Hanady’s beautiful book…

I have followed Hanady’s food blog for many years and have loved everything about it, every dish and creation, the flavours, the colours, the stories, the endlessly fabulous inspiration. And now, I’m so excited for Hanady as she has had a book published to celebrate all of this! And which is why you’ll find a quote from me on the back…

Please do check it out, the book is full of flavoursome recipes, but also tips on processes, pantry staples and ingredients. And threaded with Hanady’s love of beautiful food made from the heart, drawing on her heritage and travels.

Visit Hanady’s blog for more details and where to find the book where you are.

Enjoy! And once again, huge congratulations to Hanady for this wonderful achievement xx

My cauliflower and chickpea heaven…

This is one of my all time favourite dishes of mine, the flavours are phenomenal and the textures are perfect, the crunchy bits on the cauliflower, and the sticky cloves of garlic and the pop of the chickpeas…I can wax lyrical about this one for hours….!

The marinade/sauce is sharp and spicy. If you need to take the edge of the sourness, or to add some sweet stickiness, add a spoonful or two of honey to the mix.

I love it freshly cooked, cold the next day, reheated, or whizzed up into a dip if there’s any left (it’s a rarity!). If you try it, I hope you love it too…

Ingredients

1 whole head of a medium cauliflower

1 can/jar chickpeas, drained

3-5 lemons, squeezed for the juice

16 cloves garlic, peeled

150ml olive oil

3 tsp mayonnaise/natural yoghurt

1 tsp Harissa paste/spice mix

1 tbsp tomato purée

Salt and pepper

Method

Separate the cauliflower florets and cut them into similar small/medium sized pieces.

Mix all of the ingredients except the cauliflower and chickpeas together in a large dish to marinate in (I sometimes use a large oven proof dish that I can then put straight into the oven, but not always) then add the cauliflower florets and chickpeas and mix it all together well.

Put a lid on it and put it in the fridge for 24 hours.

The next day, preheat the oven to 200C/390F fan/convection.

EDIT: if you read this post previously, after making this again I have amended the way to cook it for greater ease and simplicity:

Either remove the cover and cook it all in the dish you marinated the ingredients in, or tip it all out onto an oven tray/cookie sheet/open wide baking vessel, using a spatula to scrape out every last fabulous drop of the marinade, all onto the tray.

Cook, uncovered for 45-60 minutes until the cauliflower is roasted, with some crunchy edges and cooked through. Give it all a stir or move it all around halfway through to mix the flavours up again and get the cauliflower pieces evenly roasted.

Leave it for as long as it takes for the cauliflower to get charred crunchy edges, and the chickpeas to darken and get crunchy too, and the garlic to get really sticky!

Eat on it’s own straight from the pan like I end up doing, or serve on its own, or with salad leaves or as a side dish with whatever you’re eating.

Try it with a drizzle of tahini too! So so good!

Lunch in the pan…

This was one of those creations that was driven by what I had in the fridge, and the desire for a big lunch packed with fresh vegetables…

This is my typical meal: a pan, a splash of olive oil, and lots of vegetables!

This one includes lots of chopped up courgette/zucchini, garlic, spinach, and aubergine, with a couple of spoon fulls of my homemade harissa sauce stirred through it.

Over the top I drizzled tahini and a few handfuls of toasted pumpkin seeds for the added protein, good oils and crunch! A whole huge pan of goodness!

Lunch is served!

A week of wild garlic…

Every year, around this time, I see so many posts on blogs and Instagram of people sharing their wild garlic creations. And each year I’m so envious!!! I’ve tried wild garlic once, having paid a fortune for it at a local ‘posh’ greengrocers, and I know it’s lovely, but I’ve never found any locally to be able to forage for myself…until this week!

I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for weeks around where I walk Bob every morning; I know that wild garlic tends to grow in wooded areas, and where we walk isn’t wooded at all. Except for one small area, and this week, there it was! I finally found my own local supply of wild garlic…

In this small wooded area, running along a path we walk up and down regularly, is an area of bountiful, gorgeous wild garlic.

Oh the joy! I cannot tell you how excited I was!!! And by the look of it, no one knows it’s there, or maybe just doesn’t know what it is, which is even better 🙂

I immediately sent the photo above to Kellie, who is a wild garlic guru, to double check my find, but I was pretty sure I was right. I collected some there and then, using one of the nappy sacks I can for cleaning up after Bob, and returned the next couple of days with bigger bags and some gloves and foraged to my hearts content.

So, there’s been lots of careful washing and drying of leaves and stalks and flowers in my kitchen all week, the smell has been amazing, it’s got such a lovely smell, not as strong as bulb garlic, but you can tell what it is; and there’s been lots of concoctions, which I am sharing below. It honestly feels like such a gift from nature, and has made me smile all week; the pure simplicity of collecting, cooking and eating gorgeous fresh food direct form the earth is wonderful – I totally get those of your who grow your own food!

The leaves, stalks and flowers are all edible, and all have different strengths; the stalks have a stronger flavour than the leaves, and the flowers are stronger again, but none as strong as bulb garlic. You can eat them all raw or cooked. You can sauté the leaves like spinach, you chop it and add it to salad, the possibilities are endless. So here’s a few rough ideas to tempt you, apologies for the lack of quantities, I’ve just provided lists of ingredients and suggestions…

Chargrilled red pepper & WG harissa

Long red peppers, chargrilled, peeled and deseeded

Wild garlic leaves and stalks, washed and dried

Tabil spice mix (toasted cumin, coriander & caraway seeds, ground)

Pul biber flakes

Olive oil

Lemon juice

All in a blender and whizzed tougher.

WG & preserved lemon harissa

Wild garlic leaves and stalks, washed and dried

Spring onions, whites and greens roughly chopped

Half a preserved lemon, roughly chopped

Ground cumin & coriande

Pul biber flakes

Olive oil

Lemon juice

All in a blender and whizzed together, but not for too long, it’s nice rustic.

WG flower homous

Make your standard homous recipe but leave out the garlic, and add some carefully picked wild garlic flowers at the end, stirring them in by hand. Leave it a day before eating it for the flavour to develop.

WG cream cheese

Whizz up WG leaves and stalks, or just the stalks, or just the leaves, with your choice of cream cheese.

WG & pumpkin seed dairy free pesto

WG leaves and stalks chopped up with toasted pumpkin seeds, olive oil and lemon juice. Add your choice of cheese at will 🙂

WG & spring onion salsa verde

Wild garlic leaves and stems, washed and dried

Spring onions, whites and greens, roughly chopped

Homemade apple cider vinegar

Pomegranate molasses

Ground cumin & coriander

Pul biber chilli flakes

Olive oil

Chop all together in a blender to the consistency of your choice.

WG, tahini & yoghurt sauce

Blend WG leaves and stalks with tahini, yoghurt and lemon juice, and use at will like this, or add to other ingredients to create a dip, like below

Spiced carrot & WG, tahini & yoghurt dip

Carrots cooked in olive oil with red onion and garlic and my Moroccan spice mix, whizzed up with some of the tahini and yogurt sauce from above.

And to finish…

This was a mixture of some of the WG cream cheese mixed with the WG pesto, plus some boiled chunks of sweet potato and topped with wild garlic flowers.

I’ve also sautéd leaves with added spinach and quinoa, and eaten a fair amount of raw leaves in the process too!

I hope I didn’t lose you halfway down the page with all of my WG creations?! If you find some, I hope you enjoy it as much as I have 🙂

A ‘green harissa’ feast..

I recently came across a ‘verbena harissa’ that sounded and looked interesting…so I read the ingredients and created a version of my own…

Look at all that green goodness! I think it worked well, I’m thoroughly enjoying eating it anyway.. My experimental recipe is below.

Yesterday I reheated some leftover roasted vegetables from our Sunday lunch, added some freekeh..

..then spooned over lots of my green concoction and drizzled with tahini..

OMG! Heavenly!! There literally aren’t the words to tell you how good it was! 
So, back to my ‘green harissa’..

Ingredients

Frozen spinach, 6-7 cubes, defrosted & drained 

Frozen peas, defrosted & drained 

Coriander, small bunch

Dried parsley, 1 tbsp

Dried lemon verbena, 2 big pinches 

Preserved lemon, 1 washed & finely chopped

Garlic, 1-2 cloves depending on size peeled

Spices: equal amounts of  cumin, coriander & caraway seeds and star anise, toasted, cooled and ground, then 2-3 tsp added to the mix, you can store any leftovers for future and other uses 

Aleppo chilli flakes, 1-2 tbsp depending on taste

Pinch of salt 

Vegetable OR rapeseed oil, 2-3 tbsp

Lemon juice, 1-2 tbsp as required 

Method

Except for the peas, put everything into a blender and process it to a consistency you like

Remove from the blender and stir the peas in gently by hand

Spoon into a jar and store in the fridge overnight for the flavour to develop

To use: remove from the fridge an hour before use, stir well and use at will!

An attempt at a close up 

What do you think? I hope you think it looks as interesting as it tastes..I’m sharing this with everyone at this week’s Fiesta Friday, co hosted this week by Margy and Anugya..

Homemade rose harissa spice mix..

  

There’s been so much going on in my kitchen recently I literally have 6 posts in draft and more to add…it made it hard choosing a post for today so I hope you like the one I picked 😉 

You all know that I love making harissa using Kellie’s recipe, last week I decided to make a dry spice mix based on the recipe and it worked so well I could literally add it to everything. This isn’t particularly spicy, you could easily ramp up the heat by adding your favourite chilli powder or dry chillies. 

Rose harissa spice mix

2 tsp each of caraway, coriander and cumin seeds
2 whole star anise
2 fat garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
1 ½ tsp mild paprika 
2 heaped tbsp dried red bell pepper
2 heaped tbsp dried tomato flakes
1 tbsp Aleppo chilli flakes 
2 tsp lemon peel powder 
2 tbsp culinary grade dried rose petals

Dry fry the caraway, coriander and cumin seeds, whole star anise, garlic cloves and paprika over a medium heat until you start to smell the aromas. Keep an eye on it so that you don’t burn any seeds.
Allow them all to cool then mill them all up with the rest of the ingredients. 

Lovely! Just look at those colours and flavours, it’s got such a lovely flavour 🙂

I buy the dried red bell peppers and dried tomato flakes from Just Ingredients (I am not sponsored or paid to share this). 

   
   I am bringing my spice mix to this week’s Fiesta Friday, co hosted this week by the lovely Judy and Petra, please do pop over and check out everyone’s posts.   

 

The first day I made this spice mix I roasted some butternut squash and threw some over it, which I ate with some oven baked falafels and a dressing of soft goats cheese, lemon juice and water..

   

Have a great weekend everyone xx

Let’s get saucy!

 
I like sauces; I like adding that wet element to a dish of roasted vegetables, without it always being tahini sauce (although I could easily eat tahini sauce every day of my life); I also like to have things prepared and ready to go in the fridge (I often come home for walking or working out very hungry and I need to be able to grab healthy homemade food quickly!); I like being able to control the oil (coconut oil is my choice), salt (limited) and sugar (none!) by making my own versions of everything; and I like having pots and pans bubbling away in my kitchen and mess everywhere whilst no one else is home, mess that magically disappears before they arrive at the end of their days! It’s magic you know!!  

A couple of days ago I decided to stock up: I made my versions of harissa and enchilada sauce, I made a tomato kasundi from the lovely blog that is Feast Wisely, and I made chipotle en adobe from Thomasina Miers ‘Mexican Food Made Simple’…this stuff is kick ass..possibly because I added a whole huge bag of dried chipotle chillies!!! 

Once again I followed the basics of Kellie’s rose harissa recipe, however, I used a mixture of guajillo (Top photo below) and Pasilla chillies, and in the absence of pepper in the fridge, I used only sun blushed tomatoes, and lots of them.

  
The tomato kasundi recipe is a superfood packed India spiced tomato chutney, with lots of ginger, garlic, turmeric, coconut oil, apple cider vinegar among the ingredients, however, I used 2 x 680g jars of tomato passata instead of fresh tomatoes so that mine was more of a sauce. I used some last night to create a mushroom dish..   

  For the enchilada sauce, I revisited the one I made last week with some amendments; I removed the flour and oil element that often forms the start of echilada sauce recipes and I merged several recipes I’ve read, which I really should have noted but I didn’t!!! From memory, I went down a route of using tomato paste, salt free vegetable stock, garlic, cumin, oregano, and some of the guajillo chillies that I’d softened for my harissa. Apologies for the lack of details!!! What I can tell you is that I kicked it up a notch with some of the chipotle en adobe sauce I made (jeez, that stuff is HOT! A little goes a long long way!), and I thickened it slightly with the guar gum that I was sent from My Protein recently.  

 I can now tell you that when using guar gum as a thickener, you need to sprinkle it over your dish, don’t just throw it in all in one go as it will clump and create a solid block in your sauce. Even with sprinkling it across your dish you still need to stir it in really well, I ended up whisking the sauce to disperse the guar gum successfully. 

And so I created my ‘skyline’ of jars of sauce!  

 

I hope this brings some colour into your day…I’m packing up some of my sauces to take along to this week’s Fiesta Friday blog party…late again, sorry! I hope this week’s wonderful co hosts, a Jess and Caroline,  will forgive me…;) 

The fabulous creator of Fiesta Friday, Angie has now also set up a Fiesta Friday on Pinterest, so you can find endless inspiration from all of the party goers there too now, check out this week’s party post for more details. Have a great day xx

More harissa fun…

 

I make batches and batches of harissa, referring back to Kellies recipe every time, but playing with different chillies and making my own slight variations. I recently ordered a selection of dried chillies from Sous Chef and have been working may way through them and discovering the slight differences in flavours, as well as heat. 

I previously made some harissa with the Mulato chillies, which have a chocolatey flavour, and are therefore used in mole sauces and dishes. They rendered my harissa a brown colour and were not very spicy, so I added a few Piquin chillies, the little red ones (not in the photo) that I had….and deleted the photos!!!   

   

In this batch, I used the Pasilla chillies.. 

   The flavour is good, without being too spicy, and as the jars sit in my fridge, the flavours continue to develop and the taste only gets better. 

I am learning more and more about the various chillies and using them; these big dry chillies can just be ripped open to remove seeds really easily, or you can pull off the stalks and pour the seeds out, just roll the chilli between your fingers to release them. Then put the chillies into a pan of boiling water and simmer until they soften up sufficienlt, each type takes different amounts of time to soften. 

This is also why I recently took receipt of more spices from Just Ingredients, just to add to my ever increasing stash of spices!!  I mean, can one ever really have enough spices???? (Please say no!)  

   Just look at those colours!!!! Recently I’ve throughly enjoyed some lunches of baked sweet potato topped with harissa and tahini sauce…my oh my, what a collection of flavours!! Just gorgeous!   

Yum!!!!

I hope you like my harissa explorations 🙂 see you tomorrow with another fab ‘What would you feed me?’ guest post xx 

 

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 🙂