to look at.

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At the market today, my favourite fish stall had some superb fresh tuna, so I decided to sear it fairly rare and have it as part of a Nicoise Salad in place of the usual tinned tuna. Without losing the elements that make a salad a Nicoise, ie Tuna, Egg, French Beans, Tomatoes and Black Olives, there is room for you to make the salad your own. I prefer a poached egg to boiled as I like to mix the runny yolk into the salad. I also like to thin down the mayonnaise with a little water before pouring it over the salad. And I do love Chilli Jam with tuna, so although it is not traditional…..

Gratin of Onions & Potatoes

02 Tuesday Sep 2014

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I am afraid I have been side tracked and this post as you possibly already have noticed is not featuring the promised Ajo Blanco soup.

I have been today at one of Doris’s book exchange lunches where each of the participants contribute part of the meal. As I have had a very good crop of red onions and a similarly good one of potatoes, I offered to concoct a dish from these. The girls were asking at the end of the meal if the recipe was on the blog, which I think means that they liked it. So here it is on the blog.
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1 kilo onions
1 tablespoon olive oil
30 grams butter
1.5 kilos potatoes
200 ml chicken stock
100 ml thin cream
1 small tin anchovies
100 grams grated parmesan
Freshly ground black pepper

Peel and slice the onions into rounds.

Melt the butter and olive oil on a low heat in a large shallow pan. Add the onions and stir into the fats. Cover and cook slowly for 30 minutes, stirring from time to time until the onions are soft and translucent.

Peel the potatoes and slice into thin rounds.

Heat the chicken stock and cream together slowly. Chop the anchovies quite small and add together with their oil to the stock and cream. As the liquids heat the anchovies should dissolve.

Preheat the oven to 160 centigrade.

Once the liquids are hot, assemble the dish. You will need a shallow ovenproof dish.

Put a layer of overlapping potato slices in the bottom of the dish. Strew over a third of the onions, then a few spoonfuls of the stock mix, then thinly scatter over some grated parmesan. Season with black pepper, then continue with the layers finishing with a layer of potatoes generously covered with the grated cheese.

Cover and bake in the oven for 45 minutes.

You can cook to this point the day before the dish is needed, and the resting time does add to the flavour of the dish.

If you are serving the potatoes straight away, uncover them, turn the oven heat up to 180 centigrade and put the dish back in the oven for about 15 minutes until the top is nicely browned.

If you have prepared the dish in advance then it will need longer in the oven to reheat the potatoes through. I had my dish 10 minutes in the oven covered and then another 10-15 minutes uncovered until the top was nicely browned, again at 180 centigrade.

The Larder – Bethnal Green – London

11 Monday Aug 2014

Posted by in Food for One, Main Courses, Snacks and Tapas, Vegetable Dishes

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I don’t generally consider restaurant reviews to be part of what this blog is about, but the food in this vegetarian cafe is so good that it cannot not be mentioned. All the meals that I have ordered here have been so thoughtfully composed, executed and presented. Whoever designs the dishes has a real understanding of how to mix flavours and textures, and never forgets to consider how the components will look on the plate.

Today I treated myself to a Mexican breakfast – which I had for lunch.

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In the little brown pot beneath the grilled half mushroom, fried egg, guacamole and fresh coriander leaves was a rich and spicy tomatoey sauce thick with black and pinto beans, corn kernels, red peppers, celery and onions. There was just enough chilli to give it oomph without overpowering the rest of the ingredients, and it was fragrant with the flavour of garlic and coriander seeds.

Below the deep fried Padron peppers in the other pot was a flavoursome but not hot jalapeño purée. The tortilla chips were freshly deep fried and crispy.

I look forward to trying their egg and chips, one of the most appetising looking egg and chips that I have ever seen. Served on one of those pasta plates that is like a shallow soup bowl, there is a base of freshly made tomato sauce topped with a stack of fat crispy polenta chips which likewise is topped with a fried egg.

I hope it is on the menu next time I visit this restaurant.

http://www.worldslarder.co.uk

Braised Chicory

12 Monday May 2014

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At this time of the year the chicories that I have been enjoying all through the winter are starting to get a little big and too bitter to be eaten raw. Actually what happens is that the chicories cut for salads sprout new tender leaves and so these I use for salads, and then other chicories get left and get too big.

After a lot of effort is put in to grow something, it cannot be wasted.

When I was in Sicily a couple of years ago, I was served cold spicy cooked chicories as part of a mixed starter and it was delicious and is the inspiration for this recipe.

This method works well for the pale Belgian chicories as well as lettuce that have grown large.
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4 large heads of Chicory – washed and outer leaves removed
60 ml olive oil
60 ml balsamic vinegar
150-200 ml chicken stock
Large pinch of chilli flakes – to taste
Salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Cutting top to bottom, cut the heads of chicory in half.
Warm the oil in a shallow thick based pan that will take the chicories in one layer. Once the oil is hot add the chicories, cover and fry gently until browned.
Turn the chicories over and fry on the other side, again until browned.
Add the balsamic vinegar, chilli flakes and season with salt and pepper.
Add just enough stock to almost come to the top of the chicory layer.
Leave to cook slowly for 10 minutes.
Turn over the chicories. The liquid should have reduced. If you think that it is too dry, add a little more stock but go easy.
Continue cooking until the chicories are cooked and tender and the liquid reduced to very little.
Serve either as a vegetable with a main course, or cold as part of a mixed starter, or as a pizza topping with some goats cheese.

Berenjenas en Escabeche – Aubergines in Spicy Sauce

11 Sunday May 2014

Posted by in Preserves, Techniques, Vegetable Dishes

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When you grow aubergines the first year plants will start to give you fruit in June or July and then continue until about November or early December depending on the weather. You can take out the plants at this point and start again the next year, but with the frost free winters here I can leave mine in the ground. They will have a little rest for a month or two and then start to produce fruit again. The fruits tend to be smaller and paler than the summer fruit, but plentiful.

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When there are more than I can eat fresh, I like to cook them in this spicy sauce and bottle them for serving as part of a mixed starter later. Escabeche is a method used a lot here in Spain for preserving usually fish. It is highly flavoured with garlic and smoked paprika, and then vinegar and white wine are used to aid the preserving process.

For a slightly more eastern mood to the escabeche for preserving aubergines I like to add some cumin seeds and use quite a hot piquant paprika.

500 grams  small aubergines

1 head garlic

150 ml olive oil

150 ml white wine

150 ml white wine vinegar

15 ml cumin seeds

30 ml smoked paprika – picante

Salt

To cook the preserve you will need a large shallow thick based pan in which you can cook the aubergines in one layer.

Divide the head of garlic into cloves and peel each one. If some are very large slice them in half.

Wash the aubergines and remove the stalks. Cut the fruits in half from top to bottom.

Heat the oil in the pan and add the garlic.

Once the garlics start to sizzle turn them over and move them to the edges of the pan.

Add the aubergines cut side down and fry gently for 5 to 10 minutes until golden brown.

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Turn over and fry on the other side.

Add the cumin seeds and paprika, then the vinegar and wine. Shake the pan to mix the spices and liquid without disturbing the aubergine pieces.

Add enough water to just cover the aubergines and season with salt, half a teaspoon.

Cook covered for 5 minutes.

Gently turn over each of the aubergines, I use tongs for this, and continue cooking covered until the aubergines are cooked through but not mushy. This should take between 5 and 10 minutes.

Some of the liquid will by now have been absorbed by the aubergines and so will look reduced.

Put the aubergines while still hot in hot sterilised jars, seal them and cool.

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Serve as either part of a mixed starter, with cheese or they are very good with lamb dishes.

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