Cheese and Yoghurt Sauce

This is a very lazy, and very effective way of making a thick sauce to go over pancakes, lasagne and so on. In my opinion it tastes much better than white sauce, however carefully made.  I would be a little bit careful using it in the pressure cooker, however, because it might separate. If you make your own yoghurt (see recipe), you will usually have some on board. This recipe assumes that you have thick, Greek-style yoghurt, but if yours is on the thin side, use all yoghurt or add another egg.

 

Serves 2

 

1/2 cup Greek-style yoghurt

1/2 cup milk

1 egg

1 cup grated cheese

 

 Method:

• Beat the yoghurt, milk and egg together. Add the grated cheese and mix well.
• Pour over the dish and heat through, either on a low heat with a flame tamer on the top of the cooker, or in a moderate oven.

Variation:

I haven’t tried making a vegan version of this. Of course it’s easy to buy or make plant milk and you can buy or make plant milk yoghurt, too. The usual egg substitute is 1 tbsp ground flax seed to 3 tbsp water. Whisk in the water and then let it stand until it becomes gelatinous, about 5 minutes. This works well in baking, but I’m not sure if it would work in this recipe.

Tomato Sauce (Marinara Sauce)

For some reason, North Americans invariably refer to this as marinara sauce, which always sounds a bit pretentious to me!   Whatever you choose to call it, the easiest way to make it is with a can of chopped tomatoes.   However, if fresh tomatoes are cheap and full-flavoured, they are also very good, so long as you don’t mind little bits of skin in it. 

If you want to peel the tomatoes first, immerse the tomato in boiling water for 1 minute and then immediately plunge it into cold water to stop it cooking.  A bowl of seawater is fine for this. If you pierce the skin first, it is easier to start the peeling process.

 

Serves 2

1 onion

1 tbsp olive oil

1 garlic clove

400 g/14 oz can tomatoes OR 4 or 5 fresh ones

salt and pepper

 

Method:

• Dice the onion and cook it in the olive oil for 5 minutes or so. Dice the garlic and add it to the pan.
• When the garlic is softened, add the can of tomatoes, or the fresh ones, diced.
• Cook for 10 to 15 minutes over a moderate heat until the sauce has thickened to the texture you want. Season with salt and pepper.

Variations:

This is a very basic, but surprisingly good sauce. It can be seasoned with basil, thyme or any other herb that takes your fancy: fresh basil, of course is particularly good as is fresh Italian parsley. Cinnamon or chilli can also be used, and a dollop of red wine raises it to gourmet standards. If you are feeling especially elegant, put it through a wire sieve to make a smooth purée.

Pastry

Before proceeding any further, let me say that I do not claim to be anything of a pastry cook. This is partly because on a boat, it’s usually difficult to have everything cool. It’s also due to my reluctance to use expensive butter or unpleasant-tasting margarine and the fact that I dislike ‘rubbing in’ pastry. I suspect that I simply don’t have the touch to produce good pastry. However, whenever I serve it, people always seem to enjoy it, so I can at least assert that if you use this recipe, the results are edible!

The following recipe is easy and foolproof. It’s cheap, because there’s no butter in it and it’s made with wholemeal flour. While it doesn’t produce light and flaky results, it rolls out easily. It makes sufficient to make two decent-sized pasties, a 230 mm (9 in) frying-pan quiche, a 200 mm (8 in) flan tin quiche or to cover a pie.

To be honest, if I make anything with ‛pastry’ these days, I nearly always use Calzone dough instead.

If you have your own favoured recipe, this is the equivalent of what in the UK would be referred to as ‘half a pound’ of pastry, or 250 g, or the equivalent of making North American pastry with a cup of flour.

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup water

salt and pepper

1 cup wholewheat flour

 

Method:

• Put the oil, water, salt and pepper in a bowl and whisk together with a mini whisk or broad-bladed knife.

• Mix in the flour, finishing off by kneading gently with your hand.
• Roll out the pastry on a lightly-floured board or counter.

There! It really couldn’t be easier, could it?

Quick Curry Sauce

I’m sure no Indian cook would own this one; however it is useful for extending some leftovers or mixing in with a can of beans. If you cook some rice in the pressure cooker while you’re making this, you get an almost instant meal.

 

Serves 2

 

2 tbsp olive or coconut oil

1 onion

1 garlic clove or 1/2 tsp garlic paste

fresh ginger or 1/2 tsp ginger paste

2 tbsp gram flour

1½ cups water

1 tbsp curry paste OR 1 tbsp curry powder and 1 tbsp tomato purée

1 tbsp lemon juice

salt 

 

Method:

• Heat the oil in a saucepan. Chop the onion, dice the garlic and ginger and fry in the oil until softened. If you’re using curry powder, add this now and cook for another minute or two.
• Add the gram flour and a little of the water. Stir until any lumps of flour have disappeared and then add the rest of the water. Bring to the boil, stirring constantly.
• When the sauce has boiled, lower the heat (and add the curry paste). If you’re using curry powder, add the tomato purée. Stir and add the lemon juice. Add salt to taste.
• Leave on a low heat to simmer for 5 minutes so that the gram flour is completely cooked. If it’s too thick, add a little more water, or liquid from the can of beans, if you’re using them.

Variations:

• For Baked bean curry, which tastes surprisingly good, add a tin of baked beans to the above sauce.

• Add cooked vegetables for an instant meal.
• Try frying plantain with the onions.

Hollandaise Sauce

Perhaps this isn’t exactly a basic recipe, but it’s a lovely one to have in your repertoire. Typically, it’s served with fresh fish such as salmon, but it also goes superbly with fresh asparagus, which is anyway such a luxury, that it deserves the best of treatment. It’s also very popular poured over poached eggs on toast.

If you’re unacquainted with this sauce, the best way to describe it’s like hot mayonnaise, but somehow, even richer. I haven’t tried making a vegan version of this.

 

Serves 2

 

1½ tsp lemon juice

1 tbsp water

1 egg

50 g (2 oz)/4 tbsp butter

 

Method:

• Boil water in a small saucepan and then take it off the stove.
• Find a bowl that will sit comfortably over the pan, but not so deeply as to displace the hot water.
• Put the lemon juice, water, salt and pepper in the bowl.
• Beat in the egg, with a wire whisk and then add a quarter of the butter. Continue whisking until the butter has melted. By now the sauce should be starting to thicken.
• Add the rest of the butter a quarter at a time, whisking all the time.
• Taste. Add a little more lemon juice if you like.
• The sauce should be served immediately, but it will keep warm if you leave the bowl over the hot water.

If you find that the water has cooled down too quickly, you can put it back over a very low flame on a flame tamer. The water must not boil because it will then effectively scramble the egg, which will ruin the sauce.

 

Vegan "Parmesan" (Parmegan)

For many years, I lived with a man who detested cheese and because money was in short supply, I hardly ever bought this treat for myself.  I missed it, but its lack was tolerable, although I really enjoyed eating it when I had a chance.  Then I lived with someone who loved cheese and, moreover, we had a little more money, so we generally had it on board.

When I decided to live on my own in New Zealand, I could finally eat exactly how I wanted to.  However, my budget was again pretty limited and I found that New Zealand, in spite of being awash in dairy cows, has no tradition of its own cheese.  Most of the affordable cheese made here, is a pastiche of Camembert or Brie, of Gouda and Edam and of course, the ubiquitous so-called Cheddar.  I had hoped for so much more, remembering the open markets of my English youth, where I could buy several different versions of my local cheese.  While there is some superb artisan cheese in this country, not only is most of it beyond my financial means, but most of it is beyond my physical means, only being sold in the major cities.  Over recent years, the plight of dairy cattle (particularly calves) and of the planet overall, has inexorably inched me towards veganism.  However, I still succumbed to the lure of Parmesan or Pecorino cheese.  It was a very happy day, therefore, that I stumbled across a vegan alternative on the Internet.

Not only is vegan "Parmesan" a genuinely acceptable alternative to the real thing, it even emulates it sufficiently accurately, that friends have tipped generous amounts of the food I've served them, without even noticing that it's not the 'real thing'.  Often what you taste is what you expect!

Many people use cashew nuts: I prefer Brazil nuts.  (In this blog I am not generally going to discuss the various ethical pros and cons of one nut/grain/legume over another.  Suffice it to say that the worst of them is probably less unethical than most animal products.)  You will need a blender or good mouli-grinder to make this.

Brazil nuts are one of those that tend to go stale quite quickly - like walnuts - so I have assumed that the 'cheese' would also lose its flavour and freshness quickly.  I therefore limit its production to 1/4 cup at a time.  The recipe is so simple that it's extremely easy to make larger quantities.  However, I do find that a small jar will keep happily for at least two or three weeks without refrigeration, which is another of its great virtues.

1/4 cup Brazil nuts 

1 tbsp nutritional yeast 

1/4 to 1/2 tsp salt

 

Method:

• Roughly chop the Brazil nuts into about 1cm pieces
• Put the chopped nuts, the nutritional yeast and the salt into your blender or mouli and process until you get the consistency of finely grated cheese.
• Serve over pasta, etc, as you would Parmesan cheese.

Adjust the salt according to your personal taste.