Bulghar Wheat Smorgasborg Salad

It's been a long and sometimes difficult few months, which means I've been eating lots of comfort food. So sometimes, every once in a while, I get a moment where I crave a fully healthy, wholesome meal. Lately, I turn to bulghar wheat and a whole crapload of vegetables.

I used to be sort of meh about bulghar wheat, I think I found it too, well, wheaty, but I've come to love it. I treat it as a slightly more chewy, nutty, couscous, and I crave meals with it! My usual trick is to chop out a whole lots of tasty wholesome stuff and mix it together with the wheat, and scarf it down until I can wheat no more. This post illustrates one such example, and perhaps my most extreme one yet. I practically emptied my fridge in this salad attempt. Obviously, this is hardly a recipe that needs to be followed to a T--you can throw just about whatever you want together.

I served this with some salmon fillets doused in lemon juice, harissa, and something else that I've forgotten now.

The Recipe:

150g bulghar wheat

1 small aubergine, chopped
1 big courgette, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 small head of broccoli, divided
2 medium carrots, chopped
Small bunch of salad greens
Handful sprouting beans
Half an avocado
1 orange
1 tblsp fresh harissa
1 tblsp stilton
Lemon, for juicing
Olive oil, for frying
Salt and pepper

Boil up some water, pour the bulghar wheat into a large bowl, cover with the water until it covers it and then some. Cover the bowl and let sit for at least 20 minutes.

In the meantime, heat up a frying pan, throw in some olive oil, and fsautee the garlic, broccoli, aubergine, courgette. Add in the harissa, and let the veg sautee until they're nice and soft.

Once the bulghar wheat is ready, throw in both the raw veg, and the cooked veg. Combine, season, and douse it with a little lemon juice, until it's too your liking.

Eat, and feel virtuous.

What is healthy about this recipe: Everything! A good meal for when you are craving something that will fill you up, but not weight you down. And bulghar wheat has a puny glycemic index and lots of fibre. Lucky us.

What is seasonal about this recipe: This was made with seasonal veg I had on hand. And the great thing about these sorts of smorgasborg recipes is that you can use whatever you'[ve got, no matter the season. I'm a big fan of meal ideas that are this versatile.

What I learned from this recipe: I love bulghar wheat!

What I will change next time: I loved the addition of the orange, which was the first time I'd done that, and I'd love to experiment more with citrus in salads. Also, beets! Beets should really be in everything!

Broccoli, Aubergine, and Pea Tart

We were recently given a couple of bags of whole wheat flour from our flour supplier who encouraged us to experiment with it as he was proud of its mixture of grains. He suggested that it would work well in my shortcrust pastry, but I was skeptical as shortcrust can be a bit finicky to work with. I wasn't sure what to make for dinner tonight, but we received our organic veg box and I had this bag of flour so I decided to make a tart.

Tarts seem difficult to make, but once you know how to make a good shortcrust pastry, they're relatively simple and are extremely versatile. This one was made with vegetables and other ingredients I had on hand, but the tart filling can be virtually anything.

The whole wheat crust worked out really well. It was a little bit more difficult to work with than white flour, and I had to patch up holes in the crust, but it was impossible to tell this in the end. It was also delicious and didn't taste in any way inferior to the white flour version.

Serve with salad, bread, or whatever else strikes your fancy.

The Recipe:

For the shortcrust pastry:
200g whole wheat flour
100g butter
1 medium sized egg

For the filling:
1 medium sized aubergine
1/2 head of broccoli
1 medium sized onion
about half a cup of frozen peas
small bunch of coarsely chopped flat leaf parsley
soft goat's cheese
parmesan cheese
2 medium sized eggs
1 small container of single cream

To make the shortcrust pastry (this can be done in advance): Chop the butter into cubes and add to the flour. Keeping the ingredients as cold as possible will yield the best results. Work the two ingredients together until the mixture has the consistency of coarse breadcrumbs. Add in an egg and mix together until you have a dough. Put this into a clean plastic bag and either refrigerate it or freeze it, if you are making the pastry well in advance.

When you're ready to make the tart, butter up a tart pan, flour your work surface, and roll out the pastry (if it's frozen, allow it to thaw first) to about an eighth of an inch thick. Place the tart pan on the rolled out pastry and cut a circle about an inch more than the diameter of the pan. Place the circle of dough in the centre of the tart pan and press the outer part of the dough against the walls of the pan. Press the dough into the pan and try to push out any air bubbles. If the dough has cracked anywhere, just patch it up with the excess dough that you will have cut away earlier.

To make the filling, chop up the onions, aubergines, broccoli, and peas. Fry them up with some olive oil and once they're done, transfer them to a bowl. Add in the chopped parsley, the goat's cheese, the egg, and the cream, and mix this all together. Season.

Pour the filling into the tart shell, sprinkle it with parmesan cheese, and put this into an oven preheated to 180 degrees. The tart is finished when the filling is solid--about 30-35 minutes.

What is healthy about this recipe: The usual caveats about butter, eggs, and cheese apply (but they are so delicious), but the whole wheat flour does provide a healthier alternative to a regular shortcrust pastry.

What is seasonal about this recipe: The peas were frozen, but the rest of the veg was seasonal. The nice thing about tarts is that you can vary them to fully take advantage of seasonal produce.

What I learned from this recipe: Flour is an ingredient that we generally take for granted, but we've increasingly been learning that it is an interesting and important ingredient and it's worth paying attention to. The flour we use comes from a local cereals farmer who grows an organic medieval blend of flour that is stoneground (this gentler process keeps more nutrients in the flour than the usual industrial process). I've been seriously impressed with this flour and think that it's worth the extra effort to track down organic and stoneground flour. The results are worth it.

What I will change next time: This is the first time that I've used whole wheat flour to make shortcrust pastry and it needs a little bit of work until I'm ready to use it for my pies, where the visual element is more important. Still, this pastry was promising and I'll be sure to use it again.

Shakshuka

Here's another recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi's 'The New Vegetarian' column in the Guardian's weekend magazine. This is an aromatic North African dish and it seems to be a real 'kitchen sink' type of dish that a lot can be added to--Ottolenghi suggests preserved lemon or feta, but I think that even some meat like lamb, especially if it was tender and falling apart, would go really well with it.

One of the joys of this dish was the scent in the house as I was cooking it. The herbs and saffron filled with air with a mouth-wateringly fragrant scent and it was hard to not pick too much from it while it was cooking.

The Recipe:

(Reproduced without permission from the Guardian's website. The recipe given is for 4, but I halved the quantities when I made it.)

½ tsp cumin seeds
190ml light olive oil or vegetable oil
2 large onions, peeled and sliced
2 red and 2 yellow peppers, cored and cut into 2cm strips
4 tsp muscovado sugar
2 bayleaves
6 sprigs thyme, picked and chopped
2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1 bunch fresh coriander, chopped
6 ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
½ tsp saffron strands
Pinch of cayenne pepper
Salt and pepper
Up to 250ml water
8 free-range eggs

In a large saucepan, dry-roast the cumin on high heat for two minutes. Add the oil and sauté the onions for two minutes. Add the peppers, sugar, bayleaves, thyme, parsley and two tablespoons of coriander, and cook on high heat to get a nice colour. Add the tomatoes, saffron, cayenne, salt and pepper. Cook on low heat for 15 minutes, adding enough water to keep it the consistency of a pasta sauce. Taste and adjust the seasoning. It should be potent and flavoursome. You can prepare this mix in advance.

Place four saucepans on medium heat and divide the mixture between them. Break two eggs into each pan, pouring into gaps in the mixture. Sprinkle with salt, cover and cook very gently for 10-12 minutes, until the egg just sets. Sprinkle with coriander and serve with chunky white bread.

What is healthy about this recipe: Since the recipe is mostly just vegetables, herbs, and spices, it's actually pretty good. The usual caveats about eggs apply, but everything in moderation...

What is seasonal about this recipe: Not that much, to be honest. If you're focused on seasonal eating, it's best to leave this dish to the late summer.

What I learned from this recipe: I'm usually a lot stingier with herbs than I was with this recipe--this one uses handfuls of chopped coriander and parsley--but I think that it's worth trying to use more herbs with other dishes because the results can be spectacular. I should also make an effort to incorporate more saffron into my cooking.

What I will change next time: I'd like to try the same dish but with different vegetables and maybe some meat.

Lapsang Souchong Chicken with Courgette and Red Onion Risotto

Risotto is one of my staple foods. It's easy to make, relatively quick, versatile, inexpensive, and makes for a great meal. It's also one of those 'kitchen sink' type foods that you can add virtually anything to. For a quick after-work meal, you can add frozen peas. For something fancier, you could equally add in some nice seafood. There are a number of cookbooks dedicated to risotto out on the market, but I think that all you really need is a basic understanding of how to make risotto and then you can do virtually anything with it.

Tonight's dinner was a courgette and red onion risotto served with Lapsang Souchong chicken and oven-roasted red onions, courgettes, and aubergines. I got the idea for the chicken from Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Cooking cookbook. There is a recipe in there for a Lapsang Souchong-based dipping sauce for spring rolls and I liked the idea and figured that a slightly modified version of it would work nicely as a marinade.

The Recipe:

Lapsang Souchong Chicken (serves 2)

2 chicken legs with thighs attached
1 Lapsang Souchong teabag (I used Twinings, though if you use loose leaf tea instead, you should grind it with a mortar and pestle)
1 lemon, juiced
A good glug of olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Cut or tear open the teabag and add its contents to the lemon juice. Add in the olive oil, salt and pepper to taste, and mix. Put the chicken into a container, add the marinade and let it marinade for at least an hour.

In the meantime, preheat an oven to 200C. When the chicken has been marinaded, place it on a baking tray and put in the oven until it's cooked all the way through--about 35 to 40 minutes.

Courgette and Red Onion Risotto

1 red onion, finely diced
1 courgette, finely diced
Arborio rice
Vegetable stock
Salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese

Heat a saucepan over medium heat, add in some olive oil and fry the onions until soft. Next, add the rice and let it cook slightly. Ladle in the stock and stir it in bit by bit, allowing for the rice to absorb the stock before adding in the next bit. When the rice is partially cooked, but not completely, add in the courgettes. The rice will be finished when it still has a bit of bite to it--you don't want to overcook it. Remove the rice from the heat, season to taste, and stir in the parmesan. I also added in some chopped parsley this time.

What is healthy about this recipe: Basically everything! If you're really health-conscious, you could remove the chicken skin before cooking.

What is seasonal about this recipe: Basically everything again! I used veg from this week's organic delivery box and the recipe is versatile so you can use whatever vegetables, fish, or seafoods are seasonal. High Fearnley-Whittingstall has a recipe for a parsnip risotto here.

What I learned from this recipe: I had never before used teas in cooking, but I really liked the result.

What I will change next time: I'd like to experiment with different kinds of teas in marinades. A nice green tea or a jasmine tea would go well with chicken, I imagine.

Cauliflower and Saffron Bake

Because we all need a few light pink vegetables every once in a while.

So yes, I do actually make things other than cakes. A couple of weeks ago, Graeme shoved a copy of the Guardian's Weekend supplement in my face, exclaiming, "I know something you're going to want to make!" Because it turns out that I am totally food predictable, he was right. I love cauliflower, and the idea of a fragrant cauliflower dish tinted a nice light pink was too much for me to resist. I attempted it last night, as a perfect side to Heidi's 101 Cookbooks recipe for curried noodle patties (which is, by the way, an awesome idea for an "I love comfort food and have lots of stuff to use up!" dinner). We were very happy, spice-filled, campers. I really recommend this as a vegetable side dish for when you're bored with your usual steamed veggies and the like. We both liked that the cauliflower was well-cooked but still retained some crunchiness and was not at all soggy.

The only major change I made to the Guardian recipe is that for some reason I was majorly NOT in the mood for olives (which is a weird freak incident for me) and so I used marinated artichoke hearts instead. So I'm mostly reposting the original recipe, written by Yotam Ottolenghi, here with my minor changes:

The Recipe:

Cauliflower and Saffron Bake

1 medium cauliflower, divided into florets
1 red onion, sliced
70g sultanas
Bunch of marinated artichoke hearts (maybe 100g?) sliced slightly
½ tsp saffron strands, infused in 3 tbsp of boiling water
3 tbsp olive oil
2 bayleaves
Salt and pepper and paprika (I add paprika to most things)
4 tbsp parsley, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F. Toss together all the ingredients except the parsley.

Tip the contents of the bowl into an oven-proof dish, shake to even out a bit, cover with foil and bake for around 40-45 minutes. Halfway through the cooking, remove from the oven, lift off the lid, give the contents of the oven dish a thorough stir, cover again and return to finish off cooking. The cauliflower is ready when tender but not too soft.

Remove from the oven, lift off the foil covering and leave to cool down a little before stirring in the chopped parsley. C'est si facile!

What is healthy about this recipe: Everything! Finally a recipe where I can say this.

What is seasonal in this recipe: The cauliflower, parsley, and red onion, were all purchased from the friendly organic farmers at our local farmers' market. Their produce is always seasonal and lovely and a pleasure to use and eat. I am so psyched to see all the herbs sprouting up from the ground these days.

What I learned from this recipe: Be more adventurous with herbs and spices!

What I will change next time: Maybe a bit more saffron actually, but I am not one for subtle flavours. And I might actually try it with the olives on a day when I'm feeling more olive-friendly.