Lentil 'Meatballs' and Tomato Sauce

I love taking inspiration from other food blogs - in terms of both style and content. I have already mentioned one of my favourite blogs, The Stone Soup on here - not only is Jules very knowledgeable about her subject, but she has a great style that I love reading. Plus all of her recipes come with tweaks, so even when she blogs about a meat or fish-based dish, she gives pointers on how to make it vegetarian or vegan. Her recipes are also nice and simple, which is always a plus! But another thing I love about her blog is how interactive it is - lots of readers always comment on her recipes, and - perhaps following her lead - are always keen to share how they have tweaked the recipe to suit their own needs or tastes. The end result is an amazing melting pot of culinary ideas based around a common dish, which I find so inspirational.


Last night's dinner was an amalgamation of one of Jules's recipes and one of Heidi Swanson's. Jules had blogged about lentil balls as an alternative to meatballs, and one of the commenters mentioned that they had made Heidi's Five-Minute Tomato Sauce to accompany the lentil balls. The sauce sounded so amazing that I just had to try both it and the lentil balls (that I keep accidentally referring to as meatballs....slips off the tongue more easily, doesn't it?!) and I was really impressed with both and just had to share this recipe with you. (David really enjoyed it too, so it has also passed the 'meat-eater test'.)

Lentil 'Meatballs' and Tomato Sauce

(Serves 2)

Ingredients:

115g dried brown lentils

500ml vegetable stock

3 tbsps olive oil (plus more for drizzling)

1 1/2 teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes

1/2 tsp salt

3 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tin chopped tomatoes

1 tsp lemon juice

75g ground almonds

1 medium egg

150g dried spaghetti

Method:

Pre-heat the oven to 200ºC Put the lentils in a medium pan and pour over the stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for approximately 20 minutes or until lentils are soft. Meanwhile, prepare the tomato sauce. Put the olive oil, red pepper flakes, salt and garlic in a pan and gently heat until the aromas are released - don't let the garlic brown. At this point, add the tomatoes, and bring to a gentle simmer. Crush any larger pieces of tomato between the side of the pan and the stirring spoon. Take off the heat and add the lemon juice. Pour the sauce into an oven-proof bowl and set to one side. Once your lentils have finished cooking, drain them, put them in a bowl and rougroughly mash them. Add the ground almonds and the egg, and mix well. Once everything is well combined, use a soup spoon to help form the lentil mixture into medium-sized balls, and place the balls into the tomato sauce. Drizzle with a glug of olive oil. Bake the whole thing in the oven for 20 minutes. After 10 minutes, put the spaghetti into a large pan of boiling water and cook until tender (about 10 minutes). Serve the lentil balls and tomato sauce on top of the spaghetti for a tasty, filling dinner.

To serve, Jules suggests sprinkling with parmesan, which I forgot to do, but that would definitely be really tasty!

Mushroom Risotto

I think I need to improve on my food photography skills.....this mushroom risotto is mouth-wateringly good but I don't think it comes across in the photos. You'll just have to take my word for it for now, and any tips on the photography front will be gratefully received!

Many people think that making a risotto from scratch is really difficult and/or time consuming. But it is one of my go-to meals, partly as it is so easy to make it seem fresh every time by altering the ingredients, but partly as I feel so comfortable making it. Yes, you need to spend a good half hour standing over it, stirring frequently, but other than that, there's not much else required in terms of time. And it is not as complicated as you'd think. I think the trick is to keep tasting the rice as you near the end of the cooking time, until you are satisfied with the consistency - not too hard, not too mushy. You will eventually develop a feel for how long your risotto takes.

Another tip I would offer would be this: don't worry too much about how much stock you need. If you taste the rice and it seems done but you haven't used all your stock, that's fine. (I suggest preparing a litre in the recipe below, but the other night I found I only used 700ml.) Or, if it's not quite done and you've run out of stock, simply add a little boiling water instead of the stock. Bearing this in mind may help you if you have a fear of trying to make risotto.

I have been making mushroom risotto for years, but had taken a bit of a break from it for the last few months, favouring pea and mint (ever since I started growing my own mint, I have loved any excuse to use it in my cooking!) or pea and carrot versions. But now the weather's getting colder and I was looking to revisit some old favourites, the mushroom risotto came back onto the menu, and it has been a welcome return!

I am usually not very specific about quantities with this recipe - I use lots of mushrooms, as I absolutely adore them, but you can reduce the amount if you want/need to. Also, I just add as much cheese and butter at the end as I feel like (sometimes this is dictated by how much of each I have left!!), but I tried to weigh out what I was using the other night to give me an idea of what to suggest you add - these are the weights I have noted in the recipe below.

If you don't have wine, it is possible to make the recipe without it, or to substitute lemon juice (both of which I used to do), but the wine really adds the 'wow' factor to this one, so I'd highly recommend its inclusion if possible. One thing I've learned over the past couple of years is that although white wine can't be drunk after more than two or three days open in the fridge, it is still fine to use in cooking after this time. I usually have an open bottle of 'old' wine in the fridge specifically for cooking, and a couple of times I have used wine as old as two months old in my risotto - and it was still delicious and caused no problems. This makes it even easier to include wine in your risotto - there's no desperation to use up the rest of the bottle! Alternatively, you can buy those mini bottles of wine, or even small cartons of wine for a pound or two at the supermarket - ideal for cooking with.

Mushroom Risotto 

(serves two with a little left over for lunch the next day!)

Ingredients:

3 tbsps olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped finely

300g button mushrooms

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

200g arborio rice

150ml white wine

1 litre vegetable stock

30g butter

50g grated parmesan/vegetarian equivalent

salt and pepper, to taste

Method:

Heat the oil in a large pan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and mushrooms and fry, stirring gently until the mushrooms have softened (approximately 10 minutes). Add the garlic and fry for another minute. Now add the rice, stirring to coat each grain in the oil. Once all the grains are coated, add the wine. Stir until the wine has been fully absorbed by the rice. Now add the stock, gradually (many recipes suggest a ladleful at a time; I am not so precise, but would say about 150ml-200ml at a time). After you have added a ladleful/approximately 200ml, keep stirring until the stock has been fully absorbed by the rice. Only at this point add the next ladleful/200ml portion. At this point, it may be good to turn the heat down a touch, if the risotto seems to be boiling rather than simmering. Continue like this until the rice is cooked through - it should still retain a little bite (it should definitely not be soggy!) but it should not be so firm that it's crunchy either. I never normally time this, but I did the other night and it took approximately 20 minutes to reach this stage. At this point, take the risotto off the heat and add the butter, cheese and salt and pepper. Stir well to combine. Let stand for a couple of minutes, and then serve. If you have some fresh basil leaves, they make a nice garnish.

I hope you enjoy this recipe and that if you have previously been put off trying to cook risotto, that I have inspired you to try!

Cheese and Tomato Rice

I have the day off work today, which is nice - a whole day to myself with no plans. Except waiting in all day for a parcel to be delivered, so I am house-bound. Still, the weather is pretty horrible just now, so I am not too upset that I can't go out. Instead, I am taking advantage of all of this free time, and as well as catching up on the book I'm reading, I decided this morning to give my blog a little spring (or autumn) clean: I have added a new page, basically a contents page, listing all of the recipes I have blogged about, categorised by meal/type. This should make it easier for you, my readers, to find the recipe you're looking for, and also easier for me to keep track of what I have and haven't blogged about, and what might be missing. Hopefully you will find this page helpful - it can be found here.

I also thought today would be a good day to tell you all about one of my favourite autumn/winter dishes - it's filling, it's tasty, and it can easily be adapted to suit the vegetables you have to hand that day. The recipe is Cheese and Tomato Rice, and is based on the Cheddar and Tomato Rice recipe I found in the BBC Good Food 101 Veggie Dishes cookbook. It is not one of my quickest recipes, as it has to go in the oven for half an hour after you have cooked it on the hob - but during that half hour, I like (ok, maybe 'like' is taking it a bit too far) to wash the dishes, so that after dinner there's not too much to clean up. It's also good reheated - I usually just keep it in the oven dish that I bake it in, and then pop the whole thing back in the oven for half an hour (including the time it takes the oven to pre-heat) - this seems to heat it through nicely.

Cheese and Tomato Rice (serves 4)

Ingredients:

3 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, thinly sliced

1 red pepper, de-seeded and sliced

250g mushrooms

1 garlic clove, crushed

1 tin chopped tomatoes

1 litre vegetable stock

300g long-grain rice

salt and pepper, to taste

150g frozen peas

100g cheddar, grated

Method:

Heat the oil over a medium heat in a large pan. Add the onions, red pepper and mushrooms, and fry until completely softened. Add the garlic and cook for one more minute. At this point, turn on your oven to pre-heat it to 180ºC (160ºC fan-assisted). Add the tomatoes, stock and rice, and season. Bring to the boil, stirring gently, then reduce to a simmer, still stirring. Add the frozen peas. Continue to simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until almost all the liquid has been absorbed. Transfer the mixture to a casserole dish and scatter over the grated cheese. Put in the oven and bake for approximately 30 minutes. This is delicious served with a side salad, but I find it filling enough on its own too.

The great thing about this recipe is that you can easily add any vegetable you prefer - asparagus, sweetcorn or broad beans would all be nice, I think. Let me know if you customise this recipe to your own needs/tastes, I'd love to know how it turns out!

Emma's Malteser Cake

This week is my last week in my current job so at the request of my colleagues, I have made them some  Malteser cake. This is a no-bake effort, and really easy - in fact, the recipe came from a former colleague, Emma, who made it for bake sales and was subsequently asked to share the recipe with its adoring fans. But since she left, I have picked up the baton for making this for every bake sale or any time someone requests it, really! So it is my leaving gift to my lovely team, who I will miss very much.

This cake is ideal for bake sales or for friends coming over for coffee and cake, as it's so easy and requires minimal effort (it takes maybe half an hour to prepare, then you just pop it into the fridge for an hour) but tastes great! It is certainly not for anyone on a health kick - you can practically see the calories dancing all over it - but it's a great sweet treat that always goes down a storm.

Malteser Cake

Ingredients:

225g milk chocolate

110g butter (but I have just realised I accidentally made it with 225g butter tonight, and it tastes AMAZING!)

3 tbsps golden syrup

225g crushed digestive biscuits

225g Maltesers (plus a few extra to sprinkle on top)

100g white chocolate

Method:

Melt the milk chocolate, butter and syrup in a pan over a medium heat until the butter and chocolate have fully melted down. While this is melting, this is a good time to crush the digestives, if you keep an eye on the pan at the same time. Once the chocolate mixture is ready, add the crushed digestives and Maltesers and mix well until the chocolate layer on the Maltesers has melted into the mixture. Pour the whole lot onto a baking tray and smooth down with a spoon. Melt the white chocolate in the microwave by breaking it into chunks and microwaving on full power for blasts of 10 or 20 seconds at the time, checking it frequently to check it's not burning. Drizzle the white chocolate over the top of the Malteser layer in the tray. Finally, crush the remaining Maltesers and sprinkle them over the top. Put the cake in the fridge for at least an hour. You can leave it in over night, but beware, if you do, you'll need to take it out a couple of hours before you want to cut it, as it will be solid!

Tasty Tzatziki

Tonight's dinner was a repeat of that delicious spicy broccoli pasta I told you about on Friday -  but this time, David was here to sample it too. I am happy to say that he found it as delicious as I did, and we are both in agreement that it will be a regular feature in our dinner menus from now on. I love making food that I enjoy, but half of the enjoyment of eating surely comes from the company you enjoy the food with, so it's always nice to know that David's a fan of one of my favourite dishes (yes, I just made it for the first time last week and already it's one of my favourites!).

Tzatziki saves the day!

Last week wasn't all discovering new favourite recipes though. On Thursday, I was really excited to try a new falafel recipe from A Girl Called Jack. Like Jack, I too have tried on various occasions to make my own falafel (after falling in love with the stuff when I was living in Germany - whilst all my meat-eating friends were munching on their döner kebaps, I was discovering the delights of falafel). Also like Jack, none of my previous attempts had quite lived up to my expectations. (Ok, basically they crumbled and fell apart completely.) So I was really excited to see that she had finally cracked the perfect falafel!

Yeah....falling apart in the pan - not great!

Unfortunately, my attempts to recreate this perfect falafel failed. This could be because I shallow (rather than deep) fried my falafel, and the turning could have aided the falling apart. Or perhaps it was because I used a food processor rather than a hand held masher to mash the chickpeas. Either way, I had the same problem of the falafel falling apart. They were still tasty, in the garlic and coriander pita bread, accompanied by salad, but what really lifted this failed experiment was the delicious tzatziki I made to drizzle over the falafel. This is an incredibly simple recipe that could be used as a dip for almost anything you fancy, or if you are able to make your falafel more successfully than me (please tell me how!), then it would obviously be great with that.

Not the full portion, but this is what the finished product should look like!

Here's how I did it.

Ingredients:

150ml natural yoghurt

1/3 cucumber (I really love my cucumber, so feel free to use less if you prefer!)

2 garlic cloves

3 tsp lemon juice

a few mint leaves, finely chopped

Method:

Pour the yoghurt into a bowl. Chop the cucumber into tiny pieces (I chop it firstly into rounds of maybe 1/2cm thick, then cut each round - you can stack them and do several at once - into slices one way across, then the other way across). Add this to the yoghurt. Crush the garlic cloves into the mixture, add the lemon juice and mint, and then stir everything together. Yum!

On another note completely, I have just discovered that one of my friends has recently started blogging too, so I wanted to share her blog with you. Tales of Adventure, Big and Small is not a cooking blog, but shares some of Laura's musings (and she's my friend, so you know they're worth listening to!) and good ideas. I love her fruity vodka idea, and am just thinking of which of my friends would love this as a Christmas gift. So why not take a wee look?

Please do let me know if you've had more success than I have with falafel. Or if you have something that is always a failure when you try to make it, let me know - maybe I'll have some tips for you?

Spicy Broccoli Pasta

Spicy Broccoli Pasta

Having no idea what I was going to eat for dinner, not very much in the fridge, and no desire to go back out into the cold (it has got freezing over the last few days!), I seem to have come up with a real winner of a dinner, just by chance. Inspired by a Yottam Ottolenghi creation (I must recommend his book, Plenty, again - I was drooling just reading it), I created this Spicy Broccoli Pasta.

It is unusual, delicious, and best of all, easy! I would definitely pay good money for this in a restaurant, and I am looking forward to cooking it for guests sometime, to see their reactions. I had never tried the combination of broccoli and mint, but it was really lovely. I think it's the combination of the fiery spices and refreshing mint that makes this dish so surprisingly good. But I will leave it up to you to try it out and let me know what you think of it.

Spicy Broccoli Pasta (serves 2)

Ingredients:

100g butter

2 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, finely sliced

300g broccoli, chopped into florets

200g rigatoni

1/2 tsp ginger

1/2 tsp hot smoked paprika

1/2 tsp coriander

1/2 tsp chilli powder

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp cinnamon 

1/2 tsp salt

black pepper, to taste

handful of fresh mint, finely chopped

Method:

Heat the butter and oil in a saucepan over a medium heat and add the onion. Cook gently for 10 - 15 minutes or until the onion is soft. Meanwhile, put the broccoli into a steaming basket over a pan of boiling water and cook for 10 - 15 minutes. Cook the pasta in boiling water according to packet instructions. When your onions are nicely softened, add the spices, salt and pepper, and stir well. Take off the heat. Add the pasta and broccoli to the sauce, and stir. Serve on plates, sprinkled with chopped mint.

Kitchen Products I Love

I have just finished my dinner - the delicious Wholesome Lemony Dhal from my friend Nicola's blog, Just8 - and had to tell you about it, as I think anyone who enjoys my blog and/or recipes should definitely try this one out. I had mine with broccoli instead of rice, as suggested by Nicola, and David also had some garlic and coriander pita bread with his. I love the simplicity of it - but at the same time, it is so filling, with each flavour really shining through. With the spinach and broccoli, it will take you well on your way to your five a day, and the lentils are a great source of protein. The health benefits of the dish combined with its ease of preparation and delicious taste make it as close to a perfect dinner as I can imagine. The only thing I would add to the original recipe is that if you don't have lemons to hand, you can use lemon juice from a bottle, in which case I would add about 120ml.

Wholesome Lemony Dhal with broccoli and salad

But what I really thought I would write about tonight, was not a recipe at all, but actually some of the recent and not-so-recent purchases for my veggie kitchen. From the start of this blog, I've said I would review products as well as share recipes, so today, I'm going to talk to you about some of the kitchen items I love (and one I'm not so happy with...just to warn you!). So, without further ado...

Tiger - Bargains or Cheap Tat?

I have recently been introduced to the delights of Tiger by my friend Anna at Pink Pom Poms. This shop is fairly new to Glasgow, but from looking at their website, they are a pretty big chain across much of Europe and even further afield. They don't appear to have an online shop, but if you have one nearby (there's a store locator on the website), it's worth a wander. I'd describe it as a kind of smaller scale Ikea (but that could just be the way they name their products) - they sell small kitchen and home products, such as kitchen timers, candles, notepads, etc.

When I was there a couple of weeks ago, I was looking for a cheap and creative way to store my rubber gloves (yes, how exciting!). I can't attach anything permanent to the wall, as we're in a rented flat, so it had to be something removable too. I came up with this:

Yup, a toothbrush holder. But as you can see, I have successfully used it to store the rubber gloves, and at just £2, I'm pretty pleased with my bargain! I was a little bit worried about the suction cups and whether the holder would actually stay stuck to the wall, but so far it's stayed up no problem for over a month. Just goes to show, that sometimes it pays to think a bit outside the box when you're looking for cheap storage solutions.

I also bought a knife sharpener at Tiger. However, this was not such a success story, unfortunately. I thought it looked cool, and must have been swayed by this and the price - £3 - (and the fact that my lovely Jamie Oliver knives are getting a bit blunt). But when I tried it out, it didn't seem to really make much of a difference. I wondered if I should have tried running the knife through the 3 sections for a bit longer, but this actually seemed to make the knife even blunter! I would have to say, it looks like a knife sharpener is not one of those products that you can go for the cheapest option with - or at least, not Tiger's version.

So, looks like while there are some great bargains to be had at Tiger, sometimes cheap really does mean bad.

IKEA

Who doesn't love IKEA?! I headed there last night to pick up some storage jars for some of the dried ingredients in my kitchen. As you can see below, they look pretty smart in the cupboard, and keep the contents nice and fresh. I've used mine to store my different types of pasta (but need more jars for more types!), rice (ditto), cous cous and lentils in. The tall ones cost £4.25 each and the shorter (but presumably bigger in terms of capacity) ones in front cost £4.75 each. They are really nice and do the job well (I already had one of the tall ones for a while, and loved it so much I decided to 'add to the family'.)

I'll need to get some more for the top shelf though - as you can see, it's still a bit of a mess! 

Kitchen White Board

This white board is the final product I wanted to show you. I actually bought this over a year ago, and I'm so glad I did. It's often the small, simple things that make a difference, I find, and the white board is a good example of that. I didn't have a pin board in my old flat, so thought this would be handy for scribbling notes on. I now do have a pin board, but while I pin money off vouchers, postcards, and taxi company business cards to it, I still like my whiteboard for writing notes. 

I sometimes use it to plan the week's recipes, or if I'm having friends over for dinner, I might write up the dinner plan there, so I remember any good ideas I have for dessert or accompaniments! 

Most recently, we've been using it to keep track of staple ingredients that we run out of (or are about to run out of) as we notice them. That way, when we come to do the weekly shopping, we can just check the whiteboard to see what we need to add to our shopping list in the way of any herbs, spices or other little things we might otherwise assume we have in the cupboard (because seriously, does salt ever run out?....Well, actually, yes, it does. And we remembered to restock because of our whiteboard list.)

The whiteboard sticks directly onto wood or metal (so you could put it on your fridge, if you wanted). Ours is stuck discreetly on the inside of a cupboard door. The best thing about the whiteboard is that it is re-stickable (not sure that's the word they actually used, but I like it!) - so I had it stuck to a cupboard in our old flat, but when moving day came, it couldn't have been simpler to peel it off the door, transport it (I stuck it to a plastic poly pocket just to keep the sticky side clean during the journey), and then reapply it to a cupboard door in our new flat. So another great one for us renters - or anyone who likes the idea of being able to move their notes around the kitchen, or simply not damage nice wooden cupboard doors.

I bought it from Staples for (I think) £5, and the non-permanent markers were from there too (can't remember the price, but it was reasonable too). Annoyingly, I can't see this product on their website any more, so if you know where to find these, please let me know in the comments, as I'd highly recommend them!