Getting my 5 a day

Recently I've been feeling like eating super-healthily: Lots of vegetables, salads, vegetarian dishes. This week's new recipes were excellent examples of the kind of food I've been craving.

A Vietnamese Crab and Asparagus soup made a delicious lunch (even though it doesn't look that great!)


It was quite unusual in that it had a beaten egg stirred through to form thin eggy strands. That really enriched the soup and made it taste quite indulgent. The recipe was extremely easy to make. I battled with my 'food miles' conscience since asparagus isn't in season in the UK anymore, but in the end greed won out! Here's the recipe:

Vietnamese Crab and Asparagus soup for 2

1 tin crab (or 120g cooked fresh crab meat)
200g asparagus spears
500g chicken stock
3 shallots (finely sliced)
1 1/2 teaspoons fish sauce
1 teaspoon cornflour
1 egg
salt and pepper
chives

Warm the stock in a saucepan, add the shallots and simmer for a few minutes to soften.
Meanwhile chop the asparagus spears into bite sized pieces and cook in simmering water for 4-5 minutes until tender.
Add the asparagus, crab, fish sauce and seasoning to the stock mixture. Mix the cornflour to a paste with a little water, add it to the soup mixture and stir until the soup thickens a little. Beat the egg lightly, add to the soup and stir briskly to form strands of egg. Sprinkle with some snipped chives and serve.

For dinner the same day I threw together an Ottolenghi salad recipe of broad beans and radishes, which was excellent served with a piece of haddock and pitta breads, with a tahini sauce for dipping.


See: It looks like the book's picture!

I never used to like radishes, but thought it was high time I revisited them to see if I like them now. This combination of salad ingredients was lovely and the radishes gave a great textural contrast with their crunchiness, as well as being a wonderful colour against the grean of the beans. I actually used half and half broad beans and peas as I didn't have enough broad beans for the recipe. That seemed to work just fine.

One revelation is that I don't know why I never thought to pop broadbeans out of their skins before. I have always hated those tough outer skins that they have, but they're very easily peeled off!

Fresh and healthy summery dishes feel exactly right just now.

Daring Cooks July Challenge

This month's Daring Cook's challenge was to make a pasta or noodle without the aid of a motorized machine. We were however allowed to use a hand-crank pasta roller.

The challenge presented me with a conundrum - I got a pasta rolling machine at Christmas and have made my own pasta a few times since then, so I could take the easy route of making a recipe I know, or I could investigate a different kind of pasta. It seemed more in the spirit of the Daring Cooks to attempt something new, so I started to look around for ideas.

I've been reading a memoir by Josceline Dimbleby recently. Its a meander through her life and travels, interspersed with lovely recipes and photographs. Towards the end of the book there's a chapter on a visit to the Gujarati district of India, and a recipe for Khvandi, which she describes as a kind of Indian pasta. It sounded intriguing, and we were planning a curry night, so I decided to give the recipe a try and serve it as a starter.

It is an unusual method for a pasta - you boil the ingredients (gram flour, tumeric, chilli powder, yoghurt and water) down to a thick paste;



then spread it into a greased tray and leave it to set;



The idea is to then cut it into strips and serve it garnished with herbs, seeds and some dessicated coconut.

Mine didn't set though! I imagine I needed to simmer the mixture for longer before spreading it out to set. I will give this another try at some point because the flavours were good - a little bit spicy and sour. Definitely interesing.

This non-setting disaster left me with very little time to acheive a Daring Cooks dish for this month - or at least one that was edible. I got in there with only hours to spare, making Jamie Oliver's Pici with tomato sauce (from the Jamie's Italy cook book) for dinner on the day this was all due to be posted! Pici is an eggless pasta made from semolina flour and formed into tubes. Previously I have always made egg pasta in sheets or strips, so this was still something new for me even if it is a little unadventurous!

Here's what I did - mix the semolina flour to a dough using a little water. Kneed it until silky and smooth:



Wrap in clingfilm and leave it in the fridge until needed.

Divide it into small pieces, place a skewer in the middle and roll the dough around it to form a tube of pasta:



Mine were a little thicker than intended because my skewer was a bit of a thick one for this task - the thinner the better.



Served with very tasty cauliflower from the farm shop, tomato sauce and prawns, this made a good dinner. It was fairly straight-forward to make really.



Steph from Stephfood was our Daring Cooks' July hostess. Steph challenged us to make homemade noodles without the help of a motorized pasta machine. She provided us with recipes for Spätzle and Fresh Egg Pasta as well as a few delicious sauces to pair our noodles with!

Buffalo Ricotta

I think I've documented reasonably often on these pages my prolems with dairy products. I can't seem to get along with cow cheese and other milk products at all. I have however been gradually exploring the non-cow options out there. In the last year or so I have discovered a number of soft cheeses which I like and don't make my tummy hurt - buffalo mozzarella, halloumi, feta. I can cope with one or two hard cheeses (manchego mostly), although I still wouldn't eat them in chunks - just grated into other food. And, surprisingly, I have overcome my childhood hatred of yoghurt. I'm sure my bones and joints are grateful for the extra calcium!

Last week I was in London so I paid a visit to the Whole Foods Supermarket on Kensington High Street (they do the best olives of anywhere I've found in the UK). I was interested to spot Buffalo Ricotta in their fridge, and I couldn't resist buying some to try.



I didn't have a plan for it, but when I got home I flicked through my books and decided on Fennel and Ricotta Risotto from the Jamie's Italy cookbook.

The recipe can be found here.

I was a little worried that the fennel flavour would be overwhelming, but the risotto turned out really well - creamy with nicely balanced flavours. It was pretty simple and quick to make, so I would definitely recommend it for an easy week night dinner.

PS I also discovered that you can mix ricotta with a little honey, berries, lemon juice and zest for a creamy but surprisingly low calorie dessert.