Black garlic studded bread rolls and labneh..

I’m so proud of these rolls and so excited to share them with you and bring them to this week’s Fiesta Friday..Angie’s blog party extraordinaire rolls on in its 57th week of fabulousness this week 😀..I hope everyone gets to try one!
I basically added chopped black garlic to my standard wholemeal bread dough, gently kneading it into the dough once the dough had proved to mix it through, shaped the rolls, let these prove again whilst the oven heated up, and baked as usual, and the outcome was a bread roll studded with bursts of the black garlic sweetness – almost like sweet bread with raisins or dried fruit. A big fat YUM! 

I tried these with my homemade labneh: labneh is a middle eastern cheese which is basically made by straining yoghurt, and that’s pretty much it! You can use any kind of yoghurt, I often use a 0% fat greek yoghurt so I create 0% fat cheese for myself, but I’ve also used whatever plain yoghurt I’ve had in the fridge.

You literally just spoon the yoghurt into muslin, add any flavourings you fancy, then hang it to strain overnight and by the next day it’s done! I, of course, tried this with black garlic too..

As I don’t have a cool frame to hang it on, I tie up the muslin and hang it over the handle of my jug to catch the juice – make sure to tuck in the rest of the muslin otherwise the liquid travels down the fabric and all over your fridge shelf, as I found out…! It worked really well with the black garlic cloves, just chop some into the yoghurt and let it do its work, when you come to use the labneh you will see that the cloves almost melt into the cheese and spread easily with it.


I made a selection of flavours including smoked paprika and za’atar..

I even added some goji berries to another portion and made a sweet cheese which was lovely!
The black garlic version went very well atop a roasted sweet potato for lunch..

I hope you’ve enjoyed my black garlic experiments this week, do check out what else I’ve done with it in previous posts this week on here and on Instagram, and don’t forget that you can still receive a 10% discount and free delivery in the UK from Balsajo Black Garlic until the end of tomorrow, 28th, by inputting ‘foodbod’ as a discount code. 

Have fun, happy partying and happy weekend xx

More adventures with black garlic: cauliflower, coconut and black garlic rice

Cauliflower rice is such a quick and easy dish, it’s healthy, tasty, gluten free, low carb, and open to all sorts of flavours, uses and experiments, like this one! It can satisfy a vegetarian, vegan, paleo, primal and healthy diet, or just satisfy the taste buds – it takes on flavours so well, and adding the chopped black garlic to this version gave it lovely little pops of fabulousness as I ate it.

I cooked this in coconut oil because it’s so lovely and so good for you – it doesn’t overwhelm your dish with the coconut flavour so if you’re not a coconut fan, don’t fear using it, it’s such great stuff it’s still worth you trying it out, and on this occasion, just don’t add the additional coconut to the dish.

Ingredients

Half a head of medium cauliflower, roughly chopped into florets
1 tbsp coconut oil
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 cup shredded coconut (optional)
1/2 bulb black garlic, cloves cut into threes

Method

Pulse the cauliflower florets in a blender for literally less than a minute until it resembles a rice-like consistency
Add this to a wide bottom pan with the coconut oil and start to cook over a medium heat
Keep the cauliflower moving so that it all gets coated with some coconut oil
Add the turmeric (for the colour, flavour and health benefits!)
Add the shredded coconut and chopped black garlic
All the while keep it all moving in the pan
It will now be starting to cook and you could just keep frying it until it’s the softness you want it to be or, as I did, add a small amount of water to the pan and cover it with a lid to cook to the texture you would like.

Then eat it on its own as it is, or with everything and anything!

Of course, cauliflower rice can be a base for all sorts of additions; you can add anything to it that you would add to rice, you can add lots of flavours to it with spices and herbs.

Don’t forget that you can try black garlic yourself with 10% off the price plus free delivery (in the UK) using the code ‘foodbod’ until 28th February 2015. Order online or email them direct to enquire about delivery overseas at info@blackgarlic.co.uk

Having made this lovely rice last week, I ate it across a few days, it warms up again really easily. I finished it off by mixing it up with some roasted carrots and topping with some garlic, yoghurt dressing and, oh my word, it was so good!!!! This photo doesn’t do it justice, but believe me when I tell you I was in heaven!!

Have a great Sunday 🙂

Introducing my Black Garlic Harissa!!! So exciting!!!! (PLUS a discount for this amazing garlic)

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I have been playing with some black garlic recently; the lovely people at Balsajo Black Garlic sent me some to play with and I’ve had a LOT of fun! Over the next week I will be sharing my various dishes and recipes with you and hope that you like them 🙂

Black garlic is just that: black! The garlic bulbs are slow roasted for a very long time to create these beautiful, shiny, soft, balsamicky cloves. They are so soft you can squeeze them between your fingers and so tasty that you just want to eat them all up as they are…however, I have forced myself to actually cook with them and not just eat them!! I’ve added black garlic to endless dishes in their original form and it adds a lovely extra to any dish..

..like this one, harissa pan cooked cauliflower with pumpkin seeds and black garlic. You’ll be seeing more uses like this, but today I want to share with you the experiment I am most proud of, my black garlic harissa, and keep on reading right to the bottom for a fabulous discount offer from Balsajo Black Garlic just for you 🙂

I’ve read a lot of harissa recipes, and made a lot. One of my favourites is Kellie’s, which I’ve used and amended to my tastes quite a few times now; I recently read another version in Thomasina Miers cookbook ‘Chilli Notes’ in which she roasts all of the vegetables and this was my starting point for my black garlic harissa.

My black garlic harissa

Ingredients

2 long red peppers or 2 red bell peppers
2 large tomatoes or 4 medium tomatoes
2 red onions
3-4 fresh red chillies
Olive oil to taste
3 tsp cumin seeds
3 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp dried coriander / bunch fresh coriander
Juice of 1-2 lemons
Salt and pepper

AND a bulb of black garlic cloves, removed from bulb

Method

Preheat oven to 200C/390F

Roughly chop the peppers, tomatoes and onion and toss in olive oil with whole chillies and black garlic cloves.

Season and roast in oven until they start to char and become soft.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pan.

In a warm pan, dry fry the spices gently until the aromas start to release, ensure not to burn them. Remove from heat.

Add everything to your food processor, scraping the vegetables from the oven pan along with all of the lovely juices and oil and mixing with the spices. Whizz to a consistency you like, I like mine a bit chunky.

Add lemon juice a little at a time to suit your taste and mix well. The lemon juice really lifts the flavour and brings out the taste of the black garlic.

Stir dried or chopped coriander through the mix.

NOTE: I found this quite spicy to I threw in some extra oven roasted tomatoes to take the heat down a bit.

Store in a clean jar with a layer of olive oil over the top to preserve the harissa.

OR…like me..dig in with a spoon!!!!

Then, add it to EVERYTHING!!!! spread on toast, use it to marinate chicken, cook vegetables in it, experiment and play with it 🙂

Over the next week I will be sharing lots more recipes with black garlic and hope you like them. If you fancy trying black garlic for yourself (and I highly recommend it!!!) visit the brand new online shop and enter ‘foodbod’ as your discount coupon code and receive 10% off the prices plus free shipping until 28th February 2015. Enjoy!!!

I have not been paid to tell you about black garlic, I do not work for Balsajo, I am merely sharing something that I love with you because I just can’t keep it to myself!!!

I’m bringing my Black Garlic Harissa to this week’s Fiesta Friday and hope that the party goers like it. This week we have two lovely hosts: Tina and Juju – pop over the join the fun and say hello 🙂