kestrel

A bag of broad beans arrived in the veg box on Friday; we like ‘em, but you don’t get many once you’ve removed them from the huge furry pods.

I simmered them for about ten minutes, then drained, blanched, and put in a big bowl. I fried off a pack of pancetta cubes and put them to drain on some kitchen roll, then fried some cold potatoes from the fridge in the fat, and drained them similarly.

Then they went into the bowl with a tin of tuna and a dressing made from the juice of half a lemon (that was in the fridge in clingfilm), a little walnut oil, and a generous teaspoon of dijon mustard.

Lovely summer food.

originally posted at Reactive Cooking.

Still more green beans to eat …

Topped and tailed them, chopped into 2cm chunks (this is starting to sound like a repeat :). Simmered for 6/7 minutes. Drained and rinsed in cold water.

Chopped an onion and some garlic, oh and some fresh ginger. Heated groundnut oil in the wok, added about a dessertspoon of mustard seeds and waited for them to pop. Then hurled in onion, garlic and ginger and cooked until soft, splattering self in hot oil in the process.

Added the beans and some five spice powder, stirred about for a couple of minutes, added a good splash of tamari, cooked for about 2 minutes.

I used too much oil, but it worked really well. We had it with basmati rice, which had the juice of half a lemon added to it, which is really nice.

And now the green beans are all gone – hurrah! But another veg box arrives tomorrow …

I’ve been wanting to make these ever since I spotted them in one of my bread books, but I’ve never been organised enough to do it – they’re remarkably simple, but you need to start them 32 hours in advance, according to the book.
Take 3/4 cup of long grain rice (I used Basmati, as we had no long grain), 1/4 cup of red lentils, and combine in a bowl with 1 cup of warm water.

Cover with clingfilm, and leave for 8 hours.

Then, blitz the contents of the bowl in a food processor, and return to the (rinsed out) bowl, recover with the clingfilm, and leave for 24 hours.

Then stir in some salt, ground black pepper and 1/2 tsp (ish) of turmeric. The recipe said to add fresh coriander; we didn’t have any, but I did lob in some grated fresh ginger. It claimed it would make 6 x 6″ dosas, but I made them a bit smaller for ease of scoffing – just heat up a heavy based frying pan, add some oil, and cook them like drop scones or whatever.

They were utterly delicious – we ate them with some leftover black-eyed peas in tomatoes that I cooked up at the weekend to accompany our (home made) chicken dansak. We shall be having them again!

First published at Reactive Cooking.

I reviewed the contents of the veg drawer last night – to my shame, there were two small turnips going mouldy, so they had to go. A wide assortment of carrots was hurled into the slow cooker for carrot and coriander soup for lunch today. And there were a lot of green beans.

We like green beans, but we tend to do the same sort of stuff with them every time, and I
wanted to try something different, so this is what I did. It was lovely – perfect summer food.

Topped and tailed the beans, and then cut them into chunks of about 2cm. Set them to simmer for about seven minutes, I guess.

Put on some pasta quills to boil.

Got Pete to grate a lot of parmesan, rummaged for the tired half lemon in the fridge, and went and cut some fennel fronds from the garden, which I chopped up small.

Combined beans, pasta, parmesan, black pepper, lemon juice, fennel and some cream, and scoffed from bowls.

Followed it with local strawberries and a home made brownie. Lovely.

Originally posted at Reactive Cooking.