Creamy Lentil Curry

Another recipe that used some of my Christmas skipping haul. I washed and cooked up some red lentils till they started to go a bit mushy (I actually blended them as well for a smooth consistency). I fried up some various curry spices, onion, and garlic in a frying pan with lots of oil. I added this to the lentil mixture, along with some cooked chickpeas and some carrots and broccoli that I got from the skip and let it all mellow out together.

I don't eat dairy, but I had six cartons of skipped cream to use up, so I threw one in to the curry. It really set it off and gave it a lovely, well, creaminess. Coconut milk would give the same effect, but you don't often find that in the skip. Serve with some rice, or potatoes, or whatever you have lying around and you're done. It's pretty quick, and an especially good way of using up left-over veg, of which there is plenty at Christmastime.

Vegan Apple Crumble

In my Christmas Eve skipping haul there were about a dozen packets of pre-sliced apples & grapes in snack-packs. There was also a bag of peanuts & cashews. And a few dozen pitta breads. So, for Christmas dessert I decided to make an apple crumble mainly from these ingredients.

I mixed the apples with some fair trade muscovado sugar and spices (nutmeg, cinnamon, mixed spice). I placed them at the bottom of a baking dish. Then I made the topping. I crumbled about four pittas into a bowl with some of the nuts (washed as they were salty) and some brown sugar and a bit of flour. I added in a good bit of oil and mixed it all up until I got some nice crumbly clumps. I piled this on top of the apple mixture and stuck it in the oven. You don't want the top burning, so don't have it on too hot. I also poured some maple syrup over it towards the end. It's done whenever you want to eat it! It depends on your crumble preference.

It will hold out of the fridge in a cool place for a few days and I think it's even better cold.
(Props to Erin and Anna for getting me on the crumble train.)

- Dara

Skipping Christmas

I've been doing a good bit of skipping these days, or dumpster-diving as the Americans call it, somewhat less pleasantly. To those who have not tried it, I would highly recommend it. It's essentially reclaiming often-perfect food from going to waste, usually from a skip out the back of a supermarket or shop. I'm at home in Ireland currently and haven't really done much since I came home for Christmas. So, at 11pm on Christmas Eve I decided I must go and see what my hometown had to offer. I dragged my brother (and his car) along with me and soon hit the jackpot out the back of the big, evil, British supermarket chain. You know, the blue one, starts with a T. Anyway, this is what we took home, but we could have taken twenty times this amount and fed the entire town for Christmas dinner. But we didn't, we just took what we could use and carry.

      (I even found a chocolate bunny, but that didn't make it into the picture. )

Skipping is my favorite way to scavenge for food. It sure beats shopping, which I really hate and need money for. You don't have to queue, worry about prices, fair trade, ethics, animal treatment, the carbon footprint of your food - it's all rotting in a bin, so anything you take and use can only be positive. You're not supporting any unsustainable or cruel industries, in fact you're feeding off the waste they're causing. It's beautiful.

Though there is a stigma when people first hear about skipping. Like my brother said, 'You imagine someone eating a half-eaten pizza from a dirty bin,' like in those (American) movies. But it's really not like that at all. Often supermarkets are quite meticulous in their binning of foods, double- and triple-bagging goods. Heaven forbid, even the bin should be a mess. And everything's wrapped in plastic these days, which is quite convenient. Even if you don't eat the food you take from the skip, you can compost it and recycle the packaging.

My favorite bit of it all is probably creatively using up the food. It's like 'Ready, Steady, Cook'. Work with the ingredients you've got. In fact, I'm sure that could be a good show: 'Ready, Steady, Skip'. Someone may have suggested that to me before (Webby, was it you?). If no one claims it I'll take full credit for the idea.

My next few entries will concern using these ingredients to make some creative veggie dishes (and even the Christmas hams were used up on the day by the non-veggies in the house). More to come!

- Dara

Grilled Garlic Aubergines with Wilted Chard

Chard? It might be.... It's a green leafy vegetable from the veg box that is nice wilted anyway.

The aubergines were slices and grilled, with salt and olive oil on them. When they were cooked I spread a bit of crushed garlic on each piece and put it under a low heat on the grill for a few minutes. If it gets brown it gets a bit nasty, so keep a close eye on it.

I ate this with slices of smoked tofu, and olive oil drizzled all over. Tasty!

Eggs on a bed of Chickpeas, Peas and Onion.

The base of this dish was originally soup. In it's first incarnation I fried some onion and garlic, added some water and veg stock, then chickpeas and finally frozen peas. The stock was so delicious I drank it all and was left with a solid base on which to place boiled eggs. Before I did this, I mixed it with my lovely fennel fronds in olive oil, and some herbs provençal. Looks a bit strange perhaps, but it's truly delicious.

Fennel and Potato Soup

This is a basic soup which is a nice comforting evening meal.

Boil up a pan of water, then add a good amount of diced potatoes (maybe 4 medium sized ones) and 2 teaspoons of veg stock.

Then add two diced onions and four cloves of chopped garlic. Let it boil for about 10 minutes.

Next, add a chopped fennel bulb and let the whole thing boil down until the potatoes disintegrate and the whole thing starts to look a bit soupey.

Serve it with fennel fronds sprinkled on top. I used my fennel preserved in olive oil.

Butterbean, Leek and Pea Salad with Fennel Dressing

This is a beautifully delicate and satisfying salad.

Fry a leek in butter. When it's almost done add a handful of frozen peas and cooked butterbeans. Let the excess moisture evaporate, then add some chopped fennel fronds and lemon juice.

Add a bit of salt and pepper if that's your thing, and serve on lettuce leaves with some toast and olive oil on the side.

Other herbs will do if you don't have fennel. I got a fennel buld with massive fronds in my organic veg box so I chopped it up and put it in a jar with olive oil to preserve it. Coming up are some other recipes that use this fennel in oil...

Tomato, Mozzarella and Strawberry Salad with Fresh Basil

Does what it says on the tin. Lovely.

Serving suggestion: eat with hot buttered toast.

Gwen's Quick Broccoli and Stilton Quiche

Gwen created a delightful new dish, wrote some lovely sentences about it, and was published in Atom Magazine! But Gwen is too modest or lazy to tell you that, so I am telling you. Follow the link for food: Atom Magazine Fall 2011

Good work, Gwen! I'll have to step it up a notch.

Dara's Sandwich no. 5

Courgette, tomato, fresh onion, and caramelised onion houmous on Toasted Rye Bread

All of the vegetables for this one came from right here on the farm in Sweden where I'm working. Even the homemade sourdough rye bread is made from rye flour from the farm. Good lunch.

- Dara

Curried Potato, Aduki Bean Mix, and Beetroot Salad

Hej! I'm currently working on an organic vegetable farm near Björklinge in Sweden with some other friendly folk. We work hard, and it's pretty hot here, so the best bit is coming in to a big, well-deserved lunch. We take turns cooking and I volunteered for my turn the other day. It was my first time cooking for eight people, but luckily there was enough for everyone to have seconds! Oh, and all of the ingredients, apart from the spices and beans, came from right here on the farm.

Curried Potato, Aduki Bean Mix, and Beetroot Salad

First, I chopped and boiled up the potatoes. While they were cooking I diced and fried up up some onions in a big pot. I added some sugar, curry spices, and plenty of oil to the onion mix. Once the potatoes were done I added them in and stirred it all up.

For the bean mix, I chopped up some old tomatoes and fried them up with some of the chopped onions and oil. I added lots of lovely chopped courgettes and some water, cider vinegar, and a tiny bit of water with a stock cube. After this had simmered for a while I added in some aduki beans, that had been cooked and conveniently frozen, and left the whole thing to simmer a bit more.

I roasted some beetroot that was lying around and diced it up with some cucumber and tomato for the salad. As a dressing, I mixed some nice Swedish mustard, homemade cider vinegar, sugar, and oil.

And there you have it! Food for eight hungry farmers, plus second helpings!

Vegetarian Travel: Czech Republic/ Vienna

I recently went on a trip that took in lots of the Czech Republic and Vienna and took photos of my meals for a travel blog. I stayed with lots of lovely hosts who showed me great places to eat and drink and even cooked me some lovely meals. So big thanks to Paty, Lenka, Sarah, Anna and Michal.

I had been eating little or no dairy before the trip, but thought that might be a little hard while travelling. So here are a few shots of the vegetarian & vegan meals I had along the way. I'm afraid I was a poor journalist and forgot to record the names of the places I ate, but hopefully my hosts might be able to help me amend this after reviewing the meals we shared!

Prague: 

Indian Restaurant near Old Town Square

 This was charged by weight and came to about 6 euro,
which is expensive for Prague, but it was quite the meal!

This dirty snack is available in lots of Czech pubs, good for hangovers!

Camembert Cheese pickled in oil with garlic & onion

Vegan City - a strange Asian/ faux meat restaurant

 Vegan Prawns & Mushroom Soup

Quite tasty! No idea what these vegan prawns are made of.

Tofu Wrapped in Seaweed

aka. Horrible Explosion of MSG

Thanks to Paty, one of my hosts in Prague, for making this delicious one:

Pastry with Spinach and Balkan Cheese

Brno: 

Vegalité

This two-course lunch cost me about 3 euro!

 Beetroot Soup Starter

 Fried Cheese and Potato with Salad

Vienna:

Thanks to my host, Sarah, for this delicious Austrian dish:

Marillenknodel,

Traditional Austrian Apricot Dumplings

Maschu Maschu

Fried Pastry filled with Feta Cheese & Spinach, served with tzatziki

I also made a wee film on my trip, which you can see here:

http://www.fakedogfilms.com/blogs/article/64/dara-s-travel-blog-one

 - Dara

Camping

Here are edibles for a 4-day camping trip:

What you see up there fed two people for a period of four days - that's three meals a day plus snacks. We bought some much appreciated grapes and raspberries, and a baked potato with veg curry between the two of us, but apart from that it's all up there.

Below are four meals that came out of the above ingredients. Read and imagine!

This is cous cous with sprouting beans, flavoured with chilli mix and tomato paste.

Amazingly fresh tasting and filling.

Now, this one was a stroke of genius. It's TVP with the chilli spices and tomato paste again, this time with sun dried tomatoes and lovingly surrounded by a tortilla wrap.

Again with the TVP - this time with pasta, stir-in pasta sauce (light to carry!) and sun dried tomatoes. You would not believe how warm and comforting that lovely thick sauce was in a cold Scottish field. Beautiful.

Now, before thinking too much about the meal below please remember that camping is hungry work, and by the fourth day having something hot that will sit there in your belly making its presence known is exactly what you want.

Ok, so please find below a pitta bread topped with baked beans, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, TVP and (ahem...) red wine. It tasted good. Honestly.

There's something strangely satisfying about seeds that have soaked up a load of liquid - their texture becomes easier to eat and - I'm told - digest. And no-one can deny that red wine is a good liquid. As is bean juice. Just take a look at this concoction...

Dara's Sandwich no. 4

 

Roasted Red Pepper & Courgette with houmous, rocket and tomato

in a home-made brown bap. 

I roasted some peppers and courgette with some olive oil and a bit of sugar till they were nice and tender. I put them in a lovely brown bap I'd made and I added some houmus, sliced tomato and a bit of rocket. On the side, I had some salad which I tossed in the left over juice from the roasted pepper and courgette dish. Delicious!

See my houmous recipe here.

- Dara

Dara's Home-made Chips and Ketchup

Surprise a loved one, or indeed yourself, by making some lovely home-made chips and ketchup instead of frozen chips! It only takes about 5 or ten minutes to prepare.

Chips
Chop up some potatoes length-ways, or however you would like you chips to look. Spread them evenly on a baking tray and not on top of each other. Coat them with oil and any seasoning you like (we're getting into wedge territory here, but I suggest some chopped garlic). Place them in a pre-heated oven for about 30 minutes, give or take, depending on how thick you cut the chips. Give them a shuffle around halfway through. While they're cooking, let's make some ketchup!

Ketchup
Most ketchups are unnecessarily loaded with salt, but if you leave it out you can have as much ketchup as you like without worrying about your ticker! So, put a good scoop of tomato puree in a dish, depending on how much ketchup you want to make. To this I add;

crushed garlic (or garlic powder)
crushed onion (or onion powder)
malt vinegar
cider vinegar
black pepper
unrefined sugar dissolved in warm water (or syrup/ honey)
and the secret ingredient - paprika!

The quantity is up to you, start small and taste as you go along to see which ingredients you want more of. Easy on the vinegar, as it's quite strong. Paprika really sets it off, though, so plenty of that. Add the sugar mixture to sweeten and thin out the ketchup as you desire. And there you go! Serve that with your chips and impress your guests, or yourself.

- Dara

Plum, Kiwi and Apple Salad.

This is really tasty!

I think that this salad encapsulates what I want to do with this blog: change people's attitudes to food so that we eat consciously and flexibly.

This is the result of needing to use up fruit. I'm not a big fruit eater... As far as I'm concerned if you're hungry you eat food that will fill you up, (i.e. not fruit), if you're not hungry you don't eat. So when I eat fruit I prefer it in things to just on its own. Apart from apples; they're wonderful and great. Feel free to try to change my mind on this dismissive attitude to fruit - I'm trying to eat more of it.

Fruit is a blast of sugar (natural or no, it's still sugar). Sugar is a simple carbohydrate which makes your blood sugar levels disco disco, so it's really good to eat it with some protein so that your energy levels don't disco disco crash. Protein is more of a... erm... a tango. If we're sticking with the dancing analogy, then slow dances of protein and complex carbs are better for filling you up for longer, and for keeping your energy stable. The moral of the story is - eat nuts/seeds/cheese with fruit.

Right, so how to make this salad is:

1. Grate a load of apples and mix in some lemon juice. (Otherwise it'll go brown and icky.)

2. Throw in some sunflower seeds.

3. Cut up some plums and kiwis and mix them with the apple and seeds.

If there's any apple left over then it'll go really nicely with grated carrot to make a salad.

Homemade Pasta with Leek, Mushroom and Broccoli Sauce.

This is me showing off my new pasta machine.

Pasta dough is just flour and eggs with a bit of lukewarm water. I've made it before using a rolling pin, but a pasta machine is just very very cool. And surprisingly therapeutic. Word of warning though - it does take a wee while.

For the sauce I sauted some leeks and garlic in olive oil then added some sliced mushrooms and cooked them till they were nicely juicy. Then I slopped in half a pot of creme fraiche and some black pepper and added the whole lot to the cooked pasta. I also threw in some very finely cut cooked broccoli.

Pasta should be cooked in lots and lots of boiling water. I demand that you eat it while it still has a bit of bite rather than letting it turn to slop. Ask any Italian and they will tell you that sloppy pasta is only fit for old people's homes.

To serve I added some slices of mozzarella.

Voila!

Mozzarella and Tomato Salad with Bruschetta.

Like all Italian food, the secret of this dish is the quality of the ingredients. This one was served with a mixed green salad and sprouted sunflower seeds.

Cut up the tomatoes and mozzarella and arrange them on the plates. Rub the basil between your fingers to release the flavour. Sprinkle it over the mozzarella and tomato, then add salt, freshly crushed black pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Toast the bread then rub it with a clove of garlic. Add a little olive oil, salt and pepper and you have a very tasty piece of bread which could be called a bruschetta.

TVP and Beans on Toast

Lazy and proteinacious.

So:

Baked beans, TVP, water, red wine, salt and pepper in a pan. Boil for about 5 minutes.

Toast bread, butter it.

Go.

This would be good with chillie powder, tabasco or Frank's. But I had oxidising wine, so there.

Actually, I feel a bit funny about this TVP stuff, but when you're feeling uninspired and in need of some nutrition it jumps to attention, and fast. It's also cheap and you can buy it in bulk and it will last pretty much forever.

Thai Courgette and Cashew Nut Cous Cous

This is a wonderful dish, and not just because of the alliteration.

Dry roast a handful of cashews. No, dry roast several handfuls, then you can save some for later.

(Dry roast just means heat it without fat, either in a pan or in the oven / grill.) This will bring out the sweet nutty flavour of the cashews.

Fry up some Thai green curry paste and add some diced courgette. When it's nearly done pour in a load of boiling water then throw in the cous cous and stir. Keep doing this till you get a cous cousish texture. Add a load of cashews and mix in till it's pretty.

Thinly slice an onion or two, fry it up with a bit of sugar then add a load of chopped chard. When it's wilting throw in some tinned sweetcorn.

So!

Spoon the sweet vegetables on to a bed of fragrant cous cous and sprinkle with cashews. (Gastro speak-a-go-go.)

This can be prepared pretty quickly; I think it took me about 7.42 minutes.

Beer Broth

 

Beer Broth

I was in a rush the other day and needed a quick dinner, so I decided to see what I had. Cans of beer? Cooked adouki beans? Leek and onion? Bread? Eh, beer broth?! I think so! That's a thing isn't it? Well, if not it is now. It only took me about 20 minutes and it's dead easy. The hardest thing is not drinking the open tinnies before adding them in.

So, quickly then, fry up the chopped leeks, onions and garlic. Add a bit of sugar to the mixture and add the pre-cooked adouki beans (handy to keep some cooked ones in the freezer for quick meals like this). Then add - get ready- beer! Like so:
  

 

'Hey, this is fun!' said Dara.

I'm not sure how much I put in really. Probably about a can and a bit after all the sipping. I let it simmer for a minute, and added more beer gradually, so it didn't all boil off.  You can add some vegetable stock and seasonsing if you think it needs flavour. It should look like this or something:

And it's pretty much done straight away. Add salt and pepper to taste. Next time I'll do it with some barley and potatoes and carrots. Make it nice and hearty. Still, this was delicious. I topped it with some fresh parsley and served it with some nice bread. And a tinnie, if you've any left! Note: you may not want to make this meal before a matter of any importance.

- Dara

Harissa Cous Cous

This is some sort of harissa paste:

Mix LOADS of tomato paste with a good deal of paprika, chilli powder, ground cumin, coriander powder, black pepper and olive oil. Taste it and do what you want to it, then stir it into a big bowl of cous cous that's just been covered with boiling water. Leave it to sit for about three minutes then add more harissa or water as necessary.

Chickpeas and cous cous are a marriage made in culinary heaven. They are made for each other. This lot had courgette, onion, garlic and sweetcorn as well, and most veg will be pretty tasty fried up and served on top of this tasty goodness.

Cashew Nut Pesto

This is an incredible discovery - a handful of roasted cashews, about the same of basil, a clove of garlic, and some salt and pepper. Most people would add parmesan as well but it really doesn't need it. Whizz it all up with a blender then pour in as much olive oil as you like. Just make sure it's the good stuff; I like co-op's own brand. Or, as they call it here, Scotmid.

Traditionally in Italy they eat a first course of meat or fish with some sort of veg or salad, then a second of pasta. It's basically a protein course with some greenery followed by a carbohydrate course. I remembered this as I ate handfuls of roasted cashews from the pan as I waited for the pasta to cook. If you want to be a bit more civilised than me, a nice salad with some roasted cashews sprinkled over it would be a good prelude to this pasta dish.

Another thing the Italians do is stop cooking their pasta when it resists a bite slightly, rather than letting it cook to a mulch like us we tend to do on these fair isles. My way of doing this is to take a bit of pasta out every minute or so when it's nearing the end of it's cooking time and biting it to check whether or not it has changed colour all the way through - if there's just the very tiniest bit uncooked in the middle then it's time to get the sieve out, stare at it for a few seconds, then drain it. Apparently Italians just throw it at the wall, but I've only ever seen British people do that, so it might just be a myth that we've made up, like the fact that they eat garlic bread. One of the most bizzare moments of my life was explaining garlic bread to a guy from near Naples who was doing a bit of a Peter Kay at me in Italian - "Garlic?! Bread?! Garlic on bread?!"

Watch this blog for some extreme garlic bread recipes - Dara is a garlic head with a penchant for baking bread.

Polenta chips

Polenta chips on a bed of wilted spinach, with avocado slices.

Polenta is something I bought to exfoliate with in the bath. After an appetising smell arose from the bathwater it crossed my mind that I might want to try eating it. So I did, and I recommend you do the same.

Making polenta

Bring a pan of water to the boil, then pour in the polenta gradually, stirring the whole while. Once its consistency is like watery school smash stop pouring, keep stirring for a few minutes then serve. Like this it's a sloppy mess, and can be treated more or less the same as watery school smash. But if you give it a bit of thought and attention it can turn into something beautiful that will enhance your life. Or you meal time at least.

Add flavouring to the water before the polenta, e.g. veg stock, marmite, harissa paste... anything tasty and soluble in water really.

The real magic happens when you leave it to set (overnight) so that it forms a lump that you can slice and fry. This is how you make the chips. I covered them in salt and pepper as they were cooking. The next day they were really good with curry.

Spinach and avocado

Wilted spinach and sliced avocado are pretty self explanatory, BUT! did you know that they can also be used to beautifying.

Avocado face masks: http://www.wittyliving.com/recipes/facial-mask-recipes.html

Spinach, well... actually, the best thing to do is just eat it. It's good for you:

http://www.liveandfeel.com/medicinalplants/spinach.html

Exfoliating with polenta

• Fill your palm with a few pinches of polenta grain
• Dribble a little a little warm water in
• Mix it to a paste
• Gently rub it with a circular motion into your skin

Ta-Daah! You're as soft as a baby's bottom.

Quick Potato Filling

I love food. The sleuths among you can probably tell that. I cannot understand people who eat entirely for sustainance, begrudgingly and without joy. I feel very lucky to be able to eat delicious food every day. However, I do spend a little too much time cooking. Sometimes it is necessary to make a quick meal. So, I am always looking for ways to make quick food, without compromising on taste. And so, this is one I rustled up today in about 15 minutes:

Baked Potatoes with Leek and Tomato filling

(I assure you there are two large potatoes under that mountain)

I suggest throwing on a couple of extra potatoes on anytime you're cooking something in the oven. They are always handy to have in the fridge. You can heat them up and add a filling to them for a quick meal, or slice them and fry them up with some garlic and onions (mmmm), or even throw them in a curry or soup. They won't go to waste anyway, so you might as well throw a few on just to have!

With this in mind, I pre-baked some spuds yesterday when I had the oven on. So, today I popped the oven on to heat them up, while I worked on a filling. I chopped up and fried two small leeks, half an onion, and some garlic. I threw in some chopped tomatoes and more oil, and fried it all up for a minute or so. Then it was time to cut open the now-hot spuds, and load those bad boys up. Top it all off with some cheese and black pepper and stick it in the oven to melt the cheese. And then BAM - 15 minute feast, with no taste compromise (maybe a bit with the presentation alright -it makes me feel dirty looking at it).

- Dara

Vegetarian Eating Out: Camden

Dara and I have decided to blog food that we eat out too.

Here's the first: In Spiral, an amazing place in Camden. http://www.inspiralled.net/

It has a really chilled out atmosphere, a pretty view over the canal, shared tables, incredible array of vegetarian (mostly vegan) food and drink, friendly staff who aren't that inefficient hippy cliche you often find in veggie places (although they do have the whole image things going on, and yes, I love it), dj set in the evening, things are mostly organic and fairtrade... what more could you want?!

Here's a sharing platter. You could choose whatever you wanted so Ian and I got one of everything, and an avocado boat and bowl of olives to go with it. The olives had slices of raw garlic in so we were pretty smelly for a while. In a good way :-)

Here you can see:

potato wedges

chickpeas in sauce

cous cous

cabbage and linseed salad

coleslaw

kale salad

cabbage tomato stuff

roast sweet potato

raw fennel

intense salad (I can't remember what it was but it was a bit hardcore.)

Dara's Sandwich no. 2

 

Vegetarian sandwiches are the best sandwiches in the world. When done correctly, of course. This one is nice and warm in the middle, but not toasted, and so still soft on the outside. It's pretty amazing. And garlic mushrooms are certainly in the top 20 reasons to be alive. This one is not vegan, I'm afraid, but lose the cheese and you're set.

Here's how to:
Get some brown bread.
Add all of your houmous to it, more piled than spread.
Add some strong cheese and some torn spinach/ baby spinach.
Fry up some mushrooms with chopped garlic.
Place the hot mushrooms on the cheese so it melts slightly.
Top with Frank's Red Hot Sauce to set it all off.
Put it together and EAT.

- Dara

Apple, walnut and celery salad

This is YUMMY SCRUMMY. If you like lettuce, apple, celery, walnuts and lemon juice. Those are the ingredients, you see.

If it had mayonnaise then it would probably be called a Waldorf salad, but I find that mayonnaise clogs things up and lemon juice is much.... zestier.

So throw it all together and enjoy.

I had mine with Dara's fresh brown bread, a huge dollop of cottage cheese, and a large dollop of hummus. YUMMY SCRMMY indeed.

There's no oil on it and the lemon will stop the apple oxidising, so it should keep until lunchtime if made in the morning. Remember: SAFCSN (Stay Away From Chains Selling Non-food.)

Hot Salad

This salad is hot.

Shit hot.

There are actually two:

- Cannellini beans, onion and tomato

- Avocado, red pepper, celery, cashew and sesame seed on lettuce.

The first does what it says on the tin, but there's a secret ingredient. (Whisper it) ... (Sugar).

So, finely slice some an onion, fry for a few mins, add a teaspoon of (preferably dark muscadavo) sugar, then fry it for a furhter five mins or as long as you can wait. This is caramelising the onion and is amazing if you have the patience to wait a long time. Add a can of cannellini beans and diced tomato, cook it up till the tomato's just getting soft. Yummy.

Next salad: roughly chop two stick of celery and a red pepper. Dry fry a handful of cashews and a handful of sesame seeds then add the veg and a bit of olive oil and tamari or soy sauce. Let it sizzle till it's at your preferred ratio of cookedness/crunchiness. Add avocado and mix it in till it's warm. PLEASE make sure it's nicely ripe - an immature avocado should be treated like a 15-year-old. There are no two ways about it, you just have to wait until it's ready.

Erm, meanwhile wash the lettuce and place it on the plates, then sprinkle with lemon juice. The avocado and cashew salad is nice on top of it but do as you like. It's your food.