Results tagged “vegetarian”

Cacık (pronounced ‘jajuk’) is the Turkish equivalent of Greek tzatziki - a garlicky yoghurt and cucumber dip/soup/salad, depending on what it’s served with.  It’s a fantastic accompaniment to kebabs, meatballs and cooked vegetable dishes, and there is some evidence that eating yoghurt with meat is good for us.  It’s usually made with pounded garlic cloves, but bright green wild garlic makes a very pretty alternative.

‘Kemia’ - various salads, often made with cooked vegetables - are served at the start of a Moroccan meal, a bit like tapas in Spain or meze in Turkey.  They are always beautifully presented, to stimulate the appetite, and subtly spiced with classic Moroccan flavours such as mint, parsley, pepper, cumin, cinnamon and citrus.  The beauty for the cook is that you can prepare them all in advance and serve them at room temperature.
 
Of course, if you prefer you can roast the beetroots rather than boil them:  Place them, whole and unpeeled, in a roasting tin with a splash of olive oil and water.  Sprinkle with salt, cover tightly with foil and roast in a hot oven until tender throughout.  I feel this method works better with summer beetroot, and those at the start of the winter season.  These days boiling seems preferable.

This would probably never happen in Morocco, but I like to serve this salad over a bed of full-fat plain yoghurt.  The flavours go so well together, and the beetroot juices bleed into the yoghurt creating bright pink streaks and swirls.  

‘Kemia’ - various salads, often made with cooked vegetables - are served at the start of a Moroccan meal, a bit like tapas in Spain or meze in Turkey.  They are always beautifully presented, to stimulate the appetite, and subtly spiced with classic Moroccan flavours such as mint, parsley, pepper, cumin, cinnamon and citrus.  The beauty for the cook is that you can prepare them all in advance and serve them at room temperature.
 
In Morocco I noticed that cooks almost always scraped the cores out of the carrots once they were boiled.  It’s true that the core may be tougher and less tasty, but normally I don’t bother.  You might think the icing sugar is weird, but this is commonly used in Moroccan salads and the touch of sweetness works really well.  But you can of course leave it out if you wish.

One of Morocco’s most celebrated dishes is ‘couscous aux sept légumes’.  Seven is a lucky number in Morocco, and each region and city has its own variant version of this wonderful dish.  Some say it should be made with not only seven different vegetables, but also seven spices and seven-year-old aged butter, called ‘smen’, for maximum good fortune.  By these standards this recipe is pretty charmed.  (I’m counting the chickpeas and the chillies.)

Having greatly enjoyed eating and helping make this dish several times during our time in Morocco, I couldn’t wait to try it at home.  Normally, you’d expect to see fresh tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes and the like, but I couldn’t wait for summer.  So here is my winter version, employing all the usual suspect British root vegetables from our organic box.  We’re lucky enough to have a small pot of delicious homemade smen given to us by a kind woman we encountered in the mountains near Taliouine (of saffron fame).  It smells like blue cheese and adds a unique rich savoury note to the couscous.  If you don’t happen to have any aged butter, use regular butter or Indian ghee instead.  If you like, you can mash blue cheese into some butter to mimic the smen flavour.

I’ve simplified the recipe by using tinned chickpeas, quick-cook couscous and water or stock.  For the real deal, you should really cook the chickpeas from scratch (soaking them in advance and then peeling them), roll and steam your own couscous (steaming it three times over the simmering vegetables), and use a hunk or two of meat to make the broth.  It is also sometimes served with a delicious sweet relish of caramelised onions and raisins.  But this simple way works just fine, and there’s no need for any meat.  The vegetables come out most delicately tender and exquisitely flavoured; you may be surprised how delicious turnip and swede can be.

For a traditional Moroccan banquet such magnificent couscous dishes would be served following the meat course and before the desserts.  But they are really meals in themselves.  To eat, people cluster around the giant communal dish, usually sitting on cushions or benches around a low table, and eat with their hands.  As we found, the knack of shaking handfuls of couscous into neat balls and then popping them into your mouth, using just your right hand and without smearing food all over your face, is one that requires considerable dexterity.  After embarrassing ourselves on numerous occasions, we slowly learnt that it’s all in the wrist action, and the use of the soft, moist vegetables as glue to bind the couscous.  This is great party food!

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking Turkish food is just meat and kebabs, despite what you may have seen on your local highstreet in England.  Some of the best cooking we had in Turkey was totally vegetarian.  Three of or favourite cooks in Turkey, Musa Dağdeviren, Zeliha İrez and Erhan Şeker, cooked predominantly with vegetables, and made abundant use of weird and wonderful wild greens and herbs that we’d never heard of before, let alone tasted.

It was February, it was cold and I was in England.  Perhaps this explains the craving I experienced for sticky toffee pudding.  Having reviewed a number of formulas claiming to be 'the ultimate' or 'best ever', I came up with this version, adapted from recipes from the BBC Good Food Guide and Sharrow Bay.  It's certainly the best one I've had.  Make double the puddings and freeze the others for the next cold day.

No, not the scrawled 1970s cartoon or the tooth-wrenching sweet of my childhood, or even the early '90s hardcore rave anthem of my (very brief) clubbing days, but instead some delicious vanilla petits pots de crème (very French) with some bright pink rhubarb scented with orange zest (very English). 

I was inspired to make this by a vanilla panna cotta with rhubarb which I enjoyed at Cotto, by far the best restaurant in Cambridge at the moment.  Rhubarb has just hit Cambridge market, so I wasn't surprised to find it on the menu at Cotto, which makes a point of using local, organic and seasonal produce.  Not wanting to get involved with gelatin this particular afternoon, I changed it to pots de crème.  They were easy, beautiful and delicious.

To make up for the absence of recipes this last month, here is a citrussy pair suited to the season, complete with nerdy citrussy facts.  I think preserving oranges and lemons is fun.  You might not, of course.  (The lemons are for Anthea, who assures me she's interested.)

It's really easy to preserve your own lemons, and once you have a jar of them you'll find yourself adding them to tagines (eg chicken with lemon and olives), salsas (with shallots and fresh herbs, to go on grilled fish or meat), salads and couscous dishes...

When I was 4, my dad gave my mother 'The Times Cookery Book' by Katie Stewart for Christmas, doubtlessly not for entirely altruistic reasons.  She's been making Katie's marmalade every January since.  The house being filled with the sweet-sour aromas of Seville oranges cooking in their own syrup is a favourite childhood memory.  Mum's excellent 2008 vintage prompted me to write it up, complete with her own and Katie's tips.

So, we are STILL in the UK, waiting for our new car (it's a red one, and actually quite old) to be fixed up.  We still have a few essentials to buy (plug adaptors, espresso cups, etc), but hopefully next week's email will come from Paris...

Many thanks to those who have sent us tips for where to go and other useful contacts for our travels.  Please keep them coming.

I admit to having said some not very nice things about eggnog in the past.  But that was before I tried Nathan's eggnog.  Heavy on the bourbon, light on the sugar and spice, and silky smooth on the tongue, this one is a creamy and delicious dessert in a glass.  Also, Nathan cooks (and bakes) at Chez Panisse, so we can trust him.  Having said that, eggnog would more traditionally be made with rum, brandy or whisky, but Nathan's from Kentucky.

Perhaps this should be 'California Christmas cake', due to the inclusion of apricots, dates and macadamias.  You don't have to use them - you can substitute pretty much any dried fruit and nuts you like.  These ones worked for me, but maybe because I ate it in a log cabin near Lake Tahoe after inching my way down the freezing ski slopes.  The use of two whole bottles of sherry, however, seems very British, and should work anywhere.

Well, a lot has happened in 3 weeks.  We enjoyed a traditional American Thanksgiving chez Alex and Nicole, which, despite Alex nearly knocking Nicole out with a plate of oysters, the dog yaffling a whole triple-creme cheese off the board during the commotion, and later getting to the turkey before we did, was a most enjoyable feast.  I finished my internship at Chez Panisse, which was a little traumatic - involving much sobbing followed by several medicinal Manhattans.  I learnt so much there, loved cooking in a professional kitchen every day, met some wonderful people and properly fell in love with the place. And, somewhere in between these incidents, I candied a new batch of citrus peels, sourced some suet and had several restaurant mates around for a mammoth Christmas cake and pudding making session, at which a round of eggnog was the only American concession.

I realise Stir-up Sunday has passed, but it's not too late to make Christmas cake and pudding (should you be so inclined, and probably British).  Although, I recommend keeping the pudding til Xmas '08, as the one-year-old pud we ate at the pudding party was even more delicious than its sibling which we ate in April.

So, here is your first Christmassy recipe - candied citrus peel.  The cake, pudding and eggnog will follow shortly.

Well, the exams are all over and I have officially graduated from the Tante Marie Cooking School professional culinary programme.  (Judging by the quantity of champagne I drank on Friday night and the certificate I came home clutching, I'm pretty sure that's what happened, but it's a little blurry.)   I did pretty well in all the exams, with the exception of the wine test, which I got 100% wrong.  This may come as a surprise to some, although I can admit to you that I purposefully sacrificed a few points in exchange for a lifetime's excuse that I need more practice.

To celebrate the completion of my course, I egotistically decided to send you the recipe for the very delicious Pommes Anna - crispy on the outside and tender inside, like me.  It's not my recipe though, rather the creation of a well known 19th century French chef and named after the most loved and respected whore in Paris.  If it could seduce her, then it must be worth a try.
 
By the way, this dish is really easy to make but you do need a heavy, oven-proof, non-stick frying pan.  There are even special copper 'Pommes Anna pans' available at phenomenal expense from posh cookware shops.  (I got a cheap little pan from Ikea that works a treat, but now have my eye on the real deal, currently going on eBay for just $10... )

You guys voted it into third place, but it had a few particularly passionate supporters, so this week I'm sending you the aubergine soup.  It's one I learnt at school and then played with at home. .It's great for a cold autumn night.  Don't omit the garlic cream - it's essential.  Roasting the bulb first makes the garlic flavour sweet and smooth.

The aubergine is simply a marvellous vegetable.  Do send me your own aubergine recipe favourite if you have one.

As promised, some ice cream to go with last week's apple cake.  If you have an ice cream maker, this is really easy.  (Or as they would say here, 'super easy'.)  I made this ice cream having had something similar at Chez Panisse (a famous Berkeley restaurant).  There it was served with roasted figs - delicious.  At home we had it with Carlo's Florentine Apple Cake - equally delicious.  

You should use the nicest honey you can find.  If yours is too hard and crystalline to mix easily with the yolks, first warm the jar in a pan of hot water.  The honey keeps the ice cream soft, which means you can serve it directly from the freezer.  The honey also prolongs the life of the ice cream, so you can keep it for several weeks.  But you won't want to.

Well, I've had complaints that there hasn't been enough butter or cream in the last couple of recipes, so this week you're getting cake and next week you'll get the ice cream to go with it.  Has anyone attempted the (very healthy) pot stickers or gravlax yet??

This is the first recipe I've sent you that I learnt at culinary school in San Francisco.  We're getting a little more advanced now.  Having done stocks and soups we're now on to oysters and profiteroles (tricky).  Let me know if there's something you want a recipe for and I'll see if I can help..

I was taught how to make this cake by Carlo Middione, who learnt it from his father, who lived and trained in Italy.  Carlo himself has 50 years of culinary experience and now runs an excellent Italian restaurant in San Francisco called Vivande.  I think the cake is delicious.  If possible, serve it while still warm, with coffee, vin santo, cold zabaglione or ice cream.  I think it goes well with wildflower honey ice cream.  It will keep well in the fridge for a week.

Figs have been in season here in San Francisco recently, so I have been experimenting with them.  You'll either love this or hate it I reckon.  Let me know how it goes if you try it.  If nothing else, it provides a good excuse to open a bottle of Amarone.

Traditionally in Italy this dish is made with Sambuca instead of Amarone.  I tried it with both and much prefer it with Amarone.  You could try any anise-flavoured spirit, or perhaps Marsala, port or brandy... 

What makes the dish work is the contrasting combination of the salty, crunchy pine nuts, the soft, cool ricotta and the warm, sweet figs and syrup.

Risotto made with red wine and/or radicchio is a classic Italian dish.  This version is an attempt to recreate the one I had at La Badia restaurant outside Orvieto, Umbria, with my friends Libby and Tim the week before their wedding.  It is rich, savoury and melts in the mouth.  Go easy on the cheese and herbs - it's always tempting to be generous but they can overpower the dish.