Category Archives: recipe idea

Barley and thank you

Posted on March 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

Barley and purple sprouts in white bowl, photo in very far corner

Sometimes I don’t pay attention while cooking. The other evening I put barley in the pan to boil for an hour and shook spirulina in for flavour and nutrition. I thought the raw superfood would add seaweed interest. (And my mind was elsewhere).

I was in denial for most of the hour barley was cooking then conceded defeat. I’d put too much of the strong algae powder in – it was revolting. I gave the barley grains (with sliced fennel) a quick rinse and started again.

New water, and now cubed sweet potato for colour and sweetness. It was touch-and-go but turned out alright. Especially served with Aconbury’s purple organic radish sprouts (a raw super salad) bought at Better Food in Bristol, and flicked with balsamic vinegar.

(I rate balsamic above all vinegars. Worth every penny.)

I served the dish up again for its photo shoot the next morning by the window next to my “Thank you John”.

John is my dad. He has had a big stroke that has changed him. In the light of losing him (last September) I suddenly became aware of how much I was made from him.

Hemp spaghetti with oyster mushrooms and seeds

Posted on March 7, 2008 | 1 comment

Hemp spaghetti, with steamed veg and fried almond flakes and seeds

I have been on a cream and cheese fest for the last twenty-four hours. Last night Ingrid Rose brought me some Manor Farm organic double cream (Manor Farm is the real deal by the way – real food lover farming) which I spooned on last night’s pudding, my midnight snack and this morning’s porridge. At a lunch time meeting today, I positioned myself next to the cheese-board and grazed.

Finally my body went: Stop! It was craving something fresh and vegan, so I decided to humour it, the poor darling.

Once back in Bristol after my meeting in corporate London (see pic below), I dropped into one of the best organic shops in the universe, Better Food.

This real food lover supermarket based in Bristol BS2 yielded all I needed for my eat-for-health dish.

I cooked the hemp spaghetti (cannapasta) (fun to say!) in boiling water.

Over it, I steamed organic purple sprouting broccoli (still in season) from the Walled Garden, sliced fennel and oyster mushrooms. Served with grated raw carrots.

My tour de force was melting creamed coconut in slugs of olive oil and pan roasting flaked almonds, sunflower seeds and sesame seeds, with dribbles of tamari at the end to make succulent pan juices.

Good to be home.

Atrium of corporate offices

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Posted in food, recipe idea

Tagged better food, oyster mushroom, vegan

Gurnard my friend

Posted on March 6, 2008 | 2 comments

Raw gunard in baking tin on a sofa

Ingrid Rose came to dinner and I pulled out all the stops. She feels strongly about looking after land and sea – so no cutting of ethical corners with Ingrid Rose.

The fish had to be caught sustainably – not plundered from the sea or factory-farmed, she said. I was grateful to be pushed in a real food lover direction.

I dithered at the Hand Picked Shellfish stall at the Bristol Farmer’s market, agonising between two sustainable fish. Would it be familiar mackerel or ugly-looking gurnard?

In an experimental mood, I chose the gurnard although it disturbed the very fibre of my being.

Yet gurnard never let us down. Flesh firm and sweet, similar to sea bass – and at £7 a kilo, about a third of the price.

Tragically and incomprehensibly, this sustainable fish is called “jetsam” – thrown back into the sea dead, discarded from a more glamorous, prized catch.

My grandmother would say: You can’t tell a book by its cover.

I felt a pang as I handled the sea creature’s body before cooking. I no longer felt judgmental about its heavy face and lugubrious name.

We roasted it (covered) with thyme, sliced shallots and mushrooms in olive oil for 20 minutes in a hot oven. Served it with faithful brown rice and trusty steamed kale.

I felt the gurnard had entered my life like a family animal or pet – and we ate it.

“Don’t be sad,” said Ingrid Rose. “Gurnards eat other fish.”

Gurnard, kale and brown rice plated with fish carcass in background

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Posted in food, rant, recipe idea

Tagged gurnard, sustainable fish

The Delia effect

Posted on March 3, 2008 | 2 comments

Small bowl of salad (green leaves, carrots and purple radish sprouts)

When Delia spoke to the masses and decreed the poor can eat battery-farmed chickens, did their sales rise?

The “Delia effect” describes the unprecedented sale of certain ingredients after being recommended by TV cook Delia Smith. Her influence is so vast that “Delia” has entered the dictionary.

I am pleased to report that sales for free-range poultry have soared.

This follows the high-profile campaign on TV’s Channel 4 by two other famous cooks, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Jamie Oliver. They called for higher standards of chicken welfare for all concerned, chickens and their eaters alike.

Sales of free-range poultry rose by 35 per cent in January (compared with January 2007) while sales of standard indoor birds fell by 7 per cent, according to market research company TNS. In response, Tesco doubled its order for higher-welfare chickens.

I mentioned what Delia said to my hairdresser.

Sharp intake of breath. “How can it ever be alright to eat a battery-farmed chicken?” she said.

Listen, she is an apprentice hairdresser so it was gratifying to hear being short of cash does not mean skimping on food quality.

Of course, you have to be a bit canny and cook from scratch. But that’s how most people in the world eat, and why so-called peasant food (such as pasta dishes, stews, curries) tastes so good.

Today’s picture is of a salad made by Chloe, with organic leaves, grated carrots and sprouting radish, that accompanied brown rice and lentils with fried onions, mushrooms and egg, that her dad Mike made. (PS the vase may be corporate but the beans were organic).

This princely meal that cost us about £1.50 each. I rest my case.

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Posted in celebrity chefs, eating well on a budget, food, rant, recipe idea

Tagged battery chickens, Delia Smith, free range, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Jamie Oliver

Love smoothie

Posted on February 23, 2008 | 5 comments

There is nothing more pleasant than a smoothie and its pleasures are fairly instant. If you love drinking smoothies in a café (as I did in La Ruca, see pic) it’s worth investing in a blender or smoothie maker. You need electricity to make a smoothie smooth. (If anyone knows differently, tell me.)

For those planning to live on smoothies (we all have times in our life like that) then vary the ingredients as much as possible.

The delight we derive from variety is nature’s way of making sure we get diverse nutrients.

Smoothies are personal. Everyone has different tastes. This website has loads of smoothie recipes to choose from. Luckily, so I can be lazy and tell you my favourite.

You need to stock up on a few things. I find cow’s milk makes me snuffle so I use soya milk (organic because I don’t want them GM beans) and also (if this is a week’s siege) I would splash out on a carton or two of rice or nut milk. You can make your own.

Banana forms the basis because it is a mood stabiliser (all that potassium, you know), as well as easy-to-eat and sweet. Add a grape or two, or a mango sliver. What fruits do you like?

Start by whisking/blending the banana. A teaspoon of nut butter (peanut, almond or cashew) for added protein? Some raw porridge oats? This is the time to whiz ’em in a mash with a tablespoon of milk or apple juice.

Pour the milk in slowly (a mugful for one). Look, if it gets gloopy, add liquid to gently thin it out.

You can blend in raw grated or ground ginger (great for my digestion) if you like. What I also adore is cinnamon.

Cooking is a bit of an experiment (no dish is the same each time) – that’s what keeps it interesting.

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Posted in food, recipe, recipe idea

Tagged milk substitutes, recipe, smoothie

Scallops for the faint-hearted

Posted on February 22, 2008 | 1 comment

Scallops are easy to cook. I bought a dozen for ten pounds at the Hand Picked Shellfish stall at Bristol Farmers’ Market. They take minutes to cook in a frying pan with olive oil and tiny slices of fresh chilli. You only need a couple per person to add utter luxury to a dish (four if you are feeling flush) and I added fried mushrooms for further economy.

I served the scallops with boiled potatoes topped with a dollop of taramasalata from the Radford Mill farm shop on Picton street. Plus chard and purple carrots. Yes, purple. Apparently this was a carrot’s original colour but when the protestant William of Orange nabbed the British throne in 1698, carrots were bred orange in celebration. Crikey, I only discovered that on Wednesday – a real food lover never stops learning.

Talking about learning, three-year-old Mackensie fried his own mushroom and scallops.

It is never too early to get up close and physical with cooking. As my mother (the real food lover empress) says: “Food is the best education you can give a child.” It’s a guaranteed life skill. Once you know how to choose raw ingredients and cook them, you can eat well for less.

Mackensie’s mama is a faint-hearted fish eater who hates bones. This was her first taste of scallops and they went down well. “They’ve got the texture of lychees,” she said. “And they are so easy to eat.”

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Posted in food, recipe idea

Tagged food, recipe, scallops

Couscous cousins

Posted on February 20, 2008 | 1 comment

Plate with grated carrots, greens and couscous

Why do people eat pot noodles when there is couscous is in the world? Listen, all you do is pour boiling water over the grains (processed to a teeny size), let five minutes go by while they plump up with water, add olive oil and lo, instant food.

My current top favourite couscous is made from kamut (by Probios) which is good news for all you wheat-sensitive types.

Tonight I added to the couscous, chives (one of the few herbs I can grow as I have pink fingers). I fried onions, mushrooms and chilli, then grated raw carrots (organic of course) and served them with steamed kale and purple sprouting broccoli (cut up quite small).

I made one meal stretch for two unexpected guests, Sarah, my middle daughter, and Juliette, my eldest niece. Juliette, just turned 18, explained how traumatic it was. However she immediately noticed the benefits of being grown up.

How? quizzed Sarah, my daughter the social anthropologist.

Juliette said: “Like. Oh. My. God. I suddenly stopped listening to my story tapes.”

Juliette (pictured) was also disappointed with Delia. “People who are interested in food are just not going to buy Delia. She seems really old fashioned now,” she said.

My mum – the original real food lover empress – is also incensed with Delia for recommending convenience foods while so-called championing the poor. My mother’s letter begins: “Bleeding heart Delia has not done her sums right.”

My mother’s family, immigrants from Russia, lived in the East End of London. They had little on the table and very rarely meat. But they ate well because they knew about food.

Reader, such is my provenance.

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Posted in celebrity chefs, food, rant, recipe idea

Tagged celebrity chefs, couscous, Delia Smith, food prices, kamut

Law of attraction

Posted on February 15, 2008 | Leave a comment

Spilt olive oil and reminder note to buy more

Valentine evening began on a real food lover note. A salad of organic fresh leaves from Better Food and sprouted radish from Aconbury, with sunflower seeds and vinaigrette. Steaming brown rice mixed with flakes of roasted organic salmon.

Listen, the fish is oak smoked by David Felce in his own kiln. The royal real food lover (my mother) says his smoked organic salmon is the best. It’s a family aspiration to have a good fishmonger. Can a girl have two? Bristol Farmers’ Market fulfills that role twice over – more on my next shopping trip. (Pic of David Felce below).

The Law of Attraction deems positive thinking can manifest wishes. I had duly “visualised” us grooving in a club. But post-dinner, things started to unravel. Winkler unprepared for travel action google-maps for directions, only to find the disco hall in disappointing darkness. Expectations of Valentine-harmony menace to take a dive. The only answer is funky Cheltenham Road on Bristol’s East Side.

11pm. The Valentine diners have dined. Bar one30 has had a tough night – the DJ was chef and the glass washer broke. But nothing dinted their welcome. It was like being at a festival – raw and real. The mixologist created a dream cocktail from my particular predilections: Baileys Irish Cream, Amaretto and honey vodka poured over crushed ice and sprinkled with ground cinnamon. Wow. (Seriously. Wow.) We named it Cocktail Zizi after one of my personalities.

When we left, the manager blew kisses, and the mixologist apologised for the chaos. Mike said, “It is much more interesting being at the edge of Valentine’s Day.”