Category Archives: Ottolenghi

New ways of eating in 2012

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I’m a bit late with a “woo, 2012″ post and I already feel like it should be July, but I thought I’d update you with our home cooking adventures recently, as well as some heavenly ways to treat and indulge yourself without resorting to the fridge/pantry.

I’ve been wanting to eat healthier for a while but I wasn’t particularly good at sticking to it. While we rate ourselves highly in terms of percentage of home-cooked meals to takeaway (somewhere around 95%/5% I’m guessing), the things we cooked at home would be laden with butter, cream and cheese. Now I love all these foods but they weren’t doing us any good. And our portion sizes were way too big.

We’re now eating along the style of October Unprocessed (which I failed because I was unorganised and lured in by McDonalds) – eating foods that are as close to their natural state as possible, and minimal processed foods. This means a lot of vegetables – and I mean a lot – we literally cannot fit a weeks’ worth of vegetables in our crisper. We also have a freezer full of meats, and those are the building blocks for planning out our week of meals.

My sources of inspiration ranges from Whole Foods recipes – particularly their Heath Starts Here recipes, Waitrose Love Life recipes, Ottolenghi (as always!), Amanda from Mevsthebulge and Natalie Carter from Natalie Carter Talks Fitness, as well as various other blogs.

Some things we’ve been eating:

Swiss chard and lemon soup, courtesy of Milk & Mode
A very light, refreshing soup that fills you up thanks to the pasta (we used whole grain). Even the husband ate it, and he isn’t a soup fan at all.  

 
Ottolenghi’s roast chicken with sumac, za’atar and lemon (from Ottolenghi: the cookbook but you can see the recipe here)
A nice way of feeding 4 with a whole chicken in an unusual way rather than just a normal roast. We had this with a marinated pepper salad. 

Plain grilled chicken, sweet potato mash and beetroot
This looks like a very bare meal – it was meant to be, I was fuelling up before exercising for 3 hours on Tuesday so like to have something that will keep me going. I really love plain grilled chicken cooked on the George Foreman as it always seems to come out really succulent and juicy. I am also lamenting the lost years of thinking I hated sweet potato… what a waste. 
Simple beef noodle stir fry
A great Friday night dish that you can make with all your leftover vegetables in the fridge in about 20 minutes – I grilled the steak separately on the GF rather than wok cooking it and stirred it all together in the wok for about a minute (with the noodles). I made a simple Japanese dressing and poured over. I’ve also learnt that sesame oil is wasted as a cooking oil and now just use a dash of it as a sauce once it’s all cooked – healthier, and you get more of the flavour. 
So I bet you’re wondering about all this “treat” business. Well, I think that healthy eating gets a whole lot easier once you stop treating yourself with food. Keep your food for fuel, and use a whole range of other things for treats – whether it’s a hot bath, a good book, new workout gear – just start replacing these with food for when you need a pick me up and you won’t have to deal with the emotional let-down of eating a tub of icecream or bag of chips/crisps. 
One thing that I was treated to recently was this amazing hamper from Whole Foods. Now I’ve talked about Whole Foods enough that if you don’t know they have opened in Giffnock recently, I’m going to assume you must be a new reader. In the hamper was a great arrange of vitamins and supplements (which I have been taking religiously) as well as some beautiful face/body products. Some of the beauty products are exclusive to Whole Foods and are all natural. I am saving these to “treat” myself when I need a boost, but I am currently using the Neal’s Yard Frankincense Hydrating Cream and I love it to bits. If you’re looking for a pick-me-up, or need some TLC after the New Year, why don’t you pop into Whole Body (the beauty section) the next time you’re in Whole Foods?  

I’d love to hear some of your healthy recipe ideas – please share them with me!

(Edited to add: thanks to the lovely Jac at Tinned Tomatoes I’ve been able to add a recipes index which should make it really easy to browse through and find something that takes your fancy – with more recipes to come!)

Ottolenghi’s soba noodles with aubergine and mango

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I’d openly admit that I feel very uncomfortable calling eggplants aubergine, having called them eggplants for some 26 years previously. But because that’s what Ottolenghi calls his recipe, I’ll stick with it!

In the spirit of saving money, I recently borrowed Ottolenghi’s Plenty from my local library. I’ve discovered our library is an absolute treasure-trove of cookbooks and I’m planning on borrowing a whole bunch before I commit to buy. I’ve made quite a few recipes of Ottolenghi’s now, and not only are they all perfect in terms of the recipe, the flavour they deliver is absolutely amazing. If you’ve never cooked anything of his, you really should as you’ll be totally blown away by the taste.

Last night we made noodles with aubergine and mango. Soba noodles at our local Waitrose were pushing £4, and I’m not made of money so I just substituted vermicelli which we already had at home. If I was going to make this again I’d use a thicker noodle to help absorb the sauce, like an udon noodle.

This dish serves 6 as a starter and you can adapt it into a “meater” main by adding tofu. We made it for dinner – the vinegar sauce ended up being slightly overpowering for me after a while so I think it would be much better as a starter. Don’t let that make you think this wasn’t an amazing dinner though! We still have leftovers today so I think it could serve 3-4 as a main.

120ml rice vinegar
40g caster sugar
½ tsp salt
2 garlic cloves, crushed
½ fresh red chilli, finely chopped
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
grated zest and juice of 1 lime
Sunflower oil
2 aubergines, cut into 2cm dice
250g soba noodles/udon noodles
1 large ripe mango, cut into 5mm thick strips
40g basil leaves, chopped
40g coriander leaves, chopped
½ red onion, very thinly sliced

First make the dressing. In a small saucepan gently warm the vinegar, sugar and salt for up to 1 minute, just until the sugar dissolves. Remove from the heat and add the garlic, chilli and sesame oil. Allow to cool, then add the lime zest and juice.

Vinegar dressing
Heat up some sunflower oil on a grill pan and grill the aubergine cubes in two batches. Once golden brown remove to a colander, sprinkle liberally with salt and leave there to drain.
Diced eggplant

Cook the noodles in plenty of boiling salted water, stirring occasionally. They should take 5–8 minutes to become tender but still retaining a bite. Drain and rinse well under running cold water. Shake off as much of the excess water as possible, then leave to dry on a tea towel.

In a mixing bowl toss the noodles with the dressing, mango, aubergine, half of the herbs and the onion. When ready to serve add the rest of the herbs and mix well, then pile on a plate or in a bowl.

Again, I was taking these pictures on my iPhone 4S with the help of the Camera+ app – I’m considering using this as my full-time food blogger camera because it’s not only discrete but it takes pretty damn good pictures, I think!
Let me know what you think of the photos, and if you’ve made this recipe! It’s wonderful and light with a big punch of tangy vinegar. You really need the mango in it as it is the perfect contrast to all that tang. 

NOPI, Soho, London

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I learnt a lot of things when we visited London the other weekend. I learnt that perhaps I’m not the best with telling 24 hour time (1440 does not equal 2.20pm). I learnt that I’m not the best with directions; leading us in completely the opposite direction from NOPI coming out of Oxford Circus tube station. And I also learnt that sometimes you should pay more than a cursory glance at a menu when you’re looking for somewhere to go for lunch. Particularly if you’re looking for somewhere cheap. 


That’s how we ended up having lunch at NOPI. I had a 3 second glance at their menu on my iPhone, saw dishes all under £12 and though we were onto a super budget winner. We weren’t. I failed to realise that it was sharing plates, so you were more likely to be spending around £30 a head. No bother, it was my own fault for not looking properly as it is very clearly marked on the menu. 


In the end, it was a very happy misfortune: it was our one month wedding anniversary after all, and we were treated to an amazing meal. NOPI is a beautiful, crisp and clean space that is instantly relaxing. Until you get to the bathroom that is, then you might get lost trying to get out again (hint – look for the arrow on the floor!).


The menu has a great selection of dishes, and is easy to read and to narrow down dishes. We ate: 

Spicy aubergine tart, goat cheese, datterino tomato – £9
I’m still deciding, but I think this was probably my favourite dish of the day. I am crazy for aubergine (or as us crazy Australians call it, eggplant) and this was perfect. I loved the smokiness, and there was a perfect balance of goats cheese and pastry. Heavenly. 

Seared scallops, pickled daikon, green apple – £12
This was another favourite – a lovely crispy outside with the soft, silky texture inside was great, and I loved the sharp bite of apple with the delicate scallop. A light, refreshing dish. 

Softshell crab, nashi pear, peashoots – £12

I loved this dish for all the different flavours in it and all the different textures in the crab. Some may consider this a daunting dish to eat but it really is a wonderful treat and filled with contrasts of flavour. 

Chargrilled octopus, salmorejo sauce, morcilla – £10
I didn’t love this dish. I felt like the octopus was lacking flavour or punch, it just didn’t seem to deliver like I wanted it to because it looked beautiful (in a creepy octopus kind of way). 

Miso quail, grapes, verjuice, honey – £12
By this point, I was pretty full and flavour-fatigued to be honest. I loved this. Look how beautiful those chives are! My chives at home certainly don’t look like that. Quail and grapes are a great combination, the tartness of the grapes cuts through the meaty flavour of the quail to deliver a really well balanced dish. 

Spare ribs with smoky corn 

This doesn’t seem to be on the NOPI menu online so I can’t tell you how much it was. I’m not a ribs person but this dish persuaded me that they can be amazing. These were wonderfully meaty which I wasn’t expecting, and the meat was succulent and fell off the bone.

Mixed berries, white chocolate ice cream, angostura bitters – £7
Chocolate, peanut brittle, mace, crème fraiche – £8



This is what happens when the waiter delivers the crushing blow that the dessert you really want, the doughnuts with plum wine anglaise and berry compote is not available (doesn’t that sound wonderful?!). Your husband then graciously allows you to get the chocolate dessert while he gets the berries. (I’m pretty sure we’ve found the key to a perfect marriage already). I tried my best to convince him that the chocolate was awful and that he wasn’t going to like it, but the fact I was shoving it down my cake-hole as fast as I could was a dead giveaway.


The berries were a refreshing contrast to the chocolate dessert and I really like the bitters over the icecream. While this didn’t quite scream “amazing restaurant dessert” to me, I think the freshness and mixture of the berries was great, and I will definitely be adding bitters to icecream for special occasions. 


We were so happy to have lunch at NOPI, it was a pleasant surprise and a really relaxing way to spend an afternoon before hitting Wireless festival. Since eating at NOPI, I’ve been cooking as many Ottolenghi recipes as I can find on the internet and have a new-found love of all things vegetarian. 

What are some of your favourite vegetarian dishes?   


NOPI on Urbanspoon

Ottolenghi’s hot carrot salad and stuffed onions

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Seeing as we’re on an eating-out hiatus, I thought I’d do more home cooking blog posts. Last night we made a couple of recipes from my new favorite chef, Yotam Ottolenghi. This was inspired by eating at Nopi while we were in London last weekend – we’ll do a blog post on that amazing experience soon!


So last night we made the hot carrot salad as well as stuffed onions. We slightly modified each recipe though, so here is what we did. 


Hot Carrot Salad

500g carrots

2 onions, finely chopped
70ml olive oil, plus extra to finish
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp ground coriander
Salt
8 crumpets
Small tub of cold Greek yogurt
For the zhug
4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
2 medium-hot green chillies, roughly chopped
2 spring onions, roughly chopped
½ tsp ground cloves
½ tsp ground cardamom
½ tsp salt
1-2 tbsp water
40g chopped fresh coriander leaves, plus extra to garnish
  1. Peel the carrots and, depending on their thickness, cut them into cylinders, semi-circles or squares about 1.5cm thick. Place in a pot, cover with water, bring up to a boil, then simmer for eight to 10 minutes, until tender. Drain and leave to dry.
  2. Over medium heat, sauté the onion in the oil for 12 minutes, until soft and translucent. Add the carrot, sugar, ground coriander and a little salt. Increase the heat and cook, stirring, for three minutes more, then remove from the heat.
  3. To make the zhug, put the garlic, chilli, spring onion, spices and salt into a small food processor bowl. Pulse a few times, adding just enough water to help turn the ingredients into a coarse paste; don’t process too much – you want it to have a fairly rough, rustic texture. Stir in the fresh coriander, then stir into the carrots, adding salt to taste.
  4. To serve, warm the crumpets and place two on each plate. Reheat the carrots and spoon generously on top. Finish with yogurt, a trickle of oil and a little fresh coriander.



Stuffed Onions

350ml white wine
5 onions
3 small tomatoes
120g white breadcrumbs
90g feta, crumbled
80g parsley leaves, finely chopped
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 spring onions, finely chopped
3/4 teaspoon salt
Black pepper
Butter, for greasing the dish

  1. Preheat the oven to 180C and grease a baking dish with butter
  2. Combine the wine and stock in a saucepan and bring to the boil. 
  3. While this is happening, trim the top and bottom from the onions, cut them lengthways in half and remove the skin. If you’re using smaller onions, as I was, it might be easier to cut a sliver from the centre outwards, and then peel off the outer layers (so they are about 3/4s of the onion, instead of halves). Carefully remove most of the insides to leave 3 or 4 outer layers of onion. Carefully separate these. Turn the stock to a simmer and put the onion layers in it, a few at a time. Cook them for 3-4 minutes or until just tender then set aside. Keep the stock.
  4. To make the stuffing, grate the tomatoes into a bowl using a coarse cheese grater. Most of the skin will be left behind in your hands and you can discard it. Add the feta, breadcrumbs, parsley, olive oil, spring onions, salt and some pepper. Mix well.
  5. Fill each onion layer generously and roll into a ‘fat cigar shape’. Place fold side down in the dish. Pour over about 75ml of the stock. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until they are brown and charred in places and bubbling underneath. I found they probably only needed 40 minutes in a fan forced oven, and I needed to add more stock about 20 minutes in, as they’d dried out already. 



These two dishes were super easy to make and went together really well for a filling, but not heavy dinner for two. We even had enough left overs for lunch the next day!


What other Ottolenghi recipes would you recommend?