Couscous With Love

Food in films is always a winner.... remember Babette's Feast, Like Water for Chocolate, Big Night, Eat, Drink, Man, Woman... well i have now been inspired by a new French movie - Couscous by Abdellatif Kechiche. If you happen to catch it you might actually be able to pick up the fish couscous recipe.....

Watching the movie and following the recipe I now know the secret for great couscous. There is a great scene where the mother is feeding her children and relatives her couscous that she has lovingly prepared. She describes how she has made this couscous with love.

Here is my vegetarian version with love. Serve with the rocket and orange salad and some fresh mint tea for a great combination.

Couple handfuls of chickpeas (pre-cooked)
1 pepper ( I used a fabulous orange pepper that tasted just great)
1 onion halved and sliced thinly
1 garlic clove (finely chopped)
2/3 potatoes (Cubes)
1/2 carrots (quartered)
1 courgette (cut into chunks)
1 chilli pepper (finely chopped)

100g couscous (I half fill a pasta dish with couscous which works out right for 1/2 people)
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp ground cayenne or chilli pepper
1 tbsp cumin (seeds)
1 tbsp cumin (ground)
Olive oil
Seasoning

(serves 2)

1. Heat the oil in a heavy based saucepan and fry the onion until golden.
2. Add the garlic and cook off for around 30 seconds.
3. Meanwhile to prepare the couscous soak it. I usually put a layer of couscous in the bottom of a pasta bowl and pour boiling water over it so that there is about double quantities of water to couscous (like rice making). Let it sit and swell in the dish.
4. Back with the vegetable sauce - add the cumin seeds to the saucepan to bring out that cumin taste, and the cayenne/chilli.
5. Add the fresh chilli (dependent on taste you can vary the quantities of cayenne and chilli.
6. Add the tomato puree and let it cook for 5 minutes.
7. Slowly add some water to the mix.... 1/2 litre to 3/4. Stir throughly.
8. Add the chick peas, the carrots peeled and quartered and the potatoes (cubes).
9. Once the couscous has soaked up much of the water pour it into a colander/steamer and place over the simmering sauce to steam the cous cous - this will make the cous cous even more light and fluffy.
10. I steamed the couscous for a good 10/15 minutes before taking it off the heat and fluffing it with a fork.
11. Add the rest of vegetables and continue to cook until soft.
12. Put the couscous back into the colander and reheat over the sauce. Flavour the sauce and the couscous with the ground cumin.
13. To serve place the couscous in a large serving bowl and mix in the sauce - gently folding in the mixture. The couscous should soak up the sauce and turn a luscious red colour. Flavour with pepper and salt if you wish. Enjoy!

Rocket and Orange Salad

What do you do when you have a surplus of rocket growing in your garden? You have it every day and start to tire (shock, horror) of the wonderfully peppery salad leaf.... then you need a new recipe to liven it up. What better than rocket and orange salad.

To serve 2:

Bunch of rocket
Half an orange peeled and sliced thinly
3/4 tsp Walnut or olive oil
1 tsp Honey
Juice of half an orange
A little orange peel
Seasoning


Mix the rocket and orange slices together. Mix the oil, grated orange peel, honey and seasoning together. Pur over the rocket and orange and mix together to ensure all the lovely oil concoction fully coats the leaves. Great as a side dish. In fact I put it with a cous cous meal I was cooking. (see further entries).

Free Range Review

Free Range Review - the local food company.....

It puts you in touch with all your local food producers and sellers...... well almost.... still a start-up site I think - hopefully some great local food purveyors will get on the site double quick. We have to support local food.....

Please sign-up and testify.

What shall we do with the Heirloom Tomatoes?

After buying some fabulously stripy heirloom tomatoes I was faced with the dilemma of what to cook. Pasta and tomatoes.... naaaa... been there and done that, tomato and rocket salad.... possibly - I do have all that rocket in the garden.... no it is going to be polenta and tomatoes. Simple but effective. Polenta is that gloopy mass of boiled cornmeal much beloved by the Italians. It is quite a bland carbohydrate but one that would go perfectly with tasty heirloom tomatoes. The fun is in the cooking - it turns your humble saucepan into a witches cauldron as the cornmeal bubbles away like the hot mud pools of Rotorua.

5 or 6 tomatoes (get the heirloom tomatoes if you can)
Onion or leek
2/3 cloves of garlic finely chopped
Polenta (measurements escape me - best to refer to the packet)
Good bunch of basil
Parmesan cheese (optional)
Olive oil
Seasoning

(Serves 2)

1. Skin your tomatoes... I place them in boiling water for about 5 minutes. You should see the skin break and begin to peel.
2. Chop onion or leek finely and gently fry in a little olive oil.
3. Add the finely chopped garlic and cook for about 5/10 minutes.
4. Chop the tomatoes roughly and add to the onion/leek. Cook for 5 minutes.
5. Meanwhile cook your polenta in a separate saucepan. I just followed the instructions on the packet. Add water, cook for about 5 minutes - it should bubble away quite happily then turn the heat off and let it stand for 10 minutes.
6. Place the polenta in a oven proof dish and smooth the top.
7. Drizzle some olive oil over the polenta and place under the grill for about 10 minutes.... it should be golden on top.
8. Back to the tomatoes... add a little salt to season and tear the basil into the mixture.
9. Divide the polenta into squares and serve with the tomato mixture and the grated parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. If your tomatoes are good enough you might not need the cheese.

John Evelyn

"to health and long life, and the wholesomeness of the herby-diet"

John Evelyn (the 17th century diarist and writer) came to my attention during the excellent programme 'Supersizers' currently showing on BBC2. If you are interested in food please watch it... it is a delight... it is informative and it is funny.

Back to Evelyn.... I was interested that in a time of meat excess this man should promote the eating of healthy salads. Many of the time thought salads indigestible. It is horrifying to think that those wealthy enough to enjoy good food totally neglected the vegetables and salads. No wonder they were all constipated and diseased. John Evelyn was one of the first to link diet to health, promoting the eating of salad leaves. His book Acetaria catalogues seventy-three possible salad ingredients including plants like samphire, rocket, sorrel and nasturtium that have only recently come back into vogue (I am sure that there would have been many of the poor that survived on the wild food available - it is just lost to us now).

There is a great article on John Evelyn at - http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/lane/kal69/shop/pages/isbn653.htm


I especially enjoyed the quote about mushrooms - "rank and provocative excresences" that needed to be boiled for at least an hour "to exhaust the malignity".

Strawberry Risotto

Strange but utterly devine dish. It tastes fantastic and not at all what you expect.... not sweet at all. Great for this time of year when there is a glut of this luscious fruit. Enjoy this dish in the garden with a great glass of white or rose wine.

Large punnet of strawberries
Red onion (finely chopped)
Good bunch of basil
Vegetable stock
Risotto rice (try to get the best you can)
Glass of white or rose wine
Parmesan cheese
A good grind of pepper
(serves 2)

1. Taking a large saucepan fry the chopped onion gently for about 5 to 10 minutes.
2. Take half the strawberries and chop roughly and add to the onions. Do not worry too much about the chopping - these strawberries are going to reduce down to a devine pink juice. Cook on for 4 or 5 minutes.
3. In a separate pan heat up your vegetable stock.... I tend to use one stock cube and about a 500 ml of water... this is approximate - you will have to experiment.
4. Add your risotto rice to the strawberry and onion and stir through.
5. Start adding your vegetable stock to the rice a little at a time stirring constantly. Let the stock reduce down and when the mixture begins to stick a little to the bottom add more stock gradually. Now this is a controversial issue in the risotto making world. Some of my good friends think that it is unnecessary to add the stock gradually and tend to plonk it all in at the same time but I personally adhere to the time and honoured tradition of the gradual introduction of stock. It is time consuming but in the long run so satisfying. (I can hear my friends tutting at the waste of time but when it comes to making risotto I am a traditionalist). I will write again on this topic of the perfect risotto - watch this space.
6. Back to the recipe..... well you keep on adding the stock ladle by ladle and stirring constantly. Your risotto now should be blushing... it turns a glorious pink. After about 15 minutes or maybe more - risotto is not an exact science - your rice should be reaching the correct consistency - the grains or rice should be soft. Half the remaining strawberries and add all but a few which you will use later for decoration.
7. Give a good stir and add the glass of wine.
8. Keep stirring for about 3 minutes and then finally add the basil - tear the leaves into the risotto. Use as much or as little as you want. I tend to use copious amounts of basil but it is not to everyones' taste.
9. If you are using cheese grate a good handful and stir into the risotto with a good grind of pepper.
10. Plate up and decorate with a little grated cheese if you are using that, the remaining strawberry halves and a basil sprig. Prepare to be amazed.