Working lunch

I'm back! And I intend to stay back. I have a very long draft post about the wedding cake I made for my friend's wedding in September still to put up (need to add some recipes and pictures to it), but in the meantime, I'm here and I have things to write and recipes to note down.

This recipe was inspired, oddly enough, by something I ate at Seder in Israel this year. If you're Jewish you'll probably be surprised to hear that Pesach inspired any new recipe ideas, but in fact (and perhaps this tells you all you need to know about the rest of the Seder meal) the nicest thing I ate at Seder was a salad made of parsley and seeds. I had never really thought of parsley as a major salad ingredient before - usually it's more of a garnish, or something to put in soups - but then I remembered tabbouleh, which also uses parsley as its main ingredient, and this salad came together in my head.

The following can obviously be adapted to suit your tastes, but the quantities below have been making me 3 lunches, and it is quick to make, extremely filling, healthy and really delicious. Even Blondini said that parsley had never tasted so good. Only my grandpa, who has often declared his love for all food except parsley, may refuse to eat this salad.

Quinoa and parsley salad

(Makes 3 portions)

150g dry quinoa

100g flat leaf parsley (large bunch)

4 or 5 spring onions

Around 30 walnut halves

Juice of half a lemon

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Salt and pepper

Put the quinoa in a saucepan with 14 fl oz water and salt (the water should be double the volume of the quinoa) and boil until all the water is absorbed.

Chop the parsley very finely. Get rid of the green ends of the spring onions and finely slice them. Chop the walnuts into small bits.

In a glass, mix the lemon juice, a few drops of olive oil and a good slug of balsamic vinegar (or as you prefer) with salt and pepper. When the quinoa is cool, toss all the ingredients together in a bowl with the dressing. Keep it in the fridge for lunches throughout the week, or eat it all immediately!

If you like a fruity kick to your salad I think dried cranberries would go very well here.

Vegetable Spring Rolls

Yeah, I'm writing again. Hello! I won't do my usual long apology/explanation for my absence because it will probably happen again and if I do it every time it will just get boring. This time, however, I must name check Jo, whose great new blog is an inspiration and delight and has encouraged me to get back in the game. The blogging game, that is.

So, a few of my besties and their men came for dinner on Friday, and to start with I made vegetable spring rolls. They are incredibly easy – the only slightly complicated bit is in the folding, which I'm sure most of you would be able to do without any difficulty but I was never good at origami and I couldn't work out how to do them until Vangie, my parents' great cleaner, showed me how, Phillipines-style. She gave me a spring roll masterclass one afternoon, and in exchange I gave her a chocolate cake masterclass – the perfect swap.

These spring rolls are only lightly pan-fried, so are much healthier than those you'd get in a restaurant, and they crisp up beautifully in the oven if you want to fry them in advance. Additionally, you can make up the spring rolls and leave them uncooked in the fridge for a couple of days before you need them, so they are great for parties and big dinners.

Vegetable Spring Rolls

Vegetables of your choice – I think the ones that work best are bean sprouts, carrots (grated or finely sliced), pak choi or Chinese cabbage, onion, and thinly sliced peppers. It's hard to give exact quantities but if you want to cheat with this, I recommend buying those packs of ready-prepared stir-fry vegetables – one 300g pack will make around 8 spring rolls (obviously depending on size)
Fresh ginger, grated
Garlic, crushed
Soy sauce
Vegetable oil
Spring roll wrappers
1 egg white

Add a small amount of oil to a hot frying pan, and add the ginger and garlic. Fry for a minute or two and then add all the vegetables. Stir fry for a few minutes, and add soy sauce. You could, of course, stir fry using any sauce of your choice. The key is to add all the flavour you want at this stage because there is no other opportunity to do so. The other important point is to make sure there is no liquid remaining – either drain the vegetables when cooked, or cook them enough so that all the liquid is absorbed or has evaporated. Soggy vegetables will make soggy spring rolls.

Cool, and spoon a small amount onto each spring roll wrapper (this is one kind of pastry I don't think I'll be making myself!) and roll and fold the pastry to seal. It is hard to explain how – see this link for pictures.

Essentially, angle the square pastry so that one of the points is facing you. Put a dollop of vegetables just above this point, about a quarter of the way up the pastry. Roll upwards from your point to the back, and when you are just over half way, fold the sides in over your roll. Continue rolling until the end, and then, using your fingers, smear some egg white over the last point of pastry remaining and stick it down to the roll to seal it.

When they are all formed, heat a little oil in a frying pan and put the spring rolls in. They cook very quickly, so keep turning them to make sure they don't burn. Crisp up later in a hot oven, or eat straight away.

The Bloggeraid Cookbook

Googling around the other day (or maybe I was following links from other bloggers, I can't remember), I came across Bloggeraid and its cookbook project. In support of the World Food Programme's School Meal project, which helps to provide a nutritious meal at school for children in developing countries who may get no other meal each day, Bloggeraid is publishing a very special cookbook!

I have just submitted my recipe to the people at Bloggeraid and hopefully, in November/December 2009, you will be able to buy the Bloggeraid cookbook on Amazon! 100% of the profits go to the WFP School Meal programme, and you'll get to enjoy recipes from food bloggers all over the world, including one never-before-released recipe from me! I think the closing date for submitting recipes is 31 March 2009, so there is still time for you to get involved. I am posting this now, even though I haven't got a picture of my recipe yet, to give any readers time to get involved as well.

I am very excited by this as, clearly, I love writing about and thinking about food, and I think the School Meals project is a great one. My months spent volunteering in Kenya and Ghana brought home to me the necessity for children to be given a nutritious meal at school, as for many, there may be no other meals that day. Additionally, many families are reluctant to send their children, particularly their daughters, to school, and the school's provision of a meal may be a great incentive for parents to allow their children to go. I can't wait for the cookbook to be published, and I encourage you to submit a recipe too, as this is a fantastic and fun way to get involved in such a great project.

Yellow Chicken Curry

Ok, so this looks like a pile of dog sick, but it's actually a really great dish and one of my favourite chicken curries. Adapted from a Delia recipe, it's quick, easy and delicious, and I make it all the time. We had it on Wednesday, when Steve came for dinner and to play board games - it went down very well, but I was still able to snatch one portion away to freeze before it was all gobbled up.

Yellow Chicken Curry
(serves 2 people - easily multipliable for more)

Chicken pieces (I use chicken breast meat, skinless and boneless and cut into bite-size pieces, but you can make it with bigger pieces, pieces on the bone, etc - you just cook it for longer when you first put it in the oven) - enough for 2 people
1 large red pepper, roughly chopped
1 large green chilli, finely chopped
2 onions, finely chopped or blended in a food processor
2-3 cloves garlic
Large knob of ginger
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp coriander seeds
8 cardamom pods
1 tbsp turmeric
approx 200ml soy cream
salt and pepper
oil

Choose an oven-proof dish that is big enough to fit all the chicken pieces in a single layer. In this dish, grate the ginger, crush the garlic, add 1-2 teasps oil, the turmeric, salt and pepper. Mix together, and then add the chicken to this dish and coat the chicken in the mix. You can put this straight into the oven if you're in a rush, otherwise, leave this to marinade.

If you are using skinless boneless meat as I did, put it in the oven uncovered and start doing the following steps straight away. If the meat has bones, you will need to cook it for at least 30 minutes before starting on the rest of the recipe.

In a frying pan with no oil, heat the cardamon, cumin and coriander seeds, tossing them for a few minutes until you can really smell them and they turn a shade or two darker. Tip them into a pestle and mortar and grind to a fine powder.

Put the finely chopped or ground onions into the frying pan with a little oil, and fry until they turn golden. Add the red pepper and green chilli with some salt, and then add the ground spices. Cook for a few minutes until the pepper has softened, and then take the frying pan off the heat. Add the soy cream and stir until you have a thick, brownish sauce. Remove the chicken from the oven, and pour the sauce over the chicken. Cover the chicken with foil and return to the oven. Cook for at least 15 minutes like this (probably longer if your chicken has bones).

In the meantime prepare your rice or whatever accompaniment. About 10 minutes before you are ready to eat, remove the foil from the chicken and stir. The sauce should now look yellow as you mix in the marinade from the chicken into the sauce. Cook uncovered for 10 minutes and then serve.

a couscous comeback

I have been a bad blogger. I apologise, but I am staging a comeback. Thanks to those who remembered that I had a blog and kept pushing me to update it (Jo and Dannii) and to Vanessa whose fabulous blog inspired me to return.

Why haven't I been writing? Well, in the past eight months I've gone off cooking and Blondini and I have been eating nothing but takeaways and ready meals. And then pigs flew and the Pope became a druid. Really, it's because it turns out that blogging is one of those things that is really enjoyable but once stopped is hard to restart. I kept thinking: that would be interesting to write about, I'll do it later, but obviously later never came. And then of course there were the photos that I constantly felt guilty about not taking and not uploading, because I felt that a food blog needed to have lots of pictures of the food I'd been making (which it does). But maybe sometimes I'll have to do it without pictures, because I just can't always be bothered.

So, something foodie....

Well, last night I discovered couscous. I had known of couscous, of course, but I just didn't really get couscous before, and I now know that this was because I, and probably most people in this country, didn't know how to make couscous. Blondini makes it for lunch quite often, with sardines or tuna or mackerel and vegetables, and he had made it for me as a side dish on a couple of occasions but although I generally love everything he makes, I just didn't really love the couscous. It was a bit tasteless (apart from the bit where he'd put an enormous quantity of cayenne, cumin and salt and not stirred it in - that bit had too much taste) and kind of lumpy and stodgy. But then about a month ago we went out for dinner to a Moroccan restaurant and I had couscous and it was delicious. So I did some googling around, and found out that although in this country couscous is considered to be a kind of instant food - just pour on some hot water and let it stand - in North Africa it is anything but instant. I am not talking about the laborious process of actually making couscous, the rolling of the semolina and so on, but of the actual cooking itself.

According to google, the first thing I needed was a couscousiere. This appears to be an enormous pot whose sole purpose is, yes, couscous cooking, and since we don't have the largest kitchen on the planet, nor did I even know if I liked couscous yet, I decided, in an uncharacteristic move, not to go out and immediately purchase a couscousiere. Instead, I discovered that you can fashion a makeshift couscousiere out of an ordinary saucepan, a sieve and some foil.

Step 1

Weigh out the couscous. Apparently you want approximately 60 grams of dry couscous per person. I made 200g for 3 generous portions.

Put the couscous in a shallow but quite large bowl. Dissolve a teaspoon of salt in water - use approximately 15ml water for every 50g couscous. Pour the water onto the couscous and stir in with your fingers, rubbing to separate the grain and break up lumps. When the couscous has soaked all the water, stir in approximately a teaspooon of olive oil.

Step 2

Pour boiling water into the saucepan and put the sieve on top. Choose a saucepan that your sieve fits snugly on top off - the point is to avoid any steam escaping around the sides of the sieve but to allow as much surface area of the sieve to have contact with the steam rising from the pot as possible. It is also important that the water does not reach the sieve, so pour out some of the water if necessary. Fit foil around the sieve and saucepan to close off any gaps, and then put the couscous in the sieve. Cover with the saucepan lid, and simmer the water for about 20 minutes.

Step 3

Tip the couscous back into the bowl and sprinkle with more water - the same amount as you used before. Add another teaspoon of olive oil and stir well with a wooden spoon. Let it soak up and fluff up. You can leave the couscous at this stage until 10-15 minutes before you are ready to eat it.

Step 4

Put the couscous back into the sieve and repeat Step 2 for another 10-15 minutes. Serve your delicious, fluffy and light couscous with anything you like! We had it with a simple chicken tagine of my own invention - caramelised onions and preserved lemons.

Chicken Dhansak

There's no picture today as the battery in my camera died before I could take it, although this isn't a particularly photogenic dish anyway. Sorry - you'll just have to imagine this one - it's a greenish-brown curry with quite a thick sauce which is served with caramelised onion brown rice.

This is a Parsi dish from Mumbai, something I've been wanting to try for a while as vegetable dhansak is my brother's favourite curry in his favourite Indian restaurant. I had looked online in the past for a dhansak recipe but never found anything very appealing, and I was also put off by the description of dhansak curries as "sweet and sour" - in Chinese food that is my worst flavour combination.

Anyway, for our anniversary a couple of weeks ago, my mum bought us Camilla Panjabi's 50 Great Curries of India, and there was a recipe for Chicken Dhansak that looked very appealing. I made quite a few changes and substitutions but it turned out beautifully - it's spicy and tangy and has a really unusual flavour that is very different to the curries I usually make. The sauce is thick and creamy, but not made with dairy (or dairy substitutes) but with lentils and vegetables, so it is a really nutritious dish. I will definitely be making it again, it is yum!

Chicken Dhansak
(serves 2)

1 large chicken breast or enough chicken for 2 people, cut into chunks
100g toor dal (these are yellow lentils)
1 inch piece of ginger
2 cloves garlic
3oz red pumpkin (I substituted a courgette for this)
2oz aubergine (this is about 1/2 an aubergine)
1 tbsp fresh dill, chopped
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 1/2 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped
7 fresh mint leaves
1 tsp dried fenugreek leaves or fresh fenugreek (I couldn't find this so left it out)
1 tsp Parsi sambar marsala (I couldn't find this so I used 3/4 tsp fenugreek seeds, 1/2 tsp mustard seeds, 1 tsp red chilli, 1/2 tsp ground pepper)
1 tsp dhansak marsala (I did find this but if you can't, mix 1 1/2 tsp garam marsala, 1/2 tsp star anise, 1/4 tsp nutmeg)
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp red chilli powder
1 tomato
2 green chillies
1 tsp jaggery/palm sugar (I substituted dark brown muscovado sugar for this)
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 tsp tamarind paste

Brown pulao rice

6 fl oz brown basmati rice (I use 3 fl oz per person - always measure rice by volume, not by weight)
1 small/medium onion, finely chopped
Cinammon stick, bay leaf and some whole cloves (or some garam marsala instead)

Start by soaking the dal, and leave for 30 minutes. While it is soaking, prepare all the vegetables: chop the aubergine and courgette (or squash or pumpkin or whatever you can find) into 1cm cubes and put it in a large saucepan with a quarter of the ginger, 1 garlic clove, the fresh dill, 1/2 tablespoon of fresh coriander, 3 of the mint leaves and the turmeric. Add 1/3 pint of water and when the dal has soaked, drain the water and add it to the saucepan. Simmer until cooked and soft (should take 15-20 minutes).

While this is happening, toast any of the whole spices in a dry frying pan (you can use ground spices for everything but I prefer whole spices, so I put cumin seeds, coriander seeds and the fenugreek seeds and mustard seeds which are part of the Parsi sambar marsala into the pan). After a few minutes, tip these together with all of the ground spices into a pestle and mortar, and grind and blend together. Even if you are only using ground spices, blend them together before cooking with them.

Drop the tomato into some boiling water for 1 minute and then remove, slipping the skin off. Chop the tomato and the 2 chillies (remove their seeds unless you like a REALLY hot curry), and then heat a tablespoon of flavourless oil (I like rapeseed) in the frying pan and add the tomato, chillies, the remaining fresh coriander, the remaining mint leaves and all the spices, and fry for about 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Then add the cut up chicken and fry for another few minutes, making sure it is browned on all sides. It doesn't matter if the chicken isn't totally cooked through at this point because it will continue to cook in the sauce.

When the dal is cooked (this should hopefully happen at about the same time as the chicken is browning), use a stick blender or pour the contents of the saucepan into a blender and blend until smooth. Then add the chicken and any of the spicy mix in the frying pan to the saucepan together with 1/3 pint of water and let it simmer, covered.

While it cooks, start making the rice, as it will take about 20 minutes to cook. Start by frying the onion in a saucepan until it is lightly golden. Then add the (dry uncooked) rice to the saucepan, and fry the rice for a minute or so. Add 12 fl oz water (or twice the volume of the rice), some salt and the cinammon, bay leaf and cloves. Cover and let it simmer slowly.

After about 15 minutes, uncover the chicken and see how liquidy the sauce is, as you may want to reduce it. Add the lime juice and tamarind and salt to taste. Let it simmer until the rice is ready, and serve.

Veggie Burgers

What do you make when you're home late, you're hungry, you kind of want a burger but maybe something lighter and you want it FAST? A homemade veggie burger! With some sort of protein, of course - I get anxious about meals made with not enough protein.

This veggie burger is one of my least photogenic creations, but as I still wanted to show you what it looked like I have taken more of an action shot - burgers in the frying pan.

Veggie Burgers
(makes 4 large burgers, could serve 2-4 depending on how hungry you are!)

1 can of chickpeas, drained (400g chickpeas)
1 red onion, roughly chopped
1 red pepper, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Tabasco sauce
Salt and pepper

Put the onion, pepper and garlic on a tray, spray a little olive oil on them and season. Put them in the oven on a high temperature or put them under the grill for about 15 minutes. While you are doing this you could be thinking about the accompaniment to your meal. I think these would go well with pitta bread and salad - we actually had them with chips, because we were thinking about burgers and chips. If you're having something like chips, put these in the oven at the same time.

When the vegetables are cooked and maybe a little bit blackened, take them out of the oven and tip them into a food processor. Add the drained chickpeas, and whizz. Taste the mixture and see what you think - I added a little tabasco sauce, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper at this stage and the result was a very flavoursome and slightly spicy burger. Experiment with other flavours and seasonings (and indeed with other vegetables) as you wish.

It is probably preferable to chill the mixture once it is all blended, so put it in the fridge but don't worry too much - I only had it in there for about 15 minutes while I waited for the chips to finish cooking. Heat a frying pan with about a teaspoon of olive oil, and when hot add the mixture in spoonfuls, shaping them into flat patties as you put them in the pan. I made 4 large burgers with this mixture - you may prefer to make smaller burgers, which would be more manageable when trying to flip them over. Cook for a few minutes on each side, and then serve!