rice bowl FCF-style

I've been enjoying making (and eating) rice bowls with the limited veg we have at this time of year, and a little bit of meat and/or egg. 

The main bit is the rice and I've been using brown koshihikari (sushi rice) for its chewy texture and nutty flavour. We use an instant-pot-like device to cook the rice. For this I use 1 part of rice with 1.15 parts of water (by weight). If you cook by absorption in a closed pot use 1 part rice to 1.5 parts of water. Don't forget to include the residual wash water in your calculations! To do this, weigh the rice in your pot, wash (if you like) put the pot back on the scales and top up with water to the number you calculated.You could use regular short grain brown rice or white rice. It's SO important that your rice is not gluggy though so make sure you workshop your rice method first!

When the rice is cooked, I mix through toasted sesame seeds and (Asian) sesame oil and also some salt and chopped spring onions, if you have some. Serve into bowls then top the rice with:

meat/tofu cooked in miso with ginger

heaps of chopped raw or cooked (you decide based on the veg) Asian greens like broad bean tips, mizuna, hakurei and herbs

some halved 7 minute boiled eggs*

any pickles/kimchi you have lying around

This is a really simple meal that you can have on the table in, pretty much, the time it takes to cook the rice.

AI generated image - I forgot to photograph my last bowl! This one looks very neat but may not taste very good

* it may be insulting to tell you how to boil eggs but, strangely, most people don't know how to do it right. Kenji Lopez-Alt did a study on various methods and worked out that this was the best:

Bring a large amount of water to boil (it should be >5 times the volume of the eggs). Once at the boil, gently lower the eggs in with a spider/strainer basket. Start the timer immediately. I like 7 minutes for a cooked white and a slightly jammy yolk. Once the time is up, pour off the boiling water and fill the pan with cold running water and overflow it in the sink until the eggs feel coolish. You can store them in the fridge now or peel to serve. They'll peel easily, even if they're super fresh - that's one of the benefits of putting them into boiling rather than cold water.

Erba Stella

Erba Stella, which translates to "star herb," is an Italian heirloom green also known as minutina or buck's-horn plantain (Plantago coronopus). Originating along the Mediterranean coast, it is a treasured winter vegetable in Italy.

The plant forms a low-lying rosette of deeply divided leaves that resemble the antlers of a buck or the points of a star (hence the name) It has a delicate texture and mild, slightly nutty, and subtly sweet flavour. 

In the kitchen, Erba Stella is a versatile ingredient. It is most used in misticanza, an Italian mixed salad that combines whatever greens one has simply dressed with olive oil and lemon juice. It can be eaten raw, providing a delightful crunch and also lightly cooked, similar to spinach. When cooked, it tastes a little bit like seaweed and is delicious with eggs.

Broccoli has leaves you can eat!

It's funny how we eat the leaves of many brassica (mustard) plants - couve, cavolo nero, bok choy etc etc - and consider them finished once they start to flower. With broccoli, on the other hand, we wait for it to start flowering and eat that flowering head. What about all those leaves? A friend of ours said recently that broccoli leaves are his favourite of all the brassica leaves. "no way!" I thought.

I gave it a try last week and, sure enough, they're delicious! Notably, they hold their volume (don't shrink as much) and texture better than most other greens I've tried. 

I chopped them up and cooked them in a pan with a little stock and the lid on. Delicious! 

I would recommend trying this:

Chop the broccoli leaves and stems and add to a hot pan with olive oil. Toss for a minute, add some salt and little water (or stock), cover and cook on a low to medium heat. Once they're tender (check every couple of minutes) squeeze over some lemon juice and serve.

I think they could also be used in soups and stews. I'll be doing more research over winter. Maybe on cauliflower leaves too!

Daikon radish

We love growing daikon radishes. Not only are they great for eating, they are also really good for the soil and can be pulled without disrupting the structure of the soil. 

Here are a few suggestions to try out if you’re not that familiar with them:

Try cubing it up and put into a kimchi ramen noodle soup or in a coconut dhal. It’s really delicious cooked in liquid like this. It loses some of its pepperiness and has a very delicate texture and flavour.

It is often eaten as a pickle and keeps its crunch really nicely. There are many simple recipes such as this carrot and daikon pickle.

https://www.recipetineats.com/vietnamese-pickled-carrots-daikon/

And here is my mum's Chinese friend's recipe for radish cake.

1kg of Daikon, grated and squeezed out

1/2 cup dried shrimp, soaked, drained and diced (optional)

1/2 cup spring onions, sliced.

Add the daikon to 600ml water with 2tsp salt, 2tsp soy, 2tsp sugar, 2tsp sesame oil, 1 tsp white pepper. Bring to boil, simmer for 5 minutes then take off the heat and add a slurry made from 600ml water, 400g fine white rice flour, 2 tbsp cornstarch. add the shrimp and spring onion and mix well.

Pour into a greased loaf tin and steam for approx. 1 hour.

You can eat it like this or, better,  sliced and pan-fried until crispy, Yum Cha-style.

Escarole (or frisée) and mushroom salad

Here’s another recipe suggestion from Karina and Aaron in case you need some inspiration for what to do with escarole. 

And if you’ve got a favourite recipe that you’d like to share please send it through :)

https://www.triedandtruerecipe.com/warm-frisee-and-mushroom-salad/

Cavolo Nero Tradizionale

Back in 2014 we did a cycle trip in Italy. When we were in Tuscany we rented a place in a little village called Vagli Di Sotto for a few days. There were a few cook books written in English and I took some pictures of the ones that I thought sounded good. They then got lost in my myriad of photos but I went back to find them the other day, remembering that there were a couple of interesting recipes for Cavolo Nero. So here they are, and I’m going to finally go and try out ‘superb’ kale on toast.

And this is the same dish but quite different. I particularly like the ratio of kale to bread in the ingredients.

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pasta with cime di rapa

This is one of my (Stan's) favourite vegetables. Cime di rapa (meaning head of rape (mustard)) is a quick-growing, leafy mustard green popular in Italy. It's great just wilted in a pan with some olive oil, garlic salt and lemon. However, the classic recipe from Apulia is worth a try. You could go to the trouble of making orecchiete. I struggle to shape it as well as this granny:

shaping orechiette

so, I usually make cavatelli which is more straightforward:

shaping cavatelli

The pasta dough I make is with semola di grana duro rimacinata (extra-fine milled pasta semolina). I do 47% hydration (i.e. for 100g of flour add 47g water) . For Briony and me, I make 350g flour + 165g water  = 515g pasta (no salt - save that for the cooking water). That's quite a lot of pasta. That would be enough for 3-4 sedentary adults. You can use bought, dried orechiette instead, if you're feeling sedentary...

This recipe for orechiette with cime di rapa is pretty good. I make my breadcrumbs in a large mortar and pestle (uneven crumbs are the best!). Also, I use all of the cime not omitting the stems as this recipe does. I also use fresh red chile rather than flakes.