Category Archives: recipe

Beetroot soup

Posted on November 22, 2008 | 7 comments

blended-beetroot-soup-cropped1

Sharon made this soup for me. We have known each other since we were eight, and been best friends since we were 21. She recently gave me a card. It said: “A friend is someone who likes you even though they know you”.

I have a demanding digestion that cannot tolerate tomatoes but finds root vegetables soothing. Knowing my idiosyncratic dietary needs, my pal made me a Winkler-friendly beetroot soup.

Nothing beats the beet. Its colour is dramatic but it’s not all for show. Those vivid reds deliver nutritional punch, a detoxifying antioxidant called betacyanin, according to nutritionist Natalie Savona.

I love this recipe because it uses the whole beetroot so no waste. An electric blender gives the soup its smooth texture. Wear an apron when preparing and cooking beetroot as it can stain.

Sharon found the recipe in her beloved Moro cookbook. Here’s a lazier version:

You need two bunches (750g) of organic beetroot, 1 large onion, 1 potato, oil, cumin, fresh parsley and a tasty vinegar such as red wine or balsamic.

1. Cook sliced onion in 4 tablespoons of olive oil for 10 gentle minutes in a large pan

2. Add 2 rounded teaspoons of cumin (or more – 2 did not make it taste cumin-y, or grind some fresh)

3. Stir cumin and onions for a minute till the cumin releases its aroma

4. To the onion potion add beetroot – 750g previously peeled and diced quite small

5. Also one peeled and diced potato to thicken the soup (hey, do we really need to peel pots? I am gonna experiment without). Note: the smaller the diced cubes the less time they take to cook

5. Add 1.25 litre of water and simmer for 15 minutes or until veg is easy-to-munch

6. Blend soup, return to the pan with 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar (or balsamic?) and season to taste

7. Add fresh parsley (or coriander I say) to each bowl of soup.

Do you like this sort of soup?

7 Comments

Posted in eating well on a budget, food, health, organic, recipe, recipe idea, vegan

Tagged , , , ,

Vegan noodle pie

Posted on November 7, 2008 | 16 comments

vegan-noodle-pie

I dedicate this post to fellow blogger, Meg Wolff, who recovered from cancer thanks to a macrobiotic diet and Donna, a woman who befriended me at a Devon train station, who – it turns out – also cured her cancer after following a macrobiotic diet for ten months.

When Donna first approached me at the brightly-lit station on a dark wintry rainy evening last week, saying: “Hi, I am Donna,” I thought she had mistaken me for someone she knew.

Or maybe we had met…in another dimension?! (I love these stories so bear with me, you rationalists).

Donna asked me: “Are you interested in shamanism?”. “Always” I answered because I love real-life mystery.

To which she replied: “You have good medicine around you.” And I was thrilled.

Donna gave me her card and we are now in email contact – that’s how I know about Donna’s macrobiotic diet, and Axminster’s Awareness Centre, and her parents, the original ‘organic kids’, now 89 and 91. So listen up, you young things, eat your organic greens to get some healthy longevity inside you!

This is all the encouragement I need to eat more organic grains and vegetables, keeping animal-food to a minimum…

Donna and my other dedicatee, Meg Wolff, share many beliefs including the magic of writing things down.

Go visit Meg Wolff’s inspiring blog and I won’t even mind if you don’t come back.

Ah, you are back. OK, so Meg sent a newsletter which included a recipe for vegan lasagna. As a mama, I made lasagna but never considered how to veganise it – until this moment!

So I played around with Meg’s original recipe and here is mine – all ingredients from my local organic shop, the Better Food Company.

I peeled and chopped a big slice of pumpkin, putting the chopped-up pieces gently oiled, in a roasting pan to sizzle away in a medium-hot oven for 40 minutes.

For oil, I used Clearspring organic sunflower seed oil (first cold pressing for a naturally-nutty taste), a new discovery thanks to speaking coach, John Dawson.

While the pumpkin pieces were doing their thing in the oven, I made a vegan white sauce with organic soya milk, sunflower margarine and Dove’s rye flour, adding sliced fennel and mushroom, and tamari sauce, for interest and taste.

Then I drained and mashed 450g of tofu with gently-fried slices of onions and some sprinkling of smoked paprika.

I dunked 50g of gluten-free buckwheat noodles in a pan of boiling water until they softened – about five minutes.

Then I assembled my layers into an oiled-casserole dish, starting with the drained noodles covered with half the fennel and mushroom sauce, followed by the mashed-up tofu and the roasted pumpkin pieces, followed by the rest of the sauce – and baked it for 20 minutes.

I served it with fresh mustard leaves which grow on my balcony in salad pots from Cleeve nursery bought at the Organic Food Festival in Bristol last September – an easy way to have fresh leaves (see pic below)!

It was comfort food-supreme with the baked noodles reminiscent of lokshen pudding from the alter heim.

Happy Obama week!

salad-growing-on-a-balcony

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

16 Comments

Posted in eating well on a budget, food, health, organic, recipe, recipe idea, restaurant, vegan

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Baked apples

Posted on September 16, 2008 | 6 comments

I searched my trusty cookery books but in the end only Mrs Beeton’s yielded a recipe for baked apples. I customised it, omitting sugar, and used chopped-up organic dates and prunes plus sultanas and sunflower seeds to stuff the de-cored apples. I dotted butter on top, and placed the stuffed unpeeled apples in an ovenproof dish with a thumbnail of water and baked it for an hour at Gas mark 4 (180 degrees).

They emerged from the oven, fluffed-up apple-flesh bursting from their heat-withered skin. Hmmmm, worthy contenders for a competition, methinks…

My apples were organic, natch, because I didn’t fancy the cocktail of factory-made pesticides sprayed on most apples.

I had bought my big fat organic cooking apples at Bristol Farmers’ Market from the stall of the wondrous Avon Organic Group (below). I say wondrous because it is a voluntary group that helps maintain a local organic orchard and allotments in the city. Where would we be without such dedication?

It’s Apple day on October 21. I keep noticing the little darlings ripening on trees in the stillness of autumn.

If you love baked apples, and you ever come across an apple-corer, do not hesitate. Just buy it. A corer costs a few pounds and will be your lifelong-kitchen friend even if you only use it once a year.

I value mine so much, I photographed it on a velvet cushion (see below).

PS Emboldened by Antonia’s invite (see comments), I hereby enter the humble apples into their second competition at Food Glorious Food, organised in aid of British Food Fortnight.

6 Comments

Posted in food, organic, recipe, recipe idea

Tagged , , , ,

Beetroot, chocolate (and raw cocoa) brownies

Posted on July 16, 2008 | 9 comments

Beetroot, (chocolate and raw cocoa) brownies

I read about this recipe in the riveting Riverford Farm Cook Book I have been raving about, only I have customised it somewhat.

I have never thought about beetroot in cakes until I read Riverford’s recipe and then it was an “of course” moment – beetroot cake is the new carrot cake. The beets are sweet-tasting, easy to mush when cooked and not too watery. And plentiful, seasonal and grown-locally.

I used half the sugar the recipe called for, and also omitted its cocoa powder and baking powder. This was after eating the most wonderful date-and-walnut cake at Saturday’s party, baked by the Great Cake Company. Great, indeed. Cakemaker, Chris, generously shared her secret: rice flour, loads of butter and eggs. And no raising agents. Not necessary, she said.

Instant liberation! No more raising agents – just eggs. Yippee.

Going slightly off piste, I also added soaked prunes and raw cocoa nibs.

And here, thanks to the Riverford Farm Cook Book, is how I did it.

I melted a 150g bar of Green & Black’s cooking chocolate with 200g of butter, cubed, in a bowl, over a pan of boiling water.

The recipe calls for 250g but a 150g bar seemed to do it, plus I added 150g of raw cocoa nibs which are a natural stimulant and highly nutritious. Raw cocoa stays wildly crunchy and feels terribly healthy.

I had cooked the 250g beetroot the day before and now I whizzed the peeled purple beauties (and about 12 soaked prunes) in my trusty food processor, dating circa 1980s. The recipes calls for three eggs, but I whizzed-in four eggs (organic and free range of course), one by one. Then more whizzing with 100g of rapadura sugar (instead of the recipe’s 200g caster sugar).

Then with a large spoon, I folded in 50g of rice flour (which is gluten-free) and 100g ground almonds. All ingredients were organic, naturellement.

I miraculously found a baking tin of roughly the right proportions (28x18cm), greased it with butter and lined it with foil as I had no baking parchment. And placed it in the preheated oven at Gas 4/180 degrees C. It took half-an-hour. But don’t overcook it!

Omigod, were those brownies yum. Not too sweet, with crunchy bits and mousse-like lightness.

9 Comments

Posted in food, health, organic, recipe

Tagged , , , , ,

Quick lettuce soup

Posted on July 5, 2008 | 4 comments

Lettuce soup

It was buy one, get one free at the organic supermarket in Bristol.

The Better Food assistant pointed out the bargain gem lettuces, fresh from the company’s Walled Garden.

I thought: oat-thickened lettuce soup. The perfect opportunity to share the quickest healthy-soup recipe I know. You basically boil water with butter, add oats to thicken and then the lettuce which takes seconds to cook.

Boil 1 pint of water with 1 ounce (30g) of butter. Add 1 ounce of rolled oats. Bring the water, butter and oats to the boil. Simmer for five minutes to cook the oats. Add a lettuce, chopped. Season with lots of black pepper but a little salt. Turn off the heat after several minutes as lettuce cooks quickly. And will carry on cooking in the water.

I think blending this soup makes it more unctious. I blended mine (see pic).

I came across it the other day. My mother was cooking it when I got back from the Guild of Food Writers Awards. Appropriately, the recipe came from the pen of one of our best food writers, the late Jane Grigson (mother of Sophie).

I love Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book, which has recipes for every veg from artichoke to yam. My mum made hers with spinach, but the Grigson original is Irish Nettle Pottage.

I have had this book since 1980 so why, oh why, did I not think to delve in, in my nettle-soup phase?

On the subject of mistakes, I broke one glass within ten minutes of leaving the charity shop with five (for a fiver). When I photographed the damage, it had beauty (see below).

I feel a moral coming on.

Mistakes are like jewels in the crown because we can learn from them.

Broken wine glass

4 Comments

Posted in celebrity chefs, eating well on a budget, food, health, organic, producers, recipe, recipe idea

Tagged , , ,

Tofu smoothie offering

Posted on June 22, 2008 | 3 comments

Tofu smoothie

I lay on my bed, as heavy as a stone. How to eat when your energy deserts you? Gazing up at my lampshade reminded me of the yellow-themed photo competition in aid of Bri, the young food blogger who has breast cancer.

Here is my offering. A tofu smoothie in a recycled glass held up against my yellow lampshade (with yellow scarf draped over the door).

Tofu is a miracle food because it’s protein-rich but incredibly light and easy-to-digest. Made from bean curd, it’s a great invalid food because meat and dairy can be a bit hardcore when you are feeling weak.

Even chewing can be hardcore. So I blended everything and all you have to do is sip this creamy smoothie, gently.

I whizzed up 225g tofu, 2 tablespoons of ground almonds (or same amounts of peanut butter/almond butter), one sliced banana, 300 mls (half pint) rice milk and a teaspoon of cinnamon (and the same of turmeric for yellow-colour and its fabulous health properties).

Below, I pictured the half-empty tofu packet as well as a Tibetan mandala puja ceremony I went to at the Pierian centre today. The monk had spent the last week (it was Refugee week) making a mandala from rainbow-coloured sand but today he dismantled it, prayerfully.

We followed him to Bristol’s river Frome where he cast the sand grains into the water, a reminder of both life’s impermanence and the eternal and reviving now.

Tofu in a bagTibetan mandala puja ceremonyMandala puja ceremony

3 Comments

Posted in food, health, recipe, recipe idea, vegan

Tagged , , , , ,

Icing on the cake

Posted on April 13, 2008 | 1 comment

Chocolate cake

As a mama of three grown-up darlings, I have made my fair share of birthday cakes. However I have only just discovered this most splendifirous way to ice them.

The icing is melted chocolate with extra lubrication, so it spreads like a dream.

I baked three cakes. One was dry, another crumbled.

But this marvellous icing rescued them from oblivion and gave them star status. Thanks to the icing, people raved about its chocolateness and were coming back for more.

So praise be to Lulu Grimes for her magic recipe in a back issue of Olive magazine.

The amounts were 400g of chocolate (I used Green & Black’s organic cooking chocolate – 150g each bar – for a profound chocolate experience), 25g of butter and 284ml of single cream. Plus 200g icing sugar.

However after baking cakes (one for the office and two for our Five Rhythms dance class), I was bored of weighing.

When I get bored, watch out.

I feverishly broke up three (yes, three) bars of Green & Black’s organic cooking chocolate into a non-stick pan, melted in slices of (organic) butter and slugged in double cream. It took minutes to become liquidy-enough to spread easily.

I split the cakes, sandwiched in the soft warm icing with the flat of a knife and smoothed more over the top of the whole. (Do this before the icing gets cold and hardens).

I pressed white chocolate buttons into the (still) soft icing to spell M. (How easy was that? Wish I had thought of this when I was a maternal cake-industry).

A kind Five Rhythms dancer helped to cut cake (see pic below). Happy birthday, Maude!

Cutting cake at Five Rhythms

1 Comment

Posted in food, recipe

Tagged , , ,

Two soups – beetroot and pea

Posted on April 5, 2008 | 2 comments

Two soups, pea and beetroot

This two-soup soup was unplanned, a happy result of making pea soup one day, and beetroot soup the next.

Full of fibre and nutrients, it has (unusual for me) no oil or butter. Here is how I did it, food fans.

First, the pea soup. I took 200g of dried split organic peas and covered them with twice their volume with water. Then I added an onion pierced with a few cloves (thank you, queen of vegetarian cooking, Rose Elliot).

Then I cooked it for 40 minutes with a level teaspoon of untreated rock salt. And that’s it! I did not even need to blend because the obedient peas went mushy all by themselves.

As for the beetroot soup, I peeled two of the violent purple things and cut them into cubes (be careful of staining!). Thinks: as the beetroot were organic, did I need to peel? Must experiment with unpeeled next time as do not wish to shortchange myself of extra vitamins oft found in the skin.

Then I added a handful of split red lentils to thicken the soup in an innocuous way. Water to cover (about two mugsful). Plus one level teaspoon of rock salt (Do see the comments here where medical herbalist Elena Renier and I talk salt).

Still on the subject of salt: who needs a silly stock cube? Its main taste comes from salt. So why not bypass the unecessary cube – with all its weird additives – and just add a level teaspoon of sea salt instead?

The lentils and beetroot took half-an-hour to become tender to my teeth. I gave them a helping hand with my power tool, the hand-held blender. This is one kitchen device I would not be without.

Thank you, universe, for letting me have easy access to electricity, unlike the global majority. I am sure there is enough to go round if we could share resources more equally. More fairness please!

2 Comments

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

Tagged , , , , , ,

I love hummus

Posted on April 4, 2008 | Leave a comment

A blog of hummous on toast made with spelt on a plate

One of the best things about not being in the office this week was having time to make hummus. I ended up making several batches, each as subtly different as the last.

I kicked off with 200g dried organic chickpeas (from some supermarkets and all wholefood shops). Hard as bullets, I soaked them overnight in water and then cooked them (in the same water) for an hour until soft enough to eat. Of course, you can use tins for speed and this is a fab recipe.

(Mind you, the comments in above website were also instructive. I learnt I could use roasted sesame seeds instead of tahini. I had panicked because no exotic tahini could be found in this English seaside town. Luckily my saviour, Marshford, had a jar or two of the wondrous middle-eastern sesame seed paste.)

Using the hand-held blender, I noisily blended one clove of garlic (use more if no one objects) in the juice of one lemon, water from the cooked chickpeas (2 Tbs – that’s table not teaspoons!), olive oil (2 Tbs) and the yummy, runny, organic sesame seed paste (2 Tbs).  I added rock salt to taste (being careful not to oversalt – so easy to do), and a teaspoon each of ground cumin and coriander.

Once all the easy bits were blended, I added the fibrous chickpeas and mashed through them with my trusted electric tool.

I have written about hummus before but it is a food that bears repetition. And experimentation. When I ran out of lemon juice, I used lime and no one noticed.

Served with toast (in my case, spelt from the wondrous Common Loaf), I produced a nutrient-rich and high-fibre protein-filled snack.

The vegetarians and the world’s wise peasants know that combining pulses with grains (and subsituting, if you wish, pulses/grains for seeds) makes a protein equal to that delivered by the dear animals.

Leave a comment

Posted in eating well on a budget, food, recipe, recipe idea, vegan

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Almond and chocolate cake

Posted on March 10, 2008 | 1 comment

Cake with a pot of clotted cream

Cakes need precision. Although I rarely use scales, they come out in a baking moment. Still, as long as you have the basic riff down – such as the proportion to eggs to sugar to butter to flour – there’s some room to improvise.

My sister and her partner came for dinner on Saturday and I was visited by a vision of an almond and chocolate cake. (Mercedes was out of town so no chance of her faultless recipe.)

I alighted on a recipe from the internet, and another one from a back issue of Olive magazine. But oh. One recipe was in ounces, the other in grammes. And I am numerically challenged.

On top of which we all got soaked in the blustery rain which meant I had to lie down on our return. When I regained consciousness, I had 40 minutes to make dinner for four and whip up my almond vision.

I kept trying to talk myself out of attempting a cake under such circumstances. But I wouldn’t listen. While the brown rice was cooking, spinach steaming, sweet potato and coconut simmering and sunflower seeds roasting, I broke two eggs in a bowl and started whisking.

No turning back now. I was committed. The Olive magazine recipe said 2 eggs go with 90g of butter, 200g of chocolate, 55g of sugar and 150g of ground almonds. After that I was on my own.

I substituted raw cocoa nibs for the melted chocolate and chopped up goji berries and crystallised ginger as small as I could, as time unmercifully ticked by.

The scales were the sort that helpfully mark weights like 200g with a bold black stripe but leave the lesser 50g ones to your imagination.

I folded in the ground almonds, the raw chocolate, the melted butter (I thought I’d better melt something), the chopped berries and ginger into the eggs, whisked, with an invented amount of rapadura sugar.

My cake tin was too large so I filled it with water and placed a smaller one inside it. I forgot to grease the smaller one or the knowledge that cake tins are not watertight. I gave my concoction 30 minutes in a Gas Mark six oven and served it with local organic clotted cream from the other wonderful organic shop in my life, Marshford, in North Devon.

And miraculously, the cake was a winner. The combination of crunchy raw cocoa, goji berries and ginger was exotic. (Although a less hot oven might have made the almonds moister).

Synchronistically, on the same day, a fellow food blogger was making a similar cake, whose recipe I most heartily commend.

1 Comment

Posted in food, recipe

Tagged , , ,