Month: October 2012

Onion Squash Soup (served in an Onion Squash)

Posted on by Trish

Here’s something you could make for Halloween.  Please NO carving of scary faces into the squash before serving up – it makes the soup fall out.

sssooop

 

For each serving you’ll need:

  • One onion squash – about 550-600g whole weight
  • 1 and a half teaspoons of olive oil
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 15g creamed coconut  and half a teaspoon nutritional yeast  flakes OR  30g goat’s cheese
  • Vegetable stock
  • Parsley or chives to garnish
  1. Cut small amount from base of squash so that it stands flat
  2. Make another cut right through the squash about 2/3 of the way up and remove that section
  3. Scoop out seeds and discard
  4. Armed with a sharp knife and a metal spoon, excavate chunks of squash as you would if you were hollowing out a pumpkin – however aim for chunks all being approximately same size
  5. Put chunks of squash in a bowl and mix well with olive oil
  6. Transfer to baking tray and bake at 200°C, checking every 10 minutes, till chunks are soft (cooking time will vary depending on how big chunks are)
  7. When soft, transfer to blender and blend together with all other ingredients except for garnish (you can vary amount of stock to get a thinner or thicker soup)
  8. If soup not warm enough, transfer to saucepan and warm through
  9. Pour into hollowed-out squash to serve and sprinkle with garnish

Please note: onion squash also tastes amazing just on its own

WWPP: 5

How to put 4 different salads in the same bowl

Posted on by Trish

We were having falafels last night, which are great but haven’t got the cheeriest of colours shining up from your plate to welcome you home from your working day.  Having ‘just a bit of salad’ with them and sauces to go on them wouldn’t therefore do.  When it’s raining outside you kinda want some zing and I don’t hold with putting things in pitta bread unless one is out and has no option but to eat while walking.  I first decided I wanted to dish up 4 different things in one of those compartmentalised dishes, then I remembered we don’t own one so I worked out a way to get 4 things tidily into the same bowl.  To recreate the culinary wonder you see before you, you have to *shock horror* not mind tinfoil briefly touching your food.

You will need:

  • A bowl
  • Pair of chopsticks
  • Tinfoil, one side of which at least is spotlessly clean
  • Something to scrunch up inside the tinfoil to make it take up more space
  • 4 salads or other things to put in the bowl
    1. Place chopsticks across each other over the top of the bowl making 4 spaces
    2. Make 3 balls from tinfoil and whatever you’re putting inside (I used recycled kitchen roll) and place these in 3 of the spaces
    3. Starting with your most solid salad, place salads into the spaces, removing one tinfoil ball at a time
    4. You can add a sauce or something semi-liquid like houmous or a thick dip into the final space
    5. Remove the chopsticks and stick something pretty in the middle like parsley, olives or one of those tomatoes that has been carved to look like a… *fails to describe*
IMAG0608 IMAG0610

Looks a lot better when well-lit and photographed with a better camera.

4 salads

Salads clockwise from bottom left: grated carrot (including the lesser-known yellow carrots, for in fact carrots do come in many colours – and look like they might just be fizzy), houmous (low fat varieties taste nicer = discovery of the month), tomatoes and cucumber, baked beetroot/beets with satsuma and flat leaf parsley.  In the middle are some olives because I can’t carve tomatoes to look good and had already used parsley.

Sweet Potato Curry

Posted on by Trish

The area of London where I used to live and the area of London where I live now have something in common – good South Indian restaurants.  Hence I know the delights of dosas, sambhar and coconut chutney and would take them over poppadoms and something eye-watering with rice any day.  Last time I went to my favourite South Indian Restaurant I was informed that their dosas contravened my no-dairy rule, which made me go ‘meh!’.  Then I thought “I bet I can make my own and make it dairy-free!”.  And I nearly did.  By the time I’d got the hang of how to fry the dosas there was only enough mixture to give everyone a tiny one by the side of their plate.  Fortunately the curry got the seal of approval from everyone who tried it, including the lovely neighbours, who have provided me with the photo below.

SONY DSC

The dosa and sambhar are from a packet I bought at Morrisons although you can buy them online here
The dosa is based on rice and lentil flours but there’s a disclaimer on the pack that says it’s packed in a plant that processes wheat flour also so I don’t know if that counts as safely GF
The curry’s fine though – the amount below makes 3 portions

  • 350g sweet potato (one large one)
  • 125g carrots (I think about 3 medium-sized)
  • 1 red onion
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • Teaspoon sunflower oil (or other neutral oil)
  • 125g red kidney beans, cooked or canned and drained
  • 80g french beans (or dwarf or runner beans)
  • 100ml coconut milk
  • Teaspoon curry powder
  • Teaspoon stock powder
  • 2 medium tomatoes
  • Squirt of agave nectar
  1. Boil the sweet potato and the carrots till almost soft, steam the french beans over the same saucepan if you’re lazy (I am, BTW)
  2. Fry the onion and garlic in the oil in a wok or substantial frying pan
  3. Transfer potato and carrots to the same pan
  4. Add curry powder, tomatoes and (both lots of) beans and stir in
  5. Pour on enough hot stock to cover and simmer
  6. Add coconut milk and agave nectar
  7. Keep simmering till liquid reduces and potatoes and carrots go a bit mushy

In the interests of learning to make things that tend towards the healthy, I’ll be marking some of these recipes with Weight Watchers Pro Points values.  I know a number of my friends are doing Weight Watchers and I’d like to put recipes on here they can try so you’ll see at the bottom of some recipes the letters WWPP and a number.   People who are unconcerned with or even anti the whole Weight Watching thing are welcome to ignore the letters and the number.

WWPP: 6

Spring Rolls

Posted on by Trish

Vietnamese spring rolls are not fried and thus a more salady option; if you’d like to make spring rolls similar to those you’ve had in restaurants and takeaways then brush these with oil and bake or deep or shallow fry.  If you’ve used too much water preparing the pancakes then there is a danger they’ll fall apart during the cooking process (this is why there isn’t a post-cooking photo in this post – ALL of the ones I put in the oven burst open, fortunately they still taste great).

springrolls

Yes, well spotted, they’re not perfectly formed tubes.  When the spring roll folding machine at the factory can do my job, be a good companion/family member/colleague, look good in jeans and be able to sing in a Welsh accent, then and only then will criticism be permitted.

Almost all of the ingredients for these I had in the cupboards and fridge already.  The wrappers for the spring rolls are Rice Flour Pancakes from a company called Blue Dragon and they contain rice flour, tapioca flour starch, salt and water.  The packaging does not say that they are gluten free but, as far as Wikipedia can tell, all of the ingredients are so I’m including this recipe as gluten free.

Mixture in the middle bit
Start with some salad ingredients in a bowl; I used leftover salad comprised of carrots, lettuce, cucumber and tomato with the carrots grated and the tomato, lettuce and cucumber cut up finely …and tomato seeds removed.  I added a pinch of Chinese 5 spice and a splash of soy sauce also some home-sprouted mung beans (although the ones you can get in the shop are fine too) and mixed it all together in a bowl.

Pancake rolling bit
Rice flour pancakes are kinda stiff, like poppadoms before you fry them.  In order to fold them around your mixture you need to get them a bit wet so they’re more pliable.  If you’re not intending frying them then go for it and stick them under running water.  If you want them more rigid then try pressing them against a damp tea towel (a clean one, not the one you’ve been using for a week).  With your pancake damp, place about a handful of your mixture into just off the middle and roll the pancake around it, sealing the (approximation of a) tube in place with a bit more water.  Now roll up the ends and seal in the same way.

Serve with dipping sauce of your choice.  And run an image search for Vietnamese Spring Rolls to see how lovely they can look when prepared by someone who isn’t me 🙂