Beans, seeds and tomato

1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped (or 3-4 spring onions for quicker cooking)
2 tbsp sunflower seeds
3 handfuls cooked lima beans
1 large tomato
1 tbsp coriander, chopped

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan and add the chopped onion.  Cover and cook on medium-low til softened but not coloured, about 10 min.  Meanwhile toast the seeds and chop the tomato and coriander.  When the onion is ready, as the beans, tomato and seeds and then cook for 2-5 min.  Lastly, add the coriander and season to taste.  Surprisingly yum.

Pickled cucumbers

One of two jars

I was thinking about pickles.  I thought at first that pickled beetroot was the only pickled veg I really liked.  But then we had a jar of pickled cornichons and I remembered I really like those too.  So then I had my eye out for really small cucumbers or cornichons.  I found some pretty tiny cucumbers at the Haymarket, and decided to try pickling them.  It was really hard to choose the pickling method.  I know what I want them to be like, but it will be a month before I get to find out how close I got...  I know what I don't want them to be like too:  I really don't enjoy the massive, chunky, fizzy, fermented, overtly garlicky style of pickled cucumber - the ones I like are the dainty, firm / snappy, delicately herb / spice flavoured ones - perhaps it's the French style, but I'm not sure.  I tried to follow the combo from the ingredient label of the last jar of cornichons we bought, and used a combination of recipe methods. Hopefully they will turn out.  Now I just have to wait and see...

~1 1/4 lb of the smallest cucumbers you can find (these were the Lebanese type, 4-6 in long and ~3/4 in wide)
~3 tbsp salt
half a medium onion, sliced quite fine
3-4 cloves garlic, sliced
10-15 small sprigs dill (tarragon might have been better, but we had dill so dill it was)
~2 tbsp yellow mustard seeds
~1 tbsp black peppercorns
~2 cups vinegar (used 1 cup white vinegar plus 1 cup cider vinegar)

Chop the cucumbers into 1-2 in long pieces, put into a colander and salt generously in layers.  Put colander over a bowl with a plate+weight on top and leave for ~24 hours.

Rinse the cucumbers and dab dry with a clean cloth.  Clean and sterilize the jars (this amount neatly filled two large ex-caper jars ~450g).

Pack layers of cucumbers into the jars, interspersed with the garlic, onion, dill and spices.  Leave an inch of space at the top.

Heat the vinegar to just about boiling point in a pan.  Remove from the heat, fill the jars right to the top and cover immediately.

Store in a cool, dark place for at least one month before eating.


Update April 29th 2012: They are good!  Nice and crisp, with a good, sour vinegar taste but no fermentation.  Bonus pickled onion and garlic.  Pretty much exactly what I was aiming for, give or take tinier cucumbers and tarragon vs dill.

Black onion seed breadsticks

From a type of bread I've made a lot to a type of bread I've never baked before: bread sticks.  I have a deep love for nigella seed, so this recipe stuck in my mind.

1 tsp dried yeast
40 ml warm water
100 ml fake milk
50 g fake butter
1/2 tbsp brown sugar
250 g wholemeal flour
250g strong white flour
1 tsp salt
15g black onion seeds
Oil, for kneading

Mix the yeast and warm water in a cup or small bowl until dissolved, then set aside. Bring the milk to a boil, add the butter and sugar, remove from the heat, pour into a mixing bowl and leave until the butter has melted. Add the flours, salt, onion seeds and yeast liquid, and mix to a smooth dough. Cover the bowl, leave for 10 minutes, then lightly knead until smooth. Return the dough to the bowl and leave for an hour until risen.

Cut the dough into quarters and one at a time roll out each quarter to about 1cm thick. Cut a 1cm-wide strip from this dough roll, and roll out into a smooth breadstick about 25cm long. Place on a baking tray lined with nonstick paper, and continue with the remaining dough until you've filled a tray or two. Bake at 180C/350F for about 30 minutes, until crisp and golden. These keep well for at least a week if wrapped well, but you can crisp them up in the oven (at the same temperature, for about 15 minutes) on the day of serving.


These look nice and fancy and were a big hit with S.  Nice texture, the outside crisp and the inside bready.  They cry out to be dipped in something - bit weird on their own.  I made some black olive hummus to eat with them but baba ghanoush would be perfect.

St Patrick's Day: Soda bread

I used to make a lot of soda bread.  Then I started making yeast bread and got all into that and kind of forgot about soda bread.  I can't really say why - soda bread is good, and quick, and easy...

I used to go off a Delia recipe mostly, but thought I'd try something slightly different this time.  So used approximated the recipe listed here.

Oh yeah, and why did I start thinking about soda bread again?  Because it's St Patrick's Day, and soda bread is one of my favourite Irish foods (the other is potato farls, and I'm trying to think of more...).

250 g plain flour
10 g salt
15 g bicarbonate of soda
250 g wholemeal flour
150 g jumbo oat flakes (used a mixture of steel-cut oats and seeds: millet, linseed, poppy, sesame, sunflower, pumpkin)
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp black treacle
500 ml buttermilk (used soy milk soured with 1-2 tsp cider vinegar)

Heat oven to 200C/390F.  Line a baking sheet with baking paper.  Mix the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Make a well in the middle, then mix in the honey, treacle and 'buttermilk', working everything together lightly with your hands until you have a loose, wet dough.  Shape the dough into a round on to the lined baking sheet. Mark a cross in the top with a knife. Bake for around 45 minutes, or until the loaf sounds hollow when tapped on the base. Transfer to a wire rack, drape a damp cloth over the top and leave to cool.


Good stuff.  Maybe a bit much treacle (or that blackstrap molasses is a bit more powerful than treacle).  Great moist texture and I love all the seeds, though.

Potato, leek and lavender soup

Another New Covent Garden Soup Company old favourite.  I hadn't had any cookable lavender for a while, so hadn't made it for a while, but now I have lavender and now I have made the soup again.

1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
2 large leeks, washed and finely chopped
1 1/2 lb potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
1.5 l / 2.5 pints veg stock
425 ml / 3/4 pint fake milk
flowers of 3 lavender heads
salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a large saucepan, cover and cook gently for ~5 min til softened.  Add the potatoes, stock, milk and lavender.  Cover, bring to the boil and simmer gently for about 20-25 min until the potatoes are tender.  Cool a bit, then puree in a blender til smooth.  Season to taste and thin with water if necessary.


It's subtle but tasty.  Blended potato does make for a really nice smooth consistency (good for ill 'uns, like S this weekend).  I made the mistake of chucking some beetroot in my last batch of stock, so the colour of this was a little odd, just a little - browner than one might expect...

Sweet lemon / lavender / olive oil biscuits

flower biscuits!

I went a bit nuts and bought lots of dried flowers.  I wanted to mix my own tea blend (rose petals, green tea, cacao nibs and calendula petals, for the record - the rose/green tea/cacao combo is a winner in my book).  While shopping for dried rose petals, dried lavender flowers popped up too and I remembered about Lizzie and my triumphant lemon lavender cake and decided I needed some of those...  When they arrived (from Etsy), I discovered the vendor had thrown in some calendula, and also that I'm only ever going to be using a wee measure of flowers at once.  So yeah, now I have loads of flowers for cooking and tea-making.  Can't complain...

Somehow olive oil, lemon and lavender seemed like a perfect combination when I thought of it this morning - perhaps to do with memories of the Mediterranean?

1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 tbsp dried lavender flowers
juice and zest of 1/2 a lemon
1/4 cup olive oil
1-2 tbsp fake milk

Heat oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.  Mix flour, sugar, bicarb and salt in a medium bowl with a fork.  Blitz lavender flowers in grinder so that they are broken up but not powdered, then stir them in with the flour.

Mix the lemon juice and zest with the olive oil, then add to dry ingredients and mix to a smooth dough.  Add fake milk as needed to get the required consistency.

Take lumps of the mixture and shape into ~1.5in diameter balls.  Flatten slightly and place on baking sheet, leaving 1-2in between blobs as they will spread a little while cooking.  Bake for 20-30 min, until slightly browned around the edges.  Take out, cool for ~5min on the sheet, then move to a cooling rack.


These came out good.  Very crunchy, but I think I liked that.  The lavender / lemon was fairly well balanced and nicely resonant.

Salty poppy seed crackers

I was daydreaming about these thin poppy seed crackers we used to have as kids: crispy, seedy and salty, we'd eat our way through a packet in no time.  So I thought I'd try making something similar.  I liked the idea of using olive oil as a fat, so went from there.

1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp poppyseeds
1/2 tbsp sesame seeds
~3 tbsp fake milk
more fake milk and sea salt to finish

Heat the oven to 300F.  Put the flour in a bowl with the salt and sugar and mix with a fork.  Add the olive oil and rub in to disperse evenly.  Mix in the seeds.  Add fake milk and mix until you have a stiff dough (modify volume of milk accordingly).

Lightly flour a worktop and roll out the dough to about 2-3mm thick.  Cut into pieces (irregular polygons seemed like the way to go) about 6-8cm across.

Line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.  Put the cut-out shapes on it, brush them with fake milk and sprinkle with sea salt.  Bake for about 30min, until crisp but not really coloured.