Springtime themed Sunday lunch

We had a couple of friends over for Sunday lunch, last Sunday when the weather was actually nice, and decided that we were filled enough with the joys of spring to have a spring themed lunch. 

We had Ottolenghi's stuffed onions to start, then Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's macaroni and peas with tomato, mozzarella and basil salad, and Delia's Eton mess to finish. Am slightly uncomfortable about plagiarising recipes but you can get to all of them through the links.

The stuffed onions are probably the fiddliest dish that we make regularly basically because it is so delicious that I kind of don't care that it's fiddly. It involves making stuffing of: parsley, feta, spring onions, garlic, breadcrumbs, grated tomato, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then boiling the halved outer layers of the onion in stock and white wine for five minutes. Then stuffing them and baking for around 45 minutes. The resulting onions look a bit like little missiles but who cares?

Stuffing for onions

Stuffing mixture for onions

Pretty onion shells

More pretty onion shells

Little onion missiles

Cooked onion shells

More little onion missiles

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's recipes - by contrast - are much, much simpler.  But still really good.  I love the macaroni and peas recipe - so easy, just mashing some peas (and keeping some whole) with butter and garlic and parmesan.  What could possibly be bad about that?  What I love about it is that it really tastes of peas. I know that sounds silly but peas are such an underrated vegetable and they deserve their time in the spotlight.  Poor peas. Best known for stealing a princess's night's sleep. 

The humble pea - photo from patrickbaty.co.uk

Tomato and mozzarella salad - like most Italian food is as good as the quality of its ingredients.  We had tasty tomatoes so it was delicious.  

Tomato, mozzarella, and basil salad

Eton Mess - I went for Delia's recipe, which was a nice way to round off the meal but, I think, next time, I might not puree the strawberries for the sauce but just mash them a little.  I really like strawberries and I think I'd rather keep more of their texture.  I failed to take a photo of it but plan to remake it soon and will take photographs then.


Overall verdict:  thought this meal worked well, was well balanced, and I might make it again for (different) guests.

 Random food rant: why are people so weird about cooking rice?



People seem to be so weird about cooking rice.  If I had a rice grain for every person who has told me they can't cook rice, I'd have a lot of rice.   

My steps to cooking rice (for consumption with Indian food):

1.  Buy good quality basmati rice - e.g. Tilda

2.  Put said rice in a saucepan

3.  Add some water

4.  Heat until cooked (about 15 mins but can be slightly less or slightly more depending on type or rice)

5.  Drain

    
Lots of people seem to feel that that last step is Wrong and, therefore, spend a lot of time experimenting with step 3 so that they can omit step 5 (i.e. using an amount of water such that they don't need to drain it and then complain that they have undercooked rice or burned rice. But, really, there's nothing wrong with step 5. If you think about it, why should there be? It's rice. It's not going to cook any differently in more water than in less water. It's not going to dramatically change texture by being moved from pot to colander. I sometimes accidentally get the water amount exactly right and it does not taste any different to when I drain it.

The real trick with rice, in my view, is to make sure you cook it for the correct length of time. If you're inexperienced, the best way to ensure that is to start tasting it from the 10 minute mark to make sure you don't miss the window. Once you've been doing it for a while, you can just do it by eye.

Kosheri and spicy tomato sauce - Ottolenghi recipe

One of my favourite Gujarati dishes is "kitchari" - split mung beans (other split lentils work too) and pudding rice cooked up together with a dollop of ghee (or butter) and a bit of salt.  My nanima (maternal grandmother) particularly likes it with tomato curry (garlicky, lemony, slightly sweet, lovely - next time I make it, I will attempt to write it up as a recipe, but it's something I very much do by eye) and sev (crispy gram flour vermicelli noodles).

Mmm, tomatoes

When my lovely husband gave me Ottlenghi:  the cookbook, one of the recipes that caught my eye was the one for kosheri and spicy tomato sauce as it sounded pretty similar.  So, the other day, that's what I cooked.  The full recipe can be found in various places online, e.g. here but I don't want to plagiarise it by writing it all out.

Vermicelli noodles looking funny

It was a strange experience, eating it, because it is indeed very similar to kichari and tomato curry, but subtly different.  The Ottlenghil tomato sauce was much tangier due, I think, to the cider vinegar - to be honest, I think I slightly prefer the sweeter, more lemony, Gujarati version of this but it was nice as a change.  The kosheri was a much more interesting texture than kitchari, I particularly liked the addition of fried onions, but, really, I think the two dishes mostly just serve different roles:  kitchari is a bland, comfort-type food, I sometimes eat left over kitchari for breakfast because it is a bit like porridge; kosheri is more interesting, you could eat it on its own for lunch.

Mmmm, tomatoes..

Even the worm in the rock dreams of fresh herbs!

Overall verdict:  how far wrong can you go with tomatoes, lentils, butter-fried vermicelli noodles, and fresh herbs?

Kosheri

On the recipe itself..  I love Ottolenghi and, as usual, the recipe was incredibly precise - I always want to ask him, "does it really matter if I fry this for 7 minutes instead of 6?  REALLY?" and, as usual, if you follow it, you will end up with delicious food (which isn't always the case with cookbooks).

But, this time, I thought the ordering of the recipe was peculiar.  It suggests you make things in a sequence that would make the whole process take well over an hour when, if you read the recipe through completely, you can reorder it to make it much faster.  In particular, I think it's bizarre that you get to the end of cooking the tomato sauce, then the kosheri and - only then - does he tell you to fry a couple of onions for 20 minutes.  I didn't actually mind that much because I did read the whole recipe through and reorder it but, if I were hungry and got to the onion instruction, I'd have been Quite Annoyed.

Korean restaurants in London: Busan & The Old Justice

Korean restaurants in London that I have been to recently:

The newly reopened Busan, in Islington.  This was my introduction to Korean food - courtesy of a friend of mine.  Service was ok - not particularly attentive but fine, atmosphere was ok (a little cafeteria like), but the food was really good. They have various tasting plates so that you can try different types of kimchi, which was excllent, and we also split their aubergine and sesame starter which was delicious. They had a few vegetarian main course options but I was the only vegetarian in the group so can only comment on the one I had - bimbimbap.  Mmmmm, lovely vegetables and little bits of crispy rice and creamy eggness and West Indian hot sauce-like sauce.

The Old Justice - Bermondsey boozer that does authentic Korean food.  Yes, really.  It is bizarre.  It is literally half Bermondsey boozer, half Korean ex-pat hang out.  We were the only non-Koreans eating food in there.  It's kind of worth going to just to experience the oddness of it.  I love London.

Based on another review, which warned that the vegetarian bimbimbap often comes with meat that hasn't been mentioned, I specifically asked about its vegetarian-ness when ordering and was told that that was fine.  It then turned up with meat in. The waitress realised immediately and was reasonably cheerful about me sending it back.  Based on the length of time that it took to come back and the way it tasted, they definitely remade it rather than just picking the meat out, which is always good!  So, er, I would say that you should make extra sure it's vegetarian when you order it but I tried that and it still came with meat.  I guess,  maybe you could try harder but, probably, it's simplest just to prepare yourself for potentially having to send it back. 

The bimbimbap was, when it eventually appeared in its meat-free form, pretty tasty - though I think perhaps not quite as nice as Busan's.  The pan fried vegetable dumplings that we ordered as a starter to share didn't arrive until after we'd finished our mains which was a little weird but they were very nice so I didn't find myself minding too much.  They have a wide selection of Korean drinks which I wasn't feeling brave enough to try.  Maybe next time.  It's only a short walk from our house so, even though I think the food was nice rather than extraordinary, I can see us coming back.

Korean food

I have a bit of a hate-hate relationship with Chinese restaurants. With very few exceptions, they seem not to care about vegetarian food and will present you with a plateful of limp vegetables, tofu and noodles which - despite the fact that you could prepare something tastier at home having taken advantage of a vegetables + noodles + sauce offer from your local supermarket - they somehow seem to expect you to be grateful for.

I know, I said this was about Korean food, but it is relevant really! I had - because I'm a bad stereotyping person - assumed that this was true of all East Asian cuisine and so had never bothered to check out Korean food. Which turns out to be a bit of a mistake.

Korean food is awesome.  How did I not know this before?!  Yeah, that would be because I'm a bad stereotyping person.  Sue me.  I think it's actually a bit of a microcosm of what I was talking about in this entry - about meat eaters not always getting what vegetarians want out of a restauraunt.  I think a lot of meat eaters sort of think that Korean food is all about BBQ so, obviously, not good for vegetarians but, look, that Chinese place has loads of options so that would be great.  When it's rubbish.  Anyway.

There are four great reasons to go to a Korean restaurant, if you're vegetarian:

Bimbimbap

Firstly, to eat bimbimbap. Yes, it sounds a bit dull, "vegetables and rice with an egg on top," you say, "BAH, I could cook that at home". But it turns out that it is the lovechild of paella and carbonara and THEN they give you this sauce that is like West Indian Hot Sauce (one of my favourite things) but more so.  It is awesome.

Secondly, to say "bimbimbap" a lot.  It is fun.  Try it now?  Turns out, you can spend a very entertaining five minutes just saying "bimbimbap". 

Not that I have done this.  That would be silly.



Kimchi



Thirdly, to eat Kimchi.  I love pickles - particularly sauerkraut - and I love spices.  So kimchi is just up my street. 



Fourthly, to get the, relatively unusual experience for a vegetarian, of getting to eat a cuisine's signature dish - kimchi.  It just feels kind of cool. 

Imam Bayildi, Arto Der Haroutunian recipe

Stuffed - pre baking

I have a lovely book on vegetarian Middle Eastern cookery by Arto Der Haroutunian.  One of the thing I love about the book is the little stories that accompany every recipe.  One tells me that a Persian proverb is "Even the worm in the rock dreams of fresh herbs"!  Another tells the story of the name of this dish - "the imam fainted" due to its deliciousness.

I've always wanted to try it but it's quite fiddly so it's taken me a little while to get around to it.

Mighty Aubergines!

 The recipe involves frying up onions, green peppers, tomatoes, garlic with paprika, salt and black pepper slowly with lots of olive oil.  You then put a slit in each aubergine and fry them in 250 ml of oil.  This was where I got a bit stuck.  Much as I love this cookbook, one thing it's a bit short on are detailed instructions.

In this case, it told me "fry the aubergine until the flesh has started to soften".  Clearly, it starts to soften almost immediately!  When you stop really depends on how much softening counts as softening!  

Stuffed - pre baking

Eventually, I went for frying them for about 15 mins, when the outer flesh was soft but the aubergines were still not completely cooked.  You then open up the slits a bit, stuff them with the onion/pepper mixture, then bake for an hour with some water to cover the bottom of the dish.

Stuffed - pre baking

Overall verdict:  pretty damn tasty.  But:

• this recipe is realy quite faffy compared to some others and I'm slightly dubious as to whether it's really quite worth it..
• because, unlike some other recipes, this recipe doesn't involve scooping out any of the inside flesh of the aubergine, the resulting dish involves quite large chunks of aubergine flesh - which tastes nice but ended up very undersalted as there wasn't really a way to salt it and aubergine really needs salt to taste really good.

I think the stuffing was the best bit - the slow frying suggested by the recipe and the sheer quantity of olive oil involved made it gorgeous. I might just stop there next time!

why review restaurants?

One of the things that I find difficult about finding good restaurants in London is that it's difficult to find reviews of omnivorous restaurants by vegetarians. It's not hard to find reviews of vegetarian restaurants but, while there are some great vegetarian restaurants in London, you can't eat at The Gate all the time. OR CAN YOU?
 
Anyway. I don't think I know of a vegetarian restaurant critic and omnivorous critics - both professional and amateur - don't usually get what I'm looking for. I can't speak for all vegetarians but what I want in a restaurant is nice food. Sounds obvious, I know. But lots of critics seem to think that, instead, what I want to know is how much choice I have. 'There are usually two vegetarian options' is the kind of thing they might say in a restaurant review.
 
I don't really care how many options there are. Obviously, I care a little bit - I'd rather have the choice between two incredibly tasty options than just one incredibly tasty option. But I'd much rather have one really tasty choice than 20 indifferently prepared choices. In a sense, this is obvious - restaurant critics never say 'there are 20 meat dishes on the menu' and then just leave it at that because the whole point of the review is to tell you what those dishes are like, not just how many of them there are on the menu.
 
I realise that this is because vegetarians are such a small minority of the population (I think the vegetarian society estimates around 10 per cent) and so, frankly, critics don't need to bother writing for them. I find it annoying (obviously) but I think it is a reasonable decision on their parts.
 
The solution, really, is for vegetarians to step up and do it for themselves - post restaurant reviews and help other vegetarians to find tasty food. Because tasty food is good. There are various excellent sites that do this but a lot of the focus on those sites is on vegetarian restaurants. It's harder for vegetarians to find reviews of nice vegetarian food at omnivorous restaurants. I tend to find those by just random googling.  It occurs to me that it's a bit selfish of me not to contribute to those resources so that's what I intend to try to do by posting reviews on here and on other review sites.

Brunch - gram flour, feta, spring onion, bell pepper and carrot pancakes

Inspired by previous adventures in gram flour pancake making, I decided to try making some more but, this time, for brunch rather than dinner.

Mixture

I went for a similar basic mixture to Maria Elia's recipe - gram flour, semolina and water - but spring onions, bell pepper, carrots and feta instead of just carrots.  To be honest, this was mostly because this was what we had in the house - I think the spring onions and feta were lovely but that the other vegetables, you could substitute in with other vegetables.  Mushrooms would be nice, I think.

Tasty pancakes

Since it was brunch, I also kept the spicing more minimal - just salt and black pepper rather than chilli and ginger and stuff. 

They were fun to make - I love the way that they sizzle in the pan and it's a childish pleasure to compete with myself to see how many I can get to turn over without breaking at all.

I'm not sure why but they tasted rather like omlettes - same kind of squishy texture.  One to make again, perhaps when I have some fresh herbs to use up, as I think that that would convert these from tasty to delicious.

I tried another recipe from Maria Elia's The Modern Vegetarian the other day.  Sweetcorn and lemongrass soup.  No photo this time as, to be frank, it was not a dish that looked very appealing.  It kind of looked like porridge!  Lumpy porridge with bits of sweetcorn floating in it.

But it was pretty tasty. Overall verdict was that this one is a useful recipe to have in the mix - all its ingredients, except for the lemongrass, are ingredients that I usually have around, so it would work well as a "forgot to go to the shops today" kind of meal.  The milk base for the soup makes it more filling than many soups but somehow not stodgy.  Good stuff.

Once I'd made it, I thought "go me, I actually followed the recipe for once!" but then I realised that I kind of didn't.  I didn't measure the butter or milk or flour, just estimated.  I didn't use a white onion, I used a red one.  I used frozen sweetcorn rather than fresh.  And I added creamed coconut rather than creme fraiche.  Never mind.

I did follow the basic principles of the recipe and I thought the milk base, rather than stock base, was quite interesting.  I liked the hint of coconut from the creamed coconut, though, and I think I might try substituting in coconut milk for the milk next time.  Also quite tempted to add in some coriander.  And maybe a little bit of lime juice.

I'm relatively new to Thai flavours and am currently a little obsessed with coconut milk.  The fresh lemongrass for the soup was lovely - smelled amazing and made the soup so fragrant.

I'll do a proper review of The Modern Vegetarian sometime soon but, currently, I'm thinking that I do rather like it but, somehow, I find myself tinkering a lot with the recipes and using it more for inspiration than to follow exactly.  Which isn't a bad thing, particularly, and is quite often the way that I am with cookbooks. 

Gujarati dinner - shak, rice, kadhi

At the weekend, I had a bit of a craving for kadhi, which is a Gujarati spiced yoghurt soup.  It is warming and comforting and tasty.  Since it isn't really a meal on its own, I made some shak and rice to go with it too

Shak, rice and kadhi

 In Gujarati, there is no word for "curry". You would use exactly the same word to refer to "vegetables" in the generic sense as you would for "curry" - there is no other way of eating vegetables. The word in question is "shak" which I find easier to use in this context. Shak is not vegetables in a sauce, shak is not any one particular dish, shak is just what happens when you do some stuff to some vegetables.

Basic Gujarati recipe - you alter this depending on what you're cooking, e.g. spinach and chickpeas both need more tumeric than most veg -

Heat up 2-3 tablespoons of oil with some mustard seeds and cumin seeds - about a heaped teaspoon of each
When they start popping, put in your veg.
Let it cook
Add some tomatoes if you want and/or some water if it's a bit dry
Spice with 3-4 teaspoons of ground cumin/coriander mix (I've tried to do this with the two individual spices but it never tastes right), a 1/4 teaspoon ot tumeric and red chilli powder/fresh chillis to taste.
Optional: garlic, ginger, fresh coriander, lemon juice, sugar. Garlic and fresh coriander should go in at the last minute though to avoid losing the flavour during cooking.

I made aubergine and pea shak, which was pretty tasty.  Lots of garlic!

Just  shak

 The kadhi turned out pretty good, though it was a bit spicy for my long suffering husband!

Recipe:

Mix a cup of yoghurt and a cup of water together, mix in a couple of tablespoons of gram flour, bring it to a boil.  In a separate pan, heat some mustard seeds and cumin seeds with some oil.  When it starts popping, pour it into the yoghurt mixture.   Add ginger, chilli, salt to the mixture and a small amount of sugar.  Fresh coriander on top is tasty.  But that applies to anything!

Basically, the only way to go wrong is to let it split, which will only happen if you don't stir it enough.  If it somehow splits on you anyway, you can sometimes ressurect it by liquidising it, though that is not recommended a) because it doesn't always work and b) because it means you have to wash up the liquidiser!

Just kadhi

On lazy Sundays, I buy lots of fresh ginger and chillis, whiz them in the food processor and freeze them in ice cube trays, which really speeds up recipes of this sort.

carrot and gram flour pancakes, hummous and salad

Batter

One of the rather too many cookbooks I've acquired recently is The Modern Vegetarian by Maria Elia.  On the very first page is a recipe for carrot and gram flour pancakes that I've been meaning to try out for ages.

So, today, I did.  It was really good!

It reminded me a lot of a Gujarati dish called "poodla" that my nanima (maternal grandmother) taught me to make.  It's interesting to me that a) a lot of dishes exist the world over in different formats and b) that they can taste so different in different contexts.

Pancakes

Spiced gram flour pancakes (with fresh coriander and chilli in the batter) seem instinctively to me an Indian flavour and I can imagine my namima knocking these out, "measuring" everything by eye, and serving them with natural yoghurt or tamarind chutney or green chutney (coriander, chillis and green apple.)  I'm quite tempted to do that next time. 

Pancakes with hummous

But, this time, I followed Maria Elia's idea and went for topping them with hummous and salad.

She suggests carrot hummous (basically normal hummous with roasted carrots blended in) but I decided that I didn't really fancy carrot and chickpea pancakes topped with blended carrot and chickpea as that seemed rather too much carrot and chickpea for me.  So, I just made my normal hummous (the classic way) which I think worked pretty well.

Pancakes and hummous and salad

I also didn't quite follow her suggestion on the salad because I had a few things to use up - I went for pea shoots, baby plum tomatoes, spring onions and feta with some black pepper and olive oil on top.  Yum.

Next time, I might try a blend of flour (nanima recommends 1/4 chapati flour 3/4 gram flour for poodla which might work nicely), adding in some spring onions, maybe courgette rather than carrots...?

All about me

I've been vegetarian all my life.  My family is Gujarati Hindu, by heritage, and most Gujarati Hindus are vegetarian.  My parents were born and brought up in Kenya and so I was brought up on East African Gujarati food which is a big influence on me.  Dark lentil dhal is my go to comfort food and I naturally default to lots of strong flavours in my food. 

I discovered Lebanese food while at university in Oxford where there are some lovely Lebanese restaurants (particularly Al Shami on Walton Crescent - check it out if you're in Oxford and haven't!) - and it and Middle Eastern food in general has made me realise that there is a surprising amount of flavour that can come from just one or two main flavourings, like lemon and parsley.  But I still find it difficult not just to add a bit of this and a bit of that.. 

How can adding more tasty things to other tasty things ever go wrong?! 

Actually, in many and varied ways, as I will doubtless be posting about soon..

I intend to use this blog for general thoughts about vegetarian food, being a vegetarian, recipes, cooking experiments, cookbook reviews, restaurant reviews (these will mostly be London restaurants because that's where I live!), and other related things.