Ginger Garlic Red Lentil Soup

We tried this recipe recently onehttp://vegeyum.wordpress.com/2008/05/17/gingergarlicsoup/ for a Friday night quickie. I made a few minor changes, as per below :

~Ginger Garlic Red Lentil Soup~
2 cups red lentils
1.75 l vegetable stock
2 bay leaves
5 cloves of garlic, peeled and mashed
5 cm piece of ginger, grated
2 carrots, grated
1/2 cup diced tomatoes
1 medium sliced onion
1/2 cup sliced scallions, green tops as well
sploosh olive oil
2 tspn ground cumin
2 tspn ground coriander
1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes
juice of 1 lemon
salt and black pepper

Wash the lentils, and add to vegetable stock, bay leaves, garlic and ginger in a large pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the carrots and tomatoes and simmer until the soup thickens to the consistency you like (mine was around 20 minutes).

Heat the olive oil in a frypan and sauté the onions and scallions until translucent. Add the spices and sauté a further minute. Remove the bay leaves from the soup and add the onion mixture with the lemon juice. Serve and add salt and pepper to taste.

Lovely and fragrant, super quick to prepare, nourishing, cheap, easy ingredients - but eating this reminded me that I'm not so keen on the texture of cooked red lentils. Somehow they seem a bit like cardboard-ish, and I forget that between times. Maybe that is the quality of the lentils or my ignorant cooking? I'd make this again though - the ginger/garlic was lovely on a winter night, and if you increased the heat it would be a very good soup for headcold days.

Spinach & Pinenuts Coca (Flatbread)

There is a spinach glut in our garden right now, so we tried this for dinner last night, and it was delicious and simple - and used lots of spinach ;)

Coca are a type of Spanish flatbread pizza. The recipe was adapted from Moro East by Sam&Sam Clark.

This is their flatbread recipe for the coca base :

~Flatbread dough~
225g unbleached strong white bread flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dry yeast
150ml tepid water
1 tablespoon oilive oil

I mixed and kneaded the dough in the breadmixer and took it out before it rose; then allowed it to rise for 2.5 hours (probably too long but we went out visiting and returned late).

They make their dough by placing flour and salt in a bowl. Dissolving yeast in water, adding oil, then pouring this mixture a little at a time into the flour, mixing constantly. When all is mixed, knead for 5+ minutes until it is elastic and smooth. Leave to rise 1-2hrs in a warm place until doubled in size.


~Spinach, PineNuts & Anchovies Coca~
4 tab olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 tab fresh oregano, chopped
around 500g spinach, washed, dried adn chopped
handful pinenuts
crumbled fetta
anchovies, sliced into thin slivers lengthwise

Heat the oil in a large saucepan on medium, add the onion and cook until golden. Add oregano, then spinach, and stir through until it is all wilted. Set aside to drain in a colander. (the original recipe then added 50g currants plumped in water)

Heat the oven to its hottest setting. Line 2 baking trays with paper, or flour lightly.

Divide the dough into 4 balls and roll each out on very thin, to around 20cm square, on the baking trays. Spread the spinach mix over the top, lay the anchovies across, as much as you like, then scatter pinenuts and fetta. Press the mix down onto the dough with your hand and drizzle a bit more olive oil over so it doesn't burn.

Bake for 10-15 mins until it is crispy and brown underneath and the pinenuts are golden.

This was very good, but you could leave out the anchovies or use salty olives instead, and probably use whatever topping you like - very good for using up garden greens and leftovers from the fridge!

Preserved Olives

There are 5 small olive trees in our garden; when we moved here 2 yrs ago they were laden with olives, tempting and beautiful. I've been an olive scoffer since we stayed in Italy with my aunt when I was a child; somehow the taste of thick coffee, salty sweet proscutio, and rich olives stayed long after our holiday. Having our own olive trees is a delight :) What to do with them is another matter, with which I've experimented over the last few years. I'm still working on it ;) In the meantime here is a little WIP update on our olive preserving journey : From what I can read, preserving olives involves 2 steps - curing to remove the bitter oleuropein, then preserving for either a short or a longer period. Longer storage requires more precautions. Because olives are a low acidity food they are susceptible to bacterial contamination, so each step of preserving needs to be mindful of this. I'm not so keen on a dose of botulism. The first time we cured and preserved our olives I was blithley unaware of botulism risks, thinking that olives have been preserved for thousands of years in the mediterranean, so it can't be unsafe. So I cured them (mostly black) in brine, changing the brine daily for about 2 weeks, and allowing the salted water to go through the greywater onto our garden (yuck). Then bottling in a heavier brine solution with a layer of olive oil on top to keep the olives submerged. In the cupboard for a few months, and they were good; after 6 months they were darn good :D There was a slimey kind of layer on the top that creeped me out a bit, but I asked my Italian aunt and she said that was normal and it didn't harm you. The scientist in me says a Marg Simpson hmmmmm (I'd like to know what that slimey stuff is please), but they were delicious, no-one got sick, and obviously the slimey layer isn't uncommon. (Is this a head in the sand moment?) Last season there weren't many olives and they were shrivelled and dry so I composted them. Later someone said you can irrigate the trees prior to harvest to plump them up; I'll save that info for future drought years. This season the trees didn't flower at all; possibly due to extended drought, or maybe the serious haircut I gave them - they were covered in sooty mould and scale so I cut out a lot of growth from the middles to thin them and let the airflow through. Anyway they didn't flower last spring and there was no fruit this Easter. But friends have olive trees so we raided their orchard and picked a huge bucket recently. We didn't pick as many as I'd have liked b/c their horse kept threatening to trample the children; what a dilemma, to pick olives or let a large horse stand on your babies. This is what we've done this year : Cracked Green Marinated Olives Preserved Mixed Colour Olives Previously I had tried : Salted olives Brine cured olives This link is one of the most useful I've found http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/pdf/8267.pdf It explains the different curing methods - water, brine, lye and dry salting. And the preserving methods - brine or oil for short term, and very strong brine, freezing, drying or pressure canning for longer storage. There are many other links and recipes around the net that use quite cursory curing and preserving methods, which don't sit so comfortably with me after reading about botulism. But everyone has a different level of risk assessment. We have begun eating this season's olives, and they are very good. So here is this year's recipe that we will use again : ~Cracked Green & Mixed Colour Olives~ green-ripe olives lemons cooking salt good quality white vinegar clean water 1. Use a full beer bottle to squash each olive on a cutting board, so ithe flesh is cracked open. This is far easier than making 3 slits in each olive, as we did the first time. 2. As you crack the olives, place them in a bucket of cool water, with a sliced lemon (or several) in it. When you are finished, drain the water, remove the lemons, and cover the olives with cool clean water. 3. Place a plate or something similar on top of the olives to hold them under the water surface. Drain the water and replace with clean cool water every morning and evening for around 12 days. Taste them towards the end of this time to check the bitterness and when it is mostly gone, it's time to move to the next step. The preserving brine will continue to remove bitterness, so it's ok for them to still taste a little icky. 4. Drain the olives and place in a large shallow dish. Sprinkle liberally with salt and leave, covered, for 24 hours. 5. Wash and drain the olives again and place in clean container. Cover with vinegar and place a plate or similar on top to submerge them. Leave for 24 hours. 6. Drain the olives and pack into sterilised jars. Pour over a strong brine, made from 4 cups salt dissolved in 4.5L water, leaving some space at the top to pour on a layer of olive oil. The olive oil should be about 1.5cm thick and should help keep the olives submerged. These will keep for a long time; I'm not sure how long as we eat our olives too fast! 7. Seal the jars and store in a dark place for at least 6wks. Place in the fridge after opening. The olives will be very salty in this heavy brine, so I like to drain and soak the olives in warm water, then marinate them with olive oil, citrus zest and fresh herbs.

Beetroot & Haloumi salad w Walnut dressing

We had this again last night with a few variations - salted green olives instead of capers, and no haloumi. Still delicious :) And with the beetroot in our garden swelling larger and spinach threatening to shade out all else, it will be around a little more over the next few months.

So here it is again :

~Haloumi & Beetroot salad with Walnut dressing~
6 large beetroot, trimmed
500g haloumi, drained
2 tabs olive oil
100g baby spinach leaves, washed and dried

Walnut dressing
1/3 cup walnut halves
1/2 cup drained capers
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 garlic clove crushed
salt & black pepper

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Wrap beetroot in foil and place in roasting pan. Cook for an hour or until tender.

Place walnuts on baking tray and cook in oven about 10 minutes or until lightly toasted. Set aside to cool.Chop walnuts coarsely; place in a bowl with capers, garlic, oil and vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. (I would leave out salt as it is quite salty already, and I left pepper out of the kids' portions as they don't like it).

Remove beetroot from the oven and cool for 10 minutes or until you can touch it. Use gloves if you don't want beetroot stain on your hands (I don't bother), and slip skins and stems off. Slice beetroot into thick slices.

Cut haloumi into slices - I like about 3/4cm, but whatever you prefer. Heat oil in non-stick pan to high heat. Cook haloumi in batches, until golden brown on each side. Cut into smaller fingers when they are cooked.We served this on a big platter and ate with out fingers - but you could serve individually. Lay spinach on plate first, then layer beetroot and haloumi and drizzle dressing over the top. Serve immediately.