Smoked paprika and rose petal curry

Spanish Smoked Paprika has a unique flavour - think "more smoke" and "less paprika". The VegHead has no recollection how, where, when, or even why a tin of this first came into the larder, but ever since it did it's been in regular use. Get a tin. You cannot replicate the flavour by using standard paprika and just nipping outside for a quick puff. There are other brands than "La Chinata", however this happens to be one that we used first and have continued using ever since. It is widely available both online and in most supermarkets, and wherever good smoked paprika is sold.

This pinto bean curry is flavoursome, but not too hot. If you wish to add heat, add 1/2 a teaspoon of your favourite dried chilli powder, or one chopped fresh chilli. Serve with a grain like quinoa, millet, couscous, or barley couscous, or even a side of wok seared spinach and ginger.

Needing:

• 1 can of cooked pinto beans (yes - it was canned beans night in The VegHead's larder)
• 1/2 a small celeriac, peeled and cubed
• 1 medium tomato, chopped
  
• a few slices of onion
• a clove of garlic, crushed
  
• 1 teaspoon of paprika
• 1 tablespoon of rose petals
• 1/2 a teaspoon of ground black pepper
• olive oil

To do:

• saute and onion and garlic
• add the celeriac, pepper and paprika. Cook over a low heat until celeriac is medium soft.
  
• Add the beans and tomato. Stir to ensure everything is evenly covered in spices
• Once the tomato has softened, add the rose petals and cook for a further 5 minutes on low
  

Harissa beetroot and aubergine

The VegHead exceeded government guidelines on the consumption of alcohol last night. Thursday was, therefore, a "slow" day. Earlier in the week, prior to this unfortunate slip in decorum, The VegHead and SheWhoMustBeFed had earmarked Thursday dinner as Beetroot and Aubergine Sri Lankan Curry night, on account of having a particularly nice looking aubergine (tight, dark flesh and firm to the touch) as well as two precooked (and un-vinegar-ed) beetroots in the fridge. However, come dinnertime both comfort food and ease of preparation was called for. Thus, I introduce to you "the lazy version" of the curry. Total cooking time is not much more than the time it takes for the aubergine to cook through.

Needing (serves two):

• 2 cooked beetroots (not preserved in vinegar or salt), cubed
  
• 1 medium aubergine, cubed in a chunky sort of way
  
• 1 cup of cooked butter beans
• a few thin slices of onion
• 2 tablespoons of harrisa paste (or more or less to taste)
• olive oil
• generous handful of chopped fresh coriander
• 1/3 cup of coconut milk
  

To do:

• sauté the aubergine, beans, onion, and paste in a generous splash of olive oil
• once the aubergine is cooked, add the beetroot (adding the beetroot later in the cooking process ensures that you end up with some colour variation in the meal. Add it too early and everything just ends up purple. As the beetroot's already cooked, you're really just warming it up and getting it coated it spice)
• just before serving, mix through the coriander and the coconut milk
  

Serve with mashed potato a.k.a. "comfort food"

Baked tofu and bean balls

These balls are ideal for either Loinfruits or as party finger food. They bake to a lovely dark golden colour. To ensure that they were easy to remove from the tray once cooked The VegHead cooked a batch in a large muffin (or "cup cake") tray - and used a load of the happy little paper cup cake whats-its. The Loinfruit saw the uncooked balls sitting in the gaily coloured trays before they went into the oven and there was a near riot in the kitchen ....

"Look! It's cakes for dinner!" , said The Loinfruit
"Oh no it is!", said the Nasty Ogre, cruelly crushing their happiness *

Ingredients:

• 1 block of medium tofu
• 1 cup of giant Baked Beans
• 2 slices of bread, finely crumbed
• 1/3 cup of cashews, finely crushed
• 1/3 cup of sunflower seeds, finely crushed
• 1 tablespoon of finely chopped fresh dill
• 1 tablespoon of finely chopped fresh parsley
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 2 tablespoons of light tahini
  
• 1 tablespoon of tamari
• pepper to taste

To do:

• Mash everything together to an even mixture
• If too wet, crumb another slice of bread and mix through thoroughly
• Form into firm balls of approximately 5cm diameter, place into prepared paper cups
• Bake in a hot oven for 35 minutes

(*) "The Nasty Ogre" is a.k.a. "The VegHead"

Broad bean and lemon tagine

Very simple, lightly spiced. Is this Moroccan? It is cooked in a tagine and it does use preserved lemon, which are two hallmarks of Moroccan cooking. However the thyme is generally thought of as more Mediterranean than North African. The herb is however widely used across the region and in as comfortable in Middle Eastern cuisines as Italian and Greek. Who knows. Quit asking difficult questions and just eat!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of shelled broad beans (*)
• 2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
• a few thin slices of red onion
• 2 tablespoons of light miso
• 1 small preserved lemon, chopped
  
• 1 teaspoon each of fresh thymes leaves, and fresh lemon thyme leaves. Chopped.
  
• black pepper to taste
• olive oil
• water

To do:

• If using frozen broad beans, bring them to a rolling boil for a few minutes first in small saucepan. Doing so will reduce your cooking time for the tagine in the oven by up to 45 minutes compared to what it would have been had you put the frozen beans straight into the tagine! Use the boiled water as stock in the tagine.
• Thoroughly mix everything, making sure the miso is dissolved evenly
• Add enough of the water to cover the beans
• Bake at inferno setting in a preheated oven for around 45 minutes (or about 90 minutes if you didn't thaw your frozen broad beans!)
  

* Broad beans are one of the few vegetables The VegHeads keeps in the house "snap frozen". The VegHead and SheWhoMustBeFed adore fresh broad beans when they are in season and we will happily shell them and then individually peel them - there's nothing like fresh broad beans lightly steamed or quickly blanched. However The VegHead once weighed all the discarded shells etc and confirmed the suspicion that when you buy fresh broad beans by weight you are paying for one third edible beans, and two thirds compost feed. And they're not cheap to begin with. So any other dish we cook using broad beans (which generally means a tagine) we use organic, snap frozen broad beans instead.

Shittake Mushroom dip

You have to take a break from hommous every now and then don't you? Though the Bamix eventually gets a little itchy for some blending.

What's in the fridge?

What's in the fridge?

Hmm....some nice shittake mushrooms, and a bag of fruity brown gilled mushrooms too...

Mushroom dip....yumm....

The following is how The VegHead would make it next time, as the first time it ended up a little sloppier than the ideal consistency.

Need to find in your fridge:

• 4 to 6 large shittake mushrooms, chopped
  
• an equal amount of open gilled "standard" mushrooms, chopped
  
• an equal amount of pine nuts (by volume), fairly finely crushed
  
• 2 thin slices of red onion
• 1 small clove of garlic
• olive oil
• teaspoon of dark sesame oil
• teaspoon of mirin
• 1/2 teaspoon of tamari
• tablespoon of tahini
• ground pepper

きのこののり作成方式 (*)

• Lightly sauté the shittake mushrooms together with the garlic, onion and pepper in a little olive oil
• Blend the cooked shittake mushrooms etc together with the raw mushrooms.
• Add the nuts, and the sesame oil, mirin, tamari and tahini. Continue blending to a smooth paste

Store in a covered container in the fridge, lightly drizzled with a little more olive oil. Try to finish it within 3 days of making.

* Roughly translates as "The method of making mushroom paste"

Roast butter bean and celeriac

The cumin/pepper/ginger sauce used in this is originally from a "Marinated tofu" recipe from some or another commercial cookbook that populates our shelves. It has become a widely used marinade for beans, broad beans, tofu, cauliflower and lots more. Its just one of those sauces that "works".

You will need:

• 1 cup of cooked butter beans
• half a celeriac, peeled and cubed to approximately 2cm cubes
• 2 teaspoons of cumin powder
• 2 teaspoons of ground black pepper (this will make it fairly spicy)
  
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 cm of ginger root, grated
• a generous splash each of tamari, olive oil, mirin, and toasted sesame oil

To make:

• Mix everything together in a bowl
• Pour mixture into a lidded baking dish (take the lid off before pouring)
• Just cover with water
• Bake at inferno for 45 minutes

Served with a large bag of baby spinach leaves, lightly stir fried with chopped mushrooms, and a light sprinkly of (vegan) Worcestershire sauce.

So THATS what you do with a Celeriac

In this age of political correctness, it is unacceptable on the whole to use the word "ugly". We're meant to dress things up and pretend we live in some sort of Disney version of the world where we're all happy shiny people, living happy shiny lives and there's never anything truly offensive.

However there are some pretty ugly things out there, lets face it. Ugly buildings and developments. Ugly abuses of human rights. Ugly truths like climate change. There's probably even some little part of you that you find ugly about yourself, maybe that small toe you dropped a brick on one day. Maybe that nasty nagging in-grown hair. In the US alone $1900,000,000 was spent last year on cosmetic surgery to change what someone thought was a little bit of ugly.

So lets be honest and admit that in the world there are some ugly things.

Like celeriac.

When the Flying Spaghetti Monster was handing out characteristics the celeriac was all the way at the end of the line for looks. In contrast, think of an Orange. There is a fruit that so epitomises its colour that it is called the colour. Or vice versa perhaps. Then there is the rich, fragrant simplicity of the basil leaf. The endless velvety form of our mushrooms.

And then there's the celeriac.

Like you, The VegHead has looked at a pile of celeriacs sitting amongst the potatoes, carrots and so on and wondered exactly which planet it transported in from. Just where is Planet Fugly? All the while however you have to admire its pluck. The power of the supermarket is so strong that they can dictate exactly what colour an apple can be, and which shape is suitable for bananas, cucumbers and tomatoes. Its like the celeriac is just sitting there smirking and thinking "Go on...try to regulate me into some lovely package".

The celeriac is the ugly man in the room of same-same Hollywood blandness, the person so outstandingly out of place with ugliness that you eventually cross the room at the party to go see what the story is. Because there has to be one right?

So The VegHead bought one. Which is different from knowing what to do with it. So to save you the same searching on Google here is what you need to know:

• they're good for roasting, boiling and mashing
• they need to be peeled
• they'll smell like dirt before you peel them and have a light celery smell to them once peeled
• they oxidise very quickly once peeled, so only cut and peel them just before cooking or they'll blacken
• lemon apparently slows the blackening
• they can bitter if not cooked properly. If boiling, place into boiling water not cold water (and brought to the boil) as the latter method makes them bitter
• most of the nutrients are just under the skin so don't peel too deeply

So far, The VegHead has only tried it roasted with some spices. It was good. More experimention to come. Leave a comment if you know of any good recipes using celeriac.

And remember; all the freaky people make the beauty of the world.

Potato and bean balls

The Larger Loinfruit polished off nine of these together with a salad for dinner, and had to be dissuaded from stealing a tenth off the plate of the Smaller Loinfruit, who isn't as keen on them and who would have been happy to foist one off his plate if he could have got away with it.

These balls cook to a lovely light golden colour, however their popularity meant there were none left to pose for the camera so you'll just have to take The VegHead's word for it. Perhaps next time the potato paparazzi will be in town.

All well as keeping Larger Loinfruit fed, these are a good grown up party finger food, and can be made and refrigerated ahead of time and placed into the oven 20 minutes before you need them.

When you roll the balls, aim for a bit smaller than a squash ball.

The following makes about 12 balls, depending on how large you make them.

You will need:

• 1 large potato; peeled, boiled and mashed
• 1/2 cup of cooked butter beans (or haricot)
• 1/4 cup of finely ground roasted cashews (not salted variety)
  
• 1 slice of wholemeal bread, finely crumbed
• pinch of black pepper
• pinch of cumin powder
• 1 fine slice of red onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove of garlic, minced

Get all dressed up and go to the Potato and Bean Ball:

• No black tie required, but roll up your sleaves and make sure someone is around afterward to turn on the tap so you can wash your hands
• Lightly saute the onion and garlic in olive oil
• Mash all ingredients together
• Knead lightly until mixture binds fairly well
• Form into evenly sized balls
• Grease a baking tray lightly with olive oil
• Lightly brush each ball with same oil
• Bake in a medium oven for 15-20 minutes

This recipe is courtesy of SheWhoMustBeFed

Quite possibly the perfect hommous

Most of the world's religions have a central theme of mankind's continued path toward knowledge and redemption. No less than Judaism, Christianity, Catholicism, the Latter-day Saints, The Jehovah's Witnesses, The Rastafari movement, various Islamic faiths including Sunni and Shia, Dick Cheney and the rest of the lunatic base of the US Republican Party, Zoroastrians and Buddhists and a few others too subscribe to the idea of End Times. In almost all cases a series of events, some small and seemingly insignificant, and some calamitous and far reaching will herald the end of humanity's reign on the material planetary plain of existence, while the faithful ascend to a better place where 17 organic, fairly traded, low love-mile virgins await all.

Last week my friends we all jiggled just a little closer to the end. A sign was there to see if your eyes were unclouded by the lurid distractions of supermarket ready-meals. Last week, the perfect hommous was invented.

Remember the teachings of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University. The BKWSU believe in a 5th age called the Confluence Age, a time of both a total annihilation of humanity by Nuclear weapons, civil war and natural disasters; and revelation of perfect hommous making. Watch out for the next indicator - McDonalds turning into a vegan paradise. Meanwhile, enjoy this dip while awaiting the doors of paradise to be opened.

If you want to recreate this miracle you will need:

• 2 cloves of garlic - crushed
• The juice of 1 lemon
• 1 cup of cooked chickpeas
• 1 tablespoon of tahini
• 2 teaspoons of tamari
• 2 teaspoons of thick, sweet balsamic vinegar
• 1 teaspoon of mirin
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil

To do:

• Very lightly saute the garlic in a small amount of the oil
• Bamix everything to a smooth paste
  

Berbere Paste

The origin for this paste is The World Food Cafe cookbook (kudos).

The variations are that the following recipe quadruples all the portions, uses some Smoked Spanish Parika, and adds a lot more oil. A batch will last at least two months in a jar in the fridge. It is easy to make, though there are a lot of ingredients and it takes a while to make, so it is worth making enough to keep you going for a while. The amount of salt and oil may seem excessive, but remember that when you use the paste you're only adding about a tablespoon of the paste to a dish.

Ingredients:

• 8 garlic cloves
• 3cm piece of ginger - grated
  
• 1 large red onion - chopped
  
• 4 tablespoons of cider vinegar
• 2 teaspoons of black peppercorns
• 2 tsps of cardamom seeds (remove seeds from pods)
• 2 tsps coriander seeds
• 2 tsps fenugreek seeds
  
• 16 cloves
• 4 tsps cumin seeds
  
• 28 medium sized dried red chillies - these grind up easier later if they are chopped or cut up before roasting
  
• 8 tsps paprika
• 8 tsps of spanish smoked paprika
• 4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp allspice
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 cup of olive oil

To make:

• Dry roast all the seeds and the chillies for about 8 minutes in a hot oven. Adjust time as required to avoid the seeds burning.
• Finely grind all the seeds and the chillies in either a mortar and pestle (in batches) or in a food processor.
  
• Bamix the onion, ginger and garlic to a smooth paste, using a little of the oil if necessary
  
• Bamix in the powdered spices, salt, and the ground up spices, together with the rest of the olive oil. It is best to do this by adding a little more spice and a little more powder...and blend...and add some more....and blend.
  
• Keep in a sealable jar in the fridge.
  

Turmeric Tofu Quiche

The VegHead reckons that scrambled tofu with fresh turmeric roots is about as close you can to breakfast perfection this side of another hour in bed with SheWhoMustBeFed. This quiche is a slight variation on the same theme (scrambled tofu that is).

Ingredients:

• Make a pie dough and line a quiche dish with it (preferably a two piece dish with separate sides and base).
• One packet of silken tofu
• One packet of medium firm tofu - mashed
  
• Cornflour or egg replacer
• 1 cup of mushrooms, chopped
  
• 1 cup of roughly grated courgette
• 1 clove of garlic, crushed
  
• few slices of onion
  
• 4cm of a finger thick fresh turmeric root, grated using a ginger grater
  
• fresh italian herbs to taste
• pepper to taste
  
• oats (to sprinkle on top)
• olive oil
• tamari

To do:

• Lightly saute the onions, garlic, firm tofu and mushrooms in the oil and tamari
  
• Add the herbs and grated fresh turmeric
• Meanwhile, thoroughly mix the flour into the silken tofu using a fork
• Add to pot and mix thoroughly
• Mix in anything else left
  
• Spoon into the pie dish and sprinkle generously with oats
• Bake on high for 40 minutes or longer if need be.
  

Roasted pumpkin soup

There was left over pumpkin in the fridge - maybe about a cup of it mashed up. Ten minutes later it was soup for SheWhoMustBeFed. The VegHead had a salad roll instead.

Needing and doing:

• about one cup of left over roast pumpkin (any skin peeled off)
• saute a few slices of onion with olive oil and a dash of tamari
• add 3/4 cup or so of cooked haricot beans to the onion and mix through over a low heat
  
• separately bamix the pumpkin, together with about the same amount of water, half a teaspoon of miso paste, and a teaspoon of tomato paste. Add more or less water to achieve the desired consistency
  
• add the pumpkin to the pot and bring to a low simmer
• garnish the soup with a few slices of avocado, and serve with a crusty roll

Berbere haricot beans in pumpkin

England has much going for it. So much that a list of all the truly fantastic things, the wonders, the fond little quirks in all their blessed, thatched glory, oh that would be a long list indeed. Best to leave all that for now and instead simply make the observation that England generally has crap pumpkins. This of course is due to a grave misunderstanding involving a pumpkin, a farmer, and a cow.

Some time long ago, before reality television and ABBA, some English farmer had a bumper crop of fabulously flavoursome pumpkins. The farmer ate them steamed, roasted, mashed, in soups and stews and pies and a hundred other ways until he nearly turned orange. Eventually he could eat no more, and wanting to share his bountiful harvest he chopped up what was left and fed pumpkin to his cows. Eventually his neighbour Ol' Jim, who was a few herbs short of a Bouquet Garni, took this to mean that pumpkins were only fit for cows to eat. Ol' Jim's son surprised everyone when he later went on to found Tesco's, a company which through its almost complete buyer-side dominance of farm produce trends has sadly contributed to the demise of a truly yummy pumpkin in this country.

And so now you can rarely find a really nice pumkin, and the range of choice is sadly devoid of Queensland Blues, and offers mostly "butternut squash". The butternut pumpkin is a hit and miss affair in The VegHead's experience. They're rarely truly fabulous on their own though they have a nice enough flavour. Sometimes however they can be quite woody and an overall letdown. If you don't know what a butternut pumpkin looks like, well they're something like what a particularly boastful Papua New Guinea hills tribesman might wear as a gourd.

As luck would have it, Ginol Silamtena, the creator spirit of Papua New Guinea's Korowai tribesman was smiling on SheWhoMustBeFed when she last bought a butternut pumpkin. It was a particularly flavoursome individual, with the added bonus of being well shaped to stand upright on an oven tray. Most of the "nose" of the gourd had already been used to make pumpkin soup, that the Loinfruit's declared worthy of a B+. What was left was the seed pod end, together with about 5cms of the nose.

Lets get to partying with the pumpkin shall we?

Needing and doing together:

• If it weren't already obvious - a pumpkin. Butternut if you must, or a better one if you're especially blessed by Ginol Silamtena. Cut around and down into the "Cavern of Seed" which a very sharp and thin bladed knife, in such a way as to allow the "lid" to be replaced back on later.
• Scoop out all the seeds and the webbing with a sturdy spoon. Trim the lid.
  
• Measure out enough cooked haricot beans by almost filling the voided pumpkin and then tipping them back out into a bowl.
• Lightly saute a generous scoop of your favourite olives, together with a tablespoon of berbere paste. Once the paste has dissolved mix the beans through gently and thoroughly.
• Return the mix to the pumpkin. Extra points if you managed to make a perfect amount of mixture so that there is none left over (though now what will you snack on while dinner is cooking smarty-pants?)
• Secure the lid back on the pumpkin using 3 or 4 small metal skewers (wood skewers will snap for sure if you try to jam them in)
• Roast on a tray on high for 45+ minutes, or until the pumpkin flesh is soft.
• Serve with a selection of other vegetables
  

Not enough words to go around

The VegHead's day job involves a fair degree of writing. Not Tolstoyesque in proportions you understand, just more than the average peak hour train full of commuters. The volume of articles, blogs, reports, papers and the like tends to vary up and down to the tune of twenty thousand words plus or minus a week, all set against the background noise of emails and hum of actual conversations.

Words feed our minds, and are the fruits and the gristle of our everyday social interactions. Our minds are also the larders, within which are the spicey imaginings, sweet whispers, wholeseome advice and raw opinions that pepper our conversations.

But our cupboards can all too frequently run bare. Thursday night dinners for instance in the VegHead's kitchen is also known as "Whatever is left by now as Friday's are shopping day". Especially those weeks when we've all eaten so well that the worms in the compost bin have been given only the peelings and the offcuts and never a wholly uneaten bag of greens. Everything used productively until there's nothing left save the jars of pressure cooked beans.

The larder however has been restocked again - all those words that were used up in the hearty meals of day-job utterances renewed by a few days of home cooking. SheWhoMustBeFed must be fed after all, as did The Kennedy's when they came for dinner....but that is another story.

The Smaller Loinfruit's Pea and Corn Fritters

The Smaller Loinfruit likes these fritters a lot, and insists on making them himself. No really....insists....woe betide anyone who dares to touch a spoon or even worse flip a fitter in the pan.

Its all good...Loinfruits need to be in the kitchen, to make something that they like eating, and be exposed to the dangers of knives and flames and in doing so become comfortably competent with them.

Your Loinfuit may need help getting the following from the cupboard:

• 1 cup of self raising flour
• pinch of salt
• 1/4 teaspoon of bicarb soda
• egg replacer made up to 1 egg
• soy milk
• 1/2 cup of peas (blanched if freshly podded, or straight from packet if frozen)
  
• 1/2 cup of corn niblets (boiled if on the cob, or straight from packet if frozen)
• virgin coconut oil for frying the fritters

The Loinfruit will insist on doing all of the following steps by themselves:

• Mix all dry ingredients in a large bowl
• Add you-won't-believe-its-not-egg and stir through
• Add soy milk slowly, beating in with a spoon. Aim for a fritter mix type consistency. Which is about the same as porridge. Which if you're not familiar with is a bit like a pikelet mix consistency.
• Mix throughthe peas and corn
• Heat a heavy based frying pan, and after some oil spoon some mixture in to create an even fritter that is about 12 cms across. Advanced Loinfruits may have two or more fritters on the go at the same time if the size of the pan permits.
• Fry until light golden brown underneath, and the uncooked side is noticeably beginning to "cake up" yet is still wet.
• Flip, and allow other side to cook
• Get Mum and Dad to do ALL the cleaning and washing up afterwards. After all, they've had nothing to do while you've been working hard....

PS. If you don't have Loinfruits then these fritters are also good as quick snacky finger food. The fritter mix can be a good vehicle for anything really. Add some spices, or onion and garlic, or chopped carrots or courgette, or fresh coriander, or some chopped lemongrass and kaffir lime leaf or...or...or....

Banana Bread

Alliterative names improve the flavour of meals. A well-known fact of course; doubters need only to observe the use of the technique by those doyens of persuasion - the clever marketeers. Well do they recognise the truth that food names that sound good have developed in our vocabularies for food that tastes good, and are good for you. Our brains and higher cognitive capabilities naturally acting in harmony with our senses and self-awareness.

Originally anyway, until the phenomena was recognised and described by the US' FSA and Kellogs University in 1957 in a study sponsored by a consortium of wheat and corn industry bulk producers and market speculators. The group was seeking ways to use the emerging technologies of television and wire communications to create new markets for their products, as they faced declining rates of margin as crop yields increased due to mechanisation, profligate use of fertilizer, and a cheap Mexican labour force. Having learned that tastes can be influenced by the sound of the name of the food, they turned this evolutionary useful vocal quirk into a weapon of mass persuasion.

Which is why Banana Bread is good for you. Why it tastes really very nice. Why it is easy to make. And why it fills the house with a scent while cooking that makes you want to go "Hhmmm!"

Better bring bags of these for the banana bread...

* 1/3 cup of sunflower oil
* 1/2 cup of organic raw sugar
* 2 heaped teaspoons of linseeds, soaked in 2/3 cup of room temperature water for 15 minutes (use the water in the final mix)
* 1 3/4 cups of white stone-ground flour
* 1/2 cup of almonds, finely ground in the bamix whizzycupthing (or use whichever inferior method you wish if you do not have a bamix)
* 1 teaspoon of baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon of salt
* 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda (bicarb)
* 1 cup of mashed overripe bananas (usually 3 to 4 bananas). The best bananas for this are ones that are several days into their black skinned phase. Once peeled, cut of any really mangy bits however bruises and mushy bits in the flesh are no problem.

Bringing banana bread into being...

* Thoroughly mix everything together
* The bread will rise better if you "whip" the final mix for 5 minutes or so with a fork or a whisk
* Pour mix into as large and shallow a baking dish as you have. The banana bread doesn't rise much, so baking in a deep dish will result in an over heavy cake brick. Use a quiche tray, or a baking tray (3-4 cms deep) or similar. Also works well in muffins trays, if they are lined with paper cups.
* Bake in a prewarmed oven at 180C (350F) for twenty minutes, or a little more if needed

OK....lets be honest....this isn't "bread" it is "cake". But lets keep that to ourselves.

This recipe was shared with SheWhoMustBeFed by her friend The Stitch'n Bitch.

PS. The first two paragraphs of this post are works of sheer free association.

Sunday breakfast

One word my darlings.....mushrooms.

I always wanted to be a funghi...

ras-el-hanout and pepper

Take about half a teaspoon of ras-el-hanout, and mix with the same amount of roughly ground black pepper. Keep handy in a "pinch pot". An interesting variation on having pepper on the table...

Just a little thought...

Vegetable stew with polenta dumplings

SheWhoMustBeFed made a batch of polenta a day or so back. She might have been a little ambitious with the amount she made - we seem to have more dishes of polenta in the fridge than we know what to do with. One with onion and garlic mixed through it, another with a dash of ras-ek-hanout, another plain with corn nibblets mixed in.

This casserole is made from whatever vegetables are to hand, some haricot beans, and a few big lumps of polenta which act as dumplings, soaking up a big slurp of flavour from the sauce.

You need...

• SheWhoMustBeFed to come and make you some polenta. If she isn't available, then go ahead and do this step yourself. Each "chunk" of polenta ought to be a fair size - say about that of an egg
  
• a random delection of vegetables (sweet potato, carrots, brassica...)
• a cup of cooked haricot beans
• 1/2 a medium onion - chopped
• 1 clove of garlic - chopped
• 1 teaspoon of chilli powder (or more...or less)
  
• big handful each of fresh parsley, dill, rosemary, thyme - chopped
• 1 tablespoon of light miso paste
• 2 cups of white wine
• 2 cups of water

To be, to be, do be doing...

• lightly saute the onion, garlic, and chilli in a generous splash of olive oil
• add everything else except the fresh herbs and the polenta
• bring to a boil then reduce to a low simmer and allow to bubble gently away until the vegetables are nearly cooked
• add the herbs and give it a few minutes more
• add the polenta. If you just dump the polenta in and stir it through it will likely break up and dissolve so a little care is required. Place the polenta on the top of the stew, and then get each to sink into the sauce by pushing aside the vegetables under each piece with a spoon. Leave covered, off the heat, for 5 minutes for the polenta to soak up some juice
• serve, eat, get out of washing up if you can