Quinoa risotto

Yes, this is recipe number 2 on this blog using quinoa, but what can I say? It's brilliant. I was resistant to it for years, dismissing it as the preserve of hippies and weirdos with food intolerances. But, in fact, it's an impeccable rice/pasta replacement if you're craving a stodge-fest but don't want to either fall asleep after lunch or GET FAT.

This recipe was inspired by a cookbook that arrived at my house that at first, I'm ashamed to say, made me laugh out loud. It's called Cuisinier Gascon, by Pascal Aussignac, the head chef at Club Gascon Group, a very smart sort of chain of Gascon-inspired restaurants in London.

It made me laugh out loud for its unimaginable complexity. It's all beautiful and gorgeous, no doubt, but the idea that I would make a Cappucino of Black Pudding with Lobster and Asparagus or a Carpaccio of Foie Gras with Figs and Walnut made me snigger. Not that, I must hastily add, this book was intended for me - it's recipient was supposed to be Giles, but little do people know that I intercept all of Giles' post, stack up the press releases, burn the hatemail after passing names and address onto the police, put all the knickers in the bin, give Giles the fanmail to read over breakfast and appropriate all the cookbooks.

I was about to dismiss the book as too silly to be useful when I suddenly sobered up and realised how damn lucky I am that I live in a house where top chefs send in signed copies of their books, even though they're not meant for me.

So I sat down with Cuisinier Gascon and read it from cover to cover and it's brilliant; I will make one of its more complicated recipes soon as a penance, but for now, I made today for lunch a quinoa risotto, inspired by a seafood quinoa risotto I found in the book.

It serves 2 and goes something like this:

80g quinoa

300ml stock

1/2 stick of celery

2 shallots

a few snippets of lemon zest

parmesan

butter

parsley

chorizo

garlic

1 Chop up the shallots, garlic and celery and saute gently for about 8 mins in 1 tbsp groundnut oil and a generous lump of butter.

2 Add the quinoa and fry off for about 3 mins

3 pour in all the stock and leave to bubble gently for about ten minutes, giving it the occasional stir. The quinoa ought to absorb all the liquid, after about 15 minutes. You can add more if the quinoa is too al dente for you. The quinoa basically behaves like risotto rice so if you've made a risotto, it'll all be pretty familiar. The bonus is it takes much less long to cook than risotto rice.

4 When the quinoa is cooked, add another knob of butter, salt and pepper, lemon zest, a handful of parmesan and a couple of thick rounds of chorizo, chopped up, Stir to combine and then turn out onto hot plates - sprinkle over more parmesan and the parsley.

I served this with a sprig of roasted cherry tomatoes, which worked really well - to roast baby tomatoes just put in the oven for about a hour at 180 C.

Dimbleby's dinners

My eyes snapped open at 0530am this morning but I managed, with heroic effort, to stay in bed until 0650am. It's now 9am and I've read all the papers, including all that stuff about John Terry - the least surprising sex scandal I've ever read about (and I've read a LOT, you know?? Titter) - including all the fun bits of The Guide, including all the recipe sections and Giles' excellent piece in The Times Mag about Americans who don't eat anything (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/eating_out/giles_coren/article7001699.ece) and dismissed the idea that the photo of him on the front of the Magazine made him look "old and baggy". I've also eaten a massive fry-up and had three cups of tea and one cup of coffee. God only knows how I'm going to fill the rest of the day, until it's time to have a fretful little nap at about 4pm, waking up at 7pm with no idea where I am, feeling queasy.

Just imagine how much earlier I would have woken up, how much worse the jet laggery would have been, how many more things I would have achieved in the cold, snowy dawn, had Henry Dimbleby, the chef and co-owner of healthy fast-food chain Leon and, most important, husband of my first boss, the journalist Jemima Lewis, not invited us to dinner last night.

We had lamb and posh macaroni cheese, red cabbage, roasted vegetables and then an apple tatin using, we were utterly scandalised but also thrilled to learn, Jus-Roll pastry. "Why do they leave off the 'T'?" wondered Henry. "To make it sound more friendly," I said.

Anyway, Henry had rested the joint of lamb for an hour - a WHOLE HOUR - which has got me resolved to do the same in the future. Just use hot plates, hot vegetables and hot gravy and then the less-than-boiling meat doesn't matter a whit. He also made the stunning posh macaroni cheese made especially for my sister, Hannah, who was also there and who had requested for dinner (because she is pregnant AGAIN) "a huge pile of carbs covered in cheese". It was, as carbohydrates always are, the star of the party.

I love macaroni cheese, but mine is very 70s - a floury, cheesy sauce. Nice and everything but Imake it with chedder and, goddamnit, it doesn't half leak grease and bleurgh like no-one's business and it can leave you feeling a bit... heavy.

Henry uses cream and morels as a sauce to bind the pasta and then bakes it in the oven covered in a lot of Gruyere. I didn't grab him by the ears and force him to tell me the exact recipe, because that's a bit like asking a doctor at a party about the funny stabbing pain you get behind your right knee from time to time. But at a guess, he does something like this:

Boil the pasta, saute the morels gently in some butter, with salt and pepper, for a few minutes, then pour in a lot of double cream and mix round for a bit until warmed through but not, I'd guess, bubbling. Then pour in the pasta and stir to combine. Turn out into a gratin dish and cover with about three times as much Gruyere cheese as you think you need and bake in the oven for, I'd guess, about 25 mins, probably 180 degrees.

It's just brilliant. I'm never going to make mac and cheese any other way again.

I thought Henry had a recipe blog but it turns out not! I shall just have to steal his recipes and post them here. But there is a new Leon cookbook coming out in September and it's going to change the way we all cook dinner - all the recipes have 8 ingredients or fewer and can be accomplished in 6 steps.

Curry Lentil Soup

Lentils are loaded with nutrients, fiber, complex carbohydrates, and folic acld. Lentils are a low calorie, low fat, and cholesterol free food.

There are hundreds of varieties of lentils, with as many as fifty or more cultivated for food. They come in a variety of colors, with red, brown, and green being the most popular. Lentils have an earthy, nutty flavor, and some varieties lend a slight peppery touch to the palate.

Lentils are also an important source of iron. Eating lentils with foods rich in Vitamin C, such as tomatoes, green peppers, broccoli, and citrus fruits or juices, helps the body absorb iron more efficiently.

Lentils are also protein rich. They lack only one protein, methionine. Adding grains, eggs, nuts, seeds, meat, dairy products, or egg will provide a complete protein.

Soluble fiber in lentils acts as a scrub brush, cleaning the digestive system. This type of fiber also decreases serum glucose and cholesterol, and decreases insulin requirements for people with diabetes. from Lentil Facts & Lore

300 g Green lentils 3 tbsp Butter 2 Garlic cloves, minced 1 Sweet onion, peeled and chopped

1 Carrot, peeled and grated 1 tin /320 g Tomatoes, crushed 2 tbsp Curry powder 2 tsp Vegetable bouillon powder 6 cup Water Salt and black pepper to taste

1. Rinse lentils thoroughly under cold running water and drain. Heat butter in a skillet until melted. Add in minced garlic and chopped onion, stirring until soft and fragrant. Add grated carrot, crushed tomatoes and curry powder. Stir briefly.
   
2. Add in lentils, vegetable bouillon and water to the skillet. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and simmer for 40 minutes or till the lentils are soft. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve.

Namastasty

Ah me, jet lag hours seem long. It is 0525 in the am, I can hardly believe it, and I am wide awake with mean jet lag after flying in from India yesterday. Or was it today? All I know is that I woke up in Fort Cochin, pre-dawn, at some point in the last 36 hours and now I'm sitting here, pre-dawn, not entirely sure what day it is, with nothing to do. Giles has put a wash on, I made an emergency breakfast out of delicious defrosted Cranks wholemeal bread (sliced up at room temperature and then tucked away in the freezer in freezer bags), Nutella and black tea. (No milk, you see - Sainsbury's doesn't open until 7am).

Anyway, I'd like to say that Kerala all looks like this:

... and some of it does. But a lot of it looks like this:

But what am I saying? God, I'm so bourgeoise. A couple of open sewers, a leprotic (is this a word?), stoned tuk-tuk driver and I go all Valley Girl and start squealing Gross Me Out!!!!
But this isn't about me and my hygiene issues, this is about food.

The thing I noticed most about Kerala is that absolutely nowhere was anyone eating my Keralan curry, which I wrote about back in November:

http://reciperifle.blogspot.com/2009/11/curry-without-bleurgh.html

Yes, there was a lot of stuff cooked in coconut milk, as coconuts literally grow on trees in that part of the world, but it was all pretty tomatoey. I won't say it was nothing special, because it was lovely, but to my narrow, London eyes, spoiled by the Cinnamon Club and Moti Mahal and other Pukka Indian joints, curry has to work pretty hard to be surprising.

It was more the side dishes, extras, drinks and puddings that were unusual. Tea-time on the shores of Lake Kumarakom brought banana fritters; at Munnar hill station it was all about pancakes stuffed with coconut, raisins and cashews tucked up at both ends in a pretty parcel; for pudding at Malabar House in Cochin I had three dainty chocolate samosas on a mango coulis. Yes! Chocolate samosas!

I'm also newly in love with bindi, Okra, ladies' fingers, or whatever you want to call them. Some people think they are gross, which I can understand, but they are my new craving. All over Kerala they are diced up with coconut (obviously) Nigella seeds (I think) onion, turmeric and a bit of chilli and called 'Vegetable Thoran'. This is probably a very obvious dish to a lot of people and me putting it in inverted commas would be like someone discussing such interesting European breakfast foods such as 'croissant' or 'toast'.

Last for now is the marvellous and delicious drink called a Cochin Cooler, consisting of mint, ginger, honey, lime juice and soda. Dipsomaniacs could add a splash of vodka or rum. It sounds familiar and it tastes familiar but I'm pretty sure I've never had a cocktail with ginger in it. Anyway, I'll be covering the Cochin Cooler and the banana fritters, as well as a rice pancake called 'appam' in more detail soon. Right now, I've got some jet lagging to do.

Beetroot Feta Salad

The beetroot are eaten boiled either as a cooked vegetable, or cold as a salad with vinaigrette dressing or raw, either alone or combined with any salad vegetable. Beetroot's main benefits are that it contains no fat, very few calories and is a great source of fibre.

I too added some left-over Dinkel potstickers, that need using up, to the salad. It might look weird, but really really delicious.

2-3 Cooked beetroot, cut into wedges 100 g Feta cheese, cut into cubes 60 g Salad leaves 1 Shallot, finely chopped 1 clove Garlic, sliced

1 tbsp Olive oil 1 tbsp Mazola oil 2 tbsp Raspberry or red wine vinegar 1/2 tsp Dried rosemary Salt and black pepper to taste

1. Heat the olive and Mazola oils in a skillet. Add in the chopped shallot and sliced garlic. Stir-fry for over medium heat until lightly golden. Stir in the dried rosemary and vinegar, tip in the beetroot wedges, and stir for a few minutes, allowing the flavours to develope. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.
   
   
2. Take out the beetroot wedges and put them into a salad dish together with the salad leaves. Pour the vinegar dressing over the beetroot and salad leaves. Toss gently to mix through. Finally, just before serving, toss in the feta cheese cubes and taste for salt and pepper.

Curry Fish With Peas

One of my favorite ways to cook frozen fish is in flavourful rich curry sauce together with some veggies. A delicious dish for any time of the year, but particularly welcome and soothing in the cold winter days with some steamed rice.

	Sauce	Marinade
200-250 g Alaska pollock fillet 1 Small onion, sliced 3 tbsp Green peas 1 tbsp Cornstarch Oil for frying and cooking	1/2 tbsp Curry 1/2 tbsp Sugar 1. 5 tbsp Ketchup 1/4 tbsp Salt 3 tsp Water	1/4 tsp Jiafan rice wine 1/4 tsp Salt Pinch White pepper

1. Rinse and pat fish dry with paper towels. Cut into the 2-inch chunks and place them in a bowl. Add in the marinade and leave it for 10 minutes.
   
2. Heat a skillet half-filled with cooking oil. Coat lightly the fish fillet with cornstarch and fry them over the medium heat until light golden. Remove and drain.
   
3. Heat a little of oil in the same skillet over moderately high heat until hot but not smoking. Stir-fry sliced onion until aromatic, add in peas, return the fish to the skillet, pour in sauce and gently stir to combine. Cover and cook for 5 minutes. Dish up and serve with the steamed rice.

Belgium Endive Salad With Walnut And Feta

The delicate, tangy and sophisticated flavours of Belgian endive matches perfectly well with the Feta cheese and walnuts.
Belgian endive, also known as French endive and witloof, or white leaf, is a leafy vegetable that looks like a thin cylinder of tight, pale green leaves. The tangy, deep, well-rounded flavor is unmatched by any other endive.

• 1 Belgium Endive
  
• 50 g Feta cheese
  
• 50 g Walnuts, roasted
  
• 1 tbsp Olive oil
  
• 2 tsp Raspberry vinegar
  
• Salt and pepper
  
• 1/4 tsp Dried parsley

1. Roast the walnuts in the 180C/350F oven for 5-8 minutes. Remove and leave to coll completely. Whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper together in a bowl to make the dressing.
   
2. Trim off the base of Belgium endive with a knife. Gently remove the 9 outer leaves, one at a time. Rinse leaves and pat dry with paper towel. Cut the remaining endives into the small pieces. Rinse and pat dry. Place in a large bowl with roasted walnut pieces and crumbled cheese. Drizzle the prepared dressing over and toss until blended.
   
3. Spoon the salad into the endive leaves and arrange them on a serving plate. If there’s any left, then place them in the center of the serving plate. Sprinkle the dried pasley over. Serve with melba toast or crackers if desired.

Thank you, Happy Cook@Foodie's Kitchen and PearlYn@A Full Time Housefly for sharing this cool award with me. Thanks!