Stuffed vine leaves

S+I used to make these a lot. We disagree over the origin - I remembered adapting them from a Delia recipe (where she made them similar to below, but then cooked them in tomato sauce which didn't work for us at all); he claims he's been making them since he was a kid from his German vegetarian cookbook. But then a couple of half-used packages of vine leaves languished in the fridge so long we didn't buy any more for ages. It's quite easy to find vine leaves in brine in Turkish shops. We also tried with fresh ones, and the process is similar - soaking in hot water to cook and soften a bit, rather than to rinse off salt.

We thought of these after feeling a bit like we didn't put in enough effort when we took cauliflower and breadcrumbs to the last work veggie lunch. Once a month we have a potluck lunch with other veggies in our Department. It's kind of a challenge thinking of something that is fun and tasty, travels well in a backpack on a bike, can sit in a box from the night before until lunchtime, and can easily be shared. Today's lunch was supposed to be a picnic, adding the extra challenge of eating outside, possibly without cutlery. These really rise to all those challenges! Sadly the weather didn't though - it looks like lunch will be indoors.

(makes about 30)

2 cups rice (any kind is OK), cooked in 4 cups water
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
6 mushrooms, roughly chopped
handful hazelnuts, roughly chopped
handful sunflower seeds
handful raisins
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp dried oregano
handful fresh parsley, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
2 tbsp tomato puree
salt+pepper
About half a jar of vine leaves in brine

Cook the rice and let it cool while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Add the onion and garlic and cook until starting to soften. Add the mushrooms and cook until they are browned. Add the hazelnuts and sunflower seeds and cook to toast a little. Add the cooked cooled rice, along with the raisins, cinnamon, oregano, parsley, tomatoes and tomato puree. Mix well and cook over a medium heat to try and get a little colour and crispy patches on the rice. Season with salt and pepper to taste (remember the brine leaves are well salty if they are in brine so don't go nuts with the salt). When done, remove from the heat and let cool about half an hour or longer.

When ready to assemble, fill a large bowl or pan with nearly-boiling water (just cool enough to put your hand in). Take vine leaves from the package, check they are reasonably intact, and soak in the hot water for five minutes or so to rinse off some of the salt. Then remove, lay flat on a plate or board, with the stem end nearest you. Dollop 1-2 tbsp (depending on the size of the leaf) just next to the stem, then fold the leaves around it at the base and roll up towards the leaf tip. You should end up with a neat cylindrical package. Repeat until you run out of rice mixture or of leaves. They will keep in a box in the fridge for up to a week, and can be eaten cold or at room temperature.

Diced cucumber, tomato and feta salad with chickpeas

Cucumbers are so deliciously crunchy and crisp and delicately tasty and juicy. Perfect antidote to accidentally drinking too much coffee... again. Why not cut them into chickpea-sized pieces along with some cucumbers and a little bit of feta... add parsley and tasty bits and pieces, and crunch on it along with a bit of bread... whenever I cook chickpeas they disappear so fast!

1/2 cucumber, diced
6 ish small-medium tomatoes, diced
1 in piece of feta, diced
cupful of cooked chickpeas
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1 tbsp chopped capers
1 tbsp chopped sundried tomatoes
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
salt+pepper

Mix everything together, dress with olive oil, balsamic, salt+pepper. Done.


Nothing but simple food, and especially salads at the moment. S has been bringing lunch to work as well since we moved here, so it's kind of a fun challenge thinking of what will feed my appetite plus his.

Pear and gorgonzola salad with balsamic reduction

We've been working quite a lot lately, or travelling / with visitors (e.g. sauna tour), so not much time in the kitchen. Keeping up (food) exploring though - went to a cute veggie cafe (Cafe N) on Tuesday; found a nice coffee shop near our house yesterday (Sweet Treats). We're on the hunt for a place walking distance from our house, not too expensive but with tables and somewhere comfortable to sit, with good veggie options and non-veg stuff too - feel like we need to have somewhere like this in mind for when we have visitors. So far we've failed to find anywhere that fits the bill - nice-looking places have no veg stuff, cafe-type places that close early and don't have much seating have veg options but no real dinner options, our few fave place so far are further away or are a bit fancy...

Anyway, dinners have mostly been quite simple, taking advantage of all the readily-available awesome breads, and my sojourn into eating eggs and dairy again, and since it warmed up we've been making quite a lot of salads.

This was yesterday's. There was one nice ripe pear in the bowl, and I thought I'd make it go as far as I could. I guess this is a pretty typical veg option type of a salad, but tasty nonetheless, especially when you can control the levels of all those strong flavours to your liking. It comes together really fast - try and make sure it does, and gets eaten fast, as it would be a shame to let a good pear go brown...

4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 tsp sugar
2-3 handfuls rocket
1 ripe conference pear, cored and chopped into medium slices
2 in piece of gorgonzola, chopped into cubes
handful walnuts, crumbled
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
salt+pepper

Get the balsamic reduction on while you prep the rest of the salad: put balsamic and sugar in a small pan and simmer pretty high for 5-10 min until it reduced and syrupy. Take off the heat.

Meanwhile, wash the rocket and put it in a serving dish. Prep and add the pear, gorgonzola and walnuts. Drizzle balsamic reduction over the top, along with some olive oil, salt and pepper. Eat right away, with some good bread.

Celery, apple and walnut salad with lemon-tahini dressing

Very simple celery salad, surprised I never wrote it up before. It is good. Tahini and lemon juice make a creamy dressing that coats everything and brings zing.

juice of 1/3 lemon
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp tahini
salt+pepper
about 5 sticks of celery
1 apple
handful of crumbled walnuts
handful of raisins

Mix the lemon juice, olive oil, tahini and seasoning to make a creamy, thick but pourable dressing. Chop the celery and apple and put them in a serving bowl. Toss with the dressing, then add the walnuts and raisins and mix a bit more.

Berbere lentils

I've made berbere lentils before, but at the weekend was browsing my precious weeks-old Guardian Weekend (that Y shepherded carefully over from Beccles for me), and found someone professing this berbere lentils recipe (that I had noticed then forgotten about previously) to be the best thing. And I had exactly the 250 g of red lentils it called for, so off we went.

2 medium onions, chopped
sesame oil (untoasted) or peanut oil, for frying
2–3 garlic cloves, chopped
250g red lentils
2 tbsp berbere spice mix (recipe below)
400g tin chopped tomatoes
400ml water
salt and black pepper

For berbere spice mix:
2 cloves
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cayenne
2 tbsp paprika
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground turmeric
½ tsp each of ground allspice, black pepper, ground cardamom, and ground nutmeg

To make the berbere, toast the cloves with the fenugreek, cumin and coriander. Grind and then mix with the cayenne, paprika, salt, black pepper, cardamom, nutmeg, turmeric and allspice.

Fry the onions. When softened, add the garlic, lentils and berbere. Mix, then add the tomatoes and water. Bring to the boil, turn down the heat and simmer for 30 minutes, adding more water if necessary.


Pretty good. Was a bit salty - I've reduced the salt a little above (as well as tweaking spice levels to my taste).Very similar to the recipe I tried before (except a bit saltier).

Roasted carrots, chickpeas and cauliflower with yoghurt-tahini sauce

More cauliflower. I fancied roasting some chickpeas, and roasting carrots with coriander and spices. They all got roasted together and it was very very good.

Roast:
5 large carrots, scrubbed and top-and-tailed
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 1/2 tbsp coriander seeds, toasted and ground
1 tsp cumin seeds, toasted and ground
1 tbsp paprika
1-2 tsp sumac
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cayenne
1-2 tsp nigella seeds
1 tbsp sesame seeds
salt+pepper
2-3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cauliflower, broken into florets
about 1 cup cooked chickpeas

Sauce:
4 tbsp yoghurt
1 tbsp tahini
1 tsp lemon juice

Heat the oven to 230C. Put the carrots in a large baking tin along with all of the spices and seeds, salt and pepper and the olive oil (be generous with these - remember the cauliflower and chickpeas will be added partway through and they want to be coated with goodness too). Mix well and put in the oven for 10-15 min. Take out and mix in the cauliflower and the chickpeas. Put back in the oven and roast for another 20-30 min, until everything is tender and starting to crisp. While it's roasting make the sauce just by mixing together the yoghurt, tahini and lemon. Serve together.


Both roast and sauce are definite make-agains. S particularly loved the roasted chickpeas.

Cauliflower couscous

S and I joined a vegetarian lunch club at work. We meet once a month, and everyone brings some food to share. So far it's happened twice, and it's been a fun way to meet interesting people and eat good food. This time, someone brought cauliflower 'couscous'. I'd heard of that stuff but never tried it. But we are on a cauliflower (blomkål) kick at the moment - we took cauliflower and breadcrumbs to lunch club. And the cauliflower couscous was fun and tasty, so I decided to try and recreate it with half of a big cauliflower (the other half got roasted).

1/2 a cauliflower, broken into florets
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, peeled and chopped
1/2 cup shelled edamame, defrosted
2 tbsp chopped almonds, toasted
lemon juice
salt and pepper

Put the cauliflower florets in a food processor and pulse briefly - it breaks down into couscous sized pieces really fast. Heat the oil in a frying pan and saute the garlic until softened. Add the cauliflower and saute for a few minutes, just to soften slightly. Transfer to a serving bowl along with the edamame and almonds, and add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste.