A Rich Cabinet

When you have access to sweet baby beetroot, make the most of it. And I don’t mean the ready-cooked-vacuum-packed kind that has been smothered in vinegar. (Although I’ve always liked the artificial-additive-packed (probably) pickled beetroot in jars, for some reason.)

Beetroot is really easy to cook. Whatever you do, don’t chop it or peel it. Just top the stalks, leaving at least half an inch (or a centimetre) and wash it gently. If you break the skin, the flavour leeches out during cooking. I have yet to try roasting it, but it’s supposed to be extremely good too (it should be wrapped in foil and roasted at a medium temperature apparently). I usually boil it: put the beetroot in a pan with plenty of water, bring to the boil, cover and simmer very gently. Small beetroot will take at least an hour to two, older large ones could take three or four hours. To test them, don’t prick them, instead squeeze gently: they should give and the skin should move easily under your fingers. (But it’s hard to overcook them if the simmering is gentle, so if you’re not sure, just give them a bit longer.)

This is what you’ll get.

Once cooked, they’re easy to peel (even once they’ve cooled down). You don’t need a knife, the skin will just come away under your fingers. (And don’t believe people who tell you that you need rubber gloves or you’ll be indelibly stained: just wash your hands in hot water and it’ll soon come off. But keep it away from your clothes. This is why I should buy an apron.) Then they’ll keep in the fridge for a few days. The most purple food in the world.

They go beautifully with things like potato and hardboiled egg and finely chopped spring onions in a salad. I make a sweet/sharp salad dressing: olive oil, wine vinegar, honey. Mix together, adjust to taste (add salt & pepper if you like), and then add a few spoonfuls of the red liquid you cooked the beetroot in (and/or the juice that comes out of them when they sit in the fridge for a while), and add it to the dressing. Whisk vigorously, pour over the chopped up beetroot/potato/egg in a bowl and mix thoroughly. It will be both very pink and very tasty. Or for a more elegant version as a side salad, slice the elements, arrange them on a plate and drizzle the dressing over them. (I got to use the verb ‘drizzle’! Like a real food writer!)

I also found this great BBC recipe for Cheddar and chunky beetroot mayonnaise baguette. NB, though, that I don’t have a blender and wouldn’t get one out just to make a sandwich for myself anyway, so I simply chopped the beetroot fine and stirred vigorously. But it really does make a good snack lunch.

Yeah, I know, I already started to eat it again…

Because I have quite a large packet for a single person to eat up. Possible options (I’ve never tried any of them before)…

Green beans with lentils

French beans-aloo ki bhaji

Green bean and mushroom stirfry

Update: I took the basics of the green bean and mushroom stirfry and added a couple of leftover cooked potatoes in the fridge and bacon… (oh, but brown rice? I’m sorry, but brown rice is disgusting). It sounded rather dull, so I made up a sauce: soy sauce, miso, just a little tomato puree, a dash of hot chilli sauce, lemon juice and some water saved from the rice. Taste the mixture and tweak it to suit your palate, and add it towards the end when the vegetables are nearly cooked, just to let it cook a couple of minutes.

This is a recipe from Claudia Roden’s wonderful book, Mediterranean cookery. It does scale down pretty well for a couple of servings. (In any case I hardly ever weigh anything…)

(serves 8.)

1.5kg (3 1/4lb) courgettes
2 large onions, chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
3 tbsp olive oil
250g (9 oz) short-grain rice [in fact I always use long-grain, and it’s fine]
3 eggs
8-10 chard leaves or 125g (4 1/2 oz) spinach, shredded
small bunch of basil, finely chopped [I use dried]
large bunch of parsley, finely chopped [and I don’t worry too much if I don’t have any]
3 rashers lean bacon, finely chopped
50g (2 oz) grated Parmesan cheese
pepper

Trim the courgettes but leave them whole and unpeeled. Boil them in salted water for about 20 mins or steam till tender. Chop then mash with a potato masher in a colander and let the juices drain away.

Fry the onions and garlic in 2 tbsp of the oil till golden.

Cook the rice in boiling water until it’s almost done, then drain.

Meanwhile, heat the oven to 200 C/400 F/gas mark 6. Oil a large earthenware dish with the remaining oil.

Beat the eggs lightly in a bowl, mix in the chard/spinach, add the herbs, bacon, parmesan and pepper. Then add the mashed courgettes, fried onion and garlic and the rice. Mix well. Taste and season if required.

Pour the mixture into the oiled dish. Bake for about 40 minutes or until firm and browned on top. Serve hot.

Notes: You can also do a cheat’s version of this, in which you don’t boil and mash the courgettes, but simply chop them finely and put them straight in the mix. It will give a somewhat different texture, but either way is tasty. If I do boil the courgettes, I save the water and juices from the mashing to cook the rice in - just put them back in the same pan and you save some washing up too. (Also, I wouldn’t salt the cooking water, but that’s a matter of preference.)

You can leave out the bacon and it’ll still be very good, although you’ll also need to find a substitute for the parmesan for it to be a proper vegetarian recipe. (I have in the past replaced the bacon with anchovies and I thought that worked quite well.)

Final afterthought: Claudia says to serve hot, but leftovers are extremely good cold for lunch.

And because a food blog should have pictures:

Er, I was too hungry to photograph it when the dish was still full.

This was so good that I’m going to do it again tonight, but with a variation, because a stall at last week’s farmers market had some gorgeous local organic lamb’s liver. I know many people will think this is a bizarre thing to say but: I love offal.

(NB: I used creme fraiche rather than sour cream.)

This came from Nigel Slater’s The 30-minute chef. It’s a pared-down-speeded-up version of a north African recipe that you can also find in Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean cookery. But it probably will take a bit more than 30 minutes (45 is more reasonable).

(quantities for 2, and easy to halve for a single person)

2 cloves garlic
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
4 tbsp olive oil
4-6 chicken thighs (or 6 drumsticks, but thighs are best, much more meaty)
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 tsp saffron threads (optional)
2 tsp ground turmeric
4 oz olives
2 large lemons

Crush garlic to a paste with a little salt, mix with the paprika, cumin, pepper and half of the olive oil. Marinate the chicken in the mix.

Heat the remaining oil (you can add a knob of butter) in a pan and fry the chicken till golden. Lift out the chicken with a slotted spoon and put to one side.

Fry the onion (add a little more oil if necessary) till golden. Add the saffron, turmeric and olives, cook on a medium heat for a few minutes.

Return the chicken to the pan. Pour over the juice of a lemon, add 8 fl oz of water. Slice the second lemon, add it to the pan. Bring to the boil, cover the pan, and simmer till the chicken is cooked through, basting regularly.

You should have at least 5 tbsp spicy ’sludge’ (Nigel’s words) per person (top up with a bit more water if you need to). Check the seasoning and add salt if needed.

My notes: go steady with the lemon. The first time I did the recipe it was definitely too sharp for my liking. Taste before you add the second lemon, or even after you’ve put in about half of the first one if they’re really big lemons. Also, if you don’t have time to marinate the chicken before cooking (I always forget things like this), it doesn’t really matter. Just make the spice mix, lather it over the chicken and stick straight in the hot oil, and add any remaining oily spice mix to the pan before the onions go in. Oh, and I’m not convinced that the saffron makes any noticeable difference. I think its delicate flavour is probably slightly overwhelmed by all the lemon and spices.

I’ll probably serve this with couscous (livened up with chopped cherry tomato, fresh mint and anything else that takes my fancy).

This is a seriously delicious recipe.

Afterthoughts (because there are things you don’t remember till you actually do the recipe again): I use quite a bit more liquid than in the original recipe, to soak yummily into the couscous. I added a little ground cinnamon. And only used about half the quantity of lemon. (Though remember when tasting to allow for the fact that the blandness of couscous will counterbalance the strong spicy flavours of the recipe.) It was every bit as good as I remembered it.

I found a very good one online the other week. Is this the one? Hmm. It’s the nearest thing I can see today, though I must have made some changes if so. I’m unlikely to use the vegetable bouillon, for a start. (And I’m not convinced about the sugar either.)

Oh and I have no courgettes in the house but I do have red pepper to use up. I’ll probably use fresh cherry tomatoes rather than dried. And I might snip in an anchovy or two.

Update: I really don’t think that would have worked. This is better. Much simpler. But still probably not the one I had before.

What actually happened went along the lines of:
Cook pasta, then drain. (Keep back just a little of the liquid.)
Meanwhile, chop fennel, red pepper, onion and cook gently a frying pan in olive oil. Oh yeah, and a garlic clove.
When nicely soft, add halved cherry tomatoes, cook a couple minutes more, then mix into the pasta.
Warm through. Add a couple of spoonfuls of creme fraiche. [Actually, left this out last time, and I think I liked it better. A squeeze of lemon gives a nice tang though.] Season.
Serve up with plenty of parmesan.

Cooking should be about improvisation, and recipes are almost always best used as guidelines not rulebooks. So I don’t tend to follow recipes slavishly. Just because I link to a recipe or copy one out doesn’t mean I did it exactly the way it said… although I will probably add notes if I deviated from it a lot.

This will be my foodie blog. I want somewhere to link to good recipes I find online and to put down some of the favourites in my notebooks and recipe books, so that I can access them when I’m away from home.

And I might sound off about food sometimes, and stir in a little food history.

The title is inspired by Hannah Woolley’s book.