Cauliflower salad

I've previously tried a cauliflower salad recipe from Elana's Pantry, and was quite smitten with it. This is a variation that happens to be even simpler and works well as a sort of substitute to a heap of starchy carbohydrate based salad.

1/2 head cauliflower, broken into small florets

1/2" sliver of red onion, finely chopped

3 tsp mayonnaise

1/2 tsp dijon mustard

2 - 3 tsp lemon juice

Black pepper

Seasalt

Steam the cauliflower florets until just tender. Remove, rinse under cold water, drain and then roughly chop into smaller pieces.

In a bowl whisk together the salt, pepper, mustard, lemon juice and mayonnaise. Add the finely chopped red onion.

Stir in the cauliflower, and adjust dressing ingredients if required.

Top with a garlic sautéd portobello mushroom, thinly sliced, if you happen to have one just waiting. Inadvertently let it strike a heartwarming pose.

Chickpea and sweet potato spiced latkes

By latkes I mean fritters with potato in, but I quite like the word latke. These, then, are spiced sweet potato and chickpea fritters! With a little mint yoghurt dressed salad they were quite divine. Makes about 9 fritters.

Olive oil, for frying

Extra virgin oil

1/3 onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and ground

1/2 tsp coriander seeds, toasted and ground

Juice of 1/8th of a lemon

1 small sweet potato, cubed

1/2 can chickpeas, drained

1 beaten egg

Chickpea flour, for thickening

For the salad:

Spinach, baby leaf

Cucumber

Red pepper

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 tbsp greek yoghurt

Black pepper

1 - 2 tsp finely chopped fresh mint

Seasalt, pinch of

Set up a steamer over some simmering water, and steam the sweet potato until tender. Set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, whisk the olive oil and lemon juice together with the mint, pepper and salt until somewhat emulsified. Stir in the yoghurt (at this point I recalled curdling, but due to the emulsification I think this is avoided.) Add sliced cucumber and red pepper, and set to one side. Rinse spinach and leave to drain.

In a second bowl, combine a few teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil, the onion and garlic, spices, and sweet potato. Mash the potato until blended in with the other ingredients. Stir in the chickpeas, beaten egg and lemon juice. Mix well, and if a little on the thin side add a few spoonfuls of chickpea flour until more manageable.

Heat some olive oil in a frying pan to a medium heat, and then drop in spoonfuls of the fritter mix. Flatten to about 1cm thickness, and let cook for a few minutes. When it's looking golden brown on the edges, flip and cook the other side. Once cooked remove to a plate lined with kitchen towel, and leave to blot while cooking remaining batches.

Serve up fritters alongside the cucumber and red pepper salad, over some fresh spinach. Also went very well with a side dish of cauliflower salad, and some garlic fried portobello mushrooms.

Minestronesque soup

Rifling through the fridge and glaring in the freezer revealed the motley ingredients for an almost-minestrone soup. I give you - Minestronesque Soup! Also a couple of days ago I tried out gluten-free girl's dinner rolls. There was a bit of fiddling with the baking (my oven is cranky), but now once toasted and buttered I have these rather flavoursome, chewy and crispy yet dense scone-like things. I like them, although I'm not entirely sure what they are. They accompany soup nicely, anyhow.

Butter and olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 courgette, finely diced
2 sticks celery, finely diced
2 carrots, finely diced
1 small potato, finely cubed
1/4 tin cooked red kidney beans
1/2 tin tomatoes
Hot water
1/2 vegetable stock cube
1 tbsp tomato purée
1-2 tsp marjoram
1-2 tsp thyme
1 tsp ground paprika
Seasalt
Black pepper

Put a large pan on a medium-low heat, and add a tablespoon or two of butter and a couple of olive oil. (I like to use a little butter for flavour and make up required cooking fat with some plain olive oil.)

Add the onion and garlic, and sauté for a few minutes while preparing the next vegetable. Repeat this step to add the courgette, then celery, then carrots.

Stir in the potato, kidney beans and tomatoes. Break up tomato into pieces with a blunt-ended stirring utensil if they're not already chopped.

Pour in enough hot water to cover the ingredients and bring to a simmer. Dissolve stock cube in a little hot water and add to taste.

Squeeze in the tomato purée and stir in. Add herbs, spices and other seasonings, adjusting to taste. Add a little more water if required, then leave to simmer for a good half hour.

Serve up with extra black pepper, and toast a few dinner rolls before slicing and buttering them as accompaniment.

Dinner rolls

A little while back I espied a recipe on gluten-free girl's site for dinner rolls. Slightly mystified, I pored over the lengthy list of ingredients. "This is ridiculous," I thought, "There are at least 20 of them!"

Over the next month or two if I happened to find potato starch, or quinoa flakes, I surreptitiously picked it up. Eventually, I had all the ingredients and even found some appropriate pans in a sale. Project dinner rolls commenced!

I followed the recipe fairly closely, bar omitting milk powder (this may have been important, I forgot to switch the water for soy milk too), using more xanthum gum as guar gum is impossible to come by it seems, and... the rest I kept to fairly faithfully. Ah, I let the initial dough rise for too long, after forgetting about it - I don't think I'm a born baker. Then there was the shaping, the second rising, and the above appeared. These were then baked, and about 20mins into that I remembered the pan of water I'd left at the bottom of the oven.

They were cooked for a little longer than was stated as they remained seemingly quite doughy, partly due to a cranky oven too I suspect. They came out somewhat denser than I'd expected, and I couldn't quite decide if I liked them. Eventually upon the next day, I tried them toasted with a little soft goat cheese. Then, they were wondrous. Even if getting them out of the toaster at work the next day involved some variant of whack-a-mole (hit up the lever, one or two pieces will appear in a random position, and only a side swipe will stop them returning into the toaster.)

They were pretty good, and probably better if the recipe is stuck to precisely. I may try again, when the madness next descends and having a heap of small bread rolls seems like a good idea. They did accompany soup nicely - there are a few other things to try out first, though!

Sesame green tomatoes and egg

Courtesy of a night of frost, my rescue tomato plants came to a withered and somewhat prompt end. Their last burst of life did gift me with three green tomatoes, though. Following a bit of internet scouring, I was inspired to mostly eat vegetables and so this stir fry came about - to be accompanied by a slightly sweet ginger rice porridge.

1" piece of fresh ginger, thinly sliced to matchsticks

1" green chilli, thinly sliced

1 stick celery, thinly sliced

1 carrot, thinly sliced

3-4 leaves Chinese leaf, sliced
1 spring onion, finely sliced

3 green tomatoes, cut into 1/8ths then halved across the middle

1 egg

1/4 tsp green chilli, finely chopped

Sesame oil

Soy sauce

Oyster sauce

Shichimi togarashi (7 spice mix)

Heat some sunflower oil in a wok to a medium high heat. Add chilli, and fry until browned (note: do not breathe any vapours from this in unless you're fond of coughing). Then throw in the ginger, and stir for 30 seconds or so until this has turned faintly translucent.

Add carrot, stir fry for a minute or so, then add celery and repeat. While they're still reasonably al dente, add a few teaspoons of soy sauce and of oyster sauce, to taste.

Stir in Chinese leaf and spring onion, and stir fry for another minute or so. Remove pan to one side.

In a separate small frying pan, heat a little oil on medium heat. Add 1 tsp of sesame seed oil and then the finely chopped chilli, and fry for 30 seconds or so.

Add the green tomatoes and cook until just done - should be a few minutes. Sprinkle in a little soy sauce for seasoning, then break in the egg and leave for a few moments. Stir it up briefly as it cooks on the bottom of the pan, and wait again. Continue until egg is cooked to your liking (I tend to prefer pieces of white and yellow, with softness but no actual clear egg white remaining.)

Serve up the vegetables, and top with the sesame green tomatoes and egg. For some added spice, sprinkle on a little shichimi togarashi.

Sweet ginger rice porridge

I made something akin to this ages back, but recently found a ginger-y version while browsing around an inadvertently discovered recipe site. One that reminded me of the wonders of simplicity, at times. Such it was that I simmered jasmine rice with a variation of ingredients from this recipe.

1/4 cup jasmine rice
2" piece of ginger, peeled and finely minced
6 dates, stoned and halved
1 dsp dark brown sugar
2-3 cups of water

Add rice and water to a pan, and bring to the boil. (Note that I don't rinse or soak rice for porridge, though perhaps this makes it a little gloopier.)

Stir in ginger, and lower heat to a simmer. Add dates and sugar (adjusting to taste), and leave to simmer gently until rice starts to break down.

Cook to preferred softness of grain, and serve. Beware, this stuff is implausibly moreish.

Thai curry soup

This is a rather simple dish, by way of relying a little on some pre-concocted ingredients - notably Mae Ploy Green Thai Curry Paste, and Asian Home Gourmet paste for Tom Ka soup. They're simply spices and not-readily-available ingredients already mashed up for you - I did once even find candlenuts for making curry paste from scratch, but the ready-made was still better. I conceded a minor defeat. This is a simpler soup-like version of the usual curry, for which I'd use more coconut milk and additional ginger root, garlic, lemongrass and kaffir lime leaf. (And better camera settings, sadly this was the most in-focus of the lot.)

1 tsp Thai green curry paste (Mae Ploy is my favourite)

1 tsp Tom Ka soup paste (optional, but adds extra piquancy)

1 tin coconut milk

1 chicken thigh, meat roughly cubed and bone retained

1 shallot

1/2 sweet potato, cubed

1/2 aubergine (large purple eggplant), cubed

1 green (bell) pepper, diced
2 - 3 leaves Chinese leaf, sliced (optional)

1/4 lime

Fish sauce

Palm sugar

Fresh coriander (cilantro)

Jasmine rice (scant 1/2 cup per person)

Rinse and drain jasmine rice, add water in a 1:1 ratio with the rice, and bring to a boil over a high heat in an open pan. Once bubbling remove it to the lowest heat setting you can manage, cover with pan lid, and leave to effectively cook and steam for 15 - 20 mins. Once cooked, fluff it up with a fork and leave it to stand for 5 - 10 mins off any heat, covered once more.

Heat the curry and soup pastes with an 1/8th of the tin of coconut milk in a pan on medium heat, stirring until it warms through and grows fragrant. Add in a half tin more of the milk, and let come to a simmer. (Note that I use very little curry paste as I find it quite hot, so adjust to taste here as desired.)

Add the chicken, shallot and sweet potato to the curry, and let cook for 5 - 10 mins.

Stir in the aubergine, and add some coconut milk or hot water if more liquid is needed to cover the meat and vegetables. Leave to simmer for another 5 - 10 mins.

It should be about cooked by now, so add in the green pepper and simmer for a few minutes until this is done to your liking. Stir in the Chinese leaf now, if using.

A few minutes before serving, squeeze in the lime juice, balance it with a 1 tsp or so of sugar, and add fish sauce to taste. (I tend to start with a teaspoon of it, then adjust until the sweet/sour/saltiness is to my liking.) Add remaining coconut milk for a thicker, richer soup.

Stir in plenty of fresh coriander, then serve over a small heap of steaming fragrant jasmine rice. If you have the seasonings just right, you'll proceed to somewhat helplessly devour it.

Sweet spiced sesame pork

There is a wonder to having an abundance of odds and ends in the fridge - leads to all sorts of creations. The creature of this night's toil is as follows:

1 dsp dark brown sugar

2 dsp dark soy sauce

2 dsp rice wine

1 tsp Chinese 5 spice

2 cloves garlic, sliced

2 dsp orange juice

1 dsp sesame seed oil

Vegetable oil

1 piece pork tenderloin, sliced into rounds and then thin strips

2" piece of ginger, cut into 1mm thin rounds and then julienned

1 tsp cornflour with just enough cold water to make a paste

1/2 tsp chilli oil

1/2 shallot, finely sliced

1" green chilli, sliced

1/2 cup finely shredded spring cabbage

1/3 green pepper, sliced

1/3 yellow pepper, sliced

1/2 stick celery, sliced thin on the diagonal

2 spring onions, sliced thin on the diagonal

Handful torn baby leaf spinach

Cilantro

Jasmine rice (1/2 cup per person)

Mix together the sugar, soy sauce, rice wine, 5 spice, half the garlic, orange juice and sesame seed oil. Add the thinly sliced pork, and leave to marinate.

Meanwhile prepare the remaining vegetables, make up the cornflour paste, and put the rice on.

Heat 2 dsp or so of oil in a wok on medium-high heat. Stir fry half the ginger for 30 seconds or so and then add the marinated meat, lifted out of the marinade by a slotted spoon. Cook pork until just done, then remove from pan and return to marinade dish.

Clean wok, return to heat and add another 2 dsp or so of oil. Add chilli oil, and remember to breathe air from elsewhere. Add remaining ginger, and green chilli. Stir fry for a minute or so, then add the shallot and cook for another minute until softened and coloured. Add the cabbage, cook until softened.

Add in the green then yellow pepper, stir fry for another minute, then add the celery and remaining garlic. 30 seconds or so later add the spring onions, heat through, then remove from heat and stir through the spinach. Set vegetables aside in a separate dish.

Return pork and all marinade to emptied wok, and heat until bubbling. Thicken sauce as necessary with cornflour and water mixture.

Dish up the jasmine rice alongside a heap of the vegetables, and top with a pile of the sticky spiced pork. Add some fresh coriander and serve with some pickled aubergine.

Sweet chilli harusame noodles

This is probably not what you're meant to do with harusame noodles. Made from potato starch, they're a little jelly-like but nicely chewy; to my mind quite different from the tentacleness of the yam-origin shirataki noodles, their distant cousin. There should be some sort of gelatinous warning on those things.

1/2 packet harusame noodles

1" piece of ginger, thinly sliced

1/3 yellow pepper, sliced into short sticks

1 carrot, cut into short thin sticks

2 chestnut mushrooms, sliced

2 spring onions, finely sliced on diagonal

Soy sauce

Sesame seed oil

Sweet chilli sauce (clear, dipping sort)

Vegetable oil

1 egg

Beni shoga (salty pickled ginger, usually vivid red)

Seasalt

Heat a pan of water, add noodles and simmer until al dente. Drain, rinse in cool water and leave to stand.

Stir fry ginger for 30 seconds or so, then add mushrooms. Cook for a minute, then add peppers for another minute or so. Add carrot, stir fry until heated through, then add spring onions. Stir in soy sauce and sesame seed oil to taste, then sweet chilli sauce. Tip in noodles, and heat through.

To one side, fry an egg in a few drops of sesame seed oil to preferred method. (I managed a crispy-on-the-outside flipped egg which was still gooey in the middle, which happens to be a favourite.)

Serve up noodles and vegetables in a bowl, top with fried egg, and add some beni shoga. Add a little extra soy sauce and sweet chilli sauce if desired, plus a tiny pinch of seasalt to the egg.

Vegetable and herb soup

[Photo to follow, as there isn't one at present and I wanted to make a note of this.]

It's clear-out-the-fridge soup, really. Or at least, I had an abundance of vegetables and my stomach was keen to make the acquaintance of some of them.

1 large carrot, sliced
1 heart of celery, sliced
2 spring cabbage hearts, sliced
Vegetable stock
2 tbsp tomato purée
Half handful fresh basil leaves
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried marjoram
1 tsp dried thyme
Seasalt

Simmer the above. Blend. Add water until you can honestly call it a soup. Adjust stock and seasoning, then serve with toast and goat's milk brie.

Mango with ginger custard

Instead of heeding wise advice, I played around with buttons and took a set of out-of-focus shots for this. Guess I'll have to make it again, and re-photograph. (Oh noes!)

There's an American dish called "pudding" that is basically custard, as far as I can tell. This one's a bit different though, and the setting agent relies on a protease (not pronounced pro-tease, it seems) enzyme in the raw ginger root coagulating the milk protein (I think). Turns out that this process happily works on soy milk as well as it allegedly does on cow milk. Then add it to fresh mango, and magicalness happens. Recipe as follows.

Plain soy milk (approx. 1 pint - a deep cereal bowl's worth, in any case)

Agave nectar

2" - 3" piece of ginger root

1 mango

Brown sugar

Heat one bowl's worth of plain soy milk (the most delicious you can find, or make your own) over a low heat, to below simmering point. (I assume if the milk is too hot, it'll adversely affect the ginger enzyme.) Add a few teaspoons of agave syrup to sweeten it a little.

Meanwhile, peel and grate the ginger to a pulp. (So far the best tool I've found is one of the small ridged, no-hole metal ginger graters from a Japanese food shop.) Squeeze and strain the pulp to produce approx. 1/8th cup of fresh ginger juice. Add to a bowl.

Pour the warmed soy milk into the bowl with the ginger juice. Let cool and refrigerate, leaving it to set for at least half an hour to an hour.

To serve, cut up a mango into small pieces and arrange on saucers. Spoon over some of the ginger custard, and then sprinkle on a few pinches of brown sugar. Enjoy!

Chicken and vegetables in garlic oyster sauce

Sometimes a simple concept is a delightful one. So it is with this one, combining marinated chicken thigh with vegetables in oyster sauce.

Chicken thigh meat*

1 spring onion

2 cloves garlic

1 dsp soy sauce

1 dsp Chinese rice wine

Vegetable oil

5 chestnut mushrooms

1 large carrot

1/2 stick celery

4 - 5 Chinese leaves

2 dsp oyster sauce

1 tsp cornflour

Water

*If meat is on the bone, salvage bones and simmer gently with some fresh ginger root, spring onion, a few slices of chilli and a pinch of seasalt. By the time everything's ready you'll have a chicken broth to serve alongside the main.

Dice chicken, and place in a bowl. Add finely chopped spring onion, one finely sliced clove of garlic, the soy sauce and rice wine. Mix well and leave to marinate.

Mix cornflour with a little cold water to form a watery paste, and set aside.

Slice up the mushrooms, carrot and celery on a slight diagonal, and optimally about 3-4mm thick. Slice the stem parts of the Chinese leaf into 1" wide pieces, place apart, and then slice up the green leaf part.

Heat up some vegetable oil in a wok to medium-high heat. Add chicken, and stir fry until just cooked (a tiny bit of pink can remain.) Remove to a bowl, wipe clean wok, and return to heat with some more oil.

Stir fry mushrooms for 1-2mins, then carrot for 30secs, then garlic and celery for another minute or so. Return chicken to pan, heat through, and then stir in chinese leaf stem pieces. Add oyster sauce to taste (approx. 2 dsp), and mix thoroughly. Add remaining green chinese leaf, stir fry until that is just done, and remove pan from heat.

If the sauce is a little watery, scoop contents of wok to one side and add cornflour paste to the sauce. Stir sauce over heat until thickened, then stir contents of wok thoroughly.

Serve chicken and vegetables over fragrant thai rice, with a little pickled daikon and soy sauce.

Teriyaki salmon

Salmon is one of those delicious fish that only of late I discovered could be made even more delicious by cooking it less, so that the inside becomes a juicy near jelly-like delight. Here the salmon is grilled, marinated in a favourite teriyaki sauce and served over japonica rice (the sort used for sushi), with sautéd green beans and some pickles.

1 piece salmon, de-scaled

5 dsp soy sauce (shoyu if available)

5 dsp brown sugar

5 dsp cooking saké

Vegetable oil

Handful of green beans (per person)

Fresh lemon

1 clove garlic, finely sliced

Pickles

Rice (1/2 cup per person)

Add the soy sauce, sugar and saké to a small pan and stir on a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Set aside teriyaki sauce and let cool.

Rinse and then pat dry the salmon with a paper towel or similar. Place in a pyrex (or other grill-friendly) dish, spoon over a few spoonfuls of the teriyaki sauce until covered, and leave marinating in the bowl flesh side down. Tip remaining sauce in a jar and store in the fridge for future use. (It keeps a while.)

Rinse rice well, drain, and add water in a 1:1 ratio. Set over a high heat, wait until it's bubbling, then cover pan with a lid and move to a spot with the lowest heat setting available. Leave to cook until done. (Approximately 20mins - and no lifting the lid!)

Place salmon under grill on medium heat, skin side down, for a minute or two until the top is a little cooked. Then remove, baste, flip it to skin side up and return to under grill. Cook until the skin is bubbling and there's still a little wobble left to the flesh (meaning the interior is still juicy.)

Slice up a few pickles, and set to one side. Current favourites are pickled daikon (mooli) and baby aubergine (eggplant).

Finely slice a clove of garlic, and prepare beans. If a little tough, slice thinly and steam for a few minutes until just done, then dress with some lemon and garlic vinaigrette. If more tender, blanch and then sauté with the garlic, then add lemon and a drop of soy sauce to serve.

Serve up a heap of steaming rice, a side of tender green beans, and the crispy-skinned teriyaki salmon. Add pickles, and enjoy!