Simple Cauliflower with Cumin

Oh, Monday...and not just any Monday in England, but a Monday in late May, 25 degrees, strong sun and my cat asleep in a patch of shady dirt between rows of lettuce in the garden. We don't get days like this very often 'round these parts. I figured the chances of me getting anything practical done today were slim to none, so I decided to just cook.

I had a bag of nettles in my fridge - yes, that's right, stinging nettle tops. They're a really delicious green and are so good for you. Nettles are starting to enter the mainstream among adventurous foodies, or at least with gardeners, foragers, herbalists and the cooks who love them. Nettle soup motivates me to get my feet out walking in the woods every spring for an hour or two while I collect several bags and freeze some for use later in the year. So I made stinging nettle & purple broccoli soup to test proportions for a cookbook recipe. Then I experimented with a cupcake idea: my favourite kind of experiment. It came out underdone but still tasted delicious. I picked some spinach and red lettuce from the garden and tried it with a citrus vinaigrette that I'd tested last week, topped with goat's cheese and toasted, salted pumpkin seeds. Then I pulled out the head of cauliflower that I'd neglected since acquiring it last Wednesday and did something with that, too.



I've never thought much of cauliflower. In fact, I rarely eat it unless it stealthily finds its way onto my plate by way of restaurant or dinner at someone else's home. I mean, who has time for a white vegetable? Especially one that looks like broccoli but seems to have even less flavour. But then, a few years ago, I decided to try choosing my produce based on which items seemed to have the most 'life' in them. In other words, who looked the freshest, most flavourful and full of goodness? And the cauliflower at La Montanita in Albuquerque kept winning hands down. So I rolled my eyes, gave a sigh and grabbed a head of the stuff.

What I do like about cauliflower is that it makes a great 'comfort food' vegetable: it often gets baked with bread crumbs, stock and cheese; or simmered in an Indian curry with plenty of ghee and spices. This method popped into my head as I stood at my stove with this head of cauliflower, staring at it and not knowing what to do next. But I was going through a 'butter solves everything' and 'cumin tastes good with anything' phase, and so I improvised and this was the result. I think it's quite tasty, and it always convinces me to eat a bowl of cauliflower, which used to only happen as often as a hot day in the English midlands.



Simple Cauliflower

1 medium/large head of cauliflower
3 - 4 tablespoons butter or ghee
salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon cumin powder
a few tablespoons water or stock
3 tablespoons whole wheat flour
Parmesan or Grana Padano cheese to top

Wash the cauliflower and shake off excess water. Trim off most of the stalk but not all - basically, I use the florets and their stems and maybe an inch of the stalk. Chop the cauliflower into small pieces: it should be chopped small enough to look crumbly.

Melt the butter or ghee in a medium skillet. Add the cauliflower and season with salt and pepper. Sprinkle the cumin powder on and stir well. Cook for five minutes or so, stirring often to cook evenly. If the pan gets too dry, splash on a couple of tablespoons of water. Cook until the cauliflower is done to your liking: softer or a bit crunchy. With the heat on medium/low, sprinkle the whole wheat flour over all and mix well. Continue to stir, making sure to scrape the drying flour from the bottom of the pan as it starts to stick. You want the flour to brown and stick to the cauliflower, creating a toasty flavour. When it's starting to brown, take the cauliflower off the heat and divide into bowls. Top with grated cheese and serve hot as a side dish.

Spiced Hummus Recipe

Hummus is the well-worn, reliable go-to in the world of healthy foods. Always a great snack, loved by many, good for you, doesn't offend vegans or coeliacs, present on many restaurant menus. Hummus is there for you when you need it.


If you're vegetarian or interested in healthy food, chances are you've made your own hummus. You know the drill: chickpeas, tahini, lemon juice, garlic & salt with many possible additions and variations. I'm a hummus lover, and when I taste a particularly tasty version, I try to recreate it at home and pinpoint the exact flavours that make other people's renditions of this ubiquitous middle eastern dip so delicious.

There's a great restaurant in Leamington Spa called Rhubarb. It gets top marks from me for atmosphere, and its hummus gets top marks, too. Honestly, I can't really taste any tahini to speak of in their dip - it tastes more like chickpeas, white beans, something salty and herby, maybe caraway seeds, probably some lemon juice and garlic...but can you call it hummus without tahini? Doesn't that turn it into 'bean dip'? Anyway, I've been trying to place this 'salty herby' quality and one day, when I was walking down the street, completely not near the restaurant and not eating hummus, a lightbulb went off: "bouillon!"

Ah, bouillon...you've saved me from culinary boredom time and time again. You make everything better. A bit of bouillon dissolved in water makes a great cooking liquid, not just for soup, but for anything where you need to splash some water in the pan. Or, if I'm cooking, say, a South Indian style broccoli, I might use water infused with cumin, coriander and fennel seeds to steam it in the pan (if I have that lying around, which I do because cumin/coriander/fennel also makes a great tea). What I'm saying is that when there's cooking liquid in a recipe, you can add some fabulous zing to your dish by using something more interesting than water. And since there's water in hummus to thin it out, why not dissolve some bouillon in the water? I'm talking about the good stuff, though. No cheap XO brand here. Perhaps something fresh from scratch or at least an organic brand that's tasty and full of flavour.


Back to hummus - the reason we're here. I replaced the water with vegetable stock and added a few Middle Eastern spices and here's what I've got so far. I'm sure the adventures in hummus tweaking will continue for many years.

Hummus with Spices and Herbs

2 cups cooked chickpeas
2-3 tablespoons of light tahini
juice of 1/2 lemon
3/4 bouillon cube (approx. 1 - 1.5 teaspoons) dissolved in 2/3 cup hot water
1 large garlic clove, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon chopped flat leaf parsley
1/3 teaspoon paprika
1/3 teaspoon cumin powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
drizzle of high quality olive oil
salt (you may not need any) and fresh milled pepper to taste

In a food processor, combine the chickpeas with tahini and lemon juice. Blend well. Then add everything else and blend again until it's all well combined, a minute or two. Pause a few times to scrape down the sides of the food processor bowl. Taste for lemon, salt and spice and adjust as necessary.
When you've blended it well, scoop out into a bowl; drizzle with a bit more olive oil, a dusting of paprika and a few bits of parsley if you like. Serve with pitta bread, corn chips, vegetable sticks, over a salad or on wholegrain bread.

Making Organic Easier

I'm big on organic eating for many reasons, but I know a lot of people have a hard time justifying it due to the higher costs and lack of common knowledge about the benefits.

Personally, I think the benefits are: fewer food allergies, less carcinogenic crap in your body, higher amounts of nutrients in your diet (organic produce has a better chance of being grown in better soil). Aside from the benefits to your health, organic farming is so much easier on the environment, whereas commercial farming, or agribusiness, has a long history of being incredibly damaging to the soil, water supply, air and more. This is understandable, given the fact that the focus is on maximum production and profit for minimum cost, not on quality of produce, quantity of nutrients or maximum harmony with the environment, farm workers and affects on consumer health. Oh, in a perfect world...

There are also the reasons we don't know. There are thousands of synthetic (not native to the human body) chemicals used to grow our food, put into our skin care, hair care and other hygiene products; chemicals used in building our houses, laying carpet and more. Sadly, only a very small fraction of these have actually been tested for their effects on humans or animals. Apparently, the FDA can't test a chemical for its effects on health unless there is already evidence that it has detrimental effects. I'm not sure how that's supposed to protect the public, but...I'll stop before ranting. All of this inspires me to educate myself and take matters into my own hands. So how can we live more in the solution than in the problem when organic food can seem so expensive and elitist?

My personal choice has been to grow a garden at home with my husband. Put in a bit of work in the spring, and you're rewarded for months with the tastiest, freshest produce you've ever had - it's heavenly. I'm not a gardening expert, I just started last year and am slowly expanding, but you can turn yourself into a gardener through podcasts and internet tutorials, so go get 'em. Another option is to eat out less and save money for better food that way. Yet another option is to check out a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm near you: this can be a very affordable way of eating some amazing, local, organically grown produce while supporting small farmers who care about soil quality and the environment.

Last but not least, the article that inspired this posting, by PBS. It's a list of foods that contain the highest pesticide residues: the ones you really should buy organically grown, as well as the foods that come out fairly clean in tests. Have a read, it's interesting.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/health/the-dirty-dozen-and-clean-15-of-produce/

If you're still unconvinced about the importance of protecting your health and the environment, rest assured that venturing into the world of food grown with a focus on quality rather than quantity will help you to look and feel your best right now, enjoy your food more and reduce your risk of illness for years to come. It also makes a big, positive environmental impact to reduce your animal-based foods and replace them with organically grown produce. I hope you enjoy your new way of thinking about the foods you eat!

Saag Paneer from Scratch

In late March and early April, when I was home in Eugene, OR, we went to 'Govinda's Vegetarian Buffet'. Years ago, just the name of this place would have put me off - I wasn't sure what to make of it and had no idea what sort of food they served. These days, it may be our favourite restaurant in Eugene - or at least, 'old reliable'. Govinda's looks like an oversized espresso shack on River Road - not a street known for its food (unless it's fast and processed). But when our bodies have had it with espresso, pricey joints and glasses of wine with desert, Govinda's is just what the doctor ordered. What can I say, when you know what it feels like to eat really health food, how can you not keep coming back?

I generally adore Hare Krishna food - wholesome, vegetarian and totally scrummy (that's 'scrumptious' plus 'yummy' for those who don't know British English). When I asked for recipes, they recommended a book called 'The Higher Taste'. In a happy, synchronistic moment during the first cooking class I taught after returning to England, one of my students produced a pile of The Higher Taste cookbooks and said he was giving them away for free! How great is that? It turns out that it's not so much a collection of pure H.K-style recipes, but a mix of dishes from all over the globe - India, Thailand, Middle East, Europe, Greek, Latin American and more. One of the Indian recipes was for saag paneer.



I've cooked Ayurvedically for years now, with classic Indian spices & herbs, but haven't done much home cooking of the typical curry house dishes: naan bread, chana masala, etc. That all changed last week when I made Saag Paneer from scratch.

This was a process that took several days - which I hope won't put you off. Think of it as a good excuse to relax and take it slow. Or, you can just go out and buy your paneer and then it'll only take you half an hour. Or, use chickpeas instead of paneer. But I wanted to be able to say I'd made my own cheese, and I wanted my paneer to be organic and hormone free, damn it - so I took matters into my own hands. If you don't eat dairy, just skip this first part and substitute 1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas for the paneer.

Paneer for one meal, serving two hungry people:

2 litres (8 cups, almost 4 pints) of organic whole milk
1 lemon (for 3-4 Tablespoons of lemon juice)
Cheesecloth
fresh herbs - optional. I used several pinches of dry basil.

Juice your lemon first.
Pour the milk into a big saucepan with several inches of room at the top for foamy boiling. Bring it to a full rolling boil on medium high heat, stirring frequently to prevent any sticking or scalding. When it boils and foams up, turn the heat to low, and while it's still foamy, drizzle in the lemon juice. Give it a slow stir in one direction and after 10 - 15 seconds, take the pot off the heat. Continue to agitate the 'milk', which will separate into a pale yellow-green watery liquid, plus lumps of curdled clumps at the bottom. If your clumps aren't forming after one minute, place it back over the heat and keep stirring gently; if necessary, add a little more lemon juice. When the curd has formed clumps, cover the saucepan and set aside for 10 minutes.



Place a sieve or colander in the sink and cover the inside with 2 - 3 thicknesses of cheesecloth. Drape the edges of the cloth over the side of the colander. Gently pour the liquid and curd clumps into the colander. If you're going to add in any herbs, do it now by gently folding them in. Then pick up the corners of the cheesecloth, twist it up and run it under cold water for a few seconds. Squeeze your curd bundle to drain out excess liquid. If you have something to secure the twisted bit of cloth, like a wire tie, that's handy. At this point, I simply put a milk bottle, filled with water, into a coffee mug and used this as a weight to further compress the water out of the cheese and also to keep the cloth together. So basically, find something heavy and put it on top to continue draining the cheese.



After half an hour, you're in business. It should be compressed and feel firm. If you're not going to use the cheese immediately, then wrap it in a paper towel, place in a container and refrigerate - use within 4 days.


Saag Paneer
Adapted from "The Higher Taste", published by The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust

2 very large bunches of fresh spinach (if they are not very large, then make it 3 or 4 bunches - spinach really cooks down!)
1 block of paneer, cut into half inch cubes (or 1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas)
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 fresh hot green chili, seeds removed and minced (optional)
1 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon sea or rock salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons ghee (clarified butter) or coconut oil
4 tablespoons cream (I improvised and used whole milk)
1 teaspoon garam masala
1 teaspoon salt

Steam the spinach in a large saucepan with a little bit of water until it has cooked down and softened. With a fork, lift it out of the pan and into a food processor. Whiz it up a few times until it's roughly pureed. Remove and set aside.
With a mortar and pestle or a blender, or the same food processor after rinsing it out, blend the minced ginger, chili and garlic with a spoonful of cold water. Add the coriander, paprika, cumin and turmeric; pound or blend into a smooth paste.
Heat the ghee or oil in a large saucepan over medium heat, then add the spice paste and fry for a minute or two until the paste is aromatic and starts to stick. Fold in the spinach and mix well to combine with the spices. Cook for a few minutes, then add in the cream, paneer, garam masala, salt and cook for another few minutes. Serve hot with steamed basmati rice.

Gluten and Dairy Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Vegetables are my 'bottom line' diet, particularly green ones. That's what I crave more than anything, and I love feeling good more than I love the feeling of overindulgence, or the taste of sugar hitting my tongue (but I do admit to having a sweet tooth!). But baking chocolate chip cookies is an activity that I still love, even as a health nut, just as much as I loved it when I was...less than a health nut.

As a teenager, I would bake a batch for my family just to have an excuse to taste the batter. I can't really recommend doing this, since I've taken a food hygiene and safety course and eating raw eggs isn't the best idea.  I use organic eggs as much as possible, but anyway, I've never had a problem.  Touch wood.  Maybe it's a cultural thing.  My Irish hubby thinks it's gross, as does the Scottish husband of another ex-pat American friend, but she will also happily lick a spoon that's just come out of the light brown/dark brown thick, silky swath of dough in the mixing bowl.



While I was 'reforming' my health, I didn't bake any chocolate chip cookies. Maybe not for several years - can you believe it??  I still make them only rarely, and when I do, I make them to my specifications (unrefined sugar, gluten and dairy free, with ground flax seed for omega 3 fats), and usually when I can share them. Some very good helpers have appeared recently, a troop of neighborhood boys from Poland who play soccer on the green outside my front door and work up a really good appetite.  This recipe is gluten and dairy free, with unrefined cane sugar, and these nine year olds are nuts about them. They also said that the dark chocolate was nice - but you know, they are getting free cookies, so there better not be any complaining.

Chocolate chips are convenient, but I never use them anymore. I buy bars of chocolate so that I have more choice of what kind of chocolate I'm using: I've been using Divine 70% dark for several years now. It's fair trade, high quality, not too bitter, and dairy free. They're also an independent company, and since Cadbury's bought out Green & Blacks, they've been putting whole milk fat into their dark chocolate - not necessary, in my opinion. I put the bars on my cutting board and chop them first lengthwise, then widthwise. What's left is flakes and cubes that will dot your cookies with tiny bits of chocolate throughout, plus some nice big jackpot chunks here and there. And if you roll the dough into balls between your palms, you can feel the edges of the cubes poking into your skin. It just seems more artisan to me, and I like that.

Why gluten free? Well, maybe you have a problem digesting wheat, or have other digestive difficulties. If so, gluten free might help...a lot.  Gluten free foods are also a nice way to get more variety in your diet: as you'll see, this recipe has about five different kinds of flour instead of one, including milled flax seed, which is really high in omega 3 fats. Between bread, pasta, cereal, pizza and more, we've been inundated with high-gluten processed wheat for most of our lives, but eating a varied diet is vitally important. Wheat, dairy, white sugar and other refined 'white' foods, when eliminated, help many people to naturally deal with asthma, skin problems, weight, digestive problems and more, including more problematic diseases like MS and diabetes II.

Some practicalities: these cookies freeze well, so if you don't want them sitting there calling to you, pop them in a bag and freeze for a summer's day. If you can't find sorghum flour in your local whole/organic foods shop, then ask in Indian/Asian grocery stores for Juwar flour - it's the same thing, and it tastes very much like wheat. It's great for gluten free baking. And my final but most important note, if you don't have an oven thermometer and you enjoy baking even a little, I strongly suggest you get one. The Celsius to Fahrenheit converter says that 375F is 190C - but my oven only needs to be at 145C to reach 375F - which I never knew until I had the thermometer. My baking is much better having spent the £5.99 it cost to get this miracle gadget.



Gluten Free Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
If you don't want to run around getting all of the different flours, you can simply use 2 1/4 cups gluten free flour blend in place of the first 4 ingredients.

3/4 cup sorghum flour (known as Juwar Flour at Indian shops)
1/2 cup potato flour
1/2 cup ground flaxseed
1/2 cup rice flour
1 1/2 cups demerara sugar (unrefined cane crystals)
1 cup sunflower spread (or other vegan butter that bakes well - not diet 'butter')
2 Tablespoons tapioca flour or potato starch dissolved in 4 Tablespoons cool water (or 2 eggs)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
200 - 250 grams dark dairy free chocolate bars, chopped to the size of chip you prefer
3/4 cup chopped walnuts or hazelnuts (optional)
baking paper

Preheat oven to 375 F, 190C. Like a baking tray with baking paper (this makes such a difference for gluten free baking). In a large bowl, cream the vegetable butter with the sugar using the back of a large wooden spoon. Mix in egg replacer (or eggs) and then add vanilla.
Separately, sift all the dry ingredients together and then add to the wet. Mix to incorporate. Blend in the chocolate chips and optional nuts. If you have time, refrigerate for an hour or two. Scoop tablespoon-size balls onto a baking sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove and let cool, if you can wait.

Falafel with Tahini Sauce

This week, instead of heading out for some soggy camping over the May Day holiday weekend, I had the girls over for dinner. Estrogen was in the air: a bottle of champagne was popped, announcing the start the evening. There was the intention to watch Memoirs of a Geisha (my second viewing in a week), but instead we sat 'round the table having a 'chin wag' (Irish for 'social chat') until midnight. We calculated that by the end of the evening, the four of us had each spent over an hour talking - wow.

Some seriously good food makes its appearance when we get together, and it's almost always vegetarian and home made. We're all members of the amazing local CSA and each week are happily inundated with some the best organic produce around. Perhaps we'll make our own version of Sex and the City entitled 'Veg in the Country'. I'm sure it would be a sensation: 'organic chic!'

Dinner included a loaf of fresh bread baked with sultanas, walnuts and home-grown wheat; warm puy lentil, leek and dill salad; field greens with vinaigrette and toasted pumpkin seeds; falafel made from scratch with tahini sauce; and gluten-free rhubarb crumble for desert.



Middle eastern food is one of my absolute favorite cuisines. The smoky, deep flavors and colorful ingredients feed my love of exotic things: it's the kind of food you'd eat on a good adventure in a country where you really feel like a foreigner. It lends itself so well to finger food, as if you could lay it out on a big wooden platter in the middle of the table and pick it clean. Personally I quite like to stick my finger into the tahini sauce or hummus, or when I'm sharing, I'll use a falafel patty or dolmade for my flavor vessel. I like spices, herbs and a lot of variety in flavor and fresh produce, and middle eastern food delivers.

Exploring the culinary arts keeps me on my toes, learning new techniques and exploring endless flavor combinations. In this case, it was working with raw chickpeas (gasp! - are they digestible??) and deep frying. But it's not hard to make falafel from scratch. The trick is getting it to hold together while frying but I haven't had any problems so far, so hopefully you won't either. Basically, you soak your chickpeas overnight at least, dry them on a towel, then throw them in a food processor with everything else, blend until pasty (a couple minutes), form little patties and drop those into a heavy-bottomed pot with oil you've heated on medium/medium-high and fry until golden brown. You don't even need an official 'deep fryer'.

Falafel Patties with Tahini Sauce

Don't use canned chickpeas here, they're too wet and mushy.

Falafel
1 3/4 cups dry chickpeas
two big garlic cloves
small/medium red onion or two shallots
1 big handful flat parsley leaves
1 big handful cilantro (fresh coriander) leaves
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon (or a bit more!) harissa paste
1 teaspoon paprika powder
4 tablespoons flour (I used white spelt)
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
black pepper, freshly ground, to taste
sunflower oil to a depth of 1 inch or a bit more in a medium, heavy-bottomed pot

Tahini Sauce
1/2 cup light tahini (sesame seed paste)
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup water
small garlic clove, finely minced
1/4 teaspoon cumin powder
1/4 teaspoon paprika powder
a few parsley leaves, chopped finely
1/4 teaspoon salt or more to taste
fresh ground pepper to taste

The night before making the falafel, soak the chickpeas in filtered water (cover by an inch or so: they will swell up) so that by the time you make them, they've soaked for a whole day.

Roughly chop the garlic and onion and rinse the fresh herbs to remove any dirt.

Drain and rinse the soaked chickpeas, lay down a towel and pour them out onto it. Roll them around and pat to dry. Then put them into the food processor along with everything except the oil. Process until you have a thick paste: at least one minute, probably a little more than two minutes, pausing to scrape down the sides. Taste for salt and seasoning: if you want it spicier, add more black pepper, cayenne pepper powder or harissa paste. It's nice to have several different kinds of 'spiciness' in a dish: it adds interest. Blend again to incorporate anything you've adjusted. Have a plate ready; take out small handfuls of falafel paste and form little patties: 1 1/2 - 2 inches across, patted down to a thickness of less than 1 inch.

Meanwhile, pour the oil into your pot and heat over medium, medium/high heat for about 5 minutes, until hot enough that a bread crumb fries to golden brown in 1 minute when tossed in.



When your falafel patties are ready, gently drop them in to your heated oil. The first one may bubble and splatter; use caution if your hands are wet, as water droplets landing on the hot oil (it causes quite a commotion). Fry as many at once as will comfortably fit on the bottom of the pan. Turn them over with a spoon after 30 seconds or so. Have a plate with a paper towel ready, and when the falafel are golden brown, take them out and drain on said towel. It only takes a little over a minute to fry them. Continue until all your paste is used up.

Now prepare the tahini paste: in a bowl, with a fork, whisk together the tahini, lemon juice and water. Add the rest of the ingredients and whisk again to mix well. Taste for seasoning and serve with the falafel.

Falafel are usually eaten in a Pitta bread pocket with salad and dressing, but I like them on their own, dipped in the sauce, or maybe served over spicy greens like rocket (called arugula in the USA) with tahini sauce as dressing.