Get Stuffed

I curently do not have use of an oven. This can lead to inventiveness in cooking methods or sloppiness, where you just end up making slop.

I had some vague idea of Persian / Middle Eastern / North African food in my head when I did this.

I stuffed some green peppers and hollowed out aubergine with a mixture of
the aubergine flesh, crumbled firm tofu, garlic, a smidge of miso paste, harissa paste, mint, orange oil, vinegar, roughly chopped carrot, pine nuts, almonds, and the scooped out aubergine and minced ginger. I cooked them in a heavy bottomed pan which had been heated up with a bit of oil. Lid on pan. A Dutch oven. I
had to finish them off in the grill so that the stuffing would brown a little. I couldn't turn them over in the pan because the filling would have just fallen out.

I ate it with basmati rice which had lots of stuff in: fried some onions in oil with cardomom pods and cinnamon stick pieces in it. I added grated orange zest, almond slivers, garlic, saffron, vegetable stock, chopped dried apricots and raisins. Added ground cinnamon and ground cumin to the mix. Maybe if I had some pomegranate seeds, it might have become some kind of jewelled rice.

I was particularly pleased with the rice, because many flavours were presen without drowning each other out.

I like saffron. It tastes really weird, don't you think? It's almost like the antiseptic TCP but manages to claw its way back into your heart before you spit your food out.

South East Asia influences my rice dish

I was inspired to make tonight's dinner by the Vietnamese food I ate in Berlin. Which kind of saved my life. I was very cold and hungry and losing the will, so this brought me back from the brink. I liked the cooked-raw, sweet-savoury, spicy-sour, hot-cold, soft-crunchy thing going on and tried to recreate it a little here.

For three people I used:

1 1/2 cups rice, I used brown
1 pound / 1/2 kilo of firm tofu
1 courgette (about 15 cm / 6 inches long)
1 carrot (about the same size as the courgette)
1 small onion
1 bell pepper / capsicum - I used a green one
1 heaped tablespoon of sesame seeds
1 handful of uncooked redskin peanuts
1 handful desiccated coconut
4 cloves garlic
1 inch / 4cm ginger root
1 small squeeze tomato puree
light oil e.g. groundnut / veg / sunflower / sesame


seasonings and spices:
salt
pepper
cayenne pepper
soy sauce
sugar
chilli powder
ground coriander
worcester sauce
lemon juice

to finish
fresh coriander. parsley might work. I don't know, you tell me.
lemon / lime juice

1. Cook the rice in plain water. When it is done, drain excess water and keep warm.
2. While rice is cooking, cut the tofu into 1cm / 3/4 inch cubes and season with salt, pepper, soy sauce, worcester sauce, lemon juice, a bit of sugar, tomato puree. you can experiment here. mix the tofu well in the spices and condiments. If you have time, leave to marinate.
3. lift tofu cubes out of marinade and fry with some slivers of fresh ginger in a little oil until they have some brown colour and crispness. when they are ready, lift out of frying pan / wok if there is any leftover marinade, mix it. set to one side and keep warm.
4. slice onion and pepper into thin strips and crush or finely chop the garlic. Shallow fry in the same pan you used for the tofu and season. Lift out of pan and mix in with tofu.
5. cut courgette into batons and fry, adding salt, pepper and cayenne pepper until it has a bi of brown colour. lift out of pan and mix in with tofu and vegetables.
6. dry fry your peanuts until they start to brown in places and their skins blister. remove the skins- they should rub off easily, and halve or chop roughly.
7. Your rice should be done in the time it has taken to prep and cook the veg. In the frying pan, throw in your dessicated coconut and toast it slightly over heat. Be careful, it burns very easily.
8. Stir in your drained rice, add salt, a bit of sugar and chilli powder. Heat up rice and add your vegetables and tofu.
9. Top with the peanuts and finely grated carrot.
10. Squeeze the juice of a quarter of a lemon onto the rice dish.
11. Serve with chopped coriander leaves on top and extra lemon juice if needed.

Notes: Would maybe work well with fish / meat / poultry in place of the tofu. Please report back. The brown rice I used worked well because it held its shape and didn't squish when being mixed at various stages.

Cake-o-rama / a tardy rice dream

I have recently made two of these thingummies. Here is a fine coconut cake:



The cake itself was a very basic cake sponge with added desiccated coconut. What really makes it is the frosting, an indulgent mix of cream cheese, icing sugar, more desiccated coconut, a wee bit of fat and do you know what the magic ingredient is? The real kick? It's a dash of zingy lemon juice which cuts through the sweet fat rather nicely.

This is very late, but here are my pretty spring rolls from my rice paper / homemade seitan phase. Which may return. I don't know yet. The colour you see in the rolls is provided by nasturtium flowers and leaves, of which there was a sizeable glut last month.



The second cake, in case you were wondering, is lying dormant in a dark very cool place, waiting to be decorated. Picture soon.

And here it is:



I saw it once on a Nigella Lawson cookery programme, got very excited by the idea and thought that would be a good dessert for a special occasion. One makes it by mixing crushed biscuit, crushed cinder toffee, honey roast peanuts and chocolate / peanut butter chips with ice cream and freezing it in a spring form cake tin lined with clingfilm. You take it out, serve with warm chocolate sauce, and warm butterscotch sauce and what do you know? It's not unlike eating an ice-cream Snickers. I can't believe I made this for someone's birthday. The only thing I am proud of is that I honey roasted my own peanuts and made my own chocolate / peanut swirled chips because I couldn't find any.

I could probably make a much better ice cream cake, less chaotic, more structured and meaningful. You watch this space.

Rice-o-Rama

No, I haven't sampled all of the different rices I have yet to try, but I have had some Adventures in Rice over the past few weeks.

Rice Paper- Vietnamese Rice Sheets from the Thai grocery store in Chinatown. You soak them in water and they become pliable enough to make spring rolls and sticky enough to not have to glue them shut. I filled them with grated carrot, grated mooli, and avocado chunks and served with a dipping sauce of shoyu, sesame seeds, palm sugar and garlic. Couldn't find any vegetarian fish sauce. One day I will get both animal-derived and animal-free. Last week I deep fried a couple of these rolls and I LOVE RICE SHEET SPRING ROLLS!

Brown Rice- I had some excess washed uncooked rice from making a risotto- which takes aeons if you're using brown rice- which I didn't know how to use up. I ended running a bit of oil and salt through it, then roasting it in the oven until the grains went brown.

The day after, I tried to cook it as normal rice. It wasn't having any of it, so I turned off the gas and left it there. After leaving it there for 20 minutes or so strange thing had happened: the grains seemed to have burst open, so it looked a bit like crushed wheat. Didn't taste amazing but if you're looking for a change in texture, you might want to give it a go.

Dinner for one

I have been in Cambridge house- and animal-sitting for my sister and her husband since Wednesday. I tried to contact the one person I might know here but he hasn't responded to my e-mail, so what was I to but sit around cooking, eating and drinking? I can't get pissed though, I have furry and feathered responsibilities.

One is not fun, contrary to what Delia Smith said once, and it's even less fun in an unfamiliar kitchen. There are exciting things in the cupboards here such as pink peppercorns, slivers of mace, Amontillado sherry for cooking, hazelnut oil as well as some surprising ones (Oxo cubes? Come on! My brother in law is supposed to be something of an epicure, a gastronaut). However, I found no fresh ginger, no rice and no whisk. Not an electric one, not even a manual one. More about that later.

Since we've had a heatwave, I've continued on my ice cream tip and wanting to give Green and Blacks a run for their money made white chocolate ice cream with raspberries and meringue pieces. Here's a picture. Honestly, I need a food stylist and a steadier camera hand:



The ice cream itself tasted good good good, the tart raspberries provided a nice contrast to the sweet ice cream but they are little hard bits frozen raspberry - I did crush them first so they aren't whole blocks of raspberry-sized and flavoured ice. Note for next time: put raspberries through and sieve before adding, but definitely add them. They contributed such a delicious pink girly colour to the dessert.

I added meringue pieces to the mixture because I had four egg whites which I didn't know what to do with. I had to beat the whites using a fork and the strength of my arm, but I think my worn out arm gave up before the whites were stiff enough. My meringues were the palest brown when they came out of the oven and they were still squidgy in the middle. I broke the crunchy bits off and folded into the ice cream. The squidge I tried to recook in the oven. It changed the texture and not for the better, and tasted a bit like Sugar Puffs. Never mind.

This evening for dinner I had a splendid warm salad of brown rice, with tarragon, chopped tomato, onion and garlic fried in olive oil with some torn mozzarella pieces stirred in. Topped with Parmesan. It was lovely, the tomato had just the right tang to it.

I have never had tarragon before and in tonight's dinner it was just using up last scraps. I put it in a buttery lemony dressing for prawn salad the past few days. It has a nice pine-scented flavour. I'd use it again. If I had a big kitchen garden, I would grow it.