Chips and dips

To go along with the onion rings, samosas and pakoras (recipes in the previous posts), I frequently make the following dips. My mum taught me how to make the mint (pudhna) chutney which used to accompany a delicious meal when we had our birthday parties. When I look back now at our old birthday photos, we always had a big bowl of the chutney (the size of a large mixing bowl) and it was certainly popular with everyone.

Guacamole is another of my favourite dips and I adore it with nachos, tortilla wraps, burritos, enchiladas and even fried snacks. I have refined the recipe over years so that it it can be made in minutes!

Quick guacamole recipe:

• 2 avocados peeled, stoned and diced
• Sprinkle of chilli flakes
• 1-2 teaspoons lemon juice
• Salt to taste
• Handful chopped coriander 

1. Add all the ingredients, except the coriander, into a bowl.
2. Mash together with a fork until everything is combined. I quite like some chunks of avocado in the guacamole.
3. Add the coriander and mix thoroughly.

Punjabi mint and coriander chutney recipe:

Photo: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

• 1 bunch of coriander chopped with the stalks
• 1 bunch mint leaves
• 1 small onion
• 1 birds eye chilli
• 1 teaspoon dried pomegranate seeds
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• Salt to taste
• Water, if required

1. Add all the ingredients, except the water, to a food processor and blitz. 
2. If the mixture is too dry, add a splash of water to loosen the mixture.
3. Process the mixture until everything is combined.
4. Taste to check the seasoning and then serve with chips, pakoras, samosas, onion rings or even spicy veggie burgers.

Food for sharing

I find cooking therapeutic and enjoy cooking for others. Food was such an important part of my childhood and is still a major part of my life. We had 'dinner parties' weekly whether at our house or my grandparents. Although there wasn't a formal invitation it was an opportunity for us all to get together and share lovely food. My mum and my grandmother called the rest of us around to their homes whenever they were making something new or if they were cooking a family favourite including pakoras!

Although we used to eat pakoras as a teatime snack, they were one of the few things I learned to make properly before I went to university. I used to make pakoras and share them with my housemates. So Friday night, I made my potato and onion pakoras and as I was seeing a friend on Saturday I made extra for him.

• 5 medium potatoes peeled and cut in half and then sliced
• 3 onions sliced into half moon shapes
• 1 cup gram flour
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1-2 teaspoons dried fenugreek leaves (methi)
• 1-2 birds eye chilli chopped finely
• Salt to taste
• Water to combine
• Oil for frying

1. Combine all the dry ingredients.
2. Add a splash of water at a time to the dry ingredients and mix together thoroughly. The gram flour should coat the potatoes and onions.
3. Heat the oil in a wok or deep fat fryer.
4. When the oil is hot, add small amounts of the mixture to the oil and cook until golden brown.

Pakoras taste utterly delicious when they are first cooked and in my family we all love eating them with tomato sauce or mint chutney. If you are fortunate enough to have leftovers you can eat them in a tortilla wrap with salad. For me a toasted cob with tomato sauce is always a winner!

Too many ideas but what do I cook?

Tonight my mind was jumping from one recipe to another, what should I make and what do I fancy eating. I was thinking maybe risotto, potato cakes and focaccia but then I opened one of the few cupboards I have in the kitchen and there was the light bulb moment! So in the end I cooked coriander and cumin flatbreads with green lentils. I ate them with some lemon and chilli pickle I had made last week and cucumber raita.

Recipe for the easy to make flatbreads:

• 2.5 cups plain flour
• A pinch each of dried cumin, coriander, salt and sugar
• Quarter teaspoon dried yeast
• Warm milk

1. Mix the dry ingredients together.
2. Add enough warm milk to make a sticky dough.
3. Knead for five minutes. 
4. Place it in a bowl, cover and place somewhere warm to rise.
5. Once the dough has proved, lightly grease a baking sheet and turn on your grill to medium/high heat.
6. Take a tennis ball sized chunk of the sticky dough. Place it on the baking sheet and stretch it out with your fingers. The diameter will depend on how thick you like your flatbread. I normally stretch the dough into a naan shape which is around 5mm deep.
7. Place the flatbread under the grill and after a couple of minutes you will see golden spots appearing on the top of the bread. Turn it over and grill for another two minutes.
8. Remove and lightly brush with butter but you can eat it without the butter.

While the bread is rising you can make the green lentils and cucumber raita.

Recipe for the green lentils or my version of masar sabath dhal:

• 1 cup green lentils
• 3-4 cups water
• 1 teaspoon of ginger
• Half a teaspoon of turmeric
• Chilli flakes (quantity depends on how spicy you like your food!)
• For tempering - 1 tablespoon butter, half a teaspoon cumin and mustard seeds, pinch garam masala, 2 teaspoons chopped coriander
• Salt to taste

1. Place the washed lentils, water, ginger, turmeric and chilli flakes in a pan. Bring to the boil then simmer on medium heat for 30 minutes.
2. Once the lentils are cooked add salt to taste.
3. If the lentils are too dry add some boiled water to reach the consistency you prefer.
4. Heat a frying, toast the cumin and mustard seeds for a minute, add the butter. 
5. Once the seeds start to pop (be careful as they fly all over the place) add the garam masala and then take off the heat and stir into the lentils.
6. Finish with the coriander.

To make the cucumber raita, grate a 10cm piece of cucumber making sure you squeeze out the excess water from the grated cucumber. Mix the grated cucumber with 3-4 tablespoons of Greek or plain yoghurt, some mint and dill.

A burger a day keeps the migraine away

I have had a hell-ish week-long migraine which I thought was never going to end. I finally felt like myself this morning and the first thing I wanted to do was make and eat homemade vegetarian burgers. I don't think I know anyone who doesn't love a good burger, whether its a veggie or non-veggie one. Burgers are so versatile, easy to make and amazing to eat.

I have made my own burgers for years and I recently bought 'The Best Veggie Burgers on the Planet' by Joni Marie Newman which has 101 burger recipes. Sounds insane but it is a brilliant book.

I felt so inspired I made my own homemade kidney bean and sweet potato burgers.

• 2 sweet potatoes cooked and mashed
• 2 potatoes cooked and mashed
• 1 can red kidney beans
• 1 medium onion chopped
• 2 tablespoons of flour
• Half tsp each of oregano, chilli flakes and ground cumin
• 1 tbsp lime/lemon juice
• Coriander and seasoning to taste

1. Mix together all the ingredients until you get a sticky dough. Cool the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes as it will be easier to form the burger patties.
2. Take a golf ball sized piece of the dough and form into a burger.
3. Place the burger on a lightly oiled baking sheet.
4. Repeat with the rest of the mixture.
5. When you are ready to cook, preheat the oven to 210c and cook for 30 minutes.
6. Serve with lots of tomato relish, spring onions and a green salad.

I made around eight burgers with this recipe and one of the comments I received was 'this is the best burger you have ever made.' Bye bye Mr Migraine.

Lasagna, is that really the best that they could do?

Photo: Simon Howden

I went out for a friend's leaving lunch yesterday. There was only one veggie option on the menu and guess what it was? Yes you guessed right, it was the vegetable lasagna! Don't get me wrong I quite like a lasagna with a rich tomato sauce and grilled cheese on top but that doesn't mean that that is the only thing I or any other vegetarian eats.

It really surprised me because vegetarian and vegan food is available in most places. Simon Rimmer cooks one vegetarian meal each Sunday on Something for the Weekend and MasterChef showcased vegetarian food with Yotam Ottolenghi this year.

Things have really moved on because a few years ago places didn't have many vegetarian choices, let alone anything vegan on the menu. I  remember that I often made a meal out of a couple of side dishes but it wasn't a problem because I didn't expect to be catered for. I was the 'fussy veggie' but I didn't expect to go back to being the fussy veggie again in 2011!
 
The said establishment is very popular, it caters to a certain demographic (very nice cars were on show in the car park) and is in quite close proximity to the Vegetarian Society's headquarters. So you would think that there would be more than one option on the menu or at least one which shows some thought and imagination... am I really asking for too much?

Why do I crave fried food?

I don't know what it is about fried food, but why is it always delicious and why is one bite just never enough? I think I eat pretty healthily as my diet includes fruit, veg, pulses, beans and some dairy but no matter how flavoursome a meal is, on the weekends I always crave fried food.

Today, it was homemade onion rings in batter. I made a quick batter with plain flour, water, seasoning, chilli flakes and a hint of ginger. I dipped onion rings in the batter and deep fried them until golden brown. I had them with some salad and tomato sauce. Simple but utterly scrumptious!
 
Last week it was mini coloured papad squares (poppadoms) which you can buy dried from any Asian deli.

I think my craving stems from my childhood when on Sundays the whole family (uncles and aunts included) would have a late afternoon meal at my grandmother's house. My grandmother was a brilliant cook, she was experimental and loved making new meals with big flavours. And my grandmother had a sweet tooth which means she made the tastiest sweet and savoury food.

So for a period, it could have been for a few months but it felt like years, she used to make us all pakoras with mint chutney. I can still remember what they tasted like and she used to save all the scraps into a little bowl for me which I would then devour, after obviously eating platefuls of the pakoras with chutney and tomato sauce. My grandmother was extremely generous so when I say platefuls, yes I do mean platefuls. A Punjabi house never runs out of food and so there was always enough food for the family and even my grandparents' friends who used to pop by!

My quick and tasty samosas

After a night out I fancied some homemade samosas today but I had some leftover mashed potato and nearly a full loaf of wholemeal bread to use too. Light bulb moment - it was time for my quick and tasty bread samosas!

I love samosas but they do take ages to prepare and compile with traditional homemade pastry. My mum used to make the dough, roll out small circles of the pastry and cook the pastry on one side on a tawa. We would get two samosas from each pastry circle. I would then create the outer cone of the samosa, add the filling and then seal. This production line method was fun and relaxing but when we were making around a hundred samosas for a birthday celebration, it did take hours. It was definitely a job for a long lazy weekend.

So here is my recipe for making 12 baked bread samosas. I have used sweetcorn as well as peas because my boyfriend is obsessed with sweetcorn but you can use any filling that you like or have available.

• 12 slices of wholemeal bread rolled out thinly with a rolling pin
• 4 medium potatoes boiled and mashed/ chopped
• 1 cup of frozen peas and sweetcorn kernels
• 1 tbsp of oil
• Half a tsp each of mustard seeds, cumin seeds and garam masala
• 1 tsp of ginger
• Quarter teaspoon of chilli flakes
• 1 tbsp of chopped coriander
• Salt to taste
• Glue mixture - mix 2 tbsp flour and some water until you get a glue consistency
• Oil to brush each samosa

1. Add the oil, mustard seeds and cumin seeds to a frying pan and heat until the seeds start to splutter.
2. Stir in the frozen peas and sweetcorn.
3. Add the ginger, garam masala, chilli flakes, and salt. Stir and cook for a few minutes until the mixture is cooked. Finish with the coriander.
4. Add this cooked mixture to the potatoes and mix thoroughly.
5. Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6.
6. If you haven't already done so, use a rolling pin to roll out each slice of bread until you can't roll it out anymore.
7. Add a spoonful of the filling on the right half of the slice. Brush the glue on the outer edges of the bread slice, then roll over the left side of the slice so it covers the filling, and press down the outer edges to seal. You can cut around the edges and take off the crusts.
8. Make all the samosas in the same way. Place on a baking sheet, brushing each samosa with oil.
9. Place the tray in the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes until the samosas are golden brown.