Things to cook

Thinking of things to make and eat is sometimes a chore.

Daal

Fry the garlic in oil. Add ginger and seasonings. Add onion and fry gently – cook but don't caramelise. Add lentils and cover with water. Simmer until soft (20 mins or so) with lots of salt and pepper plus star anise if available. Add coriander.

Cover lentils with water in a saucepan and simmer until soft (30 mins?).

UPDATE: I've screwed this up twice now. Things to avoid: too-chunky pieces of ginger, not enough seasoning.

Kitsune udon noodle soup

Udon with fried tofu, as eaten by foxes. Serves one but scales nicely.

Start cooking the noodles while you make the broth (But when they're done, dump them in a bowl you'd like to eat from).

If you're using bonito: In another saucepan, heat 2 cups of water. Add bonito flakes (couple of tbsp?). Let simmer for a few minutes. Filter out the bonito flakes and keep the water.

If you're not using bonito: In another saucepan, heat two cups of water until simmering.

Add a generous handful of shiitake mushrooms to the possibly-bonito-flavoured water. Add a generous amount of soy sauce (to taste, but if you're not going to drink all the broth make it nice and salty to flavour the other ingredients) . Let the mushrooms simmer for a few minutes. Add tofu and baby spinach leaves. Cook for a few minutes. Pour over noodles. Garnish with sliced shallots. Delicious.

Making this more filling: add more vegetables! * Sliced carrot * Broccoli * Cooked onion rings Add these to the broth with the mushrooms. Serve with hot chilli powder to taste.

Tasty Farking Lentils

NFD: A nice version of this: chopped onions, simmered for 5 mins; add chopped mushrooms and cook for another 5; add berbere mix and cook for 5-10; add tomato paste (1-2 tbsp) and cook for another 1 or 2. Regular lentils. Serve over rice.

From Fark's “bobbette”, in a thread about the environmental impact of red meat. I have made this quite a few times now. If you get the berbere seasoning right (which as far as I'm concerned means finding at least 80% of the ingredients) it's really good.

I will try and convert you with deliciousness. Here is a recipe for lentils. It doesn't replace beef (nothing can) but if you eat lentils once in a while instead of beef, not only are you still eating yummy food, it's environmentally friendly.

I call this recipe Tasty farking Lentils. It's ethiopian inspired. You may need berbere spice mix. If you can't find it in your grocery store mix some up. Be adventurous.

Tasty farking Lentils (Ethiopian-inspired)

Berbere recipe: (From Cyber Kitchen)

Toast all the seeds and whole cloves in a small frying pan for 2 minutes, stirring constantly (open window or turn on the stove vent--it can smoke). Grind the spices in a spice grinder. If you are using pre-ground spices, ignore and go on to the next step.

Mix all remaining ingredients. Place in a tightly covered container and refrigerate. This mixture can used with many combinations of legumes, rice or vegetables.

Chickpea pasta

This isn't especially complicated and is more to remind me of some ways to use chickpeas. :) It's based on this recipe. The only annoying part is preparing the chickpeas.

Prepare the chickpeas by soaking dry chickpeas in water overnight. Then ensure the chickpeas are covered with water and simmer for between one and two hours until they are delicious. You can add a little turmeric to the water for flavour and interesting yellow colour. :) When they are done, drain the water and season the chickpeas with salt and pepper. Set aside 1-2 cups of chickpeas for this recipe.

Alternatively you could ignore the above and get your chickpeas from a can. They seem to have less texture to them out of a can, but it's not a big deal. Also, preparing fresh chickpeas takes hours and hours whereas with practice you can open a can in about four seconds.

Fetch ye your pasta. I used spaghetti but I think rigatoni (little tubes) may be better because rigatoni has a higher surface area and thus presents more area for the delicious chilli garlic sauce you are about to make to stick to. Boil some water and put the pasta on.

Meanwhile, lightly steam the snow peas in the microwave (30 seconds or so, so they stay a little crunchy).

Meanwhile, heat some olive oil in a pan. Add the onion and cook until it starts to soften, then add the chilli and garlic. Cook until the onion is nice and soft. Add the chickpeas and snow peas and cook until everything is heated through. Serve over pasta.

Piri Piri Tofu

Via Alice. Original Web site here: http://aww.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=41586 -- but here's the recipe I actually used. Alice added salt (which I forgot about) but not paprika (which I had).

Roughly chop the chillies, then put them in a mortar and bash them to pieces. So invigorating! Convey the chilli pieces to a dish suitable for marinading. Add oil, vinegar, paprika, and olive oil. Crush the garlic into this mixture. Crush the lime over the top. Mix it all up.

Chop the tofu into smallish strips. Dry-fry it to remove some moisture. Place it in the marinade and let it sit as long as you are prepared to wait.

Fry the marinaded tofu until you are happy with the exterior. Delicious!

Things to do to aubergines

1. Grill them and put them in a salad

Chop aubergine into sticks. Place on a baking sheet / tray and cover with olive oil. Sprinkle with black onion seeds. Dust with ground coriander (or use coriander seeds). Add a small pinch of salt.

Grill for 2-4 minutes, flip, repeat until delicious (maybe one or two flips).

2. Stir fry them

From the recipe here: http://thaifood.about.com/od/thaisnacks/r/thaieggplant.htm. It's listed as a side dish but it's easy to adapt to be a main dish by a) eating more and b) making more, and runnier, sauce. I have listed the recipe with my adaptations.

You will need!

The sauce needs:

Mix the sauce up right now.

The thickener needs:

Method:

Variation: This version is less salty.

Catie's Amazing Black Pepper Noodle Simulacrum

Catie writes:

I just cooked up a storm with some more asian ingredients, and managed to almost make a reproduction of that black pepper noodle dish we used to like to get in canberra from that noodle shop.

chop everything up

heat some oil and fry up the garlic, chili paste, onion When the onion is starting to go translucent, add in the black pepper, as much as you like, I did a good solid several grinds of the mill (probably about a tablespoon? maybe less). stir that around a bit to cover the onion etc. Add in the capsicum and a good sloshing of vege stir fry sauce Stir around, add in noodles, stir til noodles are broken up and covered with sauce.

Voila!

This can be pretty spicy :) Adjust to taste. Also the vege stir fry sauce is quite salty, i'm going to consider watering it down a bit instead of adding more.

om nom nom :D

Alice's congee

> I made it with some fish stock
> very dilute
> then when it was done I added soy sauce, sesame oil and "garlic ginger and chive seasoning"
> it's a pretty simple recipe if you want to try it :)
> 1 part rice to ~7-8 parts water
> bring to boil
> simmer for 20 minutes
> turn heat to as low as possible
> stir occasionally for the next 2-3 hours
> add seasoning and other things as desired
> another thing that is good in it
> (slashr) love
> also pickled cabbage
> also fried tofu
> oh my yes
> also fried garlic and ginger
> which i would have added if I had any
> in fact ginger is almost mandatory

Sasha's recipe for anything (such as curry or daal)

16:52 < alice> penelly's recipe:
16:52 < alice> 1 can of lentils
16:53 < alice> onion
16:53 < alice> curry paste of choice
16:53 < alice> cook
16:53 < alice> :)
16:53 < slashr> actually that's my recipe
16:53 < slashr> for anything

Veggie Chili

There are lots of recipes for this out there. One which works for me:

Cook onion and garlic in oil in a large saucepan. Add everything else. :) Let everything simmer for as long as you are prepared to wait (at least 20 minutes, if you didn't precook the mushrooms). Serve over rice.

Super simple daal

Annette's recipe (kinda). The recipe looks similar to "tasty farking lentils" and "daal", above. That's because, let's face it, they are all basically daals. This one has a different mouthfeel and is significantly quicker to make (at the expense of some control over the taste) because it uses stock.

Add a small amount of vegetable oil to a saucepan. Add the onions and cook until they are soft-ish (they will keep cooking so they don't have to be perfect). Add the garlic and 1 tsp (or to taste) of berbere spice mix. Cook, stirring, until it smells delicious (10-30 seconds). Add the lentils and stir until they are coated with oil and flavour (another 30 seconds or so). Add the stock. Reduce heat, stir, and simmer until the excess liquid is absorbed. This should only take five minutes or so. When you are happy with the consistency, serve.

Banana Bread

From here.

In a large bowl mash bananas with sugar and vanilla until combined and creamy. Then mix in the water.

In a smaller bowl, sift together the flour, soda, powder and cinnamon.

Add the dry to wet and stir until just mixed. You don't want to over mix or the bread will be dry.

Pour batter into sprayed loaf pan and bake in preheated 180°C oven for one hour. Your house will smell so good you will be tempted to take it out a few minutes earlier but don't or it won't be done on the inside.

Agedashi tofu

Deep fried = delicious. From here, and, again, it's a very simple recipe.

The sauce:

The basic idea is to coat cubes of tofu in corn flour, deep fry them, and then cover the deep fried tofu chunks with delicious sauce.

Make the deep fry coating by mixing the corn flour with some salt and pepper.

Cut the tofu into cubes. Fill a pan with enough oil to go about halfway up the tofu. Heat the oil. When it's hot, coat several tofu cubes in deep fry coating, and place them in the pan. When they are golden, turn them over and cook the top for a shorter amount of time. Repeat until all cubes are cooked. Place them on something to drain.

Meanwhile (or later, whatever), mix all the sauce ingredients. Heat the sauce in a saucepan or microwave. Place 4 or so tofu cubes on a plate and pour a few tbsp of sauce over them. Sprinkle a few shallots on top.

My first attempt at this turned out pretty well (it's hard to screw up deep-fried things) but I need to work on my shiitake dashi.

Soba noodle salad

Very simple sauce for soba noodles:

Cook the soba noodles, drizzle with sauce (a few tbsps).

Mirkka's Chickpea and Feta Delights

In Finnish:

sekoita
(Pidä jääkaapissa 30 min)
Muotoile pihveiksi märillä kätösillä
Paista pannulla hiljalleen ~10 min per puoli

In English:

Combine ingredients in a mixing bowl. Form into small patties (with wet hands). You may want to refrigerate the mixture before forming patties, so that they keep their shape. Fry in a medium heat pan in oil approx. 10 mins per side until golden.

The no-milk, no-eggs version

Replace the eggs with two potatoes. Grate the potatoes fine. (Potatoes need to be very starchy. You know they are if, when grating, there is a lot of juice. Put the juice in the mix too. If the result is dry, you have a problem and may want to use potato flour and water instead. Or eggs.)

Replace the cheese with sun-dried tomatoes. Chop the tomatoes.

I also forgot to add the thyme and the patties still turned out délicieux.

Quinoa-stuffed peppers

Straight from http://veggie-recipes.livejournal.com/147028.html

Boil water in a pot. Add quinoa, cover, and simmer until all absorbed.

Meanwhile, chop mushrooms coarsely. Sautee with olive oil, plus red wine or balsamic vinegar, and salt to taste. Add the diced tomato, chili, and passata. Simmer briefly just to combine. Combine with quinoa.

Let the mixture cool. While it's cooling, prepare the peppers by washing them and slicing off their tops.

Stuff the peppers so that they are firmly packed. Bake at 180 C for 45 minutes. 10 minutes before completion, cover with whatever you like -- sauce or cheese perhaps.

Mirkka's vegan low-GI no-peanuts pad thai

Finnish first, English follows.

(Jos tarjoat marinoidun tofun kanssa, laita ensin tofu marinoitumaan. Paistaminen aloitetaan samaan aikaan.)

Suikaloi porkkana ja kesäkurpitsa kuorimaveitsellä 'spagetiksi'.
Pilko kukkakaali pieneksi, lähes murusiksi.
Pilko inkivääri mahdollisimman pieneksi.
Suikaloi sipuli.

Kuumenna wokki-pannulla loraus öljyä.
Lisää pannulla puristettu valkosipuli, inkivääri ja curry, n. minuutin välein. Paistele muutama minuutti ja lisää sipuli. Paista kunnes sipuli alkaa pehmetä ja lisää kukkakaali. Paista pari minuuttia.

Lisää porkkana ja kukkakaali.

Paista kuumalla pannulla ja kääntele koko ajan, jotta ruoka ei pala.

Kun kasvikset alkavat olla pehmeitä, lisää kikherneet ja paista vielä 3-5 min.

Sekoita lopuksi joukkoon tahini*, limen* menu sekä mausta oman maun mukaan chilillä ja mustapippurilla. Ripottele pinnalla tuoretta minttua tai korianteria.

*toimii erittäin hyvin myös ilman näitä, jos esim. olet allerginen.

Marinoitu tofu

Sekoita kaikki aineet kulhossa, lisää joukkoon paloiteltu tofu ja laita jääkaappiin maustumaan n. puoleksi tunniksi. Laita tarvittaessa paino päälle, jotta tofut ovat liemessään.

Paista kuumalla pannulla ruskeiksi ja nostele talouspaperin päälle valumaan hetkeksi ennen tarjoamista.

En anglais:

(If serving with marinated tofu, marinate the tofu first and put in the fridge. Fry at the same time.)

Slice the carrot and courgette with a peeler into 'spaghetti'.
Chop the cauliflower into very small pieces.
Chop/crush the ginger.
Slice the onion.

Heat oil on a wok. Add crushed garlic, ginger and curry with intervals of approx. 1 minute. Fry all for a few minutes and add onion. Fry till onion starts to soften and add cauliflower. Fry a few minutes. Add carrot and zucchini. Fry on a hot pan, tending all the time to avoid sticking to pan.

When the veggies start to soften, add chickpeas and fry for 3-5 minutes.

Mix-in tahini* and lime juice* and season to taste with chilli and black pepper. Sprinkle fresh mint or coriander on top.

*works very well without these as well, e.g. in case of allergies.

Marinated tofu

Mix all ingredients in a bowl, add sliced tofu and marinate in the fridge for approx. 30 mins. If needed, set a weight on top to ensure tofus are soaked in sauce.

Fry on a hot pan till golden and drain on kitchen towel before serving.

Carrot top pesto

This is a Riverford recipe which I haven't even tried yet but which seems pretty interesting.

Update: Tried it and it was delicious.

Ingredients:

Method:

Spinach and Ricotta Cannelloni

This was probably the first meal I ever cooked for myself, and it's basically this recipe from the back of a cannelloni box, but even simpler (pre-made sauce). It's not gourmet, but it's easy and nice.

Preheat oven to 180 C.

De-waterify the spinach by squeezing it. Combine with ricotta and egg yolk. Crush in the garlic and mix in cheese. Add nutmeg (couple of shakes) and some salt and pepper.

Add a layer of sauce to the bottom of your baking tray. Stuff cannelloni tubes with the above filling, adding them to the tray. Cover with extra sauce. Sprinkle cheese on top. Bake for at least half an hour, testing at that time (if the tubes have a lot of give, leave them for another 10 mins and try again).

Farinata

Chick pea flour (aka garbanzo flour, aka gram flour) and water baked into a flat disc. From Italian farina + nata "flour born", which sounds like a metal album for bakers.

The hardest part is finding gram flour, which in UK supermarkets may be in an unexpected place*.

The second hardest part is ensuring you have a pan / skillet you can put in the oven.

Warm the water to about lukewarm. Combine flour, water, and oil and whisk. Add a dash of salt and pepper and combine. Cover and leave to sit for a while -- at least half an hour.

Heat oven to 250-ish degrees C. Heat the skillet over high heat and coat with 2 tbsp oil. Continue to heat until oil is shimmering. With one swift, expert motion pour the batter into the oil-coated skillet. Transfer the skillet to the hot oven and bake until the edges are crispy and delicious looking, which will be about 20-30 minutes.

* Not that unexpected. Don't be silly.

Gabi's Baroness-style Cucumber Soup

(I haven't tried this yet.)

Eat like the aristocrat you deserve to be. I've capitalised the nouns in honour of this recipe's German origin.

Peel the Cucumbers, set aside 5 cm, and cut the remaining Part into small Pieces.

Cut the Apple and Cucumbers roughly and blend together with the Dill, Oil, Vinegar, and Creme fraiche.

Set aside a few Sprigs of Dill for decorating. Chop the rest into the Soup.

Let the Soup sit in the Fridge for at least 2 Hours. Mix again before serving with the extra Dill and Cucumber Pieces.

If you're wondering, there is no salt and pepper in it to not overwhelm the apple taste and to not make it taste like a mixed salad. I still put in some salt and tiiiiiny pieces of garlic since I don’t care if it tastes like a frothy salad :p

– Gabi

Index