vegetarian – Page 3 – Gastronomy Domine

2nd June 2008

Plantain and sweet potato cake

This is a kind of rösti, which I came up with to accompany some jerked chicken. Plantains are great: they are a cousin of the banana, and look like a giant, green, yellow or creamy version of the things you eat for pudding. Unlike a banana, a plantain is usually served cooked, either when under-ripe, when they are wonderfully starchy, or overripe, when they become sweet.

You can treat an under-ripe (green) plantain much as you would a potato. I’ve teamed my plantains up with a sweet potato here for some colour and extra sweetness. The allspice here is typically Jamaican, and goes really well with the jerked chicken you’ll find on this site.

To serve 3-4 as a side dish, you’ll need:

2 large green plantains
1 large sweet potato
1 medium onion
1 ½ teaspoons ground allspice
Butter and oil to fry
Salt and pepper

Peel the plantains by chopping them in half widthways (not lengthways, as you would a banana) and easing the tough skin off. Grate the creamy flesh of the fruit. Peel and grate the sweet potato and the onion. Mix the grated sweet potato, plantain, the onion and allspice and some salt and pepper to taste in a large bowl, and melt a generous amount of oil and butter together in a large, non-stick frying pan until the butter starts to bubble.

Add the plantain and sweet potato mixture to the pan and pack it down so you have a thick pancake. Fry over a medium heat for ten minutes, then put a large plate over the pan and turn the whole arrangement upside-down, so the pancake ends up crispy side up on the plate. Return the pan to the heat, add more oil and butter and slide the pancake in, uncooked side downwards, and fry for another ten minutes. Serve piping hot.

23rd May 2008

Roast asparagus with shaved parmesan

If you thought the hollandaise sauce recipe from the other day sounded like too much hard work, this asparagus recipe will suit you down to the ground. It’s very quick and easy, and this cooking method makes the most of the tender sweetness of the stems. It also looks posh, so you can serve it up as a starter (or as an accompaniment) to guests and feel smug when they congratulate you on something which, in reality, only took you five minutes to put together.

For a starter, look at serving between six and eight stalks of asparagus per person. You can get away with less than this if you’re making it to accompany something else as a main course, but it’s worth making plenty because roast asparagus is downright delicious.

To serve two as a starter you’ll need:

16 stalks of asparagus, as fresh as possible
½ teaspoon flaked Italian chilli peppers
Zest of a lemon
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
50g parmesan cheese
Salt (preferably something crystalline, like Maldon) and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180° C (350° F).

Snap the bottoms off the stems of asparagus. They’ll come apart naturally, with a lovely snapping sound, at the point where the woody part (which you don’t want to eat) begins. Arrange them in a single layer in a baking dish.

Sprinkle the flaked chilli and lemon zest over the asparagus, and drizzle with the olive oil. Roast the asparagus in the oven for 10-15 minutes until bright green.

While the asparagus is roasting, use a potato peeler to shave the parmesan into little pieces. As soon as the asparagus comes out of the oven, scatter over the parmesan, which should soften a little as it meets the hot asparagus. Serve the roast asparagus with crusty bread if you’re eating it as a starter.

6th May 2008

Glazed halloumi and baby fennel

I had a stroke of luck the other day, when I found some baby fennel in the supermarket. These tiny bulbs with their tender stalks are delicious. They’re a little less strong in flavour than their grown-up cousin, and they’ve got a lovely texture, giving easily to the tooth with a good crunch even after cooking. If you can’t find baby fennel for this recipe, you can use a sliced bulb of the adult version.

I’ve teamed the aromatic fennel up with some salty halloumi here, and glazed the lot with a white wine and soft brown sugar reduction. This is a great (and surprisingly quick and easy) supper dish with some crusty bread to mop up the juices.

To serve two, you’ll need:

1 block (half a pound) halloumi
8 whole baby fennel bulbs
2 large shallots
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 small glass white wine
1 rounded tablespoon soft brown sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper
Basil flowers or chopped basil leaves to garnish

Dice the shallots finely and slice the garlic. Slice the halloumi into pieces about half a centimetre thick. Melt the butter and oil together in a large, non-stick frying pan, and fry the shallots with the fennel seeds for a minute or so until the shallots are becoming soft, then add the garlic, fennel bulbs and cayenne. Cook, turning the fennel, for another two minutes, then add the halloumi to the pan in a single layer with an extra drizzle of oil if you think it needs it. There won’t be much room in there, so put the fennel on top of the pieces of halloumi while the halloumi browns – this will take between five and ten minutes minutes, turning regularly (and carefully – a flexible silicone spatula is really useful here).

When the halloumi is golden on both sides, tip in the wine and sugar. Let it bubble up and simmer it hard until the liquid has almost all evaporated. You should be left with a dense syrup coating the fennel and halloumi. Taste to check the seasoning, then serve with a sprinkling of basil (the plant in my kitchen is flowering at the moment, as you’ll see from the photo) with plenty of bread to mop up the aromatic sauce.

15th January 2008

Celeriac purée

These days, few of the vegetables you’ll find in the supermarket are truly seasonal. We’ve got year-round mange tout peas (I remember the days when my parents grew them in the garden – the season only lasted for about about a month, but my, were we sick of peas at the end of that month); year-round broccoli and year-round cauliflower. Spring cabbage appears in the shops in summer, autumn and winter, and out-of-season asparagus is there whenever you want it. It doesn’t taste of anything, but if you want it, it’s there.

Happily for those outraged by man’s twisting of nature, here are a few season-specific things that you won’t find all year round. Some English root vegetables in particular are only easy to find in the winter (for the most part – there’s always bound to be someone bussing turnips in from Australia in high summer), and they’re wonderful in the cold months. It makes sense really – these roots are the energy store of the plants, and so they’re full of sugars and other nutrients.

Celeriac is one of my favourite winter roots. It’s the taproot of a celery plant (not the same one you use to dip in your hummus or to stir your Bloody Mary), but tastes much richer, deeper, creamier and sweeter than celery. I know people who can’t bear celery, but who will happily munch on celeriac; they’re really very different flavours. This vegetable isn’t readily found outside Europe, but if you are an American reader and happen upon one in a market, snap it up so you can impress your friends with your cosmopolitan cooking.

Although modern ‘best before’ stickers tend to suggest you can only keep your celeriac for a week or so, the root will actually keep in the fridge for a month or so if wrapped in plastic to keep it nice and humid- inside your fridge it is dark and cold, which fools the root into thinking it’s still underground – the celeriac won’t be any the worse for it.

The celeriac is a knobbly, rough-skinned vegetable, and its flesh is very hard. Make sure you have a very sharp knife to remove all the skin and nubbly bits, and to cut through the solid root. It makes a lovely soup (which I really ought to blog some time), and it’s great raw in coleslaw. One of the very nicest of French crudités is simply grated raw celeriac blended with a little home-made mayonnaise. But for my money, one of the best things you can do with a chunk of celeriac is to cook it until soft, mash it with a little potato, push the resulting mixture through a sieve and whip it with butter and cream for a very fine and rich side dish.

To make celeriac purée as an accompaniment for four, you’ll need:

1 large celeriac, about 20 cm in diameter (anything larger than this may be a bit woody)
2 medium potatoes (choose a variety which is good for mashing)
100 ml double cream
2 heaping tablespoons salted butter
2 level teaspoons salt (plus more to taste)

Using a very sharp knife, peel the celeriac and cut it into 2 cm square chunks. As soon as you have cut a piece, put it in a saucepan of cold water to stop it from oxidising and turning brown. Peel the potatoes and cut them into chunks about twice the size of the celeriac pieces, and add them to the pan. Warm a mixing/serving bowl.

Bring the potatoes and celeriac to the boil, put the lid on the pan and simmer for 15 minutes. Poke the vegetables with a fork to check they are soft (if they are not, cook for another 5 minutes). Drain and use a potato masher to mash the celeriac and potatoes until they are as even as you can manage.

Melt the butter and cream together in a milk pan, and bring to a very low simmer as you sieve the purée.

Push the mashed mixture through a sieve using the back of a ladle. You can also use a mouli or food mill if you have one. The resulting purée will be extremely smooth. Put the purée into the warmed bowl and use a hand whisk to whip the butter and cream mixture into the purée with the salt, and serve immediately. This is particularly good with rich meat dishes and roasts.

12th December 2007

Mexican squash and corn cream

Do try this one – it’s seriously good and has worked its way up to being a frequent star alongside my roast dinners. This silky, sweet puree works unbelievably well as an accompaniment, especially with poultry – I hope some of you will try it with your Christmas turkey. It’s rich and packed with flavour; and like many recipes which utilise creamed corn, it’s a favourite with children. It also works as a great quick main dish (and is lovely if you’re entertaining vegetarians – try it over rice with an interesting salad).

Butternut squash originates in Mexico, and it has an affinity for other Mexican ingredients like the corn, the coriander and the chillies. I’ve used crème fraîche here to loosen the mixture – an authentic Mexican dish might use crema, the thick, Mexican, sour cream, but really the difference between the two products is minuscule. If you can’t find smoky ground chipotle chillies where you are, just substitute your favourite crushed, dried chillies or chilli powder.

To serve two as a main dish or about four (depending on greed) as a side dish, you’ll need:

1 butternut squash
1 can creamed corn
3 heaped tablespoons crème fraîche
1 tablespoon salted butter
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¾ teaspoon ground chipotle chilli
1 large handful roughly chopped coriander

Peel the squash (you’ll find a serrated knife the best tool for this job – that peel is tough), remove the seeds and stringy pith, and chop the flesh into pieces about an inch square. Cover with water and simmer for 15 minutes until the pieces of squash are tender and soft when poked with a knife.

Drain the water off and return the squash pieces to the pan. Add the corn, butter and crème fraîche to the pan and mash with a potato masher off the heat until smooth. Season with the salt, pepper and chillies – you’ll find this dish will require quite a lot of salt for maximum flavour because of the natural sweetness of the vegetables.

Return the pan to a low heat and bring to a gentle simmer. Remove from the heat again and stir in the coarsely chopped coriander. Serve immediately.

This squash and corn cream freezes well.

5th December 2007

Sweet potato and halloumi sauté

Sweet potato is a great winter ingredient – all that sugar and gorgeous colour make for a really uplifting meal. The tuber is so packed with sweetness that cooking it in this way will make the edges catch and caramelise in the butter, leaving each soft little cube with a coating that’s halfway between chewy and crisp. Alongside the salty halloumi, this mixture of textures and flavours is a real winner.

This dish makes a really tasty main course for vegetarians. I also like it as a side dish with some good sausages. The magic in this is all in the spicing – it’s worth taking the time to set to the spices with a mortar and pestle until they’re really well blended (you can also use a coffee grinder) – whatever method you choose, make sure that the anise and cloves in particular are well-pulverised, because neither ingredient is good to bite down on in large chunks. You’ll end up making more spice mixture than you need, but I view this as a time-saver; just pack the extra mixture into a freezer bag and pop it in the freezer. Next time you come to cook this dish, you can use the mixture directly from the freezer.

To serve four as a side dish or two as a main course, you’ll need:

1 sweet potato
1 block halloumi
1 large shallot
1 clove garlic
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon flaked chillies
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon onion salt
1 ‘petal’ star anise
3 cloves
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Take the cumin, fennel seeds, chillies, cinnamon, onion salt, anise and cloves, and grind them thoroughly in a mortar and pestle or coffee grinder. Peel the sweet potato and cut it into large dice, about the size of the top joint of your thumb. Sprinkle two teaspoons of the spice mixture over the sweet potato pieces and toss well until they are coated. Cut the halloumi into dice the same size as the sweet potato pieces and dice the shallot finely.

Heat the butter in a non-stick frying pan over a medium-low heat (make sure you use a non-stick pan or this dish will stick like glue) until it starts to foam, and tip in the spiced sweet potato. Sauté gently, turning the pieces every few minutes, until the sweet potato is soft all the way through (about 20 minutes).

Turn the heat up a notch and add the shallots and a crushed clove of garlic to the pan. Stir well to distribute the shallots and garlic around the pan, then add the halloumi, making sure that all the halloumi pieces are in contact with the bottom of your pan. Cook for another five minutes without stirring, turn the halloumi pieces and continue to sauté for another five minutes. The shallots should be brown and a little gummy, and the halloumi should be seared a golden colour where it’s been in contact with the pan.

Turn out into a heated serving dish and garnish with parsley.

27th November 2007

Golden winter vegetable soup with frizzled chorizo

Soothing, sweet, buttery, winter vegetables are a real blessing when the weather’s cold. Plants keep a store of energy in the form of sugars in their tubers and roots, and those tubers and roots make for some surprisingly uplifting eating. This soup is passed through a sieve after being liquidised to ensure a silky, creamy texture. If you don’t own a food processor you can still make it – at the stage where the ingredients go into the processor bowl you can just mash them with a potato masher for about ten minutes, then pass the resulting mush through a sieve, pressing it through with the bottom of a ladle. You will end up muscular and with a very good pan of soup.

Because of all the plant sugars in these vegetables, you’ll find you need something salty to counter the sweet taste. I’ve cut chorizo into coins and fried it until it’s crisp and friable – a lovely contrast in texture with the silky, creamy soup. The result is a lovely sun-coloured dish at a time of year when the sun is a distant memory.

To serve four as a main course, you’ll need:

1 small celeriac
3 small sweet potatoes
1 small swede
1 small butternut squash
1 small onion
2 shallots
1 parsnip
3 carrots
1 leek
3 tablespoons butter
1 litre chicken stock (vegetarians can substitute vegetable stock and use croutons instead of the chorizo)
200 ml double cream
2 teaspoons salt
½ a nutmeg, grated
10 turns of the pepper mill
2 tablespoons chopped chives

Peel all the vegetables and cut them all into 1-inch chunks. Melt the butter in a large pan with a heavy base (this will help the soup cook evenly – I recommend Le Creuset pans, which are made of enamelled cast iron, and disperse heat beautifully) and sweat the vegetables, stirring regularly, until they begin to soften. You’ll find that the sweet potato pieces may brown a little. Don’t worry about it; they contain so much sugar that it’s hard to prevent a little of it caramelising, and it just gives depth to the soup.

When the vegetables are softening evenly, pour over the hot stock. It’s best if your stock is home-made, but some of the liquid stocks you can buy at the supermarket these days are a good substitute if you don’t have any in the freezer. Bring the stock and vegetables to a simmer, cover with a lid and leave for 20 minutes or until all the vegetables are soft all the way through.

While the soup simmers, slice a chorizo into pieces about the same size as a pound coin and fry over a medium flame in a dry frying pan, stirring and flipping the pieces occasionally. The chorizo will release its fat and the pieces will become crisp. After about 20 minutes, when the chorizo is crisp and dry, remove the pieces and drain on paper towels. Reserve the oil.

Transfer the vegetables and stock to a large bowl and liquidise in batches, passing each processed batch through a sieve back into the large pan. You will find you need to push the soup through the sieve with the back of a large spoon or ladle. Return the pan to a very low heat and stir in the cream, salt and pepper and the grated nutmeg. Bring to a simmer and serve with a drizzle of chorizo oil, some chorizo scattered over (keep some more in a bowl for people to help themselves) and a sprinkling of chopped chives.

6th November 2007

Ezme – Turkish crushed tomato and chilli salad

It’s been an exciting few days. Some readers will be aware that I have a horrible allergic reaction to lobsters (face swells, airways close, scalp comes out in lumps, I get injected with adrenaline and then sleep for two days). Unfortunately, at a Chinese meal on Sunday where the rest of the family was munching their way through a couple of lobsters while I stuck to crab, I must have accidentally ingested some, because the evening saw my eyelids slowly but surely swelling up to resemble one of those bobbly goldfish. The rest of my face soon followed, and I’ve been lying under a duvet, groaning, ever since.

Then, as soon as I felt well enough to tackle a post here, I realised that I’ve left my camera at a party the day before the lobster incident. Fortunately the party was at my parents’ house, where we were celebrating my lovely Dad’s 60th. The camera is safe and sound, but it is about 60 miles away, full of photos, and this does mean that two of the Turkish posts I was planning on making will have to wait until I have it back. Similarly, today’s post has no accompanying photographs – please imagine a cheering, dark red paste.

Ezme is served as a starter alongside other salady nibbles to be eaten with bread in Turkey. It’s extremely spicy, and also serves as a deliciously fresh cold sauce to go with grilled meats. If you’re in Cambridge, check out the Turkish delicatessen on Mill Road for the hot paprika paste you’ll need. (Tips from readers about where other Turkish delis can be located would be very welcome – please leave a comment.)

To serve six, you’ll need:

½ lb fresh, ripe tomatoes
1 pointy green pepper (the pale sort which is good barbecued)
½ a cucumber
2 spring onions
1 small handful mint leaves
1 tablespoon hot Turkish paprika paste
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
Salt, pepper, paprika to taste

Peel the tomatoes and the cucumber, and remove the stalk, interior ribs and seeds of the pepper. Chop the tomatoes, cucumber, pepper and spring onions as finely as you can without reducing them to a pulp (careful pulsing in the food processor will also do the job). Stir in all the other ingredients, tasting for seasoning. Serve at room temperature.

21st September 2007

Pathetically easy guacamole

I am almost ashamed to be calling this a recipe, given that it’ll take you about three minutes to make. All the same, it’s very tasty, and it’s a great partner to the other Mexican recipes I’ve been making this week.

I have an interesting piece of avocado trivia for you today: the word guacamole comes from the Nahuatl word ahuacamolli – literally ahuacatl mole, or sauce. Ahuacatl is the Nahuatl language word for avocado…and it also means ‘testicle’. Be gentle as you chop your avocados.

Some people assert that tomatoes have no place in guacamole. I think it’s much, much nicer with tomatoes, which offer sweetness and a little acid to the mixture – if you use tomatoes, you can get away with a little less lime. Experiment at home and see what you think.

To make guacamole for four, you’ll need:

4 avocados (I used the Hass variety)
6 cherry-sized tomatoes
1 medium onion
1 handful coriander (cilantro for Americans)
2 jalapeño chillies
1 lime
Salt and pepper

Cut the tomatoes into eighths, and cut the onion into small dice. Chop the coriander finely. Remove the seeds and ribs from inside the chillies and dice their flesh finely. Finally, chop the flesh of the avocados roughly and mix vigorously with the other chopped ingredients, squashing things around a bit in the bowl. Squeeze over lime juice to taste and season with salt and pepper.

5th September 2007

Imam Bayaldi

I’m writing about Imam Bayaldi, a favourite middle-eastern aubergine dish (it means ‘the imam fainted’), specifically in order that my friend Martin, who has a vegetarian to entertain, has something new to cook. Sorry Martin – I’ve been meaning to get round to this for ages. I guess I just like meat.

It’s odd how many dishes from places all over the world have names like this, where religious men are felled by dinner. There’s Buddha Jumps over the Wall soup (a Chinese soup so good, apparently, that even the Buddha was driven to interrupt his meditation with worldly gymnastics – I wouldn’t know, because it’s so expensive I can’t bring myself to order it). There’s Strozzapreti, an Italian pasta which translates as ‘strangled priests’, apparently because they are so good a venal priest choked himself to death when gorging on them. The imam in the case of Imam Bayaldi has, at least, only been driven to unconsciousness rather than unseemly jumping or choking, so I suppose he wins.

There’s a lot of olive oil in this recipe. Aubergines are notorious for soaking oil and flavourings up; it’s what makes them so delicious. If you’re feeling bad about your waistline, go for a jog tomorrow. Life’s too short to avoid aubergines.

To make two stuffed aubergines you’ll need:

2 aubergines
1 red onion, chopped
6 cloves garlic, crushed
1 celery heart, chopped finely (make sure you get the yellow/green leaves here)
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
3 bay leaves
1 small handful fresh oregano
1 small handful fresh mint
1 shall handful fresh parsley (plus extra to garnish)
250ml chicken stock (substitute vegetable stock if serving to vegetarians)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Begin by slicing the aubergines in half lengthways and use a knife to carefully hollow them out, making them into boat shapes. Chop the flesh you’ve removed into 1cm squares, and put it in a large covered bowl. Use a serrated knife (like a tomato, the aubergine has a tough skin and soft flesh, so it’s easier to cut with a serrated knife) to remove long strips of skin from the outside of the boats (see picture). This will help the aubergines’ flesh take on flavour evenly from the stock and olive oil. Try as hard as you can to avoid puncturing all the way through to the inside of the hollowed out shells, but don’t worry; it’s not the end of the world if you do.

Chop the onion, celery, tomatoes and the green pepper into pieces about the same size as the aubergine pieces you chopped earlier. Mix these with the aubergine flesh, the garlic and the herbs (apart from the bay leaves), a few twists of the pepper grinder and a teaspoon of salt. If you can find some flat-leaved parsley (which does have a subtly different flavour), use that – you can see from the pictures that all I had in the garden was curly-leaved parsley. Add three tablespoons of olive oil to the bowl and mix well.

Place the aubergine shells in a baking tin with reasonably high sides. Fill the aubergines with the mixture in the bowl, and tuck the bay leaves between them. Drizzle with some extra oil so the edges of the aubergines are well-lubricated, then pour the chicken stock into the bottom of the dish so it laps around the sides of the aubergines. Pour another five tablespoons of olive oil into the dish with the chicken stock.

Bake the aubergines, covered with some aluminium foil, for 45 minutes at 180°C (350°F), until they are soft. Remove from the dish and discard any remaining stock and oil in the pan. Serve immediately – the couscous from yesterday’s post is a fantastic accompaniment (and, like this dish, can be made vegetarian by swapping the chicken stock for some vegetable stock). You can avoid aubergines which (as in the photograph at the top of the page) look like a chia pet by the simple expedient of not garnishing them with way too much curly parsley. I blame the very large glass of retsina I was drinking at the time.