This is the kind of dish that can be thrown together from those last few ingredients from the back of the cupboard. Just keep some chopped tomato or passata in there and the rest can easily be adjusted.
Read moreSeaweed away
Seaweed may not be the most obvious superfood, after all, most of us are used to seeing it in a less than attractive, washed up on the beach kind of scenario.
There is, however, a lot going for it. For starters, it's a good source of some essential nutrients, including folate, iron, magnesium, calcium, iodine and Vitamins A and C.
Secondly, it's delicious.
For this recipes, dulse (purple seaweed) is combined with orange, dill and toasted hazelnut.
It's a simple yet impressive dish that is a total treat for the taste buds.
Ingredients for 2:
1 orange
a large handful of dried dulse or other seaweed
a small bunch of dill
a small cup of hazelnuts
sherry vinegar & olive oil to serve
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C. Toast the hazelnuts for 10 minutes until lightly coloured. Set aside to cool.
Soak the dried seaweed for 10 minutes. Discard the water and pat dry the rehydrated seaweed.
Peel and thinly slice the orange.
Strip the dill fonds off the stalk and discard the stalks.
Start by dividing the orange slices between two plates, lay the seaweed on top, scatter over the dill fonds and top with the toasted hazelnuts.
Drizzle the salad with a generous glug of olive oil and a teaspoon of sherry vinegar.
Serve immediately.
Sweet potato & turmeric curry
Some days only a warming bowl of curry will do the trick in filling you up.
The good news is this recipe is pretty amazing but takes next to no effort. It is one I regularly rely on for those evenings when there is nothing in the fridge and cooking seems like a hassle.
Ingredients:
1” piece of ginger roughly chopped
2x sticks of lemongrass, outer leaves removed and thinly sliced
1 onion, roughly chopped
1 clove of garlic, sliced
1 red chilli, sliced
juice of 1 lime
1 tsp turmeric
400ml (1 can) coconut milk
800g cubed sweet potato
3x cardamom pods
2x pinches of sea salt
black pepper to season
fresh coriander to serve (optional)
Method:
Blend all of the ingredients apart from the coconut milk, cardamom and sweet potato to puree in a blender, food processor or smoothie maker, adding some water if required.
Cook the puree on a medium/low heat for 10 minutes; pour in the coconut milk, add the cubed sweet potato & cardamom and cook on a low heat with a lid on for 30 minutes or until the sweet potato is cooked, remove the lid for the last 5 minutes to thicken.
Garnish with fresh coriander before serving.
Probiotic cashew mayo - plus a chicken & quinoa salad
Inspired by a recent trip to Planet Organic, this probiotic cashew mayo is nothing short of being a genius condiment.
It adds the kind of creamy and mildly acidic flavour that complements a wide variety of dishes very well.
Whilst it may sound out of the ordinary, blending cashews into a mayo foregoes the need for the addition of preservatives and added chemicals that commercial mayos are loaded with.
It's a pretty easy to make and doesn't need to be constantly kept in the fridge, alas it's a perfectly transportable lunch ingredient.
The addition of raw apple cider vinegar means this cashew mayo comes with the added benefit of being "probiotic".
Probiotics are simply live bacteria and yeasts that are good for health, in particular, they boost the digestive system.
Raw fermented products such as apple cider vinegar, yoghurts, sauerkraut and now this mayo are good sources.
Ingredients for the probiotic cashew mayo
100g cashews, soaked in water for a couple of hours or overnight
125ml water
50ml extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp raw apple cider vinegar
1 tsp wholegrain mustard
1/4 tsp sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper to season
Method:
Drain the cashews.
Put all of the ingredients in a blender and blend until completely smooth.
Check the taste and season with more sea salt and freshly ground black pepper if required.
Chicken and quinoa salad
To make the salad, shred 1 poached chicken breast.
Put the chicken on a plate with a mix of greens such as sliced sugar snap peas, blanched asparagus and rocket.
Add 120g of cooked quinoa and drizzle liberally with the cashew mayo.
Whole baked cauliflower
A couple of months ago, I was asked to do the cooking for a women's leadership retreat taking place in late December. Although I've never actually cooked for a crowd this size before, my "can do" attitude stepped in and off I went to design a 3-day menu.
Menu design complete, I sent off my quote but soon realised that I should probably practice the dishes that sounded so good on paper. That's when disaster no. 1 occurred.
One of the vegetarian dishes uses jackfruit in lieu of slow cooked lamb shoulder. Jackfruit, or the king of fruits, is an Asian fruit that shreds/ pulls apart just like slow roasted meat. Sounds great on paper, except it's super hard to obtain outside of Asia and I seem to have forgotten just how bad it smells. 30 minutes in the oven and my entire house was covered in the gentle aroma of exploding sewers.
So, to avoid evacuating the retreat, that recipe had to be swapped for something a little friendlier to the nostrils.
This whole baked cauliflower is what followed. It should serve 2-4 people dependent on the size of cauliflower you use but I shamelessly ate the whole thing in a sitting. Basically, it's insanely tasty and I wouldn't want you to miss out so here is the recipe.
Ingredients (Serves 2)
1 large cauliflower, leaves removed and stalk cut back
1 lemon, juice and zest
Leaves from a small bunch of parsley
seeds from 1/2 pomegranate
40g pistachios
black pepper to season
For the flavour paste:
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
leaves from 4 sprigs of thyme
2 tablespoons of rapeseed oil
1 teaspoon of smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon fenugreek
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
Method:
Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C.
Mix together the flavour paste ingredients and rub the mixture over the cauliflower.
Put the cauliflower in a casserole dish, squeeze over the juice of a lemon and season with black pepper. Pop the lid on the casserole and bake in the oven for an hour.
Take the lid off and bake for a further 15 minutes. Put the pistachios on a baking tray and toast in the oven for 15 minutes.
Remove the cauliflower from the casserole and cut into two pieces.
To serve, put half a cauliflower on a plate, sprinkle over a generous pinch of lemon zest, a small handful of parsley leaves, pomegranate seeds and pistachio.