Category: Side Dishes and Snacks

Four-Bean Soup with Kewpie Aioli

Leave a comment
IMG_7277

It’s the verboten, not-as-intended foods that I’ve always been drawn to — cake batter, cookie dough, pilfered leftovers straight from the fridge, cold canned spaghetti, uncooked 2-minute noodles. To this list, we can add today’s Four-Bean Soup with Kewpie Aioli in its ice-cold, waiting-for-tonight state. Despite the unappetising prospects of congealed barley, I could not stop swiping spoonfuls of it. Luckily for those of you who do not share my deranged tastes, it’s also excellent in the more expected temperature of piping hot — but it does benefit significantly from cooling down before being reheated. In that time the barley hungrily absorbs the murky broth while the beans mind their own business, and the flavour develops from 480p to 1080p in that mysterious way food can do.

When I was a kid every winter would see the stove bearing a bubbling pot of what we called Dog Bone Soup, where some cheap animal limb and a packet of King’s soup mix danced over a low heat, and I marvelled at how much better the soup tasted the next day despite nothing having been added to it — somehow all by themselves the cartilaginous meat, the lentils fuzzed almost into nothing, and the swollen barley all gained so much flavour just by sitting around. You wouldn’t think to look at pearl barley — a greyish-brown grain — that it could have so much power, and yet! Something in its tenderness and rice-fragrant plainness is very comforting and crucial to the success of this dish. I’ve taken the shortcut route with a can of mixed beans, and while there’s nothing stopping you from soaking and simmering each individual variety of dried bean here, the barley does the heavy lifting for making this soup taste like it was cooked for hours with loving, studied intention.

If you don’t have time to let it cool, this soup is still delicious — creamy bumps of beans amidst the barley like the colourwork in a Fair Isle cardigan, the familiar soffrito background of onion, carrot, and celery, and fat cloves of garlic simmered into submission in the soup before being smashed into Kewpie mayo and dolloped continentally into the soup. Although there is a culinary precedent for souping up your soup with aioli, if the idea doesn’t sit right with you it can always be spread over bread for dipping. The sweet lushness of Kewpie and the mellowly simmered garlic, however, add an extra spike of flavour and silky richness as it seeps into the broth. This is simple, soothing food, but not without panache.

I never thought of myself as a soup person but have blogged about it frequently this year — there’s probably some psychological or sociopolitical reason swirling around this decision-making, in the manner of Meryl Streep’s Cerulean Monologue. Whatever it is, soup is good, and should you be of this same mindset there’s also my Tomato and Bread Soup with Fried Carrot Pesto, the Chilled Cannellini Bean Soup with Basil Spinach Oil, and this Roasted Garlic Lentil Soup to consider.


Four-Bean Soup with Kewpie Aioli

A low-stress soup studded with barley and beans, ideal for cold rainy days — it’s all the better if you can let it sit for a while before reheating but if you need it now, it’ll still taste great. Simmering the garlic cloves in the soup before mashing them means their flavour will be softened and any harsh bite removed, without having to roast them. Recipe by myself.

  • 1 carrot
  • 1 onion
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon dried celery
  • 1/2 cup pearl barley
  • 1L (4 cups) water, plus more for topping up
  • 2 chicken stock cubes
  • 5 cloves of garlic, peel on
  • 1 x 400g tin four-bean mix
  • 1/4 cup Kewpie mayonnaise
  • leaves from 2-3 sprigs of thyme
  • salt, to taste

1: Very finely chop the onion and carrot, or — as I did — chop them into a few large pieces then throw them in a blender or food processor and blitz them into mush. An extra dish to wash is a happy trade-off here in my opinion. Warm the two tablespoons of olive oil in a large saucepan and then tip in the onion and carrot, along with the teaspoon of dried celery. Stir for about a minute over a medium heat.

2: Add the half cup of pearl barley to the pan, then add 750ml (three cups) of the water. Crumble in the two stock cubes, then drop in the five cloves of garlic, still with their peels on. Bring this mixture to the boil, stirring occasionally, then lower it to a simmer and let it bubble away gently until the pearl barley is tender, stirring now and then. This should take between twenty minutes to half an hour.

3: Once the barley is tender, fish out the garlic cloves and set them aside for a minute. Drain the liquid from the tin of beans, and tip them into the saucepan along with the remaining 250ml/cup of water. Let it simmer for another five or so minutes until the beans are warmed through, and taste for seasoning — I added a hearty shake of salt here, and then more after reheating and topping up with water. Meanwhile, squeeze the cloves of garlic from their casings into a small bowl and mash with a fork, then mix in the 1/4 cup of kewpie mayo. You can add a tablespoon of olive oil to thin it down a little if you like.

The soup is at its best when it’s had time to cool down and sit for a few hours, before being heated up again (at which point you will likely need to add another 250ml water). Divide the soup between your bowls with a dollop of the Kewpie aioli and a scattering of the thyme leaves on top.

Serves two with seconds, or three without.

Notes:

  • You can replace the teaspoon of dried celery with a whole stick of celery (throw it in the blender or food processor with the onion and carrot) or, failing that, a dash of celery salt, bearing in mind the effect on the seasoning
  • If I’d found a five-bean mix then that’s what this soup would’ve been so go right ahead if that’s what is on your shelf
  • If you have an extra mouth to feed, just throw in a second can of beans instead of doubling the entire soup, but you may need more aioli
  • I love the specific Kewpie flavour, but you could replace it with regular mayo or aioli, or use sour cream instead, or very thick yoghurt would work too

music lately:

No. 1 Fan by Majesty Crush, the kind of swirlingly immersive song that consumes you right back.

El President by Drugstore featuring Thom Yorke, speaking of haunting songs with the lyric “kill the president”, those prowling strings are so sinister they could be accompanying a pneumatically powered prop shark named Bruce as he moves into frame.

Oh, Lady Be Good by Cleo Laine. I recently watched the film Lady Be Good (such is my love for Eleanor Powell that I will follow her into the flimsiest of storylines) and the titular Gershwin tune has been stuck in my head ever since; in Ms Laine’s spectacularly buttery contralto it sounds even better.

Eple by Röyksopp, the actual captured sound of shivers going up your spine.

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!

Pickled Fried Cauliflower and Marinated Tofu Salad with Creamy Herb Dressing

1 Comment

IMG_6309

What’s in a recipe title? Whether or not it’s obvious (or indeed, warranted) I cogitate over the titles of my recipes with all the eleventh-hour fervency of Tom Wambsgans and Cousin Greg resolving the “We Hear For You” slogan in Succession, analysing my titles in terms of vibe, aesthetic, syntax, proximity, logical and lexical semantics, global political temperature, whether or not it’s stupider than something Tom and Greg would come up with, and uh, actual accuracy. In the case of today’s Pickled Fried Cauliflower and Marinated Tofu Salad with Creamy Herb Dressing the adjectives and nouns were weaving in and out and around like a high-spirited Jane Austen heroine at a Regency ball. I finally settled on the current iteration but need to include the caveat that nothing here is literally long-term preserved, there’s just pickle brine involved and so the cauliflower is experiencing being pickled in the same way that a TV character might use their surname as a verb and proclaim “you just got [surname]-ed” at another unsuspecting character. The tofu is definitely marinated, though! No vagaries there.

P1200750

There are three distinct components to this salad: scorched, nutty cauliflower soused in lemon juice with sweet, smoky gochugaru and the rich, fancy taste of toasted fennel seeds; soft chunks of tofu humming with salt and vinegar; and a celadon-hued dressing tinted with the leaves furled around the cauliflower, all held together with flouncy rocket leaves. While it’s not exactly the work of mere moments, this salad in both looks and tastes amply reflects the effort.

P1200744

With all that vinegar and lemon and marinating it might seem like this salad has set its pickling sights on the inside of your mouth as you eat it, however, it comes together in a bracing but balanced way: the opaque mellowness of the tofu and the tender cauliflower can ably handle that level of tang, and the tangle of leaves diffuses it further. I drew a little inspiration from Sicilian Cauliflower and the concept of brining tofu to make a kind of vegan feta; however in this case I’m happy for it to simply be marinated tofu — I’m bringing its delicious taste and texture to this salad on purpose as opposed to it being a substitution. That being said, if you wanted to crumble some feta into this I’m sure it would be a fine addition, but I’d use it alongside, not instead of, the tofu.

IMG_6312

Somewhat infuriatingly for a person like me who doesn’t like to plan ahead, the tofu does taste better the longer you leave it in the marinade — on the other hand, if you’re organised you can keep the main components of this salad separately in the fridge and then breezily merge them together at your leisure; the tofu in one container, the cauliflower in another (it will get a little floppy as it sits in its vinegars and spices but I don’t see this as a problem) and the dressing in a third; the rocket should be added right as you’re about to serve. I’m not talking weeks of forethought here, the morning of the dinner you’re planning to eat this salad at would be perfect. With bread for swiping through the dressing and a dessert to happily anticipate, this would be a charmingly light but bolstering dinner for two; it will of course serve more people if you have other dishes on the table. And if you want to make it a salad tasting flight, or if you live in a country where rocket is called arugula and therefore have different ingredients in season, you might also consider my Lentil, Radish, Avocado and Fried Potato Salad; my Tomatoes and Fried Mint; or Nigella’s spectacular Pea, Mint, and Avocado Salad.

P1200745

Pickled Fried Cauliflower and Marinated Tofu Salad with Creamy Herb Dressing

A fancy but robust meal of a salad, full of punchy flavour. Prepare the tofu at least a few hours in advance if you can, but it’s still fine if it’s just sitting around while you make the rest of the salad. Recipe by myself.

Marinated Tofu:

  • 300g firm tofu, drained and patted dry with a paper towel
  • 1/4 cup white vinegar
  • 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon fresh thyme or oregano leaves
  • 1 fat garlic clove, peeled and chopped roughly
  • 1/2 – 1 teaspoon table salt, or to taste

Cauliflower + Salad:

  • 1/2 a large cauliflower
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
  • 1 teaspoon gochugaru, or chilli flakes of your choice
  • 2 tablespoons pickle brine, from a jar of pickles
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • salt, to taste
  • 3 tablespoons pumpkin seeds
  • 100g rocket leaves

Creamy Herb Dressing:

  • 20g tofu (roughly) from the block for marinating
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 3 tablespoons water
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon honey
  • 1 tablespoon fresh thyme or oregano leaves
  • a few of the cauliflower leaves (optional, if they came attached)
  • salt and pepper, to taste

1: First, get the tofu a-marinating by slicing the 300g block of tofu into cubes, reserving about 20g (about 4 cubes of tofu) for the dressing. In an airtight container that is big enough to fit the tofu in, stir together the 1/4 cup of white vinegar, the two tablespoons of lemon juice, the tablespoon each of olive oil and fresh herbs, the sliced garlic clove, and the half teaspoon (or more, to taste) of table salt. Tip in the cubes of tofu, place the lid on the container, give it a gentle shake, and set aside while you complete the rest of the salad. If you’re making this ahead of time, refrigerate the container until needed.

2: Next, the cauliflower — slice your half-cauliflower into small florets, and fry them in the two tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan, letting the florets sit undisturbed for a minute or two to let them brown before turning them. I like to put the lid on the container for a couple of minutes so that they steam as well as frying, but whatever works for you. Once the cauliflower is sufficiently browned and scorched in places, remove the pieces to a large mixing bowl. Turn the heat off the pan, and tip in the fennel seeds, letting them sit for about 30 seconds in the residual heat until fragrant, and then tip the seeds over the cauliflower in the bowl. Repeat with the three tablespoons of pumpkin seeds, clattering them into the still-hot pan and leaving them to toast until fragrant. If your stovetop doesn’t hold its heat forever like mine, you may need to turn up the heat again. Set the pumpkin seeds aside for garnishing later.

3: Add the teaspoon of gochugaru (or chilli flakes) to the bowl of cauliflower, along with the two tablespoons of pickle brine, the tablespoon of lemon juice, and salt to taste. You can cover this bowl and let the cauliflower sit for a couple hours if that’s more convenient than eating it right away.

4: Finally, make the creamy herb dressing and assemble the salad. Place the reserved 20g/few cubes of tofu into a blender along with the two tablespoons of olive oil, three tablespoons of water, the teaspoon each of lemon juice, garlic powder, and honey, the tablespoon of thyme or oregano leaves, the cauliflower leaves (if using) and plenty of salt and pepper. Blitz until you have a smooth, green-tinged puree.

5: Toss the 100g of rocket leaves through the cauliflower. Drain the marinated tofu and gently toss through the salad. Drizzle over a little of the herb dressing, and leave the rest on the table with a spoon for people to add their own. Scatter over the toasted pumpkin seeds, and serve.

Makes two hearty servings. This will serve 3-4 as a side, or more as part of a busy buffet table.

Notes:

  • You can use spinach or mixed leaves instead of the rocket, but the peppery nature of the rocket is preferable here. If you’re not using rocket you could consider adding a handful of watercress to your leaves.
  • Use another garlic clove in the dressing if that’s easier — sometimes raw garlic can be a bit acrid, hence why I used garlic powder instead.
  • If your lemon juice is coming from actual fruit instead of a bottle, you could definitely add the finely grated zest to this, perhaps with the cauliflower.
  • If your cauliflower comes with its leaves already trimmed, you could add a handful of parsley or basil to the blender for the salad dressing instead, bearing in mind that the basil will add a much stronger (but delightful!) flavour.

P1200749

music lately:

As by Stevie Wonder, I could no sooner name my favourite Stevie Wonder song than I could identify which particular air particles I enjoy breathing the most. Nonetheless, this is my favourite Stevie Wonder song! The way that chorus shuffles up on you, the way the verses lap in and out like waves, the way it’s really hard to google if you forget what it’s called!

Ridin’ Low by L.A.D. I always assumed, when I’d hear this on the radio back in the day, that the chorus must have been sampled from some 1960s band, as the interpolation of Temptations guitars and Five Satins shoo-be-do-ing would suggest, but after extensive research, it seems that the composers, who I cannot find any credits for, just created one of the most beautiful choruses from scratch for this song and then disappeared into thin air? I need to know more!

Stop by Jane’s Addiction, the kind of guitar riffs that make you feel like you’re falling off a bicycle onto gravel; Perry Farrell’s stainless steel voice is a national treasure.

Brotherhood of Man, from the film adaptation of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Robert Morse’s loose-shouldered no-personal-space fidgety physicality! It has to be said!

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!

Tomato and Bread Soup with Fried Carrot Pesto

1 Comment

IMG_6253

One good thing I’ll say about the state of the world right now is that both Yellowjackets and Succession are back with new seasons and the specific effect these shows have on my serotonin levels is indubitably making up for me not receiving serotonin from any other sources. Both are tales of survival and its often gruesome ramifications except the former involves teen girls facing cannibalism in the Canadian wilderness and the latter concerns New York billionaires attending board meetings; both shows are weighing so overwhelmingly on my brain that while in the supermarket shopping for soup ingredients — and being inexplicably unable to locate a single mossy leaf of basil and so pivoting on the spot to flat-leaf parsley — I couldn’t help but congratulate myself for how well I would cope in both the wilderness and in the thrust and parry of the obtuse world of business with such a nimble demonstration of initiative and quick thinking.

IMG_6256

(When it comes to such hypotheticals I generally don’t engage in the what-ifs, subscribing to the Kim Cattrall mantra of not wanting to be in a situation even for an hour, but while looking at a flimsy, paper-straw thin supermarket leek and pondering whether or not $6 is reasonable for its purchase, wondering if I will ever behold a single affordable vegetable again in my lifetime or if that will be relegated to the sphere of nostalgia like telethons and the TV test pattern on Sunday mornings, I mean, who needs to imagine threatening fictitious situations?)

P1200737

I don’t fool myself that I’m even slightly equipped with the necessary girl-scout tendencies that might befit the survivors of Yellowjackets, but I am blessed with an ability to improvise or reverse-engineer a meal into existence based on whatever half-filled bags and scraps are in my kitchen; in the case of this tomato and bread soup, aka Pappa al Pomodoro, it was a can of tomatoes in the pantry and some ciabatta buns in the freezer and the notion that not too much would have to be done to turn them into a soup that’s not only serviceable but based on a culinary precedent (and delicious.)

IMG_6259

This soup is an exercise in trusting the process: for the twenty minutes of simmering it appears to be thin and watery and entirely unpromising, but then you drop in the torn-up ciabatta which thirstily reduces and thickens the broth, and the honey which dovetails with the sweetness of the tomatoes, and suddenly — as if you turned up the sharpness and definition on a photo — it becomes a hearty, almost stew-like potage with a gentle depth of flavour from the soft allium presence of the leeks.

Because I am typically incapable of eating soup without some kind of mollifying add-on, I’ve made a pesto (although the name is, well, nominal, as it really bears no resemblance to that Genovese delicacy) out of fried carrots, nutty and rich, blended up with almonds and the aforementioned flat-leaf parsley that I heroically substituted for the basil I couldn’t find. I’ve long been a proponent of frying your carrots (eg, these noodles and this salad) and the salty, caramelised vegetal qualities of the pesto add a dash of intrigue and panache to the otherwise humble soup, though you could add a dollop of actual pesto, or make a stack of cheese toasted sandwiches for dipping into the soup’s red depths. It’s the perfect food for this turn into autumn we at last find ourselves in, but if it’s hotter weather where you are, you might consider this Chilled Cannellini Bean Soup with Basil Spinach Oil instead; if this tomato soup is a soft blanket and a radiator heater, the bean soup is a cold damp cloth to the forehead.

P1200739

Tomato and Bread Soup with Fried Carrot Pesto

A simple and hearty Tuscan-ish soup, thickened with torn ciabatta and topped with blitzed-up fried carrots, almonds, and parsley. The soup recipe is adapted just a little from the Pappa al Pomodoro in Italian Comfort Food by the Scotto family, the pesto is my own recipe.

Fried Carrot Pesto:

  • 250g (about 2 medium) carrots
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil, plus 2-3 extra tablespoons for blending
  • 1/3 cup slivered almonds
  • 15g Italian flat-leaf parsley
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice
  • a hearty pinch of salt

Tomato and Bread Soup:

  • 1 medium-sized leek, stem only
  • 1 tablespoon tomato paste
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes
  • 800ml water
  • 2 stock cubes of your choice
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 80g (about 1 large or 2 small buns) ciabatta

1: Slice your carrot into batons and heat the first two tablespoons of olive oil in a deep frying pan. Fry the carrot sticks in the hot oil, letting them sit for a minute or two before turning. Once golden brown, remove the carrot sticks to the side to cool down and proceed with the soup.

2: Slice the stem of the leek into half moons and saute it over a low heat in the remaining oil in the same pan that you cooked the leeks in. Once the leeks have softened — which should only take about a minute — add the tablespoon of tomato paste and the two crushed garlic cloves and stir for another minute. Tip in the tin of tomatoes, and then fill up the empty tin twice with water from the tap to achieve your 800ml (or thereabouts) of water, and add this to the pan along with the two stock cubes, crumbled in. Bring this mixture to the boil then allow it to simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 20 minutes, during which time it should reduce a little.

3: After the simmering is up, remove the pan from the heat. Tear the ciabatta into smallish chunks and add it to the soup along with the two tablespoons of honey, give it a stir, and let it sit for ten minutes while you get on with the pesto, by whizzing up the somewhat-cooled fried carrots, the 1/3 cup of slivered almonds, the 15g flat-leaf parsley, the teaspoon of lemon juice, the two to three tablespoons olive oil and the pinch of salt to form a chunky paste. Taste for seasoning (you can also add more olive oil or a splash of water to thin it out if you want.)

4: Bring the heat up again on the soup if it needs it, otherwise divide the soup between two bowls and spoon over the pesto.

Makes two hearty servings, or 3-4 dainty servings.

Notes:

  • If you don’t eat honey, replace it with about a tablespoon and a half of sugar or brown sugar; you can also replace the almonds with cashews or hazelnuts, honestly, I chose the almonds because they were on special.
  • You can absolutely replace the parsley with basil, and I’d encourage you to do so, as it makes sense culinarily, I simply couldn’t find any at the supermarket.
  • The pesto is best made in a food processor, if you only have a blender then you may need to add even more olive oil and a few tablespoons of water to get it moving and adjust the seasoning accordingly.

IMG_6254

music lately:

Never Leave Me Alone by Nate Dogg, the hook is of course unreal, but its beauty would be nothing without Nate Dogg’s immediately recognisable throaty vocals, where he sounds like he’s somehow harmonising with himself at two slightly different low-vibrating pitches. A perfect song.

Andelusia by Savage Republic, I love a no-lyrics number, and this is just the sort of vigorously droning music that makes you want to run down the side of a highway in the rain.

People from the Broadway musical Funny Girl, as performed in 1992 by Laurie Beechman; I have to genuinely limit my listening to her because she makes me so emotional (like, no one needs to be crying while watching her in the incoherent Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat medley at the 1982 Tony Awards and yet! Here we find ourselves) so as you can imagine, when her crisp belt and sensitive interpretation skills are applied to this already stunning song, all bets are off.

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

1 Comment

IMG_4446

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!

IMG_4438

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.

IMG_4451

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.

IMG_4457

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.

IMG_4447


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!

Chickpeas Diabolique

1 Comment

IMG_2900

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.

P1200696

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.

IMG_2895

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.

IMG_2906

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.

IMG_2910

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!

Clove-fried Onion and Marinated Mushroom Sandwich

2 Comments

IMG_1441

In this era of Covid and cancelled plans a little absence is hardly a surprise but nonetheless I’m sorry it’s been a while since I’ve posted! I have spent most of September knocked on my ear with a bad cold — not Covid, at least according to the four rat tests I did — but not at all pleasant. Aside from sneezing with metronome regularity, the most noticeable feature of this cold was that it rendered me both ravenously hungry and completely stupid. A unique and infuriating challenge: desperate for lavish meals, a backlog of writing work calling me, and barely able to concentrate on even the most lowest-common-denominator television. Somewhere around day nine, after a brief and congested visit home to see my parents (and to deplete their resources of tissue and eucalyptus oil); I made this sandwich. It pleased me greatly, I thought it was delicious, but I was still insensible with cold; fortunately for you it draws inspiration from two separate reputable sources so the odds are in your favour that it actually is quite good.

P1200608

It’s not very attractive, let’s get that out of the way first: pale bread, pale creamy onions, pale mushrooms, and of course I forgot to buy parsley for garnish, though I’m not sure just how much pale expanse it could’ve masked, all things considered. And yes, we eat with our eyes first, but we also literally eat with our mouths, so that’s the sector we should be most concerned with appeasing. I read about a sandwich filled with clove-scented fried onions in Niki Segnit’s rollickingly entertaining book The Flavour Thesaurus, and its simplicity and warmth appealed; to further bulk out the sandwich I remembered the marinated mushrooms from Nigella’s pasta recipe that I blogged about a few weeks back — yes, this is outfit repeating, but the cold really did make me dopey as hell and this was all I could think of. (To be clear, repeating recipes is obviously fantastic in real life, just not so practical in a food blogging content way.) The sensation of soft onions fresh from the pan against the cool, vinegar-tanged mushrooms is a contrast sensation that jolts you back to life in the same way that ejecting and blowing on a piece of uncooperative technology sometimes does the trick.

@hungryandfrozen

clove-fried onion and marinated mushroom sandwich, recipe on my blog at the link above 🥖 #vegan #sandwich #mushrooms #recipe #foodblogger #fyp

♬ Goodbye Horses – Q Lazzarus

The cloves offer comforting yet bracingly strident warmth and sophistication — I could only find whole cloves, which made for a more subtle flavour profile, next time I absolutely want the unequivocal hit of ground. Their presence contributed to the name of this recipe (you’re telling me a clove fried this onion? et cetera) but there’s plenty else going on: punchy, autumnal rosemary, the meekly savoury onions, the sophisticated rasp of red wine vinegar. There’s nothing stopping you adding more elements to this sandwich; fewer would be fine too — I’d happily eat a bun filled to dripping with the onions alone. And who knows, the cloves, looking like tiny rusty nails dropped into the frying pan, may have helped hasten the cold’s departure with all their purported antioxidants and other vague health-giving properties.

P1200609

Clove-fried Onion and Marinated Mushroom Sandwich

Ugly but delicious, and surprisingly luxurious for its humble ingredients. Recipe inspired by an entry in The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit.

  • 4 button mushrooms
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil, plus 2 tablespoons extra for frying
  • 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon maple syrup
  • 1 sprig rosemary
  • salt and pepper, to taste
  • 1 large onion
  • 3 whole cloves, or a scant 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 2 tablespoons dairy-free cream of your choice (optional)
  • 1 fresh baguette

1: First get the mushrooms soaking up their marinade. Slice the button mushrooms (not too thinly, but not too thick either) and toss in a bowl with two tablespoons of the olive oil, the tablespoon of red wine vinegar, the teaspoon of maple syrup, the leaves from the sprig of rosemary, and salt and pepper to taste. Set aside while you get on with the onion.

2: Finely slice the onion and gently fry in the remaining two tablespoons of olive oil with a sprinkling of salt and the cloves. If you’re using ground cloves just stir them in, and if you’ve got whole ones, squash them a bit under a wooden spoon or bash them with a heavy knife to help release more of their fragrance, and make sure to push down on them as you stir the onions. Now, it’s up to you whether you want these onions brown and crisp or soft and caramelised, the only difference is heat and time. I wanted them tender and golden, so I kept the heat low and stirred them for about ten to fifteen minutes. Once you’ve got them where you want them, stir in the cream (if using) and remove from the heat.

3: Split your baguette in half, and spread a thick layer of the creamy fried onions over one side. Top with a layer of marinated mushrooms, clamp on the other half of the baguette, and eat, messily.

Makes one substantial sandwich.

IMG_1448

music lately:

Goodbye Horses by Q Lazzarus. Toasty, hypnotic, otherworldly, makes me feel like I’m floating away but also like I’m extremely in the present moment.

This Bitter Earth/On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter and Dinah Washington. These two songs are exquisite on their own, but mashed together? I honestly had a little Stendhal Syndrome moment when I first heard it as a bonus track on Richter’s gorgeous album The Blue Notebooks; it was recommended to me and now I’m recommending it to you.

The Whole World by OutKast ft Killer Mike, an unbelievably satisfying track, from Andre 3000’s Cole Porter-esque prelude to Killer Mike’s whip-snappishly dynamic verse and Big Boi’s words skittering around the beat like marbles in a Tupperware container.

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 tha

Salt and Vinegar Beans

2 Comments

P1200550

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.)

IMG_0523 copy

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.

P1200540

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.

P1200545

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.

P1200547

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

P1200527

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.

P1200532

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.

P1200523

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.

P1200524

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!

Catalan Chickpeas and Spinach [vegan]

1 Comment

P1200456

I have come to realise that time — as a concept, as a thing that happens to me and as a heavyweight opponent with whom I must fruitlessly wrestle — is simply none of my business. There is no point trying to understand how “it’s night before it’s afternoon/December is here before it’s June”, as Dr Seuss put it. If I had a tab open on my browser since last October, intending to presently reference the recipe therein, and if I have only just returned to it now, in the following April, and feel as though perhaps a week has passed, a month at the most, who’s to say that’s not true? Who’s going to come for me? The time police? Even if they did exist, I do not acknowledge them.

P1200451

Back in October, when I first consulted this recipe, time was moving in a more comminuted way — we were partway through a hundred-plus day lockdown, and my family’s solution to making one 24-hour period even marginally different from the one before was to choose a different country each day, and cook its food (or an approximation thereof) and listen to its music. (We stayed in lockdown so long that this was just one of our various daily schemes, but it’s the relevant one to this recipe.) I made these Catalan Chickpeas with Spinach when we got to Spain, along with some other Spain-wards recipes, and it really floored me — for something so simple, starring two undeniably excellent but not terribly flashy ingredients, it’s just beautiful. Gutsy, earthy, mellow, layered, delicious.

P1200453

I feel that of all the ingredients I might need to reassure you about in a kind but firm manner, it’s the raisins. If you’re already au fait with raisins in savoury recipes then this doesn’t apply to you, but if you are feeling suspicious, let me not only put your mind at ease but request, specifically, that you don’t leave them out — the tiny, lightly swollen bursts of winey sweetness are absolutely lush against the grainy soft chickpeas and the dark leafy spinach, to leave them out you’d lose what makes this dish so elevated and spectacular. That being said, if your suspicion for raisins veers into sensory issues territory then this doesn’t apply to you either! But put it this way, I have never once been a person who would eat a handful of raisins, the thought makes me shuddery, but once there’s some salt and olive oil involved they suddenly become entirely welcome.

@hungryandfrozen

Catalan Chickpeas and Spinach • recipe at hungryandfrozen dot com • adapted from @gimmesomeoven #vegan #cookingtiktok #beantok #chickpeas #foodblog #fyp

♬ Sascha – Jolie Holland

Maybe I’ve got time especially on the mind because my birthday is approaching, and, well, we live in a society where interrogative introspection follows each blowing out of candles; currently I’m coping by declaring, at every opportunity, that turning 36 is “so chic”. If you’re also in the ballpark of my generation or older you’re most welcome to use this framing device yourself, it’s…kind of helpful. Anyway, these chickpeas: time may be none of my business, but nonetheless I do wish I’d made them again sooner in a literal way, rather than in a “soon, in my warped and debilitating experience of the passage of time” kind of way. You should make them, and then make them again, for yourself, for friends, as a bring-a-plate, should you be in a place where socialising is relatively chill again. It would be a charming light meal for two with bread alongside (or, alternatively, the promise of dessert after); or it could easily feed four when served alongside a few other dishes, and if you’re feeling hungry, it’s all yours and no one else’s.

P1200462

Catalan Chickpeas and Spinach

An incredibly delicious, hearty, and simple dish, and impossible to make just once. I found this recipe on gimmesomeoven.com and have toyed with it just a little; if I had pine nuts I would’ve obviously preferred to use them as the original suggests, but the significantly less expensive sunflower seeds are a fine substitute.

  • 3 tablespoons sunflower seeds
  • 1 large onion
  • 6 cloves garlic
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
  • 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds (or, 1 teaspoon ground cumin)
  • 1 x 400g can chickpeas, drained
  • 3 tablespoons dry vermouth (or dry sherry, or a splash of water)
  • 3 tablespoons raisins (or sultanas)
  • 3 large handfuls spinach
  • salt, to taste, and extra virgin olive oil, to finish

1: Toast the three tablespoons of sunflower seeds in a hot pan for a few minutes, until they go from pale to golden brown. Tip them into a bowl or plate and set aside.

2: Peel and finely dice the onion, then peel and roughly chop the six cloves garlic. Warm the two tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan — I used the same one that I toasted the sunflower seeds in — and fry the chopped onion and garlic over a low heat until they’re softened. Tip in the teaspoon of smoked paprika and half teaspoon of cumin seeds, and stir to coat the onions.

3: Turn up the heat a little and tip in the chickpeas, followed by the three tablespoons of vermouth (although, I generally slosh rather than measure, for what it’s worth), and the three tablespoons of raisins or sultanas, and let it simmer for about five minutes, adding a splash of water if the pan is looking too dry.

4: Roughly chop the spinach and throw it into the pan. You can simply stir the spinach into the chickpeas with the heat on, or you can turn off the heat, clamp on a lid, and let the residual heat and steam wilt the spinach. Either way, it shouldn’t take more than a minute or two for the spinach to flop into almost nothing.

5: Remove the pan from the heat, scatter over the reserved sunflower seeds, season with salt (and pepper, if you wish) and drizzle over a little extra virgin olive oil. You could also consider a squeeze of lemon juice (especially if you used water instead of vermouth or sherry).

Serves 2—4, lightly, depending on what’s being eaten alongside, or one hungry person.

P1200452

music lately:

Forever and Ever by Demis Roussos, although this song evokes memories of Alison Steadman in the horror film (not in genre, but in vibe, you understand) Abigail’s Party, there’s something about those effortlessly gliding vocals and the full-hearted romance and proto-dream pop energy that is very loveable.

Persuasive by Doechii, I love how this is somehow quiet and loud at the same time. Utterly hypnotic, I can’t stop listening to it.

Forever, by Pete Drake. I was sent this video, along with the description that it was staggeringly Lynchian, and: I agree! If it wasn’t for the fact that it’s from 1964 I would have sworn on my own grave that David Lynch’s handprints were all over this tableau, it’s got that mix of heartbreaking comfort and looming, yet unidentifiable sinisterness and a general pervading Americanness. It’s almost hard to believe it’s real, but, somehow, it is.

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!

The Best Granola [vegan]

1 Comment

P1200448

I may be prone to exaggeration, but I come by it honestly; that is, I wouldn’t consider how I describe things to be exaggeration, merely accurate. So when I call this The Best Granola, it’s not to be cute, it’s just telling you exactly how good it is. In fact — honestly — it’s better than any granola I’ve ever made before, and I have put my name to a lot of granola recipes. The idea for this recipe comes directly from Rachel Ama, and her book Rachel Ama’s Vegan Eats; prior to that I hadn’t considered flipping the quantities of oats to nuts and seeds, now I will never make granola any other way.

This recipe is comprised almost entirely of almonds, cashews, pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds, the oats are there but resolutely in the background, and the result is extraordinary — so light, so crunchy without being the slightest burden on your masseter muscles, rich and very filling, but filling you with the sense that you could take on the world (or at least pick up that sock from the middle of the floor, where it has sat procumbent for the past week) instead of immediately needing a nap.

P1200442

There’s no getting around the fact that this is an expensive recipe — although it does make a gratifyingly whopping five litres — but when supermarkets will charge you anything from $7 to $17 for a teeny-tiny bag of mass-produced granola, making your own pays for itself by the second bowlful, not to mention that in these times of alarmingly spiking cost-of-living, it’s one more way to avoid buying off the shelf from our tyrannical supermarket duopoly overlords. With that in mind, I obviously wouldn’t recommend using your local supermarket to buy the ingredients for this (unless wherever you happen to live isn’t currently experiencing the same price surges we are, coupled with an excellent range of products, in which case, good for you, and what’s that like?) If you have a Bin Inn or other bulk store nearby then this is the time to use them, if you weren’t already, otherwise, I recommend going to a smaller greengrocer or Asian supermarket, as they tend to have bags of nuts and seeds (usually on a small shelf above the fruit and vegetables) for significantly more reasonable prices than the supermarket, indeed, I recommend prioritising them over regular supermarkets as much as you can anyway.

@hungryandfrozen

babe wake up she’s making five litres of granola again • recipe at hungryandfrozen dot com • thanks @rachelama for the inspiration #granola #breakfast #foodblogger #vegan #fyp

♬ You Don’t Have to Cry – Emma Ruth Rundle

As for the ingredients themselves, I know it might seem pedantic to ask for both whole and slivered almonds, but both of them together are necessary for just the right texture, and I swear they do taste different somehow! So far I’ve kept the flavourings fairly simple: a generous hand with the cinnamon, the smoky sweetness of molasses and golden or maple syrup, and the muted sourness of dried cranberries. You can use whichever dried fruit you like, but for me the cranberries work well here, feeling like more of a treat than sultanas, but still relatively inexpensive, and their jewel-bright colour is a lovely visual contrast to the Sahara-golden toasted nuts and the subdued green of the pumpkin seeds. Such is my trust in this recipe that I know whatever you end up putting in it will still work, indeed, I’m looking forward to slowly working through all my existing granola recipes, keeping their flavours but changing the method to match this one.

IMG_6971

I do like breakfast in theory, and I like the idea of being a breakfast person, but committing to any kind of routine is where I stumble — and not just at breakfast — this granola, however, is so delicious that my day simply hasn’t started until I’ve eaten some, and if I have it in the house I will eat it every day for breakfast without fail, and all things considered I can’t offer any greater recommendation for it than that.

IMG_6966

The Best Granola

Make this once and you’ll be hooked on its superlight, crunchy texture and deliciousness. This recipe makes a LOT, and I find that it’s worth the financial outlay in the short term to do it this way, but I have included smaller quantities in the notes if that suits you better. This recipe is based on Rachel Ama’s from her excellent book Rachel Ama’s Vegan Eats, I’m forever grateful for it and am sure you will be too upon making this.

  • 500g whole, natural almonds
  • 500g whole, raw cashews
  • 500g slivered almonds
  • 500g pumpkin seeds (preferably organic)
  • 500g sunflower seeds
  • 200g whole flaxseeds (that is, not ground — they are also sometimes called linseeds)
  • 150g sesame seeds
  • 150g coconut chips/flakes
  • 250g rolled oats
  • 3 tablespoons refined coconut oil
  • 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons golden syrup, or maple syrup
  • 3-4 tablespoons molasses
  • 3-4 teaspoons cinnamon, to taste
  • a hearty pinch of salt
  • 250g dried cranberries

1: Set your oven to 190C/370F on fan bake. Set aside two large baking trays — I use the ones that come with the oven, which fit into it like shelves, making sure that they’re very clean first with no prior roasted garlic etc residue on them. Basically you want something with a broad surface area and shallow sides.

2: Roughly chop your 500g each of whole natural almonds and raw cashews, so that you have some smaller, rubbly pieces and some nuts left whole. Logic would dictate that the quickest way to do this would be to hiff them into the food processor and pulse a few times, but for some reason I feel compelled every time to chop them by hand with my mezzaluna knife, which takes significantly longer and tends to send bits of almond flying everywhere. Up to you; but either is fine and, more importantly, doable.

3: Get the largest mixing bowl you can find — otherwise you may need two separate ones — and tip your chopped almonds and cashews into it, followed by the 500g slivered almonds, 500g pumpkin seeds, 500g sunflower seeds, 200g whole flaxseeds, 150g sesame seeds, 150g coconut chips, and the 250g rolled oats. Give them a stir, carefully, and then tip in the three tablespoons of refined coconut oil, three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, two tablespoons golden syrup, three tablespoons of molasses, and three teaspoons of cinnamon. Carefully stir this together — it shouldn’t be overly sticky, but add an extra tablespoon or so of molasses if you think it needs it.

4: Carefully divide this mixture between your two roasting trays, spreading it into an even layer. Place the trays in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. This seems like a long time but it has never failed me, that being said stop and check once or twice — sometimes it needs stirring before the twenty minutes is up, sometimes it doesn’t. After twenty minutes, remove the trays from the oven and stir, making sure the granola from the edges of the tray comes into the centre and vice versa, and return to the oven for another five to ten minutes, or until everything is nicely browned. It pays to stay in the kitchen while this is happening, because it can only be a matter of moments between toasted and burnt nuts; but don’t be too cautious either, you want the granola to really get some colour on it.

5: Once you’re satisfied at the done-ness — and bearing in mind that it will get crisper and crunchier as it cools — remove the trays from the oven and let them cool completely. At this point, sprinkle over a good pinch of salt (it seems easier to disperse it this way than in the mixing bowl) and finally tip the 250g dried cranberries over the two trays and stir them in.

Makes about 5 litres. Store in an airtight container out of direct sunlight.

Notes:

  • If feeling flush or freewheeling I’ll sometimes add a small packet or two of pecans, roughly crumbled in my hands first, and while they’re not essential, they really do add a little something as you can imagine.
  • I say 200g of flaxseeds but I have never once actually measured these properly, I just start pouring and stop when it feels right, I trust you to do the same. And if you can find organic pumpkin seeds, get them — for some reason they just taste nicer. Don’t stop yourself making this if you can only find regular ones though.

Quantities for about 1.5 litres of granola, as you can see it’s not a mathematically downscaled ratio by any means, but it works:

  • 500g natural almonds
  • 250g organic pumpkin seeds
  • 250g sunflower seeds
  • 100g flax seeds
  • 100-200g sesame seeds, cashews, pecans etc, whatever you’ve got
  • 100g coconut chips/shredded coconut
  • 150g rolled oats
  • 2 tablespoons refined coconut oil
  • 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons golden syrup (or maple syrup)
  • 1 tablespoon molasses
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon, or to taste
  • a good pinch of salt
  • 150g dried cranberries

P1200449

music lately:

Wo de Schönen Trompeten Blasen, from Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn, sung exquisitely by Jessye Norman in this 1972 recording. I’ve started listening to opera while I’m writing (there’s only so many ambient beats I can cope with before getting bored) and so far it’s working well, the inherent beauty of opera makes for a great creative backdrop, most of it is more or less unfamiliar to my ears, and generally it’s not sung in English so the words themselves aren’t distracting. Which is not to damn Norman’s singing by calling it background music; her voice demands to be listened to — and so I will, again, outside of the context of writing — and I found myself pausing my typing to gaze misty-eyed into the middle distance while this particular piece played.

There is precisely one song — Army — by Ben Folds Five that I like (admittedly I haven’t tried very hard to find more) but I REALLY love it, but even then I specifically want to listen to this stripped back live version with just Ben Folds himself — there is not much more satisfying than when the audience comes in halfway through to sing the part of the horn section in the original studio recording. That being said, this live version with the full band, providing their own vocals for the horns is very charming, and Ben Folds playing two pianos at once is very impressive, but it’s the simple live version for me, and not much else.

Tornado, by Minako Yoshida, from her MONOCHROME album, which I have listened to so many times; it’s the kind of music that makes you feel like a Sophisticated Lady Late At Night (and I realise that saying those words is very unsophisticated, but.) All the tunes are spectacular, but you might as well start with the opening track, it’s moody, neon-lit, with not a small hint of Steely Dan.

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 (including this one, two months ago) 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!