A bit of impromtu cooking

Today I went to the allotment to pick vegetables for the morning session. Due to the amount of rain lately I have found that some of the carrots had split. So change of recipe and Carrot and Ginger soup 
it will be.  As the soup contained butter beans, we did not want to throw away the bean liquid (Aqua Faba) so decided to make a lemon mousse with it.  So that was the dessert sorted.
  

Last week I made a lovely recipe Chive waffles with maple and Soy mushrooms. As it was only for the two of us, I put the other 8 waffles in the freezer for another time.



Well, the other time was now. The waffles this time were awful, taste was good but they just got stuck in the waffle iron, so we cheated  and warmed up the previously made waffles in the toaster and followed the rest of the recipe. The mushroom in maple and soy sauce were delicious, I think that they would also be lovely on a bed of mash potatoes, rice, polenta etc.

We made some rocket, pear and parmesan salad to go with it. Karina mentioned that in the past she used to crumble goats cheese instead of parmesan. Something to try in the future.
  Although Hao came a few weeks ago, he picked the rocket then too and I found a picture of him, preparing it.


The table was laid for 9 people today,  a filing lunch with some delicious Elderberry and ginger cordial.

Wonder woman, June, managed to open the corddial bottle where others failed!!

Pancakes, Spinach and sweet potato curry

I ran out of eggs, milkman was late and 9 friends were about to arrive for this mornings session. So what did we do?

 Made oat milk for the pancake mix,
   

vanilla extract for the oat milk. 
Used the orange and lemon juice for the crepe suzette sauce, the peel for orange and lemon extract. We used rum instead of vodka as we had a bottle we would otherwise never us.


   

We mixed Meghan Holmes wild rice that she gave to us as a Christmas present with some basmati rice and then topped it with spinach, sweet potato and coconut curry..


 

he vegan pancakes were delicious especially with the orange topping.

Chard and Peanut Soba noodle bowls

Today we used the chard from the allotment and the home made peanut butter to make this lovely Chard and noodle dish

Lesley making the noodle dough

We first made the noodles, Lesley made the dough, and whilst it was resting, we made the peanut butter and the sauce.

Kim, June and Hiroe making the noodles

Look what we made

   
Kim made the peanut butter for use later in the sauce and for the week's peanut butter and jelly



This recipe called for a cucumber pickle. As we have no cucumbers at this time of the year, I used a jar I made in autumn

The smoked  Chickpea tofu was lovely with it too. Crunchy on the outside, and soft in the inside.


      

New to us all, this is a keeper. Instead of cumin or garam masala we used smoked paprika and a table spoon of liquid smoke (because I have it)

It was a very tasty, quick and healthy meal, and most of the recipes will end up in the next cookery book. 

Experimentation and first sowing of 2020

A few weeks ago I soaked some green peas (from the grocery store) for a few days until they started to sprout, then planted them in some compost and ended up with a tray full of lovely pea sprouts.
As they became a bit leggy, I chopped 3/4 of the shoots, to go into the fridge and the other 1/4 started growing thicker for another cut in a few weeks time.

Today we soaked another lot, for use in February. The pea sprouts we also mixed with some corn salad and parley, a citrus dressing topped with grated and shaved parmesan cheese.     
  

Last week we made a tahini sauce, with some left in the fridge we turned it into oil free Hummus where we used yogurt instead.

   Whilst Rurie and Manami made the hummus,  June, chopped the Yacon, celery and carrots we used to go with the dip.

We made a delicious vegan Mushroom Soup, which will no doubt end up in our 4th book


Then as a dessert we made a souffle mango pancake. Slightly over done, next time, we will make it just before serving, we got our timing wrong. Although we used mango and an orange maple sauce. The original recipe called for blue berries and strawberries, so will tty and perfect it in the summer when blue berries and strawberries will be in abundance.

All in all a lovely meal again

Avocado Chocolate mousse, Noodles and stir fry

This term I am trying to find recipes that are easy to make from scratch and create hardly any waste.

So we started to turn the 4 avocados that were given to me into a delicious Avocado and Chocolate Mousse. The original recipe was by Gordon Ramsey but we added orange juice to the mixture to make it a little lighter, as Rowan did not know what Aqua Faba was we whipped up some aqua faba (chick pea water) and folded into the avocado Chocolate mixture. It made it nice and fluffy and set well in the fridge. When we were ready to eat we topped it up with a dollop of black currant jelly, some orange zest and a mint leaf. It turned out really well.
  

We then made some egg noodles to go with our stir fried vegetables.

As I had harvested our first Yacon, this went  in the stir fry together with the carrots, onions, peppers, mung bean sprouts, ginger and garlic. We added a little soya sauce and put it on a bed of noodles, sprinkled sesame seeds  and the satay sauce.



We made the peanut butter first and then proceeded to turn that into satay sauce.
As I had a tin of coconut milk, I used this but had a tin to get rid off. Rowen suggested to use coconut powder and then add milk. As I had not heard of this before, I will be on the look out for this in the local corner shop

All in all a wonderful meal

Sauteed Kale with Lemon, Tahini and hemp seeds

Today I went to the allotment and came back with a few monsters of carrots and beautifully clean cavalo nero Kale.



So we turned them into a delicious carrot and coconut soup 
We then made savoury scones (Alice's scones adapted to a feta and spring onion recipe) which we made without the oven and came out really well. As we needed yoghurt for the scone recipe we made our own to save on buying more and creating plastic waste

We made this  Kale recipe we need curry powder, if you don't have this in house, maybe you can make it with the following ingredients
We had this Kale on a bed of lemon couscous.
A lovely quick and healthy meal.

brussels sprouts soup, lavash, hot broccoli dip and pasta

Phew, we crammed it all in today! It being the last session before the Christmas break, we had a record amount of friends who joined us today.

To get us in the Christmas mood we made a cranberry mulled wine (no alcoholic)
1 litre Cranberry juice

1 cinnamon stick
a few cloves
a pinch of ground ginger
Juice and zest of one orange and lime
4 teaspoons of brown sugar
 Bring this all to boil, simmer for a bit to allow the spices to flavour the juice(other wise you can do the next step immediately for a less intense flavour)

add 275l ginger beer.
Serve warm for a zingy non alcoholic drink.

Mean while we had a massive chopping session.

One group was chopping  for your  Creamy brussels sprouts soup

Sema cut the Broccoli, Red Pepper and Onion for the hot broccoli dip rather than the mozzarella cheese we used cheddar cheese.

This dish went in the oven  together with the endless trays of lavash crackers, which we used to scoop up the hot dip.

We had still some dip left, so we made some tagliatelle and used the dip as the pasta topping.

The end result was a delicious meal shared with 10 friends. Merry Christmas.

Warm festive sweet potato salad by Irina

Warm festive sweet potato salad:

Ingredients: 

4 large sweet potatoes

2 ripe avocados

1/2 pound cherry tomatoes

1-2 lemons

1 lime (optional)

5-6 cloves of garlic

pack of fresh cilantro (coriander)

cumin spice powder

any hot pepper spice powder ( either pimiento or cayenne,or chili, etc)

1. Clean and peel sweet potatoes, cut into 1 inch cubes, place on a baking sheet  and put into 225 degrees C oven for approximately 30 minutes or until tender.  Take care not to overcook them, the sweet potato cubes should NOT become brown! Gently turn them over half way through if needed.

2. While sweet potato cubes are baking prepare the rest of the vegetables and the dressing. Peel avocados and cut them into 1/2 inch pieces. Wash the cherry tomatoes and cut them either in halves or in quarters depending on their size.

3. For the dressing squeeze the juice from 1 or 2 lemons plus 1 or 2 limes (optional). Use it all! Add two tablespoons of cumin powder (or more!, it is not hot, it just adds very nice hearty taste) and 1/4 of teaspoon of hot pepper (use less pepper if you do not like spicy foods) Press 5-6 (or more !) peeled garlic cloves through the garlic press, add to the lemon juice. Wash a large bunch of cilantro, chop into small pieces, mix well with the lemon juice, garlic and spices.

4. In a large serving dish assemble the salad: put all sweet potatoes at the bottom, then add 1/2 of tomatoes and avocados, generously cover with the dressing, add the rest of the tomatoes and avocados on top. Enjoy!

Christmas lunch and book 3 launch

Today we had a different format, every brought a dish that was typical for their countries.
The end result was delightful. Melendra made these amazing White Cheddar short bread biscuits.
Here is the recipe

White Cheddar Shortbread

Ingredients:

8 oz/227 grams shredded cheddar

½ cup/115 grams butter

1 ½ cups/170 grams plain flour

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon black pepper

Directions:

1)      Preheat oven to 350F/175C.

2)      Place all ingredients in a large mixing bowl and let stand for 30 minutes at room temperature.

3)      Beat ingredients with a mixer (or in a food processor) until combined. Then using your hands, work dough until it holds together.

4)      Divide dough in half. Roll each half of dough out to approximately 1 cm thickness. 

5)      If the dough is soft, cover and chill it. Otherwise, cut the rolled dough into 2-inch-long by 1-inch-wide rectangles. Leave the rectangles touching each other.

6)      With a floured fork, prick each rectangle 2 to 3 times. If desired, sprinkle with a bit of course salt.

7)      Bake for 20 – 25 minutes or until light brown. Cut through the rectangles again while shortbread is still warm.

8)      Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

9)      Can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 2 days or in the freezer up to 3 months.

Best wishes,

Melendra

I made a non alcoholic mulled 'wine' with the apples picked by Melendra and June, earlier in October. Added Glo's grape juice, cinnamon stick, aniseed, cardamon lemon and orange juice, and sugar to make a cordial. Although we had it with the meal, we also all got a little bottle of this Christmas Cheer to take