Don't Pattypan-ic!

I had an email from my friend/food guru Jill the other week, asking me about what I'd done with the pattypan squash in that week's veg delivery box. It was about 3 days after the box had been delivered, and sad to say I hadn't even clocked that vegetable yet. Carrots (check), beetroot (check), courgette (check), mystery yellowy squashy thing (hmm, check on it).

The squash is small and doesn't look like it would have much flesh within (which, it turns out, it doesn't). Jill had searched high and low for recipes and recommendations, and concluded that what seemed to be the done thing with the pattypan is to cut it open and fill it with something rather more delicious. So off Jill went with her chorizo and white beans, off I went with sausages and roman beans, and we both cooked our pattypans and relayed each other the results.

We independently discovered some of the same universal truths:

• Sausages in any form are wonderful, and sauteeing them with other good things make them even better.
• A pattypan squash doesn't taste of much, but it does give off an awful lot of water. Fairly tasteless water.
• The pattypan is nice to look at, but remains a curiosity in how it's survived as food for so long given it's pretty short short comings.
• Pattypan is a great word. The most fun I had in cooking and eating the squash was in trying to use the word in sentences ("Don't pattypan-ic, I know what I'm doing", "Well darn this pattypanning thing, it's just not cooking", etc). The makers of Sponge Bob Square Pants agree with me on this point.

Our adventures with with pattypan are done for now, and I'm not sad to see it go. Mr A&N loved the filling (naturally, it contained sausages) but thought the squash was as pointless as a pair of high heels on a camel. I feel bad harboring ill will against my food and so didn't take as hard a stance on the pattypan as he did, but I'm not about to start a clandestine affair with it either. If you, too, get landed with a pattypan squash, just keep Douglas Adams in mind: don't pattypan-ic, it will be fine.


Sausage and Sage Stuffed Squash
makes enough for 2-3 people as a main, though you should have a side dish too

• 4 - 6 pattypan squashes, depending on size
• olive oil to cook (a tablespoon or two)
• 1 onion, well chopped
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 1 stalk celery, sliced thinly
• handful of fresh sage, roughly chopped
• 400g / 1lb of sausages (cumberland, simple pork, or something similar)
• 1 tin of romanesco or white beans, drained
• Parmesean cheese for topping (optional)

1. Pre-heat oven to 200C / 450 F
2. Cut off the tops of the pattypan squash so that you have about 1/4 of the squash as the lid, 3/4 as the bottom
3. Place the squash bottoms and top in the oven once it's heated, and cook for about 10 minutes
4. Meanwhile, heat a frying pan over medium-high heat, and add the olive oil. Once that's warm, add the onions, garlic and celery to sautee, and cook for a couple of minutes until the onions are softened (make sure you stir every so often).
5. Add in the sage and give it all a good stir.
6. Add in the sausages, keeping them whole for now. Cook until the sausages are mostly done, then cut them up into bite-sized pieces.
7. Throw in the tin of beans, give it all a good stir and let it cook for a further minute or two
8. Salt and pepper to taste.
9. Take the squashes out of the oven, and stuff them full off the sausage mix. Top with parmesean if you want to, and put the filled squashes back in the oven for a further 10 minutes or until a fork inserted into the flesh goes in and out easily.
10. Serve with some vegetables and something like a potato gratin or hash browns on the side.

Mushroom and Cauliflower Soup

I've been meaning to blog about this soup for a while, but I kept forgetting to take pictures in my eagerness to eat it. There's everything going for this soup: easy to make, relatively healthy, needing only a few inexpensive ingredients, and a meal in itself (if you want it to be). It's an improbable sounding combination, but it is also improbably delicious and has become a quick staple in our household.

The soup almost didn't exist except for me strong-arming Mr A&N into trying it out. He had had a sudden hankering for mushroom soup, and set out on a mushroom-fueled shopping trip. He came home with a rash of mushrooms and an itch to get started on the soup immediately. In stepped me, with unloved cauliflower in hand, begging him to add it to the mix since it had been sitting in our vegetable bin for a week and we couldn't think of anything to do with it. Although the man looked like I was asking him to shoot, cook, and serve his puppy to his mother, he dutifully obeyed and threw it into the soup pot.


The soup that emerged was a surprise to us both. There was the worry that the cauliflower would overwhelm the mushrooms and leave its pungent calling card behind with each mouthful. Instead, it helped lift the taste of the ordinary mushrooms and make it seem as if the soup was based around garlicky, rich, specialty mushrooms. The minimal stock and the cream created a heartiness, and the small bits of mushroom and cauliflower that remained after blending helped stopped the soup from being so velvety that it became cloying.

We've also tested the soup with guests who loved the depth of flavor and thought it rescued the ordinary mushroom soup from being too 'mushroomy'. We've just finished the last batch today, and have two more cauliflowers lined up, waiting for a box of mushrooms to come along and create sweet music with it.


Mushroom and Cauliflower Soup
makes 4 hearty bowls of soup

• 2-3 Tbs of olive oil or butter
• 700g / 1 1/2 lbs of button mushrooms
• 1 head of cauliflower
• 1 small handful of thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 3 1/2 C / 825ml of vegetable or chicken stock or water if no stock is handy
• 1 C / 250ml of single cream (or milk if you're watching the fat content)

1. Clean and roughly chop the mushrooms and cauliflower
2. Simmer the olive oil or butter in a large soup pot over a medium heat, and add the mushrooms when the oil is hot
3. Gently cook the mushrooms with the thyme and bay leaves, stirring occasionally, until they have begun to soften and give off some liquid
4. Add the cauliflower and stir well
5. Cover and cook at a low heat for about 20 minutes
6. Uncover and add the stock or water, stirring and waiting until the liquid comes to the boil
7. Turn off the heat and blend together the ingredients using either a hand blender or a full blender. Remove bay leaves and thyme stalks before blending.
   
8. Add the cream or milk, and cook at a low heat for another couple of minutes
9. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve with nice crusty bread

Jerusalem Artichokes in White Wine, Rosemary and Cream

Mr A&N is not a huge fan of artichokes - he'd like you to know that from the start. The regular sort of artichoke has too many leaves and takes too much effort, in his opinion. He's much happier eating some nice marinated artichoke hearts, all the effort taken out and replaced with sharp vinegar and slick olive oil. Jerusalem artichokes are only artichoke by name, instead being a tuber vegetable akin to a potato. They still taste enough like an artichoke to put off Mr A&N, each bite presumably bringing back shuddering memories of having to work for his food when I last made him eat a proper artichoke.

I'm used to being the vegetable refusnik, so it always takes me by surprise when I'm willing to eat something that Mr A&N isn't. My memories of vegetables from childhood are of my mother opening a can of peas/carrots/anything, microwaving them on high for tens of minutes in all their watery canned liquid until they came out grey, limpid, and somehow tepid (despite them having been endured the Chernobal School of Cookery). Unsurprisingly, I disliked vegetables for years until I began cooking for myself and realized that I was missing out on a major food group that could also be made tasty. Mr A&N can be a good vegetable eater - his mother is almost self-sustaining with her vegetable plot and often brings us gifts of food - but he'll still dig his heels in on ocassion.

Abel and Cole, from whom we get our weekly vegetable delivery, also have recipes online and on seeing their suggestion of cooking jerusalem artichokes with white wine, rosemary, and cream, I knew Mr A&N would grudginly try it. He's not alone in feeling that those flavors can bring splendor to most foods, so giving that treatment to the artichokes meant he was almost looking forward to trying them. The result?

"The flavors are great which is no surprise. It's just a shame you can still taste the artichokes underneath."

Baby A&N starts weaning soon. I'm crossing my fingers he'll take after me rather than his father, otherwise feeding both men in my life may be a bit of an uphill journey.


Jerusalem Artichokes in White Wine, Rosemary and Cream, from Abel and Cole
serves 4

• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 450 g / 1 lb jerusalem artichokes, scrubbed well, thinly sliced into rounds
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 Tbs chopped fresh rosemary
• 120 ml / 1/2 C + 1 Tbs white wine
• 60 ml / 4 Tbs double cream
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the jerusalem artichokes and garlic and fry for 2 minutes.
   
2. Add the rosemary and wine, and cook over a high heat until the wine is reduced by half.
   
3. Cover and simmer until the artichoke is just tender, between 1 and 5 minutes.
   
4. Remove the cover, add the cream, and reduce the sauce for a couple of minutes until thickened.
   
5. Salt and pepper to taste.
   

Jasmine Saves Our Beetroot

My weekly vegetable box delivery continues to be a race between best intentions and slowly rotting organic produce. Eat the most perishables first (courgettes, tomatoes, mushrooms, leafy green things), leave the heartier goods to fend for themselves/win my affections (carrots, cabbage, potatoes). As the week draws to an end, I often make soup. This week's possible soup is a lettuce soup since we can't seem to get to the leafy green stuff quickly enough. The possibility of this lettuce soup has made Mr A&N suddenly 'remember' that he agreed to be out tomorrow night. To play poker, it turns out, and generally be more masculine than sitting at home eating lettuce soup.

The real problem vegetable in our weekly delivery has been beetroot. We've had such a regular supply of it that it's threatened to become this summer's cabbage - so abundant and with so few ideas of what to do with it that I've nearly banned it from our box for a week/a month/indefinitely. I've held off banning it, always sensing that beetroot could do grander things than we were letting it do (and, er, I'd forget about updating my preference list). Luckily I've discovered that grander thing.

In stepped the wonderful Jasmine from Confessions of a Cardamom Addict to save our beetroot. The answer, it seemed, was beetroot hummus. Roast the beetroot, put it through the blender with a bit of oil and as much horseradish as you like, throw in a bit of garlic and lime juice (if you have on hand) and revel in its beauty and flavor. It really is that simple and that wonderful, and has been on the weekly menu since I've been enlightened. The roasting turns the beetroot incredibly sweet, and putting it through the blender intensified the sweetness by taking away the complication of having to chew it and fight your way toward this flavor. And gosh isn't it look pretty.


Beetroot Hummus (an approximate recipe)

• As many fresh beetroot as you need to get rid of
• Olive oil
• clove of garlic
  
• Horseradish

1. Pre-heat the oven to 400 F / 200 C
2. Clean the beetroot but keep the skin on. Rub each beet lightly with olive oil.
3. Place the beetroot in an oven-proof tray. Cover with foil, and roast for about 40 minutes or until a fork stuck into the beetroot goes through it.
4. Allow the beetroot to cool down enough for you to handle it, then peel them.
5. Roughly chop them up, and put into a blender. Add a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and the clove of garlic and whizz up.
6. Taste for flavor. Add more olive oil if it needs a 'richer' taste. Otherwise, add the horseradish until the balance of flavors is right (about 1 Tbs per 3 beetroot tastes right to me).

Beetroot Salad with Pistachio Sauce

Beet (beetroot in the UK) is a hard vegetable for me to work up much of a passion about. It does have some exciting qualities, granted - just touching a peeled beet can dye your hands or clothes a deep pink, as it may well also dye other bodily things - but beets (particularly in their pickled form) have always struck me as a functional foodstuffs, something that would exist in pickled form, stuck in the cupboard next to tins of potatoes and corned beef hash after the armageddon has wiped out all other edible things and mankind has picked all other tasty treats bare. Perhaps that point of view is why I still have a giant jar of pickled beets from my mother-in-law which has been sitting in the back of my cupboard for 2 years now.

Beets come thick and fast in our veg box delivery, and I have become an expert at grating raw beet to include into salads (it's particularly nice with grated carrot or, as my mother-in-law recently enthused to me, with grated apple, lime juice, and ginger). But other than grating it, serving it up as borscht, or turning it into apocalypse-defying pickled beets, I find it hard to see my way to finding new uses for all those beets that keep being delivered to me.

Mr A&N - and our Moro East cookbook - came up with an answer to the beet problem with a recipe for a beetroot salad with pistachio sauce that took the shortest time to put together. It was the pistachio sauce that helped bring the dish alive, pinging in mint and parsley between the citrusy lemon and orange blossom water. There are another 4 or 5 beet-based recipes in Moro East, and I don't doubt there might be need to find more inspiration in the future. The (un-grated, un-borschted, un-pickeld) beet lives to fight another day.


Beetroot Salad with Pistachio Sauce, from Moro East
serves 4

500g young beetroot, peeled and thinly sliced

• small handful of flat-leaf parsley
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

For the pistachio sauce:

• 100g shelled, unsalted pistachios
• 2 Tbs finely chopped fresh-leaf parsley
• 1 small palm-full finely chopped fresh mint
• 1 dessertspoon lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 7 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
• 1/2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
• 4 Tbs water
• 1/2 tsp orange blossom water

1. Make the pistachio sauce first: finely chop the pistachios either by hand or in a food processor. Mix all the other ingredients together, and season with salt and pepper.
2. Toss together the beetroot and parsley leaves, then dress with the lemon juice and olive oil and season with salt and pepper.
3. Spread the beetroot out on a platter, then spoon the pistachio sauce on top.
4. Serve immediately.

Broad Bean Hummus

One of the early declarations of love I heard from Mr A&N was that he was totally, madly, utterly enamored with broad beans. The pinnacle of the broad bean world could be found in his grandparents garden; according to him, they grew the most wonderful beans known to man and his adult summertimes were spent with sighs of recollection for those beans he could no longer have. At that stage I wasn't able to tell a broad bean from a carburetor, so I needed Mr A&N to introduce me to this magical bean.

There is very little that he and I disagree on, and those few things disappear almost completely once we move into the food arena, but none of my attempts to fall in love with the broad bean brought me even slightly close to enjoying them. Also known as the fava bean in North America, I found the broad bean a bit too much like one of my only hated food stuffs, the lima bean. It was powdery and slightly bitter, and when simply boiled and dressed with a bit of butter or oil, its powdery bitterness was intensified to a degree that I couldn't face a mouthful of them. As much as I enjoyed shelling the large pods with their wonderfully velvety insides, that's as far as I've been willing to get to broad beans for a while.

And now with our weekly vegetable box delivery, broad beans have been brought straight to our door and are harder for me to turn my back on. I decided that rather than just demanding Mr A&N eat them all (hardly a hardship for him) I should again try to embrace them and maybe make them in a different way. Broad bean hummus seemed to hold out the hope of doing away with the powdery texture I didn't enjoy and forcing some different flavors into the mix. Just like chickpea hummus, I threw in garlic and some lemon, and went a bit luxury with extra butter and herbs. Served with good crusty bread, I actually did enjoy it and ate my whole slice. I might not be returning to simple, boiled broad beans any time soon, but at least now I stand a chance of enjoying both the shelling of the pods and what follows from that.




Broad Bean Hummus
enough for 1 1/12 dozen small tapas bread triangles, or 2-3 large, generous toppings for good crusty bread

• 1 kg broad bean (fava bean) pods
• bunch of fresh oregano (optional)
• 2 soup spoons of cooking liquid
• 1 large/2 medium cloves of garlic
• juice of 1 1/2 - 2 lemons
• knob of butter (about 10-15 g)
• olive oil (about 1/4 C)
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Boil water in a medium-sized pot and when boiling, place the oregano in with it.
2. Shell the broad beans and when all are shelled, place them in the pot of boiling water.
3. Boil the beans and oregano for 5-7 minutes or until the beans are nicely softened.
4. Drain the beans, reserving a couple of soup spoons of the cooking liquid and a few springs of oregano.
5. Place the beans, reserved liquid, and oregano in a blender. Add in the garlic, lemon juice, and butter, and turn the blender on.
6. Slowly add the olive oil, letting the mixture blend itself for 60 seconds or so once the oil is added. If it looks to dry (or if it's so dry it's not even blending), add a bit more oil (or water if you're being healthy) and continue blending. Otherwise, test the mixture and adjust for taste. Add more oil if it still doesn't taste creamy enough, and add salt and pepper.
7. Serve over bread, either as a tapas-style starter or as a bruschetta-style accompaniment to a main course.

Celery and White Bean Soup with Tomato

It’s cold again. More than once this year, I’ve declared Spring had arrived, only to be rudely shouted down by the weather. Flowers and showers alone don’t change the season, just as one warm day doesn’t mean the snow won’t follow. For example: London doesn’t see much snow, but it has had a few flurries since Easter – i.e., since the arrival of Spring. Luckily I still get a bit of a thrill from each snow-fall, especially since the London kind arrives with large snowflakey clumps and melts within hours. While it’s down, the blanketed quiet is such a peaceful cocoon from the normal background hubbub that you only realize the previous noise by its absence. The snow a couple of weeks back combined with our winter veg box glut of celery, and we found ourselves again facing the idea of celery soup. Unlike the previous celery soup (who knew there could be so many celery soups?), we used celery rather than celeriac this time around, and tempered the flavor with white beans and tomato. Since I’m a sucker for a nice sausage, I also couldn’t resist fry up some fresh chorizo and throwing those chunks on top.

Universal opinion among our guests was that the soup was wonderful for the wintery day, and that the chorizo was (naturally) the favorite part. The celery wasn’t overly strong and the tomato did threaten to take nudge aside the taste of the celery a bit. I thought the soup was pleasant but unspectacular, a good winter warmer and an excellent use of celery, but without the chorizo or extra paprika we threw in that it would have been a bit dull.


Everyone's love of the chorizo got me musing on why the world couldn't be more perfect by there existing there a chorizo tree, in which all of God’s creatures could enjoy fresh sausage and eat to their heart’s content without fear of chorizo shortage or animal welfare. Surely this would be the route to peace love and harmony among all creatures, great and small. With a bit more thinking, I realized that however perfect this chorizo tree sounds on first description, God would never allow it since it would turn the world into a Land of the Lotus eaters, with doped-up chorizo fiends doing nothing productive other than sitting in our gardens and nibbling. But if there’s a Garden of Eden, I now know what mine will be stocked with.

Finally, I will introduce to you one of Ambrosia and Nectar's more recent readers, Murphy Moore, who came around to enjoy the snow and the soup. Son of faithful eating companion Amanda, he's not yet old enough to be fed his own meals here so he'll have to live vicariously through Mama's dining in the mean time. He is of course welcome around whenever he likes.


Celery and White Bean Soup with Tomato, adapted from Moro East by Sam and Sam Clark Serves 4-6

• 250g dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight, or 650g drained tinned beans
• 5 Tbs olive oil
• 1 large head celery with leaves - celery sliced into 1 inch pieces, leaves set aside
• 8 spring onions with green tops, sliced into 1 cm rounds
• 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• 500g good quality tomatoes
• 1 Tbs sweet paprika
• 2-3 fresh chorizo sausages (about 1/2 sausage per person)

1. Make some celery salt by laying out the celery leaves on a baking tray and heating in a medium-low oven. Move them around every so oft to keep them from burning.
2. When leaves are quite dry and crumbly, remove from oven and crumble with equal parts of sea salt. Set aside.
3. Drain the soaked beans and add to a saucepan, and cover with plenty of fresh water.
4. Boil for about an hour, skimming off any scum that arises during the cooking. Add any extra water needed if it boils away too quickly. Season with a bit of salt and set aside.
5. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan, and add in the celery. Cook until softened, about 10 minutes.
6. Add the spring onions, garlic, and a good pinch of salt.
7. Cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. The vegetables should be soft and beginning to caramelize.
8. Add the tomatoes and half the celery salt, and cook for another 5 minutes.
9. Drain the beans, keeping back 250 ml of the cooking liquid, and add both to the pot with the vegetable mixture.
10. Add in the paprika.
11. Bring to a low boil and simmer for another 5 minutes. Taste for seasoning and adjust.
12. Heat a frying pan up with a small amount of olive oil to prevent the sausage from sticking.
13. Slice the fresh chorizo into half-inch thick disks, then quarter them.
14. Fry the chorizo pieces for about 5 minutes or until cooked. They usually give off a good amount of oil - fatty, but tasty.
15. Serve the soup in bowls with the chorizo and some of its oil spooned on top.

Celery and Leek Soup with Truffle Oil

Mr A&N and I found ourselves with a day off together at the end of the Easter break. An extra day off is a prized thing and should be treated differently to your normal weekend day - there should be no cleaning, no grocery shopping, no chores or running about here and there. On my extra days off, I like to behave like I'm a tourist and take my camera and myself out into the city and see what I can find. I've lately been feeling as if I were in a bit of a rut, which isn't uncommon for me at the end of winter (I figure it's better at the end, with spring on its way, than at the beginning). When I'm in this rut, life seems to only move between paid work and house work with no time to do things I enjoy and no sense of taking advantage of the city I live in. Even when I know this isn't actually true, this winter-time fug stays with me. A day out in London, exploring a different area through new eyes, was coming just in time to help me re-charge my dead batteries.

We headed to Notting Hill, a place I've semi-explored a number of times but hadn't been back to in a while. It wasn't until we were there that I remembered a great spice shop in the area, and before I had finished whacking myself in the forehead for being thick and forgetting to copy down its location, we stumbled on the store. Called The Spice Shop (good name, eh?), it's a small but packed space, full of sachets and canisters of all sorts of wonderful things, many of which came home with me.

Across the road from The Spice Shop is another fantastic store, Books for Cooks. Just like the Spice Shop, it's a place that will make anyone cooking-inclined be beside themselves with possibilities. I had wanted some books about the science of baking and cooking, and I was able to scan through a few titles and chat to the staff about what they'd recommend. I also had my eye caught by a cookbook that I've been flipping through without purchase for ages. A Year in My Kitchen by Skye Gyngell was the Cookery Book of the Year winner last year and is another contribution to the seasonal and non-fussy cooking genre. The spirit and place moved me, and into my bag it went.

I pawed through the cookbook over lunch and one of the first recipes to make me go 'Oooh' was a celery and leek soup, topped off with truffle oil (which I had, conveniently, just picked up from the Spice Shop). We already had a large celeriac from the previous week's vegetable box and had more celery arriving that day, so any plan to get rid of it all was a good one. Potatoes and cream helped thicken it out, and it tasted like a deeply flavored, grown-up leek and potato soup, particularly with the touch of truffle oil. I'll be looking through the cookbook more this weekend, since I'm already enticed and want to find out what else is possible.



Celery and Leek Soup with Truffle Oil, from Skye Gyngell
serves 4

• 400 g celery (or celeriac - we used a combination of the two)
• 2 leeks, mostly white parts
• 50 g unsalted butter
• 2 medium or 1 large potato, peeled and chopped
• 2 bay leaves
• 2-3 thyme sprigs
• a couple of flat leaf parsley stems
• salt and pepper
• 1 liter chicken or vegetable stock
• 150 ml double cream
• truffle oil, to drizzle

1. Separate the celery stalks and peel them finely, then chop roughly. If using celeriac, skin and chop into small cubes.
2. Melt the butter in a large pot over a low heat. Add the celery and leeks and cook gently for 15 minutes or so, until the celery is soft but not colored.
3. Add the potato, bay leaves, thyme and parsely and season with a bit of the salt and pepper.
4. Pour in the stock and bring to the boil, then lower the heat and simmer gently for 20 minutes.
5. remove from the heat and discard herb.
6. Puree the soup in small batches in a blender so it is quite smooth. Pass through a chinois before returning it to the pot so that the soup is very smooth.
7. Pour in the cream and reheat gently.
8. Check the seasoning and serve with a small drizzle of truffle oil.

Squash and Jerusalem Artichoke: A Winter Salad

One of the things I miss the most during the winter is big, colorful salads (that, and daylight). I love take the fresh summer offerings - green leaves, crunchy vegetable, sweet soft fruit of some kind - and throwing them all together with some oil and lemon juice and calling that my dinner. Winter vegetables have their own strengths but I do miss my all-in-one meals from the summertime.

One winter vegetable strength is the ease with which you can roast many of them and draw out a richer, often sweeter flavor. This works best with squashes - butternut, acorn, or plan old pumpkin - and whenever there's one on hand I'm very tempted to stick it in the oven and figure out what to do once it's done. This time around, I happened to have jerusalem artichoke on hand as well, and so I began thinking of ways of using the two together.

I had never made anything with jerusalem artichoke before, so felt I had to do a bit of research in order to get the best of them. The name of the artichoke, it turns out, is a funny thing - it's not really an artichoke (it's a tuber, like a potato), and it has no connection to jerusalem (it's a mis-pronunciation of the Italian word for sunflower, girasole). Unlike some other tubers, the artichoke can be eaten raw as well as roasted or boiled. Also curious about the artichoke is a fact that most sites featuring information about the vegetable throw up: it's high in a carbohydrate called inulin, which is linked with excessive flatulence in some people. Not a topic for a friendly foodblog, perhaps, but considering how often that fact is brought up in relation to the artichokes, I thought it only fair to warn all and sundry about the dangerous grounds on which I and my bag full of artichokes were standing.

Despite these gastric dangers, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to make a winter salad out of my squash, aritichokes, and any other bits laying around that needed eating (in this case, thyme, pine nuts, rocket and bacon, and cous cous to bulk it all out, though quinoa would work just as well). The squash and artichokes were roasted together with olive oil, a generous handful of thyme and a few cloves of garlic, and the bacon set to grill on top of it when the vegetables were nearly done. Roasted pine nuts in the cous cous, dress it all with a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and you have yourselves a winter salad.


And how was it? Very, very good, thank you - just the thing to scratch that salad itch during the winter. It felt healthy, and combined a bit of sweet and salty with a variety of textures.

Ah yes, and how were the artichokes? Nutty, crunchy, and still nicely crisp even after a bit of roasting. My first foray into the jerusalem artichoke world was a good one.

Yes, but, the the inulin, I hear you ask. What about the famed effects of the inulin? Well...this is a mature blog and I'm nothing but a dignified woman, so I shan't be discussing that. I will admit that one of the two of us in the A&N household was susceptible to the inulin's effect, but I shan't reveal which of the two of us it was. Who says the mystery from romance is dead.


A Winter Salad of Squash and Jerusalem Artichokes (an approximate recipe)
serves 4 as a salad main

• 1 medium butternut squash (although other squashes would be fine as long as they're big enough)
• 1 lb of jerusalem artichokes
• bunch of thyme
• 3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
• olive oil
• 300g cous cous
• 300g hot water
• about 30g of pine nuts
• a couple of handfuls of small salad leaves, such as rocket
• 1 packet of streaky bacon, about 250g
• olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 C / 375 F.
2. Peel the squash and cut into 1 inch cubes.
3. Clean the artichokes and cut into chunks that are about 1 1/2 times the size of the squash cubes.
4. Spread the squash and artichokes out on an oven tray or oven-proof dish. Add in the thyme and chopped garlic, and drizzle with olive oil. Toss all together until roughly mixed.
5. Set to cook in the oven for about 20 minutes.
6. If you have a rack that sets on top of the roasting tray, lay the bacon strips on top of the rack and then place on top of the roasting vegetables. Otherwise, remove the vegetables from the oven and lay the bacon strips on top.
7. Cook for another 15 minutes or until the bacon is nicely crispy.
8. Meanwhile, prepare the cous cous by boiling the water and placing the cous cous in a large bowl. When boiled, pour the water onto the cous cous, stir lightly with a fork, and cover with a plate to let the cous cous steam for a few minutes.
9. Set a small frying pan on medium heat, and lightly toast the pine nuts until they're just slightly brown.
10. After about 3 minutes, toss the cous cous with a fork and add in the salad greens, pine nuts, olive oil and vinegar enough to lightly dress and flavor everything, and some salt and pepper.
11. When the vegetables and bacon are done, remove the thyme stalks from the tray and add in the vegetables and pan juices to the cous cous.
12. Cut the bacon up into bite-sized pieces, and add that to the salad mixture.
13. Toss all together, and adjust for flavor.

Smashed Swede with Pears and Ginger

There was something about the vegetable named 'rutabaga' that always made me want to giggle. I had never knowingly eaten one (my parents weren't big vegetable pushers) so I'm not sure where the fondness for saying those syllables came from, but between rutabaga and ratatouille, the 'R' section in the food alphabet provided me with much mirth.

The next amusing vegetable name came to light as an adult, when I moved to Britain and heard there was something called a swede. What made someone name this one veg after that nationality, I wondered? And where was your greek, your irish, and your spaniard in your vegetable drawer? Well, imagine how happy it made me to find out that the veg name that was making me giggle as an adult was actually another name for the same rutabaga that delighted me so much as a child. I felt like I had come full circle and that the spheres of the Universe were working as they ought.

Now, during all of this silliness, I had never actually bothered to taste our humble swede/rutabaga. I just didn't know what to do with it. I tried buying one and throwing it in with some stew, but that wasn't hugely revealing as to what the vegetable was really like. A year passed. Another winter, I tried roasting it with a host of other winter vegetables but it once again got subsumed between the other tastes of carrots, parsnips and squashes. Another year passed. I tried stew again - ho hum. Then, this winter, there was a confluence of events: I spotted a recipe on epicurious for mashed rutabaga that sounded intriguing, and Mr A&N's mother (prolific gardener and healthy person extraordinairre) brought some home-grown swedes with her when she was up visiting for Christmas. The stage was set for the Great Swede Experiment, Winter 2007/2008 Chapter.



The epicurious recipe was quite simple: it called to boil the swede while roasting the pears with ginger and lemon juice. The two factions would come together after a bit of mashing and the addition of cream and thyme. All went well in the making of it, but no one was that bowled over by the sweet and creamy taste that tried to mask the fact there was a vegetable involved. And I once again didn't get a sense for what the swede itself was like.

After a few attempts, my guess is that the swede isn't the most flavor-packed of the winter vegetables but is fine to use accompanying other veg or in a mash. The next time I cook with it, though, I might insist on making everyone refer to it as a rutabaga - which can only improve the taste.

Smashed Swede with Pears and Ginger
from epicurious.com

• 4 pounds swede, peeled, cut into 3/4- to 1-inch cubes
• 1 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger
• 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
• 3 firm Anjou pears (about 1 3/4 pounds), peeled, cored, cut into 3/4-inch cubes
• 1/3 cup heavy whipping cream
• 5 tablespoons butter
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
• Coarse kosher salt

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C / 400 F
   
2. Boil the swede in water for about 35 minutes or until the pieces are tender.
3. Combine oil, lemon juice, ginger, and sugar in large bowl. Add pears; toss to coat.
4. In a oven-proof ceramic dish or a baking sheet sprayed with non-stick spray, lay out the pear mixture.
5. Roast until tender, turning pears every 10 minutes, about 35 minutes total.
6. Drain the swede and return to same pot. Mash to until it's a coarse puree.
   
7. Stir over medium heat until excess moisture evaporates, about 5 minutes.
   
8. Add cream, butter, and thyme.
   
9. Mix in pears and any juices from baking sheet.
   
10. Season with salt and pepper.
    

Carrot and Cardamom Mash

Cardamom is one of my favorite spices, both to smell and to taste. The first time I knowingly tasted it was in a Celestial Seasonings tea called Bengal Spice. I found the combination of cinnamon, ginger, and cardamom absolutely intoxicating. Like a cat with catnip, I would go into moments of empty-headed joy when drinking the tea, and was fully addicted to the body-warming suffusion of flavors that this simple drink could give.

Cardamom is used mostly in Middle Eastern and Central Asian cooking, with use also seen in Scandinavian countries. Green cardamom is more typically used in sweet dishes and in the Middle Eastern coffee drink, while black cardamom is more for savory dishes and is described as having a more blunt, strong flavor. It has a huge range of medicinal uses attributed to it, from being used to sweeten breath, help mouth ulcers and gum problems, aid tuberculosis sufferers, improve digestion, counter-act obesity, and act as an aphrodisiac. A fairly impressive list, I think, and makes me wonder why we haven't all been munching on cardamom to help heal all our ills.

I got in the mood for cardamom the other night when faced with a cold, rainy walk home and a return to a cold (though dry) house. I remembered the wonderful warmth of the tea, and felt I had to work its way into my dinner. Carrots were already on the menu out of necessity, and I thought that a mash with carrots, potatoes, and cardamom would deliver both the right, comforting, flavor and consistency.


We had the mash with middle-eastern spiced lamb chops: plenty of garlic, ras al hanout, and a bit of chilli powder, stirred together in a dish with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then put under the grill. It was all very right for a rain-soaked winter night.


For my weather-led use of cardamom, I'm submitting this to Simona from Bricole for this week's Weekend Herb Blogging.

Carrot and Cardamom Mash

• 4 large carrots
• 2 medium potatoes
• 3 pods cardamom (green cardamom is preferable)
• 1/2 C milk
• 10g butter (approximately - use as much butter as you normally do for your mash)
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Peel the carrots and potatoes, and roughly cut into pieces.
2. Boil the carrots and potatoes in water until they are both well softened.
3. Meanwhile, crush the cardamom pod and combine it with the milk in a small saucepan. Gently boil the milk for about 15 minutes, to allow the flavors to infuse.
4. Drain the carrots and potatoes, saving a ladel-full of the cooking liquid.
5. Strain the cardamom seeds from the milk.
6. Mash the carrots and potatoes together with the butter and the cardamom-flavored milk. If mash needs a bit more liquid, add some of the reserved cooking liquid.
7. Add salt and pepper to taste.

A Quick Sabzi

Some days, I am overtaken by pangs of healthy thoughts. I wonder how I can work more bran into my diet. I begin craving broccoli. I contemplate going for a jog. With the cold weather and the holidays hurtling toward me at speed, my mind is telling me to be good before it all falls apart in a tumult of turkey and oh-alright-just-another-slice-of pie.

One rather tasty way of eating healthy vegetables is to make them into a sabzi. Madhur Jaffrey, the Indian chef and cookbook writer, tells that 'sabzi' is a word that came into northern India from Persian invaders. In Persia, sabzi simply means 'green'; in India, it's transmogrified to mean vegetables, or a vegetable dish prepared without meat added in.

Because of that broad definition of what sabzi means, you'll find many sabzi recipes about. I like one of the recipes Madhur gives, mainly for its simplicity in preparation but the flavor it can deliver. I also like the fact that you can change around some of the ingredients and still come away with a tasty side dish - I often make it with carrots rather than the suggested courgettes, and have scaled back the list of the ingredients until it was only cumin, coriander, and mustard I was working with, and still I've chased all the last bits around the plate. I've copied out Madhur's recipe as written, but I do feel it's a forgiving one if you can't match every ingredient, especially asafetida, which might be the most difficult to find (and perhaps even commit to, since it's translation in English is 'devil's dung' due to its...rather strong odor).

For the lovely combination of Indian spices and vegetables, I'm submitting this to Truffle from What's On My Plate for this week's Weekend Herb Blogging.



Courgette and Green Pepper Sabzi, from Madhur Jaffrey
Serves 3-4 as a side

• 3 Tbs olive or corn oil
• Generous pinch of asafetida
• 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1/4 tsp whole brown mustard seed
• 1 1/4 Lb / 560g courgettes sliced into 1 1/2 in long and 1/2 thick fingers
• 1 large green pepper, cut into 1/2 in wide slices
• 2 Tbs yogurt
• 1 Tbs ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp chaat masala (or pinch of cayenne pepper and squeeze of lemon)

1. Heat a large pan or wok over medium-high heat, and add the oil
2. When the oil is hot, first add the asafetida, and quickly follow it with the cumin and mustard seed
3. The mustard will begin popping within a few seconds; when it does, add the vegetables
4. Stir and fry for 5 minutes
5. Add the yogurt, and stir until it's absorbed
6. Reduce heat to low, and stir in the coriander and salt, continuing to stir for a minute
7. Add the chaat masala / cayenne pepper and lemon, and quickly toss all together
8. Taste, and add more salt if needed.
   

Romanseco Broccoli

I'm not generally a shallow person, but I can be persuaded to buy certain foods based on how much they appeal to me visually (Prestat chocolates is a good case in point). At my humble weekend food market, I had a stunning little green number catch my eye, labeled as a romanseco broccoli. I had no ambition other than to own it and photograph it, so I bought it and figured I'd put together plans on how to cook it later.


Part of the reason it caught my eye, I will confess, is because it immediatly made my mind shout "Fibonacci sequence!". The fibonacci sequence is a mathematical sequence of numbers that occurs in nature in many instances - in the swirl of pine cones or sunflower seeds, in the shell of a nautilus, in patterns of reproduction - and also makes an appearance in architecture (where it's dubbed 'the golden ratio') to produce some of our more eye-pleasing buildings (like the Pantheon). I remember hearing about this at 16 in my calculus math class, and thinking it was the first interesting thing I had been told during the year - that a series of numbers that never altered wasn't just produced by mathematicians for fun adding purposes but could be seen in nature and was physically pleasing to boot. Unfortunately the class moved on and we had to begin solving equations and things, and I returned to my stupor, but the stunning notion of the Fibonacci sequence has stayed with me - and excited me - ever since.

So I bought my vegetable for superficial reasons (though perhaps not shallow ones, if it made me dig into the recesses of my mathematical mind), and thoroughly enjoyed photographing it and looking and how many fractal levels the little green nubs went down to. I gave it a nice sending off of cooking it au gratin, and enjoyed the eating of it too (mainly because I could coo over each stem and its bizarre yet beautiful repition). It did, indeed, taste like broccoli mixed with a touch of cauliflower (covered in cheese). But surely you wouldn't buy a romanesco just for its taste, would you?

Carrot and Corainder Seed Soup

This is one of my favorite soups. That's a big claim - during the non-summer months, we tend to have home-made soups at least once a week. Adding to my pleasure in eating soup is the fact that my stomach has an ability to take in liquid in volumes unseen in most humans. And camels. It's a unique gustatory talent to have, and I try to use it well.

Carrot and coriander seed soup is a wonderful soup for the autumn; I found it in a Delia Smith cookbook and she recommends it as a spring dish, but I couldn't disagree more. The coriander seeds, which are toasted and then ground into powder, create a fragrant warming vein lacing through the carrots, and help to bring on a suffuse warmth. This balances beautifully with the delicate sweetness of the carrots. Since I have the soup as my main meal, I like to eat it with a thick wholemeal bread slathered in butter, like an Irish soda bread.

This time making the soup, I experimented by cutting the kernels off a couple of ears of corn, and toasting half while including the other half in the soup. I liked the toasted corn sprinkled on top of the soup, but found the extra corn pureed within it upset the balance of the other flavors and added to much sweetness overall.


Carrot and Coriander Seed Soup, from Delia Smith
Seres 6 as a starter, 3-4 as a main

• 2 lb of carrots
• 1 Tbs coriander seeds (I normally tend to double this, but you might want to start as suggested)
• 1 oz / 25 g butter
• 1 small clove garlic
• 2 pints / 1.2 litres chicken or vegetable stock
• 3 Tbs chopped coriander (I sometimes leave this out to no ill effect)
• 3 Tbs creme fraiche
• salt and pepper

1. Peel and chop the carrots
2. Dry-roast the coriander seeds in a pan, shaking gently throughout; roast for 1-2 minutes until the seeds start browning and jumping around the pan. Transfer the seeds to a mortar and pestle and crush
3. Melt the butter in a large pot, then add the carrots, garlic, and 3/4 of the coriander seeds
4. Stir, and let sweat for about 10 minutes until the carrots begin to soften
5. Add the stock and salt and pepper, and bring to the boil
6. Reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, for 15-20 minutes or until the carrots are tender
7. Liquidize the soup in batches, then return to the pot and add the chopped fresh coriander and the creme fraiche
8. Re-heat the soup gently, tasting for flavor, and sprinkle each bowlful with the remaining toasted coriander seeds

Pick Your Own

On Friday, I went to pick my own fruit (and veg) with my good friend Amanda. We were both very excited for the experience - we live in London and couldn't believe there was somewhere within easy train distance where we could pick (and eat) our fill of fresh goods. We were even happier to be able to go with each other, since we both knew neither of our partners would have been ratcheted up to the same levels of excitement as each other was.

We went to Parkside Farms in Enfield which is easy reach from a couple of train stations, especially if you have bikes with you as we did. It was a lovely, bright summery day and riding our bikes through the (semi-) country lanes made us feel like we were kids on our summer holidays. Our main goal was to get raspberries, and I was happy to gather any other vegetables available. The farm was impressively large, and though there were a fair number of families out we never felt like we were knocking into people and competing for food.

That said, I'm an inherently competitive person and when I was placed in front of the object of my desire (i.e, raspberries) something within me clicked on and I began picking for all I was worth. I felt it was like the soft-fruit equivalent of a fantastic sale at your favorite store: I began grasping everything within my site and felt it very important that I get to the fruit before anyone else could. And yet that sensation brought me great joy, as did the picking itself. The raspberries were so ripe that the slightest caress made them come off in your hand, and I felt proud and protective of them as I gently gathered handfuls before depositing them in my basket.

We spent about an hour picking raspberries (around 1 1/4 kilos each) before moving on to the vegetables. The vegetable picking was less popular than the fruit, but since I was there to gain food for my table (and freezer) popularity didn't matter to me. I was able to fill a large bag of string beans as well as a half dozen courgettes, a bag full of spinach, and a bag full of onions. Scattered around the vegetable fields were raspberry casualties where eager pickers had a slip and lost their hard-picked bounty under their feet.
Both of us had a wonderful day out, being in the country and gathering our own food and cycling down hilly lanes in the breeze. It would be great if Mr. A&N ever decided to join me in a picking session, but I've at least found an enthusiastic picking partner in Amanda.