While I enjoy making dishes with posh ingredients, it makes my peasant heart happy to do so with common stuff.
On the posh side, we had a simple pasta course at the weekend, just ribbed (for your pleasure, and to pick up the sauce) tubes and a small but expensive tin of black truffle slices in olive oil. Add grated Parmesan and that's it. Delicious.
On the simple side, a recent curry made with dried lentils, loads of sliced onions and garlic, a grated thumb of ginger, and a tin of coconut milk. With spices to perk it up of course. It was slurpy (the lentils cooked to dhal doneness), filling and of course cheap(-ish), and for once I got the spice balance right - a hint of heat, a lot of taste.
As so often the difference in kitchen terms between the two was time. The pasta and truffle thing took 10 minutes. The curry in all needed over an hour - 10 mins to boil the rinsed lentils, 35 more to simmer them, add to the sauteed onions and mix with the coconut milk then bubble gently away for another quarter of an hour to let the ginger, garlic and spices blend in and flavour the whole pan.
I loved both meals, but maybe because I enjoy the faffery, or possibly because the curry cost by my reckoning £2.50 (coconut milk from the Indian supermarket undercuts Messrs Sainsbury and Aldi by about 33%) it was the latter that pleased me most.
Showing posts with label lentils. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lentils. Show all posts
Tuesday, 10 December 2019
Friday, 4 October 2019
Jamie Oliver Has Good Idea Shock
There are some TV chefs (cooks is a more accurate word for most) I actually like - HF-W, for one. There are others - Nigella 'another bucket of cream please' Lawson, and Jamie 'fry it pukka fella' Oliver - I cannot abide. Strange then that reading a recent JO recipe gave me a headstart on what proved to be an excellent dish.
Probably on the BBC website, or maybe The Guardian (he's a Londoner so The Guardian - to which I subscribe btw - acknowledges his existence, unlike restaurants outside the M25) I read what was clearly a plug (surely not) for his recent discovery of vegetables. Doesn't he know HF-W planted his flag on such produce some time ago, even introducing common people to them? The recipe used lentils with other ingredients to make a non-meat basis for shepherd's/cottage pie (the end result more like cottage to my mind, for what it's worth).
Sternest Critic having been welcomed back to the fold with a huge T-bone steak on Wednesday (he's been off teaching diving in foreign climes), Thursday was his introduction to our present mainly vegetarian regime. Without the recipe to hand I worked from general principles and vague recollection: the 'meat' base was made with lentils (cooked from dried), to which diced carrots, fried onions red and white, garlic, chopped mushrooms, tomato puree, tomato sauce, smoked paprika, and - JO's good idea - some Marmite were added. I overdid the Marmite, as The Dear Leader (may her enemies writhe in eternal pain) pointed out, perfectly correctly (as if it needs saying). The lid was made with potatoes, parsnip and turnip, mashed with some grated cheddar and mezzo-luna-ed parsley, and a layer of grated cheddar put on top to finish it - and when that had browned up in the oven the pie was ready.
Normally I'm one for not substituting stuff for meat in vegetarian cooking - let the veggies speak for themselves - but this mixture made for a meaty texture, and was very savoury. Marmite has B12, so addresses one of my concerns about cutting out/back on meat and fish. It also imparts a terrific umami taste. But I added a bit too much, and it slightly overshadowed the lentils. Nil desperandum, it will be corrected next time, and there will be a next time, as it was enjoyed by all. Trouble was, we struggled to find a name for it: Crofter's Pie? Smallholder's Pie? Cheaty Meatless Pie?
Probably on the BBC website, or maybe The Guardian (he's a Londoner so The Guardian - to which I subscribe btw - acknowledges his existence, unlike restaurants outside the M25) I read what was clearly a plug (surely not) for his recent discovery of vegetables. Doesn't he know HF-W planted his flag on such produce some time ago, even introducing common people to them? The recipe used lentils with other ingredients to make a non-meat basis for shepherd's/cottage pie (the end result more like cottage to my mind, for what it's worth).
Sternest Critic having been welcomed back to the fold with a huge T-bone steak on Wednesday (he's been off teaching diving in foreign climes), Thursday was his introduction to our present mainly vegetarian regime. Without the recipe to hand I worked from general principles and vague recollection: the 'meat' base was made with lentils (cooked from dried), to which diced carrots, fried onions red and white, garlic, chopped mushrooms, tomato puree, tomato sauce, smoked paprika, and - JO's good idea - some Marmite were added. I overdid the Marmite, as The Dear Leader (may her enemies writhe in eternal pain) pointed out, perfectly correctly (as if it needs saying). The lid was made with potatoes, parsnip and turnip, mashed with some grated cheddar and mezzo-luna-ed parsley, and a layer of grated cheddar put on top to finish it - and when that had browned up in the oven the pie was ready.
Normally I'm one for not substituting stuff for meat in vegetarian cooking - let the veggies speak for themselves - but this mixture made for a meaty texture, and was very savoury. Marmite has B12, so addresses one of my concerns about cutting out/back on meat and fish. It also imparts a terrific umami taste. But I added a bit too much, and it slightly overshadowed the lentils. Nil desperandum, it will be corrected next time, and there will be a next time, as it was enjoyed by all. Trouble was, we struggled to find a name for it: Crofter's Pie? Smallholder's Pie? Cheaty Meatless Pie?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)