A blog for people who love to eat vegetables
Bouillabaisse on a vegetarian food blog? Is there something fishy going on? Not at all.
Paul Gayler, a man who’s pretty good with vegetables, turns the classic fish soup from Marseille into a late summer stew that is fragrant and filling – especially if a slab of crusty bread is at hand to soak up some of the broth.
The recipe is at the Telegraph website, here.
This will be made, and hastily eaten no doubt, in the next few days.
Yes, it’s been quiet over here at ETP Towers. Actually, scrub that: it’s been busy. Day jobs and gatherings with family and old friends have taken us away from the kitchen rather a lot recently.
One thing we haven’t missed out on, however, is new season asparagus. A trip to the Cotswolds brought us almost to the Vale of Evesham, where some of the UK’s best asparagus is grown. We had some and my was it good.
If you’re bored of steaming, boiling and grilling those sweet green stalks then (generally meaty) chef Mark Hix has another way of getting your fix: eating asparagus raw. It also marks a second appearance of radishes on this blog. Yippee!
The recipe is utterly simple, totally tempting and over here.
Wow. Denis Cotter claims this is an autumnal dish. We had it on a dark April day when a bowl of filling, warming loveliness was called for. The garlic and fennel mash was sublime and a tangy topping of chickpeas was the perfect complement. We made a little too much and still scraped our bowls clean. The recipe is in Cotter’s book For the Love of Food, here. I know we plug this book intermittently, but it’s with good reason. So, no recipe here – go buy!
Do you ever start to make a recipe and then realise you’re missing a vital ingredient? Only the other day I was busy assembling a meal of (Turkish vegetable casserole) Turlu Turlu when I remembered I had no tomatoes in the house in any shape or form. Which reminds me that ETP should feature that recipe at some point.
Well, this risotto recipe may look complete, but secreted within it is a similar story. It was meant to include elements of fennel (in the oil) and broad beans (adding colour and texture to the risotto). Oh dear. I can feel our old friend Denis Cotter, whose recipe we were stealing, shaking his head admonishingly.
But we persevered and, if you haven’t tried a beetroot risotto before, so should you. Here’s how:
The lemon oil was made by shaking olive oil with the zest and juice of a lemon in a jar. Easy – in effect a basic lemony dressing.
Beets are then boiled/simmered until tender (anywhere between 20-40 minutes, depending on size), drained, rinsed under cold water then peeled. They are then diced and roasted with a little olive oil and salt for 15 minutes. Don’t burn them – it’s easily done.
After 15 minutes, remove half the beets and, adding about a cup-full of vegetable stock or water, blend to a puree in a food processor and put it in a pan on the hob, adding enough extra stock to make the amount of risotto you’re cooking. Keep the stock hot. Continue to cook the remainder of the beets in the oven for 10 more minutes or so, until they begin to caramelise.
Now for the rice – and this really just becomes a standard risotto cooking method with a different type of stock. So, saute a couple of finely sliced shallots and 2 cloves of garlic in a little olive oil for 5 minutes. Add arborio risotto rice and ‘toast’ it in the pan for 5 minutes, stirring often. Add a small glass or red wine and cook for a further 5 minutes or so to ‘burn off’ the alcohol. Then start to add the beetroot stock, a ladle at a time. Keep going until the risotto is just tender. It should be pink too! When it’s done, stir in the caramelised beets and a little butter.
To serve, plate up the rice, scatter over some goats cheese and drizzle the lemon oil over.
Even if it wasn’t the recipe we had initially intended, it still worked – big flavours all round, from sweet beets to tangy goats cheese to perfumed lemon.
The prize goes to the best colour pink, along with the biggest flavours. The photo here doesn’t quite do ours justice – but I think another bash at the recipe could improve it. A magenta risotto, anyone?
Wednesday 17 August
As I type this the wind is rattling the windows and the skies are a deep grey – a kind that Elle Deco would probably say is very fashionable for an accent wall right now. Yes, the sky is all rather Farrow and Ball.
It was a lovely evening when I made this soup, however. Ella was late coming home and I was pottering about after a day’s work. The recipe, here, is by Yotam Ottolenghi and would also make a fab lunch – perhaps with a light glass of Vinho Verde. I made rather a lot of croutons, as you can see. But I do like halloumi! And I know, fennel, chilled, soup? Give it a go – especially if you’re fond of a hearty gazpacho or almond based ajo blanco.
…and while we’re on the subject of summery soups infused with basil, here’s a light little number from Yotam Ottolenghi in the Guardian today.
It’s sunny outside but the weather over this last week has been gloriously British: sunny and warm one minute, rainy and cold the next. Indeed just as I typed that, the sun that was filtering in through the ETP window disappeared. It’s now so dark I might need to turn a light on.
Changeable weather alters what you want to it. Late spring ingredients are currently in abundance, but what to do when the weather becomes inclement and a salad of those delicate greens just won’t do? Well, you could do worse than make a casserole of them, as this fab idea in the Independent newspaper demonstrates. Artichokes, fennel, peas, leeks and broad beans are all here, but in a slightly less summer setting. Read it http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/recipes/vegetable-casserole-with-artichokes-fennel-peas-broad-beans-and-leeks-2297784.html.
Pouring down again, dammit. And thundering.
Fresh peas, picked from the garden, breaking open the pod, scraping out the peas, stuffing them in your mouth, chewing he sweet juice from the pod… nothing better.
Too often bagged supermarket fresh peas are old and bitter and, while they’re okay for Muttar Paneer, frozen peas just aren’t the same taste of early summer.
I don’t think many people would associate London-based chef and restaurateur Mark Hix with lovely spring veg – I mean, he might cook it, but only alongside the meaty surf and turf that he normally dishes up. And yet, there he is in the Independent with some rather lovely recipes for chilled pea and fennel soup, an amazing sounding deep-fried pea pods with minted pea mayonnaise, and a must-try pea and spinach curry. Go see here. And if you try it out, let us know how it goes.
Friday 15 April
We really fancied the roast fennel recipe I posted a link to on April 12, but it didn’t seem quite substantial enough for a Friday night dinner. What to add to roast vegetables to make meal of it? Cous cous or quinoa, of course. We opted for quinoa, which, as I’ve commented previously, is starting to gain a loyal following at ETP Towers. It is also, of course, a high-quality protein, making it a more nutritious choice than a simple carb such as cous cous. We do need our proteins. So, yes, we followed the recipe as mentioned, and added cooked quinoa. For me the highlight was the slow cooked tomatoes and olives, which added a tanginess to contrast with the sweet roast fennel.
…we have two glorious fennel bulbs in the ETP kitchen at the moment, so how timely that these recipes should appear in one of the weekend’s papers:
Fennel, radish, pea and mozzarella salad
Earth to plate 