Vegetarian Mole

Yeah, I'm experimenting with the chocolate and chilli combination again. This time as a main meal. I'd recommend not telling people what's in this until after they've already finished - my dad liked it, but once he realised the flavour was chocolate he found it a bit odd.

By the way, if you're wondering why I always use red onions, it's not because of any flavour preference. Our crop of red onions was good this year while our white onions failed rather dismally.

What I used:
Sunflower oil
2 medium red onions
2 red chillis
Lots of salt
1 tsp garam masala
1/3 cup cocoa
1/4 cup treacle
About 3tbsp brown sugar
2 cans of kidney beans
Boiling water.

What I did:

This is about as embarassingly simple as you'd expect. I chopped up the onions, fried them in sunflower oil with the salt for 5 minutes. I then diced the chillis and removed most of the seeds (I needn't have bothered. I keep forgetting how unspicy these chillis are) and added these to the mix. I let it cook for another 5 minutes before adding the garam masala and cocoa. (I added a little bit of water as well to keep it moist at this point).

After a few more minutes I added the beans, stirred until the beans were thoroughly coated and then added the treacle and sugar, covered everything with water and transferred it to the oven. I cooked it there for about 30 minutes.

Conclusion:

I liked it. I will agree with the assessment that it was a bit odd, but I thought it worked. That being said, it probably won't go on my list of meals to cook on a regular basis.

It could use being a bit spicier (this is a function of the chillis I used) and to have slightly less water - I didn't think the sauce was thick enough. I served it with white rice, pan fried squash and a broccoli, chickory and sesame salad.

Pseudo-African Peanut and carrot stew

This was (very) loosely based off this recipe.

What I used:

Lots of sunflower oil
3 small white onions (close to shallot size)
1 medium-small red onion
4 cloves of garlic
1/2 tbsp of cumin
1/2 tbsp of brown sugar
1/2 tbsp of dried crushed chilli
3 cups of salted peanuts
8 medium-large carrots
1 can of chopped tomatoes
1 kallo yeast-free vegetable stock cube
Water

What I did:

I needed to use the food processor for the peanuts anyway, so I decided to be very lazy with this recipe and use it for all my chopping purposes. So I shoved the onions and garlic in the processor, pulsed it for a bit until they were fine and started frying them in oil as per usual. I added the sugar, cumin and chilli here.

I fried them for about 5 to 10 minutes, and while they were frying I pulsed the peanuts and the carrots in the blender (seperately). I then added the peanuts, fried for a bit longer and added the carrots as well. I continued to fry this for another 5-10 minutes, then added the tomatoes, stock and boiling water to cover it.

I simmered this for about 20 minutes before deciding it wasn't cooking fast enough. I then transferred it to the hot oven on the aga and left it for another 20 minutes. When I took it out almost all the water had evaporated, so I added a little more, stirred it and stuck it in the simmering oven to keep warm and cook slightly more. It was probably in there for 10 minutes before we ate. I served this with whole wheat African chapatis, which are like Indian chapatis except that they're from Africa. (I'll include a post on chapatis some time - I'm really struggling to get the damn things right).

Conclusion

I'd say this was a success. It wasn't perfect, but it had a nice flavour to it. Simple, but slightly unusual. I'd probably use fewer peanuts in future - maybe two instead of three cups. Possibly a touch more chilli as well.

Mombasa Pumpkin Desert

Rather than given an account of this one, I'm just going to refer you to the original recipe.

The only major change I made to this was that I added some water to it. This was a mistake - the pumpkin gives off a huge amount of water on it's own, so this made the sauce way too watery.

That being said, it tasted quite nice. The pumpkin was overcooked when I did it, but that's because I was trying to reduce the overabundance of liquid. I think it could use being slightly less sweet though - I'd probably use about half a cup less sugar. Alternatively, I used about a kilo of chopped pumpkin for the amount of ingredients suggested. Using maybe half again this much would probably be advisable (but given that the sweetness was in the sauce, this probably wouldn't make it less sweet - you'd just be getting less sauce per pumpkin bit).

Butternut squash risotto

This is a much more basic recipe than the others I've been playing with, but it was really nice so I'll include it anyway.

Vegetarian risotto has a danger of being a bit boring. The butternut squash in this offsets that nicely without adding a lot of work, making for a really nice easy dish. This follows a similar recipe in the reader's digest "Pumpkins and squashes" cookbook.

What I used:

A cup and a half of risotto rice
Half a butternut squash
Two small red onions
A few sprigs of fresh thyme
One kallo organic vegetable stock cube
Boiling water
Olive oil

What I did:

Pretty much what you'd expect. Diced the onions, fried them in olive oil. Peeled the squash and chopped it up into cm cubes then added it to the onions along with the thyme. After a few minutes more I added the rice, stirred for a bit longer and then cover with vegetable stock and boiling water. I let the water cook off and topped it up once or twice until the risotto and the squash were both well cooked and slightly glooy.

Conclusion:

This was actually really nice. I'm sure a lot of this was that I used a good stock for it, but the combination of the risotto flavour and the butternut squash was a definite winner. The fact that this was unbelievably easy to make was a definite point in its favour as well. I'll absolutely be making this one again. I served it with a mushroom omelette for added flavour and protein, and there were enough leftovers to have the risotto for lunch the next day as well.

David's Mole Brownies

Disclaimer: No moles or other small cute fuzzy creatures of any description were harmed in the making of this recipe. The title is pronounced "Day-vids Moh-lay Brow-nees".

This recipe is about one part "Mexican Mole Muffins" from the Green and Blacks cookbook, one part my family's traditional brownie recipe and one part pure Davidry.

What I used:

1.5 cups of flour
1 cup cocoa powder
1.5 cups soft brown sugar
1 cup boiling water
3 eggs
pinch of salt
150g 'Pure' brand sunflower based margarine
50g green and blacks dark chocolate
1tbsp powdered ginger
1tsp powdered cinnamon
1/4 tsp powdered chilli
2 fresh chillis
1 tbsp vanilla extract

What I did:

I covered the green and blacks chocolate with the boiling water to melt it and put the margarine in a pot on the stove to do similar. While the magic of thermal energy was doing its thing I sifted all the dry ingredients into the mixer bowl. Really I shouldn't have bothered doing this with the sugar - getting brown sugar through a sieve turns out to be a real pain. Then I added the wet ingredients and turned on the mixer. While this was mixing I chopped up the chillis and removed most of the seeds, then added them to the mix.

Then I greased a baking tray and used a spatula to transfer the mix from the bowl to the tray. Here I encountered my first problem: The resulting brownies were going to be wafer thin. Take 2: I transferred it to a smallish ceramic dish instead. Now it was too thick. At this point I decided "fuck it" and stuck it in the aga anyway (using a cookie tray to keep the temperature right) and baked it for about 45 minutes, turning it occasionally. I adopted the standard brownie method of considering it cooked when a knife comes out clean.

Conclusion:

Hrrm. I'll give this one a definite 'maybe'. It was reasonably nice, but all things considered I'd rather have had the normal brownies. Given some work it will probably be quite nice:

First problem, it was way too dense. I think what it needs to fix this is one more egg, less flour and no water. It may also help to cut the brown sugar with white, or replace it entirely.

Second problem, you could barely taste the spices. It needed a lot more chilli for a start: maybe one more fresh chilli and include more of the seeds, or just up the amount of dried chilli in it. You also couldn't really taste the cinnamon or ginger. I was loathe to use too much cinnamon because it can overpower recipes if you do, but it really needed a lot more than that. I think one can probably safely pile in the ginger on this.

I'll give it another try some time with fiddling, but as the recipe stands it's not really worth making again.

Fried Pasta

I'm notorious for not wanting to cook pasta; It feels like cheating to me. I suspect this is a hangup from my student days and not wanting to conform to the stereotype. So I'm rather glad to try new pasta recipes which are weird enough for me to consider actually using.

This is loosely based on a recipe by Jamie Oliver from his new Italy book (Rather, the free extracts from it that were being given out in the Guardian). There are two main reasons it's only loosely based on the original recipe: Firstly, the original makes heavy use of parmesan and I don't do dairy products. Secondly, I lost the recipe halfway through cooking.

What I used:

A handful of linguini
3 eggs
Lots of olive oil
About 1 tbsp flour
Dried chilli
Dried oregano
Dried thyme
Salt
Some sun dried tomatoes which I had previously soaked and stored in a mixture of olive oil, sunflower oil and white wine vinegar.

What I did:

I cooked the linguini just short of the instructions on the packet. While this was happening I chopped up the sun dried tomatoes and then added everything else to a mixer bowl and turned on the mixer (what can I say, I'm lazy). Everything else did include quite a lot of olive oil (I was stupid and forgot that if you add flour to liquid then it goes lumpy, so I used the olive oil and some heavy duty mixing to break up the lumps and smooth it out). Once the pasta was cooked I added that to the mixer as well and mixed it for a bit longer. I then cut it up slightly with a knife (just breaking some of the pieces in half really).

I then heated more olive oil in a pan and added about a handful of the mixture to it and fried it until it was reasonably cooked, turning it over several times as it cooked. The first two didn't really get enough of the batter, so they ended up a bit crappy. The second two did and were fairly nice.

Conclusion:

I'd say this was a qualified success. The batter didn't properly coat the linguini, which is why the first two didn't work very well. It could possibly use a bit less liquid and a bit more flour next time. Jamie Oliver suggests only using the yolk from the third egg. That sounded like far too much work to me, so I didn't bother. In future I probably still won't bother, but it might be worth trying. Further, it was a bit too oily. This was my own silly fault for using so much olive oil in the batter - it didn't really need that much liquid, and a bit of water would work to substitute for most of it.

It might be worth breaking the linguini in half before cooking: The length of the noodles made it difficult to get decent sized quantities out of the bowl and into the frying pan. Other things I might try adding to the mix include chopped olives and fried onions. There are few savoury recipes that can't be made better with onions. If you do eat dairy and want to try this recipe, I'd probably recommend adding up to a handful of parmesan to the batter. I suspect it would improve it a lot.

These problems aside, it was delicious, though it did need salt and pepper added. The chilli gave it a nice bite, while the herbs combined well with the flavours of the tomatoes, egg and pasta. I probably wouldn't make this as a regular meal, but it's definitely a nice snack food.

Roast pumpkin with a spicy potato and squash filling

You know when you go to see a movie which claims "Based on a novel by..." and find it has only vague similarities in common with the book? This recipe turned out sortof like that. It is based on a recipe entitled "Snake squash stuffed with spicy potatoes in a tomato-herb sauce" in "Classic Indian Vegetarian Cooking" by Julie Sahni (a book which I highly recommend). Due to a combination of laziness and available ingredients, I've significantly changed the recipe. Here's an account of my version:

First of all, hollowing out a squash sounded like an awful lot of work, so I thought I'd use a pumpkin instead. (My mother grows large quantities of squash and pumpkins and I'm living with my parents for the next few months, so I'll probably be doing a lot of pumpkin and squash experiments). Having done that I decided to add some leftover squash from the other day to the mix, as the recipe called for using the meat of the hollowed out squash in the filling. Then I changed some other things as well, just 'cause I could. This is how it went.

What I used:

One medium small pumpkin.
About 20 smallish potatoes.
Two large red onions.
Two large tomatoes.
About a third of a smallish sweet squash (I'll try to find out the type later).
Sunflower oil
One fresh chilli
Dried powdered chilli
Mustard seeds
Cumin seeds
Garam Masala
Coarse Salt
Brown Sugar
Balsamic Vinegar
Molasses


What I did:

I took the pumpkin, cut a hole in the top and scooped out the insides like I was making a Jack o' lantern. Make sure you cut a large enough hole - I didn't, and this was irritating. While this was happening I put the potatoes on to boil, cooking them until they were just slightly undercooked.

Note: I don't skin potatoes. I believe it to be a cruel and evil thing to do to an innocent vegetable. Also it's boring.

This done I started making the Massala, frying the onion (reasonably finely chopped) with a little cumin, a lot of mustard seeds about one and a half tsp of salt and a tbsp of sugar. After 5-10 minutes frying I added the powdered spices. Another 5 minutes later I added the squash and chilli, continued frying for another 5 minutes and added the potatoes. Midway through this I realised the pan I had was way too small and transferred to a bigger one. Oops.

After about 5 minutes frying the potatoes I chopped up the tomatoes and added them to the mix. Another five minutes and I added a little boiling water to prevent things from burning, a dash of balsamic vinegar and about a tablespoon of molasses. I mixed it all up, let it cook for another minute and then transferred it to the pumpkin, covering it with the 'lid' of the pumpkin.

Now to prepare the pumpkin for roasting. I coated it with oil, wrapped it in tin foil and stuck it on a baking tray. I then put it in the oven at a high temperature for about an hour and a half. The aga had lost a lot of heat though, so in a normal oven an hour would probably suffice.

To serve I openend up the foil, cut away at the top a bit to get better access to the insides (if you cut a big enough hole in the first place you won't need to do this) and scraped at the insides of the pumpkin to mix them with the filling.

I served this with pita bread and Dal.

Conclusion:

Wow. This was great. I highly recommend it. It was a lovely combination of sweet and spicy, and the pumpkin gave off a lot of juice which made the filling (which was already moist) into a really nice stew.

I'm not sure if the foil was entirely neccesary. The pumpkin gave off an awful lot of juice, and seemed to be more steamed than roasted. This produced a nice effect, but most of the moisture would probably still be there if I hadn't done it - the pumpkin was literally swimming in it at the end - and the pumpkin flesh would have acquired a nice roast flavour. It's something worth bearing in mind for future versions. Also, the potatoes could have used being cooked a little more before hand. This may have been a product of the oven losing heat.

Other things to try in future: Some sort of bean, both for flavour and for protein, would be a nice addition to the filling. Also I think sultanas would go well in it. It might need a bit more salt, but then I always think recipes could use more salt (and rarely add more salt to them because I know I'll oversalt them when eating anyway).

Random note: Every single vegetable in this dish was grown by us. Not that I can take a lot of credit for this myself, but it was still nice.

"Playing with your food" begins

Hi there.

So, I make another excursion into the blogging world. Hopefully this will go a little better than my last one, which failed because it was too general (and has now been deleted).

As per the description, I'll be putting up accounts of new cooking ideas I've been playing with. This won't have any of my tried and tested recipes (those will be on my site if anywhere), just the new ones I'm playing around with.

I should have the first few recipes up later tonight after I've cooked today's dinner (which will itself be one of the first entries on here - an Indian roast squash with spicy potato filling).

David