IHCC Ottolenghi summary

Talk of Ottolenghi's three books was very much in the air last year. I asked at the Cookbooker forum which book I should get. Following the consensus there, Santa brought me Ottolenghi. In the course of the challenge, I made seven recipes from Ottolenghi, three from Plenty, and two from Jerusalem.

Post	Recipe	Book, page OR link (book)	Rating (1-3)
Post	Harissa-Marinated Chicken with Red Grapefruit Salad  yogurt+harissa is an excellent marinade grapefruit salad delicious, nice starter perhaps	Ottolenghi, p119	+++
Post	Pasta with Yogurt, Peas, and Chile very good	web (Jerusalem)	+++
Post	White Chocolate and Cranberry Biscuits yum!	Ottolenghi, p225	+++
Post	Chilled Red Pepper Soup with Soured Cream lekker cold soup	Ottolenghi, p94	+++
Post	Spiced Lentils with Cucumber Yogurt tasty	web (Plenty)	+++
Post	Pear and Amaretto Crumble Cake nice, moist cake	Ottolenghi, p218; web	+++
Post	Chicken Meatballs with Preserved Lemon and Harissa Relish meatballs tasty but dry, with good relish	web (now seems to be here; can't determine cookbook, might be from a TV show)	++
Post	Saffron Tagliatelle with Spiced Butter lovely yellow pasta with a tasty sauce	web (Plenty)	++
Post	Zucchini and Hazelnut Salad tasty zucchini salad	web (Plenty)	+++
Post	Parsley, Lemon, and Cannellini Bean Salad with red quinoa, a good salad	web (Jerusalem)	+++
Post	Carrot and Walnut Cake good, but lots of work	Ottolenghi, p200	+
Post	Chargrilled Broccoli with Chili and Garlic my regular sort of broc, but grilled	Ottolenghi, p41	+++
Post	Buttered Prawns with Tomato, Olives, and Arak good, but a bit fat	Ottolenghi, p150	++

IHCC: Oh Ottolenghi!

My attention has been elsewhere and the time with Ottolenghi has flown by, especially the last couple of months, so I wanted to do a nice meal for our going away party. I choose Harissa-Marinated Chicken with Red Grapefruit Salad from Ottolenghi (p119). And a good choice it was!

This dish starts with marinating chicken thighs in a yogurt-harissa mixture. Ottolenghi has you made the harissa paste from scratch. One day I will make some harissa from scratch, maybe using this recipe, just to see how it is, but this isn't the time right now. Instead I took the lazy way and used the store-bought kind. Morocco, having been a French colony, left its influence in the grocery store where tubes and jars of harissa and other interesting spices are easily available. So the marinade was especially simple, a big spoonful of harissa mixed with a smaller spoonful of yogurt. Plop this mixture into a ziploc with the chicken bits, squish around till everything is well-coated, then set it in the fridge overnight. Easy with very good results. The chicken is baked, then finished under the grill, and would probably be quite good on the barbecue.

The arugula (aka rocket or rucola) salad with red grapefruit was a delicious surprise. It's very simple, red grapefruit sections tossed with rocket, a dab of olive oil, coarse sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper.

The sauce for the bird bits was equal amounts of grapefruit juice and maple syrup, with slightly less lemon juice, a bit of salt, a pinch of cinnamon, and star anise. This all boiled for 20 minutes till it reduced quite a bit. The sweet-sour taste was a nice combination and complemented the spicy harissa left on the chicken.

Here are our plates waiting to go to the dining room:

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs and this month's Cook Your Books.

IHCC: September Pot Luck

It's potluck time again and one last time I'm going back to Madhur Jaffrey. I had the intention to do something from Ottolenghi, but things keep preventing that from happening. And today was grocery day, so that means fish, and, as it frequently does, it means an Indian sort of fish dish as the center of the meal.

From Flavours of India (p195), there was Spicy, Pan-Fried Fish Steaks Chettinad. I used cod (rather than kingfish) and it did fall apart a bit, as cod is wont to do, but tasted delicious. You simply rub the fillets with a paste with ground coriander, cayenne, turmeric, ground cumin, salt, lime or lemon juice, and water and let them marinate for 15 minutes or so. Then fry them ... well, I grilled them to avoid the extra oil.

For sides there were Fried Aubergine (Eggplant) Slices and Cauliflower with Potatoes from Indian Cooking (p90 and p109, respectively)

With eggplant from the garden, I used all the spices (salt, turmeric, cayenne, black pepper) for half the eggplant asked in the recipe. This is really tasty but suffers from the oiliness that fried eggplant always does. Next time I do this, I think I'll just wipe the slices with a bit of olive oil before applying the spice mix, then grill them. Serve with lemon slices.

Since I had broccoli to be used and didn't expect to find any good cauliflower in the shops, I used broccoli instead cauliflower for the potato dish. They're both brassicas after all and the green makes a prettier plate. This is another dish that uses those cold boiled potatoes you keep in the fridge. Right. First you fry some whole cumin seeds, then add the cauliflower, er, broccoli and stir until brown spots start appearing. Cover (I added a slog of water) and cook over lower heat till the veg is mostly done. Then add the cubed potato, chopped green chili, ground cumin, ground coriander, turmeric, cayenne, ground roasted cumin (the last of my supply—I need to make more soon!), salt, and black pepper. Stir and cook till everything is warmed through.

Altogether a nice meal, if not really Ottolenghi as I intended.

Visit this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what's turned up in this week's pot luck.

IHCC: August Pot Luck

Between kitchen renovations and the zucchini glut from the garden, there's not much serious cooking going on here right now. But today was shopping day, and shopping day means fresh fish. What better way is there to cook fish than Indian? A quick trip through Madhur Jaffry's books came up with quite a long short list of fish-for-dinner recipes.

Using up bits of garden bounty, I served the fish with Pan-Grilled Zucchini (At Home with Madhur Jaffrey, p173) and Fried Aubergine (Eggplant) Slices (Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking, p99), both of which I've made before. The zucchini is pan-fried (you could also pan-grill it) then sprinkled with a squeeze of lemon then some salt, freshly ground black pepper, ground roasted cumin, and cayenne. The eggplant is tossed with salt, turmeric, cayenne, and freshly ground black pepper, then pan-fried and served with slices of lemon. I've not done this yet, but I next time I'll cut the eggplant slices a bit bigger and add just a bit of oil with spices, then pan-grill or broil them.

For the fish dish, I finally settled on Grilled or Bhuna Fish Steaks from Foolproof Indian Cooking (p44), using some salmon fillets rather than swordfish (or other) steaks. You make a lumpy sort of paste of grated ginger, crushed garlic cloves, garam masala, ground cumin, turmeric, ground mustard, cayenne, lemon juice, salt&pepper, and maybe a bit of water. Spread this on the fish and let it sit while you get everything else ready. Then just pop it under the broiler or on the grill till it's done.

Visit this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what's turned up in this week's pot luck. I'm also sharing this with the newly discovered Cook Your Books, where I'll try to share monthly something cooked from a seldom or never used cookbook. Since this fish dish is the first I've made from Foolproof, it qualifies.

IHCC: Gorgeously green!

Back in the kitchen with Ottolenghi this week for something green after a couple of weeks off with company. When I went looking for a recipe I found I had already collected a green one from Jerusalem, via Orangette, one of my favorite food blogs. This was Pasta with Yogurt, Peas, and Chile and it sounded like just the sort of green thing that we'd like to eat. And it was!

First you buzz up a sauce with yogurt, olive oil, garlic, and some peas (either fresh or defrosted frozen). This becomes a beautiful pale green sauce.

While the pasta is cooking (I used orecchiette, but any shaped pasta would be fine), warm a bit more olive oil with pine nuts and chili flakes (I plain old chili flakes here, having no Urfa or Aleppo or Kirmizi biber) for about 4 minutes, until the nuts are golden and the oil is red. Warm more peas with some of the pasta water.

Drain the pasta, put it back in the pasta pot, and slowly stir in the buzzed sauce. You do this slowly to avoid curdling the yogurt. (Actually, the recipe has you put the newly buzzed sauce into a big bowl and then add the pasta to that. To keep the head dishwasher happy, I usually save a dish by doing the mixing in the pasta pot.) Add the warmed peas, a lot of torn basil, crumbled feta, and some salt. Top with the pine nuts and chili oil and serve.

The recipe is advertised to serve 6. I made about half the sauce with about a third of the pasta as dinner for two. Maybe it was a bit saucy, but we didn't notice. It was very good. This will be one of our favorite Ottolenghi recipes.

Visit this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see the green things that folks have been cooking up.

IHCC: Fruitfull!

It's fruit for Ottolenghi this week. And, of course, there are lots of fruity things to be made. But I finally settled on some White Chocolate and Cranberry Biscuits—that's Cookies to us Amurricans—from Ottolenghi (p225). Ed says he doesn't like white chocolate, but he liked these cookies. The dried cranberries were sold by a Canadian choir touring the area a while ago.

These are fairly easy to make as cookies go and were the sort of crispy, chewy combination that we both like.

Stir together four, salt, baking powder, and baking soda, and set aside with some along with some rolled oats. Measure some white chocolate (chips if you have them) and some dried cranberries into another bowl

Cream some butter, vanilla, white sugar, and brown sugar in largish bowl (the biggest of the regular 3-bowl Pyrex set is big enough). Stir in the flour mixture and oatmeal. Then stir in the chocolate and cranberries. Don't overmix.

Chilling the batter for a bit helps with the shaping. Set balls between the size of an olive and a walnut on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper and pop them in the oven for 10 minutes. Ten minutes was just perfect for the top shelf but a bit short for the bottom shelf.

Result? About three and a half dozen of some really more-ish cookies. Very bad for the diet for those of us with little self-control.

Visit this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what fruity things people have been serving up!

IHCC: Paint the town red!

This week is the turn for red food, which brings to mind all kinds of possibilities. After making a short list, I settled on Chilled Red Pepper Soup with Soured Cream from Ottolenghi (p94) and came up a winner.

Start by sautéing a coarsely chopped onion along with some minced sage. While the onion softens, chop some red bell peppers (two for the half recipe I made). A small part is chopped in 1.5cm dice and set aside to be added at the end. (I thought this was too large and chopped this bit quite fine; somewhere in between would be best, I think.) The rest of the bell peppers get chopped coarsely and added to the onions, along with some salt, bay leaves, ground cumin, sugar, and red pepper flakes. (A pinch of red pepper flakes was good for my half recipe; two pinches would be nice for a whole recipe.) After this softens a bit, chicken or vegetable stock is added, the mixture brought to a simmer, then covered and cooked on low for about 15 minutes, until the veggies are soft.

Remove the bay leaf and purée the veggies with a staff mixer in the pot or transfer to a regular blender. Let the mixture cool a bit, stir in some diced celery, the reserved bell pepper, lemon zest, and minced garlic. Let the mixture cool to room temp, then refrigerate for a few hours or overnight.

Take the soup from the fridge half an hour before you're ready to serve. Stir, adjust the seasoning, divide among serving bowls, sprinkle with chopped parsley and basil, and top with a collop of sour cream. Ottolenghi suggest finishing with a drizzle of olive oil, but I skipped this.

The stick of celery I bought to make this dish disappeared into another meal earlier in the week, so I used some dried celery leaves instead of the celery. With bigger chunks of bell pepper and celery bits of the same size, this would be quite a crunchy soup. That might be nice, but I can also see that having a completely smooth soup might also be nice.

Crunchy or not, the result was quite tasty. It would be a good company dish since it could easily be made the day before and finishing takes a very short time. I can easily imagine sipping this soup while food on the grill gets ready to eat.

In general, I've not been very pleased with Ottolenghi's recipe writing style. Simple steps are often over-explained while more difficult things are skipped over. Sometimes prep steps are not given in the most efficient order. (In addition, I find font used in this book particularly difficult to read. I'm trying to avoid developing an antipathy to the book because I have made some good things from it.) This particular recipe, though, is quite well explained. The steps are in the proper order so that you can work from it sequentially without having to plan ahead yourself for the following steps.

Visit this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what yummy, red things other IHCCers have cooked up this week.

IHCC: Got a pulse?

Chickpeas, lentils, beans! Some of our favorite foods around here. Beyond the occasional black-eyed pea, they're not something I grew up eating, but something that's been added to my food vocabulary over time.

A bit of internet searching turned up Ottolenghi's Spiced Lentils with Cucumber Yogurt, which seemed like just the thing on the cold and damp summer days we continue to have.

This recipe starts with soaking red lentils, not something I recall doing before, but why not? It gives you just enough time to get everything else ready for cooking.

The bottom half of a bunch of coriander (leaves and stems) gets coarsely chopped in the food processor with a small onion, some ginger, garlic, and a chili. Black mustard seeds are popped in a dry skillet, then oil added and the coriander-onion mixture is fried for ten minutes on low heat. Then some ground coriander, ground cumin, turmeric, paprika, and curry leaves are added and cooked another five minutes.

Finally the lentils and their soaking water are added, along with tomatoes, a bit of sugar (I used half what was asked), fenugreek (it's not clear if this should be leaves or seeds; I used seeds and that seemed to be the right choice), asafoetida, and a pinch of salt. This mixture is simmered, covered, for about 30 minutes, until the lentils are cooked.

Meanwhile you can stir together some yogurt with finely diced cucumber (coarsely shredded might be nice), some olive oil, and some salt.

When the lentils are done, stir in the chopped leaves from the top half of the bunch of coriander, some lime juice, and some butter.

To my eye, this recipe uses way too much oil. Four tablespoons of sunflower oil are used to fry the coriander-onion mixture. One and a half tablespoons of olive oil are used for the yogurt topping. Seventy grams, more than four and a half tablespoons, of butter are stirred into the cooked lentils! Not in my kitchen, sorry. I used no more than half of the first two oils and only a dab of butter; that could have been eliminated altogether, I think.

The lentils can be served as a stewy soup, over rice, or with bread. I actually cooked some rice, but we decided that eating the lentils plain, topped with the yogurt mixture would be fine. And it was. And very tasty indeed. DH was a happy camper. The whole recipe served two of us generously. With rice, it might stretch to four.

VIsit this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what yummy things other IHCCers have cooked up this week.

IHCC: June Potluck

It seems like the monthly Potluck theme falls right about the time I'm getting a serious craving for Indian food. So here we are again with yet another from Madhur Jaffery. This time all from At Home with Madhur Jaffrey. This is a newish book for me that I got during the last IHCC challenge after reading about lots of good recipes from it.

Today being our day for shopping means fish for dinner. So we had Delicious Pan-Grilled Halibut (or Swordfish, or Salmon)—with swordfish since there was no halibut—(p47), accompanied by Karhai Broccoli (p148) and Potatoes with Cumin and Mustard Seeds (p164).

The pan-grilled swordfish was indeed delicious, and also easy to make. First you rub the fillets with turmeric and salt. This sits while you make a mixture of grated ginger, smashed garlic, lemon juice and cayenne which gets rubbed into the fish in turn for another sit. The fillets are then dusted with rice flour (I used ground rice that I used to clean my spice grinder) and quickly browned in a skillet. Then in the oven till cooked through. Almost an hour of wall clock time passes while this is happening, but there's quite a bit of unattended time.

The broccoli was a nice variation on a steam-sautéed veg. Asafedtida, then cumin and mustard seeds are heated in hot oil. When the seeds start popping, stir in the broccoli. After a minute stir in some salt and cayenne. Then add a slog of water, cover, and simmer on low heat until the broccoli is done, stirring occasionally.

The potatoes would be a snap if you kept boiled potatoes in your fridge (as happens in all well-regulated kitchens, right?). The cold, boiled potatoes are cut into smallish dice. Cumin and mustard seeds are popped in hot oil. Then slivered ginger is added, followed by the potatoes. When this has been well stirred together, sprinkle on salt, red pepper flakes, and freshly ground black pepper. Cook till the potatoes are lightly browned. This would be a good dish with most meals, including your breakfast eggs.

This post is linked to I Heart Cooking Clubs, where you can check out what potluck dishes other folks have made this week.

IHCC: Something Sweet

So sweet it is. Pear and Amaretto Crumble Cake from Ottolenghi (p218, and on the web) caught my eye since I've got a bottle of amaretto needing to be used up. It turned out to a tasty cake, but can't say it's one I'd ever make again. DH, the head dishwasher, asked if there were any bowls that I didn't use to make the cake. There's a bowl for tossing together the apple, pear, walnuts, lemon zest, and amaretto, plus the one I used for measuring the weight of the fruit and nuts. Then there's a bowl for the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, and ground almonds. And a couple more for the separated eggs, plus the small one to crack each egg into. (If you've ever opened a bad egg into a cake batter, you learn to open your eggs into a separate dish before adding them to anything.) And a big bowl for mixing the batter. And a little one for mixing the crumble. (I made a fifth recipe of the crumble recipe to top the loaves.) That's a lot of bowls for what's essentially a tarted up quick bread.

It tastes yummy, I must say, and the balance of cinnamon to cloves is just right. Very moist and full of chunky fruit.

Visit I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what sweet treats people are cooking up this week.

IHCC: Pattycake, Pattycake ...

So, this week it's time for some patties. Searching a bit turned up a recipe for Chicken Meatballs with Preserved Lemon and Harissa Relish (web), looking more like patties than meatballs.

The relish is made of thinly sliced preserved lemons, a bit of lemon juice, olive oil, and harissa. I've made preserved lemons before, but happened to find some ready-made in the shops recently, so used those. These lemons were a bit small; it took three rather than two to make up the 220g. I halved the lemons lengthwise, then sliced as thinly as I could manage, removing seeds as I went. The harissa was a specialty one I bought recently.

For the patties, the recipe calls for cutting the kernels from a cob of grilled corn. There being no corn worth grilling in the shops, I thought to use a bit of canned corn, but in the end forgot add even this. The corn would be mixed with ground chicken (I ground skinless, boneless breasts), soaked bread crumbs (I used panko), grated onion, garlic, a red chili, an egg, salt and pepper. Sixty gram balls are first grilled, then baked to finish.

The patties were tasty enough, even without the corn, but dry in the way that chicken or turkey burgers tend to be. The relish was a nice complement.

Visit I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what kind of pattycakes other folks are making.

IHCC: May Potluck

Potluck time has rolled around again at I Heart Cooking Clubs, and I was unprepared yet again. But we were both needing an Indian fix, so picked up At Home with Madhur Jaffrey, one of my newer Jaffrey books, and had a look around. Ed thinks roast chicken is about the best thing there is to eat, so I settled on Whole Chicken Baked with an Almond and Onion Sauce (p99).

The chicken was really good and easy to make. First you skin the bird, slash it, and rub with salt and lemon juice. While that's sitting for 15 minutes, you whiz together a paste with more lemon juice and salt, yogurt, onion, ginger, garlic, cayenne, garam masala, and almond slivers. Pop the bird in a ziploc, add the onion paste, rub it in a bit, and let the bird sit in the fridge for up to 24 hours.

When you're ready to cook, preheat the oven to 400F, find a pan that holds the chicken, pop some cumin seeds in a bit of oil, add the chicken (breast side up) and all the marinade, cover and pop into the oven for 30 minutes. Then remove the lid, and bake for another 40 minutes, basting occasionally. Result, one amazingly tasty chicken that fell in half when I lifted it from the pan.

Following some of Jaffrey's go-with suggestions, I also made Yellow Basmati Rice with Sesame Seeds (p208) and Sweet-and-Sour Eggplant (p153). The rice is a fairly easy to make with only two groups of spices to be added in the process (a dried chili, urad dal, mustard seeds, and sesame seeds toasted at the start, then turmeric and salt added with the rice). The sesame seeds were an interesting addition.

The eggplant dish was quite interesting. To make a half recipe, I used a single eggplant of the appropriate weight; baby eggplants are asked, but mine were bigger. (This was a good amount for a side dish. Jaffrey suggests that this dish could serve as a vegetarian main course, but then I think you'd use a whole recipe to serve two.) You start by cutting each of your eggplants lengthwise almost into quarters, leaving them whole at the stem end. These are soaked in water for 30 minutes while you prepare a paste of toasted chickpea flour, ginger, cayenne, ground coriander, ground cumin, salt, chopped cilantro/coriander leaves, and water. Dry the soaked eggplants and coat the cut surfaces with the paste. Brown the eggplants on all sides, sprinkle with salt, add a bit of water, cover, and simmer gently for 25 minutes. (Since our eggplant turned out very soft, I think about 20 minutes would be fine here.) Remove the cover, stir in a syrup of sugar, lemon juice, and water, then cook quickly until a thick sauce remains. We didn't find this sweet-and-sour taste very noticeable, but the dish as a whole was quite good.

And we have another monochrome but delicious Indian dinner.

Visit I Heart Cooking Clubs to see what other folks are make this week!

IHCC: Use your Noodle!

Now, pasta. There's a theme after my own heart, one of my favorite subjects. Mostly I have to stop myself from planning a pasta dinner for every night of the week. Searching the web, I found Saffron Tagliatelle with Spiced Butter (reportedly from Plenty). This not only looked good but also contributes to my 2013 kitchen goal of making pasta from scratch at least once a month.

The saffron pasta itself is very nice. I didn't really follow the instructions for making this all that closely, since I'm fairly comfortable making long skinny pastas now. I mixed the dough by hand in a bowl rather than with the food processor, since that's fairly easy to do and involves much less cleanup. Also, I found the direction to roll out the dough before running it through the pasta machine a bit odd. I just flatten mine a bit between my hands and let the machine do the work. That's what it's for, isn't it?

A half recipe of the dough calls for quite a bit more flour that I usually use for pasta-for-two, but the extra flour goes with the saffron-soaking water. I overlooked the turmeric addition and expect this would have deepened the lovely saffron-gold color of the noodles, with the flavor washed out in the boiling. The resulting dough was nice and workable.

Ottolenghi instructs you to roll the pasta out to the thinnest setting (typically 7). Most pasta instructors say that 6 is more than sufficient. When I first started pasta-making I found 7 very difficult to achieve. With experience, I can do this now, but generally don't like pasta rolled that thin. Lately I've been liking pasta with a bit more chew, so I rolled this batch only to 5, making it a bit thicker than normal. The cut pasta is quite pretty, golden in color with the saffron threads still visible. (Sorry the color is lost with the indoor lighting.)

To make the spiced butter sauce you simmer four minced shallots in eight tablespoons butter and two tablespoons olive oil. When the shallots are very soft and the butter begins to brown, stir in the spices, ginger, paprika, coriander, cinnamon, cayenne, chili flakes, and turmeric, with some salt and pepper. Toss this with the cooked pasta and serve topped with a mixture of toasted pine nuts, mint, and parsley, all roughly chopped.

The result was a nicely tingly and quite tasty; the topping was a nice addition. But the spiced butter sauce for the pasta was way too fat for our tastes. I used only six tablespoons butter where eight were asked since that's what was left in the butter dish and I was too lazy to get out more (also I was already suspecting this dish was heavy on the fat side). I think that two tablespoons each of butter and oil would be more than enough here. 

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: A Squash is a Squash, Of Course, Of Course

This week's squash theme seems a bit out of sync with the seasons. In this corner of the world, winter squash haven't been in the markets for a couple of months now, and the garden flood of summer squash has not yet begun. There are some zucchini (aka courgettes) in the shops, coming from more southern climes, and this week there were even some organic ones. A quick look through Ottolenghi didn't turn up anything that appealed for this week, but a search on the web turned up Zucchini and Hazelnut Salad from Plenty, which tickled my fancy.

This is an easy-to-make salad that made a nice starter followed by a pasta dish. You begin by toasting some hazelnuts, letting them cool a bit, rubbing off most of the skins, and chopping them coarsely. While the nuts are toasting, heat a grill pan and slice the zucchini thickly. Toss the slices with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then grill them to make nice sear marks. Transfer to a bowl and toss with balsamic vinegar.

When the slices are cool, toss them together with a bit more olive oil, handfuls of green and purple basil leaves, and the chopped nuts. Divide salad among your plates, top with sliced Parmesan, and drizzle on a bit of hazelnut oil. I skipped this step, since I forgot to buy the hazelnut oil. But actually I think it might be better to add the hazelnut oil when tossing with the basil to have a salad that's not quite so oily.

The garden supply of basil being very limited right now, I made only a half recipe. This made two servings, nice for a starter, but a bit skimpy if you wanted more substantial servings. It was very tasty. though, and this is a recipe to repeat with the summer's garden bounty.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Going with the Grain!

This week, grains. A nice topic, since I've been trying off and on to increase my grain "vocabulary." Nothing in Ottolenghi seemed to appeal for this topic, but a bit of searching on the web turned up Parsley, Lemon, and Cannellini Bean Salad, which seems to be from Jerusalem, although that's a bit unclear. When red quinoa turned up at the grocery store, I knew I'd found my salad. 

This is a really lovely summery salad. First you cook the quinoa by simmering it, then letting it sit covered for a bit. I made a half recipe, but needed to add almost the full amount of water to keep the quinoa from simmering completely dry.

While the quinoa cools, you shred some parsley, mint, and green onion. (I used shallot since green onions seem to be unknown in this part of the world.) Stir these together with some cannellini beans (canned is fine), some finely chopped lemon (all the lemon is chopped, except the seeds), some ground allspice, olive oil, salt, and pepper. 

I found it interesting that the entire lemon was chopped, peel, pith, and flesh, and worried a bit about the taste being too bitter from the pith. In fact, this wasn't a problem at all. The salad tasted of lemon, but only in a nice tart kind of way.

Stir everything together and serve. A half recipe served three people a bit skimpily; we would all have liked a bit more. The advertised four servings for the whole recipe is probably correct. 

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: April Potluck!

It's potluck time at IHCC! And this round, we can also choose recipes from other IHCC chef/authors. Which only makes choosing harder, since there are seven other authors from which to choose. Oh dear. But, I realized, I'm needing an Indian fix, and Indian vegetarian would be even better. A little searching through my books turned up Spicy Eggplant Stew with Potatoes, Mushrooms, and Chickpeas (Shorvedar Baigan Aur Aloo) in Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian (p196). Plus, this had the great advantage of using up some things from the freezer and making a dent in some things from the larder. And, it turned out to be a delicious stew.

The stew is quite easy to make. There's a bit of peeling and chopping to do as prep, then it cooks for a long while relatively unattended, allowing the cook to do something else.

You start by frying asafetida and cumin seeds briefly, then adding dried red chiles. (As is often the case with Jaffrey's recipes, I used about half the oil asked in the recipe.) When the chiles darken, you stir in potato chunks. After a minute, stir in some eggplant chunks. After two minutes, stir in mushroom chunks. After two more minutes, stir in some turmeric and ground coriander. Then add tomato purée, water, salt, cilantro, and chickpeas. Simmer the stew until the veggies are done, 35 to 40 minutes. That's all there is to it.

I was a bit short on chickpeas and didn't want to open a can, just to use half of it, but this wasn't really a problem. In fact, the whole thing really seemed like a clean-out-the-pantry sort of dinner. I'm sure you could use bits of veg that need using up. Jaffrey gives instruction for adding okra. It seems that anything that has a shorter cooking time could just be added later.

The result was a yummy stew that we ate pretty much on its own, as a  one-dish dinner. The recipe says it says four to six. I think four would be stretching it. Two of us had dinner and we'll have a mugful each for lunch one day soon, so it might serve three comfortably.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Get back to your roots!

Roots roots roots. These being things we like, I had options for a couple of different rooty salads this week. But there never seemed to be a time when such a salad was needed or there wasn't enough time to get it made. For tonight's dinner, it seemed like a dessert might be in order and there were lots of carrots to use, so the rooty solution was Carrot and Walnut Cake from Ottolenghi (p200).

When I made my first trip through this book, I was actually a little put off by this recipe and it didn't get a sticky. Somehow a carrot cake where you separate the eggs and fold in the beaten egg whites seems a bit much. It didn't look like the kind of fine-structured cake that you usually get when you fold in egg white. My old standard carrot cake doesn't need that and is still really good. But, thinking of something for a sweet treat this evening, I thought I'd give it a try anyhow.

The recipe asks for a 20cm springform pan. For some reason I seem to have accumulated three 24cm springform pans and no other sizes. (One of these was a gift from a cheesecake-making friend, another I picked up at a charity second-hand shop to leave at this house before we moved here, but where did the third one come from? I really ought to remedy this situation before long.) But an 8in cake pan, more or less the same diameter, works just as well, if not better. To be honest, I'm not really sure why this cake needs a springform pan at all.

For the making, this is a fairly ordinary, if fussy, cake recipe. Stir together (sift only if you really feel the need) the dry ingredients—flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and cloves. Whisk a whole egg and an egg yolk. Beat together some vegetable oil and sugar*, then add the whisked egg-and-a-half. Finally, stir in some chopped walnuts, coconut, grated carrots, and then the dry ingredients.

* Since we tend to like our sweets not so sweet, I used only 200g sucre de canne (a natural brown sugar with a bit of flavor oomph), where 270g sugar was asked. Ed thought this was fine, I thought it was a trifle short, and might use 210g or 220g if I make this again.

Then beat two egg whites (yay, one from the freezer!) with a pinch of salt until they make firm peaks, and fold them into the batter. Pour the batter into your cake pan (lined, like my mother taught me, with a circle of "waxed" paper) and put it in the oven at 170C for about an hour, maybe a smidge longer.

The icing is cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and honey. I stirred the toasted, chopped walnuts into the icing rather than sprinkling them on top. My standard cream cheese icing uses equal portions of cream cheese and butter; the ratio for this icing is 2.5:1, making it a bit lighter perhaps. The honey was an interesting addition.

We liked this variation on a carrot cake, although I can't say it was all that much better than my old standard recipe. But it is nice that it's just a single layer, which makes it easier for two people to finish off before it starts getting stale.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Loving the Leaf!

Leafy food, that's a nice idea. Strangely, though, French grocery stores and markets, at least in this area, don't regularly carry lots of leafy greens. Spinach or chard or spinach or bok choy, on occasion, but not dependably and not always looking their freshest. It's odd, because I know the French eat these things. I see recipes in magazines for one thing. Out walking, it's not uncommon for us to meet neighbors with sacksful of dandelion greens (for salads or, coarsely chopped, added to bean soups). Lettuce, is in the shops, of course, and sacks of mixed greens, but I didn't remember noticing a recipe.

There was broccoli in the fridge wanting to be used. So I could wait to go to the grocery store hoping to find an interesting green (one that wasn't cabbage, please, since I'm still finishing off the chinese cabbage I bought last week) or I could use up my broc with a recipe I already had my eye on. I decided on the broccoli and was glad I did because I found no interesting leafy green things when I went to the store the next day.

Broccoli is our favorite veg so I always have my eye out for different ways to use it. To that end I marked Chargrilled Broccoli with Chili and Garlic in Ottolenghi (p41)—sorry, make that Chilli, this is a UK book—when I read through the book.

This recipe is fairly easy to make, although nothing compared to my sort of standard steamed broccoli dressed with a bit of garlic and red pepper flakes that have been warmed in olive oil. Actually it's rather similar to that, but different, if you know what I mean,

Broccoli florets are partly cooked in boiling water, then drained, shocked in ice water to stop the cooking, and drained again. The very dry broccoli is tossed with olive oil and lots of coarse sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. They they're grilled on a very hot ridged grill pan, in batches if necessary, till they are nicely grill-marked. While you're grilling, warm some olive oil in a small skillet with lots of thinly sliced garlic and some thinly sliced, mild red chilies. Take this off the heat when the garlic begins to turn golden. When all the broccoli is grilled, toss it with the garlic-chili oil. Serve warm or at room temperature.

There's nothing really fancy about the recipe, but the grilling adds a nice flavor to the dish. I wouldn't make this if I were making something else fussy that wanted lots of attention, but it is nice if you're mildly occupied in the area of the stove and are available to pay a bit of attention. It is nice that, once assembled, the dish can wait till the rest of the meal is ready to eat.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.

IHCC: Shalom Yotam Ottolenghi!!

This week, we have our first I Heart Cooking Clubs outing with Yotam Ottlenghi. Each week we'll be cooking an Ottlenghi dish with a suggested theme. Come along and join in the fun!

Santa brought me Ottolenghi: The Cookbook after I asked at cookbooker which of his three books I should get—this was was the unanimous choice. I've made a dash through the book now, marking very many pages with stickies. For this week's welcome, I chose Buttered Prawns with Tomato, Olives, and Arak (p150). This is recommended as a starter for four, but I served it as the main dish for two along with some polenta. The dish is quite simple to make, just a bit of preparation and about 5 minutes of cooking.

To prepare:

• Four plum tomatoes should be peeled, cut into wedges, and set aside with some chili flakes and kalamata olives. Plum tomatoes are not in season yet so I used some vine tomatoes that have been in the shops and pretty good in the last weeks. 
• Measure out 20 milliliters (a short tablespoon and a half) of Arak. Okay, no Arak around here, but there is some pastis (Ricard, not Pernod) in the fridge wanting to be used up.
• Three very thinly sliced cloves of garlic get set aside with some chopped flat parsley, a pinch of salt, and 30g (about 2 tablespoons) of butter. (I didn't use the full amount of this butter, since the dish seemed plenty rich already.)

To cook, heat a frying pan, then add 20g (a short tablespoon and a half) of butter. When this melts, add the shrimp and sauté briskly for about 2 minutes. Then add the tomatoes, chili flakes, and olives; continue cooking for another 2 minutes. Carefully add the liquor and stir till it evaporates. Stir in the garlic, parsley, salt, and extra butter. When the butter has melted, you're ready to serve and eat!

And yummy it was. The kalamatas were a nice touch and the anise flavor of the Arak/pastis adds a unexpectedly nice flavor. (Neither of us a big anise fans, but sometimes it works.) Next time I might try this with olive oil in place of the butter to make it a bit less rich.

This post is shared with this week's I Heart Cooking Clubs.