Wonderful Watercress, Perfect Puha

My masseuse gave me some puha/watercress from a river up north somewhere, so I did what I love to do with a bunch of fine veges – made simple soup to bring out the flavour.  We did this last week with Jerusalem artichokes and that was awesome (scrubbed but unpeeled sliced with chicken stock, softened onion, garlic, parmesan and that’s about it).  But Jerusalem artichoke soup isn’t such a gorgeous colour like the watercress, so here’s the watercress recipe. 

Watercress Soup

Makes enough for 2 generous portions (dictated by the amount of watercress I had).

Finely chop

·         half an onion

Gently cook it in a medium sized saucepan in a tablespoon of olive oil over a low heat until soft and translucent.  Do this slowly.

slow cooking onions

Add

·         1 and ¾ cups of vegetable stock

Bring to gentle boil for couple of minutes.

Trim and chop

·         120g (that’s what I had) of watercress

watercress goes in

Tip into the saucepan.   Simmer 3 minutes or so until the watercress has completely wilted.  Take off the heat and stir in

·         a good tablespoon or two of sour cream

And then blend – either with a stick or benchtop blender until smooth.  Return to rinsed pot to reheat and add salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste.  The amount of pepper will depend on how peppery your watercress is to start with, obviously. 

green bowl of glory

Go green!!

evidence of enjoyment!

Plenty of Veges with Yotam Ottolenghi

I decided several months ago that I don't really cook vegetables well. I do eat plenty of vegetables, but because our veges are sooooo gggggoooooddddd here in NZ, I haven't found the need to cook with them much. I tend to steam them a bit, just to bring out their natural flavour, and that's about it. An abundance of flavour and freshness has meant that I haven't developed a vege-skill. Is it the same for you?

So, I decided to invest some time in learning about vegetable cooking. This is, of course, a lifetime project, but I decided to start with one of the best: Yotam Ottolenghi. Mr Ottolenghi is the Guardian's Weekend vegetarian columnist and a London restauranteur and chef. He's not a vegetarian, mind, but he does do a well-regarded line in vegetables in that fine city. It seems that Mr Ottolenghi has more heritage than Stonehenge – Israeli, Jewish, Turkish, Italian personally, plus an Arab boyfriend/cooking partner (I think that's right). And he draws liberally from them all – plenty of aunts and others are referenced.

So, I bought his book “Plenty” – which includes plenty of his columns from the Guardian and some additions. It's a very pretty book and the cover is padded (ooo, ahhh). 

 White is clearly a bit of a silly colour for a book to leave lying around my kitchen, but I'll cope.

A friend already had the book and when I told him I had bought it, he simply said “have fun chopping”. It's true that there's lots of slicing, chopping, crushing and dicing to be done, but I'm up for that! Bring it.

Pav and I spent a week on Waiheke to start our summer holiday, so we took the book along to be our eating guide. We had previously made the Black pepper tofu – which was very very (very) peppery, as warned.  But this time we went further.

You may have heard of my aubergine complex: I love them, but find them difficult to cook (partly, I think because I fear the amount of oil they can soak up). Mr Ottolenghi's Aubergines with buttermilk sauce were a delight. They turned out just like the picture (which is always exciting on the first go) and were delicious – full of the earthy richness of aubergine and the slightly tart tang of buttermilk and yoghurt, plus sweet/sour of pomegranate. 

Pomegranates are around at the moment so get some and make this.

I'm not using his words here, so any trouble is my fault:

Aubergines with Buttermilk Sauce, and Pomegranate
Turn the oven to 200C. Line a baking tray with baking paper or tin foil.

Halve as many aubergine as you have people from tip to toe – then slash parallel lines in the flesh in two directions to make diamond shapes. Don't cut the skin. Brush each half with about 20mL of olive oil. Yes, that seems like a lot, but it worked wonderfully. Lay them in the baking tray, flesh side up and sprinkle with 1.5 to 3 teaspoons of lemon thyme leaves (they don't sell those on Waiheke, so we used ordinary thyme) – season with salt and pepper.

Bake for 35-40 mins until the flesh is soft and brown and looks like it wants to be eaten.

Meantime, make the sauce (this is the part Pav did for us).  This makes enough for 3 aubergine:

Whisk together:

• 140mL buttermilk
• 100g Greek yoghurt
• 1.5 T olive oil
• 1 small garlic clove, crushed
• pinch of salt

Now, for us the raw garlic was a bit full on. If you're into that sort of thing, cool, but otherwise you could try to use garlic infused olive oil, or you could roast the garlic with the aubergines and squeeze it into the sauce.

Serve the aubergines with

• the sauce,
• sprinkles of dukkah (Mr Ottolenghi instructs us to use za'atar, which is much the same),

•  the seeds of a pomegranate – one fruit for every 2-3 people. To get the seeds out, halve the fruit around its equator; place the cut side on your hand over a bowl and then bash the round side of the fruit with a wooden spoon or equivalent to release the seeds into your hand and the bowl – start bashing gently and gradually increase as required and as your confidence improves; pick pith out of the seeds.
• some more thyme sprinkled
• and a drizzle of olive oil.

Absolutely delightful.

We also made two excellent meal-styled salads: Marinated pepper (by which he means capsicum) salad with pecorino and Courgette and cobnut salad (sans cobnuts, almonds instead in our case). Both were delightful ways to use everyday vegetables in a new way.

Plus we made Green pancakes – pancakes full of spinach, spring onions and chillies, served with lime butter (more raw garlic if you don't mind). They were spectacular – spicy enough to be exciting, but without distressing anyone. And the lime butter is a new favourite. 

We will definitely be exploring more of the book and next time I'm in London I'll be sure to check out one of Mr Ottolenghi's several restaurants – assuming I can get in!

These are just a sample of the delights of the book, so you might even consider buying it yourself. If you do, let me know what you make.

Let's keep enjoying the bounties of the vegetable patch as the weather brings so many things to ripeness. And happy new year!

Non-Vichy carrots and a pineapple party

Before my all day meeting, I took a quick wander around the Chaffers Market for some inspiration for dinner. I spied some lamb fillets from Wai-Ora Farm Lamb and wandered off happy. These guys bring lamb from their own farm to the market and I'm a fan. www.wai-orafarmlamb.co.nz

What to have with the lamb?  I love veges, but I've not been very adventurous with cooking them. I guess because of the quality of the vegetables available in NZ, they don't need to be cooked elaborately to make them taste good. A quick steam or flick around a wok to release the flavour or caramalise the edges is usually enough for me. But I've decided to become more adventurous with them. Let's see how that plays out, eh.

When I got home I gently rolled one of the lamb fillets in fresh thyme, oil, salt and pepper and let it sit at room temperature for about 20 minutes. And then focused on the veges. 

I decided on two separate vegetables to accompany the lamb: pea puree and honeyed carrots. To make pureed peas, you simply boil peas in water with mint leaves and when just cooked puree until preferred consistency is achieved. I like it pretty chunky so you can still tell they're peas. I love the colour too. You might need to add some of the boiling water or stock (whichever you have).

(This honeyed carrot recipe is slightly related to carrots a la Vichy, which are a bit more complicated to cook. But I do like the name – Vichy for the water they're supposed to be cooked with in France. The water is named after spa town Vichy where the water is naturally effervescent and an alleged cure-all. I don't have any French water lying around the house, so I just use quite salty water.)

Boil the sliced carrots in salty water until tender and then drain and return them to the dry pot over a very low heat with a little honey and butter. Roll around in melted honey and butter and serve.

The lamb is simply fried on a really hot pan for a couple of minutes each side (no additional oil required). Best to under cook fillet rather than risk over cooking.

Super supper. 

No leftovers with that dish, but I was lucky to have dessert from leftovers from the pineapple party a few days earlier.

I'm used to people I live with not liking pineapple. My father and sister both can't stand it. And neither can Pav. The only problem of course is that eating a whole pineapple by myself is a bit of a challenge. So last weekend, with Pav away, I threw a pineapple party.  Two pineapple paramours came around with wine and a savoury course as a prelude to the pineapple dessert which was the planned centrepiece.

It's probably the simplest dessert possible. Are you ready? Bake whole pineapple for 2 hours at 180C in a baking tray. Longer would be fine if the pineapple's big. Slice up and serve with cream, gingernuts (your favourite recipe or buy some), any juice that escaped from the pineapple during cooking and syrup.  I made the syrup with 2 cups of apple juice, 100g sugar and 1 tablespoon of finely diced ginger (hurrah, ginger) simmered for 15 minutes or so to reduce. I used fresh ginger, but I bet it would be grand with crystalised or preserved ginger instead. The pineapple paramours loved it and so did I reheated a few days later!

 Happy eating.