Minestrone soup

 

 

 

The name ‘Minestrone’ has become something of a catch-all for a tomato, vegetable and pasta soup. I don’t pretend that the following version is any more authentic than most, but it certainly is attractive and full of flavour.  Even if I weren't a vegetarian, my Minestrone would always contain beans and recipes which don't, seem very odd to me, because white beans are so often used in Italian peasant food, which is surely what this is.  Cannelini beans would be first choice, but if you can't buy them, any white beans will do.  Even borlotti beans would do, if you have those, also being popular in Italy. 

 

Non-vegetarian recipes call for bacon, but I've seen more than a few which are strictly vegetarian. Ideally, one would chop in a stick or two of celery, but I don't find this a good voyaging vegetable, because you buy so much at a time.  Even in a fridge, I suspect it doesn't last forever, so I suggest celery seed as an alternative: it's a shame that you can't just buy three or four sticks of celery at a time! This soup makes for a great and filling meal with chunks of freshly-baked bread.   

Use 1/3 seawater to 2/3 fresh, if the sea is clean, and leave out the salt.

 

Serves 4 to 6 as a starter, 2 for a main course

 

Ingredients

at least 2 tbsp olive oil
2medium onions or one large
2 garlic cloves
1 carrot

1 small potato 
1 stick celery OR 1 tsp celery seed

1/2 tsp fennel seeds 3 cups water

2 tsp Annie's Mixed Herbs OR 1 tsp rosemary + 1 tsp thyme

1 tsp sweet paprika

2 cups water 

1/4 cup white beans, soaked in 1 cup boiling water for an hour 

about a packed cup full of shredded cabbage
a piece of Parmesan cheese rind

14 oz/400 g tin of crushed tomatoes

about 20 lengths of spaghetti

coarsely ground or cracked black pepper

optional Parmesan cheese or "Parmegan" cheese to serve

Method:

• Heat the olive oil in the pressure cooker.
• Chop the onions and garlic and cook over a fairly high heat until they’re starting to brown. If you are using it, add 1 tsp salt.
• While this is happening, dice the carrot, potato and the celery. Add to the other vegetables, together with the celery seed (if using) and the fennel seed, and cook until they are aromatic - about 5 minutes.
• Add the dried herbs and paprika and toss the vegetables to ensure that they're mixed well. 
• Pour in the water, the beans their water, and bring to the boil. Pressure cook for 10 minutes. Reduce pressure gradually. 
• When you can safely remove the lid, add the cabbage to the pan. Return it to the flame. If you’re using the Parmesan cheese rind, cut this into small dice and add. 
• Empty the tomatoes into the pan and mix them in. 
• When the soup is boiling once more, lower the heat to a simmer, break the spaghetti into 25 mm (1 in) lengths and add this. Stir to separate the pieces of pasta.
• Gind in a generous amoun of pepper. Minestrone also responds well to ½ tsp of cracked black pepper. Taste after a couple of minutes to see if it needs more salt.
• Cook until the spaghetti has softened – you can bring it back up to pressure for 3 minutes if you wish.

Serve with chunks of bread and, if you have it, plenty of Parmesan cheese.

 

Notes:

• Don't be mean with the olive oil and use a nice, peppery one if you can get it.
• The rind from the Parmesan cheese adds a wonderful depth of flavour, which vegans will have to do without.  However, probably most small-income voyagers will have to do without it, too and indeed, even if you have lots of money, Parmesan cheese, complete with rind, is often difficult to source.  In the days when I ate Parmesan, I used to enjoy eating the piece of rind in the soup, but most people apparently take it out before serving.
• If you don't have crushed tomatoes, use whole ones and crush them yourself. 

Variations:

• Ideally, this recipe would include green beans. I tend to eat soup in cold weather, when green beans are expensive and/or hard to come by.  But they certainly enhance the soup.
• Some recipes call for red kidney beans, but I find that they make the soup too dark,  By all means use them if that's what you fancy!
• Use black-eyed peas or chickpeas, if you have no white beans. The black-eyed peas won't need soaking first. Or you could use a can.
• Most recipes call for a bay leaf.  I can never taste them, myself, but feel free to add one, with the rest of the herbs, if you like them.   
• Replace the cabbage with kale or Swiss chard/silver beet.
• You could also use the leaves from a cauliflower, instead of cabbage.
• Broccoli florets, added at the end would go well, but not if you're intending to reheat the soup for another meal.
• Use another type of pasta, such as elbow pasta, or alphabet, but keep to small shapes so that you don't overwhelm the soup with it. 
• Add tomato purée for a richer flavour, especially if your canned tomatoes are a bit watery. 
• If you miss the bacon flavour from traditional Minestrone, use smoked paprika instead of the sweet.  
• A couple of mushrooms, sliced are also a pleasant addition.
• Add a tsp of mushroom stock powder for more flavour.
• Add chopped pepper to taste
• Use chopped tomatoes in purée for a thicker soup.
• Add 1/4 tsp dried chilli flakes
• Fresh tomatoes are also great, if they're available and have plenty of flavour, but in cold weather, canned will probably be a better choice.   

You will find many other recipes for soup here 

 

Edited 19/08/26

 

Mushroom pilau

I'm sorry that I don't have a photo to go with this: I'll try to remember to take one next time that I make it.

This is a great meal to make if you want a straightforward Indian meal. It’s quick to make and full of flavour. Better still, it only needs one pan, but the flavour profile is quite complex with whole spices, golden onions, garlic, and mushrooms. If you like cinnamon, this is the recipe for you and the spice complements the earthiness of the mushrooms.  While mushrooms don't always keep that well, it is easy enough to cook underway and quite straightforward.

Because there are only a few mushrooms, I suggest making more rice than I would normally recommend for two servings. I’m sure the pilau would also happily take the addition of some cooked beans, particularly chickpeas, if you wanted to make it more filling. You could, of course, serve it alongside curried chickpeas or tarka dal, for example.

Serves 2

Ingredient

1 tbsp oil or ghee

1 bay leaf

2 cardamom bashed

1 cm/1/2 inch cinnamon stick

3 cloves

3/4 tsp cumin seeds

1/2 medium onion diced

1 clove garlic minced or 1/2 tsp garlic paste

6 mushrooms, sliced

3/4 cup basmati rice

1 1/2 cups boiling water

1/4 tsp turmeric powder

1/4 tsp garam masala

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black pepper

Method:

• Heat ghee in the pan and add the whole bay leaf, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and cumin seeds. Sauté for a minute or two until fragrant.
• Now add the diced onions and garlic and sauté for a few minutes until the onion softens and turns golden.
• Add the mushrooms and sauté for 5 minutes until lightly golden.
• Now add the rice and fry for 2 minutes until toasty.
• Pour in the boiling water and stir in the turmeric, garam masala, salt and pepper. Mix well and bring the rice to boil on a medium heat. Place a lid on the pan and reduce the heat to low.
• Cook until all the water has been absorbed. Stir it up with your spoon and check the seasoning. Leave it with the lid on for a few minutes to dry out before serving.

Notes:

• Making a suggestion for how many mushrooms to add, is a bit fraught. Some button mushrooms are tiny, some enormous. I envisage some of about 50 mm diameter for this recipe.

Variation:

• If you are going to eat the pilau on its own, you can stir in some green leaves towards the end: silver beet/Swiss chard or spinach would go well, or even cabbage.

 

 

You will find many more recipes like this here.

Chick pea and Aubergine Casserole

I have lots of wonderful recipes to share and so far have been trying to marry them to photographs. However sometimes I forget to take the photo, or it’s a recipe I haven’t cooked for a while, so never took one in the first place. Lots of older recipe books don’t have photos and even if they’re considered essential online, I’m sure most people can work out what the dish will look like, once it’s cooked. So please forgive the odd recipe that I’m including without the accompanying image.

This is one of my favourite recipes. It’s easy to cook, absolutely yummy to eat and fit to offer guests. Aubergines, alas, are not always easy to come by, so if you like them anywhere near as much as I do, you want to make the most of them while you can. I’ve never bothered faffing around with salting and squeezing aubergines. I am told that if you do so, it makes them less like blotting paper around the olive oil, so I tried it once. It didn’t seem to make a lot of difference and although I did manage to get some of the pieces to fry brown and crisp, it didn’t seem to make the slightest difference to the end result. From all accounts it is simply unnecessary with modern varietals. So I decided that I was right. 

Serves 2

Ingredients

1/2 cup chick peas

1 large onion

3 garlic cloves

3 tbsp olive oil

1 aubergine

400 g/14 oz can tomatoes

salt

cracked black pepper

1 tsp oregano OR Annie's mixed herbs

Method:

• Soak and cook the chick peas in the usual manner.
• Chop the onion, dice the garlic. Fry them in the olive oil in a large saucepan until they’re soft.
• Cut the aubergine into chunky pieces, add to the pan and cook for a further 5 mins, turning the pieces frequently so that they all make some contact with both the pan and the oil.
• Now add the drained chick peas and the tomatoes. Season generously with the salt, pepper and oregano. When everything is heated through, turn the flame down low and cook for a further 20 minutes. Alternatively, use the pressure cooker (which is probably your largest pan, anyway) and bring to pressure for 5 minutes.

Serve with rice, wild rice or pasta. In the unlikely event that there’s any left over, it’s also delicious cold.

Variations:

• Use a can of cherry tomatoes, for special occasions
• Fresh tomatoes can also be substituted if cheap and readily available.
• Use white beans instead of the chick peas.

 

 

 

You will find many more recipeslike this here

Asparagus matar malai - asparagus white curry

 

Some time ago I adapted/created a mushroom white curry - mushroom matai malai - and have become addicted to it.  While having all the glorious flavours of curry, it is also quite different from most other Indian recipes that I've tried.  I have also found it a good meal to serve to guests, because it is one of those recipes that can be half made, set aside and then quickly completed when you're ready to eat.  However, I found it frustrating that the curry always came out brown, rather than white and because I can't find oyster mushroom locally, have just had to put up with it.  However, when the asparagus season started and I found myself wondering how to cook it, it occurred to me that it might go well in this white curry sauce.

 

Fresh asparagus is something of a luxury and combining it with Indian spices might sound like sacrilege: however, I urge you to try it.  I find it incredibly good eating and could happily enjoy it twice a week during the all-too-brief asparagus season.  Because it is a bit of a luxury, I make the cashew nut cream, that these white curries usually contain.

 

The onions, garlic and ginger are meant to be ground to a paste in a blender.  However, this means that you need to wash and dry the blender just before making the cashew cream.  I find this a bit of a bother and simply dice the onion very finely and use ginger and garlic pastes.  I don't think that the onions intrude.

Matar, by the way, means peas, so they are, strictly, essential. otherwise it will be simply asparagus malai. I use freeze-dried peas – essential voyagers’ provisions.  You could leave them out, I suppose, but they add interest to the appearance.

I have made this curry several times and adore it.  If you’re not fond of too much chilli, leave out the chillies and simply use the Kashmiri chilli powder.  It is so good that I could probably eat both servings at one sitting and other people also scrape their plate clean.  Because of this, it's worth adding chickpeas or white beans to make it more filling.  either that or have rice and roti!  Moreover, as it is spectacularly delicious, it's difficult not to eat the full two servings oneself and I've occasionally added white beans or  chickpeas to it.  However, if serving it for guests, the beans do detract slightly, so maybe just splurge on more asparagus.  In my opinion, this is not a curry to serve with a dal, or another curry, because I want to appreciate its uniqueness.

 

Unfortunately, it still doesn't end up white.  I shall just have to try it with cauliflower! 

Serves 2

Ingredients

 

one bunch of asparagus - about a dozen stalks

1/4 cup cashew nuts plus water for blending

1½ tbsp ghee or oil

1/2 tsp cumin seeds

1 small piece mace

1 or 2 green chillies, chopped

1 small onion, finely diced

1/2 tsp ginger paste

2 garlic cloves, finely diced or 1/2 tsp garlic paste

2 green cardamoms, seeds only

1 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp water

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1/3 cup freeze-dried peas soaked in 1/4 cup hot water

1/4 tsp ground white pepper or black, if that’s all you have

1/4 tsp garam masala

1 tbsp kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves)

Method:

• Trim the ends of the asparagus and cut it into pieces about 35mm/1.5 in long. 
• Put the cashews in a blender and grind them to a powder.  Than add 1/4 cup of water and blend until you have a smooth liquid.  
• Heat the ghee in a heavy-based saucepan and sizzle the cumin seeds and mace.
• Add the chilli and cook for a few moments. 
• Now add the onion, ginger, garlic, cardamom seeds, coriander, chilli powder and salt. Cook for a couple of minutes, lower the heat and add the water. (This is to stop the vegetables browning). Cook until the onions, etc are soft adding a drop more water if necessary. 
• Now raise the heat once more, add the asparagus and cook for a few minutes, ensuring that it is well-covered in the ghee/spice/aromatics mixture.
• Add the peas and any remaining water.  
• Cook for another four or five minutes and then stir in the cashew cream and cinnamon and bring everything to a very gentle boil. I usually find I need to add more water, so you could rinse out the blender with a couple of tbsp water and add that to the pot.  Now turn the heat right down until the mixture is barely simmering and add the pepper.
• Put a lid on and simmer until the  asparagus is cooked. Remove the lid so that the sauce can thicken to the consistency you want, then add the methi and garam masala. Cook very gently for another couple of minutes.
  Mushrooms also go very well in this sauce.

Serve with roti, brown basmati rice, or cumin rice if you prefer.  

Notes:

• Whole mace, unlike the ground variety, has a surprisingly intense flavour. If you’re not used to using it, be careful how much you add. I use a piece about the size of an almond.

Variations:

• If cashews are too expensive or unobtainable, you can use blanched peanuts instead.
• Use yoghurt instead of cashew nut cream. 
• If you want to end up with a smoother sauce, add the onion, ginger, garlic, and green chilli to a blender or food processor and blend to make a rough paste.  Add this paste to the pan, after you've fried the cumin and mace.
• For a more filling meal, add ½ cup chickpeas or white beans, soaked, cooked and drained. Or a can.  I have to admit that they do rather take away from the rather luxurious consistency of the sauce.
• This is quite a quick meal to make because you can just add everything in order, stirring to ensure that it’s all mixed, as you don’t want the fried vegetables and spices to turn brown. 
• Leave out the peas, if you don't have any.  Or substitute with some green beans.
• Try with cauliflower, cooking florets until just tender and then adding them once you've made the sauce.
• Courgettes could replace the asparagus, but I recommend only using baby ones: larger ones produce too much liquid.  
• I haven't tried this with broccoli, but it should work with young tender florets.  Broccoli can have a strong flavour which would overwhelm the sauce. 

 You will find more recipes like this here

 

Brussels sprouts with mung dal and carrots

This is a great recipe for showcasing Brussels sprouts – a very underrated vegetable in my opinion. When they are unavailable, they can be replaced with courgettes. Having both dal and vegetables in the one pot, means that cooking a proper meal is a simpler process and serving it with rice or roti will complete the protein for best nutrition. Carrots, are also underrated and in combination with the sprouts will provide a good selection of minerals and vitamins and cooked with the bright yellow mung dal, you end up with a very attractive dish. Mung dal are one of my favourite legumes; they cook quickly and have their own distinct flavour. They don’t break down quite as much as split lentils (masoor), but are softer than chana dal. I use them a lot.

The original recipe ends up with completely softened sprouts and carrots. I like well-cooked carrots, but prefer my Brussels a bit firmer. Please see the * Note for alternative cooking. 

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 tsp oil

1/2 tsp mustard seeds

1/4 tsp fennel seeds

1 Indian bay leaf

a generous pinch of asafoetida

1 green chilli chopped

2 large garlic cloves, chopped OR 1 tsp garlic paste

1/4 tsp turmeric powder

1 medium tomato chopped

dried fenugreeek leaves or chilli flakes

1/2 cup yellow mung dal

1 3/4 cups water

1/2 tsp salt or more to taste

1/4 cup chopped carrots

10 to 12 large Brussels sprouts, or equivalent smaller ones

Method

• Trim the sprouts removing the discoloured leaves and excess stem. Depending on their size, half, quarter them or leave them whole.
• Put a saucepan over a medium heat, add oil and heat it.
• Add mustard seeds and wait for them to sputter.
• Then mix in the asafoetida, fennel seeds and bay leaf. Cook for about half a minute
• Add the chilli and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until the garlic browns evenly. (If you’re using garlic paste, add at the next stage, otherwise it will spit all over the place.
• Throw in the carrots and Brussels sprouts*, if you like them soft cooked. (See Note) You can add some other veggies depending on availability and preference. Cook them for a minute.
• Now add the tomato, turmeric and cook for 2-3 minutes until the tomato gets mushy.
• Add the dal to the pan with salt, and water and mix well.
• Cook covered on a low heat for 20-30 minutes, until the mung dal is tender.
• Serve hot, with dried fenugreek leaves or red chilli flakes and roti/naan or rice.  I like cumin rice with it.  (Cook the rice.  Fry 1/2 tsp cumin seeds in a small pan until brown and savoury and pour over the rice.)

Note:

•  To make this gluten free, leave out the asafoetida.

• * If you like your Brussels sprouts firm, I suggest cooking the recipe as written, but adding the Brussels sprouts when the dal starts to soften, depending on whether you want them almost crunchy or merely al dente. This unfortunately is a bit hit and miss, depending on how big the sprouts are. Better to put them in too late and then add some more water if the dal is drying out, than put them in too early and overcook them.
• To refresh the dal the next day, make a new tempering: add a teaspoon of oil, to a small frying pan, heat on medium, add 1/4 tsp mustard seeds, a bay leaf and chilli flakes. Wait for the mustard seeds to sputter.  Pour this over the heated dal and serve.
   

Variations:

• Substitute 1/4 cup (31 g) chopped or grated courgette for the sprouts.
  Use mustard oil for a change of flavour. 

 

You will find many more recipes like this here.

 

Broccoli, chickpeas and tomatoes

 

This is a quick light dinner, ideal for when you come home late, have had sundowners with lots of snacks or simply aren’t feeling very hungry. In spite of its simplicity, it’s really quite delicious: somehow chickpeas and tomatoes are an unbeatable combination

Serves 2

Ingredients

1/2 cup chickpeas, soaked and cooked

1 small head of broccoli broken into florets, stalk trimmed and diced

olive oil

1 medium onion diced

2 cloves garlic, dice

1/2 tsp salt

4 medium tomatoes, quartered

pepper

Method:

• Briefly cook the broccoli until barely softened. Drain and set aside.
• Heat the oil in a frying pan and then add the broccoli stalk, the onion and the garlic and sprinkle over the salt.
• Cook over a moderate heat until softened, but not browned. Cover with a lid to speed things up a little; add a tablespoonful or two of water if it looks like burning.
• Once everything is softened and the onion translucent, tip in the tomatoes and cover once more. Cook for about five minutes on a medium flame until the tomatoes are heated through and starting to soften.
• Gently fold in the broccoli and chickpeas and cook until the broccoli has reached the right consistency. Grind over a generous amount of black pepper and serve hot on warmed plates.

Accompany the meal with thick slices of good bread, to mop up the juices.

Variation:

• You could also serve this over short pasta such as penne, or polenta.

 

 

You will find many more recipes like this here

 

Mushroom matar malai - Mushroom white curry

 

This recipe is so freely adapted from the more authentic ones, that I hardly dare to put it into ‘Curries for Cooks’. However, as it uses one or two spices/herb which only dedicated curry cooks are likely to have on board, that’s how I shall categorise it. (This, of course, assumes that anyone ever looks at the pages on this blog!)

I first made this when I had been ‘off my food’ for a while and unable to face the thought of any Indian food. As I generally adore such recipes, this was a personal tragedy at the time. I had been sent a malai recipe in one of my blog feeds, and it attracted my attention as having not too many spices and looking like something might tempt my appetite. The recipe in question was for paneer, which I can’t obtain locally (and as an aspiring vegan, try to avoid), I looked to see if there were any more recipes on the Internet and came across a mushroom malai, with even fewer spices – perhaps too few - so I took a bit from both recipes.

When I came to look more closely, I discovered that these ‘white’ curries usually contain cashew nuts (this isn’t just a vegan spin on Indian food: a lot of Indian recipes call for cashews), which I don’t include and malai, which means cream, which I also left out. Vegan versions use cashew nut cream; vegetarian versions seem to use cream plus some yoghurt, which I think is because Indian cream is thicker than that which is available in most countries (the UK being – or was! - a notable exception) and sounds more like ‘double cream’. Anyway, this is all irrelevant, because I simply used a goodly amount of nice, thick yoghurt, bearing in mind that cashews might be a bit expensive for small income sailors.  However, if you want to use cashew cream, I give instructions in the Variations.

The onions, garlic and ginger are meant to be ground to a paste in a blender. I couldn’t be bothered (another side effect of the appetite loss) and simply diced them very finely. They certainly didn’t intrude, but the blender instructions are described in Variations.

Matar, by the way, means peas, so they are, strictly, essential. Otherwise it will be simply mushroom malai. I used freeze-dried peas – essential voyagers’ provisions. The curry, even with all my alterations, was incredibly good. I could have scoffed the lot – so obviously it also restored my appetite for Indian food!!

I have made it several times since and it has become one of my favourite ways to eat mushrooms. I’ve been tweaking the spices to keep the curry mellow, but with lots of flavour and, having now got it about right, I feel I can finally post the recipe. If you’re not fond of too much chilli, leave out the chillies and simply use the Kashmiri chilli powder. I have even made this recipe without any cream, yoghurt or cream substitute and it is still delicious. I’m afraid the photos don’t show a white curry: the button mushroom that I buy locally, always turn any sauce brown. Oyster mushrooms produce a lighter-coloured sauce, but are often neither affordable nor available. Use as many mushrooms as you think you can eat: this isn’t a particularly filling meal.  Moreover, as it is spectacularly delicious, it's difficult not to eat the full two servings oneself and if I've taken to adding chickpeas to it, although really I prefer just making more rice.

Serves 2

Ingredients

1½ tbsp ghee or oil

1/2 tsp cumin seeds

1 small piece mace

1 or 2 green chillies, chopped

1 small onion, finely diced

1/2 tsp ginger paste

2 garlic cloves, finely diced or 1/2 tsp garlic paste

2 green cardamoms, seeds only

1 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp water

2 cups of white mushrooms quartered

1/2 cup yoghurt, thinned to pouring consistency, if necessary

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1/3 cup freeze-dried peas

1/4 tsp ground white pepper or black, if that’s all you have

1/4 tsp garam masala

1 tbsp kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves)

Method:

• Heat the ghee in a heavy-based saucepan and sizzle the cumin seeds and mace.
• Add the chilli and cook for a few moments.
• Now add the onion, ginger, garlic, cardamom seeds, coriander, chilli powder and salt. Cook for a couple of minutes, lower the heat and add the water. (This is to stop the vegetables browning). Cook until the onions, etc are soft adding a drop more water if necessary.
• Now raise the heat once more, add the mushrooms and cook for a few minutes, ensuring that they are well-covered in the ghee/spice/aromatics mixture.
• When the mushrooms are starting to soften, add the peas.  As my mushrooms never seem to give off any liquid, you might find that more water is needed.  
• Cook for another four or five minutes and then stir in the yoghurt and cinnamon and bring everything to a very gentle boil. Now turn the heat right down until the mixture is barely simmering and add the pepper.
• Put a lid on and simmer until the mushrooms are cooked. Remove the lid so that the sauce can thicken to the consistency you want, then add the methi and garam masala. Cook very gently for another couple of minutes.

Serve with roti, brown basmati rice, or cumin rice if you prefer.  

Notes:

• This recipe would be a good one for voyagers who make their own yoghurt.
• Whole mace, unlike the ground variety, has a surprisingly intense flavour. If you’re not used to using it, be careful how much you add. I broke off a piece about the size of a small cardamom pod.

Variations:

• If you want to end up with a smoother sauce, add the onion, ginger, garlic, and green chilli to a blender or food processor and blend to make a rough paste.  Add this paste to the pan, after you've fried the cumin and mace.
• Use cashew cream instead of yoghurt.  To make cashew cream, put 1/4 cup of cashews in a blender and grind them to a powder.  Than add 1/4 cup of water and blend until you have a smooth liquid.  I usually find I need to add more water after adding the peas, so you rinse out the blender with a couple of tbsp water and add that to the pot.  
• For a more filling meal, add ½ cup chickpeas or white beans, soaked, cooked and drained. Or a can.  I have to admit that they do rather take away from the rather luxurious consistency of the sauce.
• This is quite a quick meal to make because you can just add everything in order, stirring to ensure that it’s all mixed, as you don’t want the fried vegetables and spices to turn brown.
•  Leave out the peas, if you don't have any.  Or substitute with some green beans.
• Try with cauliflower, cooking florets until just tender and then adding them once you've made the sauce.
• Courgettes could replace the asparagus, but I recommend only using baby ones: larger ones produce too much liquid.  
• I haven't tried this with broccoli, but it should work with young tender florets.  Broccoli can have a strong flavour which would overwhelm the sauce. 
• This gravy also goes very well with Asparagus.

 You will find more recipes like this here

 

Cornish pasties

Pasties originate in Cornwall, so perhaps it’s not surprising that I associate them with Falmouth.  Known locally as ‘Oggies’ for some obscure reason, they were a neatly packaged lunch for men working in the tin mines.  The story goes that they were savoury at one end and that the other end was filled with jam. Nowadays, they’re usually made with meat, but of course they were originally vegetarian – miners couldn’t afford meat for lunch. Rowes, in Falmouth, used to make (and probably still do!) probably the best vegetarian pasty that I’ve ever eaten.  However, they used flaky pastry, which is far from authentic and is so awkward to make, that I don’t suggest it for any of my recipes.  However, the following recipe is an attempt to replicate Rowes' masterpiece and I think the filling is not dissimilar.

 

Ideally, pasties are made in an oven, but if you don’t have one, they can be ‘dry’ fried in a heavy frying pan and are almost as good. 

 

Makes 2 pasties

 

Ingredients

 

1 portion of pastry

1 large potato

1 large carrot

1 small swede (or turnip) - about the size of a tennis ball

1 onion

a good pinch each of rosemary, thyme and sage

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp white pepper

 

Method:

• If you are using it, pre-heat the oven to Fairly Hot. 
• Peel, if you prefer, and thinly slice the potato, carrot, swede and onion, then put them into a frying pan of lightly salted water.  Bring to the boil and cook for 5 minutes.
• Add the herbs, salt and the white pepper. Half a tsp might seem a lot, but in my opinion, good pasties are always quite peppery and you could easily add more without overdoing it.  Cook a bit longer, until tender – about ten minutes. Drain and cool, trying not to break up the slices.  
• Make the pastry, cut it in half and roll it out.
• Cut out two discs a little smaller than the diameter of your frying pan, or about 200mm/8 in across, if you're cooking in the oven.  Make your discs as near circular as possible: this makes it easier to seal the pasties.
• Pile the filling carefully in the centre of each disc.  You really want it to be thoroughly cooled and quite dry, otherwise it can weaken the pastry.  Shove in as much filling as you can - pasties are much nicer well filled. 
• Now moisten the edges with water: a 12 mm (1/2 inch) paintbrush is ideal for this, or just use your finger. Fold each disc in two and pinch the edges together. The easiest way tends to be to start from the middle and work to the ends. Poke back any of the filling that tries to drop out. When the pasty is sealed, fold the seam back over on itself, at 12 mm/1/2 in intervals, to double seal the edge and pinch it between finger and thumb. This should result in a highly professional looking crimped effect.
• Put them on a baking sheet and cook in a Fairly Hot oven for 20 – 25 minutes, or cook them in the frying pan.
• To do this, ensure that your pan is very clean and/or excellently seasoned.  If you have any doubts, it might well be worth greasing the pan first. Put it over a flame tamer and a moderate flame. (If you don't have a flame tamer, I would definitely grease the pan.  While this increases your chances of burning the pasties slightly, this is nowhere near as bad as the pastry sticking to the pan).
• When you’ve made the pasties, put them in the pan. Their semi-circular shape makes this quite straightforward. After about 10 minutes, carefully turn them over, using a fish slice and/or tongs. Cook the other side. The pastry should brown nicely where it’s in contact with the pan and the rest should cook through to become opaque. Turn them again for another 5 minutes each side if they don’t seem quite done. If you have a well-vented lid to let the steam out, (so that they don’t end up soggy) you can cover them to speed things up a little.
  
  

Pasties are delicious straight out of the oven or pan, either eaten - carefully! - out of hand, or on a plate with knife and fork, accompanied with a green vegetable or salad.  Cold, like the miners ate them, they're ideal picnic food being pretty robust and not requiring a plate.

 

Notes:

• If you know how to make pastry, my recipe for 'one portion' is: 4 tsp olive oil, 1/3 cup water, pinch of salt, 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1/4 tsp baking powder.
• Swede,in my opinion, is much preferable to turnip, both for taste and colour, but if they're unavailable, turnip is a good second best. 
• If you don’t have white pepper, use black, but the white pepper is what is traditionally used and adds a different sort of ‘heat’ from black.
• If you are feeling pretty confident, you can start sealing the pasty from one end: this allows you to keep adding filling to stuff them as full as possible.  However, it's easy to tear the pastry - this is one reason why a cold, dry filling makes life easier.  Any left over veg can be put into an omelette - or even a sandwich, for the more adventurous eater.
• If you're confident about the pan/flame tamer arrangement, add a little oil to the pan before adding the pasties. This will ensure a delightful golden crust, but if the pan is too hot you could easily burn the pastry.

Variations:

• Cook a diced potato, carrot, onion and 1/4 cup split peas in a small saucepan. Season with a few herbs, salt and pepper and, when it’s cooled, pile onto the pastry. Complete and cook as above.  This filling will probably be easier to use than the sliced vegetables in the main recipe.
• Cook the above with a little turmeric, coriander, cumin, chilli and garam masala as an ersatz samosa! 
• Leftover stewor hotpot can also be used. Ensure it’s well drained before putting it on the pastry.
• Add freeze-dried peas to the filling.
• Any of the fillings for empanadas can be used to make a savoury pasty.
• Pasties are good hot, as a main meal, with a green vegetable such as Brussels sprouts. I dare say some people would like to add a gravy or sauce of some description, too.

 Edited 26/6/26

'Chicken' seitan and spinach in Indian creamy sauce - Malai palak

This is one of those insanely good Indian recipes that I find irresistable.  Malai means cream, Palak is spinach and this is a loosely adapted recipe from Vegan Richa. In her recipe, she uses soy curls to replace chicken, which are then cooked in a delectable creamy spicy sauce. I’m not even sure if you can buy soy curls in New Zealand and can’t imagine them being commonly available around the world, so it strikes me as a much better idea to use seitan.  Seitan also produces a nice 'meaty' result.

In the original, the soy curls are marinaded and then baked. I think marinades are unseamanlike underway, as well as being wasteful. Certainly, I don’t find it makes much difference to seitan and in fact you get infinitely better results from incorporating the flavours into the seitan in the first place. This is what I’ve done in this recipe. As for baking - I assume many small income voyagers stil lsail without ovens and even those who do, will probabaly avoid using them because of the cost - and the fact that they heat up the cabin.

 

I use ginger paste and garlic paste in my ‛Indian’ cooking. If you prefer to use finely minced ginger and garlic, go ahead.  I'm not sure that this is really a Curry For Cooks, in spite the use of ingredients being pretty authentic: most boats would probably have them on board.  The only exception is the methi and if you don't have it you can leave it out.

Serves 2

Ingredients

For the ‟marinaded chicken”

6 slightly rounded tbsp vital wheat gluten

2 tbsp gram flour

2 tsp nutritional yeast

1/2 tsp mushroom stock powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp onion powder

        1/4 tsp garlic granules

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/4 cup water

1 tbsp soya sauce

For the sauce:

1 tsp oil

1 (Indian) bay leaf

1 whole clove

1 medium onion, chopped

1/2 tsp garlic paste

1/2 tsp ginger paste

1 small green chilli, diced

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/8 tsp cayenne OR 1/4 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder

pinch ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp black pepper

*200 ml/7 oz ounce can of full fat coconut milk

2 tbsp vegan yoghurt

1/4 cup water or milk

125 g/4 oz spinach, washed and roughly chopped

1 tsp dried fenugreek leaves, kasuri methi

garam masala

chilli flakes

Method:

• Seitan: In a bowl, mix vital wheat gluten, gram flour, nutritional yeast, mushroom stock powder, salt, onion powder, garlic granules, ground coriander and ground cumin.
• In a small jug, mix the water and soya sauce and add them to the bowl.
• Mix into a soft dough, starting with a knife or spatula and ending with your hand. If the mix seems a little bit dry, add a little more water, a teaspoonful at a time. Use the dough to clean your bowl thoroughly, otherwise the dried seitan will need to be soaked off.
• Put the dough on a board and flatten down. You will be cutting it into bite-sized chunks, so it wants to be a suitable thickness.
• Put the trivet into your pressure cooker, along with 1/2 cup water. Place the seitan on the trivet, and bring up to pressure for 5 minutes. Let the pressure go down naturally.
• When you can take the lid off, take out the seitan and cut it up – or tear it for a more ‛authentic’ appearance.
• If you want to, you can now fry the chunks in some oil so that they are crisp on the outside. On odds, I think I prefer them soft.

For the sauce:

• Heat a pan over medium high heat and add some oil.
• Now add the bay leaf, clove, onion, garlic paste, ginger paste, green chilli salt. Cook stirring occasionally until onion is golden.
• Turn down the heat and add coriander, ground cumin, cayenne or Kashmiri chilli, cinnamon and black pepper
• Throw in the seitan pieces and turn for a few minutes so that they are well mixed in and covered in the spices.
• Then add in the milk, yoghurt, water and spinach and mix in. Reduce heat to medium low, cover and cook for 12-15 mins, checking that it’s not drying out. Add some more water, if necessary.
• Add the kasuri methi, check salt and flavour and carry on cooking until you get a rich creamy sauce.

Garnish with garam masala and chilli pepper flakes if you like, and serve with rice, roti or even good quality bread.

Variations:

• Use two or three leaves of silver beet/Swiss chard instead of spinach.
• Replace the seitan with half a cup of chickpeas or beans, cooked and drained, putting them in with the spinach
• Add some quartered mushrooms, with the onions, etc.
• If you don’t have yoghurt, use more milk/water. If you have a lot of coconut yoghurt, you can just thin that down to suit. You need around 300 ml liquid. You may need to simmer for more or less time to achieve the consistency you want.

Notes:

• * Coconut milk tends to come in an odd assortment of sizes. Just use a can closest to the size in the recipe. If you’re fortunate to find dried, genuine coconut milk, mix that according to the instructions on the container.

 

You will find many more recipeslike this, here, here and here 

 

 

Lentil lasagne

Lasagne is generally served up sizzling hot from the oven, with a crisp top, and often crunchy bits of lasagne sticking out. I’ve read that some Italians prefer to pop it into the oven for only about a quarter of an hour and to eat it moist and soft. That being so, I think we’ll go for the latter ‘gourmet’ version, which means that instead of using an oven, we can use the pressure cooker. However, be warned that this may not work in a cheap pan because it’s likely to stick. (If your pressure cooker is a bit on the thin side, what you’ll have to do is to put the lasagne into something like a cake tin, that will fit in your pressure cooker. Put half a pint of water in the bottom of the cooker, with the tin on the trivet, loosely covered with greaseproof paper or foil. It can then be cooked at high pressure for 10 minutes.)

I specify ‘no-cook’ lasagne, but in fact I believe that nearly all lasagne sheets can be used without pre-cooking.  If you can find the right pasta, this recipe can be gluten free.

Serves 2

Ingredients

6 pieces ‘no-cook’ lasagne

1/2 cup whole lentils

2 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, diced

1 red or green pepper, chopped

400 g/14 oz can chopped tomatoes

1/2 tsp sage

1/2 tsp basil

1/2 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp chilli flakes

salt and pepper

cheese sauce, mixed more thickly, as shown in the Variations on that post

Method:

• Cook the soaked lentils as usual and set aside.
• Heat the olive oil in a saucepan. Add the onion, garlic and pepper and fry until the onion is golden.
• Add the tomatoes and mix in the sage, basil, oregano, cinnamon, chilli flakes, salt and pepper.
• When everything is mixed together and heated through, add the lentils. Cook gently for ten minutes or so to let all the flavours combine. Taste and check the seasoning.
• Pour half the sauce into the bottom of the pressure cooker. Add half the lasagne sheets. Unfortunately, these will not fit very neatly, but you will have to do your best. Now add the rest of the sauce and the remaining lasagne. Cover with the cheese sauce, pouring carefully, to ensure that all the lasagne is covered.
• On a medium heat, bring the pressure cooker up to pressure. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes and reduce pressure at room temperature. Ideally, leave it for a further five minutes so that if the lasagne has caught at all, it will lift easily from the pan. It’s impossible to serve this dish at all elegantly, but if you spoon it carefully from the pan, the layers should remain more or less intact.

Serve with a cooked green vegetable or salad.

Variations:

• Use 4 or 5 fresh tomatoes and 1/4 cup red wine in the sauce.
• Add extra grated cheese or "Parmegan"

Alternative cooking:

• Arrange the lasagne in a shallow oven-proof dish and cook it in a moderate oven for a quarter of an hour or so. I don’t find it needs the 45 minutes that most cookbooks recommend. In this case, you can substitute the cheese and yoghurt sauce for cheese sauce. It’s quicker and easier to make, and probably more nutritious, but due to the yoghurt, it might separate in the pressure cooker.
• Layer the lasagne into a deep frying pan, or wide saucepan. Heat over a low heat, using a flame tamer if necessary, to ensure it doesn’t catch and get burnt. Cover and cook for about 15 minutes, checking every now and then to see if the sauce has cooked, by which time it will be quite firm. In this case you can also use the cheese and yoghurt sauce.

 

 

You will find many more recipes for pasta on the page:  Main-course recipes - pasta based