meatless dishes to make your table pop
Great day out in Monfrague Biosphere Reserve with a stiff walk up to the Castle. I chickened out just before the summit. Vertigo, don’t you know! Lots of fresh air, exercise – and vultures. Enough to give anyone a healthy appetite. We ate lunch out in the chiringito in the village. Finally, after an hour of gentle restorative yoga, SUPPER. Well, dinner, actually. Continue reading “Dinner: Korean Bibimbap With Turnip Kimchi”
Our first day: lunch after walking around the Old City walls and Castle.
The “injera” we ate was a gluten-free version with sorghum and millet, plus buckwheat for colour and body. It was naturally fermented as per teff injera and made by excactly the same method. Click here for classic injera recipe.
Other methods include the yeast-based lahoh and an instant injera
I used my amazing air-fryer / food dehydrator to dry the sweetest figs I’ve ever tasted, courtesy of our dear frineds John Perring and Charmian Inman from their nearby finca Lagar de La Señora. John and Charmian also make excellent organic wines under the same name and the best ever olive oil: check them out at Lagar De la Señora.
The menu:
This was my first taste of bitter melon or gourd. I bought this morsel from a street-food stall waiting for a bus in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. Asking what it was the vendor shouted “bittaaa” repeatedly, making a “face”. I was intrigued. Continue reading “Thai Bitter Melon With Egg”
This is my first mention of Indian cuisine – not curry, which is a more British invention and I will talk about later. Why the reticence? I think Indian cuisines are so sublime I needed to feel ready to share something SO close to my heart. But enough sentimentality! Let’s get on with the show. Continue reading “Karela Sabzi – Indian Spiced Bitter Gourd”
This quintessentially Ethiopian chilli-based spice blend is readily available from mainstream supermarket chains. For a more authentic product the universal rule applies: if you want it done “properly” do it yourself. Every cook has their own version. The recipe given contains the most commonly used and readily available spices. Lesser known spices include nigella (black onion) seeds, ajwain, and korarima, a spice that grows wild in Ethiopia.
Make a simple dry spice powder which will keep in a sealed jar for many months, or go one step further and prepare a tempered berbere paste ready to add to dishes at any stage.
Just back in London. wet, windy and nippy: what a relief! Thought we’d enjoy the bad weather and sniff out some Veggie / vegan Ethiopian street food from a stall in the South Bank I heard about.
Ok, the injera is not 100% teff given the colour – and taste. I’ll ask what flour(s) they used another time. It felt wrong to scrutinize the product before deciding whether or not it was tasty, which it definitely was. The toppings were great: fresh and bright okra, cous-cous, chickpeas, brown-lentil and soya stews beatifully spiced and plenty of raw salds. Yum. Def recommend you try them when in central London. Weekends only.
Ethiopique, South Bank, London
This is a simple-to -make dish bursting with taste by the addition of the berbere spice blend. Continue reading “Misir Wot: Ethiopian Red Lentil Stew”
Known for its use in Moroccan cooking this versatile condiment originates in Tunisia. Dried chillies are re-hydrated and ground into a coarse paste. Purists add salt and at most a little oilive oil. The Moroccan take is rather more aromatic Continue reading “Tunisian Harissa Paste”
No overview of salsa can be complete without the classic cooked tomato salsa.
Tomatoes in Mexico come in two major varieties: xitomates, the red fruit we’re familiar with in Europe, and tomate or the smaller tomatillos, usually green but also orange and even purple and related to the cape gooseberry or physallis. Continue reading “Classic Mexican Salsa”
I first tasted this in Guanajuato in central Mexico. It came with soft, crisp flour tortillas filled with Brie and caramelized onions. I don’t recall the main course. I’d just arrived and was so intoxicated by the colour all around me that only the this sharp, sweet, piquant salsa managed to get through the sensory overload. Continue reading “Mango Salsa”