Transylvanian pea and spinach stew

Certain dishes evoke a great deal of nostalgia.
It’s a little trip back to your childhood, a holiday, your nan’s kitchen etc etc.
This recipe is a fully nostalgic one for me, taking me straight to my childhood home of Transylvania.
At the time of growing up, imported food was still exceptionally rare. (Post-communism had its merits, albeit none that I truly appreciated at the time.)
The lack of imported food meant we had to entirely rely on seasonal produce, preserve foods when there was a glut and make the best of every morsel of every foodstuff.
It’s a hipster dream now but back then it was, an often difficult, reality.

I always looked forward to spring.
Preserves (think A LOT of sauerkraut & similar items) were replaced by fresh, vibrant greens. Blossoms and berries added colour to the otherwise bleak landscape.
Pea season would soon be looming.
I loved fresh peas as a child.
I still do.
This recipe brings together the best of those greens that appear during spring and combines them with tasty peas.
The recipe works with any greens but spinach is perhaps the mildest. If you want to go wild with it, young nettles are a great alternative.
Give it a go.
I’m biased but it’s super tasty. (and very very frugal)

Ingredients to serve 2:

1 onion
1 clove of garlic
1 tablespoon of flour or gluten-free alternative
1 entire bag of spinach (200g approx)
1 mug of frozen peas
1 mug of milk or plant milk (it’s better with milk but you do you)
1 stock cube
A small bunch of parsley (10-15g approx)
Sea salt & black pepper to season
A drizzle of whatever oil for cooking

Toppings (entirely optional but totally recommended)
Creme fraiche - find it near double cream in supermarkets, it’s a cultured version of cream and is the traditional way to serve this dish. Almost everything has creme fraiche on it in Transylvania.
A boiled egg - for extra protein
A few extra herbs to sprinkle on top
Nuts or seeds for added crunch - I popped a few macadamias on top because I had some left over
Sliced avocado - entirely untraditional but it brings a different texture profile to the dish

Method:
Pop a saucepan on a medium heat.
Add the onion, garlic and a splash of oil.
Cook gently until the onion has softened.
Add the flour and cook for a further minute.
Time to add the spinach. You’ll likely need to do this bit by bit as the spinach wilts. Keep cramming it in there and cooking it down.
Once the spinach has wilted, pour in the milk and cook for a further minute.
Grab the parsley and pop it in a blender.
Pour the spinachey liquid over the parsley, season well with sea salt and black pepper and blend it until it’s mostly smooth (it doesn’t have to be perfect).
Return the green sauce to your saucepan.
Add the frozen peas and gently heat up it the peas are no longer frozen. Avoid boiling it too heavily because that’ll turn the vibrant green colours brown. It’s better to gently heat it and allow it to slowly bubble.
Check the seasoning and season again if it needs a bit more salt and pepper.
Top with any/ all of your chosen toppings.
Serve immediately.
The full video instructions are available here: Recipe video

Venison & red wine ragu

There are so many reasons to cook more wild venison.

First, it’s hugely nutritious, boasting higher protein levels than other red meat sources and more of the hard-to-find minerals zinc and selenium.
It is also very lean, meaning we don’t need to worry about saturated fats. (FYI - I don’t worry about saturated fats.)

Second, it is actually sustainable.
Yes, sustainable red meat exists. Venison is perhaps on top of that list.
The thing with deer in the UK is they don’t have a natural predator. Thanks to this, coupled with an abundant supply of food and the introduction of non-native deer species, we have somehow ended up with a few too many of them on our shores.
Sadly, they love to munch on trees which is damaging woodlands and all the lovely woodland-dwelling species that live in those environments.
In a nutshell, too many deer means fewer trees, which is bad news, so we cull deer each year.
Cue a supply of sustainable, highly nutritious protein.

Last but not least, venison is delicious.
I may be biased but this recipe is super tasty.
Think a rich ragu with chunks of meat that cooks in 30 minutes flat.
In fact, you don’t need to cook venison all that long full stop, thanks to its low fat content.

Top tip: check the recipe notes after the methods section if you aren’t familiar with “chefy” terms.

Ingredients to feed 2

300g of diced wild venison (it’s in many supermarkets now)
1 onion, finely diced
1 stick of celery, finely diced
5-6 chestnut mushrooms, roughly sliced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed or finely diced
1 large carrot, blended into a puree (blending the carrot makes a sweeter, thicker sauce)
1 bay leaf
300ml passata
1 glass of good quality red wine. I used an organic Italian Primitivo.
Sea salt and black pepper for seasoning
Any good quality oil for cooking, I used cold-pressed rapeseed oil

Pasta & greens to serve.
I used pappardelle pasta and kale.

Method

1. Add a couple of tablespoon of oil to a large saucepan on a medium-low heat.
2. Pop in your onions & celery immediately and allow them to saute until they are soft. Approximately 10 minutes.
3. Turn the heat up to high.
4. Add the venison and cook for a couple of minutes until it is beginning to colour. You’ll need to give the pan a good stir to stop anything from catching.
5. Pour in the wine and let it cook until almost all of it is gone. It’ll bubble away quickly.
6. Stir in the mushrooms and garlic.
7. Turn the heat down to low, add the carrot puree, bay leaf and passata and season it well with sea salt and black pepper.
8. Let everything bubble away slowly on a low heat for 20 to 30 minutes until the sauce has reduced and the meat is tender. If the sauce is looking too dry then add a splash of water.
9. Taste the sauce and add more salt & pepper if needed.
10. Serve with pasta and a side of greens.

Recipe Notes

Finely diced onion & celery = the smallest squares you can humanly chop onions & celery into.

Passata is a “sieved” version of chopped tomatoes. Think smoother chopped tomatoes. Available from most supermarkets and usually lives next to chopped tomatoes.

If you need to feed more than 2 people, simply multiply the quantity of ingredients.

Pureeing a raw carrot adds natural sweetness to your ragu. If you can’t be bothered to wash a blender (or don’t have one) then dice the carrot and add it to your pan at the same time as the onions/ celery.

Waldorf(ish) trout, potato and walnut salad

Back in May, I was lucky enough to spend a day trout fishing.
Let’s just say trout fishing isn’t my forte (yet) but it was a beautiful day and in an ode to making the most of it, I took myself on a foraging walk around the lakes.
This Waldorf (ish) salad is a combination of ingredients that could be found in the vicinity of the fishing lake. (Plus some potatoes because carbs are a requirement.)
It’s a beautiful play on flavoursome ingredients that is reminiscent of Waldorf salad, except this version is clearly much better.

On a nutritional note, the salad is fantastic for Omega 3s since both trout and walnuts are great sources of this essential fat. Plus there are tonnes of vitamins, minerals and fibre to boot.
The science links Omega 3s to everything from skin health, cognition to cardiovascular health and much more.
Moral: we aren’t really getting enough Omega 3s and this recipe is a tasty way to capitalise on this much-needed nutrient.

Serves 2 as a lunch or 4 as a starter

Ingredients
2 trout fillets, steamed, poached or roasted
1 crispy lettuce such as little gem or cos, washed and separated into leaves
10 new potatoes/ small potatoes, boiled in salted water until soft then halved
1-2 sticks of celery depending on how much you like them, sliced
1 eating apple, cored and sliced
1 large handful of California Walnuts, 60g approximately
A large handful of a sharp fruit such as gooseberry, blackberry or 1 stick of rhubarb - halve the gooseberry or blackberry or if you opted for rhubarb then finely slice it
2 handfuls of watercress
Sea salt and black pepper to season

For the herby dressing
2 heaped tablespoons of creme fraiche
2 heaped tablespoons of natural yoghurt
1 teaspoon of wholegrain or dijon mustard
Juice of 1/4 of a lemon (optional)
Leaves from 2 sprigs of mint, finely chopped
Leaves from 5 sprigs each of tarragon and dill, roughly chopped
A pinch of sea salt

Method
Get your ingredients ready as per the cooking/ chopping requirements above.
To make the herby dressing, combine all of the ingredients aside from the lemon juice in a small bowl.
Season generously with sea salt.
Taste the dressing. If it needs more acidity then add the lemon juice, if you are happy with it then leave it as is.
To assemble the salad, pop all of your ingredients on a platter and flake the fish over it.
Season well with sea salt and black pepper.
Dot teaspoons of the herby dressing all of the salad.
Enjoy!

Chicken enchiladas and a herby slaw

During 2021 I ran a few online cookalongs with teens.
The idea was to introduce them to more whole foods and help them to stop relying on processed foods.
Herein lie some of the issues.
The flavour profiles of vegetables and other whole foods can be a steep slope unless those foods have been introduced during early childhood. Quite literally, we are biologically programmed to think that vegetables are poisonous, unless, of course, we learn that they are ok.
When children first start to crawl and walk, they’ll notoriously go through a fussy phase. Think about this way, they are learning about food, they are also picking things up and tasting them. Most poisonous things have a bitter undertone so evolution got clever with this and decided that anything bitter would be an instant nope.
Sadly vegetables also fall in the bitter undertone category but if they are introduced by a trusted guardian a child soon learns they are ok.
IF they are introduced.

So anyway, here I am, trying to encourage teens to get more veggies in. I had to pick a good medium as a vehicle for the introduction.
I had to start with something that they’d universally agree on as being delicious.
And that is how this chicken enchilada recipe was born.
I sold it to them as a pizza pie but the deal was it had to have a side of slaw.
They loved it and I think you’ll like it too.
So here is the recipe:

Ingredients for 4
2 chicken breasts, sliced
1 large bottle of passata, 600 - 690g
8 corn & wheat tortillas
spices: paprika, ground coriander, ground cumin
2 cloves of garlic, peeled & crushed
1 large red onion, peeled & sliced
1 red pepper, sliced
1 red chilli (optional), sliced
100g of spinach
1 block of cheddar cheese, grated

For the slaw:
1/4 of a red cabbage, finely sliced
1 tin of sweetcorn, drained
1/2 bunch each of fresh parsley, coriander & chives, roughly chopped
1 lime
1 teaspoon of agave or maple syrup
sea salt and black pepper to season
rapeseed oil for cooking
olive oil for drizzling

Method:
To make the sauce, pour the passata in a saucepan.
Add 2 crushed garlic cloves, 2 big pinches of sea salt, lots of black pepper and a heaped teaspoon each of ground coriander, cumin and paprika.
Leave this to bubble on a low-medium heat until you make the rest of the dish.

Set the oven to 180 degrees C.
Put a frying pan on a medium-high heat.
Add a splash of oil and cook the chicken until it turns fully white.
Add the peppers, onion and chilli (if using) and cook for a further minute.
Season well with sea salt and black pepper.
Pour in half of the sauce and the spinach. Let it cook until the spinach wilts.
Divide the mix between the tortillas, roll them up to form wraps and put them on a baking tray.
Pour the remaining sauce over the top and sprinkle on the grated cheese.
Bake in the oven for 20-30 minutes until the cheese has melted and the tortillas are golden brown.

To make the slaw, put the cabbage, roughly chopped herbs and sweetcorn in a bowl.
Unless the stems of the herbs are particularly woody then there is no need to take the leaves off the coriander and parsley, just roughly chop the whole lot.
Season with a generous pinch of sea salt and some freshly ground black pepper.
In a smaller bowl, combine the juice of 1 lime with a teaspoon of agave and 3 tablespoons of good-quality olive oil. Pour this over the slaw and mix it well to combine.

To serve, divide the enchilada between 4 plates, serve with a generous helping of slaw and some extra fresh coriander if its your thing.

Warm Hummus Bowl

Yes, warm hummus as a base for meals is a thing and yes it is super tasty.
Here is why I utterly adore this recipe:
- The warm hummus base provides a good dose of plant-based protein
- You can use up any veggies that are past their best for the topping. Just roast them up.
- It’s a bowl of goodness that’s utterly brimming with nutrients. A friend once described it as ‘you can feel the goodness filling up your body with every mouthful’.
- The price per portion is definitely on the very affordable end of the scale. Aka it is very cheap to make.

Feel free to use shop-bought hummus if you are short on time but I do think it’s worth making the fresh version featured here. The spices used give the homemade version a little something extra.

Ingredients for 2 portions:

For the hummus
1 tin of chickpeas, drained but the water reserved
2 teaspoons of tahini
2 tablespoons of oil (i.e. olive oil, rapeseed oil or sunflower oil)
1 teaspoon of ground coriander
1/2 a teaspoon of cumin seeds
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
Salt & pepper

For the topping
This part is entirely your choice, here is what I went with:
Any vegetables for roasting: I used a mix of red onion, butternut squash and cauliflower
Potatoes - simply cube and boil these then pan fry them using some garlic, paprika, smoked paprika, sea salt and black pepper
Salad veggies: I went with lettuce, parsley & cucumber dressed with olive oil and lemon juice but anything goes
Pickles if they are your thing: I went with some pickled rose petals but only because I was testing this recipe for a retreat and it needed to have something fancy. Pickled beetroot or pickled gherkins will do the trick just as well.
The toppings aim to bring elements of sweetness (roasted veggies & potatoes) and elements of sour (the lemon juice on the salad and the pickles) as well as working with different textures (think crunchy salad and soft potatoes). Aiming for this variety makes everything taste good.

Method:
Roast your veggies & boil some potatoes.
Chop up the salad vegetables.
To make the hummus, put a small saucepan on a medium heat.
Add the oil and sliced garlic. Cook for 1 minute.
Add the cumin seeds and coriander and cook for a further minute. The oil should be very fragrant.
Set the oil aside to cool slightly.
Put the chickpeas, 1/3 of the chickpea water, tahini and lemon juice in a blender.
Season with two very good pinches of sea salt and a generous amount of black pepper.
Pour in the warm oil and spices.
Blend the hummus until it is smooth, adding a bit more of the chickpea water if needed.
Check the seasoning and add more salt and pepper if required.
Transfer the hummus to a saucepan and gently warm through. You don’t want it to boil, merely to take on some of the heat.
Divide the hummus between two bowls and top it with the roasted veggies, salad and potatoes.
Enjoy!