Nooched Tofu

So I have been trying to sneak a bit more soy products into our diet. To reduce the amount of meat we eat, and because it is alleged to help with symptoms of perimenopause. There has been some resistance from certain family members though, who find it bland.

But this, now this is tasty tofu! Flavoured-up with soy sauce, garlic and sesame oil and coated with nutritional yeast flakes - 'nooch' for short! The coated tofu is quickly toasted in the air fryer, and it's ready to go - in a stir fry, on a salad, with pasta and tomato sauce, or just eaten by itself. And even the tofu-hesitant here are eating it up with gusto.

If you've not come across them before, nutritional yeast flakes are small savoury flakes of processed yeast, with a vaguely nutty, cheesy flavour. Like marmite, they are rich in B vitamins. You can find tubs of it in larger supermarkets and health food shops under the brand name Engevita.

Parsee Red Curry

This curry is adapted from the "Parsee Red Chicken Curry" recipe from 50 Great Curries Of India by Camellia Panjabi, for making in the Instant Pot. I have added vegetables and chickpeas to it to fill it out for use as a bulk cooking recipe for portioning out and freezing.

Simple Meatloaf

This particular recipe has been knocking around the kitchen scribbled on the back of an old envelope for a couple of months now, so it's time to write it up here. It turns a packet of cheap mince into a midweek roast dinner.

Notes on running a cake plant (aka Hermann or Amish Friendship Cake)

Cake plant recipes did the rounds in the 70s / 80s, and we were given starters to feed by friends several times over that period. Inevitably, we would maintain them for a couple of months, handing out starters to any friends who weren't sick of it yet, before it just became too much of the same cake over and over, or the mixture managed to overflow the storage bowl and cause a mess. The mixture would be discarded, and the instructions filed away until the next time we were given a starter to try again.

Over the years, on rediscovering the archived instructions, I have restarted the culture from scratch a few times. These restarts have eventually suffered the same fates as the originals.

Over time - and especially over this last strange year - I have evolved how I manage the cake plant starter away from the original instructions. I have also added to my stock of recipes using the starter. So I am recording the details here, so I don't forget them once working from home stops being the norm.

Slow Roast Belly Pork Slices and Vegetables

I've made this dish a couple of times now, so this article is to record how I've been modifying the original recipe, which is here. This also works if you replace the belly pork with chicken thighs and drumsticks.

Fish and Vegetable Fritters

So, this week's surprise from the vegbox delivery people was a carton of 15 egg whites that needed using in a few days(!) Not wanting to fill the entire house with meringues, I made these for lunch. Two days in a row.

Slow-cooker Lamb Curry

I fancied a curry, but needed something I could pop in the slow cooker all day whilst doing other things. So I adapted a recipe for Seyal Gosht from "50 Great Curries of India" by Camellia Panjabi - by simply throwing everything together and slow cooking.

It turned out deliciously spicy, and was really easy to prepare. I will definitely be making this again!

Green Tomato Pie

Summer has turned to autumn. The days are getting shorter, and the tomato plants outside in the garden have stopped flowering. The remaining fruit is not ripening. So the plants have been cut down.

But what to do with all the unripe green tomatoes?

Previously, I have used these up in batches of Green Tomato Chutney.

But I have heard rumours that green tomatoes can be cooked much like apples into pies and cakes.

Google yielded this recipe. I made a few tweaks.

Lamb and Lentil Ragu

A delicious stew of lamb, lentils, and root vegetables cooked with tomatoes, red wine and herbs.

This goes well over pasta or polenta, and cooks fast enough in the pressure cooker to be doable on a week-night evening after work. 

If you don't have a pressure cooker, you can just dump all the ingredients in a slow cooker and let it cook for 8 hours.

Since this recipe makes enough for about 4-6 servings, I generally serve one third on the day, and divide the rest between tubs to freeze and eat later.

Persian-style Gluten Free Shortbread

So there's a bag of besan lurking in the cupboard that was bought for some long-forgotten experiment ages ago, and now needs using up.
Coincidentally, I had just rediscovered my copy of The Legendary Cuisine Of Persia, that had gotten buried in a pile of stuff.
So I was glad to spot the recipe for Nan-e Nokhodchi whilst leafing through - a simple shortbread made with besan, and flavoured with ground green cardamom.
I scaled the recipe up a bit from the rather small batch size in the book.

Peanut Butter Cookies

It's a damp drizzly day, and I found a half jar of nut butter in the cupboard that needed using up. So time to brighten things up with some sweet-salty Peanut Butter Cookies.

These are based on the recipe from The Kitchn, but mixed up a bit to match what was in the cupboard.

The Cofresh Sweet Chilli Caramel Peanuts are a recent find in the supermarket Ethnic Foods aisle. Very moreish, with just the right level of chilli hit to offset the caramel sweetness.

Hot Milk Cake with Pandan Kaya filling

So we went to Hoo Hing recently and as usual Random Things To Try somehow found their way into the trolley.

This time the things included a jar of Pandan Kaya, which turned out to be a thick custard-like spread made from eggs and coconut milk, flavoured with pandan leaf. My immediate thought on trying it was that it would make an excellent filling for a cake. Preferably a light plain sponge cake that would show off the filling's flavour without overpowering it.

This American Hot Milk Cake from Farmers Weekly sounded perfect, just needing a couple of tweaks.

I don't bother to keep self-raising flour AND plain flour, and of course when I looked in the cupboard there wasn't quite enough plain white flour left so it ended up being about 2/3 plain white flour and 1/3 chapathi flour.

West African-inspired Stew

Just a quick note before I forget what I cooked tonight cause it came out really tasty. I was reading through some West African recipes for inspiration, and ended up making this stew.
Makes enough for 6 portions.

• 2 tbsp Unrefined Red Palm Oil
• 2 small onions, peeled and chopped
• 500g stewing steak, diced
• 3 cloves garlic - crushed and chopped
• Diced root vegetables - carrots, swede
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp chilli powder
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 beef stock cube
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• 1 cup dry black eyed beans
• 2 and a half tins of water
• 1 small tin tomato puree
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Melt the palm oil in the base of a pressure cooker. Add the onions and beef and let the meat brown, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and let it fry for a moment too.
Sprinkle the herbs and spices into the pan, and stir in along with the diced vegetables, crumbled stock cube, dry beans and tinned tomatoes.
Use the tomato tin to measure in another 2 or so tins of water - enough to cover the beans.
Close the lid and bring the pressure cooker to high presure for 30 minutes.
Let cool down til the pressure is released.
Stir the tomato puree into the sauce to thicken it, and season to taste.

I served half the recipe tonight with steamed broccoli and potato wedges.
The other half of it is in the fridge for tomorrow night.



Categories:

Bulgogi flavoured Mince

This is a quick weeknight recipe that has the flavours of Bulgogi, but without the planning ahead and remembering to actually marinade stuff.

And using cheap beef mince instead of finely sliced steak.

The sauce paste is based on the Bulgogi marinade from Our Korean Kitchen.

Tomato 'Instant' Kimchi sort of thing

The tomato plants in the greenhouse are still fruiting, and there are tomatoes aplenty in need of using up. More tomato recipes are urgently needed!

Inspired by the 'instant' emergency cucmber Kimchi recipe in Our Korean Kitchen, I went searching to see if Tomato Kimchi was a thing. And it was - I found Park Shin Hye's Tomato Kimchi.

I didn't have any Gochugaru (chilli pepper powder) , but I did have some Gochujang (sweetened fermented chilli pepper paste). So I substituted gochujang for the gochugaru and sugar. I also added some chopped fresh basil as I was out of chives. It seems to work, even if it's not authentic.

Quick Chicken Liver Pate

Every fortnight I receive a pack of organic chicken carcasses with my vegbox order. These are what is left over after a chicken has had breasts, thighs, drumsticks and wings cut off - namely the main body, neck and giblets (internal organs). The pack generally contains the remains of two butchered chickens.

I separate out the livers from the giblets, and throw everything else into a roasting tin, cover with foil and pop in the oven to roast, and then into the pressure cooker to make Chicken Stock.

The livers, I make into pate.

Tamale Pie

This is a way to turn leftover Chilli or Picadillo into a one-dish meal.

The pre-cooked chilli is topped with a quick-mix cornbread batter, and then thrown in the oven to bake.

I initially came across this sort of thing in Laurel's Kitchen, where it is called Tennessee Corn Pone. However, this dish is apparently more commonly called Tamale Pie across America.

Baked Polenta

I've made this a couple of times now.
It's easy to lob in the oven whilst pressure-cooking something to accompany it, and avoids the traditional constant stirring on the hob of most polenta recipes.

This method of cooking polenta comes via Joy the Baker.

An attempt at something vaguely resembling Pho

This morning's experiment turned out as a good light lunch for a hot sunny day.

In the meat box delivery this week were a pair of chicken legs and a pair of gammon steaks, so I decided to make a chicken and ham pie. Having roasted the chicken legs, and cut up and cooked the gammon ready for the pie, I had sufficient chicken bones, skin, cartilege and gammon rinds to make a small batch of stock.

I threw it all in the pressure cooker along with a quartered onion, a sliced carrot, a couple of bay leaves, 4 peppercorns and a tsp or two of celery seed in the usual way. Pouring over a litre and a half of water, I brought it to high pressure and let it cook for an hour or so whilst wandering off to decide on what sort of soup to make for lunch.

I ended up looking at some Vietnamese Pho recipes. This is normally made with beef stock, but hey, chicken and gammon stock is what was in the pot.

The packet of Thai rice noodles in the cupboard looked close enough. Plenty of fresh herbs in the garden for the garnish. Just needed some spices to have gone in with the stock...

So, a quick cooldown of the pressure cooker under the cold tap later, I added:

• 6 cloves
• 4 green cardamon, crushed to split the pods open
• 2 black cardamon, crushed to split the pods open
• 3 star anise
• a couple of inches of cassia bark
• a tablespoon of coriander seeds
• a tsp of fennel seeds
• an inch or so of fresh root ginger, sliced

Got it back up to high pressure and gave it another half hour whilst I rounded up and prepped everything else.

• The rice noodles simply went in a bowl, pour over boiling water to cover and leave for 4 minutes before draining and dividing between the serving bowls.

• A bundle of coriander leaves and chives and a sprig of fennel leaves, all roughly chopped together and divided between the serving bowls.

• A small onion, peeled and thinly sliced, and divided between the serving bowls.

By this point, the pressure cooking time was up, so back under the cold tap with it for another quick cooldown.
I strained the soup through a plastic sieve into a large bowl, then added to taste:

• a couple of tablespoons of fish sauce
• a dash or two of light soy sauce
• a dash or two of bottled lime juice

Pouring the soup over the noodles and herbs in the bowls, and it was ready to serve.

Not having actually ever eaten the real thing, I have no idea how close I got to the right flavour, but my daughter said she had had pho at a Vietnamese restaurant with her Dad once, and it tasted pretty close.

She then drowned it in sriracha sauce.


Categories: Vietnamese  Soup

Broccoli and Stilton Soup

This is a tasty, creamy soup, full of green vegetableness, and subtly flavoured with stilton cheese. Even the blue-cheese-hating members of this household will eat it.

It is also very quick to cook up in the pressure cooker.