Category: Vegetarian

Noodles with smoky gochujang bokkeum

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A pan full of noodles and vegetables

Some years ago I posted a recipe for a vegan variation on gochujang bokkeum, a Korean fried chilli sauce, and though I’m no longer vegan, the sauce in this iteration has lost none of its monumental appeal. Here I’ve simply stirred it through wide, chewy noodles with some flash-wilted greens and a hazy splash of liquid smoke; it makes for a dinner of such wild splendidness that even though it’s something of a retread; it does both bear repeating and stand alone on its own merit. Indeed, I’ve made a slight variation of this three times this weekend alone because it has thrice been the exact correct answer to ‘what should we have for dinner’, prosaic though that is.

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Ricotta, peas and greens on toast with black garlic

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Portrait view of greens, peas and ricotta on toast with a knife and fork next to it

Sometimes, of a drab, sink-coloured Tuesday or glooming Sunday evening with Monday sitting on its chest like a sleep paralysis demon, I want something stupid for dinner that reclaims a sense of whimsy from what’s left of the day. Food that in its odd vividness jolts you awake and reminds you that you’re alive and—somewhat—living in the moment. The sort of dish, like this ricotta, peas and greens on toast with black garlic that is potentially non-scalable because the more people you have to explain it to, the less likely you are to gain a consensus. But for yourself, as a droll supper, sidestepping the prosaic meat and three veg? Spectacular. The next night after this I had pasta, then noodles the night after that, but the day after that? I had this again and it felt as giddy as the first time.

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Pink grapefruit posset with white chocolate pumpkin seed mendiants

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A sliced pink grapefruit on a green plate next to four coupes of grapefruit posset

There are a few load-bearing moments in my youthful journey towards becoming a food blogger slash person obsessed with cooking; the epiphanic first time ever I saw Nigella Lawson’s face and cooking show in 2001, winning the best cake award at the 1998 Calf Club, my childhood adventures in microwaving (largely borne from the fact that we only had a microwave, but). Another such signpost is the lemon posset recipe from a Cuisine magazine—I want to say it’s from April 2002 but regrettably I lost the hard copy years ago—being my signature dessert at family gatherings for several years in my teens. It’s one of those recipes that feels like magic, and for reasons I can only chalk up to time management and perception of time itself, this is the first time I’ve recreated this dish for my almost eighteen-years-old blog. Except, here I’ve hoisted up the citrus stakes by replacing lemon with bitter pink grapefruit.

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Shawarma-spiced roast vegetables with feta

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A serving spoon in a dish of roasted veges

A tray of roast vegetables is a noble dinner. Huddled low topographically yet covering so much surface area; the magnificent juxtaposition of tender internal cellular structure and crisp-lipped exterior; so much result for so little fuss. If you want to make a modicum of fuss, however—perhaps by borrowing the multiplicity of rich spices present in shawarma—and then crumbling over a genuinely modest quantity of feta—then you’re really in for a good time. The hardest part of these shawarma-spiced roast vegetables with feta, for me at least, is that every time I open up my spice drawer the boxes of spices have re-ordered themselves or got themselves all wedged and bunched up the back like an upwardly-directional pair of underwear; I intend to be the kind of person who has spices neatly contained in small, labelled containers but it never comes to pass, luckily this doesn’t put me off using them.

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Salmon, mango and coriander salad

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Salmon mango salad on a green plate, on a baking tray with a fork below it

Mango? Salad? In these final shrinking vestiges of autumn as it descends, sighing and officially, into winter? First of all, deliciousness knows no practical response to temperature, so jot that down. Secondly, every now and then I dunk my head under the humbling waters of my site analytics and am reminded that a shocking number of my viewership comes from the United States, despite my distinct non-Americanness — to wit, the very nomenclature of this recipe, which, stateside, would be cilantro. While America does enough self-pandering to last us all a lifetime, some of the best and coolest long-term mutuals that I’ve never met are from the US and it does occur to me that this Salmon, Mango and Coriander Salad would be particularly tempting if I lived somewhere with summer rapidly approaching. On the other hand, I’ve had this for dinner three times this week alone here in increasingly frosty New Zealand. Once tasted, you’ll want to make time for this recipe all year round. And with frozen, cubed mango, it’s quite possible to do this. (And, I feel strenuously driven to make clear above the fold, if you hate coriander I have a variation for you.)

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Freeform black bean cobbler

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a dish of black bean cobbler with a serving inside a bowl in front of it

After last week’s rampant whimsy we’re back to something practical with this freeform black bean cobbler; so named because it’s so adaptable that it might veer all the way around to being annoying again — in that sometimes having too many options just means you have to make more decisions, but I shall attempt to make it clear why the main suggested path is worth traversing, culinarily.

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fig leaf ice cream [no-churn]

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a teacup of ice cream sitting on fig leaves

This recipe isn’t practical by anyone’s metrics, aside from perhaps Louis XIV the Sun King’s, but if you so happen to have a fig tree within your vicinity or circle of acquaintances then it’s a fairly delightful and simple way of making an unexpectedly captivating fig leaf ice cream. Getting something out of the part of a tree you don’t usually eat is fun; and arguably prudent, if not practical, plus the method is simple and the texture is stunning.

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Butternut, chickpea, and peanut soup

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a spoon resting in a bowl of butternut soup with bread on a plate next to it

I have an old cookbook — as in, it’s from 1980 and I found it in an opshop — called, with brisk disregard for tautology, Supercook’s Supersavers Cookbook. Fascinatingly, it lists milk, cheese, and eggs as three of the most important ingredients for an economical kitchen; meanwhile I remember butter and cheese quadrupling in cost overnight somewhere around the beginning of the recession in 2007 and never, ever lowering or even settling in price ever again. When the consumer cannot control the rapidly-shifting sands underneath our feet nor the repellant deciders who dictate the prices of ingredients, it makes me wary of claiming a recipe to be cheap or budget-friendly. But if you can’t guarantee cost-of-living-crisis-amenability — and it’s hard to guarantee much of anything at all in these trying times — I can at least promise a certain versatility that can meet you where you’re at, in this Butternut, Chickpea, and Peanut Soup.

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Peanut butter chocolate chunk squares

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Sliced peanut butter chocolate chunk squares

As this food blog approaches its eighteenth turn around the sun, it occurred to me to conduct some market research (instagram story polls) to learn more about what on earth people want; especially since I am, if I may be blunt, not in a period of engagement that history books will recall as significant. Whether this blog is flourishing or flopping, I’ll still keep writing it because I genuinely love it — which means it can never truly flop — but there’s no harm in asking questions and selectively heeding their responses. Today’s recipe for peanut butter chocolate chunk squares doesn’t, alas, meet any of the data’s findings, but it is what I had prepared for this week, and even if not data-informed, it is — of course! — delicious.

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Roasted green beans, fennel, potato, and feta

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Green beans and fennel on a roasting tray

If brunch can be defined as not quite breakfast and not quite lunch, occasionally you require a similar framework applied to your dinner, whether through heat, haste, exhaustion or the lingering memory of prior repletion. I shall not wring a cramped portmanteau out of ‘dinner’ and ‘lunch’ — though others have tried — but I shall offer you this recipe for roasted green beans, potatoes, fennel and feta, which occupies that nebulous yet necessary space.

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