Asian Flavours…

Today I am in the mood for an Asian-themed menu. Asian cookery is a favourite of mine, as it’s possible to create really healthy, really fragrant dishes with herbs and spices. Lots of taste does not have to equal inchage. Or square footage.

I am well aware that saying ‘Asian’ is like saying ‘European’ in terms of just how many national cuisines come under the umbrella. One cuisine, that quite rightfully in my opinion, is enjoying a lot of exposure in the UK’s supermarkets is Japanese. Long gone are the days when tempura batter or Japanese pickled ginger were only to be found in the deli. Now most large supermarkets stock a pretty decent range of goods.

One thing I couldn’t get at the supermarket or at the deli was green tea powder. I had been on the hunt for a few weeks, as my new agar-agar cookery book called for it in relation to a pudding. I managed to locate some matcha powder at www. japanesekitchen.co.uk. The beautiful packaging of this particular brand caught my design eye – responsible also for the purchase of a  $12 jar of jam in the past because the packaging was so beautiful. I’d particularly like to recommend Japanese Kitchen as their customer service was excellent. They didn’t have any of my preferred brand in stock due to the terrible devastation caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, but they promised to email me when supply was resumed. With this I created a green tea ice cream, which is the featured dessert in today’s menu.

To start with I decided to pick an old favourite of mine, tempura. Whilst the batter mix I bought from the supermarket, you can make it yourself pretty easily. I decided to serve the tempura mushrooms with a wasabi, sesame and soy dipping sauce. I had forgotten how good tempura is, and I was pleased with the tangy, sweet, sharp sauce.

The main course would be an aromatic Ginger, Lemongrass, Chili and Garlic tofu, flavours not strictly Japanese, hence the title of this post ‘Asian Flavours’ rather than ‘Dinner in Kyoto’… And to finish up, the green tea ice-cream.

Most of my English friends and colleagues make a ‘yucky’ face when I mention green tea. I do like it, but I think the two or three years I spent in Japan might count for part of that. I might have become immune to it. One interesting snippet that I didn’t know was that all tea, black, olong, green, Russian Caravan, you name it, comes from the same plant Camellia sinensis but it’s the type of processing which gives the resulting flavour and colour. Obviously some types of tea are named after where they are grown, such as Assam and Darjeeling.

The green tea ice cream has an interesting flavour and a very smooth silky texture, but I would recommend serving just a little as the taste might be unfamiliar to most people.

Spontaneous Soups…

As October arrived with the glow of Indian summer, it seems unseasonal to speak of soup. However the weather man has it on good authority that cooler weather is on the way.  I find the autumn a very melancholy and nostalgic time. I remember walking around the park in November in my teens, when every exhalation hung like fog in the air.  With the chill, my mind wanders to hearty, homemade soups which for me is one of the highlights of autumn. There were still things to be harvested in the veg patch, and I had various bits and pieces in the fridge that I needed to use up. Soup is great way to use up odds and ends, including herbs, and when you make them yourself they are more delicious and healthier than the ones you can buy at the store. In addition, it means you don’t waste food, and that is key to my current frugality drive (more of that later!). The veggie patch has given up its last fruits of the summer, including a little surprise, a sweet dumpling squash. When I say a surprise, I admit it wasn’t a total shock, after all I did plant, but this is the first time I have had a sweet dumpling from it.

This small green striped squash was the only offering from that particular plant, and rock hard when I when preparing it for the oven. I decided to bake mine in the oven with just a dash of maple syrup, then to make it into soup. Goodness only know what the result would be! In fact, it had quite an unusual texture and flavour. I have seen lots of recipes for these hollowed out and baked with maple syrup as a side dish, and I wonder if that wouldn’t be too sweet.

I also had half a punnet of mushrooms, (I always think the word ‘punnet’ should be some kind of comic medieval song, half way between pun and sonnet), some carrots, half an orange pepper and lots of herbs.

So, on the menu (and in the liquidizer) today are:

Mushroom soup

Carrot, orange pepper and coriander soup

Sweet dumpling soup with a dash of maple syrup

These soups are not only yummy and delicious but also super-cheap to make. Try making soup with leftover bits and pieces, pretty much you can’t go wrong. Enjoy!

The Passion of Parsnips…

My post today isn’t a three course menu, but rather more a ‘What can I do if I have X ingredient?’ No prizes for guessing which ingredient that might be…

Like most things in my life, my veg patch planning is a bit haphazard. Sometimes though, within the chaos of vegetation, a surprise can present itself. A long forgotten planting can bear fruit. And so I found these little beauties.

I had totally forgotten I had planted parsnips aaaages ago, and although I was quite bewildered by the mystery mid-green leaves that grew tall and spread over the summer, it didn’t jog my memory. I am passionate about growing my own, and that passion seemed to have transferred itself into the ground. That, or it was a really cold winter last year.

There is no question of course that these specimens would be rejected by the European Community, or have to be re-classified under adult entertainment. There’s something a bit creepy about all the tendrils coming off them, but horrowshow aside, I decided that these parsnip lovers were destined for something a little spicy themselves. And so, parsnip and ginger soup came into being. The soup is a nice combination of the smooth and the spicy, with a real kick of ginger. Just the thing to keep the immune system strong over the colder months.

I did discover some other parsnips in the patch, but these clearly were less desirable and definitely single. I paired them up with some tasty butternut squash in a savoury tart, and it was a happy ending all round.

Turkish Delight… or Disaster…

Turkey… I spent a long weekend in Istanbul a few years ago and loved it.. The Spice Bazaar, the fabulous hammams, and the delicious and reasonably priced food.  Turkish pizza, or pide, is also very popular in Australia where I lived for several years. It’s served with wedges of lemon, has fillings to tempt both vegetarians and non veggies alike, and was just delicious.  I found a recipe for pide dough recently and so was inspired to attempt a Turkish themed menu.

The starter is called Muhammara, and is a walnut based dip, sweetened with pomegranate molasses. I was particularly interested in this recipe, as I have a bottle of pomegranate molasses and was looking for different applications for it.

For the main course I made a Spinach and Feta Cheese Pide, the possibilities are endless however. Roasted red peppers, chargrilled aubergines,  and salty black olives would be fabulous too. The dough recipe calls for olive oil, which not all do, but I really think it transforms the dough. My human taste guinea pigs all declared it was really delicious.

So we have had the delight, now the disaster. I was attempting to make Turkish Delight, which traditionally uses gelatine, with agar agar. Currently it’s banished to the freezer in an attempt to get it to set. I will have another go with it, and this batch might have to end up as Turkish Delight ice-cream.

Until then Afiyet olsun!

Agar agar

A new addition to my larder is agar agar, the vegetarian version of gelatine. After a couple of false starts it seems I am getting the hang of it. Derived from seaweed, agar agar has no taste or odour. The pot recommends one tablespoon of agar agar to a pint of liquid, and I find a quarter teaspoon mixes into 65ml of water and has enough setting power for pâté.

The three courses I have prepared today are:

Mushroom, Roasted Pepper and Almond pâté

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goats Cheese and Sweet Pepper Tart

 

 

 

 

Strawberry Shortcake

 

 

 

 

 

It would have been nice to be able to produce my own peppers for these dishes, but I never seem to have much luck -  peppers seem to take an age to grow and I suspect we might need ten degrees more heat to really encourage them. The aubergine plants have flowered, so I am hoping they will produce enough baby aubergine for a dish in the next week or two.

Enough about vegetable tribulations, it’s a bank holiday here and I want to get out and enjoy the late summer sunshine!

Sublime soup, beautiful beet, and something sweet…

Last year, I was pleasantly surprised with the results of successful my pumpkin and squash growing. A very small patch produced a fabulous Rouge d’Etampe and several mid-green squash, decked with pale freckles, with melon-white flesh. The red was delicious and sweet, but the unidentified squash was a little bit bland. I wished that I had known about this recipe then, as its successor this year ended up transformed into Lemon-scented Summer Squash Soup with Croutons and a Herb and Almond Cream. This soup is simply sublime – the recipe really brings out the flavours in this unassuming vegetable, and it can be simple enough for a lunch or supper, or enhanced for  a dinner party starter. I think croutons are essential, but you can choose whether to add the herb cream or not; for me it was just an extra level of taste and texture.

Lemon-scented Summer Squash Soup with Croutons and Herb Almond Cream

My good friend Sally, who is herself a very skilled cook, treated me to a fantastic balsamic, beetroot, goats cheese and pinenut concoction earlier this year, and it was so good that I was inspired to try a savoury pancake filled with honeyed beetroot, sour cream and toasted pinenuts. The humble beet is much beloved over in Australia, where it often crops up as an adornment to burgers, however it seems to have lost some of its popularity over here. However, it’s back in my good books, as the pancake was absolutely delicious, the sweetness of the beet contrasting nicely with the tang of sour cream. I will be featuring more savoury crepes and pancakes as the weeks go by, as they are a versatile and economical way to rustle up a great veggie main course.

Savoury Pancake with Honeyed Beetroot, Sour Cream and Toasted Pinenuts

I have really got back into baking cookies, and generally have a few rolls of dough in the freezer ready to cut off some rounds to bake. My guinea-pigs include the boys at work, and so far, they aren’t complaining! For something sweet try these  White Chocolate, Orange and Almond cookies.

White Chocolate, Orange and Almond cookies