Warm fall food - mashed potato, roast fennel, aubergine with miso+sesame

We watched an episode of 'Celebrity Masterchef' the other night, and the man was doing a demo of making mashed potato without a masher - he mashed it a bit with a fork then beat it over a gentle heat until smooth.  Remembered we had some potatoes (forgot them for a while), decided they were still OK, and then to mash them.


Mashed potato with mustard and spring onions

4 medium potatoes, peeled
2 spring onions, chopped
1 tbsp marg
1/2 tbsp fancy mustard from Australia (+Tanya)
2-3 tbsp fake milk
salt+pepper

Cover potatoes with water and boil until soft when poked - 20-25min.  Drain, return to pan and mash with a fork until all large chunks are gone.  Add the marg, milk, mustard and seasoning and beat over a gentle heat with a wooden spoon until smooth, adding more milk if it is too thick.  Add the spring onions and mix well in.


Roast fennel

Several leaves from a massive fennel bulb, sliced
1 medium onion, sliced
3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
olive oil
salt and pepper

Heat oven to 375F.  Rub baking tin with olive oil.  Add veg and season.  Put in oven for ~30min, until done, removing and mixing once or twice along the way.


Aubergine with miso and sesame

Chinese aubergines (the long thin ones) - I only had 1 but 3-4 would have been better
sesame oil
sesame seeds (1/4-1/2 tbsp per aubergine)
yellow miso paste (~1/2 tbsp per aubergine)
lime juice

Heat oven to 375F.  Rub baking tin with sesame oil. Slice the aubergines on the diagonal into pieces about 1cm thick.  Arrange them on the baking tin and put in the oven for ~15 min.  Turn them and put back in for another 10 min or so.  For the last 5 min, add sesame seeds to the tin to roast - keep a careful eye they don't burn.  Remove from the oven and transfer aubergine+seeds to a bowl.  Add the miso paste and sufficient lime juice to thin the paste enough to mix it up.  Mix together and eat warm or cold.


I also stewed a little bit of rhubarb with a couple of apples (from apple picking @ Dowse Orchards in Sherborn), and ate it with Bird's custard made with almond milk.  Although the proportion of rhubarb was quite low its taste still came through - the apples weren't cookers so their taste was fairly mild, and they were sweet enough that I hardly needed to add any sugar.  I'm getting used to the taste of fake milk custard.  I do love a bit of custard on a dark evening...

The aubergine was well tasty - I'd read about the aubergine-miso combo a few times but hadn't got around to trying it.  It works well.  The fennel mix was simple but ended up going really well with the mash, which amazingly turned out good and smooth and pretty darn tasty with the fancy mustard etc. mmmmm Autumn.