Category: Gluten-free

One-pan Fried Chickpeas, Rice, and Greens

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You know that phrase along the lines of if I’d had more time I’d have written a shorter letter, apocryphally attributed to Mark Twain but originating with Pascal? It springs to mind, somewhat tenuously, as I try to convince you of this recipe’s simplicity while firing off absolute paragraphs upon paragraphs of instructions — though as a votary of the School of Nigella, I am defiantly defensive of a wordy recipe. (And speaking of attribution, interesting how recency bias and perhaps incuriosity — but also being only human! — lead us to bestow the invention of a recipe to whoever the last person was that we saw making it, much as the glory for this phrase is usually thrown towards Twain. As an ambitious writer I can only but dream of such easy valour!)

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Despite all my words this recipe really is simple, and, speaking once more of attribution, it’s little more than an offshoot of the Sunday night pilaf in my 2013 cookbook; fiddled with a little and given creamy-crunchy texture from fried, spice-dusted chickpeas. And I do not lie about it using only one pan! That being said, I’m not overly wedded to a singular pan as a useful framework for recipes — like, if I’m washing dishes then I’m washing dishes, and what you save in pan-space you tend to have to make up for in extra bowls to reserve all the various layers of the recipe — but who am I to argue with the SEO keyword clickable seduction of the words, one-pan. Anyone who’s spent more than one minute on my blog knows that SEO keywords have never been my priority, partially due to my disdain for their effect on the written word and partly due to my own fecklessness but sometimes the stars align!

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Anyway, rice, greens, spices, chickpeas, nuts: this is serene, gentle food with a civilised jumble of textures — tender rice, popcorn-esque chickpeas, softly crunchy almonds, almost-melted greens. The spices are fairly calm as well, meant to suggest rather than boldly stride across the palate, but as I’ve mentioned in the notes, you can add more if you want, and if you also want to criss-cross this with sriracha or lacquer it with chilli oil, bravo on your initiative. To make it more luxurious you could add pine nuts or pistachios, to make it cheaper you could use pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds, beyond that moment of decision, this is fairly soothing on the wallet to boot, inasmuch as anything can be in our debilitatingly enduring cost-of-living crisis. If greens are also too expensive, as well they might be, I used frozen peas in the original pilaf that inspired this, and they’d definitely be fine here too. Whatever you add or don’t add, perfectly cooked rice plus a little something stirred in will always be delicious.

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One-pan Fried Chickpeas, Rice, and Greens

A simple recipe (despite how much I’ve written below) that you can add to or subtract from, as is however it’s delicious, calming, and as promised leaves you one pan to wash. Recipe by myself.

  • 2 tablespoons flaked almonds
  • 1 x 400g tin chickpeas
  • 1 heaped tablespoon cornflour (or cornstarch in the US)
  • 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 3 tablespoons rice bran oil, or similar
  • 1 cup basmati rice
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin, extra
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 500ml/2 cups water
  • 1 stock cube of your choice (or use 500ml prepared stock)
  • 2 large handfuls silverbeet, baby spinach, or other robust green leaves
  • Fresh thyme leaves from 2-3 sprigs

1: Toast the almonds in a large nonstick frying pan that has a lid (although you don’t need the lid until later, and I’m sure some other type of pan would work fine, this is just what I specifically used) stirring the nuts over a medium heat until they become golden-tinged and fragrant. Turn off the heat and tip the almonds into a bowl or some other receptacle and set aside.

2: Drain the chickpeas and toss them in a bowl with the heaped tablespoon of cornflour, half teaspoon of smoked paprika, and half teaspoon of cumin, stirring to lightly dust the beans in the seasoning. Heat the three tablespoons of oil in the same pan as before, and then tumble in the chickpeas. Fry them over a high heat for about ten minutes, stirring only occasionally, until they’re crispy and browned, covering with the lid if the chickpeas become too agitated in the heat and threaten to ping out of the pan. It will take a good ten minutes or so to truly achieve a crispy texture, so patience is key here. Once the chickpeas are where you want them, tip them into a bowl (perhaps the one that had the cornstarch and spices in it before, hastily wiped out with a paper towel), and set aside.

3: Rinse the rice under cool water, and then place it (the rice, not the water) into the same pan as before. Stir for a couple of minutes over medium heat, just to let the residual water evaporate a little and for the grains to toast lightly, then stir in the teaspoon of cumin, the half teaspoon of cinnamon, and the 500ml water and stock cube (or 500ml prepared stock/broth.) Raise the heat, and as soon as the water comes to the boil, clamp the lid on the pan and bring the heat down to the lowest possible setting. Let the rice cook, without removing the lid, for ten minutes (it may take a minute or two longer, but you can cautiously lift the lid at this point and taste to check how al-dente the grains are.) Once the rice is satisfactorily tender, turn off the heat, roughly chop up your greens if they’re larger leaves — or simply leave them as they are if you’ve got baby spinach — scatter them over the rice, and place the lid back on top again to let the greens wilt in the heat and steam, which should only take a minute or two.

4: Remove the lid, stir the greens into the rice, along with the reserved fried chickpeas and most of the flaked almonds and thyme leaves. Taste to see if it needs a bump in seasoning or spices; serve scattered with the remaining almonds and thyme.

Serves 4, although I’d certainly have room for dessert afterwards.

Notes:

  • These spices are a jump-off point, if you have spices that you regularly reach for which appear, to your palate, to be missing, feel free to add them.
  • A dollop of yoghurt on top, or perhaps yoghurt and feta blended together, is very welcome, this would also be delightful with a tangle of fried onions, a step that you could add in perhaps before the chickpeas but after the toasted almonds, although by this point it might just be easier to use two pans.

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music lately:

Come On Feet by Quasimoto, oddly poignant in its psychedelic spaciousness, yet also hopeful; either way, a killer beat.

Teenage Caveman by Beat Happening, another one that makes my heart ache with its upbeat yet plaintive opening hook that strongly echoes the emotional tumult of Classical Gas; weirdly the verses are more poignant than the “we cry alone” refrain of the chorus, I’m not musically clever enough to know why but I’m guessing it’s that minor key up to no good again!

Just Be Good To Me, as covered by Mariah Carey live in Tokyo in 1996; this song is so watertight-excellent that I’m not sure it’s possible to do a bad cover of it but nonetheless this is sumptuously casual and casually sumptuous, a fantastic choice for both the silky and raspy sides of Mariah’s unreal voice, and made glorious by that expansive, full-live-band-and-backup-singer lushness.

(Also, this isn’t the full song but it is, if I’m honest, the part I care most about — the “I’ve come home at last” bit — sung by Tony winner Stephanie J. Block emoting to the back row of as yet undiscovered planets during As If We Never Said Goodbye from Sunset Boulevard, I have watched this clip…many times.)

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours every month. There’s no better time than right now — your support helps me to make all these blog posts!

chilled cannellini bean soup with basil spinach oil

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I absolutely did not intend to leave it so long between blog posts, but the circumstances which were in the process of changing dramatically around the time of my last post have now come to fruition, in fact I’d currently describe myself as kind of circumstance-less, and while all of it was out of my control, and has utterly derailed my plans for this blog and also literally everything else in my life, I can only wallow for so long and eventually have to attempt to flourish within my new non-circumstances. (If this sounds irritatingly cryptic it’s because I can’t speak too freely about the old circumstances till the new ones are secured, you know?) The wallowing is important! But it’s also important to be reluctantly practical.

And so, at last, a recipe: simple and soothingly chilled for these unsoothing and unchilled times; although our summer here in Auckland has been a particularly horrendous write-off culminating in the disastrous weather event at the end of January where we received all conceivable rain from all possible timelines all within one day, but with the rain comes humidity, and with humidity, a cold soup comes into its own.

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You may look askance at the brief ingredient list: am I truly asking you to just puree some canned beans, and call it a soup? Well first of all, you’re an adult with free will, so you can add what you like to it, but it is — obviously — important to come at this from a place of already loving beans. I find cannellini beans to be truly delicious in a fairly un-tampered-with state (although I do also love a tampered-with bean), you may find that a splash of soy sauce or a crumbled stock cube isn’t even required; you may want to add sauteed shallots and garlic and celery and so on; as the cook and the eater, the recipe as I wrote it works for me. A bracing splash of pickle brine provides a spike of acidity, like dressmaking scissors slicing through velvet, and the opaque creaminess from the blitzed-up beans is luscious and elegant.

Of course, there’s the basil spinach oil to interrupt that unending ivory; basil for intensity of flavour, spinach because I had some in the fridge — dripped over the soup it rather resembles a giraffe’s pattern with the exposure turned up, or a forgotten petri dish, or a scene from the nuclear power plant in The Simpsons. The swirls are more accessibly pretty, but I am fond of the radioactive blob effect. Either way, the basil spinach oil lends peppery, herbal richness to the soup without overwhelming its frictionless calm. And as someone who tends to seek out from and recreate in food what I can’t get from the wider world, un-overwhelmed frictionless calm in a bowl sounds good to me.

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Chilled Cannellini Bean Soup with Basil Spinach Oil

Very fast, very relaxed, a cool velvety pool of pureed beans with bright green lily pads of basil-tinted olive oil, and all you need is a blender. Recipe by myself.

  • 2 x 400g tins of cannellini beans
  • 1 teaspoon pickle brine or lemon juice (or caper brine, or red wine vinegar)
  • 1/2 a stock cube of your choice, or a splash of soy sauce, or Maggi sauce
  • 1/3 cup loosely packed basil leaves
  • 1/3 cup loosely packed baby spinach leaves
  • 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
  • salt, to taste

1: Place the unopened cans of beans in the fridge a couple of hours before you plan to eat to give them the titular chill — although I also like this at room temperature. Boil the jug (or if you don’t have a kettle, bring a small pan of water to the boil on the stovetop), place the spinach and basil leaves in a sieve, and, holding the sieve over the sink, pour the freshly-boiled water onto the leaves. Immediately follow this up by rinsing them with cold water from the tap, and set aside to drain. This is the fiddliest part of the whole recipe — blanching the leaves helps retain their bright lurid green, and seems to blend them into the olive oil more easily, too.

2: Drain the tins of beans — not too thoroughly and without rinsing, you want to keep some of the can liquid here — and place in a blender, along with the teaspoon of pickle brine or other acid and half stock cube, or splash of soy sauce, or whatever source of salinity you’re using. Fill one of the empty cans about 3/4 full with cold tap water, pour it into the blender with the beans, and blitz everything to a smooth puree. Taste to see if it needs more acid or more salt — I actually like this with pickle brine and lemon juice at the same time, but a little sour goes a long way here.

3: Divide the soup between two bowls and place them in the fridge to chill further while you make the basil spinach oil. Rinse any residual soup from the blender, and press the basil and spinach leaves against the sieve to remove as much water as possible. Blend the leaves, the half cup of olive oil, and a pinch of salt together until the basil and spinach are completely pulverised into bright green liquid, as opposed to oil with bits of green in it.

4: Drop spoonfuls of the basil spinach oil over the soup and either leave them as is or swirl, depending on which option appeals to you, and eat immediately.

Serves 2.

Notes:

  • A few colour-contrasting splashes of chilli oil or sriracha would be invigorating here.
  • You probably won’t use all the basil spinach oil at once, but any less oil and the blender wouldn’t be able to process it. Store any remaining in the fridge in a jar or sealed container and use within a day or two.

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music lately:

Stuck on You by Failure, a song that achieves all it needs to in the first fifteen seconds and yet still gets better; nonetheless, I urge you to let that opening hook giving way into drums wash over you at least once.

Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in my Hand by Primitive Radio Gods. It may just be the sickly lure of nostalgia or the shuffling mid-tempo Beastie Boys-y beat carrying it but one-hit wonders simply do not hit, wonderfully, like they used to! Also, which is a more dated concept right now: needing to use a phone booth, or having money in your hand?

Pace, Pace, Mio Dio performed exquisitely by Leontyne Price, as the youtube account name says, this is coloratura!

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours every month. There’s no better time than right now — your support helps me to make all these blog posts!

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes with Cherry Tomato Dressing

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As someone perpetually sliding around in the gauzy formlessess of liminal spaces — or at least, as someone who feels this way — or, at least, as someone who once heard the word “liminal” and really latched onto it without being 100% confident of deploying the word accurately and yet still blithely using it several times a day — I find myself drawn to recipes which occupy more than one space, not quite a side, not quite a main, able to be raked through linguine or spooned over bowls of various grains, or maybe just eaten on their own with nothing before or after. Recipes like the Chickpeas Diabolique, or Roasted Zucchini with Spinach-Peanut Pesto, or Salt and Vinegar Beans, or Vegetables a là Grecque, or today’s recipe, the equally nebulous but compelling Roasted Cherry Tomatoes with Cherry Tomato Dressing. Is it a side? How many does it serve? I don’t know! Is it delicious? Of course! Why else would we be here!

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That being said, if you’re someone who quite reasonably likes to know where you stand, it might help to think of this as a definite side dish, or as a potential pasta sauce, having eaten it as both I can assure you of its success in either regard. Infuriatingly, but with weary predictability, despite it being the middle of summer the cherry tomatoes were stupidly expensive (for full transparency: two punnets of cherry tomatoes, a garlic bulb, a bottle of lemon juice because there were no lemons, and a basil plant cost twenty-two literal dollars) but because I had this idea in my head already and because supermarkets, themselves quite the liminal space, send me into a kind of automaton trance where I dazedly make stupid financial decisions in the name of feeding myself (although to be fair these days it’s hard to buy anything at the supermarket, even the driest bag of lentils, without it being a stupid financial decision), I bought the lot and proceeded with this recipe.

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Anyway, enough of the requisite cantankerous captiousness at the state of supermarket prices; what does the dish taste like? As the title claims, it’s pretty simple: roasted cherry tomatoes, with a few unroasted tomatoes plucked out and whizzed up into a peachy-yellow dressing with lemon juice, garlic, and olive oil, then poured back over their friends, so you get this mix of summer-sweet, glorious intensity from the roasted tomatoes and glibly fresh, raw zestiness from the raw tomatoes in the dressing and all that lemon juice. The two opposites meld together gorgeously, aided by the dusky richness of basil leaves bobbing handsomely on the surface like boats in a harbour at sunset. It’s a soft, messy dish with a lot of sauce between that which springs from the tomatoes in the oven and all the dressing, should you not know quite what to do with it I’d just get a spoon and some bread and use the two to empty and wipe the roasting dish completely of every last drop. Looking at that mess of red, yellow and vivid green, it’s easy to forget that tomatoes are more expensive than diamonds and it has rained every single day of 2023, tasting it solidifies this even more so.

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Roasted Cherry Tomatoes with Cherry Tomato Dressing

Simple and gorgeous, tastes like a rising sun, and ready to eat on its own or to be stirred through pasta. Recipe by myself.

  • 2 punnets cherry tomatoes
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil

Dressing

  • 6 cherry tomatoes (from one of the above punnets)
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  • 4 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • hearty pinch of salt
  • a handful of fresh basil leaves, to serve

1: Set your oven to 210C/420F. Remove six cherry tomatoes from one of your punnets and tumble the remaining cherry tomatoes into a shallow roasting dish into which they fit fairly snugly. You can halve some of the tomatoes if you want — I halved roughly a third of them before losing interest. Drizzle over the tablespoon of olive oil and roast the tomatoes for fifteen minutes or until they’ve softened and buckled in on themselves a little, at which point they’ll also release a decent amount of juice into the roasting dish.

2: While the tomatoes are roasting, get on with the dressing. Halve the six cherry tomatoes that you set aside earlier, and scoop out the seeds with a teaspoon. (A slightly fiddly job and I apologise! But you do get to eat the seeds as you go, at least.) Throw the halved and emptied cherry tomatoes in a blender with the peeled garlic clove, the two tablespoons of lemon juice, the four tablespoons of olive oil, the half teaspoon of sugar and a good pinch of salt. Blend it up into a frothy, pale-orange dressing, and taste to see if it needs any balancing of salt, sweet, or sour.

3: Once the tomatoes are done in the oven, pour over the dressing — you don’t need to stir it, but if you want to go for a mere nudge and lift, rather than a vigorous folding — and scatter over the basil leaves.

Serves 1—2, though it depends on how you dish it up. As a side dish, it could serve three to four, but more if there are a lot of dishes; or two to three when stirred through pasta or spooned over polenta, et cetera.

Notes:

  • Weirdly I could not find lemons at any supermarkets near me, which just adds to that feeling of losing grip on reality that confronts me whenever I do groceries; if you can get hold of one I would encourage you to strip off the zest before juicing it and to scatter it over the tomatoes at the end along with the basil.
  • If you only have a really large blender you might struggle to whizz up such a small quantity of ingredients, in which case a stick blender would be a lot easier, if you have neither then you could try pushing the tomatoes through a sieve or just really finely chopping and mashing them along with the garlic clove before stirring in the remaining ingredients.

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music lately:

Sleep Walk by Santo and Johnny. There’s something about a beautiful instrumental piece of pop that occupies the same space in my brain as a beautiful piece of classical music; it evokes a mood and suggests a story with nothing more than notes and chord progressions, and listening to this glorious tune — and even if you don’t recognise the name, you’ve probably heard it — spins dozens of different stories, all poignant and atmospheric.

Manchild by Neneh Cherry, when those synths come in like a shiver up the spine, yes! To say nothing of the prescient lyrics!

Blues From a Gun by The Jesus and Mary Chain, part of the genre of music that I would describe, in this current economy, as “irresponsibly exciting”.

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours every month. There’s no better time than right now — your support helps me to make all these blog posts!

chocolate, rum, and prune truffle ice cream [vegan, no-churn]

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2023! Personally, I think we’ve gone too far and should try a do-over of one of the previous years but since — as we’ve well and truly established — I have no influence over the passage of time, here we are and here I am, hastily squeaking a blog post in while we’re barely still in that phase of January where you can reasonably keep saying “happy new year”; accompanied by a handful of blurry photos of ice cream from my phone. December was a tumultuous month for reasons out of my control, like being handed a punctured bucket of sand and being told every grain of sand you lose is going to cost you twenty dollars and you also are expected to tap dance while picking up the falling grains; and unsurprisingly none of that has magically gone away just because December finally ended, hence my unsteady launch into a new year of food blogging, but — as always! — while very little else can be counted on, this recipe for Chocolate, Rum, and Prune Truffle Ice Cream is, at least, so delicious.

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While most of my ice cream recipes lean towards the dense rather than the fluffy, texture-wise, this one has a particular cellular compression, like a very solid ganache, hence adding “truffle” to the title to warn you of its approaching sturdiness, while also providing a distracting flourish from the presence of the prunes, which, to be fair, aren’t everyone’s favourite sweetmeat. Me, I love a prune, with their plummy, almost tannin-y sweetness and depth, and here they bring a potent, rum-drenched fruitiness to the ice cream, well-matched by the bitter dark chocolate and expansive sweet creaminess of the coconut.

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The result tastes rather like Christmas cake mixed with brownie batter, immensely rich and grown-up, with a husky rummy finish that avoids overwhelming. It doesn’t look as elegant as it tastes, so if aesthetics are your watchword, you could consider having diminutive serving glasses as I’ve done in these photos, or freezing it in a lined loaf tin to cut into slices, or serving it with icing sugar-dusted raspberries for a pop of colour, or giving up entirely. On serving-based aesthetics, that is, not 2023 as a whole, because despite my recent lived experience I still have high hopes for the new year to nudge new good things into existence. I mean, we have this ice cream! That is a start.

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Chocolate, Rum, and Prune Truffle Ice Cream

Dense, intense, rich, with plummy rum-soaked pureed fruit and dark chocolate. As always, no ice cream maker is necessary but you do need to allow several hours for the prunes to soak (and, of course, for the ice cream itself to freeze). Recipe by myself.

  • 1 and 1/2 cups prunes
  • 3 tablespoons dark rum (see notes)
  • 200ml rooibos tea (that is, one cup minus about three tablespoons)
  • 250g dark chocolate
  • 1 x 320g tin condensed coconut milk (or condensed oat milk)
  • 1 x 400ml tin full-fat coconut cream
  • a pinch of salt

1: Soak the prunes in the rum and tea for about six hours, or overnight, in a sealed container (or — I just poured the rum and cooled tea directly onto the prunes in their snaplock bag from the bulk section of the supermarket where I bought them.)

2: Once step one is complete, either several hours later or the next day, puree the prunes and any remaining liquid in a blender or food processor. It’s up to you whether you want this to be a velvety puree or to retain some texture, I went for the latter but either is fine.

3: From here it’s pretty simple; gently melt the 250g dark chocolate in bursts in the microwave or in a heatproof bowl resting (without touching the water) on a small pan of simmering water. Once the chocolate is melted, stir in your condensed milk and coconut cream, and then spatula the prune puree from your blender into the chocolate mixture and stir again to combine. Finally, stir in a decent pinch of salt, to taste.

4: Transfer this delicious mixture into a container with a lid; I like to let my ice creams rest in the fridge for two hours first as I, perhaps misguidedly, feel that it improves the flavour and texture, so either after that or straight away if you’re impatient, freeze the chocolate mixture for about six hours or until, well, frozen.

Makes roughly 1.25 litres. Because of the alcohol content you only need to let this sit for a few minutes to make it spoonable.

Notes:

  • If you don’t wish to use rum, Marsala would be my second choice (in fact, it might be my first choice if I had both in front of me), otherwise bourbon or Pedro Ximinez sherry would be great. If you don’t wish to use alcohol at all simply leave it out, bearing in mind that the ice cream will be a lot more rock-hard without the softening effect of alcohol. I’d also add a couple teaspoons of vanilla extract for another layer of flavour.
  • You also don’t have to use rooibos if you don’t like the taste. It’s my preferred tea to soak dried fruit in, however Earl Grey would not be out of the question.

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music lately:

Pets by Porno for Pyros, I was going to call this song “nonplussedly cheerful” but one of the youtube commenters bested me with a more accurate description of “nihilistically hopeful”, and something in Perry Farrell’s scraped-hollow voice adds to the nihilism and the hopefulness of it.

Long Ago by Mariah Carey. Despite her staggering body of number 1 singles, she is never lethargic or parsimonious on the album tracks, and this slinky, low-lit song could’ve absolutely been a later release from the incredible Daydream.

Serenade in Blue by Ethel Ennis, her plush voice is glorious for interpreting this standard, but I am also fond of the long-shadowed cinematic orchestrations on the Glenn Miller original.

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours every month. There’s no better time than right now — your support helps me to make all these blog posts!

The Annual HungryandFrozen Edible Gift Recipe Round-Up!

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The thing about Christmas coming but once (thank goodness) a year is that with each iteration you realise, poignantly, how much has changed since the last one. While you could of course reflect upon this during any Tuesday or September, with its keen sense of tradition and consistency and focus on familial relationships and togetherness, Christmas certainly lends itself to introspection more than, say, Halloween — though don’t let me hold you back. It’s that very sameness that makes the changes sharply delineated, makes you wonder what will have transpired by next Christmas, but it can also be comforting; the same music, the same scent of pine, the same food. And despite the quinquereme of changes that 2022 has powerfully rowed into my life, we can all count on one thing remaining the same: my Annual HungryandFrozen Edible Gift Recipe Round-Up!

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If this is news to you, each December I gather a list of recipes from my prior blog posts that I believe would make ideal edible gifts, in case you want prompting in that direction, despite having the entire internet already at your disposal. It’s a self-serving action, yes, but hopefully helpful — and all I ever really want is to be useful while drawing attention to myself in the process. In the spirit of consistency and tradition, and also in the spirit of retaining my own sanity in these trying times, I’ve kept a lot of the text in this post the same as in previous years — there’s only so many ways you can launch into this thing, and I appreciate your understanding.

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Christmas is a pretty fraught time of year as it is, and inescapable even if you’re not particularly invested — a bit like that primary school exercise where we inexplicably had to look after an egg for a week without breaking it, Christmas is a responsibility handed to you by a greater authority, fragile, and kind of wasteful in the grander scheme of things. But it’s happening, and if, like me, you’re someone who finds comfort and calm in cooking, then focussing your energy on making delicious edible gifts for people can reign in some of that generalised seasonal tension. Make a list, check it twice, work out which tier each person is on — are they worth putting in the effort to boil sugar? — pour yourself a small glass of port or a fruity cup of tea, and fill the kitchen with the scent of cinnamon and melting chocolate while the lights twinkle in your peripheral vision.

If you keep a relatively small circle, there are still neighbours, the postal service, and any number of people nearby who might be cheered by a jar or box of something in their letterbox with a friendly note attached. But even just you, alone, are reason enough to bake a cake.

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As for the financial pressures of this time of year — I won’t lie, between the ludicrous supermarket prices, time, electricity, storage and wrapping, homemade edible gifts aren’t necessarily cheap, and there’s no moral superiority in making your own jam. It is undeniably delightful to receive something homemade — but if this is too strenuous, stick with the food concept and do your Christmas shopping at the supermarket. The aforementioned ludicrous supermarket prices (all I want for Christmas is for more than one green vegetable at a time to be affordable) are still there to be reckoned with, but it’s undeniably fast and easy. Chocolates, candy, olive oil, fancy salt, spices, peanut butter, curry pastes, hot sauce, olives, a complicated shape of pasta? All delightful gifts. It can be as simple as just buying food you know someone happily eats a lot of. They love beans? Get them beans! They love noodles? Buy them a week’s worth! I guarantee they’ll be pleased. Basically, we cannot escape capitalism, but giving an edible gift has so many upsides: it’s delicious, it has immediate practical application, it will eventually cease taking up space in the receiver’s house, and it makes you look like a really great person, but perhaps more importantly, it shows the people you love that they’re worth a little time and consideration.

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I realise to heaps of people Christmas is — quite reasonably — just another day of the week! But there will be some point in your life when giving a gift is required, and almost all the recipes listed below work beautifully year-round (though I personally can’t eat candy canes out of season.)

Anyway, let’s get to it. I admit, I look forward to compiling this, especially when, throughout the year, I blog a recipe that could potentially augment the list. I’ve grouped the list into three categories, and have also included a few recipes I wrote for Tenderly over the years.

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Two caveats: some of these recipes are from absolute years ago, as will happen when you have a fifteen-year-old food blog, but while details and contexts and locations and motivations have changed, the deliciousness remains constant. Also, I feel like it’s worth noting anything that could melt should be stored in the fridge rather than under the tree for as long as possible.

Finally — all these recipes are vegan.

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The Annual HungryandFrozen Edible Gift Recipe Round-Up!

Category One: Things In Jars

Things In Jars! That eternal receptacle, a glass jar makes the humblest of ingredients and least of efforts look welcoming and exertional. From relish to pickles to the unsinkable salted caramel sauce, Things in Jars are ideal gifts for your most marginally tolerable of coworkers or the most highly specific loves of your life. For added personal flair — though this could just be my neurological predisposition for over-explaining — I suggest including a gift tag with recommendations on ways to use the contents of the jar. I used to be extremely cavalier about the sterility of said jars, but after living at home I’ve been sufficiently old-wives-taled into respectful fear for botulism. I like to think that a jar fresh from the dishwasher is as close to sterile as you can hope for; otherwise, I’d consult the internet (and with the state of google these days it’s worth either going straight to youtube or adding “reddit” after your search term) for wise counsel on the process.

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Savoury:

Coconut Oat Chilli Crisp
Vegan Gochujang Bokkeum (if you know someone who likes chilli I cannot recommend this highly enough)
Roasted Plum Harissa
Cranberry Sauce (this recipe is super easy, and I make it almost every year to have with Christmas dinner)
Corn and Chilli Relish
Marinated Tamarillos
Taco Pickles
Sake Pickled Radishes
Preserved Limes
Dukkah (perhaps accompanied by a nice bottle of olive oil)
Spiced Peaches (very, very easy and good)
Olive Tapenade
Caramelised Onion Butter
Tomato Relish
Ras el hanout
Berbere
Khmeli Suneli (overachievers might consider making a tasting flight of these three spice mixes)
Cumin and Paprika Spiced Pumpkin Seed Butter
Peach Balsamic Barbecue Sauce
Roasted Chickpea Butter
Quick-Pickled Apples and Pears
Quick Pickled Scallions/Spring Onions
Pickled Eggplant

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Sweet

Pecan Cookie Granola Butter
Rhubarb, Raspberry and Cardamom Jam
Rhubarb Fig Jam
Berry Chia Seed Jam
Black Salted Caramel Sauce
Salted Pineapple Caramel Sauce
Orange Confit
Apple Cinnamon Granola
Strawberry Jam Granola
Buckwheat, Cranberry and Cinnamon Granola
Caramel Walnut Granola
Lux Maple Granola
The Best Granola (the others are still good, but it’s named for a reason)
Lemon Curd
Salted Vanilla Brazil Nut Butter
Coffee Cinnamon Hazelnut Butter
Rhubarb Fruit Mince (very easy and delicious and surprisingly easy to find ways to use)

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Category Two: Baked Goods

They’re baked! They’re good! While biscuits and cookies are more commonly gifted, don’t rule out a loaf, perhaps wrapped in baking paper and then brown paper — the ginger molasses loaf below keeps forever and would make a charmingly convivial offering. And at this busy time of year, having something to slice and eat with a cup of tea or a snifter of whatever weird liqueur you can find in the back of the cupboard is nothing if not a stroke of good fortune. I’ve made the Christmas Star Cookies a LOT and recommend them enthusiastically, but for some reason they work better if you make individual batches repeatedly rather than trying to double or triple the ingredients. As for how to present them, you don’t need to convert your house into an arts-and-crafts station; a handful of cookies in a cellophane or sandwich bag tied with a bow is fine, or pile them into takeout containers which is easy, practical, and less of a single-use-plastic vibe. I’m still partial to the magic of curling ribbon, but a wider ribbon will create a distracting flourish for simple packaging. Don’t stress about it too much though, the food itself is the star here.

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Christmas Star Cookies
Pistachio Toffee Cookies (gorgeous, but the toffee softens after a couple of days, so make them closer to the date of giving)
Chocolate Rosemary Cookies (very elegant, and you could tie a sprig of rosemary in with the packaging for rustic Christmassy effect)
Hundreds and Thousands Biscuits
Rum + Pecan Cookies
Chewy Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies
Pecan Sandies
Brown Butter Chocolate Brownies
Viv’s Crackers (good to make anyway for general nibbling)
Vanilla Chocolate Macarons (high effort, high reward, but like, really high effort, this isn’t for people you feel indifference towards)
Dark Rum Tahini Chocolate Walnut Cookies
Roasted Carrot Cake with Apple Cider Vinegar Buttercream (if this or the poppyseed loaf below has to travel a long distance I’d leave them uniced)
Lemon Poppyseed Loaf Cake
Ginger-Molasses Loaf Cake (I have made dozens and dozens of these, and it’s excellent with treacle instead of molasses)
The Very Best Vegan Christmas Cake (I do not exaggerate)

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Category Three: Novelty, No-Bake Sweets, and General Sugary Chaos

The best category, let’s be frank. Whether it’s dissolving candy canes in bottom-shelf vodka or adding pink food colouring to white chocolate for the aesthetic, sugar is the true reason for the season. And since dentists wildly overcharge us for their service, you might as well make them really earn it. Note: even with overproof vodka the passionfruit and mandarin liqueurs probably won’t be ready in time for Christmas; unless you can find out-of-season feijoas there’s no point trying that recipe either, but either give the intended receiver an IOU, or save it for their birthday — or next Christmas.

Homemade Feijoa Vodka
Homemade Passionfruit Liqueur
Homemade Mandarin Liqueur
Candy Cane Vodka (or Peppermint Schnapps if you will — it’s almost literally potable!)
Coffee-Orange Liqueur aka Forty Four
Old Fashioned Lemonade Cordial
Chocolate Pistachio Fudge (incredibly easy, and it’s a Nigella recipe so you can really trust it)
Chocolate-Nut Fudge Candies
Three-ingredient Chocolate Caramel Hearts
Candy Cane Bark
Homemade Bounty Bars
Salted Chocolate Cashew Butter Slice
Almond Butter Toffee
Old Fashioned Fudge
Chocolate Caramel Rice Bubble Slice
No-bake Cookie Dough Truffles
Vegan White Chocolate
Vegan Cookies and Cream White Chocolate
Raspberry Rainbow Slab

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(Pictured, in order from the top: Chocolate Pistachio Fudge; Candy Cane Bark; Rhubarb Fruit Mince; Sake-Pickled Radishes; Chocolate-Nut Fudge Candies; Candy Canes (just as they are, not a recipe); Rhubarb, Raspberry, and Cardamom Jam; Roasted Plum Harissa; Berry Chia Seed Jam; Christmas Star Cookies; The Best Christmas Cake; Homemade Mandarin Liqueur; Raspberry Rainbow Slab.)  

music lately:

Turkey Lurkey Time from the 1969 Tony Awards performance of the musical Promises, Promises. I have a small personal tradition where I watch this clip every December 1st and invariably start crying, which is where I should point out that it is absolutely not a number intended to stir that kind of emotion. I can’t explain it, it’s something about Donna McKechnie’s elasticated spine, it’s the diagonal convergence at the end, it’s the way I wait for it each year, it’s the culmination of all the previous years up until this point, it’s Christmas!

Amen, by Jolie Holland, a song of almost otherworldly soothing beauty from her glorious album Escondida.

Supervixens, by A.R Kane, I mean, this is a time for tradition after all, and this will always remain one of my top-listened songs of any year, and every time I listen it’s more messy, more yearning, more weird, more amazing.

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours every month. There’s no better time than right now — your support helps me to make all these blog posts!

Chickpeas Diabolique

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We are truly working overtime down in the Just Gotta Get Through This Week salt mines this year (where we spend all day txting each other “just gotta get through this week”), though if the inexorable passage of time has taught me anything it’s that the universe or fate or whatever force is responsible for all this does not care that you’ve made it through this week/month/year! All of which is to say, the external stresses in my life are really externally stressing me this week, and so I’m reproducing a recipe some of you will have seen already last year in the small but mighty island nation that is my Patreon; but in this economy, I’m saying outfit repeating is not only cool, it’s the responsible choice.

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Joking about being a thesis replicant has rather backfired on me since upon reflection an actual replicant would be much better equipped to deal with trials and tribulations than I am; at the very least a replicant wouldn’t suffer pain in their thoracic spinal region from slumping over a laptop like a collapsed circus tent for eleven hours at a time in the library. But I can report one thing that is literally good: on Friday, I handed in my thesis (roughly 80k words all up, and on time!). Despite, if not because of everything else going on, I am very proud of myself, grateful to those who supported me along the way this year, and relieved to be typing again without the watchful chaperone of APA 7 referencing guidelines. This recipe for chickpeas diabolique is just the sort of barely-laborious cooking you can do when you’re half-conscious at best, and its rip-roaring red-orange hue reminiscent of molten red devil marbles, and surprisingly feisty cayenne heat will help make you feel full-awake.

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This is my reworking of a Belgian scampi recipe; the chickpeas are not in the slightest bit intended to be a 1:1 analogue for seafood, it’s more that I thought this sauce and preparation would suit the legumes keenly, and I was correct. In fact, this is possibly my favourite chickpea recipe ever — so far — as much for its speed and ease as its dramatically delicious results from such a simple list of ingredients. Something remarkable, flavour-wise, happens somewhere between the tomato paste sizzling and caramelising and the vermouth hitting the hot pan and rising up again like a magician’s puff of smoke, and it tastes like you’ve done an awful lot more than you really have. It’s sticky, it’s messy, it’s rich and decadent but rustic and unpretentious, and it tastes amazing.

@hungryandfrozen

chickpeas diabolique, probably my favourite chickpeas of all? recipe at hungryandfrozen dot com 🤠 #chickpeas #vegan #cookingvideo #fyp

♬ The Dark Of The Matinée – Franz Ferdinand

Serving the chickpeas with bread to swipe at the lurid, lycopene-rich sauce makes sense, as does serving the dish as part of a table of mezze or small plates, and it goes without saying — but nonetheless, for the record — this would be wonderful stirred through pasta. I’d choose a ridged shape, to catch the sauce; I do like the idea of pappardelle with this, like a playground slide for the chickpeas, but something with more structural integrity would probably be a better choice, like bucatini or fettuccini. Any leftovers (I ate about 75% of what was in the enamel dish in the photos and refrigerated the rest) are strangely good cold, but probably best kept as a solo snack unless reheating. I still very much just gotta get through this week, but this recipe is another tick in the somewhat lonely “literally good” column, and will long continue to be.

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Chickpeas Diabolique

Easy, fast, messily delicious, and with very few perishable ingredients you can keep the means to make it at any time safely in your pantry. Recipe by myself, but adapted from and inspired by the Belgian dish, Scampi Diabolique.

  • 1 onion
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • olive oil, for frying — a couple tablespoons
  • 1 x 400g tin of chickpeas, drained
  • 1/4 cup tomato paste, heaped is fine
  • 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
  • a pinch of cayenne pepper, or to taste
  • 1/2 cup dry white vermouth (or dry white wine or dry sherry)
  • 1-2 generously heaped tablespoons vegan aioli, plain vegan yoghurt, or anything else rich and creamy — even hummus or thick coconut cream
  • salt and pepper, to taste

1: Finely dice the onion and garlic cloves. Heat a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a wide frying pan and gently fry both alliums over a low heat till soft but not browned. Tip in the chickpeas, stirring to warm them through, along with the teaspoon of smoked paprika and pinch of cayenne.

2: Turn up the heat and stir in the 1/4 cup tomato paste, continuing to stir to let the tomato paste coat the chickpeas and get stickily caramelised in the heat.

3: After a minute or so of this, pour in the 1/2 cup dry vermouth, which will hit the pan with an enthusiastic hiss, and stir it in, along with the tablespoon or two (and I lean towards two), of aioli. Let this warm through, still stirring, then remove from the heat. Season and taste, add a splash of water to make it saucier if need be (or, indeed, more vermouth), and serve.

Serves one as a hearty snack, or two with accompaniments. Could stretch to three if stirred through pasta.

Notes:
I assume confidently that the “diabolique” part of the name refers to the heat of the cayenne. If you’re serving this to kids, perhaps leave it out, but up to you — the dish is more punchy than truly spicy, but cayenne gets exponentially hotter pretty quick so if whoever’s eating it is not spice-confident, add with caution.

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music lately:

Out Here On My Own by Irene Cara, another shining star extinguished by this cruel year. I can’t begin to describe what the film Fame means to me, nor shall I try, so instead let’s just celebrate her singular talent — that delicate yet raw, gorgeously emotive voice, that vivid, vulnerable screen presence — in this, one of the most beautiful and perfect ballads of all time. If you feel like wallowing then you might follow it up with I Sing The Body Electric, an unhinged and extraordinarily joyous song that never lets you guess its next move, and which is often unfairly left out of the rightful praise heaped upon this film’s soundtrack.

Dragnalus by Unwound, seems like only yesterday I was recommending my little brother music to blow his mind and now he recommends me music because I am old and set in my ways and only listen to the same seven tracks over and over. Fortunately, this is music recommendation catnip for me: it’s old enough to rent a car, it’s obscure enough that I missed it first time around, and it sounds like angry chickpea tin cans fighting in the bottom of a council skip.

Nobody by Keith Sweat feat. Athena Cage. Even when playing over the speakers of the Chemist Warehouse, with its fluorescent lighting and narrow aisles closing in on you, surely the least amenable and most incongruent environment to hear this song, still a seductive slow-dance air pervaded between those disorientingly jammed shelves.

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours every month. There’s no better time than right now — your support helps me to make all these blog posts!

Vegan Chocolate-Nut Fudge Candies

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You can usually pinpoint the exact moment that I become cognisant of Christmas approaching because I’ll suddenly post an utterly frivolous recipe whose existence clearly serves to augment my annual edible Christmas gift round-up. Case in frivolous point, these Chocolate-Nut Fudge Candies, which you’ll see added to this year’s imminent list in a couple of weeks. I mean, I’m also aware that the Fideles are Adeste-ing because I’ve started having those dreams where I wake up on Christmas Day and haven’t organised any presents and everyone is deeply disappointed in me. But only one of these internal alarm clocks results in chocolate, and even though I am still largely in Thesis Replicant Mode (a mode which, admittedly, feeds on itself more than my thesis probably requires at this point) I still heeded the call.

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If you need to cook something giddy and impetuous there are few safer bets than a second-hand mid-century book of recipes compiled from women across America titled America’s Favourite Recipes, subheading: Desserts, sub-subheading: including party beverages. I love to read this book when in need of comfort, and they weren’t lying about the party beverages, such as Cranberry Eggnog, a “mock Tom Collins” with two cups of milk in it, and a punch that includes, but is not restricted to, maraschino cherries, pineapple juice, and peppermint extract. These chocolate candies — and I use the American word here since it makes sense, provenancially — are adapted from a recipe in the book by Mrs O.S. Dews, who was, at the time of publishing in 1968, the president of the Officers’ Wives’ Club in Ogden, Utah. Should Mrs Dews still be kicking about, I graciously thank her.

@hungryandfrozen

chocolate-nut fudge candies 🤠 full recipe at hungryandfrozen dot com #chocolate #vegan #ediblechristmasgifts

♬ I’ve Got My Love To Keep Me Warm – Billie Holiday & Her Orchestra

Though there’s a bit of boiling sugar involved here this recipe is remarkably easy and very delicious — admittedly, not a super complex flavour profile, it instead evokes solidified chocolate icing, but this is hardly a bad thing. Also, despite having not a lick of dairy, the combination of toffee shocked into submission by a pile of chocolate really does end up tasting like fudge, with its wet-sand, tooth-exfoliating soft melting grittiness.

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The dusting of dehydrated plum powder, scattering on the white baking paper like pohutukawa needles (or, I suppose, a Fargo-esque spray of blood) on fallen snow, is, I assure you, truly for aesthetic purposes only. You could consider sprinkling over edible glitter to give it the old razzle dazzle, lean into immaturity with rainbow sprinkles, or assume a soberly logical stance and simply press extra cashews into the surface of the cooling chocolate candies. Either way, these are delicious post-dinner fortifiers or, logically, edible gifts, and just be glad my eyes weren’t caught by the peanut brittle recipe at the bottom of the same page of this book, which lists 16 inches (!!) of paraffin wax in the ingredients; but then it did win a prize at the Tulsa State Fair…

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Chocolate-Nut Fudge Candies

You need to pay a little bit of attention here but these aren’t too arduous and they make, needless to say, an excellent edible gift. With their simple chocolate flavour they’re very kid-friendly, but maybe keep them out of the way while you’re boiling the sugar. Recipe adapted from the Favourite Recipes of America: Desserts book.

  • 200g dark chocolate
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup golden syrup (or light corn syrup for the Americans)
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
  • 1/2 cup roasted, salted cashews
  • 1/4 cup boiling water
  • salt, for scattering over
  • dehydrated plum powder, to serve (very optional)

1: Roughly chop the 200g dark chocolate and set aside. Just leave it on the chopping board, no need to decant it into a separate bowl. You might as well rip off a couple sheets of baking paper and lay them on baking trays for later, too.

2: Place the two cups of sugar, cup of brown sugar, 1/4 cup golden syrup, 1/2 cup water and teaspoon of vinegar into a large heavy-based saucepan and cook over a low heat for about fifteen minutes, stirring constantly without letting it bubble up, until the sugar is entirely dissolved, or near enough. You’ll see it on the back of your spoon — it’ll look clear and shiny rather than gritty — and you should be able to feel it as you stir as well.

3: Once the sugar is dissolved, turn up the heat and let the sugar mixture boil, without stirring, for three minutes. The second three minutes are up, remove the pan from the heat, and once the bubbles have subsided, throw in the chopped chocolate and stir energetically.

4: Once the chocolate has entirely melted and incorporated and the mixture has thickened considerably, let it sit for ten minutes to cool a little. While this is happening, roughly chop the 1/2 cup of roasted salted cashews and boil the jug for the water. Stir the cashews into the saucepan along with the 1/4 cup boiling water — the chocolate mixture will go from quite dry and crumbly to shiny again — and drop tablespoons of the mixture onto baking trays lined with baking paper. Sprinkle over a little salt and, if you like, shake a little dehydrated plum powder (or any other red fruit, plum is just what I had in the cupboard) through a sieve over the chocolate candies.

Allow the candies to cool and firm up, then store them in an airtight container in the fridge. Makes around 30 – 35.

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music lately:

American Teen by Ethel Cain, a fitting song to go with this recipe. Whether its an indictment of my age or just the fact that I genuinely prefer very old music, I’ve hit a point where I struggle to care about or resonate with much of anything that hasn’t already existed for many years, but this song broke through my walls and defences. Possibly because it has a distinct 1994-ish energy, but probably because it’s wildly beautiful and exhilarating with the kind of lively guitar riffs that make you want to raise a can of Pepsi-cola up a flagpole and salute it.

The Nitty Gritty by Shirley Ellis, the way this song perambulates and syncopates is so immensely satisfying, as is Ellis’ gorgeous voice, though little is as satisfying as the ludicrously sincere dancing in the video with it, I highly recommend clicking through.

(Birds Fly) Whisper to a Scream by Icicle Works, just the song you want playing as you run through concrete back alleys in the rain wearing a scratchy wool jumper while charmingly and cinematically coming of age circa 1983. Those drums — those drums!!

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours every month. There’s no better time than right now — your support helps me to make all these blog posts!

Vegan Cardamom Thyme Chocolate Puddings

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Every time I think I’ve Done Something by adding a pinch of cardamom to a recipe I hear Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly saying “florals, for spring? Groundbreaking”, but as I favour known deliciousness over needless striving for innovation (or worse: striving for virality) I can calmly tell this fictional character onto whom I’m projecting that yes, cardamom is wonderful, and here’s more of it. Obviously people have been using cardamom for centuries — it’s referred to in ancient Sanskrit texts, was beloved of Hippocrates, part of the Song Dynasty economy — and it’s pleasing to know, as I tuck into this chocolate pudding from the comfort of my bed, that I’m participating in the noble continuation of a grand culinary tradition.

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Sometimes the right answer isn’t where you’re looking for it. This recipe started off as an ice cream, and very fine it was, but the wistfully cardamom-tinted richness of the unfrozen mixture stuck with me more, so I made it again and dialled it back a few steps. Both cardamom and thyme have a kind of resiny, oily fragrance that’s wobbling just on the precipice of lemon without actually being lemony; together they lift the chocolate’s heavy curtains while still emphasising its richness, adding an air of mystery without being intrusive. Now, the first time I made this I let the coconut cream sit with its bashed cardamom pods for six hours to infuse, the second time I was in more of a hurry and it only sat for half an hour; it was still good but the cardamom didn’t make itself so known. If you end up in this same position, put ground cardamom on your shopping list and add as much as you need to the chocolate mixture till the flavour pops.

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This recipe is, I grant you, kind of annoying: first I ask for cashew butter (what are we, squillionaires) and second it requires two separate saucepans, but at least you don’t have to use a blender? And after a certain point of streamlining and cutting corners we have to accept that cooking food does involve being in your kitchen. For your efforts and sink full of dishes, however, you get a chocolate pudding of astonishing lusciousness, so dense and dark that you half expect a curious hippo’s nostrils to emerge through its surface; wildly sophisticated thanks to the individual portions and fragrant cardamom (and my fairly low bar for what constitutes sophistication), and yet inner-childishly comforting with its yielding softness and vague evocation, as you drag your spoon through the chocolate, of being given a scraped-out bowl of cake batter to lick. (Also: no tiktok video this week, my phone has suddenly decided it has all the capacity and power of a 125mb thumb drive from 2006 and as such I was up till 3am last night trying to clear storage space so I could edit one single video of chocolate melting and was thwarted at every turn. I have about 1000 fewer photos on my phone but it’s still being all “no x” whenever I try to edit that one video. Can’t wait till I try this again next time!)

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Cardamom Thyme Chocolate Puddings

Velvet-rich chocolate kissed with cardamom and fresh thyme: it’s a little messy to make and requires some advance planning, but every spoonful is a reward. And if you don’t have time to let the coconut cream infuse, add 1/2 a teaspoon ground cardamom — or more to taste — as you’re mixing it into the chocolate. Recipe by myself.

  • 4 cardamom pods
  • 2 sprigs fresh thyme
  • 1 x 400ml tin full-fat coconut cream
  • 1 cup/250ml water
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
  • 2 tablespoons golden syrup
  • 3 heaped tablespoons smooth cashew butter
  • 200g dark chocolate
  • Extra thyme leaves, for serving

1: Split the cardamom pods with a knife to release the black seeds within, and place the seeds and pods along with the two sprigs of thyme and the tin of coconut cream in a small saucepan and gently heat it, stirring, till the coconut cream is just too hot to touch, with a couple small bubbles escaping to the surface, but nowhere near boiling. Remove it from the heat — if you have the time, let it sit for about six hours in the fridge to soak up all the cardamom and thyme flavour, if not, just set it aside while you get on with the rest of the recipe, and add some ground cardamom to taste when you mix it into the chocolate later.

2: Roughly chop the 200g dark chocolate and set aside. In another saucepan, stir together the cup of water, the 1/2 cup brown sugar, two tablespoons golden syrup and three heaped tablespoons smooth cashew butter. Bring to a boil, stirring regularly with a whisk — it’ll look very unlikely at this stage but with a little heat (and a lot of chocolate later) it will all come together. Once it’s reached the boil, by which point it should resemble caramel sauce, let it bubble away for two minutes, stirring constantly, and then remove from the heat.

3: Let the cashew syrup sit for a minute till it stops bubbling, then tip in the chopped dark chocolate and briskly stir till the chocolate has melted. Now, take your initial pan of coconut cream, and strain it into the chocolate mixture through a sieve, so it catches the leaves and bits of cardamom. Whisk the two mixtures together, adding ground cardamom at this point if you feel like it needs a boost, and divide this mixture between your chosen serving bowls. Refrigerate the puddings for about two hours (though they can happily sit in the fridge overnight if need be) and serve scattered with extra thyme leaves.

The number of servings depends on the size of your ramekins/bowls etc, but this makes roughly 700ml of pudding mixture, and I divided it between six different receptacles, which made for a comfortable serving of pudding: enough to feel like you’ve really eaten something, but not enough that you feel like you’ve overcommitted. It would look lovely in martini or other cocktail glasses, I also liked how they looked in the base of the capacious stemless wine glasses that you can see in some of the photos here. And you could always test how it will look by filling your glasses with the same amount of water first, eg if you have seven glasses then pour in 100ml water.

Notes:

  • I haven’t tested it either way so I couldn’t say for sure but if you can’t get cashew butter, I imagine you could replace it with smooth almond butter; you could possibly leave it out altogether, bearing in mind the effect this will have on the finished texture and richness. I periodically order cashew butter from Revive, it’s the best I’ve ever tasted, it keeps for ages, and they regularly put it on special.
  • If your cashew butter is unsalted, add a pinch of salt when you’re whisking the chocolate and coconut cream together; you could also sprinkle over some sea salt flakes to serve.
  • If you’re serving this to fusspots who don’t like cardamom and thyme, subtle though they are here, leave them out and add a couple teaspoons of vanilla extract when whisking everything together at the end.

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music lately:

Kid by Steve Lawrence (aka Mr Eydie Gormé) from the 1968 musical Golden Rainbow. Apropos of nothing I’ve decided to work my way through every Broadway flop mentioned in the song Monkeys and Playbills from [title of show]; Golden Rainbow is second on the list and there’s something charming about this song, about that cavernous late-60s sound, and about Lawrence’s throaty, Scott Walker-esque voice.

It’s Like That, by Run-DMC and Jason Nevins. Simply cannot overstate the effect that this music video had on me in 1997! I require an oral history of it right now!

Seagull by Ride, the sort of song that makes you feel like you could run vertically up a gust of wind onto the roof of a tall building, perhaps following it up by leaping from rooftop to rooftop as you run from one end of the city to the other without any danger of falling.

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours on a monthly basis. There’s no better time than right now – your support helps me to make all these blog posts!

Salt and Vinegar Beans

2 Comments

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Often my indecision isn’t based on actual lack of ability to make a decision, it’s just that I still, to ambivalently quote Bono, haven’t found what I’m looking for. I spent forty minutes today sniffing scented candles in the hopes of being able to commit to one; it didn’t take so long because I couldn’t decide, it took so long because none of them were quite explicitly pleasing enough to my nose for me to take that fragrant leap. (I eventually alit upon one with a fairly uncool name — Rendezvous — but a richly elegant bouquet of amber and orchid, and decided, decisively, that I could compromise on the name for the smell which is, after all, the point of it all.)

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This is why I keep running lists everywhere — on my notes app, on various documents strewn across my laptop’s memory, in my journal, on any piece of paper — of recipe ideas that occur to me at any given moment. The question of what to cook next is of course shaped by numerous factors, ninety percent of them financial, but just having an idea to push you in a direction does mean a good chunk of the legwork is already done. In this case, I’d written down the words “salt and vinegar beans” and put it in bold so that future-me would be unable to miss it. A half-bag of beans in the cupboard and a free day for bean-simmering appeared, and I thought I’d give it a go. A few years back I made a Salt and Vinegar Potato Gratin with happy results and so it was no great surprise that the flavour could be successfully transferred to another medium, in this case, lipstick-soft borlotti beans.

@hungryandfrozen

salt and vinegar beans hell yeah full recipe at hungryandfrozen dot com #vegan #recipe #beantok #saltandvinegar

♬ Help Me – Judy Kuhn

Even those who consider themselves truly indecisive surely have an opinion on salt and vinegar, a flavour that people seem to instantly know where they stand on. If it’s not the packet of chips you reach for first then this recipe is unlikely to convince you or change your mind, nor would I expect it to (you might, however, consider my chilli oil beans recipe instead.) For those of us who like our snacks to bite us back, this is heavenly — sure, I wasn’t surprised that it worked, but I was astonished at just how excellent it was, with the creamy and tender beans slicked in their caustic coating, the sourness somehow at odds with and yet so perfect with the beans’ texture at the same time. The flounce of rocket leaves offers pepperiness without distraction, and livens things up visually; I do think they’re necessary but if you can’t get hold of any, just use some actual pepper instead, the salt and vinegar is the real reason we’re here.

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Although I like the brisk antiseptic rasp of white vinegar I went for red wine vinegar this time, it has an easy-going elegance but still enough of a kick to send tingles up the side of your face with every mouthful. White wine vinegar would also work, balsamic would be too balsamic-y, I think, but black vinegar could just well be wonderful. Whatever you end up using, I recommend serving the beans with bottles of vinegar and olive oil and the salt within reach so that you can simply pour more of each into your bowl while you eat, as your tastebuds decree.

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Salt and Vinegar Beans

This is — unsurprisingly — one for the salt-and-vinegar-heads, and very good too, with the creamy, slow-simmered beans coated in a shimmering film of red wine vinegar, olive oil, and plenty of salt. The quantities of the aforementioned ingredients are purposefully vague, as only you can know how much you want. Oh, and you’ll need to start this a day ahead to give yourself time to soak the beans. Recipe by myself.

  • 1 cup dried borlotti beans
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 – 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
  • 2 – 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • a hearty pinch of good salt
  • a handful of rocket leaves (about a third of one of those supermarket packets, but use as much as you want)

1: Place the borlotti beans in a good-sized bowl, cover generously with water, and leave to sit for at least six hours, or better still, overnight. You may need to top up the water if they absorb it too greedily.

2: The next day, drain and rinse the beans and place them in a saucepan, again covering them generously with water. Add the bay leaf, bring the water to the boil, and then once it does, cover the pan with a lid and lower the heat right down. Let the beans simmer for about an hour, although be prepared to simmer them for twice as long, fishing one out now and then to test for doneness. Once they’re completely tender, drain the beans and discard the bay leaf.

3: Stir one to two tablespoons of red wine vinegar, two to three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, and a hearty pinch of salt together in a large bowl. As mentioned above, the quantities are vague because it all depends on your tastes, but if you’re unsure, start off with the smaller quantity and add more if you need it. Tip the drained beans, still warm, into the vinegar mixture, and gently stir it together. Taste to see if it wants more of anything, then stir in the rocket leaves, and serve immediately.

Serves two generously, or four as part of a meal with other bits and pieces. If you want to make this ahead of time, either add the rocket at the last minute or make your peace with wilted rocket. It tastes great either way, so no harm done. And if you are making it ahead of time and storing it in the fridge, let the beans come to room temperature before serving. I happily ate these beans just as they were, but to make it a full meal, some bread alongside wouldn’t go amiss, and maybe something vegetal but not vinegary: sliced tomatoes, roasted broccoli, et cetera.

Note:
I haven’t tried this with ready-cooked tinned beans, but can’t think of any earthly reason why it wouldn’t work. I’d use two tins of borlotti beans, drained, rinsed, and maybe warmed through in a little vegetable stock. Equally, I’m confident you could use a different dried bean to the borlotti, I’m just partial to their soft pink colour, especially against the green of the rocket.

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music lately:

I Took Your Name by R.E.M. I truly cannot overstate the power the tremolo has over me!

O-o-h Child by the Five Stairsteps. So comforting it’s almost hypnotic.

Help Me by Judy Kuhn, a cover of the Joni Mitchell song, which you probably could’ve guessed without knowing just by the questioning, peaks-and-troughs path of the vocals. There’s little I love more than a Broadway solo album — the production done on most of them could almost be a genre in itself — and Kuhn’s crystal-clear voice and level-headed vibrato is perfect for interpreting this song.

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours on a monthly basis. There’s no better time than right now – your support helps me to make all these blog posts!

Vegetables à la Grecque

1 Comment

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I have all the time in the world for vegetables, but nothing makes my mood plummet quicker than a vegetable that has been boiled or steamed without any other mitigating spices, fats, seasonings or textural elements added to it. As a vegan — in fact, as a food writer — I should be able to face vegetables in such an untampered, intact state, and if politeness is required of a situation of course I will quietly capitulate, but internally it’ll be wall-to-wall culinary sorrow at the limpness of texture and blandness of vibe.

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Peevishly, I still crave variety, and there’s only so many times I can eat fried or roasted vegetables in quick succession. So, when I find a new-to-me method that allows me to hoon a vast quantity of vegetables in a way that’s pleasing to both my palate and boundaries, I’m obviously going to try it. It was in two separate books — Beard on Food by James Beard and Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison — that I found this preparation for Vegetables à la Grecque, and while there is undeniably some boiling, it involves generous amounts of vermouth, olive oil, and spices, forming a rich yet graceful broth that you then reduce down to an intensely-flavoured liquor, before pouring it back over the vegetables, and then finally serving it chilled.

@hungryandfrozen

vegetables à la grecque #vegan #cooking #foodblog #recipes #fyp

♬ Maps – Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I chose fennel and green beans, and the result was so elegant: the tender, aniseed petals of fennel and the sweetness of the beans swimming in all that lush, lemony, herbal liquid, each doing their level best to infuse the other with flavour. Because this is made in advance and placidly sits in the fridge until required, it’s a useful recipe to have in your repertoire; it could stand up to a hearty stew or other slow-cooked thing as a vegetable side, but would fit happily on a table of smaller sharing plates, especially if there’s lots of bread for mopping up, and I can also see it being a friendly salad alternative in high summer when you can only face foods that have known the chill of refrigeration. I’d like to try it with cauliflower, in which case I might consider throwing in a handful of sultanas and even — should budget allow — a pinch of saffron. (Although let’s face it, with the cost of living these days the cauliflower is likely to be more expensive than the saffron.) My aversion to plain boiled vegetables may never be truly rehabilitated, but this recipe for all seasons is definite — and delicious — progress.

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Vegetables à la Grecque

A simple but elegant way to prepare vegetables, simmered and then chilled in a lush vermouth-y broth. If you need to feed more people, just add more vegetables and a bit more of everything else. Adapted from recipes by James Beard (Beard on Food) and Deborah Madison (Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone.)

  • 2-3 medium-sized fennel bulbs
  • 300g green beans
  • 1/3 cup dry vermouth or dry white wine
  • 1 lemon
  • 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
  • 1 teaspoon coriander seeds
  • 1 bay leaf
  • a good pinch of salt
  • freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 and 1/2 cups water
  • fresh thyme, parsley, or other herbs of your choice to serve 

1: Trim the bases from the fennel bulbs and chop each bulb into quarters or sixths, depending on how big they are. Trim the ends off the beans.

2: In a saucepan big enough to fit the vegetables in (bearing in mind they will collapse down a bit as they cook) combine the 1/3 cup vermouth, the juice of the lemon and a long strip of its peel, the three tablespoons of olive oil, the teaspoon each of fennel and coriander seeds, the bay leaf, the pinch of salt and a few twists of pepper (or, if you like, you can throw in a couple of whole peppercorns.) If you have the necessary pestle and mortar you can bash about the seeds a bit first to release their fragrance, but it’ll be absolutely fine if you don’t. Pour in the 1 and 1/2 cups of water — you may not need all of it depending on the size of your pan — and bring everything to the boil.

3: Once the broth is at the boil, lower the vegetables into the pan and turn the heat down to a simmer, partially covering the pan with a lid. Simmer for about ten minutes, or until the vegetables are tender but still with a good bite to them. Depending on your vegetables you may want to stagger the timing a little — when I make this again I’ll probably add the beans a few minutes after the fennel so they keep their colour better.

4: Once the vegetables are tender but bite-y, remove them to a serving dish using tongs or some other similarly useful implement, then turn up the heat on the saucepan and let the broth cook away until it has reduced down by about half. Don’t get too hung up on the precision of this, but I find sticking the end of a wooden spoon into the pan at various intervals to see what the tide is like helps to keep track of the reduction. Once it’s reduced down sufficiently, pour the entire contents of the pan over the waiting vegetables in their serving dish, cover, and refrigerate until cooled. Chop up some fresh herbs — thyme, parsley, basil would be perfect — and scatter over before serving.

Serves 2 as a side, although I happily ate all of this by myself with some bread to dip into the liquor, and it could stretch to another person, maybe even two more, if you had plenty of other food on the table.

Note:

  • If you don’t like fennel, or beans, or can’t get hold of them, you could try using any other firm vegetable: James Beard recommends eggplant and artichoke, and Deborah Madison suggests cauliflower, carrots, mushrooms and turnips. While I haven’t made it with these myself, I am confident they would all be delicious.
  • If you have a few cloves of garlic on hand and like to eat it then definitely add them, finely sliced, to the simmering broth — the only reason I left it out was because I forgot it, but it’s good to know it tastes great without should I find myself in this situation again.

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music lately:

Sparks by Faith and the Muse. Weighs a ton and yet floats right through you.

No, No, No by Dawn Penn. A classic. A classic!

Roly Poly by Doris Day and Perry Blackwell from the film Pillow Talk. I wish there were more recordings of Blackwell available, her presence and voice are great, but at least we get this very fun moment in this very fun film.

PS: If you like my writing and wish to support me directly, there’s no better way than by stepping behind the claret velvet VIP curtain of my Patreon. Recipes, reviews, poetry, updates, secrets, stories, all yours on a monthly basis. There’s no better time than right now – your support helps me to make all these blog posts!