Lentil Dumpling Curry and Cabbage and Fennel Stirfry - Indian Food Week

I know I should have posted a recipe last night but we got side-tracked and ended up ordering pizza with Damon's colleagues instead... For those in the UK, check out the nutritional information for Domino's pizzas, I almost had a heart attack when I did!

Today's Indian food recipes are quite different from the ones most people are used to. The stir-fry is different from usual Asian stir-fries - it doesn't use any sauce, only fried spices. The curry is from South Indian cuisine - the flavours are more subtle and the texture less creamy.

Today was uncharacteristically (long word!) sunny and warm in Cambridge - 10C warmer than on the same day last year! We decided to take our Indian stir fry along for a cycle to Grantchester Meadows and frolick along the river Cam. For those audiophiles out there, Grantchester Meadows is indeed a Pink Floyd song from Ummagumma.

Cycling at Grantchester Meadow

Cabbage and Fennel Stir-fry
Ingredients:
1 Tbsp Coconut Oil/Olive oil
1 tsp Fennel Seeds
1 tsp Sesame Seeds
1 Onion, sliced thinly
1 Fennel, sliced thinly
1 Star Anise seed
1 small Green Cabbage, cut thinly
1 tsp Chilli Powder or Cayenne Powder
1/2 tsp Salt (or more if you're a salt fan)
Juice of a Lemon
1 tsp Garam Masala

Stir-fry with Quorn burgers and home-made cranberry green ice-tea

How to:
Heat the oil in a large pan on medium heat and toast the seeds until they start to crackle.
Add the onion, fennel and star anise, cook for 5 minutes until the onion becomes translucent and golden.
Add the cabbage and cook until it is wilted, about 5 minutes.
Add the chilli powder and salt and mix well.
Cook for another few minutes, then add the lemon juice and garam masala. Mix well and serve with some (veggie) burgers or use as a side for other dishes.


Lentil Dumplings Curry (Paruppu Urundai Kuzhambu)
This recipe was inspired from this food blog. 
I know it seems rather intimidating but this recipe is actually pretty straight forward, uses a lot of the same ingredients in different ways. We had it ready in no time and it was delicious! 

Lentil Dumpling Curry - ready to be eaten!

Ingredients:
Curry Paste:
1 tbsp Coriander Seeds or Powder
2 Red Chillies - you can replace some of the chillies with tomato paste if you don't want it to be too spicy but want to keep the paste consistency
1 tsp Cumin Seeds or Powder
1/2 tsp Fennel Seeds
1 1/2 tsp Poppy Seeds
1/4 cup Grated Coconut

For the dumplings:
1 cup Toor Dal (or lentils if you cannot get hold of it), soaked in water for a couple of hours
1/2 Red Onion, roughly
1 Clove Garlic
1/2 tsp Fennel Seeds
1/2 tsp Cumin Seeds
1 Red Chilli
 2 Tbsp Tomato Paste
Handful fresh Coriander
Salt to taste

For the Curry Sauce:
1 Tbsp Olive oil
1/2 tsp Mustard
1 tsp Fennel Seeds
1 tsp Fenugreek Seeds
1 tsp Curry Leaves - I used dried curry leaves but you could use fresh ones or even Curry Powder
1 Red Onion, chopped
1 small piece Ginger, crushed into a paste
3 Garlic Cloves, crushed
1 tin chopped Tomatoes
Salt to taste
1 tsp Tamarind Extract (you can also soak a small ball of Tamarind paste in some hot water and use the juice squeezed from the paste) - this really gave the dish an interesting taste. If you cannot get hold of any, you could potentially add a teaspoon of brown sugar but it will not add any subtle flavour to the dish.

How to:
First, blend the curry paste ingredients and keep aside.
Blend the dal until it becomes a chunky paste - if it's not blended enough, the dumplings won't hold nicely. Put the dal into a large bowl and set aside. Blend the rest of the dumpling ingredients and mix them well in the dal.
Shape into squash ball-sized dumplings. Steam the dumplings for about 10 minutes. You could potentially skip the steaming step and cook them in the sauce instead, but the dumplings might not hold.

Dumplings - straight after steaming

While the dumplings are steaming, make the curry sauce.
Heat up a tablespoon of oil in a large pan and add the mustard, fennel seeds and fenugreek seeds. Cook until they start to splatter. Then add the onion, garlic and ginger until the onion becomes translucent.
Add the tomatoes and salt, cook for another 5 minutes.
Add the spice mix and a cup of water. Cook until slightly reduced but still saucy. 
If, like me, you prefer a smooth curry sauce, you can blend it slightly at this point - watch out though because the sauce will be hot!
Add the tamarind, mix well. Add the dumplings in the sauce and cook on low heat for another 5 minutes. Serve with brown basmati rice. Enjoy!

Festival Food

Ever been to a music festival with a vegan? Well, I have! And I've had to get quite creative to keep the recipes tasty, cheap, quick and with the minimum amount of ingredients to take along. All the recipes below are vegan but you can substitute ingredients for more conventional alternatives - though the chocolate fudgey bites are phenomenal as they are!

Doing what I do best - cook for everyone!

So yeah, sorry I haven't posted for a few days but we spent the weekend at a music festival (a vet, vegetarian, vegan and a legendary Essex lad!) - All Tomorrow's Parties - in Minehead (across the sea from Cardiff). To prevent excessive consumption of junk food during the weekend (we did pig out once for lunch...), I decided to come up with easy, quick recipes to feed 4 people using as few ingredients as possible.
Note that this is not for your typical South African festival, you'll need basic kitchen equipment for these recipes but they'll work for a quick meal.

Lunches and dinners for 3 night stay: 
Tomato Soup
Leek and Parnsip Risotto
Roasted Potato with Beans (don't need a recipe for this one, lol!)
Butternut Mac n Cheese
Celeriac and Cauliflower Mash with Veggie Burgers

Snacks:
Chocolate Fudgey Bites
Pita and Carrots with Hummus

Tomato Soup
I absolutely love tomato soup - it is probably the best kind of soup out there. The trick to delicious tomato soup is to de-seed all the tomatoes before cooking them. It can be quite time consuming but it is really worth it. You can also use cherry tomatoes if you have the patience/time to de-seed them!

Ingredients:
1kg tomatoes (you can use 1kg cherry tomatoes or half cherry tomatoes/half normal tomatoes)
1 onion, sliced
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 liter vegetable stock (use as much as desired depending how thick you like your soup)
Salt and pepper
Optional: butter, bread (we used wholemeal sourdough from the Earth's Crust in the Cambridge market) and cream to serve

How to:
If you'd like, you can skin the tomatoes but it is not necessary.
Start by chopping up the tomatoes and remove the seeds. 
Heat up some olive oil in a large pan and cook the onion until soft.
Add the tomatoes and cook for about 3 minutes.
Add the stock and the balsamic vinegar. Cook for 10 minutes.
Blend, season and serve warm with some cream and buttered bread.

Leek and Parsnip Risotto (with Ruby Orange Vodka Cocktail)

Eating lunch outside in the sun - an ATP festival first!

Ingredients (for 4 people):
1 onion, chopped
1-2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 fennel, chopped into small cubes
2 leeks, sliced thinly
400 grams risotto rice
150ml white wine - I used Pinto Grigio but I think a drier white would work best
1 liter of vegetable stock, keep warm in a separate pan
juice of one lemon
parsley or thyme - I only had thyme handy but I think parsley would work better
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

How to:
Heat up some olive oil in a pan on medium heat and add the onion. Cook on low heat until the onions are translucent but not brown. Add the garlic and cook for a further 2 minutes.
Add the fennel and leek and cook on low-medium heat until both are soft.
Add the risotto rice and make sure it is nicely coated with the leftover oil in the pan. Keep mixing gently for a minute.
Pour the white wine in the pan and wait until it has mostly evaporated.
Add ladles of the warm stock one at a time. Wait a bit in between each ladle until the water has been absorbed by the rice - make sure the stove's not too hot or the stock will just evaporate and not cook the rice.
You can always add a bit more stock if needs be, just taste the rice along the way until it is al dente!
Once the rice is cooked, add chopped parsley, salt and pepper to taste and the lemon juice.
Serve immediately on a sunny patio with a cool glass of white wine.

For the Ruby Orange Vodka Cocktail:

Eating tasty Butternut Mac n Cheese

Pour some Vanilla Vodka (I tend to be heavy handed so I won't give you any guidelines there, but the usual "single, double" rule should be alright here) in a tall glass. The mix is made up of 2/3 blood orange juice (or ruby orange juice) and 1/3 cranberry juice. Drink cold.

By the way, I need a creative name for the above cocktail - please help me with one!

Butternut Mac n Cheese
I stole this recipe from "Oh She Glows" so I'll link this up to her website where the original recipe is. I follow it to the letter and it comes out perfect, comforting and delicious.

Celeriac and Cauliflower Mash with Veggie Burgers (or any other burger for that matter)

Ingredients:
1 celeriac, peeled and chopped - I guess you could use parsnip or any other root vegetable
1 cauliflower, chopped
Thyme
A knob of butter (vegan or not)
A splash of milk (dairy or not) - adjust quantities depending on how thick/runny you like your mash
Salt and pepper

How to:
Boil the celeriac and cauliflower until very tender.
Drain and put into a large bowl. Add the thyme, salt, pepper, milk and butter.
Mash using a hand-held blender or a masher.
Adjust seasoning if necessary. 

Serve with the burger of your choice - we ate Aduki Bean Kiev and they were delicious!

Chocolate Fudge Bites! Nom Nom Nom

Chocolate Fudgey Bites
For snacks, I made these little devils: German Chocolate Fudge Bites and they came out so chocolatey and addictive!

Mark E Smith and Me! - "Good Evening, we are the Fall"

Damon's musical note: Music wise, the weekend's highlights included the Boredoms, the mighty Fall, Group Doueh's infectious Saharan grooves, Mount Eerie, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the monumental Earth and Matana Roberts.

The Boredoms (and me!) - Acid Police!

Fennel and Blood Orange - a poorly advertised love story?

For the second time since we started getting our veggie box, I was faced this week with an old enemy: fennel! The first time was during the second week of February - Valentine's Day week! I really despise the stuff and despite my mom's best efforts have never really willingly dished it on my plate, let alone bought some from the shops! But unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), I had no choice seeing as it had been delivered to my door amongst other better tasting vegetables.
Having recently discovered Master Chef UK (I don't know why I always watch that show AFTER dinner, then I get soo hungry), I decided to search the BBC Food database for a tasty way to tackle my old foe. Boy, oh boy, was that a good decision! I came across this beauty: Red mullet, fennel puree and fennel salad with lemongrass broth which is what I made for our Valentine's Day dinner (I replaced the red mullet with sustainably source Pacific Tuna).

Pacific Tuna, fennel puree, fennel and blood orange salad with lemongrass broth

 Topped with some real pink champagne and amazing Hotel Chocolat Truffles, this was a finger-licking good Valentine's Day.
So I found that the trick to fennel is two things: anise seeds and blood orange. The anise seeds emphasize the taste of the fennel and the blood orange beautifully complements it. Blood oranges work so well with fennel that I ordered a kilo of them along with this week's veg box as soon as I found out we were getting more fennel. I was actually excited to get more fennel! Say what?
I know it sounds crazy, but take it from a fennel hater - this works!

So tonight is the night where I'm eating fennel again! I went back to the BBC Food website and found this recipe: Mozzarella Bruschetta with Shave Fennel and Courgette. I forgot to buy courgette and used up the lemon juice in last night's latkes so I modified the recipe a bit - we'd also run out of mozzarella so I had to use a gouda style cheese which was a little strong for the dish.
Damon thought that orange and cheese should not mix but I disagree, I thought the salad was great on the toasted cheese. Each to his/her opinion but do give it a try with a neutral cheese, like mozzarella.

Dinner - toasted cheese with a twist!

Ingredients:
2 blood oranges, with skin removed and segments cut into small pieces (I guess you could use normal oranges but I don't know how that would turn out)
Juice of one (blood) orange
Juice of half lemon 
1 fennel bulb, sliced thinly
A few sprigs of mint, chopped 
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Sourdough bread (2 slices per person is the way I usually go about it but feel free to adjust)
1 large garlic clove, cut into halves (one clove per 4 slices of bread)
Mozzarella, grated or sliced

How to:

Adventurous toast!

Toast the sourdough slices. Once toasted, rub the garlic clove halves on one side of the toast and keep aside.
Mix the fennel, blood orange segments and mint in a bowl. Pour a tablespoon of olive oil on them and toss gently. 
In a cup, mix the orange juice, lemon juice, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper to taste. Mix into the salad.
Sprinkle a generous amount of mozzarella on each toast. You can quickly pop the toasts in the oven for a "toasted cheese" effect or keep the cheese as-is.
Serve the toast next to the salad and decide whether you're adventurous enough to eat the salad on the toast.