Stinging

This was a success. Nettle lasagne. Tastes like spinach. Not a lot to say about it, prepare your nettles by rinsing well and blanching for 5 minutes or so, then chop finely and use in your favourite recipe. This was a version maigré, with Mr. Stripey at home we're eating several meals a day and rather too large ones at that, so I left out the béchamel sauce to save a few calories.

Cooking is still taking a less important part of life than growing plants and sitting in the sun but I will be blogging some new favourites in a week or two.

Healthy eating

Quinoa Nettle Bake

I've not been feeling too well for a few days and have decided this is, in part at least, due to the rather naff diet I've been feeding myself over the last month. I set out to make a meal bursting full of goodness and vital nutrition.

Quinoa is a magical seed grain, full of excellent things. The 100g I used today in this dish provided a third of my protein and iron for the day and half my needs in folate, phosphorus and magnesium. It also happens to be easy to grow so although this particular meal was made with imported produce, it can easily be made part of a locavore diet. I cooked it before combining it with the other ingredients.

Nettles are traditionally established as a good spring tonic, containing Vitamins A, C and K along with iron and other minerals. Pick just the tops (use gloves), wash well and blanch in boiling water for five minutes before draining and chopping well as you would spinach.

To flavour the nettles I used ginger and garlic, both with health merits of their own. Tomatoes, brown bread and sesame seeds made the crispy topping and virgin olive oil greased the dish and was sprinkled over the food to help the bread cubes turn golden. It all cooked in a hot oven for about 40 minutes.

It's good stuff. I expect to be much healthier tomorrow.

In the last week

Chickpea and rice burgers

A selection of unremarkable meals eaten recently. I had hoped these ground chickpea and rice burgers would be special enough to share the recipe but alas, they were only edible, not great.


Onion fritters with tomato jam

When the going gets tough I tend to resort to batter based snack foods.


Tofu and Beetroot Hash

What can I say? This was only the sum of its parts. The greens were the first harvest from the Good King Henry, which was nice.

A much more successful meal that has formed a couple of suppers already this week is my variation on a recipe which I'm sure I found on Thyme for Cooking but I've just been back to look and can't find anything like it. Anyway, it's just a really simple pasta dressed with olive oil, a little vegan margarine, lemon juice, nutritional yeast flakes, salt, pepper and chopped fresh herbs of choice; I've been using fresh sage mostly, it's wonderful. Naturally the original contained butter and parmesan but you don't need me to tell you that's not vegan. This has just the right amount of starchy comfort mixed with spring flavours for me at the moment.

Finally, everyone loves pizza. This monster did three meals, all of them delicious.

Backlinks

Something bad is going on although I'm not sure where to point the finger. More backlink issues on this blog so existing ones are hidden and new posts will not be enabled for them.

It's stuff like this that makes me want to stop blogging.

Rhubarb, rhubarb

I'm feeling a bit peeved today, firstly foodgawker have ignored my submission of the Dandelion post. No comments, no feedback, no show. I'm disappointed and incensed in equal parts since I only submit odd posts there that I think will be more interesting than 'yetanothercupcake' recipe. Still it's their loss. No more free content from me. UPDATE: I just checked the site, they didn't like my photo. Well, see this finger, I don't like you either...

And then I hear via Thyme for Cooking that Google have come up with some fantastic new scheme that seems destined to make the independent food blogger even more alienated. I've resisted strongly every attempt to be coerced into affiliating with cooking themed content agglomerations with the intrinsic implication that I welcome the commercialisation associated with it, although I notice a certain site has included me anyway, and I don't much want to have to start conforming to Google's idea of a recipe post in order to have people find me. Google, if you're reading, stop this madness now.

Anyway, the other day when Rose asked if I knew any savoury things to do with rhubarb it started a train of thought which I now present.


Rhubarb Tzatziki

The concept is simple, instead of cucumber in the tzatziki use rhubarb. Sounds mad, works well.

For a small side dish enough for two;

1 big stick of rhubarb, trimmed and peeled
1 or 2 cloves of garlic
olive oil
salt
100g good quality soy/dairy free yoghurt

It's easy to peel rhubarb, just slide the knife blade under the skin at one end of the stalk and holding the slice against the blade gently pull the skin away down the length. You'll need to take two or three pulls like this. Then cube the rhubarb flesh as you would for a cucumber tzatziki. I cut it into short batons and then across into cubes about few millimetres square. Small is better but don't become obsessive.

Sprinkle a little salt (about 1/2 tsp.) over the cubes and leave for a couple of hours to release the juices. Then drain. This removes some of the salt and stops the tzatziki from becoming watery.

Crush your garlic to a fine paste, how much you use is up to you, and mix it with the drained rhubarb. Add a good glug of a pleasant tasting olive oil and stir everything together then add the yoghurt and mix well. Cover tightly and leave to mellow in the fridge for 12 to 24 hours.

This is good, the texture is just right and there is no need to add extra wine vinegar or lemon juice because the rhubarb provides the sharpness.

However, I didn't stop there because the Indian sub-continent equivalent of island tzatziki is the Raita.

Simpler than the tzatziki, this time there's no need for anything other than a good handful of freshly chopped mint added to the rhubarb after preparation and draining. Mix in the yoghurt and it's ready to eat within half an hour. The sourness of the rhubarb really shines in this making a mint sauce to die for. It would be brilliant with poppadums or as side dish to rice and curry but it went pretty well with crinkle crisps too.


Rhubarb Raita

Tanpopo - eating dandelions

Call me weird, you won't be the first, but I've always wanted to try eating dandelion roots. However, despite living in a meadow full of them I've never found any with large enough roots to make it feasible to prepare enough for a portion. Until today.



Digging in the back garden plot, full of rich soil and untouched since last autumn there were several large plants which had been biding their time and just beginning to flower. I suppose the counsel of perfection would have been to take them a couple of weeks ago before the buds were fully developed but no matter, it wasn't too late.



It's really not worth while trying to work with any root thinner than your little finger. Trim off the tops and scrub them well. I used a rough nylon scrubbing sponge, the sort used for washing up but a nail brush might work too. Most of the outer colour will come off. Use a small knife to peel away any difficult spots.



Shred the roots into small pieces. I found it easiest to sit with a bowl in my lap and 'sharpen' the roots like a pencil into the bowl. This is a standard Japanese technique called sasagaki, usually used for burdock root. In Roger Philipps' Wild Food book he gives a recipe where the root is minced but I think this is nicer. In the larger roots you may find a stringy twiggy core. It's easy enough to pick this out as you go but small bits won't hurt.

Stir fry the shreds in a teaspoonful of sesame oil for a few minutes until they are just beginning to turn golden at the edges, then add a couple of tablespoons of soy sauce mixed with water in equal parts. Cover the pan and allow everything to steam for a minute then remove the lid and allow the dandelion root to simmer gently. Stir frequently until all the moisture has evaporated and the shreds are dark and shiny with the glaze.

It's quite bitter so plan to serve it as a condiment with rice and another dish but do try it if you can. I found it addictive.

Lovely Lovage

Chickpea and Pasta Soup with Lovage

One of the less widely available herbs, with a yeasty celery smell that reaches out to you, lovage grows up to be something of triffid easily reaching 1.5 to 2 metres when in flower. Because it needs so much space in the garden not many people grow it but it is a wonderful way to flavour soups and stews.


It's a perennial herb, dying back to ground level in winter but quite hardy. At this time of year it's wonderfully leafy and green shooting up quickly. When it flowers later in the summer bees and insects all love it. The seeds can be saved and used like celery seed. You can also use the seeds and root to flavour liqueurs which become fragrant rather than savoury in smell and have an intriguing flavour. If you want to preserve some for winter it's better to freeze chopped leaves in ice cube trays and then bag securely but the elusive smell will only last a few months even in the freezer, quickly turning to hay.

I made a spring soup, still hearty with chickpeas and pasta and packed with vegetables but with vernal lightness from a handful of fresh herbs; lovage, parsley and chives. Lovage will be in plenty of meals from now on.

Back with Rhubarb Muffins

At last things seemed to have settled down a bit and there's a little bit of time and inclination in my life for cooking. For the next few weeks I'm going to try to showcase some of the spring produce that's growing here - not as easy as it sounds as it will be a few weeks before the first crops come in - and foraging for wild and escaped plants to add to the variety.



The rhubarb season is in full swing. Forget the weedy anaemic stems of fluorescent pink stuff sold at enormous prices two months ago, this is the real thing. Great big chunky stems of mouth puckering sharpness and excitement.

Still, I know not everyone is as willing and able to nibble their way through a freshly plucked leaf stem as I am. Making this fruity vegetable into muffins helps the medicine go down.

For nine muffins you will need:

200g flour, white or brown
100g sugar, brown is best
Baking powder; 1 sachet, 11g, about 2 teaspoons full
100g non-dairy yoghurt
25ml non-dairy milk
100g light vegetable oil
1 large stick of rhubarb, peeled if you like and chopped small
extra granulated sugar for sprinkling

Mix yoghurt, milk and oil in a bowl. Add the brown sugar, flour and baking powder. Mix together well. It will form quite a stiff batter. Add a little more milk if you like but not too much as the rhubarb will supply more moisture during cooking.

Line your muffin tins with paper cases (or grease well) and put a couple of large teaspoons of mixture into each case. Add a few pieces of rhubarb to each muffin then share the rest of the batter evenly between the cakes. Put one piece of rhubarb on top and sprinkle liberally with sugar, for extra sweetness and a crunchy finish.

Bake at about 200C for between 20 and 25 minutes. The rhubarb keeps the centres moist so it's not easy to check for doneness, the golden brown of the top should be your guide.

Allow to cool a little and eat a couple at a time as a restorative snack while gardening.