Lettuce and Tarragon Risotto

Although I'm perfectly comfortable with the fact leaves are good for you and even evangelise about it to others from time to time I find actually eating a lot of raw vegetation really quite dull. This is a way of getting more leafy greens into me, without my jaw aching. Regular readers will also note that it's a way of getting more of my favourite white rice included in my diet, but that's not important right now.

At the risk of boring everyone I'll just run over the steps involved in risotto again.

Chop an onion (or shallots) finely and melt down in some olive oil. It's o.k. to use a tad more oil in a vegan risotto as there will be no added fat from cheese or cream.

Put in a quantity of rice, probably a little less than you think you'll need. Risotto rice is always recommended but as it happens I've been using some Riz Rond (aka pudding rice) and the sky hasn't fallen yet. It's working just fine.

Get the rice oily and warmed. Chuck in a good glassful of white wine. I've got a bottle of cooking wine, a (just) drinkable Blanc de Blancs vin de table but if you're buying in a dry Italian wine or a Muscadet is probably better.

Let that sizzle and boil. Add a quantity of chopped tarragon. If you have no tarragon a spoonful of Pastis is good or a slug of vermouth. Add salt and black pepper.

The stock; don't use a stock cube unless you crave monosodium glutamate (which happens), plain water will do. The water doesn't even have to be hot although if you're using cold add it in small doses so that the pan never stops cooking. Of course if you have a good and compatible vegetable stock to hand use it by all means.

Add liquid in small quantities, stirring regularly and keeping the pan simmering, until the rice is nearly cooked.

Add another wine glass of liquid and some nutritional yeast. This really does do most of what the parmesan would do in a traditional recipe but it needs moisture to dissolve in and adds no fat. Don't overdo it, it is a matter of taste how much you'll need.

Stir everything around and pile in a lot of washed, roughly chopped lettuce. Put the lid on the pan to help it wilt down a bit and then remove the lid and stir it in. You may need a little more stock or water but the lettuce gives off quite a lot of liquid as it cooks. Keep stirring, testing the rice and observing until everything is cooked to perfection and serve.

Nostalgia

My first experiences of French food, when I was 12, were on an exchange trip from my school to a school in Maubeuge. We were all assigned host families and partners from the school there and the idea was that after we had stayed with them, they would come and stay with us. Except for some reason I was paired with a boy who wouldn't travel. Or maybe it was that my parents were too mean. Anyway, I was dropped off in the depth of the countryside miles from the town with no chance of seeing any of my friends except on the organised trips and with a boy who didn't mix.

It was not a happy time. The family were very nice to me but couldn't overcome my shyness, their son's shyness and the total language barriers between us all. However, there was a lovely girl who worked for them, milked the cows in the morning, did all the cleaning, most of the cooking, everything as far as I could see and although we couldn't swap a word we got along pretty well.

One evening she put this on the table. Simple lightly cooked fresh cauliflower and a strong oily vinaigrette rich with garlic and herbs. I'd never had anything like it before in my life and I loved it.



Use a good olive oil and plenty of seasoning. Don't overcook the cauliflower and include a few of the leaves if they are crisp and fresh.

Sorry about the picture. I cut my finger eviscerating an artichoke yesterday and combined with general sadness don't have much energy for fancy photography.

foodgawker or tastespotting?

Which food photo accumulator do you prefer? tastespotting or foodgawker?

There are now over 200 feeds in my reader, I'd like to reduce that a bit and the content in these two has considerable overlap.

It's good to skim across looking for new presentations or ethnic foods I've never heard of although most of the content involving meat, dairy and cupcakes isn't for me. However, it's getting a bit dull seeing the same stuff in two places, especially when there's a group release from one of the baking gangs. Foodgawker seems to be a bit quicker in getting the links up but tastespotting is longer established and I think may have more contributors. One of them has got to go.

Do you have a favourite or am I missing the perfect alternative site that will meet my needs? Why do people post their links on both sites and is it a good or bad thing? Do you know the meaning of life? Answers in the comments please, I'd really like to hear from you.

Food experiment fail

Time to draw a veil over this week's food activities. I've had not one, not two but three complete wipeouts in the kitchen wasting food and gas.

The first mistake is pictured above and below, a riff on Mediterranean stuffed vegetables. There's not really all that much wrong with them except they are entirely and totally unappetising. I've made a curry and 2 pints of soup so far in order to avoid eating these excrescences and even when I decided to hide the evidence by eating the photo shoot I gave up half way through because I simply couldn't force another mouthful in.

Then there were the sections of pumpkin, roasted because I had the oven on anyway. They weren't quite soft enough, so I left them in for another hour. I now have pumpkin leather, possibly of use to Ray Mears as something to sharpen his blade on or even to light fires but hardly edible.

Finally, there is no way on earth I will reveal what I did to a poor defenceless aubergine in the interests of research because it might lead someone of unsound mind to try to repeat the experiment and I couldn't take the guilt for the resulting disaster. It's very rare that food in my kitchen goes straight from oven to compost bin but this was a prime example. It makes me gag even to think about it.

So there you have it. Maybe I'm not cut out to be a top chef after all.

Lagana and Etnos

We have a small book on Roman Cookery which makes fascinating reading. I've long wanted to try some of the dishes in it which have been translated from the original Latin, but although I have no doubt that the translations by this renowned scholar are good, as a cook some of the substitutions and modernisations seem bizarre.

Anyway, the first two dishes that seemed easy to bring back into the vegan repertoire are Etnos, a very simple dried pea soup that is still standard fare all over the globe and Lagana, which is fried pasta. This makes a sort of crisp puffy wafer, golden and with a snap to it. It seems the Italians didn't hit on the idea of boiling their pasta until the middle ages.

This very simple fried bread was used to scoop up the soup as a sort of edible spoon. I am actually thrilled at how easy and effective this was, as my experience of frying flour and water pastes in the past has been mixed to say the least.



To make stacks of lagana (at least 100) you need:

150g flour. I think the type of flour is probably important. I used a medium atta, a wholemeal chapatti flour, sieved before weighing to remove the coarsest portions of the bran.
90-100ml water. Start with the lower amount and add a little extra if needed.
Oil, preferably olive, for cooking.

Mix the flour and water together to form a smooth pliable dough. Knead it for a minute or two. I wondered if it would need a rest period and tried cooking some immediately and then after a rest of a couple of hours but it seemed to make no difference.

Seasoning, there is none but I think some crushed pepper would sit nicely in this.

Roll small portions, the ubiquitous walnut sized lump springs to mind, out on a lightly floured board as thinly as you can, and I mean thinly but I didn't measure it, so I can't tell you exactly. Not quite as thin as phyllo pastry but getting there. After trimming the edges I got ten chips out of each of my walnut sized lumps.

I cut my sheets of rolled dough into rectangles about 2cm by 4cm which makes a good size for a couple of bites. The frying and rolling is probably best approached on a production line basis if you have help. I had to stop and take my pan off the heat a couple of times to roll out more crackers. The crisps cook so quickly that a constant feed stream is practical.

Heat about 1cm of oil in a heavy flat bottomed pan. The temperature needs to be just hot enough and shouldn't be smoking. Try a test piece, it should sizzle around the edges if the oil is hot enough. I used a frying pan but you could probably do this in a deep fryer if you wanted. Float each cut section on the oil. It will immediately puff up, sometimes in little bubbles but sometimes as perfect jolly little pillows. Turn them over almost immediately and allow the second side to cook, then remove from the oil and allow to drain on a rack or kitchen towel.

Like many fried goods these benefit from a few minutes in a warm oven to remove the greasiness so it's possible to cook quite a lot and keep them warm while you finish the batch.



The soup is simply a couple of handfuls of split green peas, soaked over night and then cooked with a chopped leek or onion for an hour or so at a simmer until the pulses are completely soft. Whizz them up with a stick blender (or get the house slave to rub them through a sieve) and then season with herbs, salt and pepper. The Romans liked dill in their pea soups but mint or coriander are acceptable substitutes. A drizzle of olive oil is also used for flavour but I left it out of mine because of all the fried noodles to come.

The soup needs to be thick. If there's still a lot of water in the pan when the peas are cooked strain some off before blending or you'll have to do what I did and simmer the soup again to make it thicker.

The simple flavours and bland texture of the soup are an excellent match for the puffy, crispy lagana which worked really well as spoons. They are particularly good when they've formed pillows as you can use them to scoop up the soup inside them for a taste explosion when they get to the mouth. It's all pretty easy too. I'll be trying more recipes from this book over the summer.

Hungry Gap Risotto

Risotto with Leek Scapes and Good King Henry

O.k. it's not pushing back the boundaries of culinary exploration but give me a break, I had oven chips for lunch, this is a huge jump back into the saddle for supper.

Tomorrow, something you might never, possibly, have seen before, maybe.

Toodlepip.

Too hungry

Pan Braised Potato, Pumpkin, Celeriac and Onion in a Miso Wine gravy with Toasted Hazelnuts.

This was supposed to have been oven roasted veggies, cooked along with a loaf of bread to save fuel, but the dough was slow and I was too hungry to wait. Perhaps a bit wintery for the time of year but it's still pretty cold here in the evenings.

Vegetables were pan fried with just a little oil, slowly so that they gained some colour and flavour, then a miso and wine stock was added and the pan lid put on to complete the cooking. The lid doesn't fit too well and there was a little evaporation which helped the sauce thicken.

The toasted hazelnuts were sprinkled over for added crunch and protein.

It's all very well announcing I'll be eating from a menu plan but that means I have to make one. I had no idea there were so many recipes in my 'good ideas to try' box but I'm making some lists now. There should be enough variety that I can post a couple of new experiments each week without giving up on old favourites already blogged.

A good plain cake

It sounds like something out of Mrs. Beaton, Plain cake, suitable for children and servants. But, it's simple, fool proof and can be soaked with brandy, filled with fruit and glazed with sugar for extra fancyness if required.

The only thing I'd change when making this again is to use a white flour instead of the wholemeal used here. It was just a bit too worthy for a celebration and I much prefer bread to cake for every day use.

250g flour
100g sugar
1 pkt. (11g) baking powder
100g soy yoghurt
100ml (about two small fruits worth) fresh orange juice
1 medium banana, well mashed
100g light flavoured oil

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in a separate bowl and then add the dry ingredients to them. Mix just well enough to combine evenly and scrape into a well greased and floured loaf tin. Smooth the top gently.

Bake at about 200C for about 40 minutes. It will rise to the top of the tin and become firm and golden. Test with a skewer and make sure your cranky and inconsistent gas oven doesn't burn the bottom before cooking the middle.

The serving suggestion has sliced strawberries macerated in sugar and a little Rivesaltes Ambre atop a couple of sections of trimmed cake. What's not to like?

Health and Beauty

A bunch of weeds and herbs including red valerian, scuplit, sorrel, sweet cicely, chives and flowers, clover flowers, comfrey, bramble shoots, parsley, tarragon, sage and lemon thyme.

One of the main reasons for writing this blog is that when I'm on my own I don't eat healthily, usually choosing easy starchy snacks to pick at along with a lot of strong coffee.

This season I've not been managing very well at all, firstly with the excuse of not having the option of particularly fresh foods and now, because I have access to junk food again, the ability to avoid healthy eating with 'treats'. It's got to stop.

Tomorrow, Mr. S-C will be back for the weekend so I'm planning to bake him a cake and a nice dinner which may or may not be blogged but starting Monday it's going back to working to a menu plan and no more cheating.

Tonight, a rather pedestrian selection of tomato, cucumber, onion and chopped chicon has been enlivened with the bunch of foraged greens and herbs shown above. The dressing was made with olive oil, mustard and sherry vinegar which I find much preferable to the rather abused balsamic available in supermarkets (although if anyone would like to gift me a drop of the real stuff I'd be very grateful!).

Cravings

So the Mister came and we went shopping. As expected plantains aren't available in the local Leclerc (nor was root ginger, boo). I bought the greenest bananas I could find, and that wasn't very green, and fried them anyway.

It was o.k., pleasant enough and intriguingly textured with crispy edges and a soft centre. Not really what I've been fantasising about but probably the less said about that the better. This is a food blog after all.