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.

Oat buns

We have eaten so much good Danish bread. There is endless variety: traditional rye made with sourdough; versions with chia, carrot, potato for moistness. Various focaccia and baguette type things. And everything in between (lots of nuts and seeds!). Last weekend we went to Relæ with Y+M, and fell in love hard with the sourdough bread they serve there - it's from Manfred's, their other place over the road (also had the best beer I have ever had). S especially became a little obsessed. So yesterday we returned to Jægersborggade to try and track down that bread (after a very successful mission to a secret secondhand store). It turned out to be pretty easy: they were selling the bread as wholes and halves for quite a reasonable price, right from the restaurant. So we went home happy, with a bag full of tasty, stretchy, crunchy, wonderful sourdough (not to mention the radio, DVD/CD player, three jackets, one shirt and waterproof trousers we'd picked up earlier...).

So anyway, yesterday for some reason I was looking at the side of a packet of oats and became intrigued by the recipe there. Thought it was about time I tried to follow a recipe written in Danish. With the help of Google translate I figured it out. And realised we had pretty much all the ingredients. Including grahamsmel, which I hadn't been able to identify previously. So I made these oat buns, using up some slightly out of date fresh yeast, testing the grahamsmel, and with freshly made yoghurt. I think I could understand the recipe! One thing I noticed, that I remembered from some Swedish hagebutten soup stuff Anna had given me once upon a time, is that Scandinavians seem to measure volume in decilitres (1 dl = 100 ml) rather than millilitres.

(makes 10 rolls)

25 g yeast (gær)
200 ml (2 dl) lukewarm water (vand)
250 g plain flour (hvedemel) (used white spelt instead)
75 g graham flour (grahamsmel)
250 g oats (havregryn)
100 ml yoghurt
1 tbsp (spsk) sugar (sukker)
2 tbsp oil (olie)
1 tsp (tsk) salt
more yoghurt and some sesame seeds to finish

Dissolve (opløs) the yeast in lukewarm (lunkent) water, and add (tilsæt) the flours, oats, yogurt, sugar, oil and salt.

Knead (ælt) to a smooth (glat) and supple (smidig) dough (dej). The dough should be soft (blød). Form (form) the dough into a ball (kugle).

Let (lad) the dough rise (hæve), covered (tildækket), for about 45 min. Knock (slå) dough down (ned) and shape 10 buns (boller).

Set (sæt) buns (bollerne) on a baking sheet (bageplade) with baking paper (bagepapir) and let them prove (efterhæve) for about 30 min.

Brush with yogurt or water, then sprinkle (drys) with sesame seeds.

Bake at 200C / fan (varmluft) 180C for 12-15 min.


Came out tasty enough but not very well risen - perhaps the yeast was past it? Perhaps spelt flour was a bad substitution?

Ultimate gingery red lentil dal

They've had a red lentil dal on the menu at Grød all the time we've been here, and I keep ordering it even though I know it's really something I can make at home. Because it is pretty much the ultimate comfort food on a chilly day (it's starting to feel like Spring and sunny but it's still a bit chilly if we're honest).

I have been making versions of the Grød dal ever since we first went there. This time I think I nailed it. And I made crispy garlic butter flatbreads to go with it, which really took it over the edge.

(takes about half an hour from beginning to end)

Dal:
1-2 tbsp coconut oil
3 tbsp chopped fresh ginger
1 1/2 tbsp coriander seeds, crushed in a pestle and mortar
2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 cups red lentils
4 cups hot water
3 tbsp tomato puree
2 large carrots, peeled and chopped into half moons
2 tbsp chopped fresh coriander
juice of 1/3 lime
1 tsp honey
1-2 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper

To serve:
yoghurt (or skyr, or ricotta)
more chopped fresh coriander
salty almonds (about 5 per bowl)

Cheat's garlic flatbreads:
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1-2 cm slice of butter
flatbread (7 chapati size pieces)

Heat the oil in a large lidded frying pan. Add the fresh ginger and saute for a couple of minutes. Add the dried spices and saute until fragrant. Add red lentils and mix around, then pour in hot water, add tomato puree, stir, cover and simmer for about 20 min. Peel and chop the carrots and add to the pan (they should need 10-15 min to become tender). Add about 1 tbsp of chopped coriander. Simmer until the lentils and carrots are tender.

Meanwhile, make the flatbreads. We had some thin Turkish flatbread that needed eating; I chopped it into 7 chapati size squares. Put the chopped garlic and cold butter into a small bowl and heat in the microwave for 15-20 sec, or however long it takes for the butter to become soft and scoopable but not liquid. Mix garlic and butter together. Heat a large heavy frying pan to a high heat, then put the first flatbread piece in it. Warm for a few min, until hot, then turn over. Put about a teaspoon of garlic-butter mixture on it and spread out. Transfer to a plate to keep warm. Repeat for the remaining flatbreads.

To finish off the dal, add the remaining 1 tbsp of coriander (remember to keep some for serving), lime juice, honey, salt and pepper. Taste and add more if necessary.

To serve, fill a bowl with dal, put some yoghurt on top and scatter with chopped fresh coriander and salty almonds. If necessary reheat the flatbreads in the microwave. Scoop dal up with flatbread or eat with a spoon.


Notes: the flatbreads were quite crispy - to make softer, perhaps it would be good to sprinkle them with water while warming the first side; I microwaved the garlic with the butter in the hope it would take the edge off the raw garlic taste and I don't know if it was that that did it but something worked and they were just garlicky enough.

Warm beluga lentil salad with tomato, parsley and feta

A bag of beluga lentils was an impulse buy at my current favourite shop in Copenhagen, a Turkish grocer's in the southerly part of Norrebro. They were the same price as the other lentils, that's why: I think I'd always thought of them as the fancy expensive kind of lentils so the level pricing clinched the deal...

When I cooked them I saw why they have a reputation. They hold their shape well, and like forbidden/black/purple rice they develop a wonderfully deep dark purplish black colour (hence beluga). Good solid earthy taste too.

My go-to for lentils of the brown-green-black varieties is to turn them into a quick salad, with some elements of spices (coriander, cumin, cinnamon, paprika, chilli, sumac are favourites), olive oil, acid (balsamic vinegar or lemon juice), herbs (coriander, chives, parsley, mint), powerful flavour pockets (sundried tomatoes, capers, caramelized onions+garlic, olives), crunch (toasted seeds or chopped nuts), and probably something a bit creamy (thick yoghurt, tahini, feta) and something fresh (chopped tomatoes, leaves, maybe cucumber). I thought I must have written out a million of these salads on here, but on checking found not that many. Endless variants possible!

The beluga lentils were so pretty and tasty I wanted to keep it relatively simple, so cut back on spices etc and made a salad with just some basic components.

1 cup beluga lentils cooked with a bay leaf and a couple of peeled cloves of garlic in 1 3/4 cups water
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1-2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
salt+pepper
2 tbsp chopped parsley
6 medium-small tomatoes, chopped (or sundried tomatoes)
2 cm lump of feta, crumbled
2 tbsp chopped hazelnuts (optional)

Cook the beluga lentils with bay leaf and garlic. They should take about 15-20 min. When done (slight bite remaining, no liquid left), mix the oil, vinegar, salt and pepper in the bottom of a serving bowl, tip the lentils in and mix together. Taste to check seasoning. Once they have cooled a little, add parsley, tomatoes and feta and toss. Add hazelnuts if using, check seasoning, and serve.


Very pretty: purple lentils, white feta, red tomatoes, green parsley. And just as tasty as its more complicated relatives.

Carrot and coriander salad

We have a food processor in our current place, which makes grated root vegetables a breeze. So, I made this Delia recipe in a few minutes' work, with no grated knuckles.

1 lb carrot, peeled
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp coriander seed
2 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil
1 small onion, peeled and sliced
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
pinch cayenne pepper

Grate the carrots finely. Put in a bowl and mix with vinegar and salt. Cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours (preferably overnight). If necessary pour off excess juice (drink it!).

Dry-roast the coriander seeds in a small frying pan over a medium heat. Tip into a mortar and crush the roasted seeds.

Heat the oil in the same frying pan, add the onion and fry until golden; allow to cool slightly then drain the oil through a sieve on to the carrots. The onion has now served its purpose and can be used in another dish (I put it in a lentil salad).

Add the coriander seeds, garlic and cayenne to the carrots, mix and serve.


I like this salad, but remembered two things I wasn't sure about: first, is it really necessary to leave it so long and pour off the juice? Second, the onion oil part results in very little oil and seems like an unnecessary faff as you have to do something with the cooked onion and surely you don't get much flavour from that tiny bit of oil, especially beside loads of tasty coriander seed.