Sunny memories

Mr B. has run away to Kerry for work purposes and he's taken the camera with him :-( Nevermind, he'll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, this has given me the perfect excuse to go trawling through my photo archive, weed out the rubbish (of which there is a lot) and see if there's anything interesting and food-related to post here.

Icecream on a sunny May day at the Edinburgh farmers market seems to fit the bill. More specifically, low-fat, no-sugar, vegan strawberry icecream,* which was absolutely delicious. And I wasn't the only one who thought so - the stall selling it ran out by mid-morning.

This was a treat that sparkled with flavour on the tongue. It performed that wonderful trick of tasting more like strawberries than the real thing. Sunshine somehow captured in a cone. A real pleasure to be lingered over on a warm day, while taking in the view of the Castle - I don't know of too many other farmers markets with such an amazing backdrop. (Although I'd love to put that to the test by visiting all the markets in the world, just to make a fair comparison, of course...)

As for the icecream makers, they were local farmers who had come up with an ingenious solution to their strawberry glut (rather than just going the usual jam-making route), so it could have been just a one-off thing for them to pitch up on that particular Saturday. I don't know if they ever came back as I moved to Ireland not long after taking these photos. But I truly hope so.

*Being an inquisitive/nosy person by nature, I asked what went into the icecream. I was expecting to hear that there was at least some soya milk or cream, because the resulting flavour and texture was so creamy. The answer turned out to be just water and incredibly ripe strawberries (hence the need to make something with then before they turned bad). Who'd have thunk it?

Out of the comfort zone

The great NaBloPoMo marathon has kicked off and I've got to confess that I'm too chicken to sign up. Partly this is because I'm going to be away for a couple of days this month and may not be able to post, but mostly it's just that I'm a whole barrel-load of lazy. OK, I'll commit to writing for as many days of the month as I have access to a computer. (I don't think they have a blogging group set up for the partially committed...) Although, much like Hellojed over at It Had Better Be Good, I'm not sure what I'll be writing about. Guess that's all part of the fun!

So here's the first post of 30(ish).

Something magical happens when you drop kale into a saucepan of boiling water. Almost instantly, the dark green leaves take on a striking emerald hue, becoming a little transparent in the process. In fact, they wouldn't look out of place in a stained glass window. (Hmmm - a great vegetable window anyone? No?) How can eating in winter be considered dull or a deprivation when you have such wonderful produce to play with? And I love playing with my food :-)

This dish was my lunch the other day (and the day after - it reheated well). I had to fiddle with the recipe a bit to suit what I had in the house (not enough kale, basically) but I think it worked out ok: the higher bean-to-kale ratio made it more of a main course than a side dish.

Kale with cannellini beans adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

Provides 2 main course portions

You'll need:

250g kale or mixed greens, stems and ribs removed
Salt and pepper
1 small onion, finely diced
1½ tablespoon olive oil
2 plump cloves garlic, minced
Pinch red chilli flakes
2 teaspoons chopped rosemary
½ cup white wine or water
1 x 400g tin cooked cannellini beans, rinsed well
Freshly grated Parmesan (optional)
Croutons to serve

1. Simmer the kale in salted water until tender - around 7 to 10 minutes. Drain and reserve the cooking water, and chop the kale.

2. In a large pan, sauté the onion in the oil with the garlic, pepper flakes and rosemary for about 3 minutes. Add the wine/water and cook until it's reduced to a syrupy sauce.

3. Add the beans, kale and enough cooking water to keep the mixture loose. Heat through, taste for salt and season with pepper, and serve with a dusting of Parmesan.

Cook's notes

Just for interest, Deborah specifies 1½ to 2 pounds of kale, in order to serve 2 to 4 people. The rest of the recipe is exactly the same as shown above.

I didn't have any white wine around, so I just used water. Sounds dull but worked well. But I'd like to try the wine version at some point - it probably adds an extra savoury note.

This week, I'm mostly eating...

Garlic, it seems. This time, my favourite member of the allium family makes an appearance in a chickpea salad with roasted peppers. It keeps well in the fridge, it’s a good lunchtime keep-you-going kind of dish, and it’s tastier once it’s had a chance to sit for a while and let the flavours develop.

But this does mean the garlic flavour is pretty prominent (although not overwhelming), so – in the name of love, peace and harmony – make sure that your loved one or all your co-workers eat it too. Unless you’re trying to break up with your loved one or you hate your co-workers, in which case go right ahead and chomp the lot on your own. Then breathe. Heavily.

Chickpea salad with roasted peppers from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

Serves 2 hungry people or 4 as a side dish

You’ll need:

2 large red peppers, roasted
3 cups of cooked chickpeas, rinsed if canned
¼ cup of parsley, chopped
2 tablespoons of chopped mint
3 tablespoons of capers, rinsed
1½ tablespoons of fresh lemon juice or red wine or sherry vinegar
¼ teaspoon of salt
2 cloves of garlic, minced
4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

1. Cut the peppers into ½-inch wide strips and put them in a large bowl, together with the chickpeas, herbs and the capers.
2. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, salt, garlic and oil. Pour over the chickpea mixture and combine.
3. Serve (or refrigerate and allow flavours to mingle).

Cook’s notes

Despite my resolution to boil all beans from scratch, I just used a 400g can here. Oh the shame. What can I say, I’m just a very impatient person. But I think this meant I only used about half the amount specified. However, I like the ratio of chickpeas to peppers that this produced and would recommend it.

I didn’t have any capers, so I just left them out. But I don’t think they were any great loss, just a ‘nice to have’.

Again, I didn’t use as much oil as specified because recipes always seem to add too much for my taste. In this case, 3 tablespoons of oil worked just fine.

A cup full of sunshine

Actually, I think it looks more like an egg yolk surrounded by the white of the mug in the above picture. But that's a loooong post title.

A weekend trip to York for a christening meant we only returned to Ireland very, very late last night. After sleeping in and still feeling groggy, a trudge to the shops for supplies wasn't really on the cards, so I had to russle something up for lunch from whatever I could find lying around - preferably something that didn't require a lot of effort.

Which led to...

Garlicky butternut squash soup, adapted from Soup Kitchen

You'll need:

1 butternut squash

2 or more unpeeled cloves of garlic (I used 5, but it depends how garlicky you want to go)

Some olive oil

1 pint of veggie stock

Salt and pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/ gas mark 6. Slice the butternut squash into segments and place them in a roasting tin, along with at least two cloves of garlic (or more to taste.)

2. Toss the squash and garlic with some olive oil and then put the tin in the oven for about 40 minutes, until the squash is soft and browned around the edges.

3. Remove from the oven and allow to cool a bit.

4. Scoop out the squash flesh, pop the garlic cloves out of their skins and add them to a blender, along with the pint of veggie stock. Blitz.

5. Adjust the seasoning to taste and reheat the soup if necessary.

6. Serve.

Lazy days

A rare opportunity to curl up on the sofa on a hazy spring morning and eat breakfast while watching what’s going on in the park across the road.

Kids setting up the posts for their Saturday football practice, some hanging around on the sidelines and not looking quite so keen (I can sympathise). Joggers cracking a fair pace across the square in ones and twos. A toddler running at full pelt across the grass, his arms bouncing up and down, his smile broad – he hasn’t quite worked out how to stop without falling over. And it looks like a bit of a shock when he does (but dad comes to the rescue). Cherry and apple blossom slowly falling off the trees dotted around the park - white and pink petals drifting gently in the breeze to land across the street in the tiny scruffy strip of garden around our flat. People wandering past with the papers and a pint of milk from the corner shop – off to do the same thing as me and watch the world go by.

It’s a beautiful place and I’m going to miss it so much.

Yes, I was starting to fall into my own navel with introspection. So I scarfed down the rest of my breakfast and retreated to the boxroom kitchen (no window = no chance of depressing thoughts) to make muffins for Veggie Kate and D, who were coming round for a cuppa.

Veggie Kate is a slight misnomer as she's actually vegan. I looked at what was lurking in the fridge and what Isa Chandra recommended in her fantastic book Vegan with a Vengance. Recently published in a UK edition, it’s a sign of the times that you can find it readily available in any good bookshop near you. (And it’s doing quite nicely on the veggie page at Amazon.)

The fridge rummage turned up some carrots, so…

Carrot and raisin muffins
From Vegan with a Vengance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

You'll need:

75g raisins - soaked in hot water to plump them up
175g flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground/freshly grated nutmeg
4 tablespoons of sugar
1/2 teaspoon of salt
250ml of rice or soy milk
4 tablespoons of rapeseed oil
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
4 medium carrots, grated.

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 4. Spray a 12-hole muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray or lightly grease with oil.

2. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour. baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, sugar and salt.

3. Create a well in the centre and add the milk, oil and vanilla. Mix until just combined. Fold in the grated carrots and raisins.

4. Fill the muffin tins three quarters full. Bake for 18 to 22 minutes until a cocktail stick/knife inserted in the centre of one comes out clean. Let cool on a cooling rack.

Cook's notes

Of all the things I was expecting a vegan muffin to taste like, it wasn't eggy. I think it was the brand of soya milk I used, so I'm going to experiment with some others to see. But it wasn't overpowering-ly eggy - just a background taste. Mainly just lots of lovely cinnamon and carrots. Mmmmm.

Also, it only made enough batter to fill six large muffins holes in my tins (mini carrot cakes really) - the alternative was 12 small wide pancakes. So I need to get some cupcake tins or double the recipe. Either way it's a winner.