What's in your fridge?

A really interesting survey on European fridge habits was published the other day.

The British press have majored on how the UK is the hummous capital of Europe - go chickpeas! - but I thought more surprising was the statement that a third of British people don't keep fruit in the fridge.  Only a third?  I suppose it depends on the type of fruit but I always think the default for fruit is that it's outside the fridge - certainly for things like apples/pears and citrus fruit.

Not surprising but still worth highlighting is that the French are better at exporting their cheeses than we are - 10% of British households have Roquefort in their fridge but only 1% of French/Spanish/German households have Stilton in theirs.  Now, I love Roquefort, don't get me wrong (it is probably my very favourite cheese) but I always find it depressing that we're so bad at exporting our food and drink.  I love the variety that you get in the UK - that pubs will have British real ale and Belgian fruit beers and American real ale and so on… but I also find it sad that it's so hard to find British stuff overseas.  There's so much great stuff being made by small producers in the UK but their market is so much smaller than small producers in Europe.  Why do we get Swedish sparkling cider but the Swedes don't get our fantastic (but lethal) still farmhouse cider?  

I suspect it comes down to the general issue that the British find patriotism embarrassing and are more inclined to think that produce from overseas is better. It has its advantages - not just the big cities but the whole country has amazing variety and I love that - but it can sometimes be depressing.  I visited, a while back, Rich's Cider Farm in Somerset (delicious cider, by the way, and you can order boxes online) and the pub closest to the farm (at the time of visiting) sold… Magners.

Courgettes - marinaded in lemon juice, olive oil, and garlic

Courgettes with lemon and garlic

A few things lately have reminded me that courgettes can be awesome.  In particular, the other day we went to a great pop up restaurant which served pizza with courgettes on top.  

I decided to recreate the courgettes at home as a side dish - they work really well as a light summer side dish and it's also really straightforward to make.

Essentially:  slice courgettes as thinly as possible, put in bowl.  Add olive oil and lemon juice (I like a 1:1 ratio but you may prefer it less lemony), and crush in some garlic (I like lots but you may prefer less).  Add salt and pepper and leave to stand for an hour or so.  Voila!

Lemony garlicky courgettes

Roasted garlic and parsley flatbreads

Roasted garlic and parsley flatbreads

Apologies for the unscheduled hiatus - life, in general, has continued to be full of good food but sadly lacking in time to write about it.

Anyway.  The other day, my parents visited, bearing the usual offerings.  No, not wine or flowers, those would be strange.  A couple of boxes of mangoes (they are in season so it is compulsory to eat at least a box of 12 a week) and five bulbs of garlic.  Now, usually anyone is welcome to bring multiple bulbs of garlic to my house (please take note) but, in this case, I had bought myself our usual weekly supply (4-5 bulbs) the day before.

What to do?  Well, the situation is ongoing so the full answer remains to be seen but - obviously - part of the answer had to be roasting a couple of bulbs.  While one can dispose of roasted garlic fairly straightforwardly with a spoon (if one is feeling civilised), on this occasion, I decided to make flatbreads and stuff them with roasted garlic and parsley.

To make the filling, I roasted some garlic, mixed it with some chopped parsley, drizzled some olive oil on top and added some salt and pepper.

Mmmm, roasted garlic

I used Nigel Slater's recipe for the flatbreads, which worked fairly well overall.  I love making breads on the hob, it's how most Indian breads are made, and it's just plain more fun than the oven approach.  I am tempted, at some point, to try finishing them on the barbeque to get that slightly burnt, smokey thing going on.

The only tweaks I made were that, because his recipe calls for 10g of yeast and yeast comes in 7g packets, I went with 14g of yeast.  I suspect that's why mine weren't the flattest flatbread of all time but it still worked fine...  I also didn't care for his method of stuffing the flatbread - he suggests getting a ball of dough, putting the filling inside and then rolling them out.  Totally didn't work for me so I switched to shaping them with my hands into a disc, putting in the filling, folding it over again and squishing a bit with my hands.

Dough before it grew immensely

Stuffed flatbreads ready to be cooked

Roasted garlic and parsley flatbreads are go!

I really enjoyed these and am already plotting what to fill them with next..  currently, burnt aubergine and feta is the lead contender..

Banoffee frozen yoghurt

Banoffee frozen yoghurt

The other day I fancied some ice-cream was overpowered with guilt for not using our ice cream maker more but couldn't quite be bothered to make proper ice-cream.  The solution:  frozen yoghurt!  This seems to be marketed as a healthy alternative to ice-cream which I think is slightly bizarre as it's genuinely pretty tasty in its own right.  I love yoghurt in general, though.

I was not in a recipe-following mood so went for pottering down to the local fruit and veg stall and picking what looked good:  bananas.  What goes with bananas?  Toffee.  So I tried to acquire some caramel from the supermarket but the supermarket failed me.  So I bought some honey and some Hobnobs.  Obviously.

It actually turned out really well.  I decided to bake the bananas to intensify the flavour - for about 20 minutes at 200 degrees with honey drizzled on top and cinnamon. Having baked the four bananas, I mashed them into 500ml of Greek yoghurt and added a bit more honey and cinnamon.  Popped into the ice-cream maker and, after it had been doing its thing for 30 minutes or so, dropped the Hobnob pieces in.

Am definitely doing that again.  Also, baked bananas on their own were pretty good - I am contemplating further uses for them.

vegetarian etiquette

So, as I've mentioned before, I love Hadley Freeman.  I read her book - Be Awesome - recently.  It is, well, awesome.  I think she may be one of the few people who loves the Princess Bride more than I do.  And that's a compliment of the highest order.

It was one of those really self indulgent reads for me in that I spent most of it thinking "YES, I totally agree."  Except, sadly, for the section on "how to be an unannoying vegetarian" which seemed to boil down to:  you should sit in the corner on all occasions apologising and eating crumbs from the omnivorous table.  Which I found particularly strange because a lot of the rest of the book is about how women should spend more time being clear and honest about their needs.  Just apparently not if they need food to be vegetarian.


I get the impression that Hadley is, like some other vegetarians I have come across, a self-hating vegetarian.   Here's a simple test to determine whether you are one too:

If someone you know suggests going out for dinner and asks you if you have any preferences, do you:

a) suggest going to a steakhouse as you're fine with a side salad and the bread basket.  No, really, you're FINE.  In fact, you love salad.  And bread.

b) say "anywhere with a vegetarian main course option not involving beetroot* is good for me"

or

c) say "sure, but it has to be macrobiotic, vegan and serve wheatgrass shots"

If you answered a), I'm afraid you are a self-hating vegetarian.  You need to realise that your feelings matter too.  And also that people who are eating with you want you to be happy with the meal too as they don't enjoy watching you looking hungry with your side salad.  Plus, they wanted some of that bread.

If you answered b), you are normal.  I.e. like me.  Hey, it's my blog.

If you answered c), you are weird and, to be honest, people probably don't ever ask you out for dinner anyway.  Admit it.

So, here's my take on the etiquette of being vegetarian.

If you're invited to someone's home for a meal, tell them that you're vegetarian.  People like Hadley Freeman will gasp "but you don't want someone to make something SPECIAL for you!"  Well, actually, that's what going to someone's home for a meal is like.  When I invite people round for dinner, I do cook something special for them.  I don't usually cook myself a three course dinner, make sure the tablecloth is perfectly clean, iron napkins and use matching crockery and glassware.  I want to make something special for them.  I have, in fact, invited them because I want to do this.  I try always to check about dietary needs when I make the arrangements but, if I forget, I want people to let me know.  I would hate it if someone came round for dinner and ate nothing but the bread because they hadn't told me that they hate mushrooms and I'd made a feast of mushrooms with mushrooms on the side.

If I'm going out to dinner with friends and we're picking a restaurant, I think I have as much of a right to a view on where we go as everyone else does.  Hadley suggests that vegetarians just go wherever omnivores want to go and, if necessary, eat side dishes.  It slightly makes me wonder what her friends are like.  Mine will spontaneously say "oh, but that only has one vegetarian main course, is that ok for you?" or "Oh, no, we can't go there, they have nothing vegetarian for TheMightyAubergine" because, well, they are my friends and they wouldn't be happy if I had to sit through a meal with only side dishes to eat.  Of course, I don't expect to get my first choice of restaurant every time, but I do think that my views are just as important as everyone else's.  Not more important but just as important.

Hadley also says that you should never take your omnivorous friends to a vegetarian restaurant.  I.e. that your omnivorous friends are being perfectly reasonable to take you to places with no vegetarian main course but obviously it's evil for you to take them somewhere with no meat.  Just doesn't make sense to me.  Now, I am actually not that big a fan of vegetarian restaurants - all too often they are tedious places with wheatgrass shots and under-salted food (what is with that anyway?  salt is not a meat product, people!) - and, of course, I would never force a particular restaurant choice on any of my friends (see above - I think that sort of decision is one best reached by consensus) but I have no hesitation about suggesting vegetarian restaurants when appropriate.  For instance, I am going to a show with friends soon near the Gate so I have suggested going there beforehand.  If my friends said that they didn't like the look of the menu, but suggested somewhere else with a decent vegetarian option, I'd cheerfully agree with that.  But, in fact, my friends have said that they're happy to go to the Gate.  So, everyone's happy.  Except for Hadley.

*Beetroot is EVIL.

Restaurant review - The Port House, Strand

I am often sad that the newly arrived fashionable tapas restaurants in London tend to be poor for vegetarians - it's not that they don't have any options but those options rarely work together as a meal.  I was therefore pretty excited when we passed The Port House a while ago and took a look at the menu and found that it has plenty of tasty looking vegetarian options.

Not only that but it has a gin and tonic menu.  Seriously.  This is my awesome orange and cinnamon G&T.

Anyway - we had a really good lunch there.  The highlight for me were the aubergine tempura with hummus - tempura were just perfectly fried, crispy, not too greasy, and the hummus was flavoursome.    Honourable mention to the goats cheese salad and the picon blue that we had.  It was also - for central London - really good value for money.  We had 5 tapas between the two of us, admittedly almost all of them vegetarian, and a drink each and the bill came to about £40.   The atmosphere was also very nice - candlelit, quiet, tables spaced reasonably from each other.

The only downside was the bizarrely judgemental waitress.  When we ordered 5 tapas, she practically snatched the menus out of our hands and told us that "that would be enough".  We decided that perhaps she was trying to be helpful and let us know portion sizes.  However, while 5 was perhaps half a tapa too many, it was pretty much the size of lunch that we wanted particularly as a couple of them were mostly vegetables.  When she came back and saw that we'd finished, she gasped disapprovingly, cleared plates, then came back with dessert menus "Do you want dessert? [without pausing] No, you've had enough."  We didn't have dessert.  (Though, in fairness, we weren't planning to anyway.)  I'm not quite sure what makes anyone decide to take a job as a waitress when they are judgemental about people's eating habits.  It seems an unwise choice to me but there we have it.  

I liked the food so much, though, that I'm still planning to return - it's probably the only tapas restaurant in London where, as a vegetarian, you could go back a second time and order completely different dishes.  

Genoa, Liguria

Apologies for the lack of posts for the last three weeks, have been busy - in both good and bad ways - lately.

One of the good things was a visit to Genoa (or, as the Italians call it, Genova) in Liguria.  It is not only has pretty palaces and churches and museums and coastline and things but ALSO fantastic vegetarian food.  Obviously, Italy has always been a great place to travel as a vegetarian but, in my view, it can get a bit samey.  Liguria has some quite different vegetarian food, though.

Behold pretty coastline

And pretty church

Back to the food.

Firstly, there is pesto.  Who doesn't like pesto?  The Ligurians do it with funny stubby gnocchi like pasta called trofie which is extremely tasty.

Trofie al pesto - photo from here
http://foodloversodyssey.typepad.com

Secondly, there is farinata.  Farinata are gram flour pancakes but done Italian style so with tasty things like onion or artichoke or gorgonzola in them.  They are delicious.

Farinata - photo from http://savoringeverybite.com/

Thirdly, there is focaccia con formaggio which is, you've guessed, it focaccia with cheese.  It tastes more like pancakes with cheese in the middle - bit like khachapuri and that is, obviously no bad thing!

Focaccia con formaggio

And THEN, as if all that was not enough, they have torta con verdura - yes, you at the back, that does mean vegetable tarts.  Lots of them.  You can have a tart made from green beans and potatoes or broccoli and brie or artichokes.  They are all good.

And ALSO you get all the more standard Italian vegetarian goodness like pizza.  And wine.  And gelato.

In terms of the food, I think that was the best trip I've ever been on.

Lobio - kidney beans in plum sauce

lobio - kidney beans in plum sauce

There are many delightful things about Georgian cuisine - the most obvious being khachapuri which I've posted about before.  My second favourite Georgian dish is lobio - kidney beans in plum sauce.  I tried making this a while back, using an attractively straightforward recipe involving plum jam.  It was nice but not like the lobio that you get in a good Georgian restaurant.

So, when I took Claudia Roden's "The Book of Jewish Food" out from the library, one of the first recipes to catch my eye was the one she gives for lobio.  It was amazing.  I think I demolished about 10% of it in the kitchen while supposedly cooking other stuff to go with but actually, mostly, just sneaking bits of lobio.

Mmmm - Lobio

One of the things that's interesting to me about it is that it doesn't really taste of plums.  I am not a huge fan of fruit in savoury food but that doesn't matter for this because what it adds to the flavour is not fruity/sweetness but sourness/depth/something.  

It's actually remarkably straightforward to make as well - definitely something that the Mighty Aubergine household will be returning to.  A warning - like all of the recipes in this book, it makes lots, not that that is a particular problem..

Essentially, you steam a pound of plums until they're soft, then peel and stone them (this is probably the most annoying aspect of the whole recipe), add to a bunch of coriander and whiz in the food processor with some garlic (about 4-5 cloves), chilli powder (about a tea spoon), some lemon juice (to taste but roughly half a lemon's worth).  And of course a bit of salt to taste.

Whizzing plums and coriander

Lobio sauce - post whizzing

And then you add to 500g of cooked kidney beans (either tinned or dried - I prefer the latter but mostly, if I'm honest, because I'm cheap rather than because of some incredible difference that I can perceive in the flavour) and voila - lobio!

Lobio 

You can serve it warm or at room temperature - either is good.  Obviously, it's best eaten with khachapuri but, let's face it, what isn't best eaten with khachapuri?  But you could if - for whatever reason, you don't want to make khachapuri - eat it with bread, rice, or couscous or as part of a general mezze selection.  I am tempted to experiment with using the plum sauce to go with other things...

Lobio

Restaurant review - The Yellow House, Canada Water

Like Cafe Amisha, The Yellow House is one of the restaurants that we frequent when we are tired and don't want to cook. Which means that I always forget how nice it is.

We went the other day and had fondue to start which was interesting - I am more used to fondue as a main meal.  For my tastes, the fondue was a little too boozy,the booze slightly overwhelmed the cheese which was a shame because the texture was perfect.

The pizzas that we had to follow were perfect, though - crust nice and thin and flavoursome.  One of the things that I particularly like about The Yellow House is its selection of small sweet things.  As regular readers will have noticed, I don't have that much of a sweet tooth but every now and then I fancy something sweet at the end of a meal.  Restaurant puddings are usually too much for me but a couple of chocolate truffles or pieces of fudge are perfect.  The handmade chocolate truffles at The Yellow House are absolutely amazing, some of the best chocolate that I've ever had, I think mostly because of how freshly made they are.

Restaurant review - Prix Fixe, Soho

Looking for a nice but inexpensive place to grab a pre-show meal in Soho, we chanced upon Prix Fixe where the two-course set menu before 7pm is a bargain at £13.90 (no, I don't know how they came up with that figure, either.)

The set menu has six vegetarian main courses (counting the main course salads and omelette), all of which sound lovely - no tame mushroom risotto here.  I went for the grilled aubergine, roast pepper and goats cheese roulade to start - which was perfectly cooked, lovely blend of flavours and just the right amount of food for a starter, enough to whet your appetite but not so much that you don't want your main.  Because I'm a sucker for savoury pancakes, I went for the zucchini & dill pancakes as a main which were really good.  I pretty much always love pancakes but these were particularly well done - it's easy for savoury pancakes to be dry or overwhelmed by sauce but these were perfect, lovely crispy on top, and an interesting texture to the lentil and salsify sauce.

All in all, it was great.  I will definitely be back next time I am in search of a pre or post theatre meal in Soho.

Vegetarian etiquette dilemmas - the first in an occasional series

I was reminded the other day of a vegetarian etiquette dilemma that I have experienced.

The situation:  you're the only vegetarian in a group of friends dining at a restaurant.  The restaurant is the sort where it is common/typical to order a number of dishes for the group to share - think Indian, Chinese, tapas, Mexican, Lebanese, that sort of thing.  What do you do?

What I usually do is say, when we're all at the perusing of menus stage, that I'm vegetarian (or, if everyone knows that, to remind people), that I'm happy to share if everyone else is happy to order a reasonable number of vegetarian dishes so that I can have enough to eat but that, if the group as a whole would like to order lots and lots of meat, then I'll just get a vegetarian main course for myself.

Most of the time, what happens is that my friends say that that's fine and we order - depending on the place - usually around a half to three quarters vegetarian food, my friends all assume that I will (as I do) eat more than my "fair" share of the vegetarian dishes and, in exchange, they get my "share" of the meat to split between them.

However, I did have one bad experience, of going out to eat and doing this and having the other members of the group making passive aggressive comments about how they hadn't had a chance to try [insert name of vegetarian dishes that I had more than my "fair" share of and finished (NB - not that I did so without leaving the final pieces on the table for quite some time, giving ample opportunity for others to take them instead) ] which I found quite difficult.  Particularly because I kind of wanted to explain - "but we're splitting the bill evenly and I don't think that's particularly fair if I have had significantly less food than you" - but couldn't really do so because the comments weren't quite direct enough that I could tackle them without sounding extremely defensive.  I also sort of of felt like it was pretty obvious that I would be eating more than 1/number of people at the table's worth of the vegetarian stuff.   Basically because everyone else clearly felt that that wasn't sufficient for them because they had ordered meat dishes to supplement.  So why would it be enough for me?  However, I had forgotten that so many people suffer from the assumption that vegetarians are mysteriously able to survive on half the food that omnivores eat.  Vegetarianism, not just about leaving out the meat and eating what's left on the plate, people.  /End digression

This made me wonder whether I might be better advised to add to my opening spiel - "and, incidentally, I am assuming that you're ok with having my share of the meat in exchange for me having more than 1/number of people at the table's worth of the vegetarian food?" - though that seems tremendously awkward.

What would you /do you do?

Restaurant review - Avenue, St James, London

Recently, my lovely husband and I took advantage of the Evening Standard's Dine offer (now closed) and visited Avenue.  I picked it mostly because it is close to where I work (Victoria) and I have yet to really find a restaurant that I love near work which I feel is a bit of a shame.

As regular readers will know,  I am (greedily) mostly all about the food in a restaurant.  If a restaurant serves food that I love, as long as there aren't rodents visible and and the staff don't spit in my face, I will pretty much be happy to go back there.

That said, the service at Avenue was so good that even I noticed!  The waitstaff had it pitched absolutely perfectly - they were always prompt, they anticipated when you'd want more water, when you'd want to order dessert, etc, etc.  And they had ridiculously good attention to detail - e.g. we were sat at a long row of tables for two that were fairly close together and they seated groups as far as possible spaced out along the row, to avoid you having to be unnecessarily close to another party.  The waiter also won my heart by filling my hankering for ginger tea after the meal by getting the bar staff to add some chopped fresh ginger to some green tea.

The attention to detail carried through to the food too - for example, my pumpkin risotto was elevated from standard vegetarian risotto fare by the toasted hazelnuts on top that gave it a much more interesting texture.

The only complaint from me was that the puddings (very nice - banana sticky toffee puddings) weren't really anywhere near hot when they appeared, which was a bit of a pity.

I think it may be just a touch too expensive (£15-£20 for a main course) for me to want to go there regularly for the a la carte menu but I think I could definitely be tempted back for the set menu or the pre/post theatre deals that they have.

Children learning cooking in schools

Photo from openideo.com

I've been following the recent stories about children learning to cook in school with some interest.  It's taken me a while to unpick my thoughts because I have a few contradictory ones.

I'm all in favour of children learning how to cook - I think it's normal and natural for children to be involved in cooking.  In fact, I think cooking is in many ways a rather childish activity.  I think I partially enjoy it because of the sense of play and the ability to be messy in a socially acceptable way.  I like being able to do things with my hands, whether that's separating eggs with my fingers or shaping dough or whatever.  

Let's face it, this sort of thing is just plain fun.
Photo from www.kidspot.com.au

However, I'm not sure how I feel about children learning to cook in schools.  I'm not sure that I think that learning to cook should be done in a classroom kind of setting, I think that's almost separating it out from its natural context.  I think the way to learn to cook is to be given little tasks to do that ramp up in difficulty as you get better - when you're very little, you pod peas and peel cloves of garlic and then you progress to chopping things and then seasoning and then more advanced things like making dough and higher risk things like rotis and frying things like bhajiyas.  And I think it's important that that isn't separated out into a "now you learn to cook for an hour" but just part of your day to day life.

But, on the other hand, I get that not everyone is lucky enough to have families who cook and to learn how to cook in that kind of context and - obviously - I think they too should get to learn how to cook.  Because I think cooking is an important life skill for so many reasons - it's important for your health, it's important for your finances, it's important because it's fun and more people should have more fun.  

So, maybe, learning how to cook in school wouldn't be so bad.  But then I think about how none of the various articles that I've seen (perhaps I've missed one) on this subject have mentioned at all the cultural issues in play.  I mean, take this article from the Telegraph which describes at the end dishes that the author thinks that everyone should know how to make - a fair amount of meat in there which isn't going to work for vegetarian children, a couple of things that sound like they aren't Kosher and Indian food is all covered with "daal" and "curry"...  Now, obviously, schools in areas with large numbers of say Indian students or Muslim students or Jewish students or whatever are going to tailor that curriculum for their school but what happens when you are - as I was at one school - the only vegetarian kid in the whole school?  Do you just sit out the lessons that cover how to make a roast chicken or do you get a carrot to roast instead?  No-one seems to have thought about these issues at all.

I'm not suggesting that all these cooking classes should cover is vegetarian food as that would - of course - be a bit insane as many of the children will not be vegetarian and so will not really find that useful.  But I think it does bring home that food is so personal and so cultural that trying to teach it to a whole group of children with different backgrounds and assumptions is opening up a can of worms.  Because - at the end of the day - cooking is really quite different from other things that are taught in school.  There are so many different ways to do it and so many different ways to achieve a healthy balanced diet that, inevitably, it's going to be difficult when one way is taught.  

Now, I'm sure there are ways to get around this - teaching a wide variety of dishes from different traditions and focusing on techniques rather than straightforward recipes - but it's going to be incredibly difficult and I, perhaps overly cynically, rather doubt that many schools are going to teach anything other than "classic" British cooking plus a token nod towards chicken tikka masala or some other completely anglicised Indian dish.  I'm still not sure how I feel about that.

Pancakes! Baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Happy Pancake Day!

Pancakes are pure genius.  Want something sweet?  Have a pancake.  Want something savoury and stodgy and comfort foody?  Have a pancake.  Want something savoury and posh and delicate?  Have a pancake.  Want something spicy?  Have an Indian pancake.  Is there anywhere in the world that hasn't developed its own type of pancake?

Anyway.  My lovely husband loves pancakes like all sane human beings but has plans for the evening so we decided to have pancakes the night before.  Which is perfect because it means that I can write and schedule a post to go up on Pancake Day itself which is pretty cunning.

I used Nigel Slater's recipe for the pancakes themselves and stuffed them with a somewhat random mixture of things that I had in the kitchen:  fried four chopped onions, added some mushrooms and garlic, seasoned with salt and pepper and added in some grated cheddar and chopped parsley at the end, after taking it off the heat.

onion, garlic, mushroom, parsley and cheddar pancake filling

Then, made the pancakes.  I love doing things like this on the hob - watching the butter foam, having to speedily swirl the mixture, having to flip them over.  It's all great fun!

Pancake

Pancake

As each pancake was done, I put in the batter for the next and while that was cooking, I'd fill the cooked pancake with the mixture and put in a baking dish.  I went for folding the pancakes into quarters.  Mostly because that fit well into the baking dish I had - you could do it in any number of ways.

the first of many

starting to fill up!

Nigel Slater suggested adding a knob of butter to each pancake before it went in the oven but that seemed a touch unhealthy after all the butter that went into the pan to grease the pancakes so I just went for topping with grated parmesan.  Because obviously that is totally healthy.  Baked at 200 degrees C for about 10 minutes to heat through again and melt the parmesan on top.  Nigel Slater suggests baking filled savoury pancakes for 30 minutes but that would have been waaaay too long for these, they were perfectly done after 10.

Mmmmm.  These were lovely.  I love pancakes.  Not just for Pancake Day but nevertheless Pancake Day is an excellent excuse for a few!

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Pancakes baked with onions, mushrooms, cheese, parsley and garlic

Gelato in London - Black Vanilla, Greenwich

So, continuing my quest for gelato in London, we went to Black Vanilla in Greenwich yesterday.  It was very very good.

I had some apple sorbet that was basically the best apple sorbet that I have ever had and I have eaten a lot of apple sorbet.  It was just such a perfect texture, no iciness at all, just completely smooth.  The lemon meringue ice-cream that I had with it was not quite as nice - for my taste not nearly lemony enough - but perhaps it wasn't a great combination with a nicely sour apple sorbet.

My lovely husband had peanut butter and jam ice-cream which I thought was really interesting - I had kind of expected them to go for making the jam quite sweet and fruity and then have the peanut butter as the salty counterpart but, actually, they went for the peanut butter as quite sweet and the jam as the sour counterpart which was unexpectedly really nice.  I hate peanut butter and jam as a sandwich combination so it was quite impressive that I liked the ice-cream!  He also had the apple pie ice-cream which was also very nice.

Mmmmm.  Definitely going back.

An ode to Manjula's Kitchen

- Have you seen this website?
- I'm not sure about the handwo recipe, I use more ginger in mine

The other day, at a family party, my cousins and I had a bit of a bonding moment over Manjula's Kitchen.  One of my cousins exclaimed "What?  You've heard of it?  Is it famous?"  As I said to him at the time, no, it isn't, it's only famous amongst young East African Gujaratis living in this country who were, at some point, vaguely shown how to make their favourite Gujarati dishes by their mothers/aunts/grandmothers/random visiting "aunties" but have no idea how to actually make them.

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that when you google for your favourite Gujarati recipe from childhood, the first hit is Manjula's Kitchen.  Which is brilliant because it actually gives you the recipe that you want.  There are some great Indian cooking websites and blogs out there but, almost without exception, they tend to provide you with something that is slightly different to what you were looking for (if you are a UK dwelling East African Gujarati).

Now, I think South Indian food is fantastic, and Mumbai street food is some of my favourite food (like all Gujaratis, I think Punjabi food is too oily, though, sorry to any Punjabi readers), but sometimes I just want the recipe for the dish that I grew up eating.  Almost invariably it's something that my nanima or my mother showed me how to make "oh, it's so easy you just have to remember the lemon juice" and then I start to think about making it and realise that I know all about the critical importance of the lemon juice but have no idea what sort of flour to use.

I do post the odd Gujarati food recipe from time to time, and I hope my readers enjoy them but - really - Manjula is the real deal and you should head over there and check out her site.

Olive stuffed tomatoes and parsley and red onion salad

Olive stuffed tomatoes and red onion and parsley salad

Due to insane busyness at work, I have a number of things mentally queued up to post about.  This was actually what we had a a starter for our Christmas Day meal which tells you something about how long my mental queue is!

Cherry tomatoes being hollowed out

Because we were having a relatively heavy main - spanokopita - I wanted something light for the starter but, at the same time, something special.  For some reason, things always feel more special when they're stuffed.  I suppose it's because you know that someone spent ages with their thumb in a series of tomatoes to produce it. Even if that someone is you.  The main lesson that I took from this is that, if you do not want your thumb to be completely numb at the end of this, you should make sure the tomatoes are room temperature before you begin. 

Anyway, that life lesson aside, this was pretty good.  I got some cherry tomatoes - well, baby plum tomatoes, I think but it amounts to the same thing - hollowed them out with my thumb, stuffed them with olives (I had to chop the olives to get them inside but obviously this depends on the relative sizes of your olives and your tomatoes), and served on a bed of chopped red onion and herbs. 

Red onion and parsley salad

Olive stuffed tomatoes and red onion and parsley salad

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

I've been enjoying Sally Butcher's book Veggiestan which we have out from the library at the moment and am - as regular readers will doubtless be aware - rather easily persuaded into trying any recipe that involves fried aubergines.

There are two things, though, that really irritate me about the book: 

• firstly, that it is randomly patronising at times "if you don't have a lid, you can improvise one with foil", really?  really?! thank you so much for that tip, it's changed my culinary life, I would not at all have figured that out under my own steam... ; and
• secondly, as knowledgeable as the author seems to be about Middle Eastern food, she seems to be almost entirely unaware of its connections to Indian food.  For instance, she has a whole page on how drinking a salty, yoghurty drink is uniquely Iranian, *cough* salted lassi *cough*. Gujarati and Afghani food, especially, have a lot in common.  I learned a while back that there's strong historical evidence that my sub-caste (Lohana) are from Afghanistan originally, which I sometimes ponder when making recipes like this one which clearly are extremely Indian in flavours.

Basically, you fry some aubergines:

Frying aubergine slices

Frying aubergine slices

Add tomatoes, onions, chilli, coriander and tumeric and simmer for about 30 minutes, adding water if you need it:

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander and
chilli

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander and
chilli

Fried aubergine slices with tomatoes, onions, coriander
and chilli after 30 minutes of simmering

Layer it in a dish with the yoghurty sauce (yoghurt, lemon juice, garlic and mint - basically raita *cough* Sally Butcher..) and serve either hot or at room temperature.  Both myself and the lovely spouse thought it tasted even better the next day.

Afghan aubergines with yoghurt

cheese-baked egg-stuffed tomatoes - Sally Butcher recipe

Baked tomatoes with eggs and cheese

For no particular reason, I've been making a few things lately that involve baking eggs inside things.  I love eggs and baked eggs are a great way to have eggs for dinner, rather than the usual breakfast.  I also rather enjoy the thrill of fitting the eggs inside whatever it is.

I have Sally Butcher's Veggiestan out of the library at the moment and one of the recipes that I instantly wanted to try was this one for tomatoes stuffed with eggs and topped with cheese.  Cunningly, it involves putting some bread underneath to sop up the juices and make more substantial.

These were pretty easy - just scooping out the inside of tomatoes, frying some onions, mixing some of the inside of the tomato with the onions, cracking an egg inside each and topping with cheese but look a lot more impressive.  I did think that they might go better with brunch than dinner, though.

Hollowed out tomatoes

Hollowed tomatoes with eggs inside

Stuffed tomatoes with eggs and cheese

Baked tomatoes with eggs and cheese

Salsa

For some reason, it's taken me ages to get salsa right.  It's not that different to Gujarati chutneys (not what is in English considered a "chutney" but spicy sauces of various descriptions to accompany samosas and bhajias and other such savoury things) which I can manage just fine but salsa just never worked for me.  I tried various recipes online but the consistency just didn't come out right - too watery or too chunky or both. ARGH.

Anyway, the other day, we were having Mexican food and I resolved to try again with salsa.  I've tested this recipe out a couple of times since (in the interests of science, obviously, not just because it resulted in more Mexican food) and it appears to work.  Hurrah!  I no longer have to buy it at the supermarket and feel like a dismal failure.

Salsa

Recipe:

Quantity:  plenty for two people who really like salsa.

Chop four tomatoes and two onions finely (do not use a food processor, this makes it all too watery) - I like pretty much a 1:1 ratio of tomatoes to onions but, obviously, if you aren't as fond of onion, you may want to dial back on the onions.

Add the juice of a lime.  If you don't have a lime, lemon works pretty much equally well.

Add  about two tablespoons worth of tomato puree - I find this is the key to making it not watery.

To taste, depending on how hot you like your salsa:  red chilli flakes, paprika, sumac, black pepper.  I find the blend of different types of pepper gives it more depth.

And, obviously, a bit of salt.  Optionally, a little bit (like a teaspoon or so) of vodka gives it a little kick that's quite nice.  Topping with chopped coriander is also good but not vital.

Sweet potato, bean, cheese and mustard burritos

I realise that these sound bizarre but they are incredibly tasty.  Honestly.  In our house they have a collective noun of their very own and are known as "mustardy sweet potatoey beany goodness" which sums it up rather well, we feel.  We have fed them to a variety of people all of whom seem to have enjoyed it - including my lovely in-laws who are usually more meat and plain veg types.  The recipe is here.

The only tweak that I've made to this when I've made it is that, rather than peel, chop and boil the sweet potatoes, I put them unskinned in a plastic bag in the microwave, leave the bag slightly open, and then microwave.  My grandmother gave me this tip - it works with other vegetables too, potatoes/aubergines if you're wanting to add them to something but don't have time to cook them more conventionally.  I have absolutely no idea what made her come up with this method but it is genius.

Anyway, having cooked some sweet potatoes in the method of your choice, you mash 'em:

Mashing sweet potato

Mashing sweet potato

Cook up a tasty mixture of onions and a tin of tomatoes:

Tomato and oniony goodness

Cook up some beans - mmmm, beans.

Beans

Stir in a whole jar of seedy mustard - no really!

Mashed sweet potatoes with mustard

Stir in lots of grated cheddar (also added in some chopped coriander because why not?).  Actually, this is a really good sweet potato mash in general, we've used versions of it to top vegetarian cottage pie.

Mashed sweet potatoes with mustard, cheese and coriander

And then the beans - gently!

Mustardy sweet potatoes with cheese and beans

Then you wrap in tortillas and bake for 10-15 minutes:

We usually make a lot of them and freeze - they freeze really well, except that they take quite a while to defrost.  If possible, it's best to defrost them overnight and then bake in the oven.  If you can't defrost overnight, give them a quick blast in the microwave before baking in the oven from frozen.