Dear John Recipes: Armenian Main Dish

Dear John,

Your grandmother made this meal-in-a-pot often when I was a child. I gobbled it down in much the same way that you and your brother inhaled it between gulps of milk when you were kids. It’s comfort food, it’s kids’ food, it’s clear out the fridge food, it tastes better the 2nd day so don’t be afraid to make more than you can eat at once, and it’s surprisingly good for you. It’s also cheap and versatile – don’t be afraid to throw this, that and/or anything without mould and doesn’t squeak into the pot after the rice has finished cooking. Any fridge leftover should be added at the very end so they don’t over-cook and turn to mushy-muck.

There is, by the way, nothing whatsoever Armenian about this recipe. As I child I asked Grandma, “What does Armenian mean?” She thought it was a foreign word … or maybe a city in Canada. And then she said, “Don’t ask me stupid questions. Go set the table; dinner’s ready.”

Armenian Main Dish

Ingredients:
500g good quality minced beef
1 onion, finely diced
3 garlic gloves, thinly sliced
1 beef stock cube, crumbled
1 tin chopped tomatoes (approx. 14oz/400g tin)
1 tin cut green beans (approx. 14oz/400g) – If fresh beans are in season buy those. Cut beans into pieces and then fill about half way up the emptied tomato tin as a method of measure.
1 tablespoon Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce
1 tablespoon Dijon, or 1 teaspoon Colman’s dry mustard powder
1 teaspoon cumin or 1 teaspoon medium curry powder
1/2 or 1 cup uncooked Basmati or Long Grain rice (your choice)
1 teaspoon dried red chilli flakes
1 teaspoon dried parsley or 1 tablespoon fresh chopped parsley
(if needed) 1/2 cup boiling water to create enough liquid for the rice to cook. The liquid should just come above the level of the ingredients. Not too much.

Method:
Brown the minced beef over medium heat, and crumble it into small pieces by pressing a spatula against the minced beef while it cooks. Drain off the fat but not down the drain. Add the diced onion, stir and cook until the onion is translucent. Add the garlic, stir and cook for a minute or two. Don’t allow the garlic to brown, as that makes it bitter. Add the tomatoes, Lea & Perrins, mustard, cumin or curry powder, and red chilli flakes. Stir well. Bash the stock cube with your fist and then crumble into the mixture. Stir. Pour in the liquid from the canned beans, but DO NOT add the beans yet (just the liquid!). Stir. Add the rice and stir again. The rice needs enough liquid to cook – the liquid level should be slightly above the mince mixture. If you can’t see any liquid, add some now and stir it in thoroughly. Clap on the lid so the water is absorbed into the rice rather than evaporating from the pan. The rice takes about 20-minutes on low heat to cook. You can stir it once every 10-minutes to ensure that it doesn’t catch on the bottom of the pan. When the rice is cooked and tender, taste and adjust seasoning (add salt or pepper if needed). It often needs a bit more salt. Now add the cut beans, stir in gently, and warm through completely.

Variations:
You can also add a tin of crispy sweet corn, a big handful of grated cheese either stirred into the mixture or sprinkled on top and allowed to melt, a fried egg on top, a tin of red kidney beans in chilli sauce, stir in leftover mac and cheese, add chopped celery, add several fresh, chopped tomatoes for extra colour, a dessertspoonful of crème fraiche, add pitted black olives, sliced mushrooms, a squirt of anchovy paste, Dad always adds A1 Steak Sauce, Grandpa always added ketchup, I add grated cheddar. The variations and additions are endless, but these are just a few of the ones I’ve tried and liked.

Bon appetit! Værsgo!

More Sprouts, Weird Sprouts and No Sprouts

Saturday night, I started a second batch of mung bean sprouts. Sunday morning, I drained, rinsed and popped them into a small jar. They were plump and begging to unfurl little sproutie things, which they did 6hrs later. Gazooks, that was fast. I have high expectations for this crop.

I’m a semi-seasoned sprouter now; this is my second batch, so I gave myself permission to sway from pedantic adherence to instruction (rinse, drain every 8hrs, cover with muslin, etc). I had a different idea. I’d sing “I’m a Little Tea (no) Pea Sprout, Strong and Stout” to encourage rapid growth. When that didn’t work, I came up with another less clever idea.

I grabbed an new pair of black stocking knee-highs, and stuck one of them over the jar pulling the stocking tight across the top and down to the bottom. The idea being that the black stocking shades the bean sprouts so that the chlorophyll isn’t triggered by exposure to light. So far so good. The sprouts are snowy white but it’s early days, early as in the green shells are still stuck to the beans even though they’ve sprouted well.

So anyway, I started this batch on Saturday night, and Wednesday night we ate half of them on a green salad. I’ll start another batch tomorrow.

I also have some green lentils in a jar with a black stocking pulled over tight. So far the lentils haven’t shown any willingness or intent to sprout, and that’s after soaking 24hrs. This is day 3. Nada.

The quinoa seeds sprouted within a few hours after soaking for just 8hrs. The sprouts were long and thin, and reminded me of something you’d expect to see coming out of a puppy’s bottom. I tossed them across some veg soup. I won’t be repeating that experience. The quinoa sprouts tasted like rye grass. Edible but not particularly pleasant. I’m still having nightmares about thread worms and puppy bottoms.

Quinoa Sprouts on Day 2

Quinoa Sprouts on Day 3 (above and below)

Quinoa sprouts hidden in the depths of vegetable soup

The potted herbs are doing very well on windowsill. I cut the chives back to about 3-inches, and then gave them a good feed with liquid plant food. The basil received the same treatment; cut back hard and fed. I used the basil for fresh pesto with pine nuts. The chives went into a fluffy omelette that had shaved parmesan folded through it, and then topped with the last of the bean sprouts.

I’m also trying an experiment with spring onions. I chopped what I needed of the green tops, and then popped the white parts into a glass of water on the windowsill. The green tops are growing back and new sprouts have appeared. I believe I’ll have an endless supply of spring onion tops, if this works as I think it might. Photo 1 is on day 1, and photo 2 is on day 3. All of them have sprouted new green shoots and a root system is growing.

So, tell me … what are growing indoors right now?

Dear John Recipes: How-To-Make Creamed Tuna on Rice

This is a new category dedicated to my son, John, who is a very accomplished cook but he sometimes likes to know “Howd-ja-do-that?” I hope to give him a few frugal recipes to help stretch his teacher’s salary.

The first recipe, Creamed Tuna, is one that I made often when John and his brother were growing up, when money wasn’t particularly free-flowing. It’s cheap, nay frugal, and only takes a few minutes to prepare. It’s filling and warming: comfort food on the cheap. And in the spirit of BBC’s Blue Peter telly program, here’s one that I made earlier (along with Dan Lepard’s soda bread) …

There are endless ways to change this into something entirely different: stir in cooked pasta, serve on toasted, thick-sliced bread, add different vegetables, stir in some grated cheese, etc. I’ll give it more thought, and we’ll see how many different ways we can kill off a tin of tuna.

Creamed Tuna on Rice (serves 2)

Ingredients:

2 tablespoon butter or margarine
1 small yellow or red onion, diced
2 ribs celery, diced the same size as the diced onion
2 tablespoons plain flour
400ml milk (approx)
½ chicken bouillon cube or 1 teaspoon liquid bouillon (optional)
a handful frozen peas (thawed)
1 small tin crispy sweet corn, drain liquid into measuring cup with milk
2 tins tuna steaks, drained (spring water is best)
white pepper to taste
1 tablespoon half-fat crème fraîche (optional but tasty)
chopped fresh chives or parsley

Method:

Start cooking your rice.

Turn on the kettle, and pour boiling water over the frozen peas in a sieve. Allow to drain.

Melt the butter or margarine in a pot over low heat. Add the diced onion and celery, stir well so it’s covered with the butter, and then clap on the lid and cook over low heat until onion is just barely translucent. Stir after one minute and clap the lid back on tight. The onion should be cooked in 2-3 minutes.

Sprinkle the onion and celery mixture with the flour. Stir well until it is fully incorporated and coating the veg. Cook and stir for one or two minutes on low heat so that the flour ‘cooks’ away the raw flour taste. While the flour is cooking, microwave the milk for 20-30 seconds to take the chill off. It should feel warm on your finger.

Slowly add the milk, bit by bit, stirring with a balloon whisk in between each addition so that the flour doesn’t lump in the milk mixture. If it does, no worries – just whisk/stir like crazy and it will un-lump as long as your milk is finger-warm. Icy-cold milk is apt to lump. Warm milk won’t.

Now add roughly half of the milk in a slow steady steam, whisking/stirring constantly as you pour. Allow the mixture to come up to a simmering bubble, stirring the whole time. The mixture will start to thicken as it simmers. Continue adding a bit more milk until you achieve a moderately thick sauce. Keep it slightly thicker than you want it when finished. It’s easier to thin out the sauce later, but darned difficult to thicken it more. This is just like make gravy…except it’s the old fashioned, proper way.

Add the chicken bouillon, stir until dissolved. Now add the thawed peas and sweet corn. Stir again. Add the optional rounded tablespoon of crème fraîche, assuming that calories aren’t an issue. Stir. You will notice that the crème fraîche loosens the sauce slightly. That’s why we left it a bit thick earlier.

Add the canned tuna, breaking up the chunks with a fork if needed. Be careful when stirring the creamy tuna sauce now, as you don’t want the tuna to break up into stringy threads. Gently gently does it at this point. Now taste it. Add salt if you want. Add a small bit more bouillon if it’s too bland.

Drain the rice. Spoon the creamy tuna over hot cooked rice, and sprinkle chopped chives or parsley over the top.

Dan Lepard’s Breakfast Soda Bread from “Short and Sweet”

This is quite possibly the best recipe in Dan’s most recent book, “Short and Sweet”. There’s an older version of this recipe on the Guardian’s website but the updated one in his book is more precise and positively wow-inducing. That’s what my husband said after peeling off the baking paper sleeve from his individually baked, wholemeal soda bread. He forked off a chunk, the steam curling off the tender crumb, and he simply said, “Wow” as he tasted it. I nodded in agreement.

A few notes:

I don’t have a muffin tin, so I employed the Mother of Invention protocol, and voilà. I used two 6 oz. Pyrex custard cups instead, setting each baking parchment parcel into its cup and then setting them on a baking sheet in the oven.

I had to wet my fingers slightly to press the parchment parcel into the custard cup because my fingers kept sticking firmly to the dough.

There was incredible oven spring, so I don’t think coloured muffin papers would work for this. Pity because I think it would look pretty. The parchment paper looks nice enough to be honest.

I put the dry mixture into an air-tight canister, labelled it with how much wet ingredient is required for each 90g of mix. I might also add the dry ingredient list just to make things easier in the future when the canister is empty. I intend to make lots and lots and lots of these in the future.

It’s great weekend bread to accompany soup for lunch.

6 February 2012: The weather service predicted the snow would arrive on Saturday evening about 9pm. It arrived at 7pm. Well done! The ground was frozen solid from a week of sub-zero temperatures, so when the flakes turned to flurries … it stuck. And stayed. In the morning, everything was magically white and calm and quiet and virginal …  until …

… Molly dashed out the door and covered the carpet of snow with little springer footprints. She sprang and jumped and twirled and ate great chunks of snow. And then she came barrelling full blast at me and pulled up to a quick stop at my feet. She cut a pose … and then …

she was away again to play more in the snow. We had 10cm in total.

Everything was covered, including the greenhouse which looked forlorn and forgotten at the far end of the garden.

The ancient lime trees along the B road took on a new and unfamiliar silhouette against the grey sky.

Hedgerows peeking over the fence. I should fill the bird table.

It’s Monday evening now, and the snow slowly melted a bit during the day but now the temperature is –4C and everything is freezing up tight and solid again. Thank Pirelli for winter tyres.

Godnat. Sov godt. Håber dine tæer er varme.

Short and Tweet Baking Challenge: Superwraps

I’ve seen the word “quinoa” before but never realised that this week’s baking challenge would be a lesson in pronunciation. It’s not kwin-oha, which is how I’ve always pronounced it. It’s “keen-wah”. I carefully sounded it out several times in my head, hoping it would stick. It didn’t. I was calling it kwin-oha again before the day was done. But I assure you that Dan’s Superwraps are much easier to make than remembering how to pronounce the name of those weird little creamy-colour seeds, which remarkably isn’t a cereal or grain – quinoa is related to the same family as the beets, spinach and tumbleweed.

So I set about toasting the quinoa in a dry frying pan until the seeds turned nutty brown. Bored, my mind started wandering … I made

… Pacman faces, and then …

I made smiley faces …. and …

crescent moons and …

quinoa beaches and …

shapes that I didn’t really recognise as anything. And when the seeds were toasty brown…

I rolled them from the pan directly into a pot of tepid water. The recipe didn’t say if the water should be cold or hot or tepid, so I just went for a temperature that felt very wet.

The hot seeds fizzled and jumped and shot steam into the air. My gas cooker can’t keep a ‘gentle heat’ under a pan, so I put one of my old heat defusers underneath which kept the water at a steady, soft simmer. The water was absorbed within the time stated in the recipe, and I let the seeds cool on a plate. I was fascinated by the change in texture and colour of the quinoa. This stuff is very odd. Apparently it’s also very nutritious.

I made the dough using white spelt combined with strong bread flour, and after resting the dough for 30-minutes, it was very easy to work and roll thinly. Knowing from experience that when Dan says ‘”thin” he means “thinner than you’d believe possible” … I just kept rolling and rotating and flipping each 70 grams of dough until doing so any further seemed obsessive. I tossed the first one into a dry frying pan (dry since the recipe didn’t say oiled) and watched closely for the “blistering” to happen. I missed this important signal because the telephone rang. It was Molly’s veterinarian saying that the lab results showed she had an ear infection. “Ears drop and steroid tablets required,” I told her. She gave me a look. She hates ear drops.

By the time I returned to my first superwrap, it had transformed into a supercrispy flatbread, which to be honest didn’t taste half bad. The next one was better but I think I was a bit heavy-handed with the sunflower oil on it. The following one was nearly perfect, and the last (and 10th) one was just as I wanted. Delicious, soft and pliable, perhaps a touch salty but better that than too bland. The trick is not to allow these to sit in the pan too long. Quickly, quickly does it best.

Mr Misk liked them, too. That’s always an important consideration in whether I’ll make something again or not. I’ll be making these again.

We stuffed them full with slow-roasted lemon and chilli pepper chicken, diced tomatoes, shredded lettuce and pepper sauce.

And Molly waited impatiently for her dinner, too.

Dan Lepard’s “Short and Sweet” book is available at Amazon UK and Amazon USA

For this week’s Short and Tweet Challenge summary, click here.

In My Kitchen, January 2012

Note: I wrote this post in January for Celia’s Fig Jam and Lime Cordial blog feature but forgot to release it from the Pending folder. I hope that ‘better late than never’ applies here.

This marvellous little gadget was a Christmas gift from my son. A gift from him to my husband, actually, but there were 2 filters in the box so I reckon it’s okay for me to show you mine.

It is a loose leaf tea filter.

Turn on the kettle, and then put some tea leaves into the bottom of clear, plastic filter.

Pour boiling water into the filter, close the lid, and wait until the tea finishes brewing.

Now set the filter on top of your cup or mug. Setting it on your cup causes a lever to move and release all the tea into your mug.

Now dig a little hole in the soil of your garden border and tip the tea leaves into the hole. It’s great for conditioning your soil.

Totally nifty gadget and brilliant gift. Here’s