Griddled Polenta with Roasted Tomatoes

If you have never tried polenta before, please allow me to inform you that it is THE BOMB. Compared to other carb-type stuff, it's pretty low calorie, it's as cheap as 'owt, it's a complex carbohydrate which is apparently a good thing (something something glycaemic index??) and it's gluten free.
It also needs very little adornment other than stock and garlic or herbs to flavour it. Intrigued? Good.

You can buy polenta from major supermarkets (definitely Sainsburys) and health food shops, either in its ground form or even as a ready-made block. Italfresco sell a ready-made version in Sainsburys which is all ready to be sliced and griddled, and costs 75p. Ground polenta is occasionally called fine cornmeal, but it amounts to the same thing. The main thing to check is the cooking time - some grades of polenta/cornmeal apparently take up to 45 minutes of stirring - no thanks. For this recipe, I used Suma's polenta (health food shop) which only needs stirring for one minute.

I've added cheese to the polenta here but it's dead easy to veganise - just omit the cheese and make sure your stock is vegan (for example, Marigold vegan bouillon).

This recipe only really has 2 main ingredients so, apart from beans on toast, it's one of the cheapest and easiest meals for two I can think of.

If after this you're in my club of Polenta Enthusiasts, try some different stuff - add different things to the polenta as it's cooking, eat it in its gloopy porridge-y form, use it as a hotpot topping, as a pizza base...

Anyway. I shall stop enthusing about cornmeal products because it's getting a bit sad. Have fun!

Serves 2

What you need

100g quick-cook polenta
500ml water
2 cloves of garlic,crushed
a good vegetable stock
250g cherry tomatoes - a mix of colours is nice if you can get them
olive oil
50g grated cheddar cheese (optional)
fresh basil
salt and pepper

What to do

Boil the kettle. Add a tiny drizzle of oil to a deep saucepan and add the crushed garlic - just heat it through to take the raw edge off, no need to brown it.

Add 500ml of the boiled water into the pan with the garlic and turn the heat up high to bring it back to the boil. Crumble in a vegetable stock cube, or if you've got 500ml of home-made vegetable stock hanging around then use that instead (if you're fancy like that).

When the pan has reached boiling point, pour in the polenta slowly in a thin stream, stirring all the while. It's easier if you pour the polenta from a jug.

Keep stirring for 1 minute (or however long the packet advises) - watch out because it will bubble like a crazy volcano, but that's normal. When the polenta has thickened, season it generously with salt, pepper and anything else you like (e.g. fresh or dried herbs if you have any knocking around) and add the cheese if using. Stir to combine, then pour into something with a wide, flat base like a roasting tin.

Leave it to cool a bit, then refrigerate it for about half an hour - it will solidify and you'll be able to slice it.

While the polenta is cooling, slice your cherry tomatoes in half and transfer to a roasting tin with a slug of olive oil. About 15 minutes in to the polenta-cooling time, put the tomatoes in the oven at 160 degrees. They need to be in for half an hour, so when the polenta comes out of the fridge you'll have another 15 minutes to slice and griddle it - tweak the timings as you like.

Bring the polenta out of the fridge when it's had its half an hour, and slice it into wedges. Brush a heavy griddle pan with a little bit of olive oil - if it's non-stick, this isn't always necessary - and put it over a high heat until it's outrageously hot.

Add the polenta slices and griddle for a few minutes on each side until they have nice char marks.

Serve the polenta slices with the roasted tomatoes, then scatter with a torn-up handful of fresh basil.

Baked Pasta Rolls/Sideways Canneloni

Hope everyone had an amazing Christmas and New Year!

This recipe is probably the only good thing to have come out of eating nothing but restaurant food for two months (apart from increased fatness-linked winter warmth). My colleagues and I ate at Jamie's Italian on a couple of occasions and enjoyed it - however it's not exactly great for veggies, because although there are a few options which are either veggie already or easily adaptable, nothing is labelled and they are pretty indiscriminate with the Parmesan so you have to just trust the knowledge of your waiter/waitress when it comes to making a choice!

This recipe is an amalgamation of what I ended up eating in Jamie's Italian - which they called Honeycomb Canneloni - and a recipe from Jamie's website called Squash & Spinach Pasta Rotolo. I've picked the best of both worlds when it comes to the filling - half have a spinach and feta filling, half have aubergine and sun-dried tomato. There's no reason why you can't experiment with different stuff, let me know in the comments if you hit on something incredible! I've labelled the recipe steps which relate to the different fillings, so you can ignore one and double the quantity of the other if you like.

Although it's pretty fiddly - I felt like I had 10 thumbs when I was trying to do the rolls - it looks really pretty and is a great variation on boring old canneloni.

Serves 4

What you need

olive oil

6 fresh lasgne sheets (or dried, pre-boiled)

300g fresh spinach

1 onion (chopped)

half a standard-size block of veggie feta

pinch of nutmeg

500ml passata

50g mature cheddar or 25g faux-parmesan

4 cloves garlic, crushed

2 aubergines

a good handful sun-dried tomatoes

a few fresh basil leaves (optional)

salt & pepper

What to do

Aubergine filling - First, slice both the aubergines in half vertically (stalks removed) and score across the cut side in a criss-cross pattern like you would a mango. Place in a baking dish. Drizzle each half with a tablespoon of olive oil (sorry for chronic unhealth but aubergine is such an oil sponge) and place in the oven at 180 degrees for about half an hour until soft all the way through. Set aside to cool.

Spinach filling - While the aubergines are doing, you can be sorting your spinach. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a saucepan and add the onion. Fry until softened and starting to brown at the edges, then add the spinach and put the lid on the pan. Leave for about 5 minutes until the spinach has wilted, then season liberally with salt, pepper and the nutmeg before taking off the heat. Pour off any excess liquid that's come off the spinach.

Aubergine filling - When the cooked aubergine is cool, scrape the flesh out of the skin and mash it with a fork. Cut up the sun-dried tomatoes (I find scissors easiest) and stir them in. Season with salt and pepper. 

Heat a small amount of oil in a large frying pan (So much oil! So many pans! I know, I know) and add the crushed garlic. Wait until it's sizzling but not burning, then pour in the passata. Bring to the boil, then turn off the heat. 

Now for the fiddly part. Lay out one lasagne sheet at a time on a plate or board. It helps to spray or brush the surface with a small amount of oil to stop it sticking. Make sure both your fillings and the feta are within reach.

Spread the lasagne sheet with your chosen filling - alternate fillings when you change sheet to make sure it's half and half - adding a crumbled handful of feta to the spinach one, then roll up like a tiny pasta carpet. Slice each roll into three, and place each roll carefully into the pan with the passata. Place them side by side until the pan is full.

Grate over your cheese of choice and scatter over the basil if you're using. Bake in a 180 degree oven for around half an hour until golden brown.

Serve with garlic bread or a green salad, depending on the degree of January diet austerity you're enforcing.

Lentil, Spinach and Red Wine Pie - Emergency Christmas Recipe

I've been away from home working for two months. All I have eaten during this time has been restaurant food and hotel breakfasts. By consequence, I am a) as fat as a lord and b) anxious to get back in the kitchen and away from whatever TGI Fridays consider to be a viable vegetarian option. This is, by the way, the reason for the long blog silence - the closest I've got to any type of meal preparation since October has been peeling a banana.

Christmas is tomorrow - TOMORROW - so this post is mainly for meat eaters who have a surprise veggie guest and are freaking out about what to feed them. This pie works really well either as one big pie for a centrepiece, or you can split it down into individual pies (as pictured) if there are just one or two veggie guests. The quantities can be really easily messed about with as long as you keep to the same proportions, and it's really easy to veganise - just use a white vegetable fat (e.g. Trex) in your pastry instead of butter, omit the cheese, and make sure your red wine is vegan - Sainsburys and the Co-op have clear labelling on their own-brand wines.
There's no pastry bottom to this pie, just the lid, to avoid a Bake-Off style soggy bottom crisis. 

I think people tend to panic the most either when they are new veggies planning their first meat-free Christmas, or when they are meat eaters catering for a vegetarian guest. Just remember that there are lots of options beyond the traditional, and largely detested, nut loaf. If your entire family is meat-free, remember that you don't have to stay traditional - why not just bung on a big tapas spread, or curry, or Thai .... anything which lends itself well to sharing! 

To make a 4-person pie, or 4 individual pies

NB this recipe is about a million times easier if you have a food processor

Don't forget to allow time for the pie filling to cool!

What you need

For the pastry

225g plain flour
100g butter, cubed and at room temperature
75g grated mature cheddar
1 tbsp cold water

For the filling

2 tbsps olive oil

2 400g cans of puy lentils
1 onion, chopped
1 small carrot, diced (food processor!)
1 small celery stalk, diced
2 cloves of garlic - crushed
1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 175ml bottle of red wine
100ml stock
1 tbsp plain flour
A handful of fresh spinach

What to do

First, make your pastry. If you are lucky enough to have a food processor, tip all the pastry ingredients in then pulse it until it looks like breadcrumbs. Roll into a ball - if it's too crumbly add more water, if it's too wet add more flour - wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge until it's needed. If you don't have a food processor, rub the fat into the flour with your hands until it looks like breadcrumbs, add the cheese then do as above.

Now, the filling. Heat the olive oil in a largish saucepan then, when it's up to temperature, add the onions, diced celery and diced carrot. Fry over a medium heat until softened and just starting to brown - don't let the onion brown too quickly. Add the crushed garlic and the rosemary then fry for another minute before adding the flour. Cook for a further minute so you don't get that raw flour taste. 

Add the red wine and stock to the pan. Bring it to the boil then reduce the heat down to a simmer. Leave it, stirring occasionally until it's thickened - about 10-15 minutes.

Add the spinach and lentils into the pan and leave to cook for a final 5 minutes before taking off the heat. You now need to leave it to cool - if you add a pastry lid to boiling hot filling it will just collapse into mushy goo.

Towards the end of the cooling time, you could occupy yourself by rolling out the pastry and cutting out one or more lid shapes, and turning the oven on at 170 degrees.

When it's cool, transfer the filling into your pie dish/dishes of choice and lay over your pastry lid. Brush the top with beaten egg if you like, although of course not if you're vegan. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes - definitely check after 15 as pastry can go from golden-brown amazingness to burnt like THAT. 

Serve with whatever trimmings you fancy - we went for herby new potatoes and green veg - and enjoy!

Merry Christmas

Spinach Pasta Soufflé Bake

I am back from the horrible wilderness of exam time. I haven't posted anything in absolutely ages, but I honestly haven't produced anything that was even worth eating, let alone blogging! We have been living on convenience food while I frantically tried to learn how to do accounting in time to pass the exam. But it's over now, and what better way to welcome myself back into the kitchen but with a recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's wonderful Veg Every Day.

This is a tasty cross between a pasta bake and a soufflé, with the added bonus of spinach and a decent amount of cheese. Absolutely impossible to veganise though unfortunately, there really is no substitute that I'm aware of for the wizardry of beaten egg white.

We're still dieting too, I make this just under 400 calories a portion if you use semi-skimmed milk and low fat cheese, which is pretttty good for something involving the unholy trinity of pasta, butter and cheese.

For the original recipe and plenty more brilliant stuff besides, Veg Every Day is available here.

I also realised while photographing this that there is no way to make this food look good. Oh well.

Serves 4

What you need

1 onion, chopped

100g pasta of any shape - except spaghetti, that would be weird

200g fresh spinach

50g butter

50g plain flour

300ml semi-skimmed or whole milk

3 eggs, separated into yolk and white. Hugh suggests one extra egg white but that strikes me as unnecessary ballache, and problem of spare egg yolk. Up to you.

60g mature cheddar cheese

salt, pepper, nutmeg

What to do

Heat either a small amount of olive oil or some frylight, and fry off the onion until soft and golden. Set to one side.

Put the pasta on to boil, following the pack instructions for cooking time, then drain and again set to one side.

Wilt the spinach - easiest way is by putting it in a colander and pouring boiling water over it. Make sure to really squeeze as much water as you can out of the wilted spinach or you'll have a very soggy bake. Try either squashing it with a potato masher or putting it in a clean tea towel and squeezing (flush it with cold water first if you do that, or you'll burn your hands! Stating the obvious but you never know!). Use kitchen scissors to snip the spinach into pieces. 

Melt the butter in a heavy-based saucepan over a medium heat. When melted, add the flour all at once and whisk furiously with a balloon whisk until any lumps have gone. Cook for one minute, then add the milk little by little, whisking all the time. Keep whisking until the mixture has come to the boil. You should have a thickish bechamel sauce. Turn the heat off, then stir in the onion, egg yolks, cheese, nutmeg, spinach, salt and pepper. Stir the cooked pasta into the sauce.

In a pristinely-clean bowl, use an electric whisk to beat the egg whites until they are at the firm peaks stage. Stir a spoonful into your spinach and pasta mixture just to loosen it, then carefully fold the rest of the whites in, taking care not to knock too much of the air out.

Transfer the lot to a baking dish and bake at 190 degrees for 25-30 minutes, or until risen and golden brown. 

Have fun!

Spiced Aubergine and Lentil Filo Pie

We're still riding the healthy-eating horse, and doing pretty well too, but one of the things I've really been missing is pastry. Big, fat, buttery pastry. Definitely one to avoid for the moment. BUT there's hope yet - thank heaven for filo! At about 100 calories a sheet it means a pie is still a pie, but one that won't make me as wide as I am tall. So I've been doing some experimenting, and this recipe is one of the results.

This crispy, flaky, spicy aubergine and lentil offering came out at under 250 calories per serving if made with the dreaded Fry-Light (I've stated oil in the recipe because I don't hate you all, should only add about 350 cals for the whole recipe though if you measure out the 3 tablespoons). Pretty good going, and it's damn tasty as well. It goes well with Middle Eastern-type accompaniments - a tabbouleh or a fattoush salad for example, but equally well with just some green leaves out of a bag if you can't be bothered. And a glass of red.

It's also vegan! Check the packet of the filo pastry just in case, but most brands I've seen are suitable for vegans, including many supermarket own-brands.

Serves 4 - don't forget to leave time for the filling to cool! 

What you need

1 large aubergine
1 400g tin cooked brown or puy lentils
As many sheets as you like of ready-made filo pastry - I used 6
2 medium sized onions (chopped)
1 400g tin chopped tomatoes
2 cloves garlic (crushed)
thumb-sized nubbin of ginger (grated or just bunged through the garlic crusher)
1/2 tbsp dark brown sugar
3 tbsp olive oil (or other weapon of choice)
2 tsps fennel seeds (plus extra to scatter over)
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp cayenne chilli powder
salt and pepper to taste

What to do

Turn the oven on at 180 degrees. Chop the aubergine into smallish cubes, toss in 1 tablespoon of the oil and transfer to a baking dish. Put in the oven to roast while you carry on with the rest - it will want to be in for about 20 minutes, but keep checking it.

Heat the other tablespoon of olive oil in a large saucepan, and add the chopped onion, garlic, ginger, coriander, cumin and chilli powder. Put the lid on so that it all just sweats together rather than browning too  much.

Grab a frying pan and put on a high heat. Add the fennel seed to the dry pan and dry-fry them for a couple of minutes until they're brown and smelling all fennel-y, then add to the onion and spice mixture.

Once the onions etc. are translucent and starting to brown in places, add the chopped tomatoes and the lentils, having poured off the liquid from the lentil tin. Your aubergine will probably be roasted enough now, so slap that in too. Add the brown sugar, and season with salt and pepper.

Allow the pie filling to cook down over a medium heat until it's thickened. You can mainly just go off and do something else at this point, just come back every once in a while to give it a bit of a stir. It will probably take about 15 minutes for the mixture to reduce to pie-filling consistency. Once it's done, the filling will need some time to cool down. If you add the hot filling straight to the pastry, it will just go into a soggy mush. Spread it out on something so it cools quicker and it should be alright after about half an hour.

Grab a shallow baking dish and layer up 3 (or more if you like) sheets of filo pastry, brushing each sheet with some of your remaining tablespoon of olive oil (or spray with you-know-what). Spread over the filling, then finish up with a further 3+ layers of filo to form the top layer, still brushing each one with oil.

Scatter some fennel seeds over the top, and put in the oven for 25 minutes until the pastry is golden brown.

Enjoy!

Courgette, Chilli and Pine Nut Tagliatelle

We're on a bit of a weight loss mission at the moment, scary stuff. Soooo where my normal way of eating pasta is smothering it in cheese and sauce, I've been experimenting with some slightly less artery-fuzzing options. I did the courgettes in Fry-Light (that stuff makes me shudder slightly but it's a necessary evil) and by my maths it works out at under 500 calories per person.

The flavours in this are a bit of a swan-song to summer - it's almost autumn, in fact as I'm typing there's even a Christmas re-run of QI on in the background which is just making me feel all wrong. So may I present some  happy summertime type food before we all plunge back into dark and cold and misery.

Dead easy to veganise, just make sure your pasta is egg-free (most dried varieties are) and leave off the cheese.

Serves 2
What you need

2  medium-sized courgettes
200g tagliatelle (or whatever pasta you've got!)
1 medium-hot red chilli (finely chopped and seeds removed if you don't want too much heat)
2 cloves garlic (crushed)
a small handful of pine nuts (about 10-15g)
2 tbsps olive oil (or Fry-Light if, like us, you are a masochist)
juice of half a lemon (optional)
a few shavings vegetarian parmesan-style cheese
salt and pepper to taste

What to do

Courgettes first. Top and tail them then, with a potato peeler, thinly slice the two courgettes length-wise into ribbons.

Heat half of the olive oil (or depressing Fry-Light) in a ridged griddle pan. If you don't have a griddle pan, a normal non-stick frying pan will be absolutely fine but you won't get the dark ridge marks. When the pan is up to temperature lay out the courgette ribbons, turning when they are starting to brown. It won't take long because they're so thin! You'll probably need to do this in batches, unless you have a monstrous catering-size griddle pan, so pop them on a plate as they're done. It doesn't matter if they get cold, they'll warm back up when you eventually add them to the pasta.

In the mean time, heat a separate dry frying pan and add your pine nuts. Keep shaking the pan until they're evenly toasted all over, then put them on one side. At this point you should also start boiling a pan of water ready for the pasta.

In the same pan (no point creating extra washing up), add the rest of the olive oil, the garlic and the chilli. Keep a careful eye on it because you don't want it to brown, just to sweat slightly so you lose the harshness of the raw garlic. Put that on one side as well when done.

The pasta water will hopefully now be at a rolling boil, so add your tagliatelle and cook for however long the pack says, usually about 10 minutes. Drain it and put it back in the pan.

Toss the courgette ribbons, chilli, garlic and the lemon juice if using, as well as a decent amount of good-quality salt and pepper in with the tagliatelle - the heat from the pasta should warm the courgette etc. back up if it's gone a bit cold.

Plate up and sprinkle over the 'parmesan' shavings.

Now go and sit outside with a glass of chilled white wine and pretend we all live in Italy. Mmm.

Raspberry and Almond Tart

Firstly, sorry for the long silence! Lots of changes at work and similar busy-making life events has meant that by the time I get home, the last thing I feel like doing is anything in the kitchen. We've pretty much been subsisting on pasta, which is all I've managed to summon the energy to make, but I think it's time to emerge from the carb swamp and get back on the culinary horse.

I can't really say that my first re-entry to the kitchen is on a healthy basis - a great big tart full of fruit, nuts and sugar - however it is bloody delicious, especially with a big scoop of ice cream. Diet starts on Monday eh.

A brief note on pastry - I think that ready made pastry is one of the best time-saving inventions of modern times, and actually find home made pastry too rich in comparison. It's also vegan a lot of the time. Any pastry purists among you can feel free to make your own, but you can still find me kneeling at the altar of Jus-Rol.

The quantities in the recipe mainly come from a Peach and Pistachio version from a Sainsburys recipe card. Unfortunately the recipe doesn't seem to be on their website, but you can find plenty more suggestions here.

What you need

1 375g pack sweet shortcrust pastry
150g unsalted butter
100g caster sugar
1 tsp almond essence
3 medium eggs, beaten and at room temperature
150g ground almonds
2 tbsp plain flour
250g frozen raspberries (you can get these in the freezer section of most supermarkets)

Ice cream to serve (optional)

What to do

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Roll out the pastry and use it to line a flan tin. Easiest way is to drape the pastry over a rolling pin, then lay it gently onto the tin, pushing it down into the edges and leaving some hanging over the side. I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds this part a bit fiddly, so there's some helpful advice on lining tins with pastry here. My flan tin is 23cm, so that's the basis on which this recipe has been tested! I'm sure other sizes would also be fine. Prick the base with a fork so that air bubbles don't form.

Line the pastry with baking paper and fill with baking beans, uncooked rice etc, then bake for about 15 minutes. After the 15 mins, take the paper and beans out and bake for a further 5 minutes until the base is cooked. The timing here will depend greatly on your oven and how thinly you've rolled the pastry out, so keep checking it and give it more time if it still seems a bit squidgy. When done, put it to one side.

While the pastry's sorting itself out, make the filling. Beat the butter, sugar and almond essence together with an electric mixer (or a hand whisk if you've the stamina) until pale and creamy. Then add in the beaten eggs a little at a time. I've specified that the eggs should be room temperature because sometimes a mixture can curdle if the eggs are cold. I have been known to, when I've forgotten to get eggs out of the fridge enough in advance, wander round with them in my pockets until they're up to temperature! Sounds insane but it's one way around it, even if you do run the risk of a lovely pocket full of raw egg.

Once all the egg's in, fold in the almonds and the flour until thoroughly mixed in, then add the frozen raspberries. The reason I say to use frozen rather than fresh is firstly because they are cheaper, and secondly because frozen ones won't disintegrate when you stir them in.

Spoon the mixture into the tart case and bake for 35-40 minutes until set and golden. If you're worried about the edges of the tart case burning, you can cover just the edges with tin foil - fiddly but works.

Slice it up and serve it with a scoop of vanilla.