Tea

Each day begins with a small, quiet ritual. A pot of tea is brewed and sipped silently, usually over my current reading. Sometimes the tea is green, but mostly it’s black, a strong brew steeped in a chipped ceramic teapot covered in a patchwork of blue and white butterflies; a beaten silver jug of soy its partner. It is a ritual worth waking early for. Coffee in the morning makes my heart pound against my chest in a deeply unpleasant way. Tea, however, soothes as it steeps.

Rooibos tea is grown, exclusively, in its native South African soil. Thriving in scrubby, tufted rows of green, it becomes a deep cedar red once dried. Caffeine-free and low in tannin, it boasts a swathe of health claims but, being something of a skeptic, I cannot vouch for all of them, antioxidant properties aside. What I do know for certain is that it is good. Surprisingly, rooibos is never bitter, no matter how long it is left to brew. Perfect in the summer, served in tall, frosted glasses with sprigs of mint and curled slices of lemon.

Cooking a pot of grains in rooibos will increase the antioxidant qualities, yes, but more importantly, adds a certain, mysterious something to the final dish, not unlike a light, herbal vegetable stock. A whole lot quicker to make, too. This dish of amaranth and brown rice, cooked in a red bath of tea, sits comfortably on the more esoteric side of ‘healthy’ cooking but its virtues are matched perfectly by its creamy, versatile nature. Once made, it has a variety of possibilities, limited only by the cook’s imagination.

Small sesame-coated balls of the mixture floating across the surface a bowl of adzuki bean soup are perfection, but these are also rather good when formed around a half teaspoon of the exquisite Japanese chutney natto miso, or a small piece of salty-sour umeboshi plum. Enough to make you glow from the inside out. A Macrobiotic diet will do that to you. Ah, I wish.

Amaranth and brown rice cooked in rooibos tea – feeds 2
Based on an elegant and minimal, but rather fabulous recipe from the pages of Lisa’s Vegetarian Kitchen. This has a tendency to stick to the bottom of the pan, so gently, gently with the heat. A heat diffuser is essential, I think.

1 ½ cups of strained rooibos tea
¼ cup of amaranth (or hulled millet)
½ cup short-grain brown rice
Sea salt
1 small clove of garlic, crushed
2 tablespoons of tahini
1 tablespoon of tamari
½ tablespoon of unsalted butter or pale sesame oil
Palmful of leafy herbs, chopped (parsley or celery leaves are ideal)

Pour the rooibos tea into a small, heavy-based saucepan. Tip in the grains and add a pinch of sea salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting and cover with a tight-fitting lid. A heat diffuser, set between pot and flame, is best. Simmer, lid untouched, for 40-45 minutes. Rest, off the heat, still covered, for 5 minutes.

Stir through the remaining ingredients. Cool, then roll into sticky marbles and, if you like, coat in sesame seeds to float in a bean or lentil soup. Or, shape into larger patties and fry to golden brown in little olive oil or, as we often do, eat, simply as is, with a pile of greens.

July’s edition of Click, a food photography event, highlights coffee and tea, substances so entwined in our daily lives that they, rightly, deserve an event all of their own. The image, right there at the top, is my entry.

Bee and Jai have, very kindly, asked me to sit upon the judging panel this month.

Entries close on the 30^th of July.

A useful, frugal sort of soup

Seedlings of flat-leaf parsley, planted at the tail end of summer, have, halfway through winter, become forests. Which is a stroke of luck, really. It’s the one thing that I seem to be able to grow rather well. Other things – the pennywort I wanted so badly; the stubby bushes of rosemary that will not even try – are moving at the proverbial snail's pace, but the parsley, it is unstoppable. Lush forests of greenery that sit close to the back door so that I can slip out, feet un-shod, to grab a handful or two as needed. It’s enough to make a trainee kitchen gardener feel inordinately proud.

A mountain of parsley went into this soup, a wise attempt to harvest just a little of this year’s prolific crop. Incredibly delicious it is, though the sum of its parts may not initially suggest much. Ladled into shallow soup plates, this becomes quite sophisticated. Understatedly elegant and deeply herbal, in a deeply nourishing sort of way. Honest, restorative, iron-rich. Frugal winter food.

A soup to make you feel like a gardener, even if you’re not.

Parsley soup – feeds 2
To use anything less than a forest of parsley is to miss the point. This must be vital, green and herbal. You’ll need a whopping 300g, a generous ½ lb or so, to suffice two. Adapted from The Cranks Bible.

2 very large bunches of flat-leaf parsley
1 small onion, roughly chopped
6 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons of butter (or olive oil)
2 small potatoes
½ teaspoon of good veg stock powder (optional)
Sea salt and pepper
Best olive oil, for drizzling
1 heaped tablespoon of smoked almonds, chopped (optional)

Cut the parsley leaves from their stalks. Place the stalks in a large saucepan and cover, quite generously, with cold water. Throw in the onion and half of the garlic. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, partially covered, for 30 minutes.

Roughly chop the parsley leaves. Scrub the potatoes and chop them into chunks.

Stew the potatoes and garlic in the butter gently, stirring from time to time, for 15 minutes. Add the parsley leaves and stir slowly through the garlicky potatoes for a minute, maybe two. You want it to collapse a little. Measure out 3½ cups of parsley stock and pour it in next. Stir, then add the stock powder. Simmer, covered, until the potatoes crush easily against the side of the pot – 10 - 15 minutes should do it. Season to taste. Cool a little before blending until velvet-smooth. Serve with a thread of good, spicy olive oil and the almonds, if you’re using them.

Holler is hosting this month’s herbal edition of No Croutons Required and this bowl of green is my submission.

In other news, I’ve been watching Posh Nosh over here and laughing very loudly. Required viewing for anyone who claims to love cooking, I reckon. Richard E. Grant at his absolute best.

Thanks, Grocer.

Looking up, listening

The beauty of waking to rain lies in the listening. There is no more delicious sound to be had, tucked up, dry and warm. Blowing small ripples across the surface of my tea, thawing fingers frozen solid by the cold, I watched the rain fall from a grey sky in silent gratitude last week. Winter inspires introspection, and close skies, well, they make looking down rather than up easier on the eye. Earth squelching beneath socked and booted feet; the profusion of green that thrives in this damp cold; a small scruffy dog leading us across the park – there is much to look down on during this season. My neck, however, was developing a crick from the weight of a low, skewed gaze. With the rain that gaze shifted upward, to the cold, dripping sky.

Clearly I have not been looking up enough of late. Rain, in a dry continent, changes everything.

Sunday: Football. Sherbrooke lies in the Dandenong Ranges, a place of steep, rolling hills and small-scale daffodil farming on Melbourne’s fringe. A rectangular field of mud sits atop a steep hill there, too. Drawn by the promise of a little bushwalking, we plunged into a triangular sloping patch of tall trees and scrubby undergrowth on the other side, an hour before play got under way. Wind rushed way up high through the bending branches of slender eucalypts, a lonely, haunting sound deep in winter, one I love. Later, the sky changed dramatically as Oscar played, much better, I am pleased to report. There was bright sun and a small kiss of almost-snow on the wind. Back turned on the action, I watched two kookaburras settle themselves, feathers bristling, on waving branches. Wild. Graceful. A young magpie sang out, announcing their arrival and the dog, clown that she is, balanced on her tiny hind legs to leap at them, barking. Their disdain for her futile attempts made us giggle.

Listening. Hmm. Should have listened more closely to the little voice that said, ‘too fussy’ – you know the one, surely - when approaching a recipe from what is, this winter, my favourite reading. It was delicious, oh yes, but used every pan and all my patience to produce a dish that was scoffed in seven minutes flat. Sheesh. This got me thinking. About formal, fussy dining and the kind of multi-pan, showing-off it involves in home kitchens. Frankly, I can’t be bothered. Better to serve a simple dish cooked well and wow them with a sauce good enough to make them look up and engage, if only to refill their plates, at least once. Yes, please.

Why re-invent the wheel? Walnuts are exquisite right now. From Claudia Roden.

Teradot
A chunky, robust Southern Turkish sauce from Roden’s New Book of Middle Eastern Food. Perfect for dipping crisp, raw veg in to and slathering on falafels. You can make your own, and sometimes I do, but it’s just as easy to go out and buy a good dry falafel mix and doctor it with huge handfuls of finely chopped coriander and parsley.

2 cloves of garlic, chopped
Coarse sea salt
1½ cups (about 125g) of shelled walnuts, chopped
4 tablespoons of tahini
Juice of 2 fat lemons
1-2 tablespoons of boiling water
Large handful of chopped parsley

Pound the garlic with a good pinch of salt for 30 seconds, add the walnuts and continue pounding to make a chunky paste. Blend in the tahini and the lemon juice, then the boiling water, stirring well until smooth. Stir through the parsley and thin with a little more water if you like.

Or, whack the first 5 ingredients in a food processor and whiz away, stopping just short of a smooth paste. You may need to add a little warm water to get things moving around the blade nicely, but you want some texture here. Stir through the parsley. Keeps well in the fridge, but bring it back to room temperature before eating.

Serve with oven-warmed pita breads; a bunch or two of red radishes, quartered; hot, doctored falafels (see recipe intro); shredded lettuce and some thick plain yoghurt.

Markets and breakfasting

The Oriental Grocer, whose freezer, this week, delivered the prettiest wheels of sliced lotus roots and more bright green edamame pods, is by far my favourite market stall. Tightly-packed shelves teeter with produce from the four corners of the globe, all the while jostling for your attention with the freshest of coriander, large, crisp heads of wombok and colourful chillies, bunched like tiny, hot bouquets. Long smooth garlic shoots, as wide and solid as a pencil nearly tempt me each week. Nearly. Next visit, perhaps. I wish I knew what to do with them. Let’s see what can be rustled up for those for lotus roots, first. This recipe I know to be a sensation.

Challenged by A.O.F., the past week was spent, rather happily, eating gluten-free. In the process of noting each meal, my style of breakfasting – a vague hunger seems to set in only after 9am – obviously requires a little work. Predictable slices of toast or rice cakes punctuate most mornings, interspersed with the odd small bowl of muesli. Porridge sits too heavily, alas, and smoothies, that other unthinkably-easy breakfast, are too cold mid-winter. Lacking imagination, clearly. So, I’ve been playing with morning food and one of the more interesting thoughts, found while flipping wistfully on a Saturday morning, was a dish of fresh Medjool dates served with a sliver of mild feta cheese and toasty almonds; a simple, elegant idea from Nadine Abensur.

It’s wonderful. Unexpectedly so. I wouldn’t suggest you eat this regularly – cheese at breakfast is a little over the top - but if you, like me, prefer to eat a little (and later) in the morning, then this may just grab you. Makes a lovely, if not slightly odd lunch, too. A couple of years ago, we meandered through a Parisian market, looking for fruit to satisfy the familiar traveller’s need for fibre. One stall holder coaxed us over by pitting a fat, fresh date and stuffing it with the smallest, sweetest, milkiest walnuts I’ve ever tasted. I audibly gasped. He grinned. Naturally, we bought handfuls of both. Merci beaucoup.

Take three or four fresh, plump dates per person, slice each along its length and discard the pit. Toast some sweet walnuts, pecans or almonds in a dry pan until fragrant and, while warm, stuff each date with two nuts. Cut a slice of feta, a mild, creamy one, and stuff a little of it, too, into your date. Arrange on a plate, drizzle with honey or agave syrup mixed with a tiny, carefully measured droplet of orange blossom water. Rich. Blissful. Indulgent. But not the stuff of everyday breakfasting. Lord, no.

Still, the question remains. I need ideas, suggestions and inspiration, people, to get out of this silly self-made breakfasting rut.

Any ideas?

In which we make a sauce of Some Deliciousness

E.H.Shepard

Isn’t it funny
How a bear likes honey?
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!
I wonder why he does?

Sung in a small growly voice, by a Bear of Very Little Brain

Winnie-the-Pooh is a stout, greedy sort of bear and honey - dripping, viscous, sweet honey - his infamous weakness. Not that one can blame him, not one bit; in fact it is just that absent-minded greed that endears him to both adult and child alike. I’ve been wandering around the house reading A.A.Milne’s classic Winnie-the-Pooh aloud to myself and the dog, and it’s been hugely, immensely, enjoyable. Read aloud, it matters little that your audience be youthful. Nor, obviously, that one has an audience at all. ‘I can also highly recommend ‘Now We Are Six’; a tour de force of gentle but smart humour wasted on the under 10’s’, said Jo during an exchange of emails. I think she’s on to something significant. Winnie-the-Pooh is far too good to be kept merely for children.

Rotund of middle, Pooh one day finds himself stuck in Rabbit’s narrow doorway after a particularly delicious morning tea of honey and condensed milk. In one of my favourite passages, Christopher Robin, Milne’s real life son, is called upon to solve the rather sticky situation. A week of starvation is his diagnosis; Pooh must live on a diet of words alone if he’s ever to leave Rabbit’s home:

Bear began to sigh, and then found he couldn’t because he was so tightly stuck; and a tear rolled down his eye, as he said:

‘Then would you read a Sustaining Book, such as would help a Wedged Bear in Great Tightness?’

So, for a week Christopher Robin read that sort of book at the North end of Pooh, and Rabbit hung his washing on the South end…and in between Bear felt himself getting slenderer and slenderer.

With one almighty pull and a cork-like ‘pop’, Winnie-the-Pooh, I am pleased to report, is finally freed. Silly old Bear.

Simple sugar, which is essentially what honey is, has taken hold of our modern diet and rattled it to the core. Sure, we all like some sweetness, but eating as much honey as Bear does is hardly wise. So, I offer something new for Pooh to try. A sticky miso and honey sauce, just right for dressing up some simple steamed greenery. A much better and more slimming way for a Bear to get his, or indeed her, honey fix.

Honey & miso sauce (of Some Deliciousness)
Honey (or Hunny as per Pooh Bear’s spelling) is one of those things that I have come to, in small amounts, later in life. Better late than never, I say. Sub in agave syrup or rice syrup to make this vegan. Very Good poured over crisp tofu or, better still, a pile of steamed Asian greens. Keeps well, refrigerated.

1 generous tablespoon of sesame seeds
2 ½ tablespoons of miso (dark red in winter; white in the warmer months)
2 teaspoons of pale sesame oil
1 teaspoon of dark, toasted sesame oil
5 tablespoons of warm water
2 tablespoons of raw honey, rice or agave syrup
Dash of rice vinegar
1 red chilli, seeded and very finely chopped
A thumb of ginger, freshly grated

Toast the sesame seeds to a pale shade of gold in a dry frying pan, paying close attention – they can (and do) burn in the blink of an eye. Cool on a plate.

Whisk all but the sesame seeds and ginger together in a small bowl. Squeeze the grated ginger in, discard the pulp and whisk again until smooth, then sprinkle over the sesame seeds. If using white miso, you may like to add a large splash, perhaps a little more, of either tamari or soy sauce to balance things out nicely.

E.H.Shepard

Simona is co-hosting another round of Novel Food.

Read something delicious lately? Entries close on the 21^st of June.

Simplicity and muscle

Two phrases are scrawled through the pages of my journals, wedged between recipes, sketches and ramblings. Strive for simplicity. Strive for muscle. Written in confident, looping letters, these are big ideas which haunt me in the small, quiet hours of the morning. As though the action of tracing the letters over and over will allow them to seep into daily life. But the art of reduction is as elusive as it is desirable. ‘Strive for muscle’ is a phrase borrowed from Francine Du Plessix Gray, found when rifling one holiday among the pages of The Writing Life. Wrangling words, dancing with language – the ‘muscle’ or strength, simplicity if you will, of which Gray speaks is worth striving for. An idea linguistically stripped back to its essence, one that inevitably spills into other areas of thinking. Simplicity. Muscle. Both require courage.

Harmony, mindfulness. Lately these have taken a grip on my thinking, edging, as we are, toward the introspective darker days of winter. It’s all too easy to be swept up by the confusion of bells and whistles in the kitchen; to be seduced by long lists of the exotic, the obscure. Time to step back. Time to breathe.

Simplicity in the kitchen is about developing intuition and confidence. Listening to the language your ingredients are speaking. How else will they shine? It’s about taking pleasure in small things, like running your fingers through the verdant pots of parsley, beads of water showering your good shoes in the process. Or sipping green tea in the afternoon and watching chickpeas slowly, very slowly, swell in a dish of cold, clear water. Simplicity is washing the dishes by hand because the dishwasher is, sadly, far too complicated. And simplicity is having the courage to place a bowl of homemade smoky eggplant puree on the table with some buttery, slow-cooked chickpeas and happily call it Dinner.

Drifting back, nose first, to the musky fug of chickpeas and bay quietly simmering in the oven, I know instantly what is needed. A bowl of herbal, fresh, flavour-lifting persillade to cut through that richness. Simple. Muscular. We ate in contented silence and both agreed it a meal fit for company. Hunks of crusty bread, or soft fresh pita, optional.

Persillade
Simplicity is persillade. Parsley, from the garden if you’re lucky, washed and carefully dried, pine nuts from the pantry and a clove, maybe two, of garlic. The zest of a lemon sometimes goes in depending on the sort of lift a dish needs, but essentially this is an intuitive thing. A very worthy, but vastly different, substitute for parmesan cheese.

Palmful of pine nuts
1 clove of garlic, peeled
2-3 large handfuls of parsley leaves, washed and well dried

Toast the pine nuts to a pale shade of gold in a heavy based frying pan. Cool on a plate. Chop the garlic roughly, then chop everything together, running your knife back and forth, over and over, until it’s all quite fine.

Smoky eggplant puree
Not quite the classic Babaganoush, this is adapted from Stephanie Alexander’s simple, delicious recipe. Her suggestion to serve with a separate bowl of sour cream into which you have stirred some finely chopped fresh ginger and another, smaller, bowl of sliced hot green chillies is Highly Recommended.

3-4 eggplants
Olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Sea salt
2 lemons, juiced
Tahini, to taste

Preheat the oven to 180 C.

Trim and quarter the eggplants lengthways. Nestle them in a single layer in a large baking dish and drizzle with a little olive oil, just enough to lubricate the pan. Roast, turning once, for 40-45 minutes, until the wedges are cooked all the way though. Cool, then peel away and discard the skins. Place the softened eggplant flesh in a colander and press down with the back of a spoon to expel as much liquid as possible.

Puree the eggplant with the garlic, a little salt, the lemon juice and a tablespoon, to begin with, of tahini. Whiz to a puree, adding a little more tahini if you like. Serve topped with a thread of extra
virgin olive oil.

Gum blossom.

Photographed while watching Oscar play football, I'm rather sorry to say, badly.

Poor lad...

Gingko Nut Custards

The Ginkgo Biloba is a tree with an ancient lineage. It’s a living fossil, like a crocodile or the remarkable Wollemi Pine. 270 million years old it is, and that people, commands respect. Reputed to improve the memory, the green fruit, or nut, of the female tree is highly prized by both Chinese and Japanese cuisines. Julie told me that she has watched families in New York gather the stinking fruit from the pavement. Having smelt it walking around The Gardens during her stay, it’s not a task that excites me very much, I have to say. Lazy, I know, but there you go. Better by far is finding a net of gingko nuts, as I finally did, in the fridge of an excellent Asian grocery.

Shell-bound, the ginkgo is shaped much like an almond; one end rounded, the other tapered to a point. Paler and thinner-skinned, with a strong, pungent smell. Once freed, the fruit itself is a little rubbery. Not quite what I was expecting, but interesting, nonetheless. The recipe that follows uses just three and this is, I think, ideal for an untrained Western palate to begin with.

Served in tiny Japanese tea cups, these barely-set custards shudder in a very luscious way. Not sure about you, but I have days when little bowls of this sort of restorative thing are very, very welcome. Wholesome, but light. Smoked tofu adds depth and complexity to the girly-ness of it all, but originally, I made this with about 60g (2oz) of salmon belly cut into small cubes, just as Holly Davis did. It made an extraordinarily good custard, gentler and even more delicate. The earthier grounding of smoked tofu however, feels somehow right for autumn. Play as you like. Best of all, it’s quick and simple. It is surprising just how much liquid two eggs will, tremulously, set. I didn’t expect this to work at all. Lovely stuff.

Steamed ginkgo and mushroom custards – makes 6

Adapted from a Holly Davis recipe. I’ve looked, longingly, at this recipe for years, but never found the nuts. If they elude you, this, I promise, will not suffer their omission in the slightest. I wish I’d made them sooner.

8 dried shiitake mushrooms, destalked
A thin slice of smoked tofu
3 ginkgo nuts, shelled OR 6 almonds, blanched and slivered
2 free-range eggs (best you can afford/find)
½ cup of mirin
1 ½ tablespoons of shoyu, tamari or soy sauce
4 spring onions, white and an inch or so of greens, sliced
A little of green tops of the spring onion, finely chopped

You will also need:
A bamboo (or similar) steamer
A wok
6 Japanese/Chinese teacups, each of about 80ml (1/3 cup) capacity

Soak the shiitakes in freshly boiled water for 1 hour. Soak the tofu separately in cool water to cover at the same time. Drain the tofu, pat dry and cut into tiny dice.

Drain the mushrooms, reserving 1 cup (250 ml) of the liquid. Place the mushrooms in a small saucepan, cover with water and simmer until tender. Scoop out and squeeze gently when ready. Slice caps very thinly. Rub the skin from each ginkgo nut and boil in the same saucepan for 10 minutes. Drain well and slice each into 6 pieces.

Whisk eggs, mushroom liquor, mirin and shoyu together in a bowl until well combined. Divide evenly between 6 teacups and gently arrange the mushrooms, nuts, tofu (or salmon) and spring onions in each cup.

Carefully place the cups in a bamboo steamer. Pour a little water into the base of the wok, bring to a simmer and balance the steamer on top. Place the lid on and steam for 10-12 minutes. Remove and cool for 10 minutes, then serve garnished with spring onion greenery.

The gorgeous, inventive Laurie of Mediterranean Cooking in Alaska is this week’s host of Kalyn Denny’s Weekend Herb Blogging.

Faux meat: Nut roast

‘But surely the most crucial point of all is that if someone doesn’t want to eat meat, the chances are they don’t want their dinner to look like it either. You wouldn’t dream of presenting your Jewish guests with fish carefully manufactured to look like a pork chop. So why wave replica meat in front of someone who clearly doesn’t want to see it?’

Nigel Slater; ‘The Nut Cutlet’, Eating for England

Despite Johanna’s protestations, I think that Nigel makes rather a good point, poking fun, gently, at the sort of vegetarian cookery no longer considered in vogue. Having arrived at the flesh-free party somewhat late, I’ve never quite grasped the notion that replacing meat, with something concocted to look like it, is wise. Besides, I’m more of a legume girl, content to be drawn into the kitchen by what’s seasonal and abundant.

No-one writes about food like Nigel Slater. It’s writing one sinks, blissfully, in to. Later in the same book, he pokes a little more fun at ‘The Slightly Grubby Wholemeal Cook’:

‘Here you will eat healthily…the yoghurt will be goat’s, the chocolate barely sweetened and the milk soya…[the cookbooks] are on the same shelf as the meditation CD’s, the fruit tea and the tantric sex manual’

Mind you, he’s got my pantry eerily right, but the sound of dolphins cavorting through rainforests inexplicably angers me and frankly I’d rather eat Tofurky wrapped in Soy Bacon than spend hours and hours tangled tantrically. Perhaps a foray into faux meat, in light of Nigel’s dubious stereotyping, was worth exploring. I settled on Deborah Madison’s much-lauded terrine from Greens.

Nut roast is, essentially, something akin to the stuffing that steams in the cavity of a roasting bird, minus, obviously, the bird. Think meatloaf and you’re halfway there. A nut cutlet is similar in construction, differing only in size and shape.

This smells like a proper roast while it cooks: incredibly, deliciously, good. It’s substantial, weighty and golden: worthy of presenting at the table with a flourished ta-dah! Madison warns this is heavy, rich fare and she is right. Thin slices, daubed with plenty of chunky tomato and basil sauce are ideal. And if the thought of half a kilo of cheese and all those nuts fills you as much fear as it did me, try to make up for it in the days that follow with truckloads of salad and fruit…

Cheese and nut roast - feeds six or more, with leftovers

Serve with a quick tomato sauce made by dumping two tins of chopped tomatoes into a saucepan with 3 thinly sliced cloves of garlic, a glug of red wine and a sprinkling of sugar. Bubble away until reduced by about one third, add half a bunch of torn basil leaves and serve. Nut roast adapted from Greens by Deborah Madison.

½ cup of brown rice, or a mixture of brown and wild if possible
4 dried shiitake mushrooms
½ cup, packed, of dried porcini mushrooms
2 cups of nuts, a mixture of cashews, walnuts and pecans
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 stalks of celery, diced
Sea salt
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 large handful of parsley leaves, chopped
3 eggs
250g (½ pound) of cottage cheese
250g (½ pound) of strong cheddar cheese, grated

Place the rice in a small saucepan and cover with one cup of water. Bring to the boil, lower the heat right down to its lowest possible setting, clamp a lid on tightly and leave, untouched, for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180 C (350 F) and line a large loaf tin with baking paper.

Soak the dried mushrooms in hot water to cover for 20 minutes. Drain well and de-stalk the shiitakes, then chop the mushrooms. Spread the nuts out on a baking sheet and cook for 5 minutes. Cool on a plate. Chop the nuts quite finely, but not so much that you’re bored. A few chunks here and there don’t matter much.

Increase the oven temperature to 190 C (375 F). Warm the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat and cook the onion and celery until soft, about 6 minutes or so. Add a little salt, followed by the mushrooms, garlic and parsley and cook for a further 2 minutes.

In a roomy bowl, combine the cooked rice, nuts, onion and celery mixture. In another bowl, lightly beat the eggs and cottage cheese, then stir through the grated cheddar. Add the wet ingredients to the dry, combine well and press into the prepared loaf tin.

Bake for 1 – 1 ¼ hours until the top is burnished and golden, the loaf coming away easily from the sides of the tin. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes before gingerly slicing with a serated knife.

Am I a convert? Not quite, but I’ll be eagerly awaiting Johanna’s round-up for more inspiration. You have until April the 18^th to have a Neb at Nut Roast.

Adzuki croquettes

"azuki togō ka, hito totte kuō ka? shoki shoki."*

* "Will I grind my adzuki beans, or will I get a person to eat? shoki shoki."

This little ditty is sung by Azukiarai, a macabre river-dwelling creature of Japanese legend, who, when he isn’t rinsing his adzuki beans in running water, is grinding them to a powder in a skull. A human one presumably, given those lyrics. A little odd, yes, in an Iron Chef, inscrutable kind of way. Considering the reputed healing powers of the adzuki I’m not surprised this fellow is obsessed with them, though I cannot condone, nor fathom, his fondness for human flesh. Besides, there’s enough protein in those little red beans to keep one happy, healthy and nourished without resorting to...well, whatever it is that he does.

Adzuki beans are easy on the digestion and require no (or precious little) soaking. Their inherent sweetness, coupled with a tendency to cook down to a creamy, red-flecked mass makes cooking desserts with them a natural to the Oriental palate. There you’ll find sweetened red bean pastes, cakes and a creamy, dairy-free sorbet quite unlike any other. An elusive flavour it has, difficult to put an exacting finger on. My step-sons loved it right up until the moment they learned it consisted of only red beans, vanilla and sugar. Both were caught with spoons in the pail later on – its light but mealy texture had them hooked, but they needed to go away and think about it for a little while.

Tinned legumes are a necessity of modern life – you can squander an entire afternoon waiting for chickpeas to reach that butter-soft stage (not to mention the twenty four soak required prior to their immersion) - but there are some legumes that are light years ahead in both texture and flavour when cooked from scratch. Tinned adzuki’s tend toward mush which is fine, desirable even, for sweet things but less pleasant in a savoury dish like this. They’ll take an hour, sometimes up to two, to reach tender creamy perfection. If you double the quantity, you’ll find they freeze well (this is true of all home-cooked beans) and you get the added bonus of a mineral-rich broth reputed to cleanse the kidneys. Two meals and a detox. Not bad, eh?

Sit these croquettes on a bed of quickly-wokked carrot, shredded wombok (Napa cabbage) and ginger and this meal is will evoke the exotic flavours of the Orient. It combines a bit of Japanese flavouring, a pungent Korean sauce and a Chinese-ish stir-fry. Oh for such harmony beyond the kitchen walls. Perhaps I could coax even that nasty old Azukiarai into trying this, and maybe, just maybe, he’d abandon his cannibalistic ways.

Adzuki bean croquettes – for 4

Dip, crunch, lick fingers. Repeat. It’s a ritual that appeals enormously. And if the sauce into which you are dipping just happens to be a complex, salty brew, all the better. Get the sauce made while the beans are simmering. The beans themselves are great over rice or even a steaming bowl of quinoa.

For the beans:
1 cup of adzuki beans
1 ¼ litres (5 cups) of water
1 x 5cm (2 inch) piece of kombu
1 onion, peeled and stuck with 2 cloves
A thumb of ginger, peeled and sliced
4 cloves of garlic, whole
2 tablespoons of mirin (or white wine/sherry)
1 tablespoon of oil
2 bay leaves
Sea salt or tamari

Pick over and rinse the beans. Place all of the ingredients except for the salt/tamari in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to its lowest setting, cover with a lid and simmer for 1-2 hours, or until the beans are completely tender.

Remove the kombu, onion, bay leaf, ginger and garlic. Taste, seasoning with salt and/or tamari. Simmer gently for a further 2-3 minutes.

Drain, holding back just a little of the cooking liquid.

To make the croquettes:
2 cups of cooked, drained adzuki beans (see above)
4 spring onions (scallions), finely chopped (greens, too)
1 generous teaspoon of Sichuan peppercorns
Good pinch of sea salt
½ cup of breadcrumbs
½ cup of toasted sesame seeds
Oil, for greasing

Preheat the oven to 200 C (400 F).

Puree the beans, either in a food processor, blender or a food mill (I quite like the texture a food mill gives and you get a bit of an upper body work-out in the process). Don’t be tempted to blitz to a super smooth puree – leave it just a little bit chunky. If the mixture looks a little dry, add a spoonful or two of the reserved cooking liquid.

Tip the beans into a bowl and mix through the spring onions. Crush the Sichuan peppercorns with the salt in a mortar and pestle then stir into the bean mixture. Add the breadcrumbs bit by bit until the dough is stiff enough to shape easily – you may not need them all.

Roll the mixture into small, slightly flattened croquettes – 5-7 cms (about 2-3 inches) is just fine. Make them smaller if you like, finger food-style. Tip the toasted sesame seeds out onto a plate and roll the croquettes around to coat.

Lightly grease a baking sheet and carefully place the croquettes on top. Brush the tops with a little extra oil and bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes. They should be golden and crisp. Alternatively you can shallow fry them, but I find that baking them makes for a much lighter and, it must be said, less messy meal.

Serve hot, with the following sauce.

Sesame dipping sauce:

This is pungent stuff and much as I love raw garlic, I’ve toned it down just a fraction from Mark Bittman’s original recipe. It’s very salty, very umami and very, very addictive. Consider yourself warned. Serve it in small dishes by the side of each plate. Leftovers (which there will be) make a great marinade.

¼ cup of tamari, shoyu or soy sauce
¼ cup of warm water
2 tablespoons of rice vinegar
1 tablespoon of toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon of pale sesame oil
2 tablespoons of sesame seeds, toasted until golden in a dry pan
1 tablespoon of sugar
1 small clove of garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon of finely grated ginger
Pinch of chilli powder

Mix everything together until the sugar dissolves. Will keep, refrigerated, for a few days.

I’m submitting this to Susan, the Well Seasoned Cook, who is hosting an event called My Legume Love Affair. Love your beans too? Get posting.

An Inauthentic Dal

Some women shop for shoes. I shop for spices, pulses and grains. Sometimes it’s a little overwhelming to open the pantry and wonder when, exactly, you were planning to use them all. Never met a pulse I didn’t like. A half-filled jar of mung beans, the result of a failed sprouting attempt, needed emptying in an effort to wrestle back some semblance of control. Mangy-looking sprouts sold in supermarkets and one, delicious, meal of kichidi aside, I’ve not cooked or eaten mung beans nearly as often as their nutritional profile suggests one should. Moong dal is one of the few foods considered tridoshic in Ayurvedic medicine; a protein- and fibre-rich, easy-on-the-digestion, no-soaking required, all-rounder of a bean. Why, I wondered, haven’t I been cooking a pot of them at least once a week?

A large portion of Saturday morning, post voting and a half-hearted attempt at weeding, was spent faffing on the computer. Fool. The weather was stellar, but there I sat, sucked into a vortex of food related searches. Three hours passed, trawling the internet mindlessly and nothing, not one, single, useful thing had been achieved. Not exactly my intended Saturday. Frustrated, I switched the damn thing off, found a wide-brimmed hat and headed outside with Marion Halligan and Mark Bittman tucked under my arm.

‘Mung Bean Dal with Apples, Coconut and Mint’, from Bittman, sounded revolting, not least because half a cup of mint is, in my opinion, only really useful in a teapot. Bittman’s is a fairly broad use of the word dal, but it is worth noting that there are nearly as many dals as there are cooks. His suggested ‘twist’ - ditching the apples for carrots and the shredded coconut in favour of cashews - sounded interesting. And those mung beans had already lost their coveted spot. The result, with a few changes, is a surprisingly delicate moong dal with enough of the elements of Keralan cuisine to take your tastebuds on a nice little trip to tropical southern India. I can’t tell you how light and lovely this is, odd and inauthentic though its various components seem.

Having wasted Saturday morning, wasting the afternoon shopping would not have been wise. That is the beauty of a well-stocked pantry. A few handfuls of less-than-perfect spinach wilted through at the end and a palmful of curry leaves, retrieved from the very back of the freezer, rounded things out nicely. Two limes from the grocer next door were the only shopping required. One for the recipe, to cut through the coconut milk and the other for slicing into a celebratory Cointreau later in the evening. Sipped whilst dancing (badly) and messaging like-minded friends, a bit further away than I’d like them to be.

Mung dal with cashews and carrots – for 4-6

Adapted from this book. A highly delicious way to eat a highly nutritious little wonder-bean. Great with basmati rice spiced with a tablespoon of mustard seeds, carefully popped in a little hot oil moments before serving. Mustard seeds aid the digestion of beans – I do love the ancient, noble wisdom of Ayurveda.

1 ½ cups of whole mung beans (moong dal, yellow dal)
½ cup of raw cashews
3-4 medium-sized carrots, chopped
A large knob of ginger, peeled and finely grated (about 2 tablespoons)
6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped or crushed
8-10 curry leaves (optional)
½ teaspoon of turmeric
1-2 dried red chillies
1 x 400g (15oz) tin of coconut milk
1 ½ tablespoons of brown sugar or agave syrup
1 teaspoon of sea salt
A handful or two of spinach leaves
1 lime
1 long green chilli, thinly sliced (to garnish)

Basmati rice (see above), to serve

Pick over the beans very well. Pebbles and other stray bits will do your teeth no end of damage and this also gives you a chance to discard any damaged or shrunken beans. Soak the beans in a bowl of water while you prepare the other ingredients. I’m never sure of the age of mine, so a short soaking means they will cook, perfectly, within the allocated time.

Drain the beans and place them, along with the cashews, carrots, ginger, garlic, curry leaves, turmeric, chillies, coconut milk and sugar in a large, heavy-based saucepan (a Dutch oven is perfect). Add enough water to cover by 10 cms (4 inches) and bring slowly to the boil. Turn the heat down to a simmer and partially cover with a lid.

Simmer for 45-60 minutes, stirring and checking the water from time to time (I keep a hot kettle of water by the stove to top things up). The beans must be absolutely tender before adding the salt, stirring through the spinach and squeezing in the juice of the lime.

When the spinach has wilted, ladle out over bowls of basmati rice and garnish with the slices of hot, green chilli.

So, I’ve earmarked some shelf space and washed out a new jar. Mung beans will be back. Might just be making that delicious coriander and garlic-laced kichidi again, too.

This week Weekend Herb Blogging is being hosted by Kalyn, creator of this popular, weekly blogging event.