Warm salad

Recipe number four is this one, a warm vegetable salad. It looked very pretty on the photo and I had great hopes for it, as it seemed to include a very good balance of healthy things.

Ingredients

3 red onions

60 g cavalo nero

zest and juice of a lemon

6 garlic cloves

a handful of fresh tarragon leaves

4½ tbsp olive oil

chilli flakes (optional)

4 large eggs

500 g courgettes

2 x 400 g butter beans

salt and pepper 

4 soft wholemeal lavash breads

Method

1. Peel and wash the onions. Dice one of the onions finely and slice the other two and keep separate.
2. Remove the thick stems from the cavalo nero and save for soups. Wash the leafy parts, shake off well and shred.
3. Wash and zest the lemon, then squeeze out the juice. Peel the garlic and wash and cut the tarragon leaves finely.
   
4. Put the diced onion, the shredded cavalo nero, the lemon zest and juice along with 1½ tbsp of olive oil, chilli flakes and a pinch of salt in a large bowl. Mix and massage well, then cover and set aside to marinate.
5. Trim, wash and slice the courgettes thinly, 2 – 3 mm, and drain the beans.
   
6. Boil the eggs to get the yolk to a waxy consistence. Rinse under cold water, peel and set aside.
7. Meanwhile, heat up 1 tbsp of the olive oil on medium-low and fry the sliced onions for 5 minutes until they go soft and transluscent. Transfer to the bowl with cavalo nero and stir in.
8. Heat up the remaining oil to medium-high and fry the courgettes for 10 minutes, while stirring, until they go soft.
9. Press in the garlic and add the beans and stir-fry for a couple of more minutes to get the beans warmed through.
10. Transfer the courgettes and beans to the cavalo nero, add the tarragon and stir to combine everything.
11. Warm up the lavash breads and pile the warm salad on top of them, finishing with two egg halves, then wrap and serve.
    

When it was freshly made, it was OK, but the lemon dominated everything else and it just felt like something was missing. So for our lunch the following day, I decided to put the salad on top of a lavash bread and make a wrap. This turned out to be a good idea as the bread seemed to be that missing something. It is possible that overnight the butter beans might have soaked up some of the lemon and created a more balanced salad.

Lundulph wasn't too extatic about this, and suggsted a reduction of the lemon juice. I suspect that it wouldn't work, as that is the active ingredient in the marinade and cavalo nero would be way too hard to eat uncooked otherwise. So overall, I think this one is a work in progress and I'll run it by my Mum to see if she can help pin down what might be missing.

Caponata chickpea traybake

 The third recipe I picked out, again a veggie one, is this one as it seemed like a nice variation on what I've been doing for the last few years - namely roasting some vegetables to go with foil baked salmon or crispy tofu. I skipped the celery sticks, because I don't like them, even if Lundulph is OK with these things when they are cooked. Instead I added peppers and mushrooms

Ingredients

2 red onions

4 garlic cloves

3 aubergines

2 bell peppers 

500 g button mushrooms

500 g cherry tomatoes

2 x 400 g tins of chickpeas

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp capers

50 g raisins

50 ml cider vinegar

a handful fresh mint leaves

25 g toasted almond flakes

4 wholemeal pittas

salt and pepper

Method

1. Peel, wash and cut the onions into wedges. Peel the garlic.
   
2. Trim, wash and dice the aubergine into 2 cm chunks.
3. Trim, wash and cut the bell peppers into chunks. 
4. Peel the button mushrooms and save the stalks for another use. Cut the mushrooms into chunks, if too large.
   
5. Wash the tomatoes and drain the chickpeas.
6. Preheat the oven to 220 ℃/200 ℃ fan.
7. Put the onions, aubergines, bell peppers, tomatoes in a large baking tray and press in the garlic.
8. Drizzle over the oil and season, then stir to get the vegetables coated. Spread evenly in the baking tray and roast in the oven for 30 minutes.
9. Remove from the oven and add the chickpeas, capers and raisins and carefully stir through to mix. Turn down the oven to 200 ℃/180 ℃ fan and return the baking tray to the oven for 10 - 15 minutes.
10. Remove from the oven and put the pittas in to warm up in the residual heat.
11. Sprinkle the vinegar and stir carefully not to break the vegetables. Leave to rest for 10 minutes.
12. Wash and slice the mint leaves finely and toast the almond flakes in a dry frying pan.
13. Sprinkle the mint and almonds over the vegetables and serve up.

I had serious reservations about the raisins. When I've added sweet dried fruit to a savoury dish, it has always been a bad idea, but this was just 50 g for loads of vegetables, so I thought it wouldn't be too bad. And a good thing too, they were barely noticeable. The mint was quite strong when we ate the dish freshly cooked, but after stiring things together and having for lunch the next day, it was very nice. I didn't even bother reheating it and it was still nice. Lundulph insists on hot food, so he reheated his lunch and liked it as well.

This is a really nice dish, and would probably also work with meat or fish as well as on its own. I'd like to increase the amount of capers, because I quite like the taste, but Lundulph doesn't, so I probably won't. I think the fresh mint can be replaced with basil or tarragon or other fresh herbs and the almonds can also be replaced with other nuts or seeds. 

The original recipe was for 4 portions, but as I boosted it with extra vegetables, it resulted in at least 6 portions.
 

Risotto with harissa aubergine

 The second recipe I tested was this one. I'm normally not too big a fan of risotto because often I feel it's "just rice". However, Lundulph has a mild obsession with aubergine and this recipe did sound nice, especially since there was no mention of copious amounts of parmesan. I also made the executive decision to spruce up the "just rice" bit and reduced the amount of rice significantly.

Ingredients

3 aubergines

100 g harissa paste

2 onions

1 tbsp butter

250 g arborio rice

1 litre vegetable stock

300 g mixed frozen vegetables (carrots, cauliflower, French beans and petit pois)

vegetable oil

Method

1. Wash and trim the aubergines, then cut in half lengthwise and then cut each half into long thin slices, about half a centimetre thick.
2. Place the aubergnes in a bowl, add the harissa paste and stir to coat them well, then cover and set aside.
3. Peel, wash and dice the onions.
4. Heat up the butter in a deep saucepan and gently fry the onions on medium-low heat until they go transluscent.
5. Add the rice and stir around to get it coated, about 2 minutes.
6. Start adding the vegetable stock, a ladle at a time and stiring to prevent anything from sticking to the bottom of the saucepan. Add the next ladle once the previous one has been absorbed.
7. Once the stock has been added, add the frozen vegetables and stir in. Cover and let simmer until the vegetables have been cooked as well.
8. Meanwhile, heat up a little oil in a frying pan and fry the aubergine slices on medium-high heat until they go soft.
9. Serve the risotto with a few slices of aubergine on top.

 This turned out quite delicious, though I used 180 g harissa paste, which turned out to be over the top and the aubergines were very spicy. However, the risotto neutralised that somewhat and the combination was very nice. This is what I think risotto should be - with veggies incorporated.

Lundulph liked it a lot too, perhaps because of the spicy aubergines. But it could use some sort of protein to go with it, I think, not just on its own.

Old clothes

My pile of free magazines from the supermarket is growing steadily. I always mean to go through it and it almost never happens. But the other day, I managed to do just this and found a treasure trove of interesting vegetarian recipes and I have been working through them over the past couple of weeks.

I decided to start with this one, mushroom ropa vieja and any Swedes reading this might well know why. Ropa vieja is a dish made in the Spanish speaking regions and the name means old clothes. It also seems to be a take on using up leftovers in a creative way. Everyone has those. This particular version is supposedly Cuban. The name of the dish was one of the jokes used in the Swedish comedy "Sällskapsresan" ("Package Tour") and a great example of things that don't translate well. And as I always do, I made some tweaks.

Ingredients

2 dl brown shortgrain rice
500 g parboiled chanterelles
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
2 red bell peppers
18 cherry tomatoes
2 bay leaves
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp tomato purée
200 ml vegetable stock
1 tsp granulated sugar
400 g tin of white kidney beans with their liquid
salt and black pepper

Method

1. Put the oven on at 100 °C and place two large bowls in to heat up. 
2. Boil the rice.
   
3. Peel the onion and the garlic. Dice the onion.
4. Wash and slice the peppers. Wash and dice the tomatoes finely.
   
5. Heat up the oil in a frying pan, add the onion and press in the garlic. Fry gently on medium-low heat for about 5 minutes until they go soft.
6. Add the bay leaves, cumin, oregano and tomato purée, stir through and fry for a further 2 minutes.
7. Divide the onion mixture in two and remove half of it into a bowl.
8. Add the peppers, tomatoes, stock and sugar to the frying pan and let simmer gently for 15 minutes until the mixture thickens.
9. Add the mushrooms, cover and simmer for a further 5 minutes until everything is hot. Then transfe to one of the bowls in the oven.
10. Return the second half of the onion mixture to the frying pan and add the kidney beans along with their liquid.
11. Stir and simmer for 10 minutes until thickened and season to taste.
12. Serve the mushroom stew with the beans and the rice.

The original recipe calls for 300 g oyster mushrooms that are to be shredded and sprinkled with salt and left to drain for 15 minutes, then squeezed before being added to the stew. I had parboiled mushrooms, so I used them instead and quite a lot more than you'd end up with from the oyster mushrooms. So we ended up with a bit more of that stew, but it was so tasty, that I recommend my amounts.

In the original recipe, it should be black beans, however I wanted to try the white kidney beans and they worked very well. But if I make this again, I will try to use black beans.

I should also add that I used 2 bell peppers instead of one, because I had two that needed to be used up and also because I'd increased the mushrooms.

The original recipe also suggested using a ready cooked mixture of basmati and wild rice. I'm not a fan of ready cooked rice, nor basmati, but a mix of brown shortgrain rice and wild rice will proably be quite tasty and esthetically pleasing too.

Lundulph scoffed his portion quite quickly and we had a minor argument about who would get what for lunch the following day. The beans were quite amazing too and reminded me somewhat of a Bulgarian bean stew, so I would aim to double the amount next time I make this dish.

Honey-glazed salmon with watercress salad

 Every now and then I flick through our local magazine. I used to read them quite thoroughly a few years ago, but they never really had anything useful and so I stopped. But sometimes there is a good recipe in there and I was lucky to spot this one the other day. It contained the magic ingredient watercress, so I had to try it out. I had a colleague who has a watercress farm at the end of his road and he would bring freshly picked watercress at lunch. It is a wonderful thing and this recipe reminded me of my colleague and the fabulous watercress.

Ingredients
2 portions

1 small red onion
3 tbsp cider vinegar
¾ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp sugar
2 cloves of garlic
50 ml honey
1 tsp chilli flakes
2 salmon fillets (around 250 g in total)
1 avocado
½ lemon
80 g watercress

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
   
2. Peel and slice the onion thinly. Place in a jar together with the vinegar, salt and sugar. Close the lid tightly and shake well, then set aside.
3. Peel and press the garlic into a small saucepan. Add the honey and the chilli flakes, then heat up gently to infuse the flavours. Don't let it get too hot, just warm it up.
4. Glaze the salmon fillets generously, then wrap in aluminium foil and bake in the oven for 20 – 30 minutes, depending on their thickness.
5. Divide the watercress between two large plates.
6. Cut the avocado in half lengthwise, remove the stone, peel each half and then slice thinly. Place on the two plates.
7. Cut the lemon into wedges and divide between the plates.
8. Give the onion jar a shake now and then.
9. When the salmon is ready, place a fillet on each plate on top of the watercress and add pickled onion on top.
10. Serve immediately with carbs of your choice.

The original recipe says to fry the salmon in a hot pan. This is a very bad idea, which I suspected, but did anyway. What happened was that the honey burnt quickly and the salmon went almost completely black. It was OK to eat, but the charcoal flavour was a bit too strong for me. So bake in the oven is the way to go. 

I boiled quinoa and it combined quite nicely with this salad. Lundulph was quite pleased with the result and the really nice surprise was actually the pickled red onion, it was delish! Well worth making for regular salads.

Tangzhong Milk Bread

This is a recipe I came across two years ago on youtube and I keep looking at it and thinking that I really should try it out and then other things happen and take my attention away. I tried to find out what Tangzhong means and found this video, which seems very informative.

Ingredients

Cooked dough
40g bread flour
200g water

Main dough
580g bread flour
60g sugar
12g salt
10g dry yeast
10g dry milk
260g milk
50g egg
50g unsalted butter at room temperature
egg wash (1 egg yolk + milk)

Method

1. Mix the ingredients for the cooked dough in a saucepan. Turn on medium heat and keep stirring until mixture thickens to a smooth paste.
2. Let cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 6 hours or overnight. Bring out to room temperature about an hour before using.
3. Mix together the dry ingredients for the main dough except the salt in the mixing bowl of a stand mixer to combine well.
4. Then mixing at low speed, add in the milk, egg and the cooked dough and let the machine work until gluten has developed well.
5. Then add the salt, a little at a time and once incorporated, turn out the dough onto the work surface.
6. Spread the dough a bit, add in the soft unsalted butter, incorporate manually and shape into a ball.
7. Put the dough back into the mixing bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rest for 40 minutes to an hour in a warm place or a proofing drawer.
8. Test the dough by poking your finger into it. If the dough does not spring back, it is ready.
9. Weigh the dough and divide into 6 equal parts. Shape each part into a ball, then cover again with plastic wrap and let it rest for 15 minutes.
10. Roll or stretch each ball to an oval, about 1 cm thick and around 20 cm in length. Fold the top third over the middle third, then fold the lower third over that, a bit like a single turn when making puff pastry. Then turn the dough 90 degrees and roll dough into a tight roll, pinching it together at the seam. Repeat with the other pieces.
11. Place 3 of the rolls into one bread pan, cover with cling film and let proof for 30 minutes to an hour.
12. Brush with egg wash and bake in the oven, preheated to 180°C for 25-30 minutes.

    In this first attempt, I had no milk powder and I followed the video recipe, where the salt and butter were added at the start. So after some 20 minutes in the mixer machine, it still hadn't stopped sticking, but I chose to stop it because I feared the gluten would collapse. So I've made adjustments in the instructions above to save some time and get a good gluten development before adding the salt and butter.

    Once I'd placed it into the bread pans, I'd also started bakint biscuits in parallel, so I let the bread proof for 1 h, rather than just 30 minutes. I thought I'd over-proofed the bread, but not too badly actually, I did get some good oven spring and it poked up above the top edge of the bread tin. It did go a bit too dark and shiny on the top surface, I guess I didn't use enough milk in my egg wash, but the recipe didn't provide quantities and I just added about a teaspoon or so. When I took the two loaves out of the oven, Lundulph commented that it looks like a cake and should be iced.

    After leaving it to cool down completely, it still felt very soft to the touch and I was very careful when I sliced it. It did indeed come out very soft and fluffy and as we tasted it, Lundulph's cheeks glowed and his eyes sparkled, which is the very best indicator that I've succeeded. An afterthought was that I should have used milk in the cooked dough paste as well, since I didn't have milk powder. The crumb texture wasn't as stringy as in the video, but I think that may be because I stopped kneading too early perhaps, rather than the lack of milk powder. I'll get some for next time and try again. We now have some beautiful slices of bread in the freezer, hopefully once they are toasted, it'll be possible to spread butter on them, freshly baked that would not have worked at all. I did give one slice a squeeze and it did unfold completely, which was quite pleasing. The only thing I didn't like is that it went so dark on top, next time I'll brush with milk only.

    In subsequent bakes, I've added milk powder and I'm not sure if it makes any difference or not. But even when adding the butter at the end, the dough should still be worked for at least 10 minutes with the stand mixer. It might not stop sticking to the sides either, but it will develop wonderful gluten. Needless to say, Lundulph has fallen in love with this bread as have I and I haven't baked any of my usual breads for a while now. I should perhaps adjust the amounts for 3 loaves, rather than two, so that it lasts a bit longer.

    Variation: Adding ½ dl of poppy seeds or sesame seeds along with the dry ingredients works quite well and the dough stops sticking towards the end of the kneading. At this attempt, I also skipped the chilling of the cooked dough overnight in the fridge. I didn't see any difference, it comes out as fluffy as in my orginal bake. I've also started using milk in the cooked dough, stopped shaping each loaf from 3 buns and also stopped brushing the top with egg/milk wash. I don't slice and freeze the bread until the following day, so that it is a bit more stable. As with other successful recipes, I've ended up doing this every other week now.

    Variation 2: Swapping out 100 g of the flour for the main dough with strong wholemeal flour and also replacing the egg with 40 ml milk. This still results in a fluffy bread, and a good to know, if there are no eggs in the house.

    Variation 3: Replacing 180 g of the flour with strong wholemeal flour is even better. Poppy or sesame seeds can still be added (½ dl), but then an extra tablespoon of milk should be added as well.

    Update June 2024: I think this type of bread is ideal for hamburger buns or hot dog buns, when divided up in 50 g pieces, it should yield between 25 and 30.
    

Rhubarb Curd

Our rhubarbs have once again sprung to life with a vengence and I've been searching for things to do with them. Last year, I was able to harvest 3 times, despite the two flower spikes that also came out. I could have even harvested a fourth time, but resisted, mainly because I had a whole drawer full in the freezer. This year, there were three flower spikes, which I decided to cut off, even though it doesn't look like they are having any draining effect on the plants themselves. I also ripped out a few of the largest stalks in order to try this recipe, which I found a few weeks ago.

Actually, I've already tried this recipe, with some of the frozen rhubarb, and I can honestly say, I wholeheargedly agree with the gushing commments on the originator's website. This was a really scrumptious recipe. And today, I made it with fresh rhubarb, as per the original.

Ingredients
makes about 600 ml

400 g fresh or frozen rhubarbs to get 300 ml juice
1 tbsp cornflour or potatoflour
150 g granulated sugar
3 large eggs
170 g unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
pink food colouring (optional)

Method

1. Trim, wash and cut the rhubarb stalks into 0.5 cm chunks, then process in a blender until they turn into purée.
2. Place the blended rhubarb in a cheese cloth and squeeze out the juice.
3. Mix together the corn-/potatoflour with the sugar in a large saucepan, then add the eggs and whisk until smooth.
4. Dice the butter.
5. Place on low-medium heat on the hob, add the butter and 240 ml of the rhubarb juice, then stir constanty until it thickens up into a custard consistency.
6. Remove from the hob and stir in the remaining 60 ml of juice, the vanilla extract and pink food colouring, then transfer to jars.
7. Place clingfilm on the surface to prevent a skin from forming and leave to cool down completely.
8. Store in the fridge for up to a couple of weeks.

Now, since I don't force my rhubarbs, they are green, not bright pink like the ones in the shops. Possibly they are also a bit more fibrous. So both my original batch as well as the one I made today became a pale yellow in colour, because of the egg yolks and butter. So in the first batch I added some food colouring, a bit too much in fact and it went bubble gum pink. Not very pretty. I also had more than 300 ml juice, and added some additional 90 ml, which made it a bit runny. But the flavour was fantastic - sweet and tangy and really fresh and both Lundulph and I could have happily eaten it straight from the jar. But I had 5 eggwhites to use up, so I made my angel food cupcakes and used the curd as topping. Just like with the lemon curd originally, this was a very good combination, apart from the runniness.

In today's batch, I resisted the temptation to add the surplus juice and it's now cooling down on the cement slab in the larder. Lundulph said to skip the colouring, he thought the pale yellow is pretty enough.

A thing I noticed is that the curd matured over time, so some of the smoothness disappeared towards the end of the two weeks it lasted. I must try freezing some and see how that affects it. It was fine with the strawberry curd I made last year.

I've also set a little bit aside and frozen it, to see how that fares. I also looked back at the other curd recipes I've tried in the past and I'll try to use the one I made with strawberries last year, it has a fraction of the butter, so should hopefully be healthier.