Oondhiu

Oohn-dee-you?

This is a dry stew, traditionally cooked in an earthenware pot turned upside down over a fire lit in a hole dug into the ground. The idea is the vegetables cook in their own steam produced by their own water content. I did mine on the stove and it would therefore have less of a smoky taste than I imagine the real stuff would. People sell it on roadsides in India. I want to go there and try some.

I was inspired to make this because I found some lovely-looking peas at the local vegetable shop.

May add quantities if I can be bothered.

OONDHIU

Aubergine
Potato
Sweet Potato
Fresh peas, in their pods OR mange tout and frozen peas
Peanuts, bashed into coarse pieces (food processor is good for this)
Sesame seeds
Ajwain seeds (get them from South Asian grocery stores, they look a bit like celery seed)
Asafoetida (hing)
Mustard seeds
Vegetable / sunflower oil
Fresh garlic and ginger, minced
Turmeric powder
Chilli (red powder or green fresh and minced)
Salt

Chop aubergine, potato and sweet potato into roughly even sized pieces. Shell some of the peas, remove some of the more fibrous parts of the more tender pea pods Heat sesame, ajwain, mustard seeds in oil in a large pan with a lid. When seeds start to pop, add asafoetida. Then add the peanuts, all of the vegetables, spices and seasoning. Put on moderate heat with lid on pan and make sure none of it sticks to the bottom of the pan.  You may need to add more oil so nothing sticks, but don't add water. Cook for about 30 minutes until potatoes and aubergines are tender and cooked.

Serve with a flat bread like roti or naan or paratha or with rice and dal or khuri (yogurty soup which I will write about soon).

The idea with the pea pods is that you can chew all the tenderness out of them until you are left with the fibrous stuff which you leave on your plate. It's a lot of fun to eat.

Once again, I ate it all, so a picture next time. It's not much to look at anyway. But it tastes great. I'm wary that records of things online won't last, so I'm going to write recipe down this in my diary so I don't have to ring my mum again to ask her. I knew most of it anyway. 

Onions and other friends of mine.

Kind of pissaladiere. Caramelised onion on puff pastry. Veganised. Had no olives sadly, slung some tomato slices on top instead.

Served with the thing I seem to post the most pictures of on this thing: potato gratin. The only seasoning I used was salt, garlic powder and smoked paprika. Dee-licious:

Also served with the crunch of red cabbage, carrot, apple and radish. I have ignored radishes for too long, because they were too sharp, but you can reduce the sting by slicing them thin, and adding some vinegar.

And continuing with the caramelised onion tip, on Friday, Dan put onions on brown lentils and rice.

We had it with a salad of shredded spinach, and lightly fried butter beans, dressed with lemon and olive oil....

The leftover onions and some chopped preserved lemon....

And finally, this. Aubergine scorched on the hob, skin removed, pulp chopped up and thrown into  tahini, along with some cherry tomatoes and pomegranate seeds. I cannot stress how much nicer organic pomegranate is than cheaper ones. The colour and flavour is so much more intense. Possibly pomegranate molasses went into this as well. I would have to check with the cook.

And altogether. Yummy.

Grat/in/ification

The potato gratin / dauphinoise is aeons better if you make it with double cream and a little sprinkling of paprika. It's so good that it doesn't even need cheese.

Bake for good

The oven has returned! Welcome home, my friend.

Today I attempted Potato Dauphinoise today, one of them vegan. And if you're not going to use cheese, you better add a helluva lot more flavours to compensate. I didn't use vegan cream, having had a bad experience with the sweetly chemical Alpro stuff not too long ago (I've since been told oat cream has a lot more of a neutral taste*), I made a white sauce using soya milk instead. Into it I put:

- salt and pepper

- many cloves of roasted garlic, smashed

- a bay leaf

- light tahini

- grain mustard

- paprika

- dried onion flakes,

topped it with sesame seeds and more onion flakes and hoped for the best. I haven't tried it yet, but the whole thing shrunk nicely during cooking. The onions on top burned a bit, sadly.

The dairy one was a roaring success and was eaten swiftly with a salad of grated kohl rabi dressed in lemon juice, and watercress in a light film of olive oil and lemon.

*this in itself can also be a problem

The dairy one:

and the vegan one:

take your pick, I won't be offended.

Ricer Dream and fake amphibians in baked batter

There's a fine line between love and crime, as Neil Tennant sang in "In the Night". There's also a fine line between genius and stupidity. The fine line of the former can make you tread the fine line of the latter as I found out yesterday.

I was watching Saturday morning cooking TV on BBC1 and saw someone making gnocchi, so I decided to make some. (genius) Even though I had more important things I should have been doing (stupidity). I steamed potatoes but they were huge baking ones, so I got impatient and hauled them out. They were a bit undercooked in the middle which meant there were bits of potato which I could not mash (stupidity), so I thought I would find them, isolate them and pulverise them (genius). Using a garlic crusher (genius). But it turns out there were a lot more hard-to-mash bits than I realised so it took ages and I was covered in potato starch (stupidity).

I think I did this because I am hankering after a potato ricer. I wonder which came first and whether one led to the invention of the other? If anyone reading this thinks I am hinting you buy me one, I assure you, I don't want one. At least not yet. I don't have enough storage space.)

Most upsetting of all, while I was doing this, I had Halo by Beyonce playing on repeat, and it did not occur to me to press stop as I was so intent on getting the task done, so now it is the soundtrack to my potato-based frustration rather than the song I like to pretend I'm a contemporary kitchen dancer to.

I boiled a few of these dumplings up for my lunch. There was far too little flour, so they were basically potato lumps. I turned all the remainders out into a bowl, worked in more flour and reshaped. So my sermon for today is: follow a recipe when making gnocchi (the woman on the telly didn't seem to) and make sure you properly cook your spuds first.

I shouldn't have left them out overnight uncovered because this morning they looked all grey. They tasted fine, though, but were aesthetically unfit to serve to others. So I cooked 'em up and scoffed 'em for breakfast with butter.

In the style of a spin doctor, I have a picture of a delightful toad in the hole I made a few Sundays ago to distract you with:



(Made using Linda McCartney veggie sausages with a few baby button mushrooms thrown in. I put so much grease in the pan to ensure some of the batter went crispy that I had to pour a good deal out of the tray before serving.)

and the cross section of the base of a red cabbage which I fell in love with a little on the day I made the above:

Sup(p)er.

I think you should know the score by now, if you see an entry about supper here, it's not likely to have photographs because hungry stomach and greedy mouth work faster than camera finger.

I made a shoddy Potato Gratin ("We're having your favorite, Wanda honey, Potatoes au Gratin!" "Mmmmmm!") to use up a splash of cream I had. At least, I sliced potatoes thinly, added some marrow slices, oil, salt, pepper rosemary, cream, slices of garlic between layers, sprinkles some dry uncooked polenta grain on it because I couldn't be bothered looking for the semolina. Covered casserole dish in tin foil, whacked the heat up to Gas Mark 9 for an hour. Left the foil off for the last ten minutes and added oak-smoked Lancashire to bubble on the top.

I also made a mash out of some unknown squash. It was mottled green and cream on the outside and I feared it would taste watery and boring but it was a bit like butternut squash. I roasted it with olive oil, paprika and cumin before blitzing with a bit of fresh ginger root.

Finally, a pea and mint puree, as I was still feeling inspired by the meal I was taken out for and the end of last month. Frozen peas, fresh finely chopped mint leaves, an onion I'd roasted in its skin while the oven was on, it all got the blitz treatment. Pepper, a squeeze of lime but no salt, which is strange for a sodium chloride fiend like me.

And that's what you can end up eating if you're not a house of flesh-eaters. I'm kind of glad I didn't take any photos because the presentation of the food was really poor. I rather fancied dribbling the puree artfully onto mine and my dining mates' plates, but in the end reality overpowered and my small aesthetic self was out for the count.

Supper.

No pictures I'm afraid, for it was too yummy, but made a slap up dinner because I felt guilty about having done very little all day. Also needed to use up butter (I'm not going to buy any more after this gets eaten because I know it has contributed to my burgeoning waistline) and some cream one day past its use-by date. I'm sure this recipe could be veganised. If you find vegan black pudding. The stuff I had was vegetarian.

I soaked some dried arame. Then steamed potatoes for mash, adding finely chopped Savoy Cabbage to the steamer later one. Meanwhile, I cored and sliced some apples, then shallow fried in butter, adding sugar. When the cabbage and potatoes were done, I mashed them with butter, single cream, salt, pepper and wholegrain mustard, then mashed the caramelised apples into the mixture.

I fried the slices of black pudding, keeping them on one side of the pan. On the other side of the pan I lightly fried the drained seaweed until it was crispy. Then I arranged some seaweed and black pudding slices onto a glorious heap of mash. It was so tasty that Clare didn't even add any cheese to the proceedings.

I've never had black pudding made with blood, and I imagine you could get a nicer crispiness to it when you fry it, something I have yet to achieve with the non-meat one. The non-meat one did not slice too well, and bits kept falling off it when I tried to slice it. Which wasn't too bad because I just pressed it back together. Also it tasted curiously minty- like the herb, not s intensely, as say, toothpaste. It was all right, but I'm not sure I'd buy it again.

Elderflowers, Starters for Mains, and Yummy Yogurt

Every spring / summer, I watch elderflowers bloom, give them a sniff as I walk past them, watch the tiny flowers fall to the ground, and before I know it, there are elderberries on the branches. I nibble one or two regretfully, wishing that I had done something with the blossoms. This year, I got my skates on and subsequently I have gone a bit elderflower crazy.

Last week, when looking for Grime and Nourishment to get a the recipe for Imam Bayildi, I found a pamphlet called "Well Fed- not an Animal Dead!" by Graham Burnett on the shelf, which I started to read. I was taken by one section, and after reading, I picked a reasonable amount of elderflower heads, maybe ten, gave them a rinse, and dunked them head-first into some diluted apple juice. (equal parts water and apple juice). I left for about one a half hours, and was left with a delightful refreshing elderflower drink.

This week I am trying to make elderflower champagne. I left the mixture for 24 hours, and it didn't start to bubble, as the recipe said it would. I fear this is down to the water being too hot and killing off the yeasts. The recipe said that to add yeast if it didn't start to bubble. I ignored that, and added some fresh elderflower heads, and a bit of warm water, a bit more sugar, lemon, and vinegar. I am leaving it for another 24 hours. If there is no action, I will relent and add yeast.

I have a nagging feeling that the champagne will fail. So I decided to make elderflower cordial to use up my excess. My hunt for that elusive ingredient, citric acid, led me around all of the chemists in the vicinity, the local Boots, and the nearest supermarket without success. There were elderflowers along the way and I couldn't help myself and picked more heads. I finally found the citric acid in the nearest chemist's to me. Isn't it always the way? So, now I just have to wait.

On Sunday, not knowing what to make when Rick came round for the Apprentice Final, I made a couple of starters and we ate them all. The first was a fried tofu with spring onions, in a spicy salty sauce. This was followed by chunks of roasted butternut squash, with toasted cumin seeds. I toasted the seeds in the oven in the leftover oil from roasting the squash, then threw on some salt.

But the most exciting thing I made was potatos baked in yogurt. Into the thick creamy yogurt I crushed garlic, added salt, cumin, garam masala, curry powder, chilli powder, then chopped in fresh parsley and fresh mint. I seasoned the peeled half-inch potato cubes, added a dash of olive oil then smothered the potato in the yogurt mix. I then baked it in the oven, and when they were done, I topped it with cheddar and mozzarella until they melted. It was delicious. I wished I had taken a photo. But then I didn't know I was going to have a food blog in which I was going to write about it. The only bad thing the potatoes weren't completely cooked so I would recommend parboiling them or steaming, then cooling before baking.

I have also been subsisting on polenta which I toast, add curry powder and salt, then adding yogurt until it cooks. It tastes a bit like the Gujarati dhokra but is less time and effort. I like it, but I imagine most people would think it disgusting. By the way, I don't just use curry powder willy-nilly. I never use it in curries. To me it has a fake curry taste. It's a bit like Dairylea in that respect: as long as you don't consider it to be the real thing or use it in place of the real thing, it's ok.