Pop-up Underground

Tofu Scramble with dutch oven roasted potatoes - the potatoes are that odd colour because they have a lot of blue colour in them naturally.

I did a whacky and slightly scary thing today. I announced on twitter that I would be doing a pop-up restaurant event in the autumn. I've no idea what made me do it, but it's said now, so that's what must be happening.

What's a pop-up underground restaurant? It's pop-up because it's available for a very short time. Pop-ups typically appear in unused spaces or non-food locations and after one or two nights, the show is over and they're on their way. Underground restaurants serve meals open to the public but hosted in private homes. It's on the edge of legality and most underground venues release their location on a need to know basis. Successful underground restaurants may have regular calendar dates scheduled for meals.

There is either a charge per head or donations are taken for the cost of food and preparation. Alcohol can't be sold, that really is illegal, but patrons are allowed to bring their own. The menu is fixed, sometimes themed and served supper style with all guests receiving each course at about the same time. Sometimes tables are shared as space is usually very limited in a domestic setting.

Have a look at MsMarmite's blog - she was certainly the first underground restaurateur I came across and is a great read. But of course, I've never eaten there because the food isn't vegan. It's too much to expect small concerns, often one person bands, to make extraordinary efforts to feed vegans if their usual metier is more mainstream. Which is where I come in...

I'm hoping to do at least one event in the UK this autumn, more if venues can be found so that the vegan supperclub joy can be spread around the country a bit. This really is a project that's just hours old so nothing is fixed at all yet, but it's going to happen.

Watch this space.

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.

Soup Dragon

This doesn't look as good as it tasted, steamy and green as it is with a swirl of soya cream, some croutons and a sprinkle of soya bacon bits.

It rather fails on the appropriateness for season also, a hearty pulse soup more suited to January than July but it's cold and rainy and I'm in need of comfort so naturally I turn to my favourite form of food solace.

So easy to make that it needs no recipe, an onion, a good handful of freshly dried split green peas (and by that I mean less than a year old or they'll never cook), some thyme all simmered together until completely soft, whizzed up to a velvety smoothness, seasoned and served with garnishes of choice.

Experimenting

An attempt at a posh pudding. It doesn't look too posh here, as the intention was to turn the set jelly out and cube it for service. The jelly would have done that but the cherries were too difficult to slice in the soft matrix and generally just wrecked the joint. Which was a pity but I ate it up anyway because it tasted nice.

To 500ml of almond milk add 2g agar agar powder and about 25g granulated sugar. Bring to a simmer over a gentle heat and cook for a few minutes. Pour into a mould adding fruits as desired. Sets within an hour but nicest well chilled.

For my dinner I turned to a Croq'soya burger, served with chips, fried onions, a tomato salad and a dill pickle. How unhealthy is that.

Thunderstorm Supper

Posting this evening in the gaps between large storms rolling in across the farm - I have to be quick because it's perfectly possible to explode computers in these circumstances as I have already proved.

So...



New potatoes, picked just before cooking (that is, in the rain and storm) boiled and served with pistou and capers, caramelised plum tomato and tofu in a saté sauce. Yes, this does fall outside my 'no-fusion' rule but if I'd layered it all up and called it Gado Gado no one would have been any the wiser. And I may just do that next time.

Ingredients are Everything

Despite the tautology this is an essential truth in cookery. Without the proper makings the recipe can never be recreated. This meal is based, I can't tell you how accurately because it's been years since I looked at it, on a recipe in a book published by Cranks Restaurant. It's reliable, delicious and a standby that can be dressed up or down as the occasion demands, but you must have the right ingredients.


A stew of Potatoes and Chickpeas infused with Ginger and Saffron

Finely chop an onion and put it to melt down in a good glug of olive oil. Add plenty of finely chopped garlic and a good knob of fresh root ginger reduced to as much of a paste as you can. A microplane grater is excellent for this, use the fine gauge one and mind your fingers. Keep the lid on the pan and stir often to prevent browning.

Prepare some potatoes, I used new potatoes from our vegetable plot and only had to scrape them and chop into bite sized pieces but old potatoes work nearly as well. Peel them and make large dice. Throw them into the pan with the onions etc. and put in a good grind of black pepper.

You can use dried chickpeas, soaked and cooked until tender or tinned ones as I did. If using dried peas make sure they are recently harvested and do not add salt to the cooking water or they will be tough, tinned peas need to be well rinsed to remove the canning brine.

Add your chickpeas to the pan with enough stock or water to just cover the vegetables. This is a soupy stew and the broth is an integral part so you can err on the side of generous but don't make it too wet. Bring to a simmer.

Put a big pinch of saffron strands into the hot liquid. I know it's the most expensive spice known to mankind and hard to find in some places but you don't use it often. Give it enough that you can taste it or what's the point? Saffron always makes me think of seafood so I always intend to add some shredded seaweed as an experiment in this dish but as usual intention and ability are divorced and opportunity was missed again. Salt to taste.

Cover the pan and leave to simmer for 15-20 minutes while you do the washing up. O.k. you may not need to do the washing up, but I did. It's ready when the vegetables are cooked.

Bizarrely and unusually for France I have coriander leaf but not flat leaf parsley. The parsley is definitely better, chop some finely and sprinkle it over each serving.

My meal tonight was served with steamed broccoli dressed with balsamic vinegar which was no better than it sounds.

Carrot Korma

One of the problems with living here is not that vegans are misunderstood in France, although they surely are, but that living alone there are few dishes I can cook that will be just enough for one meal. Tonight's Carrot Korma is a case in point, the quantity I made would have served two or three greedy people with bread or rice, and probably provided a taste for six as a side dish.



The recipe is based on one that is on the web in several places in slightly differing forms - since I had few of the listed ingredients, really only looking to use up a large bag of carrots that won't keep much longer, I've freely adapted and produced something which is close in spirit but probably doesn't taste much like the other versions about.

Grate a quantity of carrots, this is possibly the most tedious part of the recipe, I used enough carrots to produce about two cereal bowls of grated vegetable.

Mince or finely chop three or more cloves of garlic and slice a long medium hot green chili into thin rings. I used one of the chillies I'd bought for the stuffed chili peppers on Friday. They weren't very hot without the seeds so for this dish I left the seeds in. If you have any ginger, I didn't, finely grate about two teaspoonfuls of that too, I really think it will improve the final product.

In a clean pan heat two tablespoons or so of a light oil and add a dessert spoon of mustard seeds, a good grind of black pepper and the garlic and chillies (and ginger if you have it). Keep the heat low and stir everything around until the mustard seeds start to pop, then add a teaspoonful of ground cumin (if you have seeds add them with the mustard seed), half a teaspoon of turmeric and a smidge, say a 1/4 teaspoon each of ground cinnamon and ground allspice. Mix up well and add the carrot, stirring everything together until the carrot shreds are coated with the spices. Cover the pan and leave on a gentle heat for about 20 minutes. Give it a stir from time to time.

When the carrot is soft and cooked add two tablespoons of coconut cream. This is another place where I've deviated from the 'original' which calls for dry coconut shreds at this point. I think that would be better but I have none. If I did use dried coconut I might be tempted to add just a little extra liquid. Salt to taste. Cover the pan again and allow to heat through for a couple of minutes.

I garnished my korma with pistachio nuts. Ideally served with indian flatbreads, chapattis or parathas tonight's dinner was served with some cooked green beans and french bread recovered by warming through in the oven.

How did it taste; pretty good but the chili heat was too much for me, even with this limited amount of peppers and I had to add some soy yoghurt to cool everything down.

Veritable British Curry

Tonight's meal is an exercise in history. When I was young, curry, when it didn't come straight from the Vesta Packet, was a peculiar melange of muddled ideas about Indian cookery and the Raj.



France isn't terribly good for the things we take for granted in the UK, the range of spices is quite limited and the quality of what's available remarkably poor. I bought a jar of ground cinnamon the other day which I swear tasted of nothing at all, which was a disappointment because I'd promised myself cinnamon toast, but that's not important right now.

The lack of a decent repertoire of spices or green curry herbs means that making anything like a authentic Indian or Pakistani curry is way beyond my reach. However, I did find an acceptable Madras curry mix and with a carton of coconut cream, some potatoes, apples, prunes, tinned beans and peas created a meal redolent of my youth.

The flat breads are the left over flour tortillas, I cannot tell a lie.