Moroccan meatballs

With all the Christmas roast meat I really felt like a different kind of dinner this week. A while back I spotted that a fellow Daring Cook had tried out a Moroccan meatballs recipe for our December 2010 challenge. In that version it was served with a poached egg (poaching was our challenge for the month). Looking for a slightly less rich dish after all the Christmas excesses I actually served it without the egg, but it would clearly be delicious with one. We had steamed rice and spinach instead.



The Moroccan Merguez Ragout recipe has a wonderful blend of spices, both in the meatballs and the accompanying ragout. I'm always going on about how much I like Moroccan and Middle Eastern food, so no surprise that I liked the dish, but Dan also particularly loved this, so thanks to Audax for a very delightful dinner!



Find the recipe here.

Cooking it by the book

A few months back a read a novel called Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel. Its a magical novel, unlike anything I've read before. It is a book infused with stories of family, food, love, frustration. Each chapter explains (in very vague terms!) a dish made by one of the main characters.

I thought that the Stuffed chillis in Walnut sauce sounded like they were do-able. Although the quantities and ingredients are listed at the start of the chapter, it is a little bit of a detective job to figure out the method.

So, here is my version of the recipe, with quantities cut down to a manageable size, method deduced (& guessed in places!), enough for lunch for 5 or 6 people:

2 - 3 bell peppers, halved, de-membraned & deseeded
Garnish:
1 pomegranate
10g cashews per portion
10g sheeps cheese per portion
Stuffing Ingredients:
300g minced pork
20g raisins or sultanas
50g blanched almonds
50g walnuts
1/3 can tomatoes
1/2 onion, peeled & sliced
1/4 peach, peeled & diced
1/4 apple, peeled & diced
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
salt & white pepper
1 tablespoon of fresh chopped parsley

Method:
Chop the nuts lightly, but don't pulverise them to a powder. You want to keep decent sized chunks and texture.
Fry the onion in 1 teaspoon olive oil over a medium heat until softened. Add the mince and cumin and keep it all moving until the meat is browned. Stir in the apple and peach, walnuts, almonds, raisins, chilli powder, and tomatoes. Stir it all together, add some salt. Let most of the liquid cook off.
Remove from the heat and stir in the parsley. Allow to cool slightly then spoon the meat mixture into the pepper halves. Pack it in quite well.
These can be kept in the fridge for at least 24 hours before serving.
When you want to eat, preheat the oven to 190C. Sprinkle 10g sheep or goat cheese on each pepper half. Bake the peppers for 25 minutes.
Remove from the oven and serve, either hot or cold, garnished with 10g salted cashews per person and a tablespoon of pomegranate seeds.



I served one pepper half per person for lunch, with carrots and sweet potatoes. The peppers were yummy, and definitely one to make again, but I would serve them with a different accompaniment next time. Maybe a dollop of yoghurt mixed with some mint, and flatbreads or spicey potato and sweet potato wedges.



Who'd have thought that a novel would offer up a gorgeous dinner recipe?!

Filo

Christmas being a family affair I am heading to my parents' place for Christmas. That means Mum has sorted out all the Christmas dinner, but I do like to contribute in some small way to the Christmas eats.
Last year I made a Christmas cake, but Mum was making one when I was there the other week, so that didn't seem a good idea for this year. Instead I decided to make some sweet nibbles, and I chose baklava: The reasoning was that I love it, I know my younger sister and my Mum both like Baklava, not sure about my Dad, but fingers crossed!

So today saw me melting a truly extraordinary amount of butter, trying to unwrap and divide up the delicate sheets of pastry, and generally having my first filo experience. All before coffee. Co-ordination wasn't too good!

I made a recipe from the BBC website (I really do use that a lot!) by James Martin, for Walnut and pistachio baklava. It had ginger in the syrup which appealled, plus I already had all the ingredients in the cupboard - a major advantage when the snow is as annoying as it is right now. I did forget to score the top of the pastry before it went in the oven, which was none too clever, but other than that I seem to have ended up with something which does resemble baklava.



The taste was more citrus-y than baklava I have bought in the past, and its less sweet too (although I did reduce the sugar quantities so that may not be due to the recipe!). It has a definite tendency towards falling apart, but then baklava always does, and it is deliciously crunchy.

NB: I didn't need anything like the amount of butter directed in the recipe - I only used about 2/3 or 3/4 of the amount, and I was being pretty generous with it.

As I was left with about 100g of filo pastry from the roll I'd bought I then had to find something else to make with it, and once again James Martin and the BBC came up trumps with a Banana, apricot and cinnamon filo parcel. It sounded like it would make a fab pudding for tonight. After my overly buttery baklava experience I adjusted the quantities slightly. Also, I generally like things slightly less sweet than in recipes, so I also cut down the amount of sugar and honey a bit. It all cooked up just fine though.



The best accompaniment would have been vanilla icecream, served on the parcels warm from the oven, but in the absence of any of that in the freezer I served it up with cream instead. A yummy, wintery, pudding. I do love cinnamon.

This post makes me realise how rarely I do sweet recipes. I really should do so more often.

TV dinner

We were idly watching Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers programme the other evening when all of a sudden I pricked up my ears. Why was this? Because he was demonstrating a duck recipe.

Now I really do like duck. And my hunt for the perfect duck recipe has been tracked on this blog. We've tried duck accompanied by mango, cherry, and plum sauces, but tonight it was Nigel Slater's Duck with honey and figs on the menu.

The recipe is very citrusy, with orange zest and juice and lemon zest included, as well as ginger. It certainly sounded like it would be a good pick-me-up for a cold snowy night. And it did prove to be a good dinner - the citrus was refreshing but not overwhelming, the figs went lovely and soft, and with the addition of rice steamed with star anise and pak choi it was filling and warming.



Find the recipe on the BBC food website here.

So all in all, Nigel did not let us down, but the favourite Duck accompaniment remains as cherries. Will anything ever knock that off the top spot I wonder?

PS One day I will start taking beautifully lit, perfectly poised, photos of the food I make. For the time-being you will have to continue to suffer my "snap and eat" approach to food photography! Sorry about that!

My Boyfriend is a Heathen

...As demonstrated by his choice of lunch on sunday.



Warm pork pie and mushy peas, all topped with a liberal helping of mint sauce.

Bleurgh!

I'm told its a Yorkshire thing.

Daring Cooks December Challenge

This month's challenge: Jenn and Jill have challenged The Daring Cooks to learn to perfect the technique of poaching an egg. They chose Eggs Benedict recipe from Alton Brown, Oeufs en Meurette from Cooking with Wine by Anne Willan, and Homemade Sundried Tomato & Pine Nut Seitan Sausages (poached) courtesy of Trudy of Veggie num num.

So, poached eggs....I didn't feel inspired, I confess. I do poach eggs rather a lot anyway, so it wasn't a challenge which pushed me to make something I wouldn't otherwise have thought of. On the otherhand, Dan is always a happy man when eggs benedict are on the breakfast menu, so he was in heaven!

So, ta dah! Eggs Benedict feature again.



I won't bother to describe the method again, but I did realise that I had been overly cautious with the butter the last couple of times I made hollandaise sauce, and that was probably the reason for it curdling. It worked better this time.





So that I'm not totally cheating (and that would not do!) I am planning to make chorizo and potato hash with poached eggs later this week - that will at least be a new recipe including poached eggs.

UPDATE: I have been poaching away, and eating lots of eggs. I think eggs might just be my favourite fast food. I tried out the Chorizo and Potato Hash recipe, and it proved to be a massive hit with Dan. I liked it too, so thumbs up all round for that one. Find the recipe on the BBC Good Food site here.

what to do with Tofu?

When I was little my older sister went through a vegetarian phase. Given that the period of vegetarianism broadly coincided with her worst teenage behaviour I rather suspect that the whole thing was thought up just to be awkward. However, my mum did go to quite a lot of effort to accomodate her, and some tasty discoveries were made.

On the otherhand, there was also tofu.

I don't quite know what made me decide to try cooking with it this week. Perhaps it was that my new cookbook (the Wagamama one) has loads of recipes which use it, but whatever the reason was, I decided it was time to cast aside some old prejudices and give tofu another chance.



I chose a flavoursome-sounding stirfry recipe in the Wagamama book, made an expedition to the chinese supermarket for tofu (a feat in itself given the icy state of the pavements!), and set to work on moyashi soba. And it was easy. Also the tofu was not bad - it took on the flavour of the other ingredients very well, and bumped up the meal so that it was filling. Definitely edible.

The failure in all of this was the fact that I had bought silken tofu rather than the firm tofu I should have used. This did mean that it disintegrated more than would have been ideal for a stirfry. Ah well, I'll do it right next time.

This left me with 200g silken tofu that I now knew would not be much use for stirfrying, but I do hate to throw food away. What to do with it?

A bit of googleing told me that silken tofu is often used in desserts, and is also quite a good egg-substitute, so I decided to make a mousse-ish pudding. My made-up recipe needs a bit of refinement, but we did both enjoy it as it was, so here it is (without final tweaks which may or may not come in time):

Dairy-free Chocolate Mousse with Apricots (for 2)
200g silken tofu
20g icing sugar
35-40g dark chocolate (I used a chocolate with orange and ginger, but any dark chocolate would work)
35g dried, ready-to-eat apricots

Mix the sugar into the tofu.
Melt the dark choclate in a bowl over gently simmering water. Once completely melted pour it into the tofu and mix through.
Divide the apricots between 2 ramekins. Spoon the chocolate-tofu mixture on top of the apricots. Refridgerate overnight. Serve.

NB: I like my choclate quite dark and slightly bitter, but if you prefer yours sweeter then add a little more sugar to the tofu.

PS I also made the smoked salmon salad from the Wagamama book this week. Seriously delicious. I wolfed it all down in about 5 minutes flat. Yum scrum! I would never have thought to put apricots, noodles and smoked salmon together, but it definitley works.

more middle eastern explorations

Sumac onions with hazlenut dukka, white fish, and couscous for dinner tonight.

And so, hurrah for the fact that I have found another use for pomegranate molasses! I bought it for making fesanjan a little while ago. It turns out it also very nice indeed with red onions.

I'm not completely convinced that the combination of the dukka, fish, and onions was the best use of the 3 elements, but I really liked them all individually. The dukka would be good mixed with olive oil and spread on sourdough toast, the onions would be fantastic with lightly spiced burgers or roasted vegetables. I used Tilapia for the fish, which was a nice firm white fish.

So a successful foray, with room for improvement. First time I'd used sumac too.

Here's how to make the onions (enough for 2):
Fry 1 1/2 thinly sliced red onions in approximately 2 teaspoons of olive oil. Fry them over a low heat until soft, then stir in approximately a teaspoon of pomegranate molasses. Turn the heat up and cook for a further 2 or 3 minutes. Stir through a teaspoon of sumac and serve.

Teriyaki Cod

Sorry to say that I had an uninspired week. Maybe it was the cold. Or pehaps just that we were away over the weekend, but I made one quite tastey, but a bit unexciting new recipe this week.

It was teriyaki cod with noodle broth, found on the BBC website, chosen purely because I had some cod in the freezer.

Find the recipe here. Its very easy, and a nice, quick week-night dinner. I suggest that you pimp your noodles with some ginger and garlic - its just better that way.