Author Archives: Monica

How To Eat More Vegetables

This week is National Vegetarian Week, 20-26 May, a week devoted to all things veggie. Loads of people are now singing the praises of a meat-free (or mostly meat-free) diet. Even notorious carnivore Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall now eats little meat or fish, declaring in the Guardian recently: “we need to eat more vegetables and less flesh because vegetables are the foods that do us the most good and our planet the least harm.” (Which I basically agree with.)

It just goes to show that you don’t need to be a vegetarian to appreciate that vegetables are a good thing and most of us should be eating more of them. National Vegetarian Week, and its subsequent outpouring of recipes and resources from all those involved, can be a good starting point for those who need a little vegetable inspiration.

Here are my suggestions for how to eat more vegetables, including easy vegetables to start with, and a rock solid vegetarian recipe that will please all palettes (provided they can handle a bit of spice).

Get Some Vegetables

Start with easy vegetables. By “easy”, I mean easy to clean, prepare and cook (a muddy beetroot is not a good place to start). A beautiful vegetable, raw or cooked can form the basis for any number of dishes, be it pasta, lentils, omelettes, pizzas…even a humble green salad can be perked up with a few grilled bell peppers.

Here are my go-to staple vegetables, organised by cooking technique, for easy-to-make and tasty-to-eat vegetarian and vegan meals:

Easy to cook greens (stir-fry with onion and garlic, season with salt and pepper – add chilli flakes if you want a kick): Kale, cabbage, spring greens, spinach, swiss chard
Good stir-fry vegetables (a great basis for tossing with pasta, rice, beans or lentils for a complete meal; garnish with crumbled feta or some toasted nuts and seeds and you’ll be glad you did): Carrots, peppers, mushrooms, greens, broccoli, asparagus, green beans
Good raw vegetables (simply slice / chop and eat, with hummus or salad dressing if you’d like): Carrots, cucumber, broccoli, cauliflower, peppers, lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, radishes
Vegetables that are good on the BBQ (baste with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, throw it on the BBQ – this is a basic one-stop solution to making vegetables amazing): Asparagus, courgettes / zucchini, mushrooms, bell peppers

A Good Vegetarian Meal Doesn’t Try to Fake it

Of course, a few vegetables alone don’t make a meal. So what are your options? My advice is to cook something that is inherently vegetarian and not some kind of mock-meat sausage in disguise (this will only leave you banging for bangers). If there’s one cuisine that I have had consistent success with in pleasing all food lovers, vegetarians and omnivores alike, it is Indian food. And if there’s one dish that has rocked all of their worlds, it’s my lentil dal.

Dal is awesome because it’s vegetarian (vegan, in fact) by nature, easy and quick to make, and very adaptable to all manners of vegetables. You can make it as is, as simple lentils, or you can add in whatever vegetables you have on hand (cauliflower and spinach work especially well, but I’ve also had good success with carrots, chard and purple sprouting broccoli).

Served with some basmati rice (and if you’re feeling adventures, a cucumber and coconut salad), then you’ve got yourself a meal that’s nutritious, flavoursome and won’t make you think about the meat you’re not eating. Seriously, I have meat-eating friends who ask for this dal specifically when they come to visit. And a recent Airbnb guest, a real dal aficionado declared it “better than the dal I usually make at home”. It’s pretty special.

5.0 from 2 reviews

How To Eat More Vegetables

Serves: 6

Panch Phoran is a spice blend of fenugreek, mustard seeds, onion seed, fennel seeds and cumin seeds. You can buy the blend in Indian supermarkets, or make it yourself by combining equal parts of each of the above seeds. If you do make it yourself, make a lot of it, because you’ll be making this dal again and again. No joke.

Ingredients

250 grams red lentils (masoor dal)
4 cups water
1 teaspoon turmeric
olive oil
1 tablespoon panch shoran (a seed blend of equal parts fenugreek, mustard seed, onion seed, fennel seed and cumin seed)
10-20 curry leaves
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp minced ginger
400g tinned diced tomatoes
pinch of chili flakes (optional)
salt to taste
1 cup (or more) of spinach, cauliflower or any other vegetable you’d like to use in your dal

Instructions

Combine the red lentils, water and turmeric in a pot. Bring to a boil then reduce the heat and simmer until the dal is tender, about 20-30 minutes.
While the lentils cook, heat the olive oil in a large skillet. Add the panch phoran and curry leaves. As soon as the seeds start to pop, add the onion, garlic and ginger. Cook until the onion is soft (it should not brown).
Add the tomatoes, cooked lentils, chili and salt. Cook for at least 10 minutes to allow the flavours to bend. Add your desired vegetable and let them simmer in the dal until they are cooked. Note: if using spinach or any other quick-cooking green, add this at the very end just before serving.
Garnish with cilantro, if you’d like. Serve hot with basmati rice or warm naan bread.

This post originally appeared on Great British Chefs website.

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Wild garlic pesto, two ways

I was recently given two very large bags of wild garlic foraged from London by recent-Airbnb-guest-turned-friend-and-colleague Kanna Ingleson. Wild garlic is a leafy herb that tastes and smells much like garlic and grows wild in woodland across the UK. It’s a forager’s favourite but is oddly hard to find in my local area in Wiltshire. Thankfully, there are hard-foraging people like Kanna in this world and I like the slice of irony that found the big bad City saving my wild garlic day here in the countryside (let’s take a moment now to give it up to London for rocking the green space).

There is lots to be done with wild garlic: soup, frittatas, risotto, ravioli… and being so akin to garlic, wild garlic can easily be used in any recipe where garlic is called for. Add a few chopped leaves to a salad, stir the greens in with pasta, add to soups, stews, you name it. Yes, options abound, but even so, to eat all of this wild garlic within the couple of weeks it would survive in the fridge would not have done my breath (or my social life) any favours. So the question turned to storage. I did freeze some of the leaves, but decided to turn a fair bunch of it into pesto, too.

The first pesto was a no-brainer: walnut and wild garlic pesto adapted from this parsley pesto recipe that I love. I’ve made it before and it’s perhaps my favourite pesto (be it with wild garlic, parsley or any combination of herbs) because it is most versatile – I love it as a topping for pizza, swirled into soup or blobbed on toasted sourdough with sautéed mushrooms and arugula.

The second pesto is a sun-dried tomato and wild garlic pesto adapted from this recipe for sun-dried tomato and basil pesto. I omitted the garlic and parmesan, substituted wild garlic for basil and added lemon and more pine nuts. Kanna also gave me the idea of adding lemon zest and chilli, so that went in there too. Props to my friend Sam from Shipton Mill who knows a thing or two about delivery devices for good bread and was on hand to help bring the pesto together. We ended up eating a fair bit of it as an appetizer with Turkish flatbread, hot off the grill.

(Hefty tip for UK fans of sun-dried tomatoes: you can buy them in bulk on Amazon: £11.55 for a kilo, and they’re organic!)

If I have one struggle with pesto, it’s this: getting the consistency right. I like mine chunky, but it’s easy to over-process the nuts, creating more of a pesto paste, which is fine, but I like some texture. The easiest way I found to achieve this is by putting the nuts in towards the end of the pulsing process, or leaving them out altogether and hand-processing the nuts with a mortar and pestle. It all depends on what your up for, and how much you can be bothered.

You’ll also notice that both of these wild garlic pestos are vegan – and you totally won’t miss the cheese.

The wild garlic pesto keeps well in the fridge for a few weeks, as long as you keep it covered with a good layer of olive oil. Or do as I do and store it in the freezer (I freeze the pesto in ice cube trays).

Here’s some more wild garlic stuff you might like:

Wild garlic and potato frittata, one of my earlier wild garlic discoveries [smarterfitter.com]
Last year’s wild garlic forage in the Forest of Dean with Gloria Nicol [flickr.com]
Gloria’s delicious wild garlic pesto, made with the traditional way with parmesan and pine nuts [laundryetc.co.uk]
Why wild garlic is good for you [guardian.co.uk]
Wild garlic recipes from Rachel Demuth, including her neat wild garlic malfatti, sort of like a gnocchi made with ricotta [vegetariancookeryschool.com]
How to have wild garlic all year round, Kavey’s super simple method of preserving wild garlic by blitzing it with oil and freezing it [kaveyeats.com]

5.0 from 1 reviews

Wild Garlic & Walnut Pesto

Ingredients

100g walnuts, toasted
50g wild garlic, washed and dried
About 150ml good olive oil (or extra-virgin rapeseed oil)
Zest and juice of ½ lemon
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

Put the walnuts into a food processor and process until finely chopped but still with some granular texture.
Add the wild garlic and blitz again to chop the leaves, then begin trickling in the oil while the processor runs. Stop when you have a sloppy purée.
Taste, season as necessary with lemon juice, salt and pepper.
Store in the fridge – if you completely cover the surface of the pesto with oil so all air is excluded, it should keep for a couple of weeks. Or freeze it!

5.0 from 1 reviews

Wild Garlic & Sundried Tomato Pesto

Ingredients

150 g sun-dried tomatoes, soaked in boiling water
100g wild garlic, washed and dried
½ cup pine nuts, toasted
zest and juice of one lemon
2 tsp red chilli flakes  (optional)
1 cup olive oil
salt and pepper

Instructions

Combine sun-dried tomatoes, and a bit of the oil in a food processor and pulse until the sun-dried tomatoes are roughly chopped (adding more olive oil as necessary).
Add the pine nuts and pulse until those are roughly chopped, too.
Add the wild garlic and pulse until it approaches the consistency you like for pesto (I like mine chunky).
Add the lemon and a few good grinds of black pepper, pulse a few times, then taste. Add more lemon, salt, or pepper as you see fit.

9 Comments

Asparagus: making healthy food less boring

We’re in the prime of British asparagus season, with May being Asparagus Month and a great time to explore this vegetable in all its many shapes and guises. Asparagus is, in general, a pretty awesome vegetable and happens to be extremely handy for people who do the intermittent fasting (aka 5:2 fast diet) thing. In fact, asparagus is good for anyone watching their calories – one medium spear of asparagus has just 3 calories but packs loads of flavour and can make traditional, boring “diet foods” into something quite interesting.

Case in point: salads. This is a favourite for many fasters and calorie counters because it allows one to have a big ol’ pile of food – quite nutritious food, at that – without necessarily having a big ol’ pile of calories along with it. But salads can be problematic: how many of us have eating a gargantuan salad only to find ourselves deeply unsatisfied at the end of it?

Let’s face it, there are many dimensions to food satisfaction: not only quantity, but flavour and texture, too. This is where asparagus can come to a salad’s rescue with its notable flavour and crisp bite (provided you don’t boil it to death). It also pairs extremely well with other fast-friendly foods like eggs and potatoes, plus fresh herbs like dill, tarragon and chives, which all together can make a salad so much more than a pile of leaves.

Dressing helps, too, but even a simple treatment of lemon juice and olive oil with salt and pepper can go along way (a little Parmesan helps, too, which is fairly low-calorie as far as cheeses go). But if you want to take it a little further, I can heartily recommend the tarragon vinaigrette recipe I’ve posted below, a little something I learned from The Vegetarian Cookery School that has proved infinitely versatile and especially stunning with potato, eggs and, yes, asparagus. All together it makes for an incredibly flavoursome fast day lunch or dinner dish – it clocks in at about 250 Calories, leaving you plenty of extra calories (250 if you’re a woman, 350 if you’re a man) for another asparagus session for later in the day.

Asparagus, Egg and Potato Salad with Tarragon Vinaigrette

You can adapt this recipe to use whatever salad vegetables you have on hand; the dressing is marvellously versatile, but is especially good with potatoes and light cheeses like ricotta and fresh goats curd. Calories: ~250.

5 asparagus spears, blanched and slice into 3cm pieces
2 boiled new potatoes (~1/2 cup or 80g)
1 carrot, julienned
1 tomato, sliced into wedges
Lettuce leaves
1 Tbsp tarragon vinaigrette (see below)
1 boiled egg
salt and pepper
lemon to serve

Tarragon vinaigrette:

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp chopped fresh tarragon
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp honey
pinch salt & pepper

Method:

Make the tarragon vinaigrette by whisking together all of the ingredients in a bowl (this makes more than you’ll need so store the rest for future salads).
Combine the asparagus, potatoes, carrots, tomato and lettuce leaves in a bowl. Toss with ~1 Tbsp of tarragon vinaigrette, plus a pinch of salt and a good grind of pepper.
Serve garnished with the boiled egg and a lemon wedge (in case it needs a little extra zing).

This post originally appeared on Great British Chefs.

4 Comments

Fitbit Review and a Giveaway

Lately I’ve been thinking lots about gamification and using game strategies to achieve goals, particularly those related to health and fitness. I’m the sort of person who responds well to numbers and data, and quite like the idea of attaching rewards to data-driven results.

So last December I decided I wanted to buy a pedometer to help motivate me to stay active while visiting Chicago over the holidays. A little research and some chatter with my sister, Stephanie, quickly saw my $12 pedometer lust balloon into something more sophisticated. And so we found the Fitbit One, a $90 gadget that tracks steps, distance, calories burned, stairs climbed and sleep. We both bought one (go Team!).

In the four months since owning the Fitbit, I find I’ve become – quite literally – attached to the thing.

It’s not just about the device – it’s the whole Fitbit website / web app package that syncs up with it. The app lets you set goals for various parameters (steps / miles walked, floors climbed, weight, etc) and then tracks your progress towards those goals on a daily basis. Feeling good is very much a one-day-at-a-time thing, and the Fitbit really does make the whole fit and active thing a lot more interesting. Who doesn’t like a good chart?

The Fitbit features I like the most:

Good apps: The Fitbit web and iPhone apps allow you to track other things besides data recorded by the Fitbit, including weight, activities (handy for swimmers like me – the Fitbit is NOT waterproof!), and food. In fact I’ve even read on some of the Fitbit forums that there are people using the apps without actually owning the Fitbit – the food, weight and exercise tracking is good enough to use even without the Fitbit.
iPhone friendly: And speaking of the app, I especially like the iPhone app, which is almost exclusively what I use. Even the Calorie counting aspect is better than most I’ve seen.
Social: The web app lets you follow friends who have Fitbits, which I love because my sister has a Fitbit, too. Go Team Shaw!
Motivating: I guess this is the most important thing of all. The Fitbit really does motivate me to walk more and reach my daily target (currently set at 10,000 steps). What really shocks me is when I wear it on a day out in London and I realise how LITTLE I walk now that I don’t live in the City. Not that I’d give up the country idyl and working from home, but it’s a much needed reminder to get off my duff once in a while and go for a stroll.
Gamifying: Steps walked, floors climbed, calories burned, they’re all “points” in the game of getting fit, and Fitbit “rewards” you with various badges for different achievements (e.g. walking 40,000 steps in a day, getting to 100 total lifetime miles, and so on). I’d like to come up with a system for attaching these achievements to more interesting goals – it’d be nice if I could define my rewards in Fitbit, so it could tell me when I’ve earned, for example, something off of my Amazon wishlist, or a pint at the pub (though having said that, one of my goals in using the Fitbit is to find non-food / non-alcohol motivators, so I better stick with Amazon, or tattoos, or original art).
Hackable: The Fitbit API lets you program your Fitbit to trigger events. For example, one guy hacked his Fitbit to turn off the power to his fridge if he didn’t walk enough. You could do the same to turn off your TV, computer, Internet, etc. Hardcore, though I’d be more apt to use the API for good (reward) verses evil (punishment). This would, of course, require me to be a mad elite computer programmer, which I’m not. So I hope someone else will step up to the plate for me.

The Fitbit isn’t perfect, however…

It’s really easy to lose, but on the plus side, Fitbit has a very responsive and understanding customer support team.
In order to track sleep, you’re supposed to wear their Fitbit on your wrist using a velcro wrist strap thing. It’s kind of uncomfortable and is prone to fall off in the middle of the night.

My sister, who presents a slightly different use case, adds…

Android syncing only works with two phones: Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II. This is just crazy given there are over 70+ models available in the US alone. Yes, iOS is more popular, but the Android share can’t be ignored! [You can read Fitbit's reason for developing their apps this way on their blog.]
The Fitbit really should come with some kind of a security clip to attach to a belt loop…anything to secure it better. [Amen.]
I can’t track specific workouts unless I enter them manually. It means I often don’t enter them at all.
Some activities produce false step counts. Horse back riding, for example: it says I did x amount of steps, but obviously I didn’t. Yes I burned calories, but it’s just not calculated right. I have to remove the Fitbit if I want to keep my step count accurate.
It doesn’t track my average speed.

Verdict…

The Fitbit has a few flaws but what gadget doesn’t? I’m addicted to thing, which is really a testament to its worthiness as a great life hacking tool. Or maybe it’s just evidence of my geekiness? Either way, I do believe I’m actually fitter for owning a Fitbit. Or at least, I’m more motivated to keep my activity levels up, and motivation is often the hardest part. And looking at my monthly step average since owning the Fitbit, it seems to be working (this is why I love data):

And for the record, Fitbit didn’t ask me to say any of this. But they did give me something groovy to give away. Read on.

Giveaway time…

The folks at Fitbit kindly gave me one of their Fitbit Zip Wireless Activity Tracker to give away. This is much like my Fitbit One but it doesn’t have the sleep tracking capabilities. You can read all about the Fitbit Zip on the Fitbit website. And as you can see, it gets great reviews on Amazon!

To enter, simply complete the Rafflecopter widget below (disclaimer: I’ve never used Rafflecopter so I hope it all works smoothly, but if you have any troubles just let me know). There is one main way to enter and various ways to get bonus entries (which I will verify so please be honest).

This giveaway is open to everyone (fortunately the Zip is lightweight so I don’t mind shipping it overseas – Fitbits for all!). Entries close on May 21, 2013. The winner will be chosen randomly using Rafflecopter and notified by email.

Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

34 Comments

Darjeeling Express Supperclub, London

I recently had the pleasure of attending one of Asma Khan’s Darjeeling Express Supperclubs, a sort of practise run for her upcoming pop-lunch at The Cinnamon Club on April 27th. It was such a memorable evening in both flavour and experience that I wanted to share a few words about it.

Asma’s been doing supperclubs for a while now, cooking from the Nawabi/Mughal school of cuisine which is part of her heritage. Her experience shows in the way she’s totally nailed the whole supperclub experience. It begins in the dining room, which you could almost confuse for a restaurant; the place is spotless, devoid of clutter, but full of patterns and textures and great lighting for photographs.

The dinner, too, was incredibly well-organised. But of course, the real memory comes down to the food, which is just what you’d hope for: delicious, home-cooked Indian cuisine. But it was more than that. It was… surprising. While some courses were as you might expect… some samosas here, a paneer dish there… sometimes Asma emerged from the kitchen with a platter of something that just took everyone’s breath away.

Case in point was the mirchi ka salaan (above), which I can only equate to boiled egg curry. And then there was the khoobani ka meetha – Asma’s apricots in syrup with cream – which had us all very happy we’d (mostly) saved room for dessert.

The highlight for me was this Cashewnut Alo: chillis and cabbage in a sort of cashew like “sauce”. I’d never had anything like this before, and I’m a sucker for cabbage. I would take a cooking class with Asma just to learn this dish alone.

This to me is the key to a good supperclub, or really, any meal: surprise the guests. Give them the unexpected. Leave them with something to remember (Asma did this even further by sending us all home with a jar of her homemade tamarind chutney).

The other reason I loved this supperclub was Asma herself: you can tell with every dish she brings out that she is extremely proud of the food she’s created. And yet she’s humble, friendly and lots of fun, too. We laughed a lot that evening (at what I can’t totally remember, which may have something to do with the bottle of very good Sorelle Bronca Prosecco I brought from Life’s a Bottle and failed to share with anyone else at the table).

Yesterday I showed Asma my photos and she said: “I do not dress up and garnish my food excessively – you have captured the dishes in the way it is served traditionally.” Maybe that’s why we were all so enamoured by Asma and her supperclub: she really does cook from the heart, and she makes you feel at home.

Big thanks to Kavey for inviting me to Asma’s supperclub. If you’re in London on Saturday, I do recommend checking out her Darjeeling Express Calcutta pop-up lunch at The Cinnamon Club on 27 April 2013 (that is, if it isn’t sold out). Click here for more info.

More photos on Flickr.

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Vegetable “Noodles”

A few people have been asking about the “noodle” dishes I’ve been Instagramming and which feature prominently in my food ideas for intermittent fasting. The basic idea is this: take any noodle or soup recipe for which you’d use pasta noodles and use julienned vegetables instead. You get the twirl-with-a-fork pleasure of pasta with fewer calories, more nutrients and, some might argue, better flavour, especially when you use really good vegetables. Soup in particular is very handy when fasting as liquid is very filling but low calorie.

My essential tool for the job is the julienne vegetable peeler pictured below. My mom gave this to me years ago and I have no idea of the brand, but an Amazon search for julienne peeler will turn up a few options (this Kuhn Rikon Julienne Peeler looks pretty flash).

The vegetables I julienne most frequently are carrots and zucchini, and occasional parsnips. Occasionally some swede (rutabaga) will come along for the ride.

Vegetable “Noodle” Soups

Here I tend to err on the Asian side. The two soups I make most regularly are Miso “Noodle” Soup and Vegetarian Pho; both are extremely quick and easy to make and basically work like this:

Make a delicious stock
Add some vegetables if you’d like: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, bell peppers, mushrooms, potato, pumpkin (be sure to be sensitive to cooking times and add those long-to-cook veggies ahead of the rest)
Add your vegetable noodles
Serve with your favourite garnishes

Miso soup can be as simple as mixing miso and water, then adding soy sauce and sesame oil to taste. I usually opt for white miso and follow this recipe as a guide: Basic Miso Soup.

Vegetarian Pho requires a bit more work, so I make the broth ahead and freeze it. This recipe on the New York Times is my go-to: Simple Vegetarian Pho Broth.

In both cases, I heat up the stock to a simmer, then add my vegetables, and try to be sensitive to their cooking times. (Broccoli cooks faster than cauliflower so I’d add the cauliflower ahead of the broccoli.) I like my vegetables crisp, so the vegetable “noodles” always go in last and only get a minute or two, otherwise they go floppy and their flavours disappear into the rest of the soup. If using leafy vegetables like spinach, I’d also add this with the “noodles”.

My favourite garnishes: spring onions, firm tofu (fried or raw), fresh herbs (mint, basil and cilantro are good), sliced fresh chilli, Sriracha sauce (who doesn’t love Sriracha?).

Vegetable “Noodle” Salad Bowls

As with noodle soups, noodle salads can also be adapted to use vegetable “noodles”. I absolutely adore this Noodle Salad with Lemongrass Dressing, pictured below, made with vegetable “noodles” instead of rice noodles.

Vegetable “Noodle” Pasta

I got the idea from this zucchini pasta recipe. You can make it with a vegetable peeler rather than a julienne peeler, making for “noodles” that are almost fettuccine like. The original recipe uses the zucchini raw, but I like to cook it for just a moment, with a few added carrots because I love them. And as with many foods in life, I like this one topped with a poached egg:

Other Vegetable “Noodle” Ideas

One of my favourite comfort foods: take thinly sliced onions and cabbage and sautee slowly until absolutely sweet and soft. Add carrots and cook for a little longer. Season with salt and pepper. Serve topped with a poached egg and garnished with smoked paprika. A little avocado on the side doesn’t go amiss.

Another great candidate is pad thai, and I’m somewhat addicted to Rachel Demuth’s Vegetarian Pad Thai recipe (alas, I’ve always devoured it greedily before getting around to taking a picture that doesn’t suck – if you don’t mind a sucky picture, then look at this one).

Some of you may be looking for Calorie counts on these recipes but I’m afraid that despite my mathematics degree, I haven’t done the math (my mode of fasting avoids calorie counting if possible). From time to time I clock the numbers and can say that the soups tend to be very low calorie (200-300) depending on how you garnish them. Other dishes can tend more towards the 400-500 calorie range. It all depends on what you add to it. But a really useful tool I find for quickly adding up calories is CalorieCount’s Recipe Analyzer.

Alright, hit me with some more vegetable “noodle” ideas. Why haven’t I made “spaghetti” and “meatballs” yet? Maybe that would be just a bit TOO much food pretending to be other food that it’s not. And perhaps that’s why most of these dishes aren’t very Italiany. Regardless, I’m open to suggestions, and the julienne peeler is open for business!

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Dolcetti Gelato

Ever since my sister introduced me to home coffee roasting and Rave Coffee‘s green coffee beans, I’ve been going to them ever seen for all my coffee needs, particularly fresh roasted beans when I’m not roasting my own, and the occasional Perfect Flat White. Rave Coffee is in an unlikely place, slightly hidden amongst a row of small businesses in the Cirencester industrial estate. In recent weeks, I’ve noticed another unlikely suspect appear in this same row of shops: a gelateria called Dolcetti. The doors have always been closed, but today, they were open, so I decided to go in.

Thh first thing I saw when I walked through Dolcetti’s mysterious doors was a big window looking into the room where the gelato is made (read: ice cream maker envy on overdrive). I then made my way to the ice cream case. I was in between errands, so gelato wasn’t really a practical purchase, but the owner, Rob Gibson, happily told me all about his new business and let me (or rather, insisted that I) try almost every flavour in the case.

Rob is serious about gelato, and even in these early days he’s done an impressive job at creating a niche, high-end product that defies the “local” cliche by doing it like he really means it. All of the dairy comes from a private farm up the road, and there’s even a “Rave Mocha” flavour using Rave Coffee from next door. Best of all, this is a dream realised (a dream Rob’s had for the last 20 years) and the enthusiasm shows, both in his words, and in his inventive flavours like “cherry yogurt” and “Swiss”, a combo of pecans and white chocolate. He also let me try his rum raisin gelato, made extra special by soaking the raisins for weeks in a very high quality rum (he wouldn’t say WHICH type of rum – “I won’t give away all my secrets” – gotta respect that!).

As a sorbet enthusiast, I was particularly inspired by the raspberry sorbet which had the most amazing colour and I loved that he kept the seeds from the berries in the sorbet. Also special was the lemon sorbet, crystal white and with the cleanest flavour. “Sicilian lemons”, Rob tells me: figures.

Dolcetti, Stirling Works, Love Lane, Cirencester GL7 1YG
tel. 01285 641333 / info@dolcetti.net

[Update: While at Dolcetti, I gave Rob my card and urged him to get on Twitter and Facebook (as you do when you do what I do). Yesterday I received this uber nice message from him: "Many thanks for all your tweets and fantastic photos. You were a breath of fresh air and just what I needed to get the twitter account open. My wife has been pushing me, but with so many other things to do, I have just not been able to get to this important part of marketing. I have however due to your visit now got going, and look forward to seeing what happens." So please give them a follow: @GelatoDolcetti.]

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Mushrooms on Toast with “Limon Tuzu”

Last week I received a mysterious parcel. The box read “alternating pressure pump”, but inside was neither pressure pump, bicycle pump nor breast pump. Instead, this was box recycling at its best: what once held a pressure pump now bore a wonder of delights from my friend Tim Clinch, that rad peep photographer I met in Gascony last summer and who runs stellar food photography workshops in beautiful places like France, Bulgaria and Spain.

A few weeks ago I sent Tim a sample of the life-changing salsa macha, along with some dried chillies so he can make his own. In return, he sent me some of his homemade “oh fukkah it’s really good” dukkah along with an array of Turkish delights like date syrup, the best sumac ever (so far), dried gooseberries, a curious “raisin sausage” and this “limon tuzu”, aka lemon salt. Foodie pen pals are the best pen pals, don’t you think?

I’ve been having fun experimenting with the dukkah and spices (I’m saving the “sausage” for a special occasion). The dukkah is quickly becoming one of those “good with everything” sort of foods (much like salsa macha, and Chicago-style giardiniera since we’re on the subject). Today, it was time to tap the tuzu.

It was a spontaneous act, adding the lemon salt to the mushrooms. I was in a hunger-induced, post-swim, post-dog-walk panic, hastily frying the mushrooms, toasting the toast and barely finding the will to wash the rocket. It was time to salt the shrooms and I saw the tuzu before the sea salt, so in it went, and it totally transformed this fairly common breakfast into something totally tart, fresh and “fukkah yeah awesome”. A bit of thyme would have been great in here, but I couldn’t be bothered going outside so settled for a pinch of za’atar, which actually worked a treat.

In one sentence, here’s how it all came together: sautéed mushrooms with lemon salt and black pepper, served on sourdough toast with avocado, rocket and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.

It took maybe 10 minutes to make, and I had to fight myself not to devour it in the same short amount of time.

My next mission is to photograph the dukkah as well as Tim photographed my chillies (see his blog – seriously, Tim, I will pay you for a print). Maybe Tim can help on this front, too… in fact, I know he can. And besides, I’ve always wanted to go to Bulgaria (I hear they have good cheese…and great photographers).

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Making Moutabal with Genie Cooks

A few weeks ago I went to an Arabian Nights Supper Club hosted by Genie Cooks (aka my friend, Sharon Al-Momami) in South West London. I already knew Sharon could cook – she’s the one who took me on that amazing seaside foraging adventure in Essex last year. But the supper club was her chance to show off the Middle Eastern dishes that she’s perfected over the last couple of decades by immersing herself in the culture and family life of Jordan.

The supperclub menu included a few familiar Middle Eastern favourites such as hummus, tabbouleh and pita, but there were surprises, too. Case in point: mousakhan, chicken – or labna if you’re vegetarian – in a delicate, super-thin flatbread with caramelised onion and sumac.

What really got my attention was Sharon’s moutabal, an aubergine and tahini dip very similar to baba ganoush. I’ve always been a sucker for all things eggplant, and this was no exception. Sure, I’d had baba ganoush before – and loved it – but this seemed different. I can’t put my finger in it, and in fact, the difference between moutabal and baba ganoush is a little hazy. The answer seems to depend on where you’re from and who you talk to. Sharon says for her, moutabal is made with tahini and baba ganoush isn’t. But however you spin it, moutabal is creamy aubergine awesomeness, and the kind of thing I want to eat all the time.

Last weekend, Sharon came to Orchard Cottage for dinner with me and my Austin friend Marcella. We needed something to nosh on while we cooked (and drank Prosecco), so Sharon showed me the ways of moutabal, which involves roasting the aubergines whole over a direct flame for about 20 minutes, or until they’re charred on the outside and soft on the inside. I have an electric hob so we improvised with my gas grill outdoors.

Once the aubergine cools, it’s a simple matter of peeling it and mashing up the insides with tahini, Greek yoghurt, lemon, garlic and salt. The moutabal, along with Turkish flatbread and hummus, was the perfect way to start our evening of feasting, drinking and rafter swinging. And let’s face it, there’s nothing like bread and hearty dips garnished with lots of olive oil to help lube the system in preparation for a very merry evening. Consequentially, the moutabal is excellent hangover food, particularly along side Sharon’s fried flatbread sandwiches, stuffed with feta, zaatar and salsa macha.

5.0 from 1 reviews

Moutabal

Author: Sharon Al-Momani

Ingredients

2 aubergines
4 tbsp tahini
4 tbsp Greek yoghurt
Juice of 1 lemon
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
½ tsp table salt

Instructions

Prick your aubergines all over with a fork to prevent them from exploding during cooking.
Cook the aubergines over a direct flame for about 20 minutes (or until soft) charring them on all sides. This gives the moutabal a wonderful smoky flavour.
Once the aubergines are cooked, leave them to cool for about 20 minutes.
Now peel the aubergines carefully and put the flesh into a mixing bowl. Make sure you remove as much of the charred skin as possible.
Add the tahini, yoghurt, garlic, lemon juice and salt and stir gently to combine. Adjust the seasoning to taste.
Spoon the moutabal into a serving dish, garnish with pomegranate seeds (optional), chopped fresh parsley and a little virgin olive oil. Serve with pitta bread. Can be eaten warm or cold.

This recipe first appeared on Sharon’s blog.

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Tamales with Butternut Squash & Goats Cheese

A couple weeks ago I wrote about making salsa macha with guajillo and chipotle chillies, a happy result of my having won a goodie bag from Cool Chile Company, which included masa harina among its dried chilli bonanza. Around the same time, I had an email from my friend, Patrick, suggesting he and our crew gather at Orchard Cottage for a Good Friday Easter feast.

The wheels began turning on a bit of Shaw family history: when I was younger, my Aunt Sue always hosted Easter with her husband Augie, whose family is from Mexico. The parties were some of the best of childhood memory because they brought together a weird combination of Lithuanian, Polish and Mexican tradition, including piñata-bashing to go with the requisite Easter egg hunt. Though we didn’t have tamales at our Easter parties, Sue often talked about her holiday tamale-making adventures with Augie’s side of the family, and on a few occasions she even gave me some leftover tamales to take home.

Sue probably didn’t realise how much I coveted these tamales, and they’ve always led to a weird longing for a tamale-making party of my own. So with life’s recent masa harina injection paired with Patrick’s Easter party suggestion, I decided to start my own tamale-inspired holiday tradition.

Tamales are usually made with lard and filled with meat like carnitas. I decided to take inspiration from last year’s Mexican Supperclub at The Vegetarian Cookery School, where I had some of the best Mexican food of my life – which is saying a lot given that I used to live in Austin, Texas! Among the dishes were Tamales Rellenos de Calabacin, aka tamales with butternut squash and feta, which she served with the most delicious mole sauce.

We ended up making two fillings: (1) butternut squash with goats cheese and (2) grilled red pepper, red onion, sweetcorn and feta. The tamales were surprisingly easy to make. The masa harina mixture is a simple dough of masa harina, butter (instead of lard), salt, baking powder, milk and vegetable stock.

The most fiddly part was rolling the individual tamales, but even this didn’t take very long, especially when you involve other people in the rolling. There are several schools of thought on rolling tamales – Jo and Rachel at The Vegetarian Cookery School seem to have a knack for making them extra pretty. I ended up using the technique shown in this allrecipes.com video, just because it made the most sense to me.

To serve with the tamales, I made mole poblano sauce – an epic adventure and worthy of a blog post in its own right (someday maybe?). I made it a few days ahead, with yet more of those Cool Chile Company chillies, using Thomasina Miers recipe from Mexican Food Made Simple (thanks to Charlotte Pike from Go Free for introducing me to that one).

Mole poblano is incredible stuff, containing about 20 ingredients, including dried mulatto, pasilla and ancho chillies, plantain, almonds, sesame seeds, prunes, raisins and not as much chocolate as you’d think. The result is an amazingly rich, deep, sorta sweet, sorta smoky sauce. I can’t imagine a better sauce for the butternut squash tamales. The richness of the chilli chocolate sauce seems ideal for the sweetness of the squash and corn masa, all rounded off by creamy goat cheese.

The tamales – in fact, the whole meal – totally rocked our respective worlds. We rounded out the meal with refried black beans, tortillas, salsa, guacamole, slow roast fennel with salsa macha, salad with lime dressing and for dessert: chocolate cake AND brownies with “a trio of ice creams” (including the much adored avocado ice cream). All that was missing was a piñata.

5.0 from 2 reviews

Vegetarian Tamales

Author: Rachel Demuth

Recipe type: Main

Cuisine: Mexican

Prep time: 1 hour

Cook time: 1 hour

Total time: 2 hours

Serves: 8

The number of tamales you get will depend on how big you make your tamales. I erred on the small side, which made about 16 tamales.

Ingredients

16 dried corn husks

For the masa

200g masa harina
50g butter, softened
pinch of salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
50ml milk
100ml vegetable stock

For the filling

100g goat cheese
1 butternut squash, peeled and diced into small cubes
1 chopped fresh red chilli
4 cloves garlic, whole with the skin on
A few sprigs of thyme
Chopped coriander
Juice of half a lime
Olive oil

Instructions

Roast the squash in a hot oven (180C / 350F) with the garlic, chilli, thyme, and olive oil until it is soft. This should take about 30-40 minutes. When cooked, remove the garlic from its skin, mush it up with the spatula and stir it through the squash. Add salt and pepper to taste and stir through some chopped coriander and lime juice.
Soak the corn husks in hot water for 30 minutes. When they are soft rinse them under running water as you separate them. Lay them flat on a plate and keep them covered with a damp cloth.
To prepare the masa, beat the softened butter in a mixing bowl, until soft and fluffy.
Mix the masa harina with the salt and baking powder.
Beat some of the dry mixture into the butter and then add a little milk then some more dry mix, then some stock until everything is combined.
The masa should be the consistency of scone dough, soft and pliable, if too dry and a little more milk, if too wet a little more masa harina.
To assemble the tamales, lay a husk on the table with the fat end away from you. Place a sausage of masa (30g) in the middle of the husk, starting at 1cm from the fat end press the masa down leaving a border down each side, big enough so that the husk can wrap over the filling. Press the masa down to about ⅔rds down the husk and flatten the sausage.
Top the masa with a little bit of roasted squash and smear on some goat cheese. Roll the corn husk with one end open and the other end like a burrito so that the filling gets sealed by the masa (this video is helpful).
Tear a thin strip off a long husk and tie around the open end of the tamale to seal it all together.
Steam the tamales in a vegetables steamer for 45- 60 minutes. You can tell when they are done because the masa will be soft and sponge like.
Serve them as soon as possible with mole and salsa.