Terrine of Artichoke Heart

I had one of those huge artichokes. I'd had all the leaves, nibbled away in true rodent fashion and the heart was tender and full, just calling out to be used in some more elegant way than being coated with vinaigrette and gobbled up.

This is really nothing more than another retro recipe, a jellied salad, vegetables in aspic, a chilled vegetable terrine for a summer starter or to form part of a buffet on a hot day.



Ultimately it didn't quite deliver what I wanted, the olives were too salty, the broad beans a little diffident and the artichoke nearly overpowered by the tomato lemon juice jelly. Eaten with Plamil egg free mayonnaise and some crusty bread it was pleasant enough but the subtleties need work.

Gayelord

Humour in the Stripey Cat household is a puerile thing.

This Gayelord Hauser nutritional yeast is slightly more bitter and the flakes clump together a little more damply than our preferred Marigold brand, but I think we can find a use for it.

Hair of the Dog

Tofu666 is a prolific and talented vegan cook and he told me that gin in the marinade for deep fried tofu was a GOOD thing. Naturally I put it on this week's menu plan immediately.



But there was a problem. In my recent efforts to make more Beech Noyau than the world has ever seen (or quite possibly wants) the local stocks of gin have become completely exhausted. No matter, for when gin fails there is always that other lightly distilled white spirit to fall back on, tequila!

Except that me and Amy Winehouse had a bit of sesh last night while I was painting. There was still tequila left in the bottle this morning but I was feeling just a tiny bit fragile and not really in the mood for alcohol soaked anything. And that feeling persisted for a lot of the day.

But, and I'm sure this will come as a surprise to my many gentle readers, there comes a point in any recovery programme where fried food is suddenly one of the essentials of life. So at thunderstorm time this afternoon (about 4 p.m. in our local hours) I whipped up this cocktail, sorry, marinade and set the tofu to absorb it.

1 fat clove of garlic
1 tsp salt
2 tsp pomegranate syrup
Juice of one lemon
1 tablespoon of tequila
splash of olive oil.

Mash the garlic with the salt, add the syrup and the lemon juice. Lime juice would be much better but erm, I've run out. Mix in the tequila and oil. Beat well.

Let the tofu marinate for an hour or two, as long as you like really, then drain it, save the marinade, and dust liberally in cornflour. Deep fry those triangles for five or six minutes until golden.

With the reserved marinade, I strained out the garlic pulp, added a spoonful of soy sauce and another of rice vinegar, then diluted the whole thing by about the same volume of water and slipped in some lemon zest. Heat this up gently in a separate pan.

I plated it up to look pretty but what I actually find nicer with this sort of thing is to tip all the sauce over the fried tofu and let the cornflour batter soak up the flavour, so that's what I did when I actually ate it.

And I was hoping to take a great picture but in the gloaming of the storm it was never going to happen, so my next entry for tastespotting will have to wait for a while.

New Potatoes

Despite the weather almost driving me to suicide these last few days I did manage to take the first crop from the potatoes.



Best eaten boiled with a little salt and vegan butter. No recipe needed.

Garden Salad Sandwich

Marvel of Four Seasons lettuce, rocket, radish sprouts (from thinnings) and chives on wholemeal bread.

Pain

The staff of life although the 'stuff' of life might be the more contemporary phrasing.

It's an odd thing, when in the U.K. Mr. S-C and I make all our bread but on my own in France I almost never bother. It's not because I pop out to the boulangerie every day to pick up a crisp baguette, that treat is reserved for the one day a week when I do the shopping. The rest of the time, if I go to the right shop, I have a loaf of a very nice multi-grained and seeded sourdough or if I'm elsewhere a loaf or two of nothing in particular, often sliced and kept in the freezer.

I suppose it's because I'm lazy. I've got used to the magnificent Santos bread mixing machine we have in Newport Pagnell and the thought of hand kneading makes me yawn. On the other hand, although I've read many of the recipes on the web for no-knead bread all that faffing around with hot dutch ovens seems merely to be moving the effort in some other direction.

Anyway, I put bread on my menu plan for this week and bread is what I've made. I really truly meant to follow a recipe that my friend Mac recommended which is published on her Nibblous site but that laziness got in the way again. I reverted to the never fail method of flour, water, yeast and salt which is the basic definition of bread.

For this loaf then, you'll need 500g of flour. I used some organic semi-wholemeal type 110. You can find a definition of this at Practically Edible a site I just googled and will investigate more later. It's quite difficult to get wholemeal flours in France.

Add to the flour 320ml water, a packet of instant yeast and about 6g salt. That's it. Mix it up well and then do the kneading. They always say 10 minutes and they're probably right but if you have a feel for dough you'll know when it's ready. I stopped after 8 minutes (lazy, right?)

Leave to rise in a warmish place for as long as it takes. I gave this about 90 minutes. Then knead it gently for a minute or so and shape into the final loaf form. I considered improvising a banetton but thought that letting it rise free form would be easier.

My oven isn't great. It's a bottled gas powered one in a relatively small and cheap free standing cooker. Once lit, it took nearly half an hour to hit 250C making me shudder at the thought of the gas consumed. This was pretty much all the loaf needed for a second rise so I quickly slashed the top and got it into the heat.

Give your bread 10 to 15 minutes at this inferno of a temperature (real bread ovens get even hotter) then turn down the gas and let it cook through at about 180C, say another 30 minutes making 45 minutes total. Don't be afraid to give it 10 minutes more.

It turned out pretty well, though I say it myself. Purists will notice that the dough was a little young, there are signs of unplanned splits around the base caused by too much spring in the oven but I'm happy enough.

Now, to start a sourdough culture to make proper Pain de Campagne.

Curry tonight

The menu plan quite clearly said Tarka Dal for this evening, but I was feeling lazy and I already had some lentil and bulgar soup left over from yesterday and a tub of curry powder I'd been tempted to try last time I went shopping so I 'curried' it. I fried off some onions and cumin seed as a garnish - just a little too much fried actually but that's o.k. and made some nice fresh cucumber and tomato chutney to add some vitamins.

The supermarket curry powder wasn't too bad, the end result was rather like a Chinese curry if you know what I mean and my only real problem is that I made too much and now have leftover left overs. Which is a pity.

Ginger Nuts

If you sniggered when you read that title, you're probably not British, and if you are British you'll recognise that what I've cooked this evening is not quite Ginger Nuts. Regretfully I give you Ginger Cookies!



Not quite sure what went wrong. I've always found the subtle variations of quantities of syrup and fat in these biscuits to be intriguing and difficult to master and so I suppose, as my attention was divided by being on the phone to Mr. Stripey Cat at the same time I made them, that I just didn't get it quite right again. Proper nuts are flat, crisp, covered with tiny cracks like canyons and snap when you break them. These didn't spread, didn't get cracks and are still pretty much ball shaped.

Anyway, they're o.k. spicy, sweet, crisp on the outside and slightly chewy within and very cheering on a lousy wet cold evening in deepest Normandy.

Preheat your oven to about 160C

50g margarine
50g golden syrup
50g soft brown sugar

Put these ingredients in a pan and gently melt together. When the sugar is dissolved in the fat add,

175g plain flour
1 tsp. ground ginger
pinch ground chilli pepper
1/2 tsp. baking powder or flat tsp. bicarbonate of soda

Mix it all together. It will form a dough a bit like Playdoh. Nip small portions off (about walnut sized) and form into balls. Place them on your greased baking sheet, not too close to each other in case they spread, and cook for - I don't know, I was on the phone - about 17 to 20 minutes. They'll turn golden when they're ready.

Cool on a rack and dust with a bit of icing sugar for prettiness. Brew some strong coffee and enjoy.

Stuffed

Let me apologise for the picture first. I was just getting into the groove, as it were, of food porn when the camera announced it had run out of steam. What was I to do? I could wait three hours for my dinner or I could offer up a less than perfect picture.

I like my food.

Anyway, after a trip to the SuperU where I spent a good deal of money, 55 euros including the cat food but I did get a new rolling pin out of that, I came home determined to make dinner.

These tomatoes, of medium size, not the huge beefsteak sort of later in the season, are stuffed with spinach, kidney beans, raisins, capers, garlic and herbs. I had slightly too much filling because I intended to buy a green pepper and stuff that too but in the supermarket there was a gaggle of old ladies looking intimidating by the display and so I chickened out. The spare filling went in the bottom of the pot and did a good job holding the tomatoes safely while they cooked through in the oven for about 45 minutes. I could give you the recipe but that might be impugning your intelligence. Take the stuff, mix it together, apply to tomatoes. Cook. O.k, you might like to know the spinach was frozen and the filling was therefore gently cooked until thawed and combined in a frying pan before it went into the tomatoes. If you're using fresh spinach (by far the preferable option) then this is also going to be an essential step.

I can't recommend Les Ormes de Cambras Merlot vintage 2007. It's much thinner than the 2006 I learned to love last year but when it's your first glass of wine for a week it still has the necessary kick and at less than 3 euros the bottle, "Santé".

Ready Made

Bjorg Terrine Aubergine on toast.

I seem to have lost the will to cook since Mr. Stripey Cat went back to the UK on Monday.

This Bjorg yeast based spread is o.k. but, with I hope no funny remarks from those who know me well, I think I prefer the mushroom flavoured version.

It's a shopping day tomorrow. New ingredients and a menu plan will mean more to blog about next week.

Ready Made

Bjorg Terrine Aubergine on toast.

I seem to have lost the will to cook since Mr. Stripey went back the UK on Monday.

This Bjorg yeast based

Another Planet

No pictures tonight - dinner of Cauliflower au Gratin, although edible, was neither pretty nor delicious enough to warrant the effort so I didn't.

But I did want to have a whinge or a rant or just share with another soul that recurring experience that every vegan encounters and dreads; the omnivore with a chip on their shoulder about vegans.

I was at my language class and since the end of term is approaching plans were being made for the group night out, a meal at a local hostelry. There was no way to avoid it, asked straight out why I was a party pooper I had to answer, not as I might have liked to say that spending three hours in convivial gluttony with my classmates seemed to be a fate worse than death but that because I am vegan (végétalien) there was nothing on the set menu that it would be possible for me to eat.

I wish I'd said the other thing.

In our number, mostly older people retiring to this quiet corner of Normandy, are a few who supplement their pensions by doing a little B&B on the side. One of these had attempted to cook for vegan guests and had her efforts rebuffed because she had glazed a pastry with some of her own free range hen's egg. Clearly she never had a chance to put her point of view to the vegan party because she was seething with resentment and very anxious to make her point clear to me, in case I could pass the message on I suppose.

Her main beef (if that's not an insensitive word) was that hens can't be stopped from laying eggs, her hens weren't ever allowed to have sex (no rooster) and so the eggs were infertile and redundant. It would be wasteful not to eat them up. (the phrasing is mine, imagine a little more Queen Victoria in the delivery for the full effect).

What was I supposed to do? I said I sympathised but that discussions about veganism were a bit like politics, best not tackled over dinner (or in a language class). She persisted so I tentatively suggested that vegans would prefer she didn't keep hens. She was having none of that - hens are made for keeping, they keep them all over the world and her hens live the life of Riley. Which I'm sure they do. At that moment we were called to order to confer over the outing again. Thank goodness for class discipline!

Like I said, another planet.

Saturday Night Dinner

Tofu marinated in garlic, chilli, black treacle, lemongrass, oil and lemon juice, fried off quickly to imitate grilling and coated in a peanut satay sauce. Served with salad and rice.

Retro

I'd been planning this little excursion to the seventies for a while. When Mr. Stripey Cat turned up for a weekend with me, it seemed the perfect time to make it.


Pea and Mushroom Vol au Vent

It's not just that the pastry was ready made and pre-rolled, it's more that the filling contained something that in the hallowed days of Elizabeth David had something of a following; French tinned green peas.

I don't know why, and it's certainly not the case these days where even 'top chefs' use frozen petits pois for their high falutin' confections but way back when, French tinned peas had a reputation for excellence that was the cliché of the time. Something to do with hard boiled brilliant green of British tinned peas I think. French peas have a softness and a sweetness, not entirely natural but a good deal more appetising than their virulently coloured counterparts.

With them I served:


Basil and Garlic Roasted Cauliflower

My first time roasting cauliflower and it was good but perhaps not as special as some of the reports I'd read from the world wobbly internetty thingy. I'd cut right back on oil as a concession to the rather rich white sauce in the vol au vent filling and so the cauliflower was a little dry but where it had caught the heat the slightly bitter flavour was delicious. I think I'll put the leftovers in a vinaigrette for lunch tomorrow.

Fun with Carrots

Well, what did you think this was going to be about?

Carrots, really useful and versatile vegetables, come in a variety of colours in this thrill seeking age. They always did of course but just recently plant breeders hoping for an edge have been pushing the novelty angle. You can get carrots in all colours of the rainbow, well, almost but having tried most of them I can tell you that yellow carrots are nicest raw pulled straight from the ground, white carrots are close to inedible (most seed is derived from an animal feed stock, hardy and extremely chewy to keep cows contented through the winter) and purple ones, they just taste like carrots. So we'll confine ourselves to using the orange beauties today. Orange was always my favourite colour.

The carrot salad in the picture above was one of my first exposures to weirdness in food - if I tell you that many of my formative years were spent in Norfolk it will explain some things, at least to British readers - when even the idea of making a salad with a carrot was a bit outré. Anyway, daringly they sold this on the deli counters of my youth and I loved it.

Grate some carrots, add a good handful of well salted roasted peanuts (but not dry roast, oh no, never), a much smaller handful of sultanas or raisins (don't overdo this, you'll regret it) and a good dose of lemon juice. Mix well, in an ideal world leave for a couple of hours for the flavours to mingle, and that's it.

The French of course, have their carottes rapées which I have discovered in the course of researching this piece to have inspired a number of dubious home videos. I was going to include a link to the one involving a pink rabbit, a giant carrot and a chain saw but the quality was so bad and my download speed so low I gave it up as a bad job.

Anyway to make authentic carottes rapées all you need to do is dismember your carrots, preferably with a tool like a mandoline that makes thready bits rather than grating it and douse in a mustardy vinaigrette. That's 3 parts oil (use a bland one) to 1 part vinegar (a nice cider vinegar perhaps) with some salt, pepper and a big teaspoonful (to your taste of course) of moutarde dijonnaise, all whisked well together. If you read the packets in the supermarket you'll find no end of other esoteric ingredients, but trust me, these are the essential ones. Again, best with a few hours to mature.

Finally, following the rule of three, we have a cooked carrot salad. This is a sort of North African thing with variations from Morocco to Egypt and then some.

Cut up some mature carrots into neat pieces and cook until just tender in a large pot of salted boiling water - I used about 800g which were sufficient for the following quantity of sauce. Drain the carrots reserving about 200ml of the cooking water.

Put a pan on with plenty of olive oil in it, say 4 tablespoons and allow to warm. Crush three or four cloves of garlic and let it sit in the warm oil. Add a teaspoonful of cumin seed, a teaspoonful of ground cumin, hot chilli flakes to taste (you can add a fresh chilli with the garlic if you like hot), a pinch or two of allspice, a tiny tin of tomato puree (70g) and turn up the heat a little. When it starts to cook add the reserved cooking water and stir well. Add two or three tablespoons of a good red wine vinegar and bring to a simmer for a couple of minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper if necessary. Return the carrots to the pan and coat in the sauce. Add a couple of tablespoons of chopped parsley (coriander leaf is also good) and then remove to a serving container to cool to room temperature or a storage box for the fridge. Keeps for three or four days, if it lasts that long.

Not the world's greatest picture but it was in the middle of a two hour thunderstorm and even my camera thought I should be using flash...



And if after all these you still have carrots to spare, try this recipe for Pickled Carrots that I blogged last year.

"And dat's de end!"

Simply Simple Stew

Sometimes only really simple food will do. This is a recipe that relies on "less is more". You can add stuff but you'll feel better if you don't.



Cut up some potatoes and carrots sufficient for your needs. I always peel bought French potatoes because they spray them with something to stop sprouting. I expect they do in the UK too. My budget doesn't extend to organic and the new potatoes won't be on stream from the garden for another six weeks or so.

Add to the chopped veg. a small sliced onion or some sliced leek, not too much. A stick of celery is good but not essential.

Throw your veg into a pot, no oil needed, add water to just cover them and some herbs. I used lovage (particularly good in the absence of celery) but rosemary, bay leaves, dried mixed herbs will all do well. Add a pinch of salt and a grind of black pepper.

Bring to the boil and simmer gently until the vegetables are cooked. At the end of cooking stir in a big spoonful of a dark miso of your choice.

You could add tofu cubes, I wouldn't add beans or chickpeas to this one. Other vegetables like peppers or tomato muddy the flavour. Ultimately it's your choice.

And then for pudding;



Orange Drizzle cake with soy yoghurt. I'd like to give you the recipe for this but it's pretty much unrepeatable involving as it did a pot of past its sell by date apricot and guava pudding and some soy milk gone thick. I'd read about that but it had never happened to me before. It makes a good ingredient in cakes but there's not a lot of point in specifying it since the chances are it'll never be to hand when you need it.

Bon Appétit

Snack Supper

Bite sized pakoras, made with gram flour, onions and spices, served with a tomato and yoghurt sauce.

Mushrooms

In the delicatessens and chilled cabinets of France one can find a preparation called Champignons a la Greque. It's an oily tomato sauce flavoured with thyme and oregano and encasing button mushrooms, the small white babies known as Champignons de Paris. I haven't quite got to the bottom of this nomenclature but suffice to say these are cultivated mushrooms and not the sort that are eagerly gathered in forests and fields every autumn.

I can't blame the French for this particularly, they are recreating something that is foreign, a holiday memory, a false convention almost and it's one that is shared by the British and it seems, from my research, the Americans also. But I come from a more traditional cooking discipline, something that surprises even me, and for me anything cooked a la Greque has no tomatoes, it is simmered in a liquid somewhere between a court bouillon and a marinade, fragrant, subtle and retaining its own character.



I have, as it happens, used cultivated mushrooms for this example but if you have them other sorts of fungus will be equally well served.

Finely slice a small onion and two cloves of garlic. Put them in a pan, I like to use an enamelled pan for this sort of cooking, with a good splash of olive oil and allow them just enough heat for the rawness to pass away.

Add to this a bay leaf, 6-10 crushed peppercorns, a small bunch of parsley stems and all and a strip of lemon zest. To achieve perfection I would have added a scant teaspoonful of coriander seed and half a florence fennel bulb sliced thin but these are the omissions. To substitute I used half a teaspoon of fennel seed. Thyme or Greek oregano is another possible addition.

Add 1 wine glass of a sharp white wine, an equal quantity of water and the juice of the lemon.

Bring this bath to a simmer and after five minutes add your prepared mushrooms. This amount will take at least a pound (500g) of fungi. Bring it back to a simmer and give it another five minutes. Cover the pan and leave to cool. When cool, decant into a jar or dish retaining enough marinade to cover the mushrooms and chill for between 6 and 24 hours. It will keep, covered, for a couple of days or more if necessary.



They were served on a bed of lettuce leaves, the first crop from our vegetable garden where I carefully pinched off just one leaf from each plant to decorate the plate. I used spare mushroom simmering liquid to braise the last of the chicons and reheated some French bread rolls to eat with them.

Tonight's interesting drink is a Dandelion Kir, made with Dandelion Syrup and a glass of that sharp Muscadet used in the bouillon.

No Mexican Here

Refried Beans, Pico de Gallo, Tortillas, lime and soy yoghurt - as they never have them south of the border.

Pasta Puttanesca

The first vegan Puttanesca recipe I ever learned had no tomatoes in it at all. Just shallots, garlic, a fearsomely hot chilli and lots of capers and olives. I still think that this is the best but today I wanted the subtlety of barely cooked fresh tomatoes to add sweetness and moisture to the dish.

What I did isn't quite what I would have done had all the ingredients been to hand but I shall record the recipe the way it should be and if you can spot the substitutions in the picture you may have a gold star.

Put the pasta water on to boil. Add some salt.

Slice a couple of shallots very finely (or a small onion, there's not a lot of difference when the snobbery's removed after all), several cloves of garlic, one largish (not too hot for me) green chilli. Turn 3 small tomatoes (about 150g) into small dice and slice up some black olives into slivers. Have a good tablespoon full of capers handy.

When the water is boiling, throw in your pasta, spaghetti for preference but any shape will do.

Now, in a wide shallow frying pan, quickly fry off your shallots in a dollop of olive oil, add the chilli and then the garlic. As soon as the garlic starts to colour, add the tomatoes and a pinch of dried oregano. Add some ground black pepper if you like. Turn the heat down and stir the tomatoes and other stuff around a bit, then add the olives and capers. The whole thing shouldn't take more that 8 or 9 minutes.

By now the pasta should be nearly cooked. As soon as it reaches the point of tenderness you enjoy, drain it and add it to the sauce in the frying pan. Mix together and serve with a sprinkle of finely chopped parsley.

The peanuts? I just chucked them over the top. It's the end of the week and I'm all out of protein boosters. Next time though, I might crush them up first, make them more the consistency of parmesan.

Light Lunch

Tzatziki on Endive

In the Oven

I decided to feel the pain and do it anyway. This is the meal I had planned for yesterday.

Endives are the sort of vegetable that seem just a little bit too difficult, like plantains they have a passing resemblance to familiar foods; endives resemble lettuce hearts, but treated as their counterparts fail to achieve the same quality. This makes them less popular in the English speaking world for some reason but the French (and Belgians!) know just what to do.

The standard method for preparing endives then, if a bitter salad is not required and sometimes that's quite nice, is to cook them in butter and chicken stock and sometimes a little cream so the bitterness is ameliorated and the vegetable takes on some rich character of its own. We can't use chicken stock but this is Normandy - local cider will provide both the extra flavour and the acidic bite needed to really bring the endive into its own.

Take a few chicons, I can't tell you how many but you'll need between one and two per serving, maybe more, and halve them lengthways preserving the shape and tight folding of the leaves.

Melt a good quantity of a quality vegan margarine in a heavy pan (or use oil but I think marg. works better here) and put the endives, cut faces down, in the foaming fat. Allow them to cook gently for a few moments so that they start to take some colour.

Season well with salt and pepper, then sprinkle a good tablespoon of sugar over them. The sugar is important, don't leave it out and don't overdo it.

As this hits the heat and starts to caramelise add enough dry cider to come at least two thirds of the way up the vegetables, that is, leave one third above the liquid like an iceberg. If your cider is sweet you might like to add the juice of a lemon also, I didn't have one so can't advise but it's traditional. Cover, I used a sheet of aluminium foil, and pop in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes. Serve hot, with the juices ladled over.



To serve with them I did some roast tofu. The Bjorg tofu available here is really not very nice at all, tough as old (vegan) boots and utterly flavourless. I coated mine with a mixture of miso and pomegranate syrup but you could use teriyaki sauce or your favourite barbecue mix. A few potatoes filled the meal out.

So, the answer to yesterday's question; what gets me back in the kitchen?
It's alcohol, only joking of course, or am I?

No inspirations

What do you do when you just don't feel like cooking?

There was no blog yesterday because I had lunch with one of the Stripey Kittens, over for the weekend to stay in the holiday house. We had pizza and it was fun but not because it was worth reporting as food.

Today, I've had some left over tabbouleh and some (packet) soup and I'm just not hungry. The meal I planned has no attraction and neither does anything else.

Hopefully things will be better tomorrow but if anyone has any ideas for food that is certain to tempt me back to the cooker, please leave a comment.

Not Quite Tabbouleh

The weather has taken a plunge towards summer and today has been dreamily warm, something you really appreciate when the only time you normally feel your toes is towards the end of a steaming 20 minute shower.

So, time for Middle Eastern food, naturally. Ready made Tabbouleh is widely available in all French supermarkets, next to the Carottes Rapées. It comes in regular and oriental varieties (some added raisins usually) and can even be found with meat included, which makes shopping a touch more exciting for the dedicated vegan. Why take a chance with off the shelf when you can make your own? It's easy, cheap and nutritious.

Except, to make an authentic tabbouleh you'd have to do as I say and not as I do. Authentic tabbouleh is green with parsley and mint, fragrant with lemon and contains bulgur wheat.

This tomatoey version is made with couscous and because I had no parsley or lemons, just has a lot of mint and some red wine vinegar in the dressing.

Take some fine couscous and douse it in twice its volume of boiling water. You don't need too much, there should be far more vegetable and greens than cereal in this.

Skin and chop quite a lot of tomatoes into fine chunks. Skin and chop most of a long cucumber into fine dice. You don't have to peel the cuc. but I didn't like the look of mine. Chop a small onion (or some spring onions) finely. Take a big bunch of mint, and I have four types of mint as it happens but still no parsley, and chop it up too. Then mix all these veggies in a big bowl (and you can add peppers or anything else you fancy if you have them) with salt, olive oil and red wine vinegar to taste. I like a lot of everything. Mix well and add the rehydrated couscous. Oh, and because I think I'm not getting enough protein I chucked in a small tin of white haricot beans. Chickpeas were my first choice but I didn't have any of those either.

As usual this made easily enough for two but don't let that stop you. Leftovers are good for the soul.

Eat it with pleasure. Don't under any circumstances decide to serve it in a sundae glass because that's just silly and really difficult to eat from without spilling it everywhere.

Icecream and Oranges

This is a recipe so stunningly simple and good that I wish I'd invented it, but I didn't and I first learned of it from a vegan recipe book, the name of which escapes me and the authors of which I can't remember, too annoyingly hard to find on Amazon to give them their plug, but if I can find it again I'll come back and edit this post!

Freeze some bananas, about 200g without their skins. When they are frozen hard put them in the sturdy food processor or liquidiser with 50g oil, 100g milk substitute (I like almond or rice for this but the original recipe called for soya), the juice of half a lemon and a teaspoon of good vanilla extract. That's right, no sugar needed.

Give it all a good processing. The bananas will become a delicious iced puree which you can serve immediately or pop back in the freezer to get harder again. If you leave it a very long time it might be too hard to scoop so remember to get it out half an hour or so before you need it.

Served tonight with a segmented orange but this is good so many ways and the flavourings can be adjusted - I used some brandy in tonight's version as I had no vanilla.

*** UPDATE ***
finally found that cookbook! The Vegan Cookbook by Alan Wakeman and Gordon Baskerville

Sag Aloo

Made with frozen spinach, I cannot tell a lie.

200g potatoes, cut into bite sized pieces, no need to peel.
150g fresh tomatoes, finely chopped.
200g frozen spinach - I advise defrosting this beforehand if you remember.
1 small clove garlic finely chopped.

Spices:
1 tsp. cumin seed.
1 tsp. ground turmeric.
1 tsp. black mustard seed.
0.5 tsp. ground ginger.
0.5 tsp. ground cinnamon.
0.5 tsp. ground black pepper.
0.5 tsp. chilli flakes or powder (or to taste,this amount is quite mild).
(or skip all these and use a tablespoon of your favourite curry powder instead).

Salt.
Oil - about 2 tablespoons or a little more if you're hungry/greedy/like rich food.

Heat the oil and gently fry the spices. Don't burn them. As soon as they start to give off a pleasant aroma add the potato pieces and turn them around to coat in the spicy oil. Add the garlic and the tomatoes, give everything another stir, finally add the spinach. I didn't defrost mine and that was a mistake because cooking came to a stop and everything started to stick, so I added a drop of water and that made everything too wet ultimately, but at least it didn't burn and have to be thrown away. You may need to add water too but err on the scant side of not much.

That's it really, cover the pan and let simmer gently, stirring from time to time until the potatoes are cooked and the sauce is thick and rich. Add salt to taste.

To serve, some boiled rice and an onion raita. If you don't like raw onion make the raita with cucumber instead. That interesting looking drink in the picture is a Cherry Beer Shandy, about as close as someone as refined as me will ever get to eight pints of lager before my curry.

This was really good and makes enough for tomorrow's breakfast too.