Burns Day and Mock-a-Leekie Pie

Robert Burns is the national poet of Scotland. His birthday (25. January) is celebrated as Burns Day or Burns Supper througout Scotland but also beyond. His nephew was a founding father of Dunedin in New Zeanland and so it is quite an international festivity. Although I can't warm up to the idea of eating Haggis (although luckily there are vegetarian Haggis recipes around) Burns' famous poem 'Address to a Haggis' made this dish the most eaten one at his birthday.

Even though he probably liked his Haggis, Burns was actually a very empathic person.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns

In my favourite poem of his, 'To a Mouse' he says

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,

O, what a panic's in thy breastie! 

Thou need na start awa sae hasty

Wi bickering brattle!

I wad be laith to rin an' chase thee,

Wi' murdering pattle.

I'm truly sorry man's dominion

Has broken Nature's social union,

An' justifies that ill opinion

Which makes thee startle

At me, thy poor, earth born companion 

An' fellow mortal!

In case you can't understand it, here is an English translation :)

Since he was so caring about a little mouse I thought it is only justified to make a veggie dish today. So I adjusted the Burns Supper cock-a-leekie (chicken and leek soup) and made a mock-a-leekie pie.

Here are the main ingredients:

The pie cooking in the pot:

and a cover-up with puff pastry:

In case you don't want to wait till next year and try the mock-a-leekie right now, I give you a rough recipe. I didn't make notes during cooking, so you have to go with your instincts and correct the amounts or add spices to your liking. Under no circumstances leave out the prunes; I was really surprised how nice the slightly tart prunes came out.

Mock-a-Leekie Pie (for 2-3 persons)

Ingredients:

•  olive oil for frying
• 3 leeks, sliced
• 2 carrots, sliced
• 1 parsnip, cut in chunks
• 1 potato, cut in cubes
• 1/2 cup of pearl barley
• 2 tablespoons of white wine for deglazing
• ca. 1 and 1/2 cups of veggie broth
• 1 bay leave
• 1-2 garlic cloves, finely diced
• thyme
• parsley (I didn't have one, but I wish I had, so next time I will put some in)
• guinea pepper, salt
• soy creamer (optional; the barley became so creamy on its own, that I will not use it next time)
• 1/2 cup of prunes, chopped
• 4 sheets of vegan puff pastry (rolled out according to the size of your baking dish)

What to do

Heat the olive oil in a wide pan and fry the carrots, potato, and parsnip for a couple of minutes (add some salt to draw out the juices; so they don't burn but rather roast in their own juice). Add the leek, garlic, and the barley and stir until barley is glazed and shiny. Add the white wine and let it evaporate; then add the broth (like in a risotto not all at once, so you can better adjust for the thickness of your stew), thyme, and the laurel leaf and let simmer for about 10 minutes.

Season with guinea pepper (or normal black pepper) and salt. If using soy cream, add a good dollop. Then add the prunes and cover your pie with the rolled out puff pastry. If you have time and fancy some decoration please go ahead and make a nice decor :)

Brush your pastry with water or water-thinned soy cream (a good replacement for egg-wash) and put in the oven for about 15 minutes. Enjoy!

And because this is full of winter veggies I am also sending it to a German blog event called Wintergemüse (winter vegetables) on buchcooks kitchen. She also has a birthday to celebrate: her blog will be one year old in February. Happy birthday bushcook!

I'm back!

Well, here I am again. Nobody seems to have missed me. But that doesn't stop me from pestering you with new blog entries.

So here is the first one for this year. Maybe it's best to let you know where I was between the years and post a camel photo (that's what I promised you after all). We spent our Christmas holidays in beautiful United Arab Emirates, in Abu Dhabi to be more exact. I'll just give you some impressions on how diverse a holiday in the desert can be.

At first we stayed at the Qasr al Sarab Desert Resort. Nice, isn't it?

Only surrounded by desert and camels

the desserts in the desert were just fabulous. Who can resist a gilded raspberry?

or a lovely apple tart at the pool?

 Morning fog:

We spent some time in Abu Dhabi City. The most impressive building was certainly the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, unbelievably beautiful. I had to wear an abaya though to get in :)

A short expedition into the Jebel Haffit mountains:

and to Al Ain where the National Museum is.

 
I just had to add a second photo from the museum. It's got a camel on it! Look!

The Al Ain Oasis with date palms:

 Hatta Dam in the Hajar mountains:

The famous Hatta rock pools:

 Hatta Fort tower:

Back in the city - underground camels:

and of course shopping malls with Christmas trees:

Actually I haven't finished with Abu Dhabi yet. There is so much to see and do, I have to get back. There is a lot of archaeology still waiting for me. For some we needed a pass to get in because they were on private ground, others had different opening times to what the webpages said or I only discovered them on the go - so to speak. Other sites we wanted to see needed an SUV and we only rented a normal car. We tried, but you can only go so far into the sand with a city car :(

I will make proper preparations next time and hope to be able to return soon. Abu Dhabi has so muchmore to offer than oil. And don't forget all the camels ...

Merry Christmas

I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year. I'm off to Abu Dhabi for holidays and don't know whether I will be able to post something on this blog. But I will be back next year and then you can see lovely photos of super soft camels in the desert :)

Sri Lanka-ish Beetroot Curry

When Shaheen from Allotment2Kitchen had her beetroot frenzy she also tried a recipe she saw on TV and later in a book called 'Feast for a Fiver'. The author got the recipe from a Sri Lankan, so it should be somehow authentic Sri Lankan cuisine. I've never been there, so I can't verify it. But I know that I love beetroots and this recipe is really really worth trying. I think it is already worth trying just for the colour's sake. It is a pure optical pleasure when  the dark velvety red of beets turns into a dark pink curry when you add the coconut milk :)

These are the main ingredients

And these are the spices used in the recipe

Preparing the onions

Frying the beets

Topping with kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves)

And the end product

Sri Lankan Beetroot Curry

(serves 3 - 4)

adapted from Allotment2Kitchen

Ingredients:

4 beetroots

1 tablespoon red palm oil

2 onions

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon fenugreek seeds

1/2 teaspoon yellow mustard seeds

2 red chillies

salt to taste (if you can get your hand on Himalayan salt, by all means use it)

2 tablespoons kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves)

1 can (400 ml) coconut milk

What to do

First prepare the spices. Fry the seeds in a large pan without adding any oil. You have to stir continuously in order not to burn them. The fenugreek will be the first you can smell, then the cumin, and at last there will be a hint of poignant mustard. That's when you take them out of the pan and cool them down. Coarsely grind them in a mortar and set aside. And yes, you have to be nearby all the time and ideally hold your head over the pan! I can cook without tasting the food, but not without smelling it; so it's time to sensitise your olfactory sense :)

Prepare the vegetables. Peel the onions and slice them (see photo above); peel the beetroot and slice them into strips about 1 cm wide. Heat the palm oil in the pan you used for the spices and add the onions. Fry for a couple of minutes, then add spices, sliced chillies, and salt. When everything smells nicely add the beetroot and kasuri methi and cook for about 10 to 15 minutes on medium heat. When the beetroot starts to become tender (don't overcook it) add the coconut milk and heat through for a couple of minutes.

Serve with Basmati rice.

Since I believe that it is at least Sri Lanka-ish, I'm sending my Beetroot Curry to Flavors of Sri Lanka hosted by Mharo Rajasthan. This event is part of the "Flavours of" Series 2 Asia on simplyfood.

Beetroot-and-Potato Stuffed Paratha

I think the best thing about India is not the Taj Mahal

nor her colourful temples

but most definitely the food :)

Not only are there a lot of vegetarian dishes, it is also soooo yummy. We stuffed ourselves with masala dosa, rasam, daal, and all kind of goodies while we were in Delhi. One thing I wanted to try out at home were dosa and lately I learnt about paratha and desperately wanted to try them out. So when Vatsala's Let's Go Stuffed Series

featured stuffed parathas for this month, I couldn't resist and finally tried my hand on them.

The idea to feature stuffed parathas came from Vardhini who also hosts the December event. For my very first paratha I used Radhikas (Just Home Made) recipe as a base and Indian friends from a friend (complicated isn't it?) sent me a video for the 'how-to-do'. Thank you Madhu :)

First I prepared the beetroot and potato filling:

Then you put the filling in little dough bowls

While carefully trying not to squeeze the filling out, roll out the paratha

and fry, ideally in a tawa, but since I do not own one, I used my fry pan

and then serve; we had  chickpeas and spinach with it. 

Beetroot-and-Potato Stuffed Paratha

Ingredients:

for the filling

• 1 medium beetroot, grated
• 2 medium potatoes,  boiled and mashed
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin powder
• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
• 1-2 teaspoon garam masala
• 2-3 teaspoon coconut oil
• salt to taste

for the dough 

• 3 cups wheat flour
• additional wheat flour for rolling and dusting
• salt
• hot water
• oil for roasting

Mix the flour and salt with hot water and knead into a soft dough. You should be able to knead it, but it should still be quite soft (careful, it will be hot at the beginning). Cover and set aside for at least 30 mins.

Heat oil in a pan, add cumin seeds and let them pop; add the other spices and the beetroot grates. Sauté for 5 to 10 minutes until the beet root gets tender. Add the potato mash, garam masala, and salt and mix everything. Set aside and let it cool down somewhat.

Knead the dough well again and roll it into lemon sized balls; shape the dough ball into a bowl. Put a spoonful of the filling into the dough bowl. Close the edges well, put on flour dusted surface and carefully roll out. Don't use too much force or the filling will ooze out.
Heat some oil in the frying pan and add your flattened paratha. Fry until it gets brown spots on the surface; turn around and fry the other side.

  

London's Canary Wharf and Cheese 'n Onion slices

When in London I went to Canary Wharf; one reason was, because I was interested how the former West India Docks, once a very busy port, have been transformed in the last decades (the port was closed in 1980) by heavy development work. Well, the other reason was that I needed to get the DLR (Dockland Light Railway) from Canary Wharf station to get to the Royal Observatory. But still ...

Today, Canary Wharf is not only linked to the London tube, but also the National Rail, London City Airport, and river services but on top became a huge business district and lately also a new housing area.

Huge high-rise building dominate the area. But there are also some more quiet zones, like the Jubilee Park. The park actually sits on top of Canary Wharf underground station:

You can also enjoy some art in front of the station:

With all the offices and new apartment buildings there of course followed shopping malls (there is an underground one down at the tube station) and restaurants. Among them Jamie's Italian that mushroom up everywhere nowadays:

In summer it must be quite beautiful near the river

Walking through the underground mall I stopped at WHS and bought the BBC Good Food Christmas Vegetarian special edition of it's Good Food magazine. And I decided to try out the cheese & onion slices featured in the magazine but also available online.

I used, however, purple potatoes:

The recipe asked to roughly mash the potatoes, which I did, but wasn't such a great idea. Next time I will do this for about a third of the potatoes and leave the other ones in cubes, since the pie collapsed a bit during baking. But still the mash looked beautiful in purple :)

Served with  a lambs lettuce salad and a tomato jus it was really delicious. You have to up the spices a bit. I generously added herb salt, freshly ground black pepper and a good dose of cayenne. I also skipped the egg and brushed the phyllo dough with oat cream, worked beautifully :)

But otherwise a stuck to the recipe; it was my first home-made cheese 'n onion pie after all.

I'm thinking about how I could veganise this .... any ideas?

Cannellini Bean Puree - A Tessa Kiros Recipe

Falling Cloudberries - A World of Family Recipes is a real coffe table book by Tessa Kiros, and a very intimate one, too. The book is filled with memories and photos of her life. Coming from a mixed (Finnish and Cypriot) background she can add an Italian husband, a childhood in South-Africa, and a Peruvian housekeeper; so the title 'A World of Family Recipes' is not a hollow promise.

Therefore, when I heart cooking clubs dared bloggers to check out Tessa Kiros' recipes and recreate a bean recipe from one of her books I took up the challenge, even though these are not vegetarian cook books. Many of her recipes are actually vegetarian, and the one I made -Cannellini Bean Puree- is even a vegan one. I don't think I would buy one of her books though, the bulk of recipes is after all heavily on the meaty side (that's what Greek and Finnish cuisine is after all).  But I really enjoyed the bean puree, a very simple yet nourishing dish. We really loved the spiced oil topping. For this I heated about 1/3 cup of good olive oil, added a teaspoon of rosmary and minced garlic cloves. In the original recipe Tessa crushed the garlic, but I rather liked it minced since the little pieces became a bit crunchy. And you can actually reduce the oil further (the original recipe called for 1/2 cup of olive oil).

I served the bean puree with pan-roasted carrots, soy sausages, and an endive salad. I would probably use less fatty side dishes in future (Tessa recommended Italian sausages) to make the whole meal somewhat lighter. Nevertheless we loved the combination, after all we had cold and stormy weather with rain and hail all day. So some comfort food can't hurt ;)

You can find this recipe in Tessa Kiros, Falling Cloudberries - A World of Family Recipes, 2009, page 322.

You can find the round-up at I Heart Cooking Clubs: Bean There, Done That