Playdough

Lockdown means spending a lot of time at home, and also means spending more time with little S. The weather has been amazing, so we haven't been hanging out inside a whole lot, but I was thinking he might be into some playdough, so I put some food colouring on our biweekly shopping list... I used this recipe, and made one batch of pink-red and one of blue. Both needed a little extra flour to get a good consistency.

It was fun! It's been out twice now, and is still in the fridge for another go. We made some elephants, and buses, the first time. And the second time he played with it on one kitchen surface while I did some cooking on another.

8 tbsp plain flour
2 tbsp salt
60 ml warm water
food colouring
1 tbsp vegetable oil

Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl mix together the water, a few drops of food colouring and the oil.

Pour the coloured water into the flour mix and bring together with a spoon.

Dust a work surface with a little flour and turn out the dough. Knead together for a few minutes to form a smooth, pliable dough. If you want a more intense colour you can work in a few extra drops of food colouring. Add more flour if needed.

Store in a plastic bag or wrapped in clingfilm in the fridge.

Baked smashed potatoes

It's been a while since I updated my recipes. Ages ago, when potatoes were new, I made some smashed potatoes, inspired by this.

Basically just take some boiled potatoes (I don't remember if I used warm or cold ones, either should work?), put in a baking tin and squash with the back of a big wooden spoon. Then drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and put in the oven at 200C for about 30 min / until golden and crispy around the edges.

Tahini chocolate cookies

I came across this recipe and it marries two of my favourite things (dark chocolate and tahini), and everything I’ve ever baked with tahini I have loved, but there hasn’t been nearly enough, and so clearly I had to make it. Then I looked at the cookbook it came from and realised it is some kind of cancer diet cookbook... I am not sure how I feel about diet advice for cancer, mostly I try and trust my body to tell me what it needs. But sometimes it is nice to think there is something within your control, like the food you eat every day, that can make a difference. Anyway, I haven’t done anything drastic with diet, although I have found it comforting to cook and to try and make appetising, varied food for my wee family, even when I didn’t feel much like eating. Weirdly, my appetite during chemo was often similar to when I was pregnant, so I had some practice already of figuring out what to eat when I don’t feel like eating. Also, I am a consummate snacker / grazer, which I think has helped stave off nausea in both situations.

Anyway, back to the topic: tahini! dark chocolate! As I made these I was reminded of happy gluten-free baking adventures in Boston, making gluten-free vegan treats for A, H and me. These cookies are fundamentally really similar to the sunflower butter gf cookies I used to make - I have no idea why I didn’t think of replacing the sunflower butter with tahini before, given how much I love tahini and how much easier it is to find...

1 large egg
½ cup tahini
½ cup almond flour (used normal almond meal)
½ cup coconut sugar (used normal sugar)
½ tsp baking powder
One 3½ oz / 100 g 70% (or higher) dark chocolate bar, coarsely chopped
pinch coarse sea salt

Heat the oven to 350F / 180C and line a baking sheet with baking paper. In a medium bowl, beat together the egg, tahini, almond flour, sugar, and baking powder to make a thick, sticky mixture. Fold in the chopped chocolate. Scoop about 1 tbsp of batter and place it on the baking sheet. Continue, spacing each cookie about 2½ in apart (they will spread a bit), until you have used all of the dough. Sprinkle cookies with the coarse salt. Bake 8-9 min, keeping an eye on them as they can burn easily - they should be just lightly browned on top (nb mine took longer: c 20 min). Let cool for 10 min on the baking sheet, then finish cooling on a rack.


These were simple and delicious! They seemed a bit greasy when shaping but baked up ok. There was maybe a bit much (!) chocolate, I used almond meal, which I suspect is a bit different from almond flour but was what I had, and they still came out looking like cookies and tasting good. Could be good with an oat-raisin-cinnamon situation instead of chocolate. Probably easily veganised with a flax egg, although I didn’t try it (just checked, and my favourite Lidl chocolate is vegan - hurrah). Also, might be interesting to try them with black tahini - I have some...

Yellow cauliflower and chickpeas

Yellow potatoes has been a favourite of ours for some time. It's a most speedy and excellent way to use pre-cooked potatoes - essentially dry-fried; spicy and delicious. For some reason it had never occurred to me to cook anything other than potatoes like that, but S steamed a lot of cauliflower the other day and a lightbulb came on. Wouldn't cauliflower be delicious this way too? While preparing the spice paste chickpeas also came to mind - I usually have a supply of pre-cooked chickpeas in the freezer, so it was easy to throw some in. It made for an excellent combination.

approx. 1 1/4 lb mixed steamed cauliflower and pre-cooked chickpeas
fresh ginger ~2 x 1 x 1in, peeled and coarsely chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled
3 tbsp water
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
5 tbsp veg oil
1 tsp whole fennel seed (optional)

Chop cauliflower into approx 1 in chunks. Put ginger, garlic, water, turmeric, salt, cayenne in blender and blend to a paste.

Heat oil.  Add fennel seeds.  Sizzle for a few seconds, then add the paste.  Stir and fry for 2 min.

Add cauliflower and chickpeas (direct from freezer is OK).  Stir and fry for 5-7 min over a medium-high flame til they have a golden-brown crust.

Dukkah

One of our best food finds in Copenhagen so far has been Sticks n Sushi. The name didn't sound that promising but there was one near work and I'd read that they had some good veggie stuff, so S and I decided to check it out one lunchtime, and call it research for the interviews he was hosting soon for people in his new lab (!).

It was empty that first time, but really really good once we got going. We ate a veggie selection (I think called the Greens Keeper), and it had a bit of creative veggie sushi, some unusual summer rolls, grilled corn on the cob and edamame in pods, and something really simple but delicious: sticks of sweet raw veg, with a miso dip and a sort of a dukkah of poppyseeds and something red - so you dunk the veggie stick in the miso stuff then the dukkah so the seeds etc stick. Really fresh and tasty...

(nb they had exactly my kind of puddings too: little tasty things. I tried a caramel covered in dark chocolate with sesame seeds on the outside and it was gooood)

So anyway, we went there again the other evening and ate that dip/dukkah thing again, and I started thinking about dukkah, and how M gave me some she'd made a while back and it was yummy and fennel seed-y and I put it on everythingggg. And then I made broccoli with miso sauce and seeds, and realised the world was telling me to make dukkah. So then I did. I thought Ottolenghi would probably have a good way of doing it, and I had hazelnuts left over from S's birthday cake, so I followed this recipe (subbing black pepper for green because I didn't have green and I think I like black better anyway).

70 g hazelnuts
2 tbsp sunflower seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp dry green peppercorns (or white... used black)
3 tbsp coriander seeds
1½ tbsp sesame seeds
½ tsp nigella seeds
½ tsp sea salt
1 tsp paprika

Heat the oven to 140C/285F/gas mark 1. Spread the hazelnuts on a baking tray and place in the oven for 20 minutes. Add the sunflower seeds to the tray halfway through, keeping them separate from the nuts. Remove from the oven and leave to cool while you toast the seeds.

Heat a small frying pan, then dry-roast the fennel seeds for 30 seconds. Add the cumin seeds and cook for another 30 seconds, or until they start to pop, then tip both into a little bowl. Put the pan back on the heat, toast the coriander seeds, and tip into the same bowl.

Toast the sesame and nigella seeds together until the sesame turns light brown, then tip into another small bowl.

Rub the hazelnuts to discard some of the skin. Crush coarsely with a pestle and mortar, then transfer to a medium bowl. Lightly crush the cumin and fennel seeds, and add to the hazelnuts. Repeat with the coriander seeds, then the sunflower seeds. Add these to the nut bowl, along with the ground black pepper, sesame and nigella seeds, add salt and paprika, and mix well.


I ate it with celeriac puree made like this, and it was truly delicious, either on bread, with pasta, or just the dukkah and the puree. After making this I remembered making dukkah once before, that time slightly different (I really wanted the fennel seeds this time), and eaten with baked squash.

Real Seelen

I first made something like Seelen for S (from this recipe) a few years ago, and he loved them! He didn't stop talking about them, and I made my approximation a few times since he liked them so much. They are regional bread from where he grew up in Germany, and apparently they are hard to get even elsewhere in Germany.
But I could never track down white spelt flour in the USA, not even in the fanciest grocery shops (or Eastern European ones). Not long after coming here, we went to Lidl (another German thing S loves), and found white spelt flour there! And pretty cheap too. So we decided that real Seelen were in order.

They don't take too many ingredients or special equipment, so it seemed do-able, even without my own kitchen. Finding the other ingredients was actually kind of a challenge. We had salt, that was fine and easy. I thought caraway might be easy too as it seems quite popular - there is a caraway seed cheese I see everywhere and want to try, but it only comes in gigantic blocks so haven't yet. But we didn't find caraway in any of the grocery shops we checked. The Turkish market had a bewildering selection of spices though, leading to a fairly lengthy debate between S+I over whether cumin (spidskommen) and caraway (kommen) seeds were the same or not (they're not! but he wouldn't believe it!). Anyway, we got the caraway there, and the next challenge was yeast, Again, I checked near the flour on the shelves of various grocery shops, until S found some in the fridge in a wholefoods shop - of course! Fresh yeast is the way here, dried yeast seems to be hard to find.

So, real seelen - not only with white spelt flour, but also with fresh yeast!

(makes 12 - I doubled the recipe as I had 1000g flour, 42g yeast, and no scales... and S loves seelen)

1000g white spelt flour
42g fresh yeast
600 ml warm water
4 tsp salt

For sprinkling: caraway seeds and coarse sea salt

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and knead all ingredients for about 10 minutes to get soft and fairly sticky dough.  Leave to rise in a warm place for about 60 minutes, kneading briefly after 20 min and after 40 min.

When the dough has risen turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and split in two.  With wet hands shape one piece into a square of about 20 cm.  Use a wet knife to cut the dough into six strips. Transfer the strips onto a baking sheet lined with baking paper.  Repeat with the other half of the dough (you'll need two baking sheets). Irregular shapes are fine, even good.  Cover with a clean dish towel and leave to rise for another 20 minutes.  Heat the oven to about 240C / 460F and place a bowl of water on the bottom shelf.

When the Seelen are ready to go into the oven wet them again with your hands and sprinkle with caraway seeds and coarse sea salt.  Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.


They definitely look different -lighter, more golden, with a very slight sheen. Perhaps a little more dense. But the taste is dominated by the caraway and salt so I find it hard to make out a difference in taste from the spelt. No complaints though, and it took us only two days to demolish the whole lot!

Pickled carrots

K and I made an adventure to Brattleboro at the weekend. It was kind of a distraction from S being away; also I thought if I make sure I have plenty of fun on the Saturday I could get on with work on the Sunday? Never mind about Sunday though; Saturday in Bboro was lovely.

We went to the farmers' market, which I had never found before and was positively idyllic. It was in the woods, with most of the stalls in little wooden semi-permanent stands. Lots of prepared foods (two Thai, two Indian, tacos, dim sum, Malian, pizza... surely some more I forgot). Farm stands heaving with beautiful fruit and veg; cheeses, local pottery, maple syrup, flowers: everything looked really high quality.

We carefully budgeted out our cash, and bought: a pint of maple syrup each; a punnet of the most beautiful raspberries, hot chai. And back to the prepared food: as we were going in a man recommended the tacos, and we ended up following his advice - mine was with potatoes, salsa verde, yum... I also had a tasty steamed greens bun from the dim sum stall. Food tour!

The taco came with some simple but really good pickled carrots. Since I had a load of carrots at home D gave me, those pickled carrots got me thinking about making some. I've pickled carrots before but wasn't totally happy with the results. This is another go around.

~ 1 lb carrots, peeled and cut into diagonal rounds
~ 1/3 a large red chilli, deseeded and cut into rounds
1 in piece of ginger, peeled and sliced
1 tbsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup vinegar
1 cup water

Layer the carrots in a big lidded jar with the chilli and ginger. Put the salt, sugar, vinegar and water in a pan and heat gently until just about to boil. Pour over the carrots so they are covered. Put the lid on the jar, let cool, and store in the fridge for up to a month. Ready to eat after ~ 24 hours.

Simple pickled cucumber slices

I have enjoyed all the pickled cucumbers I've made (bread and butter; faux-Grillos) a huge amount - both those recipes are keepers.

But I saw this recipe, and was feeling lazy - it's one of those things about these hot, thick summer days - they bring a vegetal bounty, but no energy and no inclination to either turn the gas on or spend any time cooking. So the quicker you can throw together a refreshing pickly snack you can eat right out of the fridge, the better.

So, even simpler than the other pickles - no heating, no garlic, no spices.

1 medium-large cucumber, washed, ends removed, thinly sliced
~1 tbsp chopped dill
1 cup white vinegar
~1 tbsp coarse salt

Pack the cucumber slices in a large, clean jar. Add the dill and salt and then pour in the vinegar. Put the lid on and shake well to distribute everything. After about 8 hours check the liquid level and top up with more vinegar/water mixture if the cucumber slices are not covered in liquid.

Salty liquorice popcorn

We had a Eurovision party on Saturday (at least partly because it was in Copenhagen). Was pretty fun, and quite a lot of people came (Esther and Freddy, Dane, Hannah M, Alvin, Morgan and Matt, Nate and Glynis, Ben H, Martin L, Daniel and Viola, Adam, Nick S, Ian S, Dave and Nathaniel, Katy, Zeba and Rishi).

I had lots of liquorice powder left in the pot S brought back from Denmark on his first visit. I learned from my ketchup making experiment that I needed to be more sparing with it. For some reason I decided it might be good on popcorn. I liked the idea of it being optional, and being able to put on just a little (or a lot!).

2 tbsp coconut oil
1/2 cup popping corn
~1 tsp liquorice granules, ground fine
~1 tsp salt

Put oil and corn in a tall lidded pan. Cover and turn to medium-high. Heat, shaking occasionally, until the pops have died down. Take off the heat and uncover. Tip into a bowl and toss with the liquorice and salt.


This really was surprisingly good!

Roasted baby artichokes

We have been trying to make weekend days when we have to work and do other unexciting things feel more like holidays. Mostly, this seems to entail a short circular walk in the morning, perhaps via a coffee shop to have a fancy coffee and a little snack, then up the hill to Whole Foods to pick up a few fancy (and quick to prepare) ingredients for lunch and later meals. Then back down the other side of the hill, with one of the best Boston cityscapes around in view. And home.

Today is a beautiful day - perfect temperature and sunshine. We bought a box of baby artichokes. They got roasted for lunch, as below.

~10-12 baby artichokes
half a large lemon 
2 cloves garlic, peeled
salt
pepper
olive oil

Heat oven to 400F / 200C. Prepare the artichokes: remove outer leaves, then trim off the outer, fibrous part of the stem. Cut off about an inch of the top to remove the tougher parts of the leaves and the sharp points at their tips. Cut in half lengthways. If there is any thistle-seed-fluff in the middle of the artichoke cut it out carefully without removing much surrounding tissue. Right away, rub all the cut surfaces with lemon (to stop them going brown). Put the halves in an oven tin.

Crush the garlic in a pestle and mortar with about half a teaspoon of coarse salt. Transfer to a small bowl and add the remaining juice from the lemon, about 2 tbsp of olive oil and a good grinding (~1/4 tsp?) of black pepper. Mix well and then pour over the artichoke halves. Toss them well to coat with oil mixture, then rearrange them so all have the cut side up. Put in the oven and roast for ~20 min until tender.


We ate these on slices of toasted sourdough, some with squashed avocado, some with shavings of hard cheese (e.g. parmesan), some with a scraping of hummus. Delicious any which way, or just on their own. We ate them all between two of us, but I bet they'd be yum as a cold antipasto type thing the next day as well. Artichokes are so much work and so much waste for so little food (I like to think of them as the vegetable lobster equivalent), but they are so worth it.

Popcorn with maple syrup, thyme and salt

We got popping corn in the CSA a while back, but when I tried popping it: nothing but burned bits. I had thought popcorn foolproof... evidently not.

This time I think I discovered my mistake: I'd heated the oil before adding the popcorn - do not do this!

~2 tbsp sunflower oil (or other high heat oil... coconut might be nice)
~1/2 cup popping corn
pinch of salt

flavouring to add when popped (optional): dried thyme, maple syrup, salt, all to taste

Use a tall, heavy-bottomed pan with a lid. Put the oil in, then add the corn and a pinch of salt. Put the lid on and shoogle around to coat the corn with oil. Turn on a high heat and, keeping the pan covered, heat it, shaking occasionally, until the corn starts to pop. Keep shaking occasionally until it stops popping. Take off the heat, shake and listen for the last few pops, then uncover. Perhaps best to add additional seasonings on an individual serving basis.

Miso

Having made koji over the last few days, I decided to move right on to making miso from it while the koji was fresh. I decided to test a couple of variants: one with 48h koji, another with 60h koji; some with soybeans and some with chickpeas. So, four tubs prepped in total (in empty 1 quart yoghurt tubs; double the recipe below in total ie half the recipe in each tub).

Instructions came from this awesome website.

1 cup dried soybeans (or chickpeas)
3 1/2 cups koji (at room temperature)
2 1/2 tbsp sea salt (used coarse; plus some extra for sprinkling on top)
1 cup cooking liquid (from the pulses)
1 tbsp unpasteurised seed miso (any unpasteurised miso - I used the one that came with the kit)

Soak the beans in a good covering of water overnight (at least 6 hours). Rinse, drain and put in a pan. Cover with water and boil ~3 hours until the beans are soft. Drain and transfer to a large mixing bowl. Bring koji to room temperature.

Mash the beans thoroughly in the bowl. Add the salt and cooking liquid and mix well. Check the temperature is not too hot (ideally ~60C). Mix in the miso. Then add the koji and mix again.

Transfer the mixture to clean, dry, straight-sided containers (you will need 1 1/2 quart total - I used two quart yoghurt tubs for this quantity but glass or ceramic would have been preferable). Pack it down well, trying to squish out any air bubbles. Sprinkle the surface with an extra 1/2 tsp salt.

Cover the surface with clingfilm, bringing the clingfilm up the insides and over the edges. Put a flat lid on the surface, on top of the clingfilm, and add a weight. Cover the whole of the top with paper, secured around the perimeter with string or elastic bands. Label with date and recipe.

Incubate at 25C (77F) for at least 3-4 weeks.


Notes: I followed exactly the same protocol for chickpeas as recommended for soybeans (there is a nice chickpea miso from South River and chickpeas are a similar size, thought it could work?). I used yoghurt tubs, with smaller yoghurt tub lids, and full jam jars for the weights. I am incubating near the radiator, monitoring temperature with the outdoor thermometer. To minimize contamination risk, I do not want to open them until the minimum expected incubation time is over.

At 1 week I sniffed around the edges of the paper lids and they smelled mildly alcoholic / fermenty, not bad - I figure if they are just rotting in there it should smell really bad?

At three weeks I opened up all the tubs and checked them. They all smell quite alcoholly, and have a layer of liquid on top while the rice-pulse mush underneath looks quite similar to how it did at the start, and is not very soft or paste-like. On a few of them, where the liquid had risen high up the edges, there was some mould at the top of the liquid layer (esp 60h soybean, a little on 48h soybean). I took some out and put the rest back at 25C. Now I am not sure how to tell if they are good or not - they don't seem disgusting, at the same time more alcoholic than I expected? Need more time?

Quick fried tofu with spring onions and sesame

This is like a speeded-up version of this delicious beast. Taking advantage of TJ's super firm tofu (no need to drain, doesn't fall apart easily so can be stir fried), simplifying and using a bit less heat.

2 tbsp veg oil
1 tsp sesame oil
1 pack super firm tofu (shrink wrapped), chopped into large chunks
~5 spring onions, chopped
1 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
generous grinding of black pepper and salt

Heat oils and then add the tofu. Stir fry, tossing regularly, for a few minutes, then add spring onions. Stir fry a little longer then add sesame seeds, chilli, pepper and salt. Keep frying until the tofu is lightly browned and the spring onions are wilted and crispy in places. We ate this with soba noodles and a quick peanut-tamarind sauce (peanut butter, tamarind paste, lime juice, soy sauce, mirin).

Midwestern collard greens

I'd never felt much love for collards. Compared with most of their Brassica relatives, they just seemed way less exciting in every way. Some came in the CSA last week. I remembered G saying that N made excellent collard greens, so when I saw him at Happy Hour on Friday I asked about them. He divulged his secret recipe: boil them for seven minutes then saute with garlic (he then segwayed into the best things about Michigan (where he comes from)). Makes sense - collards are tougher than your average green. So S+I thought we'd give them another chance. Turns out it's true: N does make excellent collard greens - the seven minutes' boiling was enough to make then incredibly tender without making them taste or look overcooked. We ate them all.

Sweet-pickled carrot and radish

We had a daikon in the CSA, and mounting carrots. I was interested in sweet-pickled slices - I looked at a few recipes and settled on something like this.

1/4 cup white sugar
1/3 cup demerara sugar
1 tbsp fine desert salt
150 ml coconut vinegar
150 ml cider vinegar
600 ml water
3-4 medium carrots
1 small-medium daikon radish
1 green chilli, thinly sliced crossways

Put the sugars, vinegars, water and salt in a pan and bring almost to a simmer. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, then turn off the heat and let cool.

Meanwhile, prepare the vegetables. Peel the carrots and daikon and then slice into matchsticks. Put in a bowl with the chilli.

When the vinegar mixture has cooled, pour it over the vegetables. Transfer to sterilised jars and store in the fridge (will be fine for several weeks).

Pickled green tomatoes (and grapes)

With my harvest of green tomatoes, I decided to pickle some (using my trusty faux-Grillo brine) as well as making jam. In fact, I still have some left even after all this - perhaps frying is also on the cards, or exciting sauce, or who knows what else? The grapes were left over from my last bunch of Concord grapes of the season - I hung onto the unripe ones to try pickling them.

~1 lb of green tomatoes
~10 unripe Concord grapes
~20 mint leaves
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp celery seeds
1/4 tsp red chilli flakes
3/8 cup cider vinegar
3/8 cup white vinegar
1 1/4 cups water
3/4 tbsp salt

Slice the green tomatoes thickly and pack into two (~400g size) jars. Add the Concord grapes and mint leaves to one / the fennel seeds, celery seeds and chilli flakes to the other. Put the vinegars, water and salt into a small saucepan and bring just to the boil. Pour over the jar contents, making sure to fill right up to ~1 cm from the brim, jiggling the contents to minimize air bubbles. Put lids on while the contents are still hot, then let cool before storing in the fridge.

Fresh tomatillo salsa

A gave me some tomatilloes from his garden. They were probably the ripest tomatilloes I've ever seen - bursting out of their husks. I think the only thing I've ever eaten made with tomatilloes (besides this sauce, where I actually subbed green tomatoes) is a fresh, green salsa (Mexican salsa verde) served with tamales and all sorts of other Mexican eats. I like that sauce, so I decided to try and make it.

6-8 ripe tomatilloes, husks removed and fruit washed

1-2 tbsp chopped sweet onion

1/4 clove garlic

1-2 tbsp chopped coriander

1 medium green chilli, halved and seeds removed

good pinch of salt
squeeze of lime juice

Put the onion and garlic in water and set aside for 5 min. Quarter the clean tomatilloes and put them in a blender. Drain onion and garlic and add to the blender. Add coriander, chilli, salt and lime and blend to make a coarse paste. Taste for seasoning and eat with whatever you like.

We ate this with chicken of the woods sauteed with sweetcorn, paprika flatbreads, guacamole and rice with lime zest and coriander. It all went down very well: fresh and tasty summer-meets-autumn food.

Green peppers with salt and citrus

We had a lot of green (and purple) peppers, plus a selection of different kinds of chilli pepper. I'd eaten a lot of them raw with dips, roasted others in a roasted veg mix with aubergines, courgettes, tomatoes, garlic etc, and was wondering what else I could do with them when I remembered about the Spanish tapas dish with whole, roasted green peppers (usually Padron peppers) sprinkled with lemon juice and sea salt. As soon as I remembered it I wanted to eat it. 

~8 green bell peppers and/or large, mild chillies (eg poblano)
olive oil
coarse sea salt
juice of 1/2 a lemon or lime

Heat oven to 400F. Grease a baking tray with olive oil and arrange the whole peppers in it. Put the tray in the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, until the peppers collapse and become lightly browned, checking halfway through and flipping them to help cook evenly. When done, remove from the oven, transfer to a serving squeeze the lemon or lime juice over the top and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. Eat immediately, or they will keep fine in the fridge for a few days.


This worked really well: simple and delicious.

Spicy cocoa and almond cookies (gluten-free)

It was A's birthday last week and I wanted to do something for it. But he didn't want. Quite emphatically. However, he was excited about going to volunteer at Drumlin Farm (where our friend D works) on Saturday, so I decided to try to make his day there as awesome as possible. Obviously a birthday needs sweet treats. Cake wouldn't have been practical, but I was daydreaming about cocoa-spiced cookies. A doesn't eat gluten so they needed to be gluten-free, but I had some eggs left he'd given me from his farmshare so an egg was do-able. I browsed over at this blog to see if there was anything that would save me making up a recipe (my time was short!), and found exactly what I was looking for, so followed that recipe.

We ate these on our lunchbreak at the farm, along with some peaches from a neighbouring farm and a whole yellow watermelon that was so ripe it had split during harvest that morning. The cookies were good: everyone seemed to like them. They were also very quick and easy to make - I threw them together in half an hour before going out on Friday evening, leaving them to cool til I got back (nb my almonds were pre-toasted). It felt good to give something back, both to the farm by volunteering and to D and A via cookies - all of them have given me a lot!

(made 11 big ones - would make more if smaller)

1/2 cup (55g) ground almonds
1/2 cup (60g) rice flour (brown or white)
1/4 cup (25g) cornstarch
1/2 cup (55g) cocoa powder
1/4 cup (55g) brown sugar
1/4 cup (50g) demerara sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch of salt
1/4-1/2 tsp chilli powder / cayenne
1/2 cup (65g) lightly toasted almonds, roughly chopped
1/2 cup ( 60g) chocolate, roughly chopped
1/4 cup (60ml) veg oil (used safflower)
1 egg (or 1 tbsp ground linseed mixed with 2 1/2 tbsp boiling water)
1 tsp vanilla essence
1-2 tbsp fake milk

Heat oven to 180C/350F. Line a oven tray with baking paper or grease with oil. Put dry ingredients in a medium bowl and mix well together with a fork. Add chopped almonds and chocolate and mix. In a separate, small bowl mix together the oil, egg and vanilla. Add wet to dry and mix to form a soft dough, adding 1-2 tbsp of fake milk until a moist (but not wet) consistency is obtained. Roll 2 tbsp of mixture into a ball, flatten and place on oven tray. Repeat with remaining dough. Bake for 12-15 min until just cooked. These cookies do not flatten out much more once cooked. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool on the tray.


Big thumbs up from everyone: gorgeous balance of sweet, spicy, bitter, crunch and squish - not too dry or too crumbly. Note, I want to try out making cookies with roasted cocoa as described here - didn't have time to experiment this time but another batch soon!

Pickled green beans with dill

Got a lot of beans from D (plus peppers and the last of the cukes - made up for a slightly disappointing mushroom hunt that yielded only ~30 tiny chanterelles and one baby hedgehog mushroom between four of us). Decided to try pickling some. I think it's a thing. Used the basic recipe from my pickled cucumbers.

large bunch of flat green beans
2-3 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1/2 tsp red chilli flakes
handful of dill, picked into fronds and washed
1 tbsp desert (or fairly fine sea, or pickling) salt
3/4 cup white vinegar
1 1/4 cup water

Wash the beans, top and tail them, then pack into a clean jar. Add the garlic, chilli and dill. Heat the vinegar, water and salt in a pan until the salt is dissolved and the mixture is just starting to boil. Pour over the beans so that they are all covered. Jiggle them until all the air bubbles come to the surface. Put the lid on, let cool to room temperature, then store in the fridge for at least a week before eating.