Little House by the Railway Line

Red Lentil Coconut Curry

Chop 1 onion finely, and fry gently in a little oil in a large saucepan. 

Add a couple of crushed garlic cloves, about 1/2 tablespoon chopped fresh ginger root, 1 teaspoon curry powder, 1/4 teaspoon each turmeric, ground cumin, paprika, 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and a couple of bay leaves.  Stir and cook for about 3 minutes.

Make up half a block of creamed coconut with 400ml boiling water to make coconut milk, and add that to the pot, along with a good slosh of soy sauce and a couple of tablespoons of tomato puree.

Then add 1 cup of rinsed lentils and about a pint of water to the pot.

Add vegetables, chopped into chunks:  the book says cauliflower, sweet potato and cabbage.  I've also used carrots and spinach, depending on what I've got around.  Spinach needs to be added rather later than carrots or cauliflower!

Cook until vegetables are softened, adding more water as necessary.

Serve with brown rice, steamed greens and mango chutney.

Leftover Pastry Idea

Chocolate - Coffee - Walnut Cake

Recipe - Golden Carrot Bake

Here it is before baking, on Saturday night (I prepared it in advance, to minimise cooking on Sunday):

And here is it after adding the cheese to the top, just before serving:

A Find in my Kitchen

Onion Chutney

Recipe - Baked Eggs

Leek and Red Onion Risotto

Wholemeal Fig Muffins

Yummy Carrot Cake

I made two carrot cakes last night, with some of the glut of carrots we seem to have built up recently.  One is for us to eat, and the other we'll take to a party we're going to on Saturday night.

I used an interesting and very simple recipe I found online, at this site.

I used the cooked and mashed carrots rather than the more normal grated ones, and it turned out delicious.  I used the recipe before to make pumpkin loaf, and it was delicious then, too.

I'll have to try the recipe with some of the other flavourings now.....  I'm thinking applesauce might be rather lovely.

Custard in the Microwave...

I've always made custard in the microwave rather than on the hob, believing it to be easier (not sure who told me that).  Mostly because boiled burnt on milk is horrible to try and clean out of a pan. 

However, the last couple of times I've done it, I've been a little inattentive, and it has boiled over.  Horrible, horrible mess.  My poor husband has actually had to pour the custard off the microwave "plate" into his pudding bowl. 

Each time, I've washed the "plate", wiped out the bottom of the microwave, and continued work.  It wasn't until G was picking something up off the floor while the microwave door was open, and looked up, that it occurred to either of us that there might be anything front with the ceiling of the microwave.

This is what it looked like:

Presumably, every time we've been cooking in it, small fragments of burnt custard have been dropping onto our dinners, which is not a nice thought. 

So, on Monday evening, I spent a good bit of time scrubbing.  Turned the microwave onto it's back, got out the anti-bacterial spray, a cloth, a sharp knife for the little holes, and a nailbrush, and set to work.

This is what it looked like afterwards:

I feel much better now!

Simply in Season

For Christmas, my husband bought me an assortment of things off my Amazon wishlist. (This works really well - he doesn't have to guess and there's enough stuff on it that I still get surprises.  He's got one as well, that I use to choose his presents.)  One of them was a cookery book called Simply in Season.

I think this may have been promoted to the spot of favourite recipe book - even above the all important Delia's How to Cook and Complete Cookery Course.  One of the things I really like about it is it's full of recipes that real people have contributed, which means the recipes are for dishes that real people make and real families eat, and they're ordinary everyday food, rather than fancy stuff to make when company comes rounds and never dream of fiddling with the rest of the time.

I also really appreciate the philosophy behind the book, as it so closely matches my own: food should be as seasonal and local as possible; any cost-cutting should be done by reducing processed ingredients / expensive cuts of meat rather than reducing the quality; food should be bought from real people running small shops where possible. 

It's also particularly useful to have recipes that don't require ingredients that never coincide seasonally when using the vegetable box (something that can't be said for most recipe books I read).  Mind you, the box scheme we use tends to stretch the rules somewhat; we get potatoes, carrots, onions and mushrooms every week, all year, and they tend to import a proportion of the contents (we've had sweet potato two weeks in a row, and it does not grow in England).  in order to facilitate more variety.  I guess far fewer people would have the box otherwise, and it would cease to be a viable business.

The only problem with the book is that, being foreign, the common vegetables are a little different, and the seasons seem to be slightly out.  I think that winter and summer must be longer in Northern USA / Canada, whereas here they're relatively short seasons and spring and autumn are much longer.  But that just gives me an excuse to read more of the book, and it's hardly the book's fault that I live in a different continent.  The other thing that could, potentially, be an issue is that the recipes are written in quite a succinct fashion; they assume that the person reading them is already fairly competent in the kitchen.  This doesn't actually bother me, but I suppose it could if one wasn't used to cooking already.

So far I've made four of the recipes in the book: Hearty Oatmeal Pancakes, Kohlrabi with Peas and Potatoes, Sweet Potato Quesadillas, and Hearty Lentil Stew, and they've all been delicious.

Here is the recipe for the pancakes the way I've been making it, cut down to serve two people with dried apple added:

1 cup jumbo (rolled oats) soaked overnight in 1 cup natural yoghurt (in fridge)
1 egg and 30ml oil, beaten and mixed into oats.
1/4 cup wholemeal flour, 1 tablespoon sugar, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon, pinch of salt.  Mix and stir into batter.
Stir in a handful of dried apple rings, chopped up small.  (The book says to use blueberries of shredded apple, but dried apple is what I have on hand and it's scrummy).

Then grease frying pan and heat (low-medium heat - no higher), and put spoonuls of batter on to cook.  They take ages longer to cook than normal pancakes, so count the sparrows on the bird feeder a few times while it's happening.  If you turn them too early they crumble and fall apart badly.  They're really thick (although they spread out a lot more than they look like they're going to) so the heat needs to be to the low side of medium to stop the bottom burning (it probably could be lower, but I get impatient).
When the batter starts to bubble on top and the edges are getting dry, turn them over and cook the other side (the second side is much quicker).

They're so yummy that I don't put anything on them, although my husband has been devouring them covered with smooth orange marmalade.

Armenian Soup

New Year's Day Dinner 2009

Christmas Dinner 2008

Beetroot and Lentil Salad

A couple of weeks ago we got a large quantity of beetroot in our vegetable box (in fact, there are still three small ones in the cupboard under the sink, for which I have no plans as yet).  I'd read this recipe for lentil and beetroot salad relatively recently, and thought it might be worth a try.

Now, generally I don't eat salad.  I don't particularly like cold food (with a few exceptions, most of which are junk foods).  I eat sandwiches every day at work because there's no means of heating up anything, and it's a chore.  I get bored with them half way through and leave them uneaten and go and buy sausage rolls from the sandwich shop instead.  And every evening when G asks what I want in my sandwiches the next day I groan at the thought of them.

However, I'm rather of the opinion that I need to get the better of this issue (as I'm slowly working through my various food issues, trying to acquire healthier / more normal eating habits), so I persevered nevertheless.  I made it on Saturday, while cooking the soup for supper.

I think my lentils may be different to ones I was supposed to use, as my most certainly do not require 25 minutes cooking time, and had turned to mush within about 15.  I think maybe 5 or 10 would have been adequate.  With that said, however, it didn't look too bad mixed up in the bowl.

It looked better after it had sat overnight and the beetroot had leached redness everywhere.  We had a third each on Sunday night for supper, and it was actually rather nice.  It took me several mouthfuls before I got used to it - it even had raw onions in, which I was a bit worried about - but once I got used to the fact that it was cold and had uncooked vegetables in, I quite enjoyed it.

I ate the remaining third as dinner tonight (as I'm in on my own this evening), but I wasn't so brave and heated it up in the microwave first.  It's nice hot too.

The weekend was rather good for kitchen successes; I'll keep a note of this recipe too.  It might even work in the lunchbox instead of sandwiches sometimes.

Cabbage Pancakes for Breakfast

Lentil Sprouts

Root Vegetable Crisps

Lentil Curry