Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie

In a conscious effort to eat less meat, I’m on a quest to find flavoursome vegetarian dishes. This is hard for me, as I’m pretty much the “if there’s no meat, it ain’t no food” type. I’ve already posted a few meatless risotto dishes (though, yes, they do contain chicken stock… sigh) that I can survive on and this Shepherd’s Pie can be added to the list. “Shepherd’s Pie without meat!?” I hear you shriek. Yes, gentle reader, I’m just as appalled. And to add insult to injury, it also contains that dreaded thing, the bane of every man’s appetite, the Chickpea. It’s sheer horror to contemplate, but bear with. I promise it’ll be alright in the end. We’ll make it through, gentle reader. Together.

Chop up a red onion, neither roughly nor finely, and soften it in some olive oil and butter for about ten minutes. Add two finely chopped garlic cloves, a chopped red chili and two teaspoons of ras el hanout. Fry for a minute or so, then add a tin of (drained) chickpeas (be brave!) and a tin of chopped tomatoes. Add 150 mls of stock (I want to say chicken, but I leave that up to you and your fierce inner strength) and a tablespoon of sugar. Season with salt and pepper and cook for about fifteen minutes. Stir regularly.

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 200 degrees and slice up some nice potatoes. Leave the skins on and parboil, drain and leave to blow off some steam for a while. When the chickpeas are tender, add a bag of baby spinach leaves and stir to help them wilt.

Ladle the chickpea mixture into two oven dishes and place a few potato slices on top. Grate over some Parmesan and add another layer of potatoes. Top with a handful of grated cheese (the kind that turns nice and golden and crispy) and into the oven they go. Give them about fifteen minutes before diving in.

Keeping the potatoes sliced instead of mashing them adds a really nice hearty texture to the dish and the amount of spice and heat means that even the dreaded chickpeas turn out okay. Well more than okay, if you’d believe it. This dish is an absolute revelation and you won’t miss the meat at all. Just please don’t use the term “veggie”… Ugh, there goes my appetite.

Broad bean salad

A wonderful, toothsome salad that goes well with any and all pasta dishes and deserves a place on any Italian table.

Cook the broad beans until tender and cool them back down under the cold tap. Squeeze the juice of one lemon and chop up a generous handfull of fresh flat leaf parsley and the same amount of fresh mint. Stir the juice and the herbs through the beans and season with some salt and pepper. Crumble in some rashers of crispy fried bacon and decorate with a few lemon slices and some more mint leaves. Perfection.

Nigella's Mother's Praised Chicken

It does indeed deserve a lot of praise.

Swirls & Spirals

Cinnamon buns, recipe by The Hairy Bikers

Pea and mint risotto

If I'm being completely honest I'd have to say there's just no beating my leek and tarragon risotto. In terms of what a human being can achieve with a grain of rice, it's the absolute epitome.
However tarragon can be in painfully short supply and when you simply can't get any, this is a worthy substitute.

Finely chop a shallot and soften it in butter and oil. After a few minutes, add a finely chopped garlic clove and when the shallot is translucent, add the arborio rice (200 grams for two people). When the rice is turning translucent at the edges, add a slosh of white vermouth (this way you don't have to open a bottle of white wine). Wait for the vermouth to be absorbed and then start the soothing, soul-restoring process of stirring and ladling in chicken stock (1,5 litres). It'll take anywhere between fifteen and twenty-five minutes for the rice to cook so do start tasting in time. When the rice has about three or four minutes to go, add 150 grams of frozen peas, some salt and pepper and a good handful of fresh mint torn to shreds. If you have a garden/balcony/window box I'd advice growing your own mint as the flavour is so much more intense than store-bought. The heated mint gives an amazing flavour and of course mint and peas are the very best of buds. Serve with Parmesan.

Note: a lot of recipes call for the adding of a great lump of butter at the very end, or a horrible amount of cream... Or both! Shudder to think. This is absolutely unnecessary as the rice gives of it's own lovely, starchy creaminess. Also the delight of this dish is it's lightness and freshness of flavour. Adding a hideous bucket-load of fat makes the dish heavy and unpleasant and not at all like the Temple Food it deserves to be. 

Aniseedy goodness

A while back we went to Royal Leamington Spa for a few days and had dinner at Carluccio's... Twice. Apart from the spectacular pistachio ice cream (is there any other kind?) I had the following pasta dish... Twice. It's incredibly Italian in it's simplicity: just a few well chosen ingredients that get on well together and elevate each other to heretofore unknown heights.
I hasten to claim that this dish inspired me to create a similar feast back at home, but, gentle reader, you and I both know that "ripped off beyond the telling of it" would be a better description.

Heat some olive oil in a pan and slice open some sausages (three or four). Italian sausages would be ideal, but if they're nowhere to be found simple pork sausages will do just as well. Peel off their skins and gut them viciously, tearing out their innards. A curiously satisfying task.
Break up the meat as you lower it into the oil and go to town with a wooden spoon. You don't want to completely pulverize it, but a variety of textures would be nice. Let it brown and, as it does so, put two tablespoons of fennel seeds and one teaspoon of chili flakes (or more, if you're so inclined) in a mortar and grind away. Again, to beat it to dust is unnecessary, but you do want to break the fennel seeds so they'll release more flavour.
Add this mixture to the meat as well as some salt and pepper and allow the spices to fry a little, becoming ever more aromatic, before tipping in two cans of cubed tomatoes. Let this come to a rollicking bubble and cook for about ten minutes during which time you can cook the accompanying pasta (penne will do). The more idyllic scenario would be to leisurely make this sauce in the afternoon and leave it to sit until dinnertime whilst you lounge and bask in the sheer idyllic-ness of it all. The more likely scenario is that you're tired after a long day's work, slightly sweaty and gross from the commute home and irritated by the fact that you still have to clean the litter box. Whatever the situation may be, this dish will be a soothing balm but, as the best balms are, with a roundhouse kick to the taste buds.

Lion's Head

I think we can all agree on the awesomeness that is Ming-Na Wen. Being the voice of Disney’s Mulan is cool enough in and of itself, but now she’s also a weekly highlight as cool-as-fudge Melinda May on Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Reading an interview with her recently I found out she’s also an enthusiastic (and probably excellent) cook. As if her resume of awesomeness needed any more padding! She said her kids’ favourite meal is Chinese comfort food, namely a dish called “Lion’s Head”. I had never heard of it but a dish with a name like that simply has to be made immediately, I think you’ll all agree. When I found out the dish consists mainly of oversized meatballs, well… let’s just say that did nothing to assuage my enthusiasm.

In a large bowl combine 250 grams of ground pork and the same amount of ground beef (you could use only one or the other if you prefer) with one loosely beaten egg, two cloves of garlic and 5 cm of ginger (just grate those in), 2 finely chopped spring onions, 1,5 tablespoons of soy sauce, 2 teaspoons of dry sherry, some salt and pepper, a pinch of sugar and a teaspoon of sesame oil. Use your hands to form the mixture into a cohesive mass, adding a tablespoon or two of flour to make sure the mixture isn’t too wet. When you roll the mixture around in the bowl, you want it to form a large ball pretty much by itself.

Heat some wok oil in a heavy based pan, with a tight fitting lid. Form the meat mixture into 4 large, slightly oval meatballs. Fry them over a medium to high heat for about five minutes until brown all over. Remove them from the pan and wipe out the excess oil.  Return the pan to the heat and add a few drops of wok oil and sesame oil, this time purely for flavour. Return the meatballs to the pan and add 375 ml of chicken stock (just use a cube) and two tablespoons of soy sauce. Clamp on the lid and let it simmer for about ten minutes. In the meantime cut a small (or half) Chinese cabbage into ribbons (just place it sideways on the board and cut 1 cm wide strips). Rinse well with cold water and leave to drain. After ten minutes, pile the cabbage on and around the meatballs and, with the lid on again, simmer for another fifteen minutes. Some of the cabbage will cook, some will steam, all will be delicious.

To serve: place a meatball in the middle of the plate, it being the head of the lion. Drape the soft cabbage around it, this being the ‘mane’ of the lion, so make sure to think feline thoughts whilst doing so. Ladle over some of the dark broth, sprinkle over some freshly chopped spring onion and prepare to swoon. The meatball is caramelized but also meltingly tender, the cabbage has retained a tiny bit of squeaky bite and the broth is wonderfully savoury. Ming-Na Wen’s kids are absolutely right to demand this dish of their awesome mother. It truly is the king of the jungle. Wait, does China have jungles?

Rockets and cherries and nuts, oh my!

This is something I threw together last night and I simply cannot keep it to myself. It’s incredibly simple and such a perfect combination of ingredients, that I’m sure it has be an already existing dish. After all, someone must’ve thought of this combination before. So, even though the recipe came to me yesterday whilst on the train, like some kind of Harry Potter-esque Divine Inspiration, I’m not claiming this as my invention. My only claim is that it’s awesome and it has to be shared with the world.

Put a pan on the heat and add either bacon or pancetta cubes (not smoked). Give them a few minutes, to render out some of the fat (pour some off if it’s a crazy amount), before adding a few chopped shallots (you want about a handful, when chopped). You want the bacon/pancetta to be tender, not crisp, and the shallots to turn translucent. Add two or three finely chopped garlic cloves. After a minute or two, turn up the heat and add good glass of dry white wine. This will both sputter and bubble, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Take about ten cherry tomatoes and cut them in half. Add them to the pan as the wine cooks down. The tomatoes will turn to mush pretty quickly and once they have you can use some tongs to fish out the skins (or you can go all Jamie Oliver and leave them in, in that case I think the term you’ll want to use later is ‘rustic’). When most of the liquid has evaporated and the tomatoes have turned the wine into a runny sauce, add a tin of chopped tomatoes, a good grinding of black pepper and about a quarter teaspoon of chili flakes. There’s no need to add salt, after all both bacon and pancetta, whichever one you’re using, are plenty salty and you’ll be adding parmesan later as well. Bring the sauce up to a gentle simmer while you get on with cooking the pasta. Use casareccia or something of that ilk. After a few minutes remove half a cup of starchy water from the pan and add that to the sauce. When the pasta is just cooked, drain and add to the sauce. Stir well to coat every piece, further tenderizing the pasta. When ready to serve, spoon the pasta with the sauce into bowls. Add a few quartered cherry tomatoes, fresh and zingy. Sprinkle over some parmesan flakes, top that with a good handful of crunchy, peppery rocket, some more parmesan and finally a generous sprinkling of toasted pine nuts. As Donna Hay would probably say, this recipe really does tick every box.

Bellini's Norma

I promised you two pasta stunners and this, gentle reader, is the second. This dish is supposedly named after the character Norma in Vincenzo Bellini’s opera of the same name. A rather dubious honour for the woman in question (Giulia Grisi), seeing how it’s a dish consisting mainly of plump purple fruit. However, if she ever tasted it she’d have known it for the compliment it truly is.

Pasta Alla Norma is a Sicilian dish and it is the one I ordered more than any other when I was in Sicily last year. I had it in posh restaurants, where it looked stunningly beautiful, and in small hole-in-the-wall type places where it looked messy and glorious. But looks aside, like all Italian cooking, it’s about the flavour of a few simple but great ingredients that just work well together. And believe me, Norma definitely hits the high notes. Start by dicing two aubergines, placing them in a colander and sprinkling them royally with salt. Place the colander in the sink and leave to drain for half an hour or so. This will make the aubergines more tender and remove the slight bitterness of the fruit. Rinse well in cold water, drain and pat dry. Fry the cubes in some butter and oil until golden brown and remove from the pan. Add some more oil and fry a finely chopped red onion and two garlic cloves until soft and slightly caramelized. Season with salt and pepper and return the aubergine to the pan. Toss together and add a jar of good tomato sauce with basil (like Barilla) and a can of chopped tomatoes with basil. Bring to the boil, clamp on a lid and after a few minutes turn off the heat. Anything with tomatoes, whether it’s soup or sauce, is always better if you let it stand for a while. Cook some penne in salted water, again adding some cooking liquid to the sauce when you bring it back to the boil. Combine the pasta with the sauce and tear up some buffalo mozzarella to stir through. Sprinkle some fresh basil leaves on top and grate over some ricotta, or if you can’t find that, some parmesan.

Mafaldine With Lamb And Mint

It’s been far too long, I know! The times, they’ve been a-changin’ and frankly I haven’t had a moment to spare (i.e. to blog). But just because I haven’t been busy writing, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy cooking. And believe you me, gentle reader, I’m making my blogging comeback in a big way. I’ve got two dazzling pasta dishes lined up, to make up for lost times. After all, you and I both know that nothing says ‘forgive me’ like a big bowl of carbs.

There’s something about the soothing warmth and slight bitterness of the lamb in combination with the rich fruitiness of the jelly that makes this dish perfectly suited to this time of year. The dark autumnal flavours are comforting, but the sprinkling of fresh mint is reminiscent of summer and gives us that pizzazz we so desperately need. Soften a chopped shallot or two (if they’re tiny) in some garlic oil, being careful not to let it colour. You want it soft and sweet, so when it does start to colour, add a pinch of salt (to stop it doing so). When it’s nearly there add a finely chopped garlic clove and stir until the garlic has lost its raw heat. Add a generous teaspoon of dried mint, the same amount of dried oregano and a good pinch of dried chilli flakes. Not too much though, you want a pleasant heat at the back of your throat, but this isn’t the place to go for full burn. Stir the herbs in the oniony oil for a minute, turning the mixture deeply fragrant, and then add the chopped lamb (about 400 grams). Break it up with a wooden spoon and let it colour. Be sure to take your time with this, I know of a lot of people who seem to think grey is an attractive colour for meat. Well it isn’t. You want the meat to caramelize, that’s where the flavour comes from. When the lamb has a nice golden sheen (and smells quite amazing) add a tin of chopped tomatoes and stir. Add a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce and three tablespoons of a fruity jelly of your choice. I use pomegranate/ redcurrant. The sweetness of the jelly really cuts through the tangy bitterness inherent to the lamb. Turn the heat down low, clamp on a lid and let it simmer for a good long while. As ever with lamb, the longer you let it sit, the better it’ll be. Cook some beautiful strands of mafaldine pasta in salted water and, as always, add some of the cooking liquid to the sauce, helping it amalgamate. Drape the pasta in the rich ragout and sprinkle generously with torn fresh mint. And I mean generously! I know fresh mint doesn’t sound like the most natural combination with pasta and tomato sauce, but of course it is best friends with lamb and it really elevates this dish.