Carrot, coriander and sun dried tomato sausages

I've been catching up with the lovely photos and recipes at Mangocheek's (don't you love the name?!) Allotment to Kitchen blog. She's an ace veggie gardener and also posts some great photos of her trips around the Glasgow area. A few recipes caught my eye when I was reading about her latest kitchen adventures recently, but there was one I just wanted to go and make immediately - some vegan roasted veggie sun dried tomato and olive sausages. We make burgers fairly often but not sausages and I was really taken with the idea.


I couldn't use this recipe exactly though - lovely though it sounded - as it contained several anti-Scientist ingredients. Namely, the olives and the oats which formed part of the filler and also the coating. I also wanted to use up the carrots from our vegbox, but I loved the idea of using lentils and sun dried tomato, and also of roasting the veggies. So I tinkered a bit and was really pleased with the results. The flavours shone through, and the sausages weren't too heavy, as potato-based things can sometimes be. Olives would have been a great addition, but hey, what can you do. The Scientist liked them too - he did say that they could have been less carroty (I pointed out helpfully that they were carrot sausages), and suggested adding some sweet potato another time. I think that would be really good too. I roughly halved mangocheeks' recipe and made five sausages which was just right for us. I served them with some baked potato wedges, dusted with paprika, and also some steamed spring greens, all from the veg box.

Guest photograph: The Scientist took this great impromptu shot of our matching pair of pooks just as the sun was starting to go down last night. I didn't even know he knew how to work my camera :)

Carrot, coriander and sun dried tomato sausages - adapted from Mangocheeks
4 carrots, washed and cut into chunks
2 garlic cloves, left whole
1/4 cup red lentils
150ml stock
handful of fresh coriander, chopped
2 sundried tomatoes, soaked in hot water
flaxseed meal and chickpea flour, for thickening and coating - I used about 1 Tbsp of flaxseed meal and about 1/4 cup of chickpea flour.

Roast the carrots and garlic at 200C for about half an hour - until soft

Cook lentils in the stock until soft

Put veggies and lentils in a food processor, with the coriander, chopped sun dried tomatoes. coriander and seasoning, to taste. Blend until well combined.

Add the flaxseed meal and enough chickpea flour that you can mould it - it will still be soft and quite damp.

Form into sausages and roll in some more chickpea flour.

Cook gently in a frying pan sprayed with some oil spray, turning every so often.

Cricket teas are here again

I posted last year about taking our turn on the tea rota for The Scientist's cricket club. This year we were picked for an early slot - in fact the first home match of the season (I think that the committee has noticed that I like baking :) ). I was really chuffed that an Australian lady left me a lovely comment saying how helpful my posts about making the teas had been last year, so I thought I'd do a quick update.


The Scientist was in charge of sandwiches again, following his production-line success last time. Luckily we read over my post again to remember what quantities of things we needed as we had completely forgotten that I'd noted that we'd only really needed three loaves of bread instead of four. Three turned out to be pretty much perfect. As far as the cakery went, we stuck with the scones, tray bake, cake formula. The Nigella scones I made last time are now are absolute stalwarts in our house, so I didn't hesitate to make a double quantity of those again. It made about 26 or 27 smallish but tall scones, and while there were some leftover when I left after tea, I'm sure they got snaffled after the match. We also did jam and whipped cream with them. Obviously. This is cricket after all.


The tray bake I did last time was a chocolate biscuit cake, and I actually didn't deviate too far from that either. I happened to have seen a souped-up malteser version on Ruth's kitchen experiments just a week or two ago, and liked the idea of the whole maltesers so much that I went for that. The chocolate melts off the maltesers so you're left with the crunchy middle bit, which looks rather good when cut, I think. The topping was white chocolate which I did find a bit sweet (also it went a bit gnarly as I melted it - I don't have a bowl suitable for a double-boiler, so I had to melt it in a pan). It did look good in cross-section and The Scientist gave it a thumbs up, but I think I'd probably just add maltesers to my regular recipe in future. Still, it was fun to try an alternative.


As to the cake, last time I made a big double-layer lemon drizzle. This time I gave The Scientist a shortlist and he picked a coconut lime cake (spot a citrus theme here?!). I was just a bit worried that a single loaf cake wouldn't feed as many as the big lemon one had, so since I had some coconut milk left over from making a curry, I also made a batch of the coconut lime cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. The loaf cake (which I actually made in a square pan as my loaf tin is too small) was very good, and really easy to make - it didn't look the greatest but got a lot of good comments about its limeiness and moistness, but the cupcakes also had a good following too (I didn't mention the vegan bit - although I have to admit that the icing was a butter one). One person said they were the dampest cakes he'd ever had, and when I asked if that was good looked at me as though I was crazy. We got a lot of really nice comments about the whole tea, and The Scientist's egg sandwiches were particularly praised too :)

Coconut and lime cake

The whole process actually wasn't quite as fun as last year - we'd had to get up pretty early for a Sunday to get it all started, and since I was making an extra cake I wasn't able to help with the sandwich production line which had been the fun part last time. But it was still nice to try out a couple of new recipes, and I had a lovely cycle ride over to the ground to help out. Due to an unforeseen batting collapse I nearly arrived too late and the scones had to stay uncut - but I still got to hang around for the kudos :)

Coconut and lime cupcake. Apologies to the creators for their lack of style. I had two issues here: firstly the players were coming in for their tea as I iced; and secondly, the icing was very very sturdy and had to be dolloped on to the cake rather than piped nicely. Luckily cricketers are not fazed by these things (too busy eating)

Update on The Scientist's return: a narrow loss, but extra thanks for the tea!
Note to 2011 us: 600g of cheese is WAAAAAAAAY too much!

I don't like to post the recipe for the vegan coconut and lime cupcakes since the recipes from that book are all over the place. But if you google it you'll find it somewhere!

Coconut and lime cake - from Prima magazine
Serves 12
175g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
175g golden caster sugar
50g tenderised sweetened coconut [I used unsweetened dessicated]
3 eggs
150ml natural yogurt [I used low fat Greek]
finely grated zest and juice of two limes
175g butter, melted

To decorate:
1 lime
12g golden icing sugar [I used normal non-golden]
1 Tbsp tenderised sweetened coconut [or dessicated]

Preheat oven to Gas 4/180C. Grease and line a 2 lb loaf tin [I used a larger square one]. Put flour, baking powder, caster sugar and coconut into a processor. Pulse to combine.

Put eggs into a jug with yogurt, zest and juice from limes, and mix with a fork. Pour into dry ingredients with butter and pulse until just combined.

Pour into prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes until golden. Cool for 10 mins

To make icing: finely grate lime zest and peel away white pith [so you're left with a naked lime]. Put lime flesh into a mini processor and whizz till lump free. Add icing sugar. Pour over cake and sprinkle over finely grated lime zest and coconut.

Penguin and mushroom salad

I'm probably inviting all sorts of weird web search results with a title like that - what a world of difference a missing comma makes (as I said to my students this week in a seminar that rather worryingly had to turn into a grammar lesson on how to use an apostrophe). Needless to say, the penguin was only matched with the mushrooms in the course of writing this post, and neither was harmed in the process.


The mushroom salad was actually my entry to Lisa and Jacqueline's monthly No Croutons Required event, which was featuring chickpeas this month. Chickpeas are our favourite pulse (is that sad or with-the-moment?) so I really wanted to enter - but busy-ness got the better of me actually posting it before the deadline. I had paired my chickpeas with a marinated and grilled portobello mushroom, serving it with mixed leaves and sundried tomato, and with some home-made blackberry vinegar drizzled over the top. I would have added avocado too if I'd had any - I think that would be a nice additional texture. You can't really see the vinegar in the photo but it gave a nice fruity acidity. I kept the marinade simple as I didn't want the vinegar to get drowned - just a bit of shaosing wine, some balsamic vinegar and some garlic powder.

Inquisitive penguin

The penguin was another matter entirely. I started him quite a while ago but then didn't have any orange wool, so he sat rather sinisterly beakless and featureless for several weeks. Then I got some more wool and made him his beak, but didn't get round to attaching his wings or giving him any eyes. So when I finally got him all together I was pleasantly surprised at how cute he was. He's another character from my book of knitted toys, and the reason I was pushed to finally finish him, is because he's one of several ambassadors from my sewing group, to an exhibition of toys in Cardiff. One of our remote members lives there, so she will be taking them in, and hopefully seeing them in situ. They come back to their owners eventually, which I'm pleased about - I felt rather sad squishing him into the postbox to go off on his important errand.

Scholarly penguin

The Easter break starts at the end of this week so hopefully I will get a few more posts up - including an award from the lovely Johanna :)

Thoughtful penguin

Spinach and lentil soup revisited

We half live off soup during the winter months and have lots of home-cooked favourites - but I don't eat soup out that often any more as it so often has butter, milk or cream in it. So when I saw that the theme of Jaqueline and Lisa's No Croutons Required this month was copycats I was at a bit of a loss. Definitely the best soup I've eaten in a cafe or restaurant in years though was the spinach and lentil soup from Earth Cafe in Manchester which I already blogged about. When I tried to recreate it that time I put mushrooms in it, and made a nice soup, but not that like the original. But I have to admit that I have a cheat now. The soup was so amazing that I emailed the cafe afterwards to tell them, and to ask if I might possibly be able to have the recipe. Lovely people that they are, they estimated a recipe based on four people and sent it back to me. I don't like to reproduce it directly since they were so nice as to pass it on, but the copycat theme made me think to make a variant on it this week, based on what we had in the house. It was pretty much as good as the one I had at the cafe if memory serves correctly - thick and earthy and pleasingly green. The original recipe called for quite a lot more lentils than I used, but I made mine to eat the next day and it thickened up lots. If you're eating it straight away I'd think about adding some more.


Earth Cafe redux spinach and lentil soup
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 Tbsp tomato puree
1 Tbsp dried thyme
200g red lentils
1.2 litres stock
Big load of spinach, washed

Fry onion and carrots in a little oil until soft. Add tomato puree and stir. Add lentils, thyme and stock, and simmer until lentils are done. Add spinach and let it wilt like crazy. Blend. Yum.

Earth Cafe is at 16-20 Turner Street, Manchester

Full O'Goodness burgers

Look - a savoury thing! We do eat proper food in this house! I made these burgers to use up some tofu and because I just couldn't stay enthusiastic about scrambling it, which was my first thought. The Scientist had said he was game to try it, and lots of people seem to like it, but I just wasn't convinced. So instead, I partnered it with all the good things I could find in the fridge and the cupboard and made some healthy little protein-heavy burgers.


It's easier to describe what I did than write out a recipe as it was all a bit imprecise. I just got out the food processor and threw in: about half a block of firm tofu, pressed and then crumbled up; half of a big sweet potato, which I'd steamed in the microwave; about 1/2 tsp of tamari, and about 1 tsp of sweet miso; a small bunch of hijiki seaweed which I'd also cooked in water for a few minutes in the microwave and then chopped up; a handful of mixed pumpkin and sunflower seeds; and about a tablespoonful of wheatgerm. I blitzed it all up and then added wholemeal flour a bit at a time until it looked as if it was going to hold together. The mixture was very soft, but it held together fine, and I rolled each burger shape in a bit more flour and some wholemeal breadcrumbs for a coating. I dithered about how to cook them, and in the end baked them for about 20 minutes at about 175C. They weren't very crisp so I put them quickly under the grill for a few minutes which helped. We were running to a schedule or I would have left them a bit longer to crisp up some more.


The burgers were much softer than our usual various favourites. But they were nice - sweet from the potato and the miso, with some crunch from the seeds and breadcrumbs. I'd definitely make them again, perhaps playing around a bit with the proportions. We ate them in wholemeal wraps with salad, tomato relish and avocado. I always laugh at how The Scientist and I eat our wraps. I generally only have one so I put quite a bit of filling in, fold up one end, and then roll it up. It's messy but fun. The Scientist has more than one, so he puts less in each, and folds it up into a neat little envelope. I just think it's funny that I'm usually the anal - no, neat - one, but his dinner is so much neater. I had another leftover one for lunch the next day, with baked beans and a fried egg. And then I accidentally nuked another one into oblivion when microwaving it. I still have one left in the fridge - I must have made 8 or so.

I should probably add, in fairness to The Scientist, that I am neat with eating, but not at all neat with my crafting projects or shoes. He is very tolerant as long as all of my knitting stays over my end of the sofa and doesn't menace him or the cats with pointy needles. Seems fair enough, really.

Persimmon chutney delight

How well I remember the first time I met a persimmon. We were in Fremantle market near Perth a few years ago. I had drawn us over to the fruit and veg stands, where lots of the traders had examples of their wares for tasting. I was a bit suspicious when one held out a slice of what looked like very firm tomato - I thought I was quite well-up on exotic fruits from years of celebrating the Jewish harvest festival as a child, but I didn't recognise this. I tried it anyway - and was sold. This was no tomato (though I love tomatoes). Instead it was a supremely sweet-yet-firm nugget of delight, and it was a persimmon. When we got home I realised that you can get them in the supermarkets here, but for at least half their season they are imported from South Africa. For the other half, however, they come from Israel, and I'm prepared to extend my definition of European that far (Eurovision, people - they're in Eurovision). So for those few months I gorge on these little delights, and try not to think about how much sugar I must be ingesting. A few weeks ago I outdid even myself, however, as I bought a whole bag for a pound from Coventry market, and even I don't allow myself to eat that many in quick succession. They were starting to look a bit sorry for themselves after a week or so, and I decided I'd better find another use for them.*


I've been engaged in a long-term project to clear and defrost the freezer so I didn't want to bake any breads or cookies that would end up in there. Instead I was inspired by two very nice fruit chutneys I've eaten over the last few weeks, and found this recipe instead. The reviews were very useful, so I made the following changes:
I halved everything EXCEPT the fruit. I had so much of it, and wanted it to be really fruity, so I used four or possibly even five smallish very ripe persimmons.
I used much less than half of the vinegar as comments said that it was very vinegary. I wanted quite a loose chutney so I added a little bit more water towards the end, and mine was neither too vinegary nor too dry.
I used half cider vinegar and half white wine vinegar because I didn't have enough cider vinegar.


The resulting chutney had a good spicy kick to it, though you could dial the heat up or down according to preferences. I filled one average sized jar from my batch, which was just right. I have a bit of a tendency to hoard chutneys, and now that I hardly eat cheese I don't use it very much! I'm looking forward to trying this one with salads and bread though, and I might even let The Scientist try it. If he buys me some more persimmons.


A couple more pertinent persimmon facts: there are two types of persimmon, one of which is wonderful, but the other of which is astringent and disgusting. There is no mistaking whether you have the right one! The right one is small and tomato shaped, although it also depends on how ripe they are. The other is bigger and more bulbous (see a handy illustrated guide from another persimmon lover here). Secondly, persimmons are also called sharon fruits, but I think persimmon is prettier. Thirdly, my aunt told me you shouldn't eat more than one per day, but I have no idea why. Fourthly, if you cut the top off and put one in the freezer for a few hours, they make a delicious little sorbet you can eat with a spoon. Versatile AND pretty, eh? But I can't show you how pretty because I'd eaten all the others by the time I made the chutney :)

* why didn't The Scientist help me out? Well, to be honest, I don't even know if he likes them as they are so firmly designated as mine. He could try one if he wanted, honest. Well, as long as I had at least six more in the bowl.

Cooking Italian

A couple of weekends ago Munchkin Granny and I did an Italian vegetarian cookery course at the Vegetarian Society's Cordon Vert Cookery School. I used to see adverts for this school in the back of the old vegetarian cooking magazines which disappeared years ago, and always thought that you must have to be terribly well-off and serious about cooking to go on one. Well, roll forwards fifteen years, and there were MG and I, aprons on, hair tied back, sitting round a shiny metal table in the pro kitchen at the Cordon Vert (and for the record, we're neither terribly well-off nor serious cooks). We'd picked an Italian day, partly because the date worked out well, but partly because we both really like Italian food. We had an introductory talk from the tutor, and then between the group of about 9, cooked a three-course meal which we all shared, family style, at the end of the day. We all made pasta, which I've made before at home, but never so successfully, and divided the other dishes up between us. MG made a lemon risotto cake, and I did a tomato sauce for the pasta, and a Mediterranean chickpea salad. Other dishes included stuffed peppers, baked fennel in cream, focaccia. spicy courgettes, and for dessert, a really yummy marinated boozy orange dish with chocolate vegan ice cream and biscotti. The whole meal was really lovely and we all left weighed down with the amount of food we'd eaten, and full of enthusiasm to get back to our own kitchens.


I haven't tried making pasta again since then, but I was tempted to revisit the chickpea salad. On the day of the course I had made it exactly as the recipe stated, but at home I fiddled around a little. My first substitution was to replace celery with red pepper (neither of us likes celery), and the second was to reduce the oil in the dressing from 4 tablespoons to 1. To be honest, I think that the best would be somewhere between 2 and 4. The 4 Tbsp version did coat the salad more satisfyingly than the reduced oil one, although you still got the zingy flavours of capers, lemon and garlic which are sauted in it in my version. I suppose in my one the dressing was more like a garnish, but either way, the flavours in the dressing are what make the main salad ingredients really come together and stand out. I made it for lunch when Scientist Sister and family popped by and it was a hit with everyone. I had to serve the olives on the side to appease The Scientist's palate, but a little self-assembly never hurt anyone.


I'm sending this Italian salad to Jacqueline and Lisa for this month's round of No Croutons Required, which has 'Mediterranean' as its theme.


Italian Chickpea Salad (adapted from the Cordon Vert School's Italian workshop)
Serves 4

1 Tbsp olive oil (or more)
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 Tbsp capers, drained and chopped
1 Tbsp parsley, finely chopped
1/2 Tbsp dried red chilli flakes
1 lemon, grated rind and juice
1 can chickpeas, drained
6 sundried tomatoes, rehydrated (or from a jar)
half a pepper, chopped small
sliced green olives, to taste
1 bag mixed salad leaves, including rocket

1. Heat the oil in a small pan, adding the garlic, capers, parsley, chillies and grated lemon rind. Saute for 2 minutes.

2. Place the chickpeas, sundried tomatoes, pepper and olives in a bowl. Pour the garlic mixture and 1 Tbsp lemon juice over them.

3. Arrange the salad leaves in a serving bowl and add the chickpea salad.

Buckwheat crepes - flipping the French way

This title is a blatant attempt to take away from the embarrassingly poor quality of the photos of my crepes. What can I say - the light is fading in the evenings and I was very hungry and keen to get on with my dinner. But these crepes were really nice and so I wanted to post about them anyway.


I've been cooking with wholegrains for some time, but I haven't really experimented with wholegrain flours. This is largely because I don't want to let myself buy even more bags of sundries than I already have - the staples storecupboard has recently become even more of a hazard as I discovered several new types of noodles (and I can't resist a new noodle). However, I do have a coffee grinder, and I have discovered that it is extremely easy to grind the grain into the flour. This is how I made the chickpea flour I used in the sweet potato falafel I made a while back, and it's also great for grinding linseeds/flaxseeds. This time it ground me some buckwheat flour with no problems at all.


I was interested in buckwheat flour because it's the basis of traditional French savoury crepes, or galettes. It's also very nutritious, according to this website entry, plus it's gluten free. After a bit of searching about I found a recipe that used almost all buckwheat flour, plus a little plain flour (the recipe is actually gluten free, so it uses GF flour, though I imagine that any other would work just as well). It's from the brilliantly titled 'Book of Yum' blog - I do like a good name to go with a good recipe. I halved it since The Scientist doesn't like savoury crepes, and it made me four good-sized ones. The first night I filled it with The Scientist's best ever bean chilli (so smoky - unfortunately he says he can't remember what he did differently from usual so I'm hoping that intuition will lead him down the same path next time. I would happily have eaten this chilli every night for about a month it was so good). The second time I was eating alone while the best beloved was out playing his last cricket match of the season (65 not out and a catch - not a bad way to end), and I made a mushroom and leek filling with the 'cheezy sauce' from Veganomicon. Both tasted great and photographed badly. But don't let that put you off. I will definitely be making these again as I particularly liked the nutty wholesome taste of the buckwheat. But I didn't flip them properly, I have to admit - just a gentle little blip with a spatula to turn them over.

Not only did I have a jolly tasty supper while The Scientist was out batting like crazy, but his return also brought more excitement. One of the team asked him if I would like to make a dessert for 20 people for the cricket club quiz next month. Needless to say I am already building up excitement levels - I'm currently favouring a tart (lemon or chocolate - or both), or a big pile of cupcakes. Any thoughts?

Buckwheat crepe recipe (gluten free - and there is also a vegan option on the same blog): here

Oaty banana bars - new snack of choice

I've been trying to think of some new healthy snacks recently, and fancied trying out some variation on a seedy munchy bar. Seeds are a good way to get some good oils into my snacks since I don't like nuts, and I thought that oats and bananas would be a good way to keep them moist, sweet and substantial enough to see me through an afternoon of battling with data not meant for twenty-first-century analysis (standardised names? Pah. Dates which correspond with the modern calendar? Piffle. Entries obscured by 18th century dirt? A mere trifle).

You get the picture; let's get back to the bananas.


I searched around for recipes that featured my main ingredients and came upon a site called Patty Cakes - a blog by a Canadian baker who features lots of healthy recipes which are suited to various special diets as well. This was a recipe called Banana Booty Bars which immediately tickled my fancy, and even more so when I noticed that Patty had included a variation which used coconut oil. I had bought some of this on the Norse Goddess's recommendation, and it's also favoured by one of my favourite bloggers, Heidi of 101 Cookbooks and Super Natural Cooking. It's unrefined, which I like, and it's also solid at room temperature which is sort of fun. If you use the oil they're vegan, and they're also wheat-free. I omitted the walnuts and used sunflower seeds instead, and raisins instead of the dates. I did add some grated orange peel, but decided to try them without choc chips this time. So many variations!


The bars were really delicious. I was probably quite light-handed with the sugar as I wanted them to be fruity-sweet, and it was just the right balance. They didn't taste particularly of coconut but it was nice to know that the fat was a relatively healthy one. The raisins and bananas together kept them really moist, while the oats and seeds lent them bulk and crunch. I made half a batch in a standard loaf tin, so they were quite thick. They were still lovely two days later, and I've put the rest in the freezer to snack on when the data get particularly obstructive. They're great with a cup of tea, and they travel well, too (I ate one on the train home and didn't even get crumbs on my laptop. Though it might explain why I seemed to have an oat stuck under my Ctrl key most of the morning....) Go on, make these now, and go and have a look at Patty's other great recipes too!

Banana Booty Bars (vegan and wheat free): recipe here

Marmite munchies

We all know that nuts and seeds are good for us, don't we? I want to like them, to garner all those juicy little essential fatty acids and minerals, but I just can't get past their - well, nuttiness, frankly. The sight of a hugely magnified picture of peanuts on the side of a KP nut van makes me gag. Seeds aren't as bad, but they're still not anywhere near the top of my list of snacks. Until now. Thanks to the power of marmite, a pile of unappealing seeds has been transformed into my ticket to EFA and B12 goodness.


I'd thought before about seasoning and baking some seeds like the ones you can buy, but had never yet got round to it. The idea for the marmite was from a cookbook of Munchkin Granny's - a Marmite Cookbook in fact. I have no idea where it came from; one of Kiwi Sis's friends was obsessed by marmite, but I can't think that it extended to planting recipe ideas in other people's kitchens. Anyway, it was so easy that I whipped up a batch in about five minutes flat when I got home, and I've been snacking on them ever since.


Having established just how easy it is to turn seeds into something I'd actually want to eat I'm keen to explore other flavour options now, and other seeds. Before you know it I will be a pinnacle of good health. Either that or essentially fat :) But I think the nuts are a step too far.

Marmite seeds (from My Mate in the Kitchen; the Marmite cookbook)
1 Tbsp marmite
1 Tbsp boiling water
150g seeds (the recipe said pumpkin; I used sunflower)

Mix marmite and hot water, and pour over seeds. Stir to coat them all. Spread the seeds out on a baking sheet (I put them on a silicone sheet to stop them sticking and ease cleaning up). Grill for about 8 minutes, but start checking after 4 or 5. The book says 4-5 total but mine took longer to get crunchy. Leave them to cool, then stir them around to separate the big clumps, and store in an airtight jar.

Vanilla poached quince and apricot

Gosh darn it, I was just about to go out to the gym and it's started raining - and The Scientist has just left to play cricket (of course). So I'll write a blog post and hope it stops. The weather we're having at the moment it might last 4 seconds or it might last all evening.


Anyway, this is a dessert I made a couple of weeks ago after finally spying some quince in a local greengrocer. I've been intrigued by quince since reading Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess, where she features it in several recipes. It's a quintessentially English orchard type of fruit and yet I have never previously seen it in the shops, despite looking. I snapped up two and gleefully brought them home with no particular idea as to what to do with them. They are hard, yellow fruits that look a lot like apples (and are related to them) but I don't believe that you would want to try biting into a raw one - not if you didn't want to spend the rest of the evening with your lips puckered inside your mouth. They have a long and illustrious history, however, being a symbol of fertility (what isn't?), associated with Aphrodite, and possibly even the fruit that Eve ate in the Garden of Eden. David Lebowitz says that they smell so nice that he likes to leave them in his kitchen overnight just for the fragrance. When I read that I went and sniffed ours, but they didn't seem to have an especially noticeable smell.


A week or so later, kitchen still unfragranced, I decided I should do something with them. I wanted something light, so I settled on a simple poached recipe. David Lebowitz has a couple, one of which particularly appealed because it used a vanilla syrup - one of my favourite flavours. I read all his instructions on how to peel these rather hard and knobbly fruits and set to work prepared for a battle. Alas, I had left my quinces a bit too long, and they were quite soft and dark in places when I cut into them. I had to cut so much off that I was only left with a small pile for poaching. I didn't want to give up, so I remembered the gingery poached dried apricots I made a while ago, and so added some dried apricots to my quince.


I was glad I'd stuck with it, as it made a lovely dessert. The quince was nice and soft, but I particularly liked the contrast between it and the chewier apricots. The syrup was very sweet - you could easily cut back on the sugar if you didn't have too sweet a tooth, or were making it for a breakfast compote, but the vanilla flavour was divine. This will be on the list for the next time I stumble upon a quince - whenever that is. Funnily enough though, I also found another ingredient I've been searching for for years this week - samphire. My PhD supervisor's wife used to cook it for their summer parties, but I have never found it anywhere. I finally found it at Borough Market last weekend and brought some back. I just steamed it lightly and ate it atop a poached egg on an English muffin. It was salty and yummy. I wish I'd bought more.

Vanilla poached quince recipe here (and I can recommend adding a few dried apricots too)

Joyous tomato and cabbage pilaf

This simple dinner was inspired by a bag of cherry tomatoes I bought at Borough Market when we were in London last weekend. That and the fact that the tomato-hating Scientist was out playing cricket (or trying to - that boy is very unlucky with the micro climate around here. He came back having got soaked; it had showered for two minutes here, only 15 minutes' drive away).


I had initially planned to make a simple tomato sauce for a pasta dish, but as the day wore on I began to fancy something featuring the crunch of my favourite grain, bulgar wheat. In the end I decided to keep with the simple and made this lovely pilaf, throwing in some cabbage we had in the fridge as well. My favourite way of eating tomatoes (apart from straight from the bag, like sweeties) is to roast them with some balsamic vinegar. It concentrates all the flavour and gives them a nice chewy texture as well. I put them in the oven and then got on with the rest of the cooking after about 20 minutes. This extra stage really made the dish, but you could just cook them in the pan when the bulgar goes in if you prefer not to turn on the oven. My dinner merited a happy dinner wiggle as I ate it, with some plain yogurt on the top, and a bit of wholemeal pitta bread on the side.


Tomato and cabbage pilaf
The trouble with making up my own dishes is that I pay no attention at all to quantities, so this is a rough guide rather than a proper recipe. I was just cooking for one, though as usual I made too much.

Cut a handful of cherry tomatoes in half (I did loads so as to have lots left over for other dishes and general snacking). Put them in a roasting tin and drizzle over some balsamic vinegar, some shaosing wine, a grinding of salt and pepper, and some fresh basil (or whatever other herbs you prefer). You can also add oil but I let the other liquids do their thing in preference. Roast in a preheated oven at around 180C for about half an hour - but leaving them longer just makes them even nicer and more chewy.

After about 20 minutes of roasting, fry some onion in a pan with a little oil. When it softens add some garlic (I used half of a big clove and it was very garlicky!). After a few more minutes add some shredded cabbage and cook for another few minutes, stirring often. Add about 50g bulgar wheat, stir and then add stock, to cover. Put a lid on the pan, and leave to simmer gently for about 10-15 minutes, until the bulgar is cooked. Serve with the tomatoes on top, and some plain yogurt to hand for drizzling. Dinner wiggle is optional, but advised.

Chocolate chilli cupcakes: unexpected star of English tea party

Chocolate chilli cupcakes, mystery treacle offering, jug of the Norse Goddess's sangria. The cupcakes are sitting on a cakestand I inherited from my Grandad.

We hosted a tea party yesterday, in honour of our visiting friends, the Norse God and Goddess. It was the fourth of July so it seemed like a fitting time to get some friends together - what with it being Alice in Wonderland Day and all :) This is a very well known English event, which I had been planning to celebrate for precisely two days, ever since I saw a poster advertising it in the Covered Market in Oxford. Oxford is, of course, the home of Alice, since C. S. Lewis was a don there, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, the site of the famous Treacle Well is near the city [interlude: Roger Federer has just won Wimbledon. During the course of the match I have moderated some essays, read a magazine, read the manual for my new camera, downloaded some pictures and made some bread. But winning Wimbledon sounds pretty good as well]. It was a coincidence that the (Canadian) Norse Goddess had come up with treacle as her first thought for an English tea party, but a happy one. She associated it with the Famous Five, so we were covering lots of children's literature bases.

The Norse Goddess gets creative (and personalised) with the cupcakes

I'll write more about how we turned the treacle theme into reality later, but this post is about the unexpected and not very English star of the tea party - the chocolate chilli cupcakes. This was inspired by the very first entry on my 2009 Cupcake Calendar, so I've been waiting a while to make it. My fellow dairy-reducing friend Vicki has shamed me into also reducing the amount of dairy products I use to bake for other people , so I didn't actually use the recipe from the calendar, but instead adapted the chocolate cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World. The calendar recipe called for the addition of chipotle chilli powder to the batter; we didn't have that, so I used regular chilli powder, and some of the sauce from a jar of chipotle chillis in adobo in lieu of some of the vanilla extract. I did go with the orange frosting the calender suggested, just using vegan marge instead of butter.

The Norse Goddess's over-sized butterfly bun (verdict: nom nom - in a Canadian accent)

The cakes were a big hit. There was a good hit of chilli - everyone noticed it, but it wasn't enough to make your eyes water (I'd been a bit worried about this). Our poor friend Neil, who got ambushed by the salt on the margarita-ish cupcakes I made a few weeks ago was also surprised by the chilli, but it doesn't seem to have been enough to put him off my baking, fortunately. No one complained that they tasted of soya milk either, so thank you Vicki for inspiring me to ban the cow's milk and butter :) The Norse Goddess and I got creative with the icing, and when I realised that she'd never had a butterfly bun, I turned one of the extras into her own little English fusion treat.

Cupcake ready for nomming, modelled by Mike

Our Alice party was a lot of fun, and was only slighted marred by the odd raindrop, which just served to push us inside to watch the Wimbledon women's final. The Norse Goddess made us up some sangria, which I've just realised I was drinking without diluting with lemonade, and The Scientist repeated his sandwich-making triumph from the cricket tea. His egg mayonnaise got particular mention in dispatches. The Norse deities were able sandwich minions, and the Norse God made the decorative bunting (environmentally friendly - made from Sunday newspaper colour supplements). Everyone was happy apart from Bamber the dog, who was kept confined to the car to avoid cat spooking. He didn't get a cupcake (naturally - chocolate being very bad for dogs indeed), but he did get a walk once the tea had gone down a little.

Eco bunting (note Andy Murray on third flag from the right!)

Chocolate chilli cupcakes (adapted from Vegan Cupcakes...)
Made 12 fairy cakes and two big cupcakes with the leftovers

1 cup soya milk
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp adobo sauce from a jar of chipotle chillis
1 cup plain white flour
1/3 cup cocoa powder
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp chilli powder

1. Preheat oven to 175 C and line a muffin tin with paper liners
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the soya milk and vinegar and set aside for a few minutes to curdle. Add the sugar, oil, vanilla and adobo sauce, and beat. In another bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb and salt. Add in two batches to the wet ingredients and beat until there are no large lumps. Add the chilli powder and stir to combine well.
3. Pour into the cupcake liners, filling three quarters of the way (this will create quite flat tops for icing. If you want to make butterfly buns, put a bit more in to get a domed top). Baking 18-20 minutes, until a tester comes out clean. Transfer to a rack and allow to cool before frosting.

Chocolate orange frosting (from the 2009 Cupcake Calendar)
1 cup icing sugar
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 Tbsp Grand Marnier (or Tia Maria)
1/3 cup butter or vegan margarine

Blend all of the ingredients together in a processor. The instructions said to sift the sugar but I didn't bother. Pipe the frosting onto the cooled cupcakes. Or, slice the top of the domed cupcakes and halve the cut-off top. Frost the top of the cupcake and then balance the two halves on top so that they look like wings (see photo)

Buffet-friendly kamut pilaf

Last week I hosted a meeting of the editorial board I sit on. The editor usually hosts and cooks up a storm, so I was a bit nervous. He'd put in a request for falafel when I said it was all going to be veggie so I themed the menu around middle-eastern-esque foods. The falafel went down very well, with toasted pittas, a spiced chickpea dip from Moosewood Low Fat Favourites, and a tahini dip (I bribed someone to take the leftovers away with them as I loathe tahini unless it's completely hidden in hummus), some roasted tomatoes and peppers with herbs and garlic, a carrot and orange salad, some salad leaves, some last-minute-panic feta with coriander leaves and oil drizzled over it, a roasted cherry tomato and cheddar tart (for those who aren't used to weird vegan grains) and this pilaf. It was based on a recipe in the BBC Food Vegetarian Summer magazine which used a grain called Ebly which I had never heard of, but which I subsequently have seen in a small box at a great price in the supermarket. I was keen to try out and use up a packet of another grain called kamut which I bought in a fit of zeal about a year ago so I subbed that instead. It looks like spelt and is similarly long-cooking, but is of ancient Egyptian origin. It's only quite recently been rediscovered, and it was described as having a 'buttery' taste in my wholegrains book. It was either going to be great or really really weird.


In the event it was very nice. I don't honestly think that I could have distinguished it from spelt if I hadn't known, and one of the other board members guessed that it was barley. It has more bite than that though - The Scientist liked it and he doesn't like barley. I said there would be a prize for anyone who could guess the grain, and no one had even heard of it which was fortunate as the prize was only dessert, which they were getting anyway :) The other good thing about the pilaf was that it was quick and easy to cook, and was nicely spiced because it simmers in well seasoned stock. I thought of serving it with some feta on the top but in the end decided to style the feta as its own dish to boost the spread on the table! Much to my relief there was enough food and it didn't seem to cause too much consternation among the omnivores. Next time we're going out for a pub lunch so carnivorousness will be restored to the masses!


Spiced kamut pilaf (based on one for Ebly grain in Good Food Vegetarian Summer magazine)
Serves 4 (I doubled it)

200g kamut
1 tbsp olive oil
1 large red onion, cut into thin wedges
1 large courgette, roughly chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed [the original recipe was for 3 cloves but one of my visitors doesn't like too much garlic]
2 tsp cumin seeds, lightly crushed
1 tsp turmeric
200g green beans, trimmed and cut into 2.5 cm pieces [the recipe said runner beans; I used whatever sort had travelled the fewest air miles]
140g cherry tomatoes
350ml vegetable stock
small handful of coriander

1. Cook the kamut in boiling water. It takes about an hour and a half. I did this a couple of days before, cooled and then froze it, but that's only because I had quite a lot of dishes to juggle on the day.
2. Heat the oil in a large frying pan, then fry the onion and courgette over a low heat for 5 minutes until soft. Stir in the garlic, cumin seeds and turmeric; fry for 1-2 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Add the beans, tomatoes and stock to the pan, bring to the boil, cover, then simmer for 5-6 minutes until the tomatoes just start to lose their shape.
4. Stir the drained kamut into the vegetables, then cook over a high heat for 2 minutes. Season to taste, stir in torn coriander and serve.

Tomato salad au Charles

Awww, you're all just so lovely :) Thank you for all the sweet comments after my return to blogland. I feel all invigorated to continue and am very pleased to be just managing to sneak in under the wire for this month's No Croutons Required. It's Holler's birthday edition, you see, so it seemed like an extra shame to miss it.


My salad is a very simple one, but the dressing makes it amazing. It's a speciality of my friend Charles, whom I visited yesterday. Charles and I go way back, right back to the first day of university, in fact, and I have him to thank for my initiation into the ways of toasted cheese sandwiches with pickles, how not to make stock, and how to dismount from a bike while it's still moving (actually I've never dared try that again after my debut). Charles' cooking skills have moved on from the cheese toastie days and both times I've seen him recently he's made a version of this salad. It's essentially a mix of lettuce, tomato and cucumber, with assorted other raw veggies and some fruit. The first time he used sliced apples, and this time it was grapes (I nearly made myself ill gorging on all the grapes!). The dressing is what brings it all together in a silky mustardyness, and was passed on to him by his dad. I hope I've remembered it correctly though I'm sure it would stand some customising. My own salad was a a bit of a pared down version as our fridge was a bit low on ingredients - some rocket and watercress, chopped tomatoes and cucumber, and some sliced pear. I added a lot of tomatoes since they are the theme of No Croutons Required this month. I love the smell of fresh tomatoes and am hoping that I'll have some more home-grown ones this year. They are (hopefully) germinating on the kitchen table, along with some peas, broad beans, herbs, and a small cucumber plant I bought on a whim today in the garden centre.


Since it's her birthday Holler has asked that we describe a whole meal to go with our tomato offerings. I'm sending over what I ate my salad alongside as it was fun: sauteed mushrooms, leeks and chard with some thyme and basil in a bit of tomato sauce, wrapped in pancakes. I served mine with some leftover sweet potato soup over the top as a sauce. It doesn't look too pretty but I think it was birthday-worthy. And just in case it's not, I'd bring out a luscious chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream icing as a dessert :)


Salad dressing au Charles
Put into a jar:
1 thumb of vinegar (not balsamic)
1 tsp English mustard
1 tsp salt
2 thumbs of olive oil

Shake and dress.

It's spring! (and a grainy mushroom pilaf)

The clocks have changed, the evenings are light, the sunshine is here (at least sporadically) and I have nearly finished teaching for the year. I am feeling fresh and invigorated and full of good intentions for actually doing something with the garden this year. I've been out there weeding and scattering seed about already this evening, and I have the soil under my fingernails to prove it.

The Scientist's trademark pancakes

So what has happened in this 6 week blog hiatus at Munchkin Mail? Well, Johanna has had a baby - the lovely Sylvia! Many congratulations! Our friends Tom and Tabitha have also produced number 2 sprog, as have Steve and Sarah. We met another set of friends, Dom and Becca's gorgeous little one last week, and The Munchkinette is crawling! And us? Well I've written 10 lectures, taken 20 seminars, given two conference papers and finished a book chapter. Does that count? I've also still been cooking and baking though I've got completely out of the habit of photographing anything, and so I will just have to tell you about the brownies that were so scrumptious and foolproof that I made them twice in one week, the decadent be-ganached marscapone brownies I made for Comic Relief, the banana-carrot cake I sent to the gamers, my new favourite salad - Ricki's edamame bean and seaweed (so simple, SO flavoursome), Heidi's bulgar and cauliflower chick pea hot pot which actually manages to make kale taste nice, and a delicious cauliflower and coconut milk curry I'm not sure if I can find again. I've made a few more cookies for my colleagues as well but mid-week baking really fell by the wayside with all the lectures and a whole ton of admin which came my way. Maybe next week...

Edamame and seaweed salad

I have to admit that I wasn't really sure if I was going to pick up the blog again after having a break. Although people tell me they keep up with my posts my real life (as opposed to blogland) friends are a little reticent about communicating. You might know what I'm up to, but people - I know NOTHING about what you're doing! So if you read this and enjoy it, please get in touch. Leave me a comment or send me an email with your news. Otherwise it's just me broadcasting random details about my personal life and that's not really what it's all about. Having said that, some people I've met through blogging left me some lovely messages and emails and I thank each and every one (so that's at least two :))

Mushroom wheatberry pilaf

It seems fitting to kick off the rejuvenated blog with a recipe that not only features my favourite vegetable, the mushroom but is also from my favourite cookbook - Moosewood Low Fat Favourites. I actually made it ages ago - in fact I think I even mentioned it in passing in a post - but never got round to writing about it properly. It was inspired by finding some wheatberries in a health food shop - I fancied grinding my own flour for some bread, but have yet to get round to doing that. In the meantime this was a chewy, flavoursome and filling meal which tasted great *and* good for you. I made loads and froze the rest for some day when The Scientist was out. Cricket season is about to start so I suspect that its time is nigh.

Mushroom wheatberry pilaf (from Moosewood Low Fat Favourites)
Serves 6 as a side (I had it as a main course)

1/2 cup raw wheatberries, soaked overnight
1 cup brown rice (or 1 1/2 cups cooked)
1 large onion, chopped
5 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
2 tsp olive oil
1 pound mushrooms, sliced (I used portabellos because that's what was in the veg box, plus some dried mushrooms)
1 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp minced fresh rosemary or 1/2 tsp dried
3 tsp soy sauce
1/2 cup dry red wine

Drain the soaked wheatberries. Return them to the saucepan with fresh water to cover. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, cover and simmer for about an hour, until tender.

In a separate pot, add 2 cups of cool water to the rice, cover tightly and bring to a boil on high heat. When steam escapes from below the lid, turn off the heat and let stand for 5 minutes. Return to a very low heat and simmer for about 35 minutes, or until all of the water has been absorbed.

While the grains cook, saute the onions and garlic in the oil in a large, covered skillet on low heat for about 10 minutes, until golden. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking. Add the mushrooms, thyme, rosemary and soy sauce and cook for 5 minutes. Pour in the wine and continue to simmer until the wine evaporates. Set aside.

When the wheatberries are soft, drain any excess liquid and then add to the sauteed mushrooms. Stir in the cooked rice, mix thoroughly and serve immediately.

Kasha varnishkes

Isn't that a great name for a dish? Varnishkes - I don't really even know how to say it, but I like the pleasingly jarring sounds (I am the daughter of a speech therapist after all). I found this recipe in my book of Jewish cooking and had had it bookmarked for ages. It's a simple dish of mushrooms, pasta bows and buckwheat, but I had put off making it because I wanted to try it in all its original 'shroomy glory before tinkering with substitutes - and of course that meant waiting for an opportunity when The Fungus-Hater Scientist and I were eating separate meals.

It wasn't only the mushrooms that attracted me to this dish. There was also the buckwheat which I've been reading is a bit of a powerhouse, but which I've only previously put in one of my favourite seedy breads. There was the combination of buckwheat and pasta which sounded interesting. And then there was the dish's Eastern European origins which made me feel as though it should be part of my cultural heritage and I'm always one for a bit of getting back to my roots.


Buckwheat is one of those sneaky foodstuffs that pretends it's one thing but is actually another. In this case the little kernels you buy in the shop are not a grain, but the fruiting seed from the buckwheat. It's often toasted, in which case it becomes kasha. Mine was regular buckwheat but it got toasted as part of the recipe. Each little groat is also a nutritional angel, containing all the different types of essential amino acid, lots of fibre, and essential fatty acids (would you credit it, I just found a website called 'Buckwheat Health Benefits').

I made this dish a few weeks ago and had my recurring winter photography problems so the pictures aren't too good. Eventually I got fed up and just ate my dinner. Which was very nice. The buckwheat stays quite nubbly - one of those grains which is almost impossible to describe. It was simultaneously hard - a bit like bulgar but more so - and yet quite soft, but with a bit of chewiness. It was softer than spelt but had a more assertive presence than brown rice. Am I getting over how it tasted here?? Just try it. Its unusual texture partnered nicely with the soft pasta, and of course the mushrooms raised it to a new level of bliss. It made a really nice healthy satisfying dish, and all my amino acid receptors tingled with glee (Dr Eco Sis: I don't wish to know that there aren't such things. In my world everyone's body strives to a balance of humours and the uterus roves around a woman's body and can cause hysterical strangulation. In my world the date is somewhere around 1700...)

I have discovered in the last six months or so that I love almost every wholegrain going. Spelt? Loved it. Barley? Love it. Bulgar? Yum yum yum. Kamut? Don't know - the packet is still unopened, but I have high hopes. The only exception is amaranth which is (I believe) almost entirely pointless. You may laugh, but when we had one of our Friday night treat dinners this week The Scientist got a very colourful and healthy-looking microwave paella, and I made a dish of brown rice, wheatberries and mushrooms - and loved it. I didn't take a photo but there's a lot more in the freezer so I hope it will appear here at some stage. The Scientist isn't quite so universally enamoured of new grains so I tend to try them out on my own first. They have to pass the barley versus spelt test to move on to the joint menu planner: he finds the former too slimey but liked the latter when he tried it. Bulgar passed; amaranth, needless to say, did not. I can usually make some sort of assessment of whether he'll like a new grain on those grounds, but buckwheat defies classification a bit because of its unusual texture. It was close enough to bulgar that I'd try it, but I think I'd have a side-dish of mashed potato on standby just in case. For those grain lovers among us though: buckwheat rocks and I recommend that you get in touch with your Eastern-European amino-acid-loving heritage immediately.

Kasha varnishkes (from the Jewish Traditions Cookbook)

Serves 4-6 [I just made a little portion and had the leftovers cold for lunch)

25g dried well-flavoured mushrooms
500ml/ 2 1/4 cups boiling water or stock
3 tbsp vegetable oil
3-4 onions, thinly sliced
250g mushrooms, sliced
300g/1 1/2 cups whole coarse buckwheat
200g pasta bows
salt and ground black pepper

Put the dried mushrooms in a bowl, pour over half the boiling water or stock and leave to stand 20-30 minutes, until rehydrated. Remove the mushrooms from the liquid, then strain and reserve the liquid.

Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the onions and fry for 5-10 minutes until softened and beginning to brown. Remove the onions to a plate, then add the sliced mushrooms to the pan and fry briefly. Add the soaked mushrooms and cook for 2-3 minutes. Return the onions to the pan and set aside.

In a large, heavy frying pan, toast the buckwheat over a high heat for 2-3 minutes, stirring. Reduce the heat.

Stir the remaining boiling stock or water and the reserved mushroom soaking liquid into the buckwheat, cover the pan and cook for about 10 minutes until the buckwheat is just tender and the liquid has been absorbed.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in a large pan of salted boiling water as directed on the packet, or until just tender, then drain.

When the kasha is cooked, toss in the onions and mushrooms, and the pasta. Season and serve hot.