No food diary today...

It's rained all day and I've eaten unfeasible amounts of the ginger cake and made another pot of that Lentil and Bulgur soup.

So here is a picture of salads to come.

Leeky

Leek and Potato Soup ~ for one

150g finely chopped leek, use some green as well as some white parts.
150g floury potato, finely cubed.
500ml water.
25g margarine (20g oil)
salt and pepper

Sweat the vegetables down in the margarine or oil, then add the water, salt and pepper to taste and simmer very gently for about half an hour. Liquidise with an immersion blender and you're done.

This is nice as it comes, you can even leave the fat out if you want a very low calorie version, but you can also add the whole vegan flavour kit, shoyu, tabasco, even nutritional yeast or soy yoghurt and it stands the test.

Enjoy.

Also this evening, more to use up that Bjorg cream than any real desire for cake I made a White Ginger Cake. It's white because I used white flour and sugar in place of the more usual whole versions for ginger cake and because I used fresh ginger instead of the dry powdered form.

200g flour
150g sugar
25g fresh root ginger, grated or very finely chopped.
1 pkt. levure chimique (baking powder, about 7g)
100g oil
200g soya cream
100g soya yoghurt.
1 tbsp. soya milk (if needed)
2 tsp. white vinegar (to activate the baking powder)

a small handful of crystallised ginger or other sugared dry fruits (I used mango because I had no ginger)

Preheat the oven to 200C and grease and flour a 20-25cm springform cake tin.

Mix the dry ingredients with the wet ones making sure there are no dry lumps - you might need the extra milk and you might not.

Put the mixture in the tin and sprinkle the preserved ginger on top.

Bake for about 50 minutes until risen and golden. Your oven may differ from mine so check from time to time.

The cake is still a little dense and moist inside so might be nicest served as a pudding with icecream or sauce but I still enjoyed the piece I had.

On the other Hand...

since nothing has fallen over for ten minutes...

perhaps there's just time to show you Mr. Stripey Cat's leaving meal from last night.

We had an open tart of artichoke hearts and potatoes with a salad of mache.




and chocolate coated strawberries with some Bjorg soya cream.



Meals will be taken alone for the next three weeks.

Pathetic

I know but the computer problems haven't gone away despite the delivery of two (2) new to France pcs which have arrived over the weekend. Seems like it's a router/networking issue of some minor complexity but whatever, until it's fixed dinner won't be.

Watch this space, but don't hold your breath.

Luscious

I'm having terrible computer problems at the moment, the machine works one minute and categorically refuses to play the next, bits freeze, accessories fail and sometimes it just won't wake up. Which is what happened yesterday, when I'd had to turn it off because of the huge thunderstorm. Thunderstorms in France usually do something bad to the electrical supply in the country and I've already lost two computers to their shenanigans. It wouldn't turn on again until this morning, and then threw a tantrum this afternoon as well for no reason I can see.

Luckily yesterday's repast, probably because I don't respond well in thunder either, was a bit of a failure, edible just but extremely ugly and unmemorable. We'll draw a curtain over it and look instead to today's effort.



Daube d'Aubergines is a recipe that has stayed with me for years, originally from a Claudia Roden book, Mediterranean Cooking I think. When I looked in the fridge for inspiration today it was if Claudia was leaning over my shoulder. "Look" she said, "there's that aubergine you don't know what to do with, and those tomatoes need eating up" and then tactfully hiding a sneer she said "and there's that half bottle of red you couldn't finish last night." The half bottle being what was left of my feeble attempt to binge drink myself away from depression over the failed technology.

"You're on!" I thought and this is what I did:

300-400g aubergine.
500g fresh tomatoes.
1/2 bottle of passable red wine.
1 small onion or a couple of shallots.
2 cloves of garlic (or as much as you like really)
2 tsps/ cubes sugar
pinch of allspice
pepper.
salt.
plenty of finely chopped parsley.

Cut the aubergine up into neat pieces, if you're entertaining it's nice to take the skin off but not essential. Use a full teaspoon of salt sprinkled over the cut up fruit and leave for at least 30 minutes to degorge. This step, often considered unnecessary with modern varieties of aubergine is essential in this dish.

Meanwhile make a tomato sauce. Finely chop your onion (or shallots) and garlic and put them with a drop of olive oil in covered pan to soften. Peel the tomatoes by immersing them in boiling water for a minute or two, then remove the cores and chop into small chunks. Again, if entertaining you can remove the seeds at this point but add an extra tomato to keep the weight up. Add the prepared tomatoes to the onions with the sugar and a very little allspice, a pinch or just enough to cover the tip of a knife. Add a generous grinding of black pepper and the half bottle of red wine. Remember the old adage about cooking wine needing to be good enough to drink. Bring everything to a simmer and allow to cook uncovered until the sauce is reduced a little.

Squeeze your salted aubergines hard with your hands to remove as much moisture as possible. This will also remove a lot of the salt. Put several tablespoonfuls of good olive oil in a frying pan and fry the aubergine until it is lightly golden on at leaast two sides. If it has been well salted it won't take up too much of the oil. Once it's cooked, drain off the excess oil and add the aubergine to the pot of sauce. Allow to simmer, well covered, for about 30 minutes.

This is a dish that really needs the extra lift that the parsley gives it. I didn't have any but I did find some Sweet Cicely in the herb garden. This is a lovely herb with leaves like cow parsley and a mild aniseedy taste which could substitute for chervil at a pinch. It substitutes well for parsley as a green herb for the photo and nearly matches up to it for taste. It also has that rather cute little white flower.

Serve with rice, couscous, pasta even or with some warm crusty bread. This quantity is plenty for two and would probably serve four as a side but it's as delicious cold as it is hot and will make a lovely lunch for tomorrow.

Jacket Spuds

I decided today's economy measure would be to cook my dinner in the woodburner although quite how economical several sheets of aluminium foil are compared to the gas I would have used in the cooker oven without foil is a moot point.

The potatoes were first given half an hour to the sides of the logs, as shown and then a further half hour directly on the embers. I feel all Valerie Singleton or do I mean Ray Mears? Not a lot in it I wouldn't have thought.

Tempura Don

There's a Japanese restaurant in Streatham we sometimes go to when we're in the UK. They do a nice age-dashi dofu but we often end up ordering this, because we love tempura and it makes a complete meal with a bowl of miso soup.

This is my version for Northern France. Tempura is a lot of faff to go to for one person but as soon as I saw the tight flower heads of the Land Cress and tender baby leaves of the Comfrey I knew that the moment for making an effort and gaining huge reward had come.

Rice is, well, rice.

The tempura batter is a little more Japanese-ish than entirely Japanese. Plain flour is mixed with a vegan lager beer, just until it's combined in a creamy, dippy sort of way.

The vegetables are Comfrey, Land cress flower heads and local 'sand' carrots. I also did a couple of slices of onion, sliced through the root end so that they would hold together but they weren't completed in time for the picture. Dip the dry vegetables in the batter, scrape off the excess (particularly important for the comfrey) and deep fry, not too hot, until puffed up and lightly golden. You can hold cooked pieces in a hot oven for a very short time but the sooner you eat them the better.

And let me apologise now about the picture. It's getting dark here, the rain was just starting and my dinner was getting cold. I didn't hang around out there.

The dipping sauce is made from some finely sliced ginger, a clove of finely sliced garlic, 1 part shoyu, 1 part rice vinegar and 2 parts water gently simmered for a few minutes and then strained.

I am stuffed and slightly overwhelmed by this quantity of fried food, but it was worth it. Definitely.

At a cost of almost nothing...

A little bit of foraging turned up these greens - Barbarea vulgaris - for my supper.

Stir fried quickly with a little sliced onion and then sprinkled in some soy sauce and a splash of cider vinegar they were allowed to steam just a moment too long, but were still very fresh and nutritious served with some boiled potato.

Lentil and Bulgur Soup

A few months ago when I was trying to lose weight I found this recipe for a filling soup on the excellent Nearly Turkish blog. It was almost vegan as it appeared, so I changed the butter for oil, recalibrated the cup measurements for a European audience and shared it with a vegetarian group on a private conferencing system Cix - (it's a great place to have threaded conversations without flaming or adverts. But as with everything there is rough with the smooth and this isn't the place to discuss it. Leave a comment if you'd like me to explain further.).

Nothing happened (including me getting thinner) until this week when my good friend and fellow blogger Niles decided to give the soup a go. He's always very charming and tactful but he said "soup wasn't as tasty as it could be". I was worried, had my diet addled taste buds misled me in my assessment of this economical and warming lunch? I decided I had to make it again and see if he was right.

Of course, being me, I couldn't decide whether to pull out the 'tasty' stops and try to add flavour or follow the recipe exactly and carry out a proper scientific test. To cut a long story shorter, I did both. The soup was tasty, to me at any rate, and I have enough to last me for the rest of the week.



Almost Turkish Lentil and Bulgur Soup:

This is the original version I shared, with notes on how I modified it today.

15g vegan margarine (or subs. 10g olive oil) (I doubled this today)
1 medium onion, finely chopped (used two onions)
(added two big cloves of garlic today)
100g French lentils
115g bulgur
30g flour (left out the flour)
500ml tomato juice (used a can of chopped toms and a little extra water)
1 litre water or stock (I prefer Marigold low salt stock powder but used a very salty French cube today)
2-3 tbsp dried mint flakes (I had no dried mint and substituted 6 tbsp. fresh mint, finely chopped)
2 tsp thyme
2 tsp red pepper flakes (I used about 1/2 tsp. as I can't take hot at the moment.)
salt

Saute onion (and garlic) with marg/oil until soft. (I gave it a good long time so that it browned a bit)
Add lentils, bulgur, juice and water/stock, mint, thyme, and pepper flakes.
Cover and simmer until lentils are cooked for approximately 30 minutes. Add extra water if you think it's getting too thick before the lentils and bulgur are cooked.
Add salt to taste. (the stock cube was so salty this wasn't necessary but I added some freshly ground black pepper to the bowl)

See, easy peasy! The left over soup gets thicker as the bulgur and lentils continue to absorb the liquid so add a little extra water or juice when reheating to get the consistency you prefer.

Alone again, naturally

Note the empty chair.

The time has come, Mr. Stripey Cat has departed back to the UK and his working life and I am alone here again, cooking for one.

Today being the first day without a companion, unless you count that bad black cat, I'm feeling more than a little sorry for myself and have been eating such junk food as I can find culminating with that most addictive of sins, Savoury rice. The glass contains pineapple juice diluted with water, not gin although I was sorely tempted.

Really I've been working hard, digging vegetable beds and so on, and the rice does have vegetables in it, peppers and carrots, not to mention a block of the inappropriately named Bjorg tofu for added protein.

Having reached the bottom of culinary excellence so quickly I'm hoping the way forward can only lead to better things but there is going to be an added restriction to my cooking for the next few months. I'm not going to starve but I need to economise so menus from now on will be compiled with an eye to frugality, at least for day to day eating. Might be fun.

Nettle Soup

We're home again and in the rush to get things sorted out, gardens planted and general partying there hasn't been a lot of fancy food cookery achieved.

This recipe for nettle soup would normally show up on the other blog where wild food and foraging makes its mark but it was cooked in celebration of our arrival and deserves its place on the table. Other vegetable treats we found were some savoy cabbage stumps bravely putting up flowering shoots every bit as toothsome as the divine purple sprouting or chinese bok choi. These were steamed quickly and served almost plain to really enjoy their fresh taste.

This is a very simple soup, made with ingredients to hand. Some recipes suggest adding a couple of floury potatoes to add body and others will specify a good stock in place of water. Use what you have and will enjoy.

Take a huge bowl of nettles, you'll need gloves to pick them and make sure you only take the tippy tops or your soup will be unpleasantly fibrous.

Chop a large onion finely and sweat down in a good gloop of oil, I used olive oil but any will do. Wash your nettles and pick out any bits of grass or other detritus then with the washing water still clinging to them put them in the pot with the onions. As they begin to wilt add just enough water to cover them.

Add herbs, I used mint, sage and the magical lovage, a herb that can bring any meal extra savoury sparkle, chopped finely as they will be incorporated into the soup. If you prefer to add harder herbs, rosemary or bay for example, then please do, the soup is infinitely variable to your taste but you'll need to pull any sticky bits out before blitzing it with the hand blender.

Simmer for 30 minutes or so, then use the hand blender to reduce the nettles and herbs to a thick puree. You can use a mouli-legumes if you prefer. Season to taste with plenty of salt and pepper.

Bring back to serving temperature and serve with croutons of fried bread and some soya yoghurt if you like it.

Musubi and Uramaki

Musubi, the famous Hawaiian snack and Uramaki, Californian rolls made with the scraps. I've blogged before about Musubi and you can find my veganised recipe here.

A Cornucopia of Leftovers

It's come at last, after some time in the UK for various reasons interesting and less interesting, on Saturday my last obligation in England for a few months will be completed and I can get back to the farm.

Naturally this means eating up all the food in fridge before we go as Mr. Stripey Cat will be joining me there for a few days before the cat and I are left to our own devices once more.

Tonight's meal then is recognisably a veg*n standby but the recipe is a little haphazard - I give you Cottage Pie.

The base mixture is made from a finely chopped onion, a finely cubed carrot and a finely cubed raw beetroot all gently sauteed in a little vegetable oil until they soften. To this was added a goodly quantity of slightly past their best mushroom, I'd say in the region of 400g if you pushed me but I didn't bother to weigh them. To soak up the moisture released by this quantity of mushrooms I added a couple of tablespoons of bulgar (cracked wheat) and chucked in the remainder of last night's even less glamorous vegetable stew.

For seasoning, the stew contributed some saffron and chili, I added a little dried thyme and soy sauce and then a big handful of finely chopped fresh herbs; a spring of sage and lots of mint and parsley. When everything was lightly cooked and combined it went into the pie dish.


Pink Fir Apple Potato on Pot

The mash was made from a random selection of potatoes including some Pink Fir Apple at the absolute end of their season. If you've never had mash from PFA you haven't lived but they are a bugger to peel and I don't like potato skin in my mash. No matter, mash the cooked spuds with a little cooking water and about 200g of soya yoghurt, then squidge it through the potato ricer onto the filling for that thatched cottage look. A sprinkle of oil on top and it's ready for the oven.

Cook at a reasonably hot temperature, say 200C for at least half an hour and anything up to an hour, very handy if you don't know what time the man plans to come home for his dinner (call me unresconstructed!) and enjoy with some cheap plonk to take away the corners of the day.



I must thank Charlotte for her kind words about the Kolokithopita

There have been more visitors here in the last few days than for the previous month. I hope at least some of you will find it worthwhile to come by again from time to time but I fear there will be a slight hiatus because as far as I know the phone line is still damaged from the winter storms and it's going to take a week to get that sorted out when I finally get back to France. So don't give up on me, I'll be back!