Paneer and sweetcorn curry

I haven't made this dish in a while and so I was looking through my blog to refresh my memory as to how I made it, and I was horrified to find I hadn't blogged it ever yet!

As Big'Un is at Uni and sometimes turns to Mama's blog to find the recipes for the dishes she misses, I thought I'd better get it blogged.  Turns out Middl'Un LOVED the dish and talked about needing me to "post it to her" when *she* goes to Uni, so I thought even MORE reason to get it written down! (So that she can cook it so I don't have to explain why I won't be able to post it...)

Ingredients:

• one pack of paneer (around 225-250g)
• 1 teaspoon of cumin seeds
• one small onion, finely chopped
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, sliced
• half a tin of chopped tomatoes
• 250g sweetcorn (I use frozen, but tinned would also be fine)
• pinch of turmeric if wished 
• salt to taste
• ground black pepper to taste

Method:

Cut the paneer block into smallish cubes, about the size of playing dice.  Fry gently in a little vegetable oil or ghee.  Keep turning until they are crispy and brown on all (or most of) the sides.  

Add the cumin seeds and when they start to sizzle, add the onion and garlic and fry gently until soft.  Add the turmeric if using.  Continue to fry until the rawness of the turmeric is gone, and the garlic and onion are very soft and translucent.

Add the tinned tomatoes and a little water.  Cover and cook until the tomatoes are "melted" down.  Stir well and add the sweetcorn. Season with the salt and pepper and cover.  Allow to simmer for 10-15 mins.  Stir well when done and serve with hot buttery chapatti.

Meatless Monday Courgette and Haricot pasta

This filling and veg packed pasta dish is really satisfying and moreish.  You don't HAVE to serve it on a Monday, obviously!

Ingredients :

1 medium to large onion

3 large courgettes

1 can of beans (haricot, borlotti, cannelini etc)

400g pasta twists or similar shapes of your prference

salt and pepper to taste.

1 tsp mixed herbs

1 tsp Marigold

red chilli flakes to taste

grated cheese if desired, or Engevita flakes

double cream if you want or have it, or Oatly cream.

Method:

Finely slice the onion and fry in a good glug of olive oil, on a medium heat.  

Cut the courgettes lengthwise and slice thinly - I'll admit I used a food processor for this and it was a boon.  Once the onions are soft and starting to mellow, tip in the courgettes and stir well to coat.  Turn the heat up and keep stirring for a few minutes.  

Add the salt and pepper, mixed herbs and chilli flakes and keep stirring and mixing.  Lower the heat very slightly, and allow to soften and cook down.

Boil the water for the pasta, salt the water once it's boiling, and then cook the pasta for 10 minutes.

Once the courgettes are softer, sprinkle in the Marigold powder and add a little of the water from the can of beans.  Mix well.  Drain the rest of the can and add the beans to the courgettes.  Mix thoroughly, lower the heat and cover.

When the pasta is done, drain it and add it to the courgette mixture.  Stir well to mix, and add the cheese or Engevita flakes.  Finally add the cream if using.

Peanut noodles with smacked cucumbers

 

If we are busy on the weekend or if Papa is working and we don't have a chance to go shopping, I get to get creative with my storecupboard for Meatless Monday!

The kids are not big fans of daal and rice and I find I'm often hungry again soon after rice anyway, so I was thinking of something different to do.  I remembered that we'd had some peanutty noodle dishes from Hello Fresh which had included chicken and I'd felt the chicken was not really adding flavour, and I also remembered a dish from a book we used to use a lot: The Wolf in the Kitchen which was simple and filling, so I sort of smushed the 2 ideas together.  I had a bendy half head of broccoli and a lovely organic cucumber in the fridge, so I googled a nice smacked cucumber recipe as I've been wanting to try this for ages and lo and behold I even had some fresh veggies for the meal!  This was filling and tasty! The kids  also didn't ask where the meat was...

NB This is only vegan if you use non-egg noodles and make sure the chilli oil is vegan/vegetarian as some types have fish or prawns in!  As you know I am NOT vegan, but if you are, I don't want to inadvertantly cause a problem.

Noodles:

Ingredients:

2 cloves of garlic
3 or 4 spring onions
2 tbsp peanut butter (crunchy works well)
25g  creamed coconut
some broccoli or other green veg. Mange tout, green beans, pak choi, cabbage etc
4 leaves of medium egg noodles or similar
100ml boiling water
soy sauce, ketjap manis, salt, sesame oil, sriricha - to taste

Method:

Slice and fry the garlic and spring onion on a low heat to soften and mellow the garlic.  

In another pan, cook the noodles.  Drain when done and keep ready.

After a few minutes of frying the garlic and spring onion, add the broccoli or whatever green veg you have if it is at all robust.  Once that has started to soften, add the peanut butter and creamed coconut and the 100ml water to dissolve and spread.  

If you are using green leafy veg, add it now.

When the veg is almost done, add the drained noodles to the pan and mix well.  Add the flavouring sauces and seasonings to your preferred taste.

Serve with the smacked cucumber.

Smacked Cucumber:

Ingredients:

1 (organic) cucumber
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce 

1 tsp sugar 

2 tsp chilli oil

1 tbsp sesame oil
optional 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

Method:

Using the flat of the knife blade, or a meat mallet, or a rolling pin, whack the cucumber all along its length. Take your time to enjoy this. Imagine it's (insert name of currently relevant idiotic politician)'s head or face. 

Once it is good and split, chop it into 2cm pieces and put the pieces in a bowl and add the salt. Leave aside for 30 mins.

When it has sat in the salt, reverse drain it with a sieve or colander and pat dry with kitchen paper.  DO NOT RINSE.  

Mix the dressing ingredients in a small bowl or jug and pour over the cucumber.  Top with the optional toasted sesame seeds.  Use any left over dressing with the noodles, or with some steamed edamame in pods for a tasty side dish.

Moong/Mung Daal - Yellow Mung lentil

When my mother fell seriously ill last year, she was in hospital for some months.  She really hated the food, and I tried to cook for her and take it to her in the evenings so she could eat home-cooked hot food at supper time.  There were no heating up facilities, so I used to either cook it freshly and put it in a food thermos and drive there at dinner time or I'd cook it earlier/ the day before, and heat it up and put it in a food thermos and drive to the hospital at dinner time.  We would also take a metal bowl and a plastic spoon for her to eat from and with, as the hospital only had plates in the evenings and the metal spoons they had were too heavy for her to use comfortably.

Doing this was an honour and a privilege and I will always be grateful that I could do her this one small service as often as I could.  I would honestly give anything to cook one more time for her or for my dad.

One day she asked me to make this specific daal, mung daal.  It is often given to patients and the elderly, as it is supposed to be easy to digest.  As it was never one I liked as a child, I had never asked her how to make it, so I sat with her and took notes as she described how she cooks this.  I'm glad I did that then because soon after that, she lost a lot of the capacity to have told me any more recipes, although she did not die for some months after.

Since that time, I've learned to love this dish and I often cook it now for my vegan and vegetarian friends and colleagues, as well as for the family.  The quantities below will serve 1-2 people and rely on using the measurement of the ubiquitous Asian "rice cup" - a plastic cup that comes with most rice cookers - I have since found that the volume of those rice cooker cups is the same as the volume of 2 rice-portion scoops from the Love Food Hate Waste campaigns.

Mung/Moong Daal

half a rice cup of yellow mung lentils

quarter teaspoon turmeric powder

half teaspoon salt

half an onion, roughly chopped

2 green chillies, one left whole, one broken in half

2 cloves of garlic, sliced.

First, soak the lentils for half an hour.

Drain well and put into the pressure cooker.

Add slightly more than double the volume of water. (About 1 and a quarter rice cups of water.)

Add the turmeric, salt, onion and green chillies.

Give pressure whichever way you normally do for 8 minutes.

If possible, allow pressure to release naturally - otherwise, a quick release will be ok, but messy.

Mix well to smash the lentils. I've seen some Indians use a really cool piece of very simple equipment to do this - it looks like a star on a stick, and the star is put in the lentils and the stick is spun between the palms to whisk up the lentils!

Fry the sliced garlic in ghee or vegetable oil until it just starts to brown.  Add to the daal.  Check the salt and the consistency.  If you need to add more water, be sure to continue to heat the daal or the water won't mix in properly.  If it pleases you, garnish with chopped fresh coriander.  This does not please anyone in my family.

Enjoy with rice or chappati.  Think of me and my darling mother.

One pan hob tomato pasta

This came about because I *hate* draining pasta.

I have no idea why, but everyone in my family knows it.

I've made a few one pan, bake in oven type pasta bakes, but I wanted something quicker and less house heating and less gas guzzling.

Google helped me with a few thoughts, and then I conjured up this:

Fry chopped onion and garlic until soft and add mixed herbs if desired. Add a carton of passata, flavoured if liked, and a carton full of boiling water. I also added half a bottle of Cirio passata but I'm not so sure it was needed to be honest.

Bring to boil and stir in 350-400g dry pasta. Bring back to boil and simmer, covered, for 20 mins. Stir once in a while.

Flavour with Marigold (obvs) and season to taste.

Just before serving, stir in half to a full pot of mascarpone and 2-3tbsp balsamic vinegar. Finally add a teaspoon of brown sugar.

Serve sprinkled with grated cheddar or parmesan if preferred.

Every child loved this. Hurrah!

Indo-Chinese not so chilli paneer

I had been hankering after a dish I've had in a couple of Indian eateries which I had no idea how to begin cooking, and also I knew I'd need to calm it down for the kids, and my decreasing chilli tolerance.  I did a bit of a Google and found out it is one of the interesting and completely unique Indo-Chinese dishes I have experienced when visiting family in Calcutta.  There is a fairly large Chinese community in Calcutta, originally based in the tannery areas, and the combination of Chinese food and Bengali tastes and ingredients led to some very regionally specific dishes. This style dish is made with chicken or paneer or tofu, and is delicious and easy. It is becoming more common in some Indian (NOT the Bangladeshi type) restaurants, and would be found under the name "Chilli Paneer" and my recipe would be very easy to re-chilli.  I adapted 2 or 3 of the different recipes I found to suit my own tastes. Oh and apparently it is often cooked with green pepper, which of course I can't/don't eat, so I put sweetcorn in instead.  I'm sure other veg would work such as courgette, green beans, baby corn or whatever takes your fancy!

1 pack paneer (I use Long Clawson from the supermarket which is 227g I think)
3 or 4 cloves garlic (or 1 clove and 1 large cube frozen garlic puree)
1 inch ginger, grated (or 1 large cube frozen ginger puree - often in supermarkets with ethnic foods)
half a bunch of spring onions
1 small red onion
1 cup of frozen sweetcorn
2 tbs ketchup
2 tbs soya sauce - Kikkoman
1 tsp vinegar, malt is fine 
2 tbs groundnut oil or similar
salt, pepper, chilli flakes
1 tbs cornflour

Start off by dicing up the paneer and putting it in a dish in one layer.  Finely chop or grate 1 clove of garlic and spread over the paneer.  Season with salt, pepper and the chilli flakes to taste.  I used VERY little.

Put the cornflour in a mug and add 5 tbs of water.  Mix well and pour over the paneer, toss them around briefly and ensure it is still in one layer.  Leave to marinade for 10 minutes.

Use the 10 minutes to chop the spring onions separating the white and green parts to use separately.  Chop the red onion too.  At this point I defrosted the frozen ginger and pureed the remaining garlic also.

Now heat a nonstick frying pan or saute pan with 1 tbs of the oil and fry the paneer, reserving the marinade.  Make sure you turn the pieces so 2 or 3 sides are browned and crisp.  At this point, try not to have no one but BigUn looking after Tiny, and Tiny has a nosebleed and BigUn isn't sure what to do or your paneer might burn. Luckily, BigUn was fine...and so was Tiny, and so was the paneer...

Remove with a slotted spoonand set aside, and add the 2nd tbs of oil if needed.  Now on a lower heat, fry the red onion and the white part of the spring onion until the onion is soft and transluscent.  Now add the garlic & ginger purees and fry on a slightly higher heat until the garlic no longer smells raw.  Now add the sweetcorn (or vegetable of your desire!)  If you were wanting to spice things up, now would be a good time to add some chopped green chilli, or red chilli etc.

Add the ketchup, soy sauce and vinegar, and add the paneer back in.  Stir and coat well and add half a mug of water. Heat the sauce up and then add the marinade too.  The sauce will thicken up very quickly, but you can always thin it down or add more of any of the sauces to taste.  Add the green part of the spring onion to serve.

We had this with bought naan bread and pitta breads, it is dryish, but you could as easily toss it through some noodles.  Big Un split her pitta and stuffed it full of paneer and ate it faster than a blink! I will admit Tiny Un really didn't even try this, but he enjoyed his pitta bread.  I guess it wasn't a protein day for him! Can't win them all.  Papa loved it and said he could easily have eaten the whole panful...

So who's wondering about Littl'Un? Thank you for asking! She was at Rainbows and had had cheese on toast before hand!

Meatless Monday on the fly - courgette curry

A friend on Twitter has been championing the protein rich savoury breakfast lately. Hers usually consist of daal, kale, avocados, poached eggs and recently chapattis too. What can I say, her photos have been building a craving in my soul, and today I tried to do something about it.
(If you want to see what inspired me, have a look on Twitter & Flickr at Monica Shaw's tweets & pics.)
I planned a daal and rice, I wanted to practice my chapatti making and thanks to Monica, I wanted some veg curried in some way too.  I looked in the fridge and saw the pack of baby courgette I had bought for dips and baby led weaning food, and decided to try something with that, thinking if I can't get my family to eat courgette curried in some way, then I'm giving up trying to get them to eat it again!
I sliced a couple of garlic cloves and fried them in a couple of teaspoons of ghee and then added a teaspoon of cumin seeds. I then added the sliced up courgettes and fried for about 5 mins til the slices were softened and starting to crisp at the edges.
I had used half a can of chopped tomatoes in the daal, and reserved the other half for dinner tomorrow, but I poured about an inch of water into the tomatoey tin and swished all the juice out into the pan. Waste not want not. I then halved a handful of organic cherry tomatoes (cos that's what I had, otherwise I would have used some of the tinned actual tomato or chopped up a couple of normal tomatoes.)
Then I sprinkled on half a teaspoon of salt and a teaspoon of my garam masala. I left this to cook on a fairly high heat, to smush the tomatoes down, and then just before serving I stirred in a dollop of natural yoghurt. 
I have to say, I did myself proud, the flavour was exactly what I'd been going for, and it perfectly complemented the creamy smooth masoor daal. Littl'Un had 4 helpings, including the last 2 slices from Papa's plate. Papa had 3 helpings. Yes, Papa who won't eat courgette!
I have to add a note that I also served a really yummy salad of sprouted beans and lentils with half a mixed leaf bag, dressed with olive oil and blackcurrant & rosemary vinegar by Womersley Foods. The sweetness was the perfect dimension needed to complete the experience for this meal.