Mushroom and Asparagus Risotto

Risotto is the ultimate comfort food.    It’s also very easy to make.   This is my favourite risotto and the one that I tend to make whenever I get fresh asparagus and don’t have inspiration to make anything else.   Hmm.  That makes it sound like this is not a great recipe.  It is, it’s just that this is an old favourite and one I’m happy to come back to again and again.

Ingredients – serves 2

200g arborio rice

1 onion

Clove of garlic

Approx 12 spears of asparagus

8 medium-sized mushrooms

500ml Vegetable stock

50g Parmesan cheese

Olive oil

Black pepper

How to make Mushroom and Asparagus Risotto

1. Heat a little olive oil.   Add the onion.   Cook until soft then add the garlic and mushroom.

2.Cook for a couple of minutes then add the rice.  Stir so it gets coated in oil.   The grains of rice will go a little translucent.  Begin adding the stock a little at a time.   Keep stirring. If there isn’t enough stock, just add water.

3. At the same time, blanch the asparagus for just a couple of minutes in some boiling water.

4. After about 20 minutes the risotto will be ready.  Add the asparagus, stir in the parmesan and season with extra black pepper.

 

Tomato Soup Recipe

Every so often I decide it’s time to make a tomato soup.   Mainly because my husband loves it whereas I always think it’s a little too simple.   I usually like to spice things up and throw a chilli in here or some spices in there.  With tomato soup it’s different, no spices, except black pepper, and that doesn’t count as a spice to me, just a little basil and everyone knows how well that goes with tomatoes.   It really is a simple soup, but simply good and tasty.   It also tastes quite creamy even though it doesn’t contain any cream.

This is adapted from a recipe at BBC Good Food and I’m sending this recipe  to Souper Sundays run by Kahakai Kitchen.

Ingredients

400g tin of chopped tomatoes

1 onion, finely chopped

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 tbsp tomato puree

Handful of basil leaves

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

400 ml of milk

Black pepper

How to make Tomato Soup

1.  Heat some olive oil in a saucepan.  Add the onion and garlic.  Cook until it becomes soft.   Add the tomato puree.

2. Add the tinned tomatoes.   Cook for about 10 minutes.

3. Using a stick blender, blend the tomato mixture.  Return to the pan.

4. Mix the baking soda with a little milk.  Pour it into the pan with the soup and then pour the milk in.   Stir, bring to the boil and then simmer for about 5 minutes.  Don’t worry that it froths a bit, this disappears as it cooks.

5. Season with the black pepper.  Serve with fresh crusty bread.

 

Recipe for Falafels

I like to eat vegetarian food at least for one or two days a week and this is one of my standbys.   I just love chickpeas and these falafels are quick and easy to create.  They are not exactly the same as the ones I have had in restaurants, so I am not sure how authentic they are or even if I should be calling them falafels.  I often find that falafels can be a bit dry and even a bit tasteless.  However, I have to admit that I have never eaten them in a really good restaurant, maybe that would change my opinion.   Well, what I am saying in a really roundabout way is that I think these are different from but better than  other falafels I’ve had.   And so, after saying all that, I would like to send these as my first ever entry for My Legume Love Affair, an event run by Susan, The Well Seasoned Cook.

Ingredients

400g can chickpeas

1 garlic clove, crushed

Handful of parsley, finely chopped

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp chilli powder or 1 red chilli, finely sliced

2 tbsp plain flour + extra for coating the falafels in

1 small red onion , finely chopped

1 lemon, to serve with them

How to make falafels

1. Put all the ingredients in a blender and whizz until it forms a thick paste.  Add a little water if necessary to help bind the ingredients.

2. Form into 6 patties, coat in flour and leave to rest for half an hour.

3. Heat a little oil in a frying pan.  When it is piping hot, add the falafels.   Cook for about 3 minutes on each side.

4. Serve in pitta breads with salad.  Squeeze lots of fresh lemon juice over the falafels.

This time I also made a tzatziki style dressing with yoghurt, cucumber, crushed garlic, parsley, salt and black pepper.

 

Asian Beef and Pak Choi

In our house,  I do all the cooking.   I would not have it any other way.  I love to be in charge of the kitchen and usually I make all the decisions about what we’re going to eat.   But sometimes, I do ask my husband what he’d like for dinner this week, and I can almost guarantee that this is the dish he’ll request.   He loves strong flavours and as the sauce in this recipe is not cooked, it packs a really strong punch.  Raw chillis, garlic and ginger.   Mmmm. I love it too.   If you aren’t such a chilli fiend you can remove the seeds but in our house the seeds are there to stay.   This recipe is adapted from Jamie Oliver

Ingredients – serves 2

2 steaks

1 lime

1 red chilli, thinly sliced

1 knob of ginger, finely diced

1 clove of garlic, finely sliced

1 pak choi or spinach

5 tbsp soy sauce

Groundnut oil

How to make Asian Beef and Pak Choi

1. Make the sauce by squeezing the lime, adding it to a bowl with the chilli, ginger, garlic, soy sauce and approx 2 tbsp oil.  Mix well. Taste and adjust as necessary.

2. Heat a griddle pan.  Season the steaks with salt and pepper.  Cooking time depends on the thickness of the steaks and how you like it done.    Cook on each side then remove from the heat and leave to rest for a few minutes.

3. Boil  some water in a pan and then when it is bubbling, add the pak choi.   Cook briefly then remove.

4. Slice the steak thinly.   Put the pak choi on the plates.   Arrange the slices of steak on top of the pak choi.  Spoon the sauce over the top.  Serve with rice.

 

Coconut Dates – Tumr Bel Nargine

When I heard about AWED and that the theme for this month was Saudi Arabia, hosted by Kitchen Samraj, I was really interested.   I don’t know about you, but I don’t know much about Saudi food and I was excited to get a reason and  opportunity to find out and do some research.

When I came across these coconut dates I felt they would go just perfectly with more of the cardamom coffee I’d made earlier.  When I then read that they are often served with coffee, and that cardamom coffee is also drunk in Saudi Arabia, I felt I just had to make them.  I adapted a recipe I found on  wikia.  The quantities were too large and I also wanted to make them a little less oily than the original recipe seemed to suggest so I dry fried the almonds rather than using oil.   The finished result was rich and chewy,with a strong taste of cardamom.  If you like a more subtle flavour, just use one cardamom pod.

Ingredients

125 g dates

2 cardamom pods

10 almonds, blanched

Small knob of butter

2 tbsp desiccated coconut

How to make Coconut Dates

1. If the almonds have their skins on, pour boiling water on them.  Leave for a minute.   Drain, squeeze each almond out of its skin.  Leave to dry or dry on some kitchen paper.

2. In a dry frying pan toast the almonds until they begin turning golden.  Be careful not to let them burn.

3. Melt the butter in a small saucepan.   Add the dates and stir.   As the dates soften they begin to stick together, mash a bit with the spoon to break up individual dates.

4. Take the seeds out of the cardamom pods and crush in a pestle and mortar.  Add the seeds to the date mixture, which should be similar now to a heavy dough.   Continue to cook for a couple of minutes.   There will be a lovely smell of date and cardamom in the kitchen.

5. Take off the heat and leave to cool for about 10 minutes.   When the mixture is cool enough to handle, divide the mixture into 10 equal sized balls.   Press an almond into the middle of each ball then roll in the desiccated coconut.

6. Serve on their own or with coffee, as a snack or at the end of a meal.

 

Cardamom Coffee

I spent the first 18 years of my life not understanding what it was about coffee that everyone seemed to love.  Not that I was  tea drinker, I didn’t like that either, or even hot chocolate much.   I would go to someone’s house and be asked what I wanted to drink and I’d ask for water.   Would you like a coffee?  what about a tea?  Squash?   No, water is fine, thanks.  They looked uncomfortable, as if they had failed to provide a nice drink for me, but really, I was fine with water.  Although I was happy with water, my hosts seemed uncomfortable with it, they kept trying to offer me drinks I didn’t want.   And so, on becoming an adult, I decided maybe it was time to bring myself to the point where I would be able to drink a coffee, just to be polite and fit in in certain social situation.  I didn’t think I’d like it, but I thought if I made myself drink a small cup each day I’d be able to accept a coffee on those occasions when hot drink drinking was required.   I started with just half a teaspoon of instant coffee, lots of sugar and a dash of water.  Within a week I was cutting down the sugar,  soon I was increasing the coffee, and before long I was topping up the whole mug.   Something I’d thought I didn’t like for all those years became an addiction in about a week.    At first it was just instant coffee, but over the next few years, living in Germany for a year and later Poland for two years, I turned to proper coffee beans and ground coffee only.   I would turn up my nose at instant, it just didn’t give me that kick I needed any more.  Nowadays I do drink instant at work (as there is no other choice) but I would never buy it or keep it in the flat at home.  Any coffee drunk at home is made with love, care and real coffee beans.

In Poland, the coffee was usually served Turkish style and I loved it.   It was so strong it made me shake when I first arrived, especially if I dared to have 2 cups.  Every so often I still enjoy coffee this way.  To give it more of a Turkish flavour,  I decided to try it with cardamom in, and this is what I did:

Ingredients

1 cup of water

1 tbsp coffee, finely ground

1 cardamom pod, crushed a little so seeds are exposed

How to make Cardamom Coffee

1. Boil the kettle. Pour the water into a mug then tip it into a saucepan.  Bring back to the boil.

2.When it boils take it off the heat. Add the coffee and cardamom pod.  Return to the heat.  It will begin to boil and foam quite quickly.

3. Take it off the heat.   Then return it to the heat until it foams again.

3. Repeat this process again once or even twice.

4. Leave the pan to rest for a minute or two so all the grinds sink to the bottom.

5. Pour into the cup and serve.

I don’t like sweet coffee so I didn’t add any sugar but if you like it to be sweet you can add some sugar to the water at the beginning

 

Slow Cooker Chicken Tagine

Traditionally tagines are cooked slowly and so I decided that it was time to bring out my slow cooker again.   I got it last winter and used it at least once a week for the first four months, but since spring it’s been gathering dust.  As the weather is now getting a little cooler I feel its time has come again.  A slow cooker may not be quite the same as a conical ceramic tagine, it’s certainly not as attractive, but I was hoping it’d do the job just as well.   When I first got my slow cooker I used to follow recipes and cook the items in stages in pans on the hob and then put the contents into the slow cooker.  But somehow, I didn’t feel that that made my life much easier, and nor did it save on washing up.  I soon realised that just throwing all the ingredients into the slow cooker in the morning led to practically the same results and that’s more or less what I’ve done ever since.   This dish was absolutely delicious and left me feeling I could eat tagine every day.

I’m sending this post to My Kitchen My World for the September challenge which is to make a Moroccan dish.  As I love North African food I’m really excited to see what other dishes are produced.

In the picture below it may look like there is no chicken in the dish but it is there, just hidden underneath all the chickpeas.

Ingredients - serves 2

2 chicken breasts

1 large onion, sliced

1 carrot, roughly chopped into large pieces

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

Knob of fresh ginger, finely diced

Approx 8 dried apricots

400g can chopped tomatoes

400g can of chickpeas

200ml chicken stock

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 tsp coriander

1tsp cumin

1tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp chilli powder

Black pepper

2 lemons

How to make Moroccan Tagine

1.Make a marinade with the spices, juice of half a lemon and a little oil.  Add the chicken.  Put in the fridge and leave overnight or for a couple of hours.  Or, if you don’t have time for this step, just go straight to step 2, and put all the spices in the pot with the rest of the ingredients.

2.Put all the ingredients except the extra lemon in the slow cooker.  Cook on low for up to 8 hours.

3. Serve with couscous cooked in chicken stock with the extra lemon cut into wedges to squeeze over the top.

 

Coq Au Vin

I love a delicious stew or casserole and coq au vin is one of my favourites.  It also makes a great meal for casual guests as nearly everyone seems to like it.  I  always it serve with roast potatoes which I parboil, sprinkle with garlic salt and then roast in the oven in a little olive oil.   They are absolutely delicious and I would not hesitate to say that I am a top roast potato maker.  But, this recipe is coq au vin and I did not just make it as an excuse to have roast potatoes again, honestly.

Ingredients – serves 4

4 Chicken breasts – left whole or cut into chunks

1 carrot, thinly sliced

Approx 10 medium-sized mushrooms, sliced

1 stick of celery, finely diced

1 onion, finely diced

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 bay leaf

1 tsp dried thyme

4 rashers of bacon

250 ml red wine

Chicken stock

1 tbsp cornflour

How to make Coq au Vin

1. Chop the bacon into pieces about 1cm wide.  Fry the bacon in a large saucepan.  Remove.  Brown the chicken on all sides.  Remove from the pan.

2. Fry the onion and celery until soft. Add the garlic. Return the bacon and chicken and add the mushrooms, carrots, bay leaf and thyme.

3.  Add the wine and top up the pan with stock so all the vegetables and meat are covered.  Heat up then simmer for 20 minutes.

4. To thicken the sauce at the end mix the cornflour with a little stock to dissolve then add to the pan and stir through.  The sauce should thicken quite quickly.

4. Serve with roasted, mashed or baked potatoes.  I often serve broccoli on the side too for extra vegetables.

The sauce soaks into the potatoes and is absolutely delicious.

 

Baked Apples

As apples are in season and so delicious and at this time of year,  I decided to try baked apples.   I have to be honest, apples are one of the fruits that I actually prefer when  cooked rather than raw.  And any cooked fruit with cinnamon is just heavenly as far as I’m concerned.  Not only are these deliciously sweet and tasty, they are also healthy.     I can see that it won’t be the last time I make them this year.   I will also experiment with other dried fruit, spices and even nuts.

I am also entering this recipe into the SOS Kitchen challenge which in September,  is to cook a recipe using apples.  The event is hosted by Ricki of Diet, Dessert and Dogs and Kim of Affairs of Living. The recipes must be vegan and use only whole food ingredients.

Ingredients - serves 2

2 apples

1 tsp brown sugar or natural sweetner

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Small handful of sultanas

4 tbsp fruit juice (I used orange)

How to make Baked Apples

1. Core the apples and score a line around the middle.  This is so that the apples don’t burst in the oven.

2. Mix the sultanas, cinnamon and sugar (or natural sweetner).  Press into the middle of the apples.

3. Put the apples in an ovenproof dish.   Spoon the fruit juice over the centre of the apples.    Put a little water in the bottom of the dish.   This will go syrupy as the apples are baking and can be spooned over the top.

4. Bake for 40-50 minutes till the apples are soft.

 

Store Cupboard Pasta

This recipe reminds me of my university days.   It’s the type of thing I used to make back then when I would just look in the cupboard and throw a few things in a pan to eat with pasta without any advance planning. These days I rarely make it as my husband doesn’t like tinned fish or sweetcorn.  The fact that I was in on my own last night meant I didn’t want to spend a long time in the kitchen and also gave me the perfect opportunity to use ingredients that he doesn’t like.

I’m also sending this post to Presto Pasta Nights which is being hosted by Bellini Valli of More Than Burnt Toast this week.

Ingredients - serves 1

1 tin mackerel or sardines in tomato sauce

1 small onion

About 8 cherry tomatoes

2 tbsp frozen sweetcorn

2 tbsp frozen peas

1 clove of garlic

Enough pasta for one

How to make Store Cupboard Pasta

1. Put the pasta on to boil.  Five minute before the end of cooking add the frozen peas and sweetcorn.

2. Fry the onion.  When soft add the garlic and cherry tomatoes.  Finally add the fish.  Break the fish up a little with the spoon but not too much. If it is too dry add a couple of tablespoons of water.  Continue to cook just until the fish is heated through.

3.Drain the pasta and put it in the pan with the sauce. Mix it all together so the pasta is coated in the sauce.