Spicy Aubergine and Tomato Salad

From Tagines & Couscous, Ghillie Başan, Ryland Peters & Small. 2010.

Christmas over it’s time to get back to normal food in normal-sized portions.

I heated the oven up to 200ºC and when it was ready put in an aubergine and two tomatoes. They were left to cook for half and hour, then tested to see if cooked. The aubergine was quite soft so all the vegetables were taken out and left to cool.

The aubergine was cut in half and all of the flesh scraped out and then chopped to a mush-like consistency. The tomatoes were peeled, cut in halves and the seeds removed. These also were chopped into small pieces.

Two garlic cloves were chopped and added to a saucepan with some olive oil. As soon as they began to colour the tomato pulp was added with a teaspoon of harissa and cooked for a few minutes more until it had begun to thicken. The aubergine was now added with a handful of chopped parsley and a handful of chopped coriander. The juice of half a lemon was added, the mixture was tested for seasoning and when adjusted to suit my palate it was ready to eat when it had cooled down to warm.

The salad was dished up and served with a couple of Suffolk Marys. The recipe suggested a sourdough bread, but I had just made the biscuits.

Aubergine and tomatoes are always a tasty combination and with the harissa to add some heat to the mixture and lemon juice to gave it a tang this was a pleasing salad. I found that with the biscuits it was sufficient for a meal.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Green Couscous with a Spring Broth

From Tagines & Couscous, Ghillie Başan, Ryland Peters & Small, 2010.

I’ve never really taken to couscous. I enjoy the grainy texture but it always seems to me to be very bland. Nevertheless, I do every so often make a couscous dish. I may eventually find that I discover the element that I seem to be missing.

For this dish I poured a cup of slightly salted warm water over a cup of couscous and let it stand to absorb the water. I then added a tablespoon of olive oil and rubbed it in with my hand. It then had butter cubes placed on top, it was covered with aluminium foil and placed in the oven while the broth was made.

I heated up about 4 cups of vegetable stock and when it was boiling added ½ cup broad beans, ½ cup green peas, a few green beans sliced, a sliced zucchini and some tinned artichoke hearts. These were let simmer for about 5 minutes until beginning to soften. Chopped herbs were added: coriander, mint and parsley.

The couscous was now served. Some couscous was placed in the centre of a soup dish, vegetables were strained from the broth and added on top and some broth poured around the couscous mound.

This was a pleasant dish though a little on the bland side. I think that I should have upped the flavour of the stock somewhat at the beginning stage. I depended too much on the vegetables flavouring the broth a bit more than they did. Nevertheless, the vegetables came through quite well, bringing their individual tastes to the fore.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔✔

Tagine of Lima Beans, Cherry Tomatoes and Black Olives

From Tagines & Couscous, Ghillie Başan, Ryland Peters and Small, 2010.

I always enjoy a good tagine and was in the mood to try another. This one was for butter beans, which I didn’t have, but there were lima beans in the pantry. So I soaked about 150g overnight. The next day they were drained, washed under running cold water and placed in a saucepan to cook for about an hour.

The main tagine then began. Four garlic cloves were peeled and crushed. Two red onions were cut in half and then into slices. A red chilli was sliced finely. These all went into the tagine with some olive oil and a knob of butter. They were cooked gently until softened.

Next into the pan went a teaspoon of coriander seeds given a little pound in the mortar and pestle, a small teaspoon of fresh ginger grated (the recipe called for heaps more than this: 25g, far too much in my reckoning), and a pinch of saffron. The lid went on the tagine and they were cooked for about 5 minutes.

Tomatoes were next. A punnet of cherry tomatoes went straight into the pan with a teaspoon of sugar and a little dried thyme. I was wary of the thyme and only added a little though 1–2 teaspoons was called for. This mixture was cooked until the tomatoes began to crinkle up.

Now the lima beans were added with some olives and the juice of a lemon. Seasonings were sprinkled in and it was all stirred and the lid went on for a few minutes to let it all heat through. Parsley was added when it was served.

I was a little disappointed with this tagine. Usually they are rich in flavours but there was something not quite right with the spice mix. I don’t think the ginger and the thyme went well together. Ginger, thyme and coriander is a blend I think I’ll avoid in future.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔

Tagine of Yam, Shallots, Carrots and Prunes

From Tagines & Couscous, Ghillie Başan, Ryland Peters & Small, 2010.

Whenever I discover a tagine of vegetables I always want to get to work and make it.

I found this one in a book of tagines, Tagines & Couscous, which I had used before with success.

I felt that the dryness of yam would be well accommodated with the sweetness of carrots and prunes. It did turn out to be so, especially since honey was added as well.

It was a simple dish to make. The shallots were peeled and kept whole. They were fried in olive oil and butter with some ginger and cinnamon sticks. When the shallots were turning golden the yam and carrots were added. After a few minutes sautéing, the prunes were added together with the honey. The stock was added. When it came to the boil it was turned down to a simmer and the tagine lid put on.

It was cooked in about half an hour, when chopped coriander and mint were added together with seasonings. It was served with a buttery couscous with almonds.

This was a different and flavoursome tagine with the sauce becoming quite syrupy.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Lentil Burgers with Country Salad

Armenian Lentil Burgers

from Veggie Burgers Every Which Way, Lukas Volger, Wakefield Press, 2010.

Being a great fan of burgers I was pleased to find this book. What a variety of vegetarian burgers are featured in it. There are burgers based on beans, grains and nuts; there are burgers with a vegetable base; and there are burgers made from tofu, seitan, tempeh and TVP. All in all I counted 30 different burgers. There’s enough there to satisfy any fan.

I decided on the Armenian lentil burgers because there were lentils in the pantry and I was having a bit of a lentil phase. Once the lentils were cooked the burgers were quite easy to put together. It was suggested that they be served with a cucumber-yoghurt sauce, an easy one to make.

The burgers were tasty and the sauce went well with them. They were, however, a little on the dry side and somewhat heavy.

I served them with a Country Salad with Peppers and Chillies from Tagines & Couscous.

Taste: ✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔

Country Salad with Peppers and Chillies

from Tagines & Couscous, Ghillie Başan, Ryland Peters and Small, 2010.

This salad looked as though it would be a good accompaniment for Armenian burgers made with lentils. The salad was composed of red onions, red and green capsicums, green chillies, celery, garlic and mint and parsley. Oil and lemon juice finished it off.

The fresh crunchy salad went well with the lentil burger and its cucumber yoghurt sauce.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Tagine of Artichokes, Potatoes, Peas and Saffron

Tagine of Artichokes, Potatoes, Peas and Saffron

from Tagines & Couscous, Ghillie Başan, Ryland Peters and Small, 2010.

I’ve been on a bit of a Moroccan cuisine phase lately and fascinated with cooking in the tagine. It’s not that easy to find recipes for meatless tagines so I was pleased to find this book that was based purely around tagines and couscous, although the meat-based recipes far outnumber the meatless.

This particular tagine states in the title that saffron is part of it. However, there is no saffron in the list of ingredients nor mention of it in the recipe itself. Lately I seem to be coming across books with recipes that have errors in them. It is disappointing because you depend upon the editors taking more care.

One other cookery book with errors,  quite a few in fact, is Vegetarian by Pippa Cuthbert and Lindsay Cameron Wilson. I did take the trouble of writing to the publishers, New Holland Publishers, to point out the errors but they didn’t even have the courtesy to acknowledge my mail. I guess they have no interest in what the purchasers of their books think. A poor attitude really because it does tend to work the other way as well. When I am purchasing cookery books in future the ones published by New Holland Publishers won't feature very high on my list.

The error in Ghillie Başan’s book is not a bad one. The recipe worked perfectly well without the saffron. There was turmeric in the dish so there was plenty of colour.

I had chosen this particular tagine because we were expecting a guest who disliked fruits in savoury dishes. This one did not have fruits but it did have preserved lemon. The meal turned out to be richly flavoured with spices and wonderful sudden hits of flavour when you bit into a piece of the preserved lemon.

It was also my first attempt at cooking with fresh artichokes. This part of the meal was not so successful as I don’t think I had prepared them totally correctly and we ended up having to use our fingers to pull off the leaves and drag them through our teeth. I don’t think this was the result intended. Nevertheless we enjoyed it all.

I'm sure I'll soon be back into this book to try out another tagine.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔