Tag: plants

Sweet vinaigrette.

Recipe

Extra virgin Greek olive oil 1/4 cup
Mirin 4 tbsp
Braggs cloudy apple cider vinegar 1/8 cup
Fine table salt to taste
Fine ground white pepper to taste
White granulated sugar 1/4 tsp
Dijon mustard 1/2 tsp

put in a jar with a lid and shake well till thick and emulsified.

This vinaigrette it is delicious, and not too sour.

Vinaigrette is all about the balance, the exact measure of oil, sweet, sour and salt, with a hint of spiciness.
I find the taste is quite different depending on the exact elements us use, should it be a Greek extra virgin olive oil or do I go for the Spanish which has quite a different flavour?
The mustard, well, just how many kinds of mustard are there?
Some are delicious in vinaigrette and some are only edible on hot dogs.
They can be rough ground or smooth, sweet or very salty, each make is completely different and adds a totally different flavour profile to the vinaigrette.

As for vinegars, there is possibly even more variation, white wine vinegar, Japanese rice wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar. Each with its own unique flavour, so experiment, decide which one to use to get the exact flavour you are looking for.

Sugar, each variety has its own unique flavour, white granulated in this case which has very little flavour, but just adds sweetness. There is deep dark muscovado, or demerara and also jaggery. All these have their own uses, and flavour recipes differently. Sweetners of all kinds have a unique effect on every dish you add them to.

Even salts have subtle flavours from table salt to black Hawaiian or pink himalayan to fleur de sel, and there are more.
I use them all in different recipes and in different ways.

Therefore I think it is important that we are clear in recipes which kind we use, which ones make the exact flavour profile we are looking for.
Each variation in the ingredients gives a variation to the flavour profile of the finished vinaigrette, sauce or dish.

So there are two recipes today

The basic recipe is

oil
vinegar
mustard
salt
pepper
sugar

This gives you the basic ingredients, and the one for todays sweet vinaigrette above, which gives you the exact recipe.

Good luck with experimenting and getting the balance right.
Every time you make a vinaigrette you can try a different mustard, a different oil a different vinegar and so on, and each time get a different vinaigrette.

That is the art of cooking, to experiment with a known recipe, technique or principle and find out what you like best or what goes best with the rest of your dish.
Dare to be different, you can even play with the proportions.
Do you want more mustard? Less salt or more sugar or oil?
What if you use honey or add celery salt instead?

Try it.

This recipe is great with all kinds of fresh salads, we ate it with little gem lettuce cucumber slices and cherry tomatoes, with a sprinkling of finely chopped spring onion.

Let me know how you get on

Focaccia, the easy recipe

It is actually incredibly easy to make focaccia.
Give it a try, it is the easiest type of bread to make, anyone can do it.

Before you put it in the oven you can cover it with any topping you like.
This one has tiny tomatoes, chopped black olives and oregano.

Try garlic, onions, rosemary, herbes de provence, chopped courgette or aubergine, paprika, chilli or even kapers.
Dare to experiment. Mix it up for a different eating experience every time.

Here is the recipe.

500g white flour
400ml (warm) water
1 sachet instant yeast
8 tbsp olive oil (and some extra)
1 tsp salt

topping
Tomatoes sliced
oregano
black olives, chopped
olive oil

technique.

First dust a work surface with flour ready for the kneading.

Oil and flour a large flat baking sheet, (16 by 12 inches).

In a large bowl mix the flour, yeast and salt and add the water slowly while you mix to get a soft liquid dough. Use your hands as this is such fun. However a wooden spoon also works.

Pour all the dough out onto the floured surface and knead for about five minutes. It should become smooth and stretchy.

Oil the bowl liberally and put the dough back in it, cover with a cloth and leave to rise for about an hour.

Pour the almost liquid bubbling dough into the baking tin and spread it out evenly with the fingertips,
Don’t worry if it deflates a bit as you push it into the corners.

Cover and leave it to rise for 45 minutes.

Heat the oven at 240c or 465f or gas mark 9 to be ready for the focaccia.

Make holes in the top by poking with the fingertips for the authentic focaccia look and cover with some more oil, add your toppings last, in this case olives, tomatoes and oregano.

Bake for 30 minutes.
When you take it out of the oven add some sea salt and more olive oil.

Eat this warm!

Don’t be afraid of yeast, this recipe always works.

a few tips.
Massage some oil into your hands before kneading, this usually helps to stop the dough sticking.
Do not leave the rising dough in a draft, yeast hates that, as well as the cold. a warm dark spot is best.
Always cover with a clean tea towel.
To avoid the tea towel sticking during the second rise, oil the surface of the dough first.
Make sure tho oven is already hot when you are ready to bake the focaccia.

Let me know how you get on.

Summer heat

As we head towards the end of August, we wait for the heat to stop, for coolness to arrive, morning early, evening late, to at last make the hot days manageable again.

Food is not really on our minds, coolness is, a perfect time for fruit, salads, ice creams.

And lots and lots of liquids, water being the best.

Drink enough water, cool, clear, crisp, clean. Chaudfontaine, Perrier, Spa, there are so many delicious waters to try. They all taste different, try some and find out.

 

I have been eating fruit, mostly.
It’s the best,
cool, sweet, simple.

Fruit requires no more work than a quick cut of the knife.
Eat raspberry, melon, watermelon, strawberries, grapes, apples, now apples are really crisp and cool.

Try something you don’t usually eat, passionfruit, papaya, dragon fruit or cactus fruit. I have, not just as they are, but chopped up and mixed in delicious bowls of fruit salad. They need nothing else.
Delicious new flavours, wonderful sweetness without the bane of refined sugars, which like cheese we know we shouldn’t really eat.

Fruit.

Quite possibly the healthiest food on the planet.

Secrets of perfect Couscous

There is a trick to getting perfect couscous, not porridge, which happens if you are not careful, or sawdust, which is also no fun to eat. Getting it right it’s part of the three bears philosophy, not to much, not too little, but just enough.

There are always instructions on the packet, usually this involves using way too much liquid, so be sparing. I find the ratio option works best for me.
Two to one, no more, no less.

So if you measure in cups it’s one cup to half a cup or 200ml. to 100ml.
hot water to couscous.
and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to smooth it out helps enormously to make a tasty meal, plus salt to taste of course.

Here’s how you do it. Boil the water, turn it off, pour in the couscous, leave it a few seconds and then start fluffing it up with a fork, add a little olive oil as you go, let if fluff it will grow quite a bit. Never add more water. Trust the process.

To turn it into this lovely meal, pictured above.

finely chop a 5cm chunk of courgette into 5mm cubes.
finely chop a handful of parsley
Chop a spring onion into slim rings, also using all the green
chop half a paprika into 5mm cubes

Finely chop a chilli, leaving out the pith and seeds for a milder flavour. I prefer cayenne chillies myself. Leave out the chilli if you don’t like the heat.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

This can be eaten as a salad, or the staple with any meal, served just warm or cold.

There are many variations, try different vegetables, whichever you prefer, do not be afraid to experiment.

Enjoy another great vegan dish!

 

Glorious food shopping

groceries

I love shopping.
Specially shopping for food.

Today I ran around happily in three different supermarkets and the greengrocers looking at all the delicious wares on display.

Scouring the shelves for exotic fruit and heirloom vegetables, I also find unusual grains and nuts. For a moment I thought the supermarket was all out of tofu! That would have been a disaster!

I feel like a hunter gatherer, foraging for all that is good and healthy, fresh and interesting. Recipes shunt through my head in quick succession as I pick up prickly pears and orange blossom honey. Minneola oranges are carefully bagged up. I find beetroot so fresh the green stalks are still crisp and leafy, such freshness I simply could not resist. Passionfruit and limes fall into my basket along with little gem lettuces to turn over on the BBQ. Glorious aubergines, a rich, dark purple, are absolutely at their best now and so versatile.

I sort carefully through the Spanish garlic and fill a bag with shallots. My mouth starts to water. I can hear it frying gently in the pan.

I leave the supermarket clutching my swag closely to me. Smug at the huge haul and sporting a wide grin on my face. I know I have gone a bit mad, I have so much I can barely lift it all. I make a quick getaway to the next shop.

Saving the best for last I head for the greengrocers, it is my favourite shop. Here I spy out fresh coconut and black grapes. Thai basil, fresh ginger, turmeric, lemon grass, and a pineapple. The smoothies are going to be so delicious I just know I’ll make one the minute I get home.

Happy shopping everyone.

Sweet chilli sauce

This is a hot little number is mitigated by it’s delicious sweetness. A simple quick recipe to spice up any meal. Goes especially well with rice dishes.

Sweet chilli sauce.

2 green jalapenos
2 red jalapenos
6 red cherry tomatoes
4 tsp sugar (I said it was sweet)
2 tbsp mirin
2 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp ponzu
salt to taste

Technique

Remove the inner pith and seeds from all the chillies and chop very finely.
Chop the cherry tomatoes almost as finely as the chillies.
Mix together in a bowl with all the other ingredients.
Add salt to taste.

This should be quite liquid and if left to stand for a hour or so, the heat of the chillies leeches into the sauce creating a delicious sweet spiciness.

The diet game



Most of us have been on a diet at one time or another

I think I must consistently be on an overeating diet. I eat just what I like when I like. I do try to do meal planning because I have to shop for the food. However I never stick to it. I open the fridge every day and see what is there, from this point I choose what I feel like preparing today.

It’s always too much.

So the trick would be to create smaller meals, dish up smaller portions, use smaller plates. This, however only leads me to go back to the kitchen later and find something else to eat.

I appear to have no control over my appetite, I wonder if anybody has any control, at all, really.

I avoid the scales, and wear stretch jeans and long flowing tops to hide the bulging stomach. I hide my body, I am scared of wearing a bikini, and I hate that.
Yet I still overeat, nothing I read or decide or do changes the amount I eat, as if my body and all its organs are ganging up on me. Is this true? Am I really not in control? Is anyone at all in control?

We all should know by now that diets don’t work, fad diets, crash diets, calorie controlled diets, low carb diets, keto diets, vegan diets, even the no-diet diet, I could go on and on, and on.
It’s a trap, it’s a game, we cannot win, we cannot break even, but we can get out of the game.

I enjoy food too much to stop eating it, all of it, as much as I can manage to stuff down me as it’s all delicious. I am a good cook, my husband is a good cook, the restaurants we go to have excellent cooks, in fact they are such good cooks they are called chefs.

How to get out of the diet game? I believe it lies on the plane of enjoyment and going for the healthy options, which are always more delicious than any kind of junk food. Remember you are what you eat, so I’m made mostly but not only of vegetables, which sounds pretty cool. We can enjoy our food and not overeat if we stick to a few simple actions and decisions. All of which are hard to make as we are all creatures of habit.

I didn’t say it was easy, changing habits never is.

Change by doing all of the above, and above all savour every morsel, taste every mouthful, eat slowly letting the taste buds do the work they were meant to do. Restrain yourself from gorging no matter how delicious, change the habitual way you eat, where, when, how and what.

You’ll be lucky! It’s a game, but can you win? Is it an unchangeable  way of life? I can’t sustain this diet game, can you?

Vegan mayonnaise

recipe

I’ve mentioned it often enough. My vegan mayonnaise recipe. So here it is. I eat this almost every day. It keeps well in a closed jar or pot in the fridge and there are many variations. Mayonnaise is a good basic recipe which can be changed and tweaked for different flavours. Add garlic and it becomes aioli, add herbs for freshness, add spices for curry flavour or a chilli hit. The choice is yours. Change the kind of oil you use or the kind of sweetner, the vinegar or citrus. Use orange instead of lemon, or use lime, or white balsamic vinegar. The variations are endless.

Dare to experiment, you will soon find the one that works for you.

There are two ways you can mix this. The newer one is to throw it all together with the oil on top and stick blend it in one go. This does not work so well for me. I use the slow method.

First add all the ingredients, except the oil. I give this a blend first to get a soft frothy little mixture.

Then using a stick blender I slowly add the oil and mix it all carefully so it does not split. Do not rush.

Aquafaba. I use the water from a tin of chickpeas, but it can be the water from any kind of tinned beans. Or if you boil up your own beans after soaking them overnight you can try cooling and using that aquafaba. After much experimentation I have found that tinned chickpea water works best for me.

The original recipe calls for a 1/2 tsp vinegar white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar. I use all lemon juice

Vegetable oil, Avocado oil, peanut oil sunflower oil. I have found that sunflower oil works best for me. I never use rapeseed oil.

Mustard, here you can use any kind of mustard you like, Dijon is my favourite.

The original recipe calls for maple syrup but any kind of sweetner will work, honey or even crystal stevia. I now use a powder or icing sugar.

1 cup sunflower oil.
1/4 cup chickpea aquafaba
1/4 tsp fine table salt
1 and 1/2 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
1/4 tsp dijon mustard
1 tsp icing sugar

technique.
Mix all the ingredients except the oil and give it a light whisk till it lightly foams.
Slowly drizzle in the oil mixing well all the time to create a soft thick mass.
Put the mixture in a pot or jar with a tightly closing lid and keep in the fridge.

Good luck, Mayonnaise can be tricky!

Lazy Sundays

Out on the water, the yacht, white on blue, crystal clear water in all directions.

The wind rustling my hair and the sails bold as the boat silently cuts the water to our favourite lagoon.

It’s time to open the picnic basket and the cooler. What did we throw into it early this morning with sleepy eyes and a dormant brain before rushing off to the lakes.

Bread, fresh from the bakers, the mad dash to the shop on the way to buy warm baked rolls just out of the oven. Fresh fruit and a knife, tomatoes, cucumber and mayonnaise, lots of green stuff. It looks like I just emptied out the vegetable drawer in the fridge and threw everything in there. Now, when hunger strikes it’s time to make up something to eat, now we find out what we forgot. Now we realise we don’t really want to be this healthy and would prefer to eat something vaguely unhealthy but there is no choice.

I slice juicy melon, the scent hitting us in the heat of the day as we throw out the anchor. I fill the rolls with salad things, they have gone slightly chewy. We are in a silent bubble, the distant sounds of revellers on the beach, children jumping into the water, chugging engines seem unreal, snaches of music and the soft lap of water on the keel create a dreamy haze.

No wasps here.

We ravenously tear at chunks of bread with our teeth, slices of cucumber and tomato spill onto our hands dripping onto the deck. Did we forget napkins and tissues again? This feast washed down with bottles of icy water from the cooler. A delicate pink wine, fresh and cool or a cold beer. I can feel an afternoon headache coming on but I don’t care. The sun beats down and turns the water into a million diamonds. It’s all simple, quiet, delicious.

We ruffle the water with our sticky hands then settle down to some serious sunbathing for the rest of the afternoon saving the punnet of strawberries for later.

This is the life.

Beetroot salad

For this recipe I used two beetroots, raw, a pink and a yellow, this gives a pleasing pastel nuance to the finished dish. Dark beetroot can also be used. It is a refreshing light salad or side dish. Also shown is the original recipe which has since evolved into the recipe I am offering you today.

ingredients.

2 beetroots
Japanese vinegar
Mirin
Salt
Cinnamon, ground
Juice of 1/2 an orange
Zest of one orange
quarters of 1/2 an orange
Mustard seed
Fennel seed

Wrap the beetroot in paper and foil and cook in the oven for 1/2 to 1 hour depending on size at 180°c.
Allow to cool and then peel.
Slice into 5mm. slices so the coloured rings show.

Put a layer of slices in a bowl and add one tbsp. of vinegar and 1 tbsp of Mirin. a sprinkling of ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp. mustard seed, 1/4 tsp fennel seed and a sprinkling of salt. Plus the zest of half the orange.

layer again and repeat.

squeeze 1/2 the orange an add the juice to the beetroot mixing gently.
Cut the other half of the orange up into pieces making sure to keep the segments whole but without skin or pith.
Mix gently into the salad and leave in the fridge for 1/2 an hour to cool and marinade.

serve and enjoy