Crock pot vegetarian chili

May 10, 2009 – 5:51 pm

I’ve fancied the idea of having a crock pot for a while, with my friend Toby heading back to the states and selling off (or giving away) most of his worldly possessions I was finally able to acquire one.

After carrying the crock pot from his flat, to work and then back home I wondered what exactly I was going to do with it. So it’s sat on my sideboard for a couple of weeks now. I hate having kitchen gadgets that sit in the back of cupboard and don’t ever get used, so it got to the point where it was do or die, i’ll use the crock pot or get rid of it.

On a similar theme of kitchen minimalism I was poking through my cupboards to see what cans, jars and odds and ends I could use up. After finding numerous cans of beans and tinned tomatoes it was pretty clear a slow cooked veggie chili was on the cards.

Having never cooked anything in a crock pot before I did a bit of searching and checking on recipes. Everything seems to be the same as a normal chili, with a couple of exceptions

  • You’ll need to fry off onions in a pan first
  • You’ll need to cook it for hours, like 6-8 of them.

I didn’t have 6+ hours this time, so I cracked the crock pot up to high. In the future i’ll definitely do it "properly", put it on in the morning and leave it on all day.

So, first things first, I chopped up an onion and gently fried it with my chili spices; Garlic, red chili flakes, ground cumin, smoked paprika, curry power and some chopped fresh green chilies.

Cambridge Heath, 9 May 2009

Throw the friend onion in the crock pot. Next I added my various cans of beans and tomato – don’t trust this photo though. I actually left the chick peas out and added an extra can of chopped tomato. This all went in the crock pot, along with half a pint of vegtable stock, a big squeee of tomato puree and a splash of Worcestershire sauce (use soy if you don’t have any). Followed with lots of salt, pepper and a really good stir with a wooden spoon.

Cambridge Heath, 9 May 2009

That was it, I set the pot to high, popped the lid on and left it for about 4 hours. When there was an hour to go I took a potato masher to the chili to smooth the beans mixture a little, i’m more of a fan of mush chili, so your milage may vary. For the remainder of of cooking time I left the lid off to thicken it up a bit.

How did it turn out? Pretty damn tasty, probably the best veggie chili i’ve made. There is one problem though; a crock pot makes a lot. Luckily chili is a very versatile food. Last night I had it with a simple bit of rice, for lunch today I made some pretty amazing nachos with chili and for tomorrow night I plan to make some tortilla wraps and make some bean burritos.

Cambridge Heath, 10 May 2009

I’m now turning my eye to my next crock pot experiment, maybe a lasagna or a Bolognese. Any suggestions?

By David | Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Quick and easy Salt and Pepper Squid

May 10, 2009 – 5:08 pm

I recently discovered there’s a small chinese super market just up the road from my flat. As with any speciality store there’s a wealth of ingredients you wouldn’t otherwise be able to find, and more common ingredients at cheaper prices than regular supermarkets.

After a recent wander round I ended up leaving with lots of fresh beansprouts, bok choi, miso soup and raw/unfried prawn crackers. But what really caught my eye was packs of frozen squid. I grabbed a pack of 4 and walked home wandering what I could do with them. Becky had the best suggestion in the end "Why not do salt and pepper squid?". We found a recipe, which i’ve since lost, but it wasn’t too complicated and I have faith I can recreate it from memory here.

First we defrosted the squid, and scored it diagonally. Quite deep cuts and quite close together, the deeper the cut (without going through, of course) the more "curl" you’ll get when you deep fry it. If you have larger bits of squid like I did then slice them up in to 1" by 2" strips, this bit doesn’t need to be exact, take some liberties.

Scored Squid

The next step was to make the salt and pepper to coat the squid with. Lightly toast equal parts sea salt and whole black pepper corns, then throw them in a pestle and mortar and grind them to a fine powder.

Salt and Pepper

You’ll need a big pan of oil for deep frying, at least 2 inches or so deep. Mix some of the salt and pepper with cornflower to make your coating for the squid. You can get an idea of the ratio of salt and pepper to cornflour from the photo below.

Oil and batter

Now comes the fun part; Dip the squid in the coating and drop it in the hot oil. Have a slotted spoon to hand and keep an eye on the squid pieces as thy bubble around the pan. From memory it was something like 2 minutes a piece, just spoon it out when it goes golden. Pop it on a piece of kitchen roll to absorb some of the fat.

Move to a bowl and dust with more of the ground salt and pepper – no corn powder this time. That’s about it, this dish turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be, the hardest part is getting the oil up to temperature. We served the squid up with freshly friend prawn crackers, a soy sauce dip and a sweet chili dip.

The final result

If you can get hold of some squid, fresh or frozen, then do give this a go. Not only is it really tasty but it’s also a lot of fun.

By David | Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Afternoon Tea at Fortnum and Mason

April 13, 2009 – 9:15 pm

Mother’s Day is commercial bunkum. However, there’s nothing bad to be said about treating your mum to a never-ending tower of little treats and a decent cup (or three) of tea.

I went for classic Earl Grey but, if you’ve got more ambitious tea tastes than me, Fortnum’s offers many rare teas including the amazing Cornish offering Tregothnan Black Tea which is grown on a hillside in Truro.

Tea

The sandwiches (ham & mustard/salmon & dill/cucumber and soft cheese/rare breed egg and watercress), goat’s cheese tartlets and salmon and cream cheese terrine. These savoury bites were replenished as soon as the plate was emptied. Yum! There is nothing more to be said except for a note to find a good recipe for the tartlets – they’d be ace for upcoming picnics.

Sandwiches

Fruit and plain scones with Somerset clotted cream and strawberry jam. Having grown up in the South-west (the home of the cream tea) I take mortal offence when anybody suggests – so, so wrongly – that the cream should go on top. Mind you, this was irrelevant here as F&M seemed to be having a shortage of both gooey cream and glossy, sticky preserve. Scones = good. Toppings = mediocre. There’s a scone recipe further down the page if you fancy making some and doing them justice with a two inch-thick layer of cream and jam.

Scones

Four patisserie cakes. One teeny-tiny éclair, one raspberry tart, two little vanilla sponges. The chocolate ganache covered cake was supposed to look like a little hat. The winner of best sweet treat went to the purple-coloured cake which had violet flavoured icing and was topped with crystallised flower petals. It tasted like summer (and thankfully not like soapy Parma Violets).

Cakes

I’m planning to make a heap of chocolate profiteroles that will knock spots off the F&M éclair using this recipe for crème patisserie.

Ingredients:

  • 
340ml milk
  • 
3 egg yolks 

  • 60g granulated sugar
  • 15g plain flour
  • 
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons corn flour

  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Method:


In a small saucepan, warm the milk over low heat until it is just hot enough to steam. While the milk is warming, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, flour, and corn four until the mixture is completely smooth.
 Once the milk is steaming, add half of it, whisking constantly, to the egg mixture. Tip the milk and egg mix back into the remaining hot milk, continue stirring, and heat it for 1-2 minutes, until the mixture turns custard-y in consistency. Remove from the heat, stir in the vanilla extract, and chill before use.

By Rebecca Hales | Posted in Eating Out, Recipes | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Fruit Rice

March 31, 2009 – 7:54 am

It’s too easy to make boring rice. Sometimes you want a good base for the other foods and sauces you’re serving, but in simpler dishes the rice really needs to justify itself a little. It’s that which inspired this simple fruity fried rice. It goes especially well with fish.

You’ll be needing

Quantities to serve 2, multiply as needed.

  • Rice, count out what you’d consider a ‘small portion’, since it will be bulked up with extras
  • A Shallot, finely sliced.
  • A centimetre chunk of ginger, finely sliced or crushed.
  • Three mini-peppers, finely sliced.
  • Four mushrooms, finely sliced.
  • Handful of spinach leaves.
  • Small handful of dried tropical fruit (mango, pineapple, pomegranate, etc.) The cheaper cubed fruit is about the right size out of the packet, fancier, larger pieces should be chopped up.
  • Handful of pine nuts.

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The making

Start boiling the rice as normal. If you’re serving with an oriental-flavoured fish, you could use a little sesame oil to help stop it sticking and add an appropriate flavour.

In a frying pan on medium heat, add a dash of olive oil and fry all the vegetables apart from the spinach together with the fruit and nuts. The idea is to do this at a medium pace, to match the boiling rice, which helps the fruit moisten. (You can also soak the dried fruit beforehand, but I’ve found that’s not really necessary.)

Check on the rice. Once you have a few minutes left, toss the spinach into the frying pan with the other vegetables and fruit. You want to it reduce down a bit, but not so much that it shrinks to nothing. Such is the knack of frying spinach. A couple of minutes should be sufficient.

Drain and rinse the rice, and immediately throw it into the frying pan. Stir it around. The rice will absorb the flavours from the pan. (An obvious variation here is to combine them separately in a bowl, keeping the flavours more distinct). That’s it, ready to serve.

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I last cooked this with salmon, and I’d recommend it. The fruit is a great complement to fish anyway, and if you marinate the salmon in soy sauce with ginger and brown sugar, it makes for an excellent sweet and sour dish.

By Ben | Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Food is Not Fuel

March 31, 2009 – 6:47 am

It’s been a little while. Sorry about that.

I’ve been thinking about t-shirts lately, sloganeering and silly designs involving stick men. I’ve also been trying to eat less, in an effort to lose the weight I gained after moving to the US. Since I reject the concept of out-right dieting, I’ve instead been trying prioritise what I consume. That leads to what I sometimes call the ‘no crap latte’ diet — San Francisco being full of amazing independent coffee shops who roast their own beans and produce a magnificent tasting latte, it’s really just raw consumption to drink anything else. And why fill up on milk if you’re not going love it?

And from that, we come to the headline. Food is not fuel. Not to be misconstrued as an anti-biofuels slogan, this is about valuing everything you eat. Savouring the taste of every mouthful. If you’re just filling up, what’s the point? Food is not about nutrition, or fat, or calories or traffic light diets. Food is about pleasure.

That’s why this blog exists. David and I have both intended to resuming writing Munch Munch regularly since, well, since we stopped writing first time around. Personally, I’m finally in a state of mind to give it another go.

To tide you over pending the my second-first-post-proper, here are some strawberries:

By Ben | Posted in Misc | Tagged | Comments (0)

How to peel garlic in a hurry

July 3, 2008 – 1:21 am

Here, John Oxton gives an effective demo on how not to take any nonsense from garlic.

John Oxton on Vimeo.

By Ben | Posted in Misc | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Seafood in Hastings

April 22, 2008 – 9:50 pm

When I was last back home in Hastings I visited White’s Seafood & Steak Bar, although the name may sound a bit trashy "Surf and Turf" it’s a nice little restaurant that serves great fresh seafood.

<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2013/2306241690_c67cdce9ec_m.jpg" alt="Escargot" title="alt="Escargot" />

I’ve not had Escargot before, it wasn’t bad. Dripping in garlic butter and quit chewy, but not bad.

<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3072/2305442579_2d88ebaf18_m.jpg" alt="Thai style swordfish" title="alt="Thai style swordfish" />

For a main I had Thai style swordfish, tenderly cooked and served on a bed of noodles, pak choi and mango slices. It was quite spicy so the mango made a nice addition.

By David | Posted in Eating Out | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

The Boiling Pot, Austin TX

April 21, 2008 – 10:58 pm
Austin, supported by an annual influx of geeks every year, supports an intimidating quantity of eateries. Joyously, many of them are very, very good indeed.

One of the more unique experiences is The Boiling Pot, a seafood restaurant of simple premise: Make selections based on the number in your party and the quantity of seafood you’d like to consume, and shortly after an inevitably large bowl of shellfish, potatoes and sausage will be emptied onto your table.

Tables are lined with greaseproof paper (crayons are provided for entertainment before food arrives), the food is emptied right in front of you. Your only cutlery is a small wooden hammer, for breaking the shells of crabs and lobster legs. A pot of butter is available as condiment, the rest is up to you and your quickly greasy fingers.

It is, to be blunt, brilliant. The food is good and the dining experience unpretentiously fun; how uptight can you be, eating with a mallet?

By Ben | Posted in Eating Out | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)

Tea Scones

February 25, 2008 – 12:50 am

A family recipe. Well, a recipe I got from my family. For all I know it came from a Delia Smith book.

As yet untested, but very nice when other people have made them.

Now that summer is approaching and afternoon tea is more appealing this recipe is due a test run.

Ingredients

  • 225g self raising floour
  • 1/2 level tsp salt
  • 25g caster sugar
  • 1/4 pint Milk
  • Milk for brushing

Instructions

  1. Heat oven at gas mark 8 or 230c.
  2. Rub butter into flour, add sugar, add milk. Mix to soft dough with knife.
  3. Roll out to 1/2 in thickness and cut out 2in cutter.
  4. Place on baking tray, brush tops with milk, bake for 7-10 minutes.
  5. Let cool on a wire rack
By David | Posted in Baking, Recipes | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Posh cheese-on-toast

February 25, 2008 – 12:42 am

For a quick snack you can’t beat cheese on toast.

This wasn’t meant to be posh, it ended up that way because there was only posh bread and cheese in the kitchen

As much as the fridge is always stocked with cheese, it tends to be posh ones, not huge blocks of cheap cheddar. The only bread in the flat was a loaf of rye bread, honestly, you couldn’t make it up…

Cheese on toast

Left: Slices of Brie, a drizzle of olive oil, and a sprig of Rosemary for a bit of flavour.

Right: Slices of Ossau Iraty (a French Ewe’s cheese), more olive oil, and lots</em< of salt and pepper.

Verdict? The brie one was alright, though the rosemary did nothing. The ewes cheese one came out pretty close to normal cheese on toast. Pretty tasty.

By David | Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)