Carrot pilaf

Are you carroted out? 

Here's something to do that is only worth doing with tasty, decent sized carrots. I make it to serve with middle-eastern meals. It goes really well with spicy braised lamb or beans or grilled things.

Turkistan pilavi  (adapted from Tess Mallos "The Complete Middle East Cookbook")

2 cups long grain rice (I use Basmati)
1/4 cup butter
2 cups of grated carrot
1/2 tsp whole black pepper corns
3 cups of water or light stock of your preference ( I use water so I can taste the carrots more)

Wash rice until water runs clear then drain well.

Heat butter in a heavy pan, add grated carrot and peppercorns and fry over medium heat for 3 minutes, stirring often.

Add rice and fry for further 2 minutes, stirring constantly.

Pour in stock and add salt to taste. Stir until boiling then reduce heat to low. Cover with lid and cook over low heat for 25-30 minutes. Remove from the heat and place a cloth under the lid and leave for 10 minutes before serving.

Photo from the (30 year old) cook book. 

Check out the serving style!

Creamy basil dressing

Here's a dressing I make sometimes that is based on an old Moosewood restaurant recipe that, I suspect, was based on Portuguese milk mayonnaise. I think that the recipe might not be quite right though as occasionally it fails. So, I have had a look at some of the milk mayo recipes made some modifications. You can adapt it however you like - leave out the cheese, use different herbs or no herbs. The result, when it works, is thick enough to use as a dip. If it fails, it still makes a great salad dressing! (Maybe add a bit more acid tho?)

Creamy garlic, pecorino and basil dressing (based on Moosewood and David Leite's recipe)

85mL cold milk (full fat - the fat is required to make the emulsion)

5mL lemon juice or vinegar

3 cloves garlic

1 tbsp grated pecorino (or other hard cheese)

1 tsp salt

180mL neutral oil or a blend with olive oil

1 tbsp basil, finely chopped

Place the milk, acid, garlic, cheese and salt into a glass jug or a blender jar (not food processor). Using a stick blender on max speed (or the blender), whiz until the garlic is pureed and the mixture is frothy. Slowly, drip-by-drip, add the oil while whizzing. You can increase the speed of pour after a while but it should still be a very thin stream - always whizzing! For ages it will look like a creamy white sauce and you'll be worried that it's not working. Only near the end will it go thick and you'll be relieved! Once finished streaming and whizzing, quickly add and whiz through the basil.

If you only have a food processor, give it a try but, in my experience, it might not get as thick.

Use as a dressing or a dip for fresh raw vegetables.

Let me know what you think.

Silverbeet Raita

Raita is usually made with cucumber and tomatoes but here's a version to make use of silverbeet. It’s a nice side dish to have with Indian curries. 

Wash a bunch of silverbeet/Swiss chard and place it into an empty pot without cutting or drying it. Put the lid on and turn it on a medium heat. The moisture from the wash will be enough to steam it. After a couple of minutes, turn the greens over so that they cook evenly. Once they're wilted, dump them into a colander to cool and drain.

To about 1 cup of yoghurt, add 1tsp of salt and about 1tbsp of finely grated ginger. I pound the salt and ginger together in a mortar and pestle first.

Squeeze out excess moisture from the silverbeet then chop it up and add it to the yoghurt. Mix well, check the seasoning and serve.

note: you can use garlic instead of ginger to make it more like a tzatziki to serve with Greek or Lebanese food. You can also add chopped herbs like coriander or dill or parsley.

Broad Bean leaf pesto

For 2 people:

30g pine nuts or walnuts

100g broad bean leaf (pick off the thicker pieces of stem first)

3-4 cloves of garlic

1/2tsp salt

90g of finely grated hard cheese. I used Tasmanian pecorino or you could use Parmesan

extra-virgin olive oil

Place nuts, leaves, garlic and salt in a food processor and turn on. Slowly stream in extra-virgin olive oil. Scrape down the sides of the processor and continue to process until smooth adding oil until the texture is thick but just starting to loosen up.

Add the cheese. Pulse the processor until the cheese is mixed through.

Cook pasta in plenty of well-salted boiling water. When done, strain (reserve some cooking liquid) and toss the pasta into a hot pan. Add some cooking liquid and agitate the pan while tossing or stirring to encourage the starch to "cream" a bit. Reduce the heat slightly, add the pesto and 2 tbsp of lemon juice. Toss or mix to distribute the sauce. Add a touch more cooking water if it starts catching in the pan. I then stir through a handful more broad bean leaves and serve immediately.

Thanks to Ryan at Templo restaurant for the suggestion.

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!