Lots of lovely food! Dips and salads…

I’ve been washing and chopping and blending and tasting today and thought it was way beyond time that I share some of my recent concoctions…

This morning I was very excited to discover wild garlic leaves coming up in the secret place that I found it growing locally last year. I came home from walking Bob with some fresh leaves and added them to some of today’s creations.

I didn’t weigh and measure things but I can tell you what went into them..

Roasted butternut squash and sweet potato with chopped fresh leaf parsley and coriander, baby spinach leaves, garlic cloves, chopped spring onions, ground roasted cumin, salt, pepper, olive oil and lemon juice

Peas, chopped fresh leaf parsley and coriander, wild garlic leaves, garlic clove, ground cumin, coriander and caraway seeds, sumac, Aleppo chilli flakes, salt, pepper, olive oil and lemon juice. Lovely eaten with some grains and tahini & buttermilk sauce 🙂

A huge bag of baby spinach leaves, a couple of garlic cloves, ground roasted cumin, seasoning, olive oil and pomegranate molasses. I sometimes add spring onions this mix, and various spices

Roasted butternut squash flesh, homemade harissa, tahini and lemon juice

Peas, wild garlic leaves, tahini and lemon juice

Homemade harissa, buttermilk and tahini

All to be eaten with some lovely sourdough of course!

Have a great week 🙂

A salad of dreams…

…well, to me anyway!!! 

I’ve made this salad several times recently because it’s been so good! It’s eminently pimpable, and even better 2-3 days later, so a winner in my book.

When I think of the salads of the past, of a bit of limp lettuce, a few slices of tomatoes and a bit of cucumber, I can see why people might think salads are boring…but this is nowhere close to boring. Not to me anyway….red onion, tomato, chickpeas, sweet potato, spices, flavours….it’s all good 🙂

Having just thrown this together, I have guesstimated the quantities that I used, feel free to amend based on taste and discovery…

Ingredients

1 large sweet potato, washed and cut into chunks

2 medium tomatoes, sliced

2 medium red onions, sliced

1 can/jar chickpeas, drained and washed 

1 tbsp pomegranate molasses

1 tbsp tamarind paste

1 tbsp lemon juice

1-2 tsp cumin seeds

1-2 tsp pul biber chilli flakes 

1 tsp amchur (dried mango) powder 

Handful of fresh coriander, chopped 

Handful of fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped (optional) 

Olive oil 

Method

Mix together the tomatoes, red onion, chickpeas, pomegranate molasses, tamarind, lemon juice and spices. Stir it well then leave it for the flavours to develop and the juice to emerge from the tomatoes. 

*I leave mine overnight in the fridge for use the following day, although, it is already tasty once you’ve made it, it will be even tastier after a few hours. 

A few hours later, or the next day, boil the sweet potato chunks until they’re nicely cooked but not disintegrating. Drain and allow to cool slightly.

Put the salad together by adding the sweet potato to the tomato and onion mix, add your coriander and parsley, if using, and drizzle with olive oil.

Serve on its own as a meal, or with a meal, and be prepared to want to lick the plate! 

Note: if you find the mixture of tangy flavours too sharp, swap the pomegranate molasses for some a little bit of honey.

I’ve also made this with lots of extra coriander and parsley and minus the sweet potato and the flavours are still so good.

It would also be great with any kind of grains soaking up those lovely flavours…actually, now that I’m reminded of how good it is, I think I’ll make some more, right now….

Butternut squash kibbeh…

A typical middle eastern ‘kibbeh’ dish would include meat; this being my blog, and me being wholeheartedly vegetarian, this version does not…it is however, a really simple dish to make, eminently useful if you have any vegetarian guests at any time, and great for leftovers and weekday lunches. 

Of course, I threw mine together, but for more detail, you could refer to this recipe for a sweet potato version. 

In essence, this is a bake, almost a cake, utilising the grains to draw moisture from the vegetable of choice as it cooks, to create a finished article that holds together when you cut into it. 

I made my kibbeh in the photos using butternut squash that I had previously baked, mashed with a bulgur wheat and red and white quinoa mix, ground cumin, ground coriander, finely chopped red onion, olive oil and a pinch of salt. 

This was spooned over a bed of sliced red onions drizzled with olive oil, and baked for 25-30 minutes. 

And it’s done! 

You could easily add other spices and/or herbs to create your own flavours, I think some ras el hanout or baharat would be good. You could also play with using other vegetables and grains; I’ve made very similar dishes using a spiced tomato base and quinoa, I think it’s an easy basis to experiment with.

This was another one I’ve made recently using only bulgur wheat, and you can see how it keeps its shape when cut. 

It’s easy to cut into pieces and serve slices, when it’s hot or cold. And very tasty with any array of homous, dips, salsas, chimichurri…

I had some leftovers with extra caramelised onions and a dressing of buttermilk, tahini, garlic and lemon juice. The sweetness of the butternut squash/sweet potato, however you make it, works well with slightly tart of acidic flavours. Goats cheese would be perfect! 

Have a great weekend, and happy Easter! 

Loaded sweet potato wedges…

This dish was part of a Mexican feast that I served for lunch last weekend, and it was so good, I’m still salivating about it!!!! 

So although it’s not ground breaking in any way, I’m sharing it for the sheer joy of it 🙂 

It’s basically loaded nachos, but with sweet potato wedges instead of nacho chips. 

I roasted some sweet potato wedges and laid them in a single layer on a large plate; I covered them with some of my mixed bean chilli, made with one of my homemade Mexican chilli sauces; then covered it all with a mixture of grated cheddar and Red Leicester cheeses. That went in the oven for the cheese to melt, then I topped it all with jalapeños, chopped mild green chillies, chopped spring onion and soured cream. 

I can tell you, it didn’t last very long at all!!!! 

Need I say anymore?! 🙂 

I hope you’ve all had a great week and have a great weekend ahead. Now, it’s  Fiesta Friday time…! 

Parsley and pineapple salsa…but not as you know it…

I couldn’t help myself, I just had to have another play with leafy greens and pineapple for Angie’s Fiesta Friday Healthy Eating Recipe Challenge…Angie stated that the ‘greens’ could be herbs if they were the main element of the recipe, which they are in this case. 

Salsas often call for a pinch of sugar, and, as ever, I never include any in my salsas, so I have no idea what difference it might make to the finished article. The success of using ground freeze dried pineapple in my chilli sauce in my previous post lead me to experiment with it again in a salsa..

And again it worked well, and added a nice finish to the sauce. 

When I first added the freeze dried pineapple to the salsa, it was not completely ground up and remained crunchy, so that as I tried the salsa, it provided shots of sweet crunch, which you might like. After a while, the pineapple dissolved into the salsa and provided a good balance with the vinegar, which was my preference.

I made this today and ate it with roasted sweet potato wedges, roasted tomatoes and cooked peas, with toasted pine nuts..

I make salsa, often along the lines of chimichurri, regularly with bunches of flat leaf parsley, coriander, dill, and whatever else is available; today I only had parsley available. 

Ingredients

Handful of flat leaf parsley, leaves stripped from stalks

2 garlic cloves, peeled 

1 tsp roasted ground cumin

1 tsp dried oregano

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp crushed freeze dried pineapple 

Method

Put it all in a small bowl blender and chop to a consistency that you like. If it requires additional liquid, you can add extra olive oil and vinegar, or even a splash of water. 

I’m loving this experimenting, there’s more to come!

Tian time!

I’ve been slicing and stacking and playing with vegetables over the last week, and producing various versions of a ‘tian’. Not to be confused with a traditional ratatouille, which is often presented in the same way, my tians have included not the courgettes, aubergines and tomatoes sitting on a base of onions and garlic of a ratatouille, but my version based on whatever I had to hand! 

As is my way, I was already knee deep in making dinner for my boys when I decided to give a tian a go, so it was a bit of a rush job..

This was sliced aubergine, courgette and sweet potato sitting on a slick of one of my homemade Mexican chilli sauces. I put a lid on the pot and baked it for half an hour, then removed the lid, sprinkled over it all some spices and grated cheese and cooked it further..

And it was good!!! Maybe not very pretty, but very tasty.

The leftovers were even tastier the next day..

I tried again a few days later but this time with aubergine, sweet potato and tomatoes – and this one was even better. The added moisture of the tomatoes is definitely a winner..

I decided to line the slices up in a rectangular pan which worked just as well, even if it doesn’t look as pretty. I also baked it uncovered for the whole time and sprinkled a smaller amount of cheese over it all 10 minutes before it was finally removed from the oven..

It really is a winner, I’ll be making this more and more often!

I think they look great when you serve them up, definitely a great option for Christmas if you’re looking for a side dish or vegetable based main dish. You could always replace the cheese topping with something else, or just leave it off, for a vegan. And try serving it with a dip, sauce or homous.

If you’re going to have a go yourself:

I would allow an hour to bake the dish 

Try and slice everything thinly and of even thickness, you could use a mandolin or slicer if you have one, I don’t!

Slice up all of the your chosen vegetables and create piles

Then start by stacking them, holding them in your hand to create a starting stack, before sitting them into the cooking pot, then start adding the rest

Include tomatoes

Sit the slices on a bed of something with some flavour 

Try mixing up the vegetables 

Keep it as colourful as possible 

Always make enough to have leftovers!!! 

I’ve had lots of fun making these – and eating them 🙂

If you celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday, I hope you had a great day. Now let’s join Fiesta Friday, with our lovely co hosts Julianna and Hilda, and see what everyone else is up to…

Roasted vegetable soup..

Yes, another thick soup from my kitchen. This one is really simple, just several trays of vegetables, all baked/roasted, then puréed together..

This includes butternut squash, sweet potato, red onions and garlic. I chopped up the butternut squash, sweet potato and red onions, split a whole bulb of garlic into cloves, and roasted/baked them all separately on large trays. (I say baked because I didn’t put any oil with the butternut squash, I think it cooks well chopped into huge wedges and baked, whereas the other elements I drizzled with olive oil.)  Once cooked, I removed the skin from the butternut squash, left the skin on the sweet potatoes, squeezed the garlic out of their skins, and added them all and the onions and all of the oil and juices from the pans, to a large pot over a medium heat. 

I added some water and chilli flakes and started to mash it all together, then blended it with a stick blender. Done! 

I froze batches for my lovely man to take to work, and saved some for me, which I ate with Moroccan spiced homous stirred through it and topped with seeds and slivered almonds…

Yum!

 I’m bringing my soup along to this week’s Fiesta Friday, co hosted this week by the amazing Petra, and Antonia 🙂 

Happy weekend!

Luscious lunches…

I make a lot of food. A LOT.

Let me explain: I eat virtually every single meal that I ever eat at home, and I make every single part of those meals.  And I eat a lot!!

I might eat food that I haven’t made a MAXIMUM of twice a month; other than that, I only ever eat food that I have made myself. And I love it! I know exactly what’s going into my body, and I know that I’m going to enjoy my food, and that it’s going to nourish me in every possible way. (And actually, on the occasions that I do eat something that I haven’t made, I end up feeling like I’ve missed out, because I miss eating my own food!)

I don’t ever ‘grab a sandwich’ or open a pot of soup or any kind of packet; I eat meals I can take time over, time to make and time to eat. I make versions of past dishes, versions of elements of dishes, new dishes, experiments, I use lots of leftovers, I make make make all the time.  I have a lot of food preparation happening in my kitchen constantly, for me and my boys. I routinely cook a couple of different grains at a time and have them available in the fridge; I endlessly roast vegetables to use once cooked and to create leftovers; I make sauces, dips, spice mixes, marinations, doughs, salads, chillis, curries, the list goes on…and a big part of this is because I can, I have the time, and because I want to. I spend a lot of time cleaning my kitchen too!

I also take a lot of photos of my food! Instagram is great for sharing those dishes daily, but not everyone is on Instagram and I like to share them on here too, in the hope that I may provide ideas and inspiration. Sometimes I wonder if each dish constitutes a post of their own, but then I think they’re too simple, hence why I share collections of dishes, which is what I am doing again today. And I’ve decided to call this, and future, collections ‘luscious lunches’ as these are typically my lunch dishes.

I am also co hosting Fiesta Friday today, along with Michelle from O Blog Off, and look forward to the huge amounts of weekly inspiration that I’m sure I will find there 🙂 

So, let me show you some recent dishes from my kitchen…there’s been a lot of Levantine and Middle Eastern flavours recently…

Chunks of carrot and sweet potato, steamed, then finished in a pan with coconut oil; with a version of chimichurri made with lots of verjus instead of vinegar, and added crushed roasted hazelnuts. 

Leftover roasted aubergines as per my previous post, with tomatoes and chopped parsley, and a version of chermoula, and toasted slivered almonds. 

Wedges of butternut squash, roasted with a drizzle of olive oil and dukkah, with a sauce of yoghurt, olive oil, lemon juice & pomegranate juice, topped with fresh coriander and pomegranate seeds.

Leftover freekeh and couscous topped with leftover roasted carrots from one meal that became…

…this lunch, topped with sumac, tahini sauce, dried barberries, toasted slivered almonds & pistachios.

Couscous with parsley, coriander, dukkah, toasted almonds & dried barberries, with a dressing of lemon juice & olive oil.

The above salad eaten with a salad of cooked carrot mashed with herbs, tabil spice mix, tahini & lemon juice.

Cauliflower roasted with olive oil & hawaayij spice mix, with freshly made homous.

Roasted butternut squash slices, topped with a thinned homous & toasted nuts, with baby plum tomatoes and a salad of aubergine, garlic, chopped parsley, tahini & lemon juice.

Couscous with roasted butternut squash, red onions & garlic. 

Carrot and herb salad.

A pan full of red onion, garlic and tomatoes, cooked in coconut oil, with several spoonfuls of my Mexican chilli and cocoa sauce, avocado, egg and grated hard goats cheese. 

And this dish at the start of this post, aubergine, tomatoes, chopped herbs, freekeh, and homous. 

Lots of fresh vegetables, and goodness, and versions of versions, and LOTS of flavour! I don’t make food without flavour!!!

So that was a view of the past couple of weeks, I hope you found it interesting. 

Enjoy your Friday and your weekend, and don’t forget to visit Fiesta Friday x

A meal for any time of the day…

This was a meal from during the week that I enjoyed preparing, eating and looking at!! Leftovers at their best!

Sweet potato slices (roasted and leftover from the previous day), topped with avocado, a mixed herbs salsa, a citrus tahini sauce, and sprinkled with chilli flakes…

Pretty, healthy, tasty food! 

It’s been a green week..

Following on from my previous post and the lovely positive responses to my ‘non recipe’ recipe, I thought I’d share some of my dishes from this week and some more non recipes…in the hope that they might provide some food ideas and inspiration, or at least some pretty pictures…

This salad is packed full of parsley, dill, lettuce, grains (quinoa & kamut), chickpeas, sweet potato, avocado, Turkish ‘tress’ cheese, olive oil, lemon juice, spices, & dollops of beetroot & dill homous, inspired by Petra’s post as featured on last week’s Fiesta Friday.

This is the ‘tress’ cheese; I’m guessing the name refers to the shape of the cheeses? It’s a very very salty cheese, too salty for me, and quite hard in texture, so I chopped it up and soaked it in water for a couple of days. I changed the water a few times to wash it through, and the cheese lost it’s saltiness and softened up, and was much tastier as far as I’m concerned.

This was a greener version of the dish in my previous post, this time with coconut oil, red onion, courgette/zucchini, garlic, spinach, sriracha, eggs, ricotta & grated cheddar, all sprinkled with Aleppo chilli flakes…and again, I just ate it directly from the pan!

There’s been a lot more eggs in my dishes recently as I attempt to increase the protein in my diet, but also because my favourite greengrocers stall are now selling lovely free range farm eggs.

This dish of mega greenness is made up of coconut oil, courgettes/zucchini, garlic, spring onions, spinach, roasted pumpkin seeds & sunflower seeds, za’atar, with dollops of two (only slightly) different green sauces…

Sauce 1 (the really green one): ricotta, yogurt, spinach, avocado, dill, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, Aleppo chilli flakes and salt, all whizzed up in my Nutribullet, hence being so smooth

Sauce 2: parsley, tahini, avocado, garlic, dill, lemon juice and a splash of water, blended in my small bowl food processor to keep some texture

This final dish was an amalgamation of virtually everything!!! I had lots of parsley to use up, so I chopped it all roughly, added steamed and cooled chunks of sweet potato, plus cooked quinoa, and stirred in the remains of the two sauces above – it created a supercharged super tasty bowl of fabulousness!!!!

So much can be created by literally throwing together everything you’ve got in the fridge! That’s my theory anyway.

I’m sharing my various dishes with everyone at this week’s Fiesta Friday, co hosted this week by Liz and Lindy – I hope they like them 🙂