Roasted aubergine with fried onion and chopped lemon - Ottolenghi recipe

Roasted aubergine with fried onion and chopped lemon

So, I've got Ottolenghi's Jerusalem cookbook out from the library at the moment - it is awesome, by the way  - and, inevitably, an aubergine recipe caught my eye..  It's funny, I clearly named this blog after aubergines but, honestly, I didn't realise just how much I cooked with them until I started posting and "aubergines" started looming so large in the tags list.  They are amazing, though - so versatile!  Anyway.  Anything that includes fried onions and lemon and aubergine is good for me..  

Ottolenghi has helpfully put the whole recipe in a Guardian article here so I won't bore you with the details but basically, you cut crosses in aubergines and roast them with olive oil, salt and black pepper on top:

The sacrificial aubergines with their flesh cut open

The sacrificial aubergines with their flesh cut open

I slid some garlic into the slits because it is tasty and I could (Ottolenghi refrains):

Black peppery aubergines with stealthy garlic slipped in

You then fry some onion with chilli and sumac and tasty things of this nature:

For a minute at the end you add in the feta:

And then you mix the chopped lemon flesh, chilli and garlic in with the onions and feta mixture and put on top of the roasted aubergines:  voila!  You can eat warm or at room temperature as you prefer.  It is quite an intense dish, so I recommend something relatively bland to go with it - some nice bread, perhaps.

Roasted aubergine with fried onion and chopped lemon

This may sound obvious but you really do have to like lemon for this dish to work for you.  Lots of recipes with lemon call for just a little twist of it but this one - with the whole chopped lemon in it - really requires you to love your lemons.  Luckily, I do.  I've always loved sour flavours, I was always That Child who stole the citrus slices from everyone's drinks.

Roasted aubergine with fried onion and chopped lemon

What to make a vegetarian at Christmas

I had a request to write a post on this (which is always nice!) so I thought I would.

Obviously, if you are making the whole meal vegetarian, the world is your oyster (or something vegetarian), but, assuming that you are not and are just seeking something to make for one or two vegetarians when you're making the rest of the Christmas meal traditionally...

I reckon there are three important things - a) the vegetarian option needs to be something special, there are so many side dishes on the table, it needs to be something that is obviously not another side dish, b) it needs to go sensibly with the side dishes - i.e. it's going to be a bit weird if the vegetarian main is curry to eat roast potatoes and sprouts with it and c) it should, ideally, have some of the standard festive flavours.

I know there are people who are all "but they can just eat the sprouts" but, really, these sorts of meals are about coming together, breaking bread together, all of that stuff that is just - frankly - ruined by one person being ignored and hungry at the table.  If you're an omnivore hosting a vegetarian this Christmas, be inclusive, make them something special and, trust me, the meal will feel more special for you too.

With that in mind, I think pastry in general is a good bet - it definitely feels like a main, you can add ingredients (like stilton or chestnuts) which make it feel festive, and it goes with the standard side dishes.

I posted about puff pastry tarts for party food here but they can easily be made larger and, if you use ready made pastry, they also have the virtue of being pretty quick and easy while still looking impressive.  Mushrooms and stilton might work well.

On a related note, pie is satisfyingly stodgy and can also be made to include festive flavours.  I posted about a couple of different pies here - spinach, broad beans and feta, and mushrooms, chestnuts and stilton.  Making your own pastry definitely does make it taste better but is by no means essential.

It's not particularly festive but it was tasty and I feel the need to include something which includes mighty aubergines, the Greek version of aubergine parmigiana, which I posted about here is easy to prepare in advance, looks impressive and is a bit different - any vegetarian will be well used to aubergine parmigiana but the Greek version is different, more robust, more strongly flavoured.

Also on the not particularly festive but tasty note, Ottolenghi's onions stuffed with breadcrumbs, feta, and parsley are delicious and definitely special enough for Christmas.

Whatever you decide, I hope you all have a great Christmas!

TV chefs Vs ready meals

This article on how TV chef's recipes are more unhealthy than microwave ready meals really really annoyed me.  Running through the whole article seemed to be the assumption that, obviously, the main reason why you'd cook rather than get a ready meal is to be healthier.  What utter rubbish!  I cook rather than eat ready meals because a) my food tastes better than ready meals and b) because I actually enjoy cooking.  Really, it's not that I secretly desire ready meals but virtuously restrain myself in favour of cooking.

Arto der haroutunian recipes: leeks with olive oil (bras yahni, broad beans with carrots (baklali havuci)

leeks with olive oil (bras yahni)

Broad beans and carrots (baklali havuci)

So, as I've mentioned before, I love my Arto der Haroutunian cookbook.  I hadn't cooked anything from it for a while so I decided to try out a couple of new recipes from it.  Both carefully selected based on ingredients that I already had.

Well, the leeks in olive oil recipe was also selected because it involves 8-10 whole peppercorns and I have a lot of respect for recipes that involve whole peppercorns.  It was like an Armenian version of risotto or paella, this, though simpler than either.   Basically, you fry an onion (or in my case a few onions as I didn't have enough leeks), and then some leeks (1 1/2 lbs) for a while in plenty of olive oil.  Then stir in a couple of chopped tomatoes, salt, whole peppercorns, rice (not too much, just 2-3 handfuls) and (according to Arto) a 1/4 of a pint of water and simmer with the lid on for 20-30 minutes.

Frying  stuff for bras yahni

Frying  stuff for bras yahni

That didn't look like nearly water to me when I added it for the quantity of rice so I kept a fairly close eye on it and ended up adding more like a pint of water in total and it didn't (see photo) end up particularly liquidy.  You then add some lemon juice and sumac to finish.  I really liked it, think I'll be making again. It reminds me how good Middle Eastern food can be - the leeks ad lemon come through really strongly but it remains a comforting rice dish at heart.

leeks with olive oil (bras yahni)

The main reason that I decided to make the broad beans with carrots (baklali havuci) to go with it (other than having broad beans and carrots to use up) was the fantastically incomprehensible Jewish proverb that Arto quotes just before it:  "One has no appetite for eating - the other has no eating for his appetite."  What?!  Seriously, if anyone reading understands this, please do explain!

Anyway.  One of the things that's annoying about cooking is that, while sometimes there are fiddly things that are not worth doing, there are some fiddly things that absolutely are worth doing.  Like peeling broad beans. Now I'm pretty speedy in the kitchen with things like this but even I find this tedious.  And yet it is definitely worth it.

10 mins of effort:  peeled broad beans

Once you've peeled the broad beans, this is pretty easy:  put broad beans in a saucepan with a chopped onion and a little water (250 ml), cook for 30 mins.  Stir in chopped carrots, chopped mint, chopped garlic, salt/black pepper/sugar/olive oil to taste.  It's not wildly exciting, it has to be said, certainly not compared with the proverb but a nice side dish.

Broad beans and carrots (baklali havuci)

Tofu

Marinaded tofu in stirfry

So, for a long time, I've had tofu issues.  I've been one of those vegetarians who is all defensive about tofu and wheatgrass shot stereotypes and enjoyed shocking people who assume the vegetarians eat nothing but tofu by saying, "I don't even LIKE tofu" loudly and annoyingly.  The other day, I decided that that was, well, a bit childish and petty and millions of people worldwide eat tofu and who was I to dismiss it without giving it a proper try?

So, I did a bit of googling - because it wasn't all affectation, I really don't know much at all about tofu, Gujarati food, I can do, Middle Eastern food, pretty comfortable with, but I'm really not much of a fan of East Asian food (with the exception of Korean food) so I know little about it - and discovered that the internet seems to feel that marinading is the thing.  This description of how to do it made sense to me - particularly the dry-frying of the tofu beforehand to dry it out a bit and make it more receptive to marinading.  I did this with a tasty marinade of soy sauce, chilli, ginger and garlic.  Then, after it had been left to marinade for an hour or so, I stirred it into a stir-fry of mushrooms and spinach and served with rice.

Much as I want to repent from my previous churlishness about tofu, I'm afraid it still isn't for me.  It's true all the things that people say about it, it does take on the flavour of the stuff you cook with it, but the thing is that I'd rather just have the stuff you cook with it.  My marinade was pretty damn tasty, I wish I'd just chucked it into a vegetable stir fry, I didn't feel like the tofu element added much.  It's not that it was bad, it was just..  blah.  I'd much rather have had water chestnuts or exotic mushrooms in the stirfry.  And, to be honest, most of the time, I'd rather just not have stirfry at all...  I feel like a bad vegetarian.

It looked pretty though.

Marinaded tofu in stirfry

Walnut, goats cheese and parsley pesto

Pasta with walnut, goats cheese and parsley pesto and roasted yellow peppers, asparagus and courgettes

An article in the Guardian reminded me about making pesto.  I tried making pesto a while back and it was nice but not significantly nicer than shop bought pesto.  But this article reminded me that one of the advantages of making your own pesto is that you don't have to stick to the pine nuts/basil/parmesan thing, you can make up your own recipe.  So, on a whim, I bought some walnuts, parsley and hard goats cheese and made my own.  I just chucked some of all three of these in the food processor and added olive oil until it looked right.  Not the most precise recipe of all time but it tasted pretty damn good.  I think I prefer parsley to basil in pesto, largely because of the more robust flavour.

Walnut, goats cheese and parsley pesto

Walnut, goats cheese and parsley pesto

To go with it, I roasted some vegetables - courgettes, yellow peppers, asparagus and some chopped garlic along with lots of salt and black pepper and olive oil.  I love roasted vegetables so much.  While they were roasting, I cooked the pasta and then combined.  Hmmm.  Definitely experimenting with pesto again..

Roasted yellow peppers, asparagus and courgettes

Pasta with walnut, goats cheese and parsley pesto and roasted yellow peppers, asparagus and courgettes

Sticky toffee pudding

Sticky toffee pudding

I know it's unsophisticated but I hate puddings/sweets that are basically savoury food with just a little subtle hint of sweetness, like posh cheesecake.  Except for tart/sour desserts like lemony things or fruit sorbets.  Anyway.  I don't have much of a sweet tooth, I prefer savoury food as is probably obvious from this blog, but when I want a sweet thing, I want it to be properly sweet.

Which means that I love sticky toffee pudding.  Since my lovely husband loves me, he decided to make it one lazy Sunday afternoon, using this recipe.  We were quite startled to find that it wasn't a steamed pudding which, I suppose, is rather ignorant of us.  It was lovely.

Sticky toffee pudding mixture

Sticky toffee pudding mixture

Sticky toffee pudding mixture

Sticky toffee pudding about to go into the oven

Sticky toffee pudding just out of the oven

Rye soda bread

Rye soda bread and soup

So, I've recently become interested in soda bread, inspired by a friend of mine, as I've mentioned earlier and I had some rye flour left over from something or other.  So, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I decided to try..  rye soda bread, using Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe.

Served with some soup I knocked up with vegetables that needed using up, it was a really nice autumn meal.  Because I made two small loafs rather than one larger one, they cooked faster.

The only criticism I'd make of the recipe is that I thought the amount of salt was completely wrong.  I thought this when looking at the recipe and went for a whole teaspoon rather than 1/4 teaspoon as suggested but both my lovely husband and I thought it was still undersalted.  I'd be tempted to go for two teaspoons next time.

Rye soda bread

Rye soda bread

Pizza - leek/roquefort and sundried tomato/aubergine/mozzarella

Leek and Roquefort pizza

A few years ago, my lovely husband acquired a pizza dough recipe from an Italian friend of his (Guisceppe - I don't suppose you're reading but, if you are, we love you and your pizza recipe!), and we've used it regularly ever since.  It produces perfect (Italian-style, thin crust) pizza every time. 

I reproduce it below as given to us as, frankly, his directions are a lot more precise than mine.

Aubergine, sundried tomato and mozzarella pizza

Usually, we slightly ruin the purity of the recipe by piling it high with all kinds of things.  Oh, we have onions, let's put those on, look we've got half a jar of olives left over from caponata, we'll pile those on, oooh but we have that bit of gorgonzola..  etc, etc.  Our pizzas are usually half pizzas, half mountains.  Anyway. 

This time we decided - for no particular reason - that we'd try to be a bit more focussed and so we we went for one pizza with white sauce, leek and roquefort and one with tomato sauce, sundried tomatoes/aubergines/mozzarella.  We fried up the leeks before putting them on the pizza and roasted the aubergine slices.

They were Good.  

Leek and Roquefort pizza

Sundried tomato, aubergine and mozzarella pizza

Pizza dough

Restaurant review - Androuet, Shoreditch

I felt a bit disloyal to L'Art Du Fromage going to Androuet.  I could make excuses like, Androuet is closer and cheaper but, really, I'd still feel guilty so what's the point?

Androuet was great, though, very similar to L'Art Du Fromage in many ways - the cheesy aroma of the place, the fondue, etc, etc.  Lovely atmosphere and service, especially.  We all had the fondue so I can only comment on that - it was really good but (in my view) not quite as nice as the fondue at L'Art Du Fromage, I think what it was lacking was the brandy that L'Art Du Fromage uses.  Though, on the other hand, it was a) considerably cheaper b) came with crudites and charcuterie as well as bread and c) you could order it individually if you wanted which, I think, is a big bonus.  There are a few main courses on the menu that I'd like to try too, like the poached duck eggs & cheese rosti, wild mushrooms, truffle sauce.

Definitely one I'll be coming back to.  Though, of course, just to be fair, I'll also be going to L'Art Du Fromage again too.  Nothing to do with All.The.Cheese.

Restaurant review - Perseverance - Edgware Road

We went to Perseverance for dinner because we wanted to go somewhere within very easy walking distance of the Cockpit Theatre and that, for some reason, is located in a weird no restaurant land.  A mile to the north, many lovely Lebanese places, a mile to the south, the posh places of Marylebone, but directly around the Cockpit Theatre, nothing at all.  Who knows?

Anyway.  Having not very graciously at all decided to go there on grounds that it seemed to be the only place that was remotely close enough to the theatre to make sensible, it was actually very nice.   For some reason, looking at reviews, Timeout seem to be the only people who dislike the place, as everyone else notes, it has an inventive menu that is well executed.  The atmosphere was nice, fairly quiet, good service, though I always find it weird to have table service for drinks in a pub.  Vegetarian options were fairly minimal - just the one main course option but as it was a very nicely done risotto, I was pretty ok with that.  I particularly liked that the apertif on the menu (an elderflower bellini) was actually priced quite reasonably (£4) for London and so I didn't feel like a total spendthrift for having it.

Restaurant review - Cafe Amisha, Bermondsey

Cafe Amisha is just down the road from us and our default place to go when we're feeling too tired to cook.  Every time I go there, I forget how nice it is.  In my head, I always think of it as a "standard Italian" but it's much more than that.  It's like a standard Italian restaurant in Italy.  There are no surprises on the menu, everything you would expect to find at a trattoria in Italy is there.  But everything is lovely.  The food is freshly prepared with attention to detail.  The service is friendly but not obtrusive.  The wine list is good.  The atmosphere is nice, tables not to close together, etc.  It's great value - no more expensive than the chain Italians but much nicer. It always cheers me up after a hard day. 

Caponata in gram flour pancakes

For some reason, I have never attempted to make caponata before.  I don't know why.  It combines many of my favourite things:  aubergines; olives; capers; tomatoes. 

I think it may be because I first had it, when cooked by my Italian best friend at university, who has been one of the big influences on me cooking-wise.  I wish I could say the same were true vice versa but I fear she still thinks I'm a barbarian with no tastebuds because of my general love for strong flavours.  It's not that she did a bad job when cooking it, it's more that I realised through cooking with her a lot that I just plain understood very little about non-Gujarati food at 18 and I found it all rather intimidating.

Funny-looking aubergine

Anyway.  I bought a funny-looking aubergine (see right) at the supermarket the other day - yes, I did buy it basically because it was funny-looking, yes, I do have a mental age of about 7 - and I thought I'd give it a go.

Anyway.  Caponata.  I went for a combination of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipe, a vague recollection of what my Italian friend did, and whim.

I chopped an onion, a couple of sticks of celery and three cloves of garlic.  Fried for a few minutes  Then added a tin of reasonably nice Italian tomatoes, some chopped green olives and some capers. 

onion, celery and garlic

chopped aubergines

Did a bit of seasoning at this stage (and tweaked and tasted at the end)-  some balsamic vinegar (about 3 table spoons) and about 4 table spoons of sugar.  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall suggested only a table spoon of sugar but, to me, that just didn't taste quite right so I kept adding more until it did, and obviously salt and black pepper.  Left to reduce for around 15 minutes. 

Caponata

Frying aubergines

While that was reducing, I chopped up a couple of aubergines into relatively small pieces (about 1.5 cm square) and fried until golden in some olive oil. 

I then combined the aubergine with the onions/celery/tomato mixture, Topped it with fresh parsley.  Though, I did think belatedly that rosemary would have been nice as well and might be worth a try next time.

gram flour pancakes batter

For no particular reason, I decided that it would be good to have the caponata in pancakes and I haven't made gram flour pancakes for ages, so that's what I went for.  Went for a gram flour/plain flour mix - 2:1 ratio - added a dash of milk, and then enough water to make it a pouring consistency (just slightly thicker than single cream), spiced it a bit with salt, chilli flakes and black pepper.

gram flour pancake about to be filled with caponata

Heated up about a table spoon of olive oil in a large frying pan, cooked the pancakes (it takes around a couple of mins each side, depending obviously on how thick you want your pancakes), filled them with the caponata and put them in the oven for about 5 mins to warm through before serving.

It was pretty good.  Nice fun dish to cook on a Sunday afternoon.  In retrospect, I'm not sure that it's really worth bothering with the pancakes - I think bread would have been just as nice with the caponata and a bit less of a faff but I like my gram flour pancakes so I don't really repine!

Gram flour pancakes with caponata

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

I've been working late a lot recently and so my lovely husband has been taking on more of the cooking.  The other day he made a particularly lovely pasta dish involving roasted garlic, creme fraiche, mushrooms, mangetout and spaghetti.  Mmmm.

To make it, he first of all roasted the garlic, which takes around an hour so worth bearing that in mind if you're really hungry!

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

There are a number of ways to roast garlic but he went for the method described here (the bottom of the page, "roasting garlic for cooking purposes") which seemed to produce some pretty tasty roasted garlic. 

Then, he fried up the vegetables - an onion, a selection of mushrooms and some mangetout (though, really, any vegetables would work) - added a good slug of white wine, cooked for a while longer to let that reduce, stirred in the creme fraiche, left it to heat through, then added the roasted garlic and the spaghetti. 

 

Roasted garlic and creme fraiche spaghetti

We decided to pack up the left overs for lunches during the week but, if you wanted to, I bet it would make for a lovely frittata di spaghetti.  That's the Italian way of using up left over spaghetti which - like much Italian cooking - is straightforward but very very good.  All you do is grease a pan (olive oil/butter/as you wish), put the spaghetti in it, crack a couple of eggs in (more if you have loads of left over spaghetti, obviously) and then cook.  Particularly good with a little cheese on top. 

Lebanese Moussaka

Lebanese moussaka

Even though we'd only just had another dish with fried aubergines, while I had Paola Gavin's Mediterranean Vegetarian Cooking out of the library, I decided to make another:  Lebanese moussaka.  This is similar to Greek moussaka but, crucially, vegetarian. 

It involves the now familiar-to-me frying of the aubergine slices, setting them aside.  Then frying an onion and garlic in olive oil, adding chickpeas and tinned tomatoes, salt, black pepper and allspice.  Then layering the mixture in between aubergine slices and baking for around 15 minutes at 200 degrees C.

Ready to go into the oven

Ready to go into the oven

I really liked it but, then, it involved aubergines AND chickpeas so that is not wholly surprising.  I do think, next time, I might spice it more - I was trying to be good and follow the recipe but I think it could use a bit of chilli or something else to pep it up a bit.