A little something healthy

After eating chips for dinner last night (and not even the British kind!), I was feeling very much in need of something healthy tonight.  Quick and easy chicken stir-fry to the rescue!  Seasoned with ginger, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, chilli flakes, a dab of miso and fresh spring onions and coriander added at the last minute.

Fresh food!

So much better.

– Anna

Ickle chili

I’ve mentioned before that I love Wahaca in Covent Garden, and one of its small charms is that they give away matchbooks that have chili seeds in them instead of matches.  I planted them in egg cartons a few weeks ago and had just about given up hope (I never expect to be able to grow things because my track record is terrible.  I killed a bamboo in about ten days once, to give you an idea of my gardening skills).

But look, I have a baby chili!  I’ll let you know how it gets on…

It's alive!

– Anna

No comment

Via Marion Nestle I learned last week that half of all infants born in the US are eligible for enrolled in WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children). The program provides food aid to “low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk.” It was the fastest-growing food assistance program in 2008, with an average of 8.7 million people enrolled each month (USDA report here).

I don’t have anything to add, I just found the stat shocking.

-Eve

Lazy link

This recipe made me think immediately of my sister…goat’s cheese wrapped in bacon?  Sign her up!

-Anna

Cold sesame noodles

The inevitable happened last weekend, and I didn’t make it to the farmers’ market on Saturday. Jesse and I had made a rare venture out of the neighborhood and we were having such a nice time I couldn’t be bothered to rush back just for a few pieces of chicken. Besides, I can make do for a week, right? And there’s lots of nice takeout around, right?

So, three meals in and no-meat-in-the-house week is going OK. Though clearly it could use a better name. Monday was chickpea curry, which I’ll post about if I ever get the recipe sorted out, and Tuesday was Jesse’s favorite, Thai curry soup.

Last night, however, was far and away the winner: cold sesame noodles. I love this dish, and since I avoid chinese restaurants in London and can’t make a good peanut sauce, it’s been a long time since I had it. But I saw a recipe on Smitten Kitchen last week and thought I’d give it a go. It was perfect. I was so excited! And I’m thrilled I get to have the leftovers for lunch today!

To make the sauce, puree:

So comically ugly I had to include it

1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup warm water
1-2 tablespoon chopped peeled fresh ginger
1 medium garlic clove, chopped
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons Asian toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon honey
Heat – I added a few good squeezes of sriracha, but add however much or little chili sauce you like

I tossed this with 250 grams of soba noodles, cooked and rinsed, and a chopped red pepper and half a cucumber. It was really, realy tasty.

Full recipe on Smitten Kitchen.

-Eve

Sorting out the spices

My spice cabinet before

This is the disaster that was my spice cabinet until recently. I couldn’t see what I had at all, especially on the second shelf, and often ended up buying duplicates.

Some of my duplicate spices

I couldn’t live with the chaos anymore, so I found a new solution. 

Using up the leftovers

Besides food (charoset, latke batter, applesauce, a bit of lamb, etc, etc), I had a lot of ingredients left over from our Jewish food extravaganza the other day.  I already told you about the chicken curry salad I made to utilise the chicken that went into our stock, but I still had  feta, greens (pea shoots, spinach, kale), yogurt, and dill sitting in the fridge.  As I’m trying to waste less food at the moment, I consulted Epicurious (who else?) for recipe ideas.

Searching “feta greens” turned up this recipe for penne, green olives and feta as the third option, so I went with that.  I don’t eat much pasta these days (I think my days carbo-loading as an athlete put me off the stuff), but I find fresh spring pastas more appealing.  I made some modifications to the recipe, namely leaving out the green olives because I hate them and all their relatives.  I also didn’t use parsley because I didn’t have any, and a quick internet search persuaded me I couldn’t use coriander in its stead (digression – who are all these people who apparently harbor a deep hatred for coriander?  It’s such goodness).  The result was easy, healthy, and tasty.  My one recommended change would be to chop the spinach.

Fresh yogurt and dill biscuits

The Kitchn then fortuitously posted a recipe for biscuits made with yogurt and dill, which killed my two other leftover birds with one stone.  Before our British readers get too disgusted, American biscuits are savoury.  I was able to whip up the dough in no time flat, thanks to the food processor.  I had to add a bit of milk to the yogurt specified in the recipe to make the dough wet enough to totally combine.  I’ve cooked the biscuits in small batches as I wanted them and left the rest of the dough in the fridge so I can always eat them piping hot.  Yum!

– Anna

The quest for perfect yoghurt

Leaving the question of correct spelling and pronounciation to the side for now, one of the eternal food questions for me is the difference in yoghurt or well, dairy products in general, in different countries.

Let’s start off with yoghurt. Firstly there is consistency, can’t be too dense or gloopy because I feel like I’m choking on it, but also not too runny. Secondly taste – good yoghurt doesn’t need sugar but it if it is too sour it ‘s no fun either.

Living in Germany for many years, I finally found the perfect plain yoghurt called LC1 but of course, not sold ANYWHERE else. LC1 had a light but not too runny feel, plus it tasted good. But no luck in good old Blighty! Firstly, barely a plain yoghurt to be found. Always full with fruit-sugar or some other crap – why I just don’t know. Anyways, having travelled to New Zealand, and having ranted already about their weird cream cheese in previous post, I found the solution. Make your own yoghurt! As I have to meanwhile order plain yoghurt online because none of my local supermarkets stock the one I like (Activia, but plain please, pretty please), I will turn to making it myself, hurray! I have yet to purchase the equipment, but yoghurt heaven seems to be in reach at last!

And here are some fun international dairy facts:

I never tasted salted butter until I moved to the UK.  No one knows the joys of quark here, and I’m talking cheese not physics. It’s borderline fat free and so much better in cheesecake. Really, you don’t know what you are missing. I also use it for the base of my quiche lorraine! To get natural-bio yoghurt in South Africa you have to buy something called Bulgarian yoghurt.

Right, I better eat some yoghurt now!

– Stef

Easy peasy cake

My recent travels enabled me to test out cake recipes that a) you can make with an oven you don’t know at all and b) with ingredients that are different than they are at home. Because I have found the hard way that cream cheese is VERY different in New Zealand. Consistency is more cottage cheese like and when you put your cheesecake in the oven, you panic completely because it just ain’t creamy and full of little cheese bits. Good news is though that the cake turned out beautifully, despite the bizarre New Zealand like cream cheese.

But enough said, firstly I tried this super easy cheesecake recipe, left the berries out because my good friend Eva made fresh passionfruit sauce (argh to live in a climate where you can make your own passionfruit sauce).

Secondly, I made the brownie cake, bit more work intense but well worth it. We made it with homegrown macademia nuts (argh, to live in a climate where you can grow your own macademia nuts…) but pecan nuts or anything else works just as well. Lovely with icecream and almost better after a day or so!!

– Stef

Overcoming fears, polenta edition

Beans on toast: a hallmark of sad British cooking. Also, delicious (see: New Yorker cartoon). It’s a staple of our Sunday brunches (chile garlic sausage, beans on toast with malt vinegar and tabasco,  mediocre coffee). Beans + carb = yum, so why not baked beans and polenta?

Sorry, I didn't remember the camera until a few bites in

Now, a little back story. In the past year I have developed a fear of polenta. I have absolutely no idea why. We’ve had a package of it in the cupboard for months and months, and I never knew what to do with it. My protein tends to the Asian, and it always struck me as an odd accompaniment to food involving soy sauce. But one weekend morning I was feeling so damn chipper (the sun was shining, it does powerful things to me) I thought I’d give it a go.

Baked beans and polenta? It was ok. The beans were reduced salt and sugar – any sweeter and I don’t think it would have worked at all. But the polenta itself was creamy and satisfying – and a treat fried later in the afternoon. And I was on to something with this bean and polenta combo. All week I pondered a reprise. I googled black beans and polenta, and kept coming back to a casserole that involves ‘polenta rounds’. What in the world is a polenta round? Undettered at around 5 last Saturday I just gave up and went my own way: polenta and black beans with broccoli rabe on the side.

Oh my god it was good. And meat-free! And how awesome is it that black beans smell so meaty?