Courgette, Chickpea and Spinach Soup

Yet another courgette recipe (we're seriously overrun here) and this one I'm really proud of. I'd forgetten how easy a good bowl of soup is to make and how satisfying. Taking inspiration from this 101Cookbooks recipe, this is a simple and fresh soup of courgette and spinach, I add chickpeas for extra thickness and just before blending threw in a load of mint and coriander and a squeeze of lemon juice to make it fresh and zingy. Finish off with a drizzle of good olive oil or a dollop of yoghurt.




Makes enough for 2 with leftovers.

Ingredients
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
1/2 red chilli
2 medium courgettes
about 100g spinach (or spring greens)
all roughly chopped
25g butter
750ml vegetable stock (from bouillon powder is fine)
1 can chickpeas, drained
juice 1/2 lemon
small bunch each of coriander and mint

• Heat the butter in a large saucepan, sweat the onion, garlic and chilli for 5 or so mins until softened.


• Add the courgette and continue to cook for a few minutes until they take on some colour.


• Pour in the hot stock and bring to the boil. Add the chickpeas, and if using spring greens, you want to add them here. cover and simmer for 10-15mins.
  


• If using spinach, add now and cook until the spinach is wilted (it will only take about 30s).


• Add the mint, coriander and lemon juice and blend immediately.

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Spinach and Anchovy Tart

I've been lusting after this baby for a while now, everywhere I look in food magazines, there are beautiful tarts made in this rectangular tart tin. Not only was I won over by the elegance, I also hoped it might be easier to line with pastry and blind bake (I ALWAYS get holes). So, it was with great delight that I wandered around John Lewis homewares department last week and came out clutching my tin.

We seemed to get an explosion of green in the veg box this week, a bag of beautiful baby spinach, earmarked for nothing more than a salad and big bunches of spring greens. In my quest for tart inspiration, I came across this recipe on BBCGoodfood.com, except I used stirfried sping greens, chopped finely instead. The anchovies are not overpowering at all, but lend a salty savouriness, that perks this up and stops it being bland.

I also skipped the potatoes and made a potato salad instead. Slice new potatoes into thick coins and roast with olive and oil and salt until cooked through and golden, make sure you scrape them off the bottom of the roasting tray every so often to stop them sticking. Once cooked, add pepper, a squeeze of lemon juice, finely chopped onions and parsley. My new favourite way to eat new potatoes.

As you might expect, this is delicious eaten at room temperature so leftovers won't last long as I discovered when we devoured them at 4am after a night of dancing. The crumbs were quite a depressing sight the following morning.


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Brown Rice and Spinach Pilaf

Eggs are my new favourite thing. Especially poached eggs, nestled atop a bowl of rice. I like to break open the yolk and let the insides trickle down. Recently it's been a stir fry, full of garlic, ginger and chilli and topped with plenty of toasted cashews. I came across this simple comforting bowl in Waitrose Food Illustrated and couldn't resist. Delicately spiced with cumin, cinnamon and cardamon, with plenty of spinach stirred through at the last minute and topped with toasted pine nuts.

Originally intended to be bulghar wheat pilaf, I reached into the grain drawer only to find I'd used all my bulghar wheat already. So brown rice it was, a little disappointing, only in the sense that brown rice takes about 3 times as long to cook and we were impatient for our dinner. Either grain would work well as they each lend a certian nuttiness to the end result.

Ingredients

serves 4
25g butter
2 garlic cloves , crushed
1 large onion , finely chopped
4 cardamom pods , bruised
1tsp cumin
1tsp cinnamon
250g brown basmati rice
500ml hot, vegetable stock
200g spinach, finely chopped
50g pine nuts
4 eggs, poached

• Heat a frying pan (that has a lid), as you do so, toast the pine nuts and remove.
• Add the butter and a little oil. Once bubbling add the onions and garlic and fry for 5-10mins until brown.
• Add the spices and cook for a few more minutes until they begin to smell delicious.
• Tip in the rice and stir well. Pour in the hot stock and bring to the boil.
• Turn the heat down, cover and simmer for 20-30mins until the rice is cooked, adding more water if necessary.
• Stir through the spinach, cover and leave to sit for a few minutes until the spinach is wilted. Season well and stirin the pine nuts.
• Serve topped with a poached egg.

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Roasted Tomato and Spinach bulghar salad

This is one of the great salads that I'm loving at the moment. They take a bit longer than your average chop and go salad to prepare but are bursting with flavour and if you make a huge batch, you can eat it for dinner and keep leftovers in the fridge for lunch or for other meals. Simply add the protein of your choice. Try blistered slices of haloumi, fried mackerel fillets, chicken, lamb kebabs or a poached egg.

This salad was inspired by this recipe from 101cookbooks, in all honesty, I took a cursory glance at the ingredients and went by the picture more than anything, so my version is below. Bursting with colour, sweet roasted cherry tomatoes and slow cooked red onions go beautifully with the nutty bulghar wheat spiked with loads of fresh herbs, a little garlic and a handful of spinach (I have a sneaky suspicion that toasted pine nuts or almonds would be a fabulously crunchy addition). A perfect accompaniment to a mezze type affair, try a simple carrot salad, some hummus and flatbreads.

Ingredients

250g cherry tomatoes
250g bulghar
olive oil
juice 1/2 lemon
1 clove garlic
3 handfuls spinach
1 bunch mint
1 bunch parsley

Onions
3 red onions, finley sliced
2tsp brown sugar
1tbsp balsamic vinegar

• First up the tomatoes. Preheat the oven to 180C. Slice the tomatoes in half and throw onto a large baking tray. Drizzle with olive, season with crunchy flakes of sea salt, a twist of black pepper and a pinch of brown sugar. Stir well, making sure all the tomatoes are cut side up and roast for 40mins until shrivelled and golden.
• Meanwhile pour the bulghar wheat into a saucepan that has a lid with 1/2tsp of bouillon if you have it or a pinch of salt. Cover with boiling water, bring to the boil, cover and simmer until all the water is absorbed and the bulghar is tender but still with some bite. (you may need to add a little extra water or drain any excess off.
• Heat a large frying pan with 2tbsp olive oil, add the onions and cook on low until completely soft. Add the balsamic vinegar, sugar and plenty of seasoning and cook for another 5mins or so until dark, sweet and sticky.
• To assemble the salad, squeeze the lemon juice over the bulghar and add 2-3tbsp olive oil, the garlic and most of the mint and parsley. Stir well and season to taste.
  
• Fold in the spinach and tumble onto a large serving platter. Top with roasted tomatoes, onions and the rest of the herbs.
  

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Lamb Saag

So, first up apologies for the absence. I've been cooking of course and I have a whole raft of recipes ready to write about, i guess life just gets in the way sometimes...

Next up for OxNosh is a booklet of recipes for students and we spent the bank holiday weekend developing recipes. The idea is that they're easy, obviously but we've also kept the ingredient list as short as possible whilst delivering big flavours so that it's likey to turn out edible and hopefully tasty if even the most inexperienced cook tries it.

This curry was one of our triumphs, using cheaper cuts of lamb designed for long and slow cooking. Leave this to do its thing puttering away slowly on the hob so that you're left with a rich dark curry, meltingly tender. Extra brownie points for sneaking in some vegetables too, bearing our audience in mind, we also tried this with frozen spinach. I was initially unconvinced, but it worked and keeps it green colour well.

I would also make loads of this and freeze it for a treat at a later date. If you're making it for lots of people like we did, try doing a daal or vegetable curry to go alongside and make the meat go further. Eat with fluffy white rice and yoghurt.




Ingredients

Serves 4
2tbsp sunflower oil
750g lamb shoulder or neck fillet cut into cubes
1tbsp flour
2 medium onions, finely chopped
3 garlic gloves, finely chopped
2tsp ground coriander
2tsp ground cumin
2tbsp tomato puree
1 tin chopped tomatoes
200g frozen spinach

• Put the lamb into a bowl, sprinkle over the flour and season well.Heat a large casserole with the sunflower oil, add the lamb to the pan in small batches, allowing it brown it on all sides before removing it.
• Once the lamb is cooked, add the onions and garlic to the pan and cook on a low heat until browned.
• Add the spices and lamb to the pan and cook for a few mins, stirring all the time.Add the tomato puree and chopped tomatoes, bring to the boil and simmer for 45mins until the lamb is tender.
• Before you want to serve the curry, stir in the frozen spinach and cook for another 5minutes.

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Pappardelle with Sausage and Savoy Cabbage

Possibly the best way to eat savoy cabbage (along with colcannon). There aren't many vegetables that don't benefit from being paired with pasta and cream or cheese. Faced with another cabbage in the veg box, I rustled this up and it's definitely one to make again.

The cabbage is definitely the star, you're not trying to mask it with all the other ingredients, simply enhance. So don't be alarmed at the amount of raw cabbage you have to fit into the frying pan, it will cook down. This is all about using what you have, any other pasta will do, try mozzarella in place of the parmesan or strong cheddar. Any other greens would also work well, kale, chard, or spinach.


Ingredients

serves 4

400g pappardelle
1 pack sausages, approx 250g
2 fat cloves garlic, finely chopped
50g butter
1 Savoy cabbage
200g grated parmesan
3 tbsp pine nuts, toasted

• Cook the pasta in plenty of boiling salted water until al dente. Drain and reserve a mugful of the cooking water.
• Meanwhile, quarter the cabbage, remove the core and slice as finely as possible.
• Heat a large frying pan and add a little oil, split the sausages, and add the insides to the pan, use a wooden spoon to break the meat up into chunks whilst you're frying. Once golden, add the cabbage, garlic and butter.
• This will look like a huge amount of cabbage, but it will cook down. Stir as best you can and try to coat it all in the buttery juices. Continue frying and stirring for about 5mins until the cabbage is completely cooked, season well.
• Tip the pasta into the pan along with the cheese and 2 tbsp cooking water. Stir the pasta into the cabbage, be patient after a minute or so, the cheese will melt and form a lovely shiny sauce that clings to the pasta, add some more pasta water if you need to.
• Sprinkle over the pine nuts and serve.

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Sag Aloo

Having spent all week thinking about the saag panner that I had at Woodlands, I decided to try and make my own, the key was the saag part of the curry, it was a bright green, almost pureed sauce, brimming with flavour.

Seen as though I had some potatoes left to use up, I made sag aloo. I cooked the potatoes slowly in the onions and aromatic spice mixture, lifted them out and them cooked the spinach in the same pan, pureed it and then add the potatoes back in. All in all, I think this was a bit involved, so next time, I'd probably just chop the spinach really small to get the same texture. It was definitely good, just not as good as Woodlands...

Ingredients
2 onions, chopped finely
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1tbsp grated ginger
2tsp cumin seeds
2tsp gorund coriander
1tsp tumeric
2tsp garam masala
500g new potatoes, sliced into thick coins and cooked until soft
spinach, finely chopped
2tbsp yoghurt

Fry the onions, garlic and ginger slowly in sunflower oil until really soft, add the spices and fry for a few mins more. Add the potatoes and cook slowly for 5-10mins until the potatoes are really soft and have absorbed all the spices. Add the spinach and cook for 5mins more. Stir in the yoghurt and season to taste. Read more...