Chickpea Curry

First of all, you're welcome.

Second, everyone who eats this likes it. Everyone from affirmed curry haters to curry lovers. Give it a try. I got the idea from a curry an Indian lady made for my high school graduation (uuugh, ages ago) but adapted to suit my tastes and preferences (for heavy cream).

You'll need some olive oil, a can of chick peas, some onions, garlic, curry powder (or a mix of spices as mentioned before), ginger (dried or fresh), a can of chopped tomatoes, heavy cream, salt and pepper, and rice to serve it with.

Dice the onions as finely as you care to and fry them with olive oil until they're soft, but not browned. Add some salt to the cooking onions to keep them from browning.
Once the onions have undergone long slow softening, add fresh garlic (or my garlic paste here), the curry powder and the ginger (here powdered). Stir for about a minute to combine it all and toast the spices a bit. Don't know why I do that, I just do.
Drain and rinse a can of chick peas, then add them to the pot, stirring them in and coating them with the curry and onion mixture.
Next add the chopped tomatoes plus about 1/3 cup of water and let it simmer, covered, on the stove for about 20-30 minutes until the tomatoes are broken down.
It will look something like this. The water will steam off and the sauce will be a bit thickened.
Next add the cream and stir in. How much cream? I tend to go by color, but really you should put in as much as you like to suit your taste. So basically I have taken a perfectly adequate vegan meal and made it non-vegan but oh so delicious. You can keep it vegan by using coconut milk instead--that also tastes fabulous and feels even more indulgent than the cream (but I'm not sure which actually has the worse nutritional content--don't know, don't care).
It's done! Serve in a bowl with fresh rice. So good.

Pork Chops with cider, mustard and cream

Oooh, this is soooo good. I mentioned this and the vegetarian version a while ago, but I've decided the vegetarian version is not worth it. The non-veg version is the way to go, if you can.

You're going to need a pork chop, some hard cider, some wholegrain mustard and cream. Nigella Lawson's recipe has gnocchi to serve alongside. So that's what I'm trying here. It's the kind of gnocchi that comes premade in packages in British supermarkets. Don't know if they're available in the States, but it's also totally worth it making your own.

So season that pork chop.

And fry or grill it up.

Now, in the pan where you fried the pork chop, pour in a small cup of cider and reduce it down a bit.

Then add 1 big tablespoon of wholegrain mustard. Nigella used wholegrain and I used it too because it's sooooo pretty in the end.

Then add about a quarter cup of heavy cream and swirl it in.

Let it reduce and thicken a bit.

Meanwhile, you can boil your gnocchi. Drain it and throw it into the sauce. It'll thicken a bit and become totally luscious.

Spoon the gnocchi into your plate and spoon the extra sauce over the pork chop.

Doesn't it look beautiful??!!??

Oh man, it tastes so good too! It's got a subtle flavour, it's rich and warm and savoury. And the gnocchi is really soft and comforting like mashed potatoes. Come to think of it, you could have any carb with this--potatoes, mashed potatoes, I've had it with bread. It's soooooooo good. It tastes so good I'm going to make it right now (hey, it's lunchtime!).

Make this today. You will not regret it.

PS One of these days I'm going to make gnocchi again and take full pictures of it. Coming to a screen near you.

UPDATE: I'm eating it now. I don't even know what to do with myself it's so good.

Potato Curry and fried eggs

Okay, this is going to be good.

I can't claim 100% credit for this, but I think I can claim around 60%. I've been making curried potatoes for years. The Economist and I usually eat it with rice, but eventually realised we were pretty much bombarding ourselves with carbs. We stopped eating it for a while, but recently I found a Nigella Lawson recipe of a type of potato curry served with... wait for it... a fried egg, dipping the spicy potatoes into the runny yolk. I'm a big fan of anything that requires dipping into runny egg yolk. Add to these positives the fact that this is quick, easy and absolutely delicious. PLUS, totally vegetarian. PLUS PLUS it's made from staples you usually just have on hand, so no special shopping trips for this. Let's get into it.

It's pretty simple: potatoes, eggs, garlic (or garlic paste as I have here), and curry powder. If you've got it, fresh parsley, coriander or any other fresh herbs really make it.

Chop the potatoes into bite size pieces and put in a pot of cold water. Rinse the potatoes once, then refill the pot with cold water, set it boiling and cook until the potatoes are cooked through but still holding their shape. Should take about 15 minutes.

Drain the potatoes and keep them on standby while you prepare the spices.

Put a few good glugs of olive oil in big wide frying pan. Add your garlic, whatever form you use. If it's raw, let it soften a bit to take away the edge.

This curry powder is a special mix my mom makes. She gave me a big bag at Christmas and I put some into an empty jar. I use 2-3 teaspoons for a full pan of curry. It's pretty strong and spicy. If you don't make your own curry powder (who does? I don't, I got it from my mom after all) just experiment a bit adding different spices, including chili powder (important for a hot curry), ground coriander, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc, etc. whatever you want. I like it hot.

Lovely brick red. At the same time, add some salt. Okay, lots of salt. These potatoes need lots of seasoning.

Add the potatoes, which will hopefully have steamed off any extra liquid and stir gently to coat.

So golden and delicious. I can't ever keep myself from eating a bunch before I'm even done with the rest of the meal. Cover the potatoes and put them aside while you cook the eggs.

Just fry them up in a separate pan. Season with salt and tons of pepper.

Add the herbs and enjoy. The spicy, grainy potatoes are delicious alongside the accompaniment of the bland, sort of buttery eggs. Mm-mm, so good.

RECIPE PROFILE

Recipe Type: Dinner

Vegetarian Classification: Vegetarian

Diet Ho Hum

I'm trying to eat better, which tends to mean more veggies, less of everything else. Here's a lunch I had recently: stir fried veggies with soy sauce and a piece of salmon for lean protein.

I'm not a big fish eater, mainly because I hadn't figured out how to cook it until recently. Now I know it's very easy, very fast and actually pretty tasty. Not a vegetarian dish, unless you skip the salmon or use something else. Can be served with rice.

Get a bunch of vegetables. I really like eggplant, but the Economist does not. Good thing this was a solitary lunch.

Chop them up and stir fry them in olive oil.

Throw in some soy sauce at the end. Yummy. (Do it right at the end or it'll burn and smoke away.)

Salt and pepper that salmon. I love black pepper.

Grill up the salmon on the same pan. It's a pretty good combination of flavors. And healthy as heck. (Is that an expression?)

RECIPE PROFILE:

Recipe Type: Lunch or Dinner

Vegetarian Classification: Non-vegetarian, Adaptable

Roasted Butternut Squash with red onions and goat's cheese

Okay, this is a dish I'm really proud of. It's an adaptation of a mix between a Nigella Lawson recipe and a Valentine Warner recipe I saw on his show. The primary component is butternut squash, that fantastic vegetable (is it a vegetable actually?) that The Economist and I eat over and over again all winter because its delicious, really healthy, really versatile and because at home as children we both ate butternut squash (or sometimes yams or sweet potatoes), cooked, mashed up, slathered with butter and buried in brown sugar. As an adult I've learned to appreciate the natural sweetness of butternut squash. In this recipe it is more savory than sweet though. It's just cubed and roasted with chunks of red onion (which also goes sweet in the oven), seasoned with herbs and dotted with tangy goat's cheese, melting and oozing on the top.

As delicious as butternut squash is, it's actually kind of a pain to get to its flesh. For some recipes you can get by just halving it, but for this recipe I want cubes. Here is how I do it.

I think you're supposed to, but I don't bother to wash the outside. Mistake?

I split the squash (I've used two here) in half lengthwise. This can be difficult because the flesh is so hard. Or it might be because I have the crappiest knives in existence. I don't peel, again, probably because I have the crappiest peeler in existence.

Once they're split, I use a sharp-edged spoon to gouge out the seeds as cleanly as I can. I have moderate success with this.

Then I take each length of squash and cut it into 1-2cm sections.

Then I take each section, and pare off the skin, a small piece at a time, leaving me with a pile of skin slivers. There is a bit of wastage this way, but I find it clean, methodical and satisfying knifework.

...Little more...

Plus you end up with nice even chunks of flesh. The Nigella recipe says to leave the skins on, but I've tried that and it's no good. The skin just doesn't taste very good.

Then I peel some red onions, I used 3 medium ones this time.

Cut them into thick-ish chunks. You want some skinny bits to burn and caramelize and the thicker parts to get soft, sweet and moist.

Once everything is cut up, I spread it out in pans. I've got one medium pan and a second small pan for some over flow. Coat everything in a few spoonfuls of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper. Add some sage (I used dried) and thyme (I had fresh, so I used that, dried is fine too) and mix it all up to coat. Stick it in the oven; it will take about half an hour.

Before it goes in. It's so pretty!

Once it's roasted and the squash is cooked through, you can divide it between plates (or I guess put it on one big serving platter).

And crumble some goat's cheese on top. The goat's cheese is nice and salty and sharp. The onions are sweet and juicy. The squash is sort of savoury and sweet too. It's good as a whole dinner or a side dish. Bon apetit!

RECIPE PROFILE

Type: Dinner or Side Dish

Classification: Vegetarian

Yogurt Experiment

RECIPE PROFILE

Recipe Type: Side Dish, or Dessert

Vegetarian Classification: Vegetarian

First of all, I'd like to demonstrate that this is the result of us not cooking food ourselves one night: frozen pizza, sadly burnt.

I did a little food experiment with yogurt and passionfruits. I had some vanilla yogurt. Please excuse the fact that this is some fruity organic brand, it just happened to be the cheapest at the store.

Passionfruit is a strange, strange fruit. It's in season right now and you can get 3 for 1GBP. You cut them open and and eat the pulp and seeds. They are super sour and tart, but delicious with something smooth and creamy like yogurt. Here we go.

Yogurt in bowl. Portion control

Cut that weird, dry, wrinkly fruit in half.

Scoop out the pulp and seeds.

Here we have the pulp of one passionfruit.

Give it a swirl to make it pretty.

It tasted really good, but the seeds are very hard and crunchy and my teeth can't take it. Next time I made this, I put it through a sieve to get the pulp and juice out and chucked the seeds. Pretty darn tasty, fast and easy.