Moussaka

I made moussaka for dinner tonight. It's painfully easy.



Make a mince mixture of red lentils and bulgar wheat simmered together with some fried onions (use olive oil), a diced carrot and a tin of tomatoes. Season with half a teaspoon of ground cinnamon (or drop in half a stick for later retrieval) and a good tablespoon of dried mint. If you have fresh mint add to taste. Salt and pepper, naturally.

Slice some aubergines thin (I used two fairly small ones) and fry or griddle the slices until they soften.

Grease a pan and position enough aubergine slices to cover the bottom of it. Cover these with a good layer of mince mix and level off. Put a second layer of aubergines over this.

Top off with a layer of béchamel sauce made with your favourite vegan substitutions - vegan marg, soy milk etc. well seasoned with salt and nutritional yeast.

I sprinkled a layer of sesame seeds over everything for a little extra je ne sais quoi.

Bake in a medium oven for an hour or so, or until the other diner gets home. Will sit comfortably warm for another hour as is being demonstrated by the one in the picture.

To kill a King

Allegedly one of Elvis' favourite snacks, the fried peanut butter and banana sandwich.

I don't know what came over me.

Doing more with your Mooli

I'm looking hard for a picture of a mooli, I'm sure I had one around here somewhere...[later] this ought to do it.


This Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons image is from the user Chris 73 and is freely available at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Daikon.Japan.jpg under the creative commons cc-by-sa 2.5 license.

Anyway, what I want to talk about today is Mooli Cake or Radish Cake or even Carrot Cake due to some problems with translation. This is an interesting way to use the great white radish of doom that turns it from a watery root vegetable or pungent pickle ingredient into a tasty snack food of delicious substance.

I first came across it in the excellent Thai Vegetarian Cooking book by Vatcharin Bhumichtr first published in 1991. I notice his recipes, including the one for White Radish Cake with Beansprouts have proliferated all over the web without regard for copyright which is a pity, but I still recommend you get the book if you can find it at a reasonable price as it is full of good stuff.

Doing a bit more research for the benefit of this blog (yes, I am that dedicated!) I've discovered that Chinese versions are usually flavoured before steaming, often with quite strong flavours but this mild white recipe is good because it can be dressed up or down as the menu requires.

The most difficult part of this is improvising a big enough steamer. I used a 2 gallon stock pot with a cake tin ring as a support for another 20cm cake tin. Line your cooking container with parchment for easy unmoulding.

750g fresh white mooli radish (about 1 medium)
125g white rice flour
25g wheat flour
a splash of water (about 15ml)

Trim and peel your radish, then grate with a very fine grater or save your strength and chop it up roughly before using a food processor to reduce it to a fine pulp.

Mix the radish with the flours and then add just a splash of water. How much depends on how fresh and wet your radish is, there will be a noticeable slackening of the mixture but it should not become runny.

Assemble your steamer contraption and bring to the boil. Fill your steamer tin or dish with the mix and level off. A square shape is ideal for presentation but a round one will work perfectly well. When the steamer is hot, put the radish cake into the steamer and close the lid.

Steam for 30-35 minutes. A skewer or thin knife blade inserted should come out clean although the cake will still seem a little soft.

Remove from the heat and allow to cool completely. Any surface wetness will disappear and the cake will firm up.

At this point the cake can be wrapped and put away in the fridge until needed, it will keep for a couple of days.

To use:

Cut into bitesized cubes or rectangles. Fry the cubes in hot oil on all sides until browned. Then use in stirfries or with dipping sauces. I decided to do mine salt and pepper style.

Move your radish cakes cubes to one side of the wok. Reduce the heat. Fry a thinly sliced red onion or shallot in the space cleared until it begins to soften and colour. Add a red chilli cut in rings and a thinly sliced clove of garlic. Turn up the heat and working quickly to avoid burning the garlic stir the radish cake back into the mix. Season well with salt (and freshly ground black pepper if you like) and serve immediately.

MIA

I've been being a bad blogger again, and notice that my stats, always slim, are beginning to melt away entirely. I have been cooking, honestly, some pretty prime stuff too but somehow I never quite get around to the whole photo, edit, write up scene. This probably has something to do with the seasons, it's too dark for easy photography and I'm too cold to want to wait for my dinner.

Here is a case in point. Ridiculously thick tomato and pumpkin soup snapped just as the sun was going down and a cold bowlful at that, plated for the shot while my real supper warmed on the stove.

It's too easy for a proper recipe, just onions and garlic sweated down with plenty of chopped pumpkin (I used one of the last of the Melonette Jaspee De Vendee) and some tinned tomatoes, simmered with some rosemary and a couple of bay leaves until soft, then whizzed with the immersion blender. Season to taste. It's thick and comforting and the sweetness of the squash offsets the acidity of the tinned tomatoes nicely.

No more cooking for a couple of days. Hope to be doing something fancy at the weekend. I may even cook too.