Almond & Garlic Kale with Sauté Potatoes & Poached Egg

I’m liking kale at the moment (and as a bonus it’s ridiculously nutritious and healthy) and still having a fair quantity of it further to my last vegbox delivery I decided to try a kale based main rather than sidelining it to a mere accompaniment. If you want to have a meat based main however you could have this as a side and leave out the poached egg, and even...

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Braised Pork & Potato with Fermented Beancurd

Apart from my little slip-up on my birthday weekend, I’ve been doing really well with no-red-meat October. A shame then that it suddenly occurred to me over the weekend that with my impending move in less than a month I should get a bit of a move on with emptying the freezer. October has henceforth become then “Red-meat-only-once-a-week-preferably-on-a-Sunday October”....

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Sichuan Style Tofu with Aubergine

I had a bad cold at the end of last week and the weekend and when it first hit I wanted comfort food. Spicy comfort food at that.. very spicy. The sort of spicy that gives a cold a cuff round the ear then a hard kick up the arse before flinging it out the door. I decided, in the end, as I had an aubergine in the fridge, to go for a kind of meatless mapo doufu (tofu) crossed with fish-fragrant aubergine,...

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Broccoli & Mushroom Stirfry

Red meat free October went slightly awry last Saturday but it was my birthday after all and out for dinner with friends I just couldn’t resist the lamb rump with kidney that was on the menu. Very delicious it was too and I heartily recommend those readers in North London to try out Mosaica in Wood Green’s “cultural quarter” (don’t ask). Sunday I was back on track though and chose to rustle...

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Sambhar - Lentil Curry with Vegetables

Sambhar or sambar is a lentil- based based vegetable curry dish popular in the Southern states of India such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu. I don’t think what I’ve come up with here is particularly authentic in all honesty (for a start I didn’t use sambhar powder but instead a curry powder labelled “Kinot” in the cupboard - I’ve no idea what’s actually in it!) but what I made does contain what...

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Roast Chicken and Celeriac

I used to hate roast dinners, Sunday’s were never a good food day for me. I found them incredibly boring and bland and didn’t like a whole host of vegetables that I now do. Amazingly I didn’t even particularly care for roast potatoes. I know, WTF? My poor mum, she loves a good roast and must have found me a right pain in the arse. And she always cooked the best roast , by far, of anyone I knew,...

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Spiced salmon with roast cauliflower & garlic chilli greens

So I’m being a bit of a dinnerdiary.org plunderer this week and the following is also heavily influenced by a couple of things I have seen there. I’m doing well with my no-meat-October thing.. even if I do say so myself. To the extent that I went out for dinner at the weekend (I had too many martinis to take photos so I shall not, sadly, be posting a review) and steered clear of beef, lamb or...

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Chicken with mustard & herb lentils

In case you don’t know, October is “Vegetarian awareness month”, well certainly in America anyway. Now, I had a sort of health MOT type thing recently where I was told that my cholesterol was just outside what it should be. Of course they didn’t tell me if it was good or bad cholesterol (i.e. HDL or LDL - I won’t go into a science lesson) but it did make me think that maybe taking a month off of...

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Cà ri gà - Vietnamese chicken curry with sweet potato

Indian culinary influences are more pronounced in the South of Vietnam so consequently one finds more curries there and in the centre - that said, the curries do tend to be more stew-like with a soupier sauce than their Indian or Thai counterparts. Another difference is that unlike Indian and Southeast Asian curries, pastes are less likely to be employed and a spice powder blend is used instead.  You...

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Sichuan Style Beef & Mooli Noodle Soup

I think I’ve made it fairly clear in previous posts that I love Sichuan food. Having a shelf full of Sichuan “store cupboard” ingredients such as douban jiang (chilli bean paste), Shaoxing wine (well, that's not actually from Sichuan but features frequently) and Sichuan peppercorns, I thought I’d try and come up with a soup recipe using these and a new favourite vegetable - mooli. Mooli, also known...

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