Sweetcorn and Feta Pies – Accidentally Vegetarian

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I am becoming an accidental vegetarian. While I cannot see myself giving up steak or bacon completely, there are so many meatless meals to be discovered. For me, a successful vegetarian dish is when I eat something that is so delicious that I don’t notice the absence of meat. My beloved doesn’t believe a meal is complete without some form of animal on the plate, so finding meatless meals that satisfy a carnivorous household is a challenge.

Sweetcorn and Feta Pies - accidentally vegetarian!

With the garden in full production at the moment, there are herbs aplenty and a forest of salad leaves, helping me to meet the meatless task half-way. Fresh mint and flat-leaved parsley are the flavours that lift these pies out of the ordinary.

Make sure there's enough mint left for the cook's Mojito!

Delicious hot or cold, they are a great way of sneaking vegetables past the kids, or making a chic, recession-proof office lunch. Easy to make and easy to eat, preparation time is about 5 minutes, cooking time about 25 minutes, eating time about 30 seconds flat!

For 4 pies you will need...

... to pre-heat the oven to 190°C

2 sheets of all butter ready-rolled puff pastry, thawed

100g tinned sweetcorn kernels

100g feta cheese, roughly mashed

50g fresh spinach, washed, dried and finely shredded

4 spring onions, finely chopped

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh mint

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh flat-leaved parsley

1 egg, beaten

1                    Cut each pastry sheet in half then trim to a square of approximately 14cm (use the trimmings to cut out fancy shapes to decorate if you like – kids love this bit.)

2                    Mix together the rest of the ingredients, reserving about 1 tablespoon of the beaten egg.

3                    Divide the mixture between the four squares making a sausage shape in the centre of each and leaving a margin of about 1cm at each end of the sausage shape. Brush the edges with a little cold water. Fold the narrow ends in, then fold the wider edges over the top of the mixture to make a neat parcel.

4                    Place each pastry parcel on a non-stick baking sheet, so that the join is underneath. Brush with beaten egg to give the pies a lovely glaze. If decorating with pastry shapes, pop these on top now and brush with egg.

5                    Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20 – 25 minutes or until golden brown and serve hot or cold, with or without salad.

I ♥ herbs!

Tip: Make tiny versions as canapés and serve with a minty Mojito.

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Belly Dancing Tabbouleh - Hurray !

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Although a seemingly simple salad with just a handful of ingredients, Tabbouleh can kill or kiss your taste buds.

In the West, we seem to be a little heavy-handed with the bulghur wheat element, when it is essentially a parsley salad, meant to cleanse the palate. However, while I love parsley, recipes calling for five hundred grams of the stuff are overkill as far as my (admittedly, Western) palate is concerned. Five hundred grams is about 5 large bunches of parsley - or enough to garnish every single dish from Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course, desserts included.

I have aimed for a happy medium with this recipe, including a few extra ingredients which obviously don’t belong in a palate cleanser: onion and garlic are not traditional but they make sure this salad doesn’t sit alone and unloved at a party or barbeque, but is up there showing off what it learnt at belly-dancing class.

Don’t be tempted to use your food processor to deal with the parsley. It will turn it into horrible green mud. To shine in this salad, the parsley (and mint) needs to be shredded as thinly as you can possible manage, using a sharp, sharp knife. The salad vegetables should be finely diced or chopped so that they resemble little jewels. 

For my ‘happy medium’ Tabbouleh, you will need...

475mls water

150mls freshly squeezed lemon juice

1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (yellow part only)

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

175g bulghur wheat

1 medium red onion (about the size of a tennis ball), peeled and finely chopped

400g ripe tomatoes, cut into 1cm dice

300g cucumber, finely diced, skin included

200g flat leafed parsley (stalks removed), washed, dried and finely shredded

10g fresh mint leaves, finely shredded 

Dressing

125mls extra virgin olive oil

50mls freshly squeezed lemon juice

a small clove of garlic, crushed

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 

Place the water, lemon juice and zest, and the cinnamon in a saucepan and bring to the boil.

Place the bulghur wheat in a large heatproof bowl. When the contents of the saucepan have come to the boil, carefully pour over the bulghur wheat. Set aside until cooled.

Meanwhile, prepare the vegetables and herbs as described in the ingredient list above.

To make the dressing, simply place the dressing ingredients in a jam jar (or similar) with a screw-top lid and shake until combined.

When the bulghur wheat has absorbed most of the liquid and has cooled, drain it in a large colander or sieve and rinse by carefully pouring about 500mls of boiling water over it to remove any excess starch that could make the dish stodgy, and leave to drain and cool once more.

Place the cooled bulghur wheat in a large bowl and gently fluff the grains with a fork to separate them. Add the herbs, vegetables and dressing and gently combine. This salad is best made a day in advance so that the flavours have a chance to meld and mellow. It will keep, covered, in the fridge for about 4 days.

For a low-cal Tabbouleh delivery system use endive leaves to scoop it up!

Variation: add finely diced feta to the salad for an extra layer of flavour. 

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Hummus – and the search for the holy grail...

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Over the years, I’ve been a bit of a culinary Indiana Jones in my pursuit of the holy grail of hummus. With experimentation, I’ve discovered that the earth won’t stop rotating on its axis if you don’t add tahini; that cumin (my most hated spice) if toasted and added in small amounts, adds a deep subtle earthiness that I can’t live without in this dip/mezze; that adding a little lemon zest lifts it out of the ordinary; and that dried chickpeas yield better results than tinned. The only downside to using dried chickpeas is that you have to plan a little ahead – no spontaneous hummus fests I'm afraid. However, you can speed up the cooking process with a pressure cooker.

In some countries parsley is served on the side. I’ve gone ahead and put some into the recipe.

Is this the the best hummus ever? Who knows! For me, it's the best yet ... but I’m not going to stop experimenting. If I come up with a version that tickles my taste buds even more, I’ll let you know.

For approximately 500g of earthy, lemony hummus you will need...

200g dried chickpeas (soaked overnight in a large bowl of cold water)

6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

½ teaspoon grated lemon zest

½ teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted in a dry frying pan and ground to a powder

½ teaspoon sea salt

10g fresh flat-leafed parsley, finely chopped
a little warm water from the kettle (up to 6 tablespoons) 

a little extra good olive oil for drizzling over the finished dish

Transform the humble chickpea into food of the gods with a few simple ingredients 

 

1.      Place the soaked chickpeas in the pressure cooker and cover with about 2cm cold water. (Don’t add salt as this effects the texture.) Bring to pressure and cook for 14 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to depressurise naturally. Once the pot has depressurised, drain the chickpeas and leave to cool. (If you don’t have a pressure cooker, cover the chickpeas with about 4cm water, bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for an hour or so, or until soft enough to squash easily between your fingers).

2.      Place the cooked and cooled chickpeas in a food processer, along with the olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, lemon zest, ground cumin, and salt. Process until you have a fairly smooth mixture. Add the chopped parsley and process once more until the parsley has been dispersed throughout the mixture.

3.      At this stage the mixture will be quite stiff. Add a little warm water from the kettle – a tablespoon at a time – pulsing the mixture between additions – until you achieve a looser texture that still holds its shape. You don’t want it to be runny.

4.      Taste and add more salt if required. This is ready to eat now, but the flavours deepen and meld if covered and left to develop for a few hours. Alchemy at work!

Drizzle with olive oil and serve with this easy homemade pita bread or sticks of crunchy fresh vegetables.

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Beetroot, Orange and Feta Salad – charmed I’m sure!

Pin It Great recipes are like great stories. To keep them fresh and alive, each recipient must keep the essential ingredients and add some embellishments of their own.

My good friend Lorraine (poet, playwright, novelist and general all round funny girl) throws together an amazing beetroot salad. Could I steal it for my blog, I asked. Sure! She in turn had robbed it from her sister, who had gotten it from someone else, and so on. For me to make a beetroot salad is a big step, given how much I absolutely loathed it for years. If you are in the "loathe" camp, I urge you to try it again. You may surprise yourself.

Simply delicious!

It couldn’t be simpler. Shake some rocket leaves (arugula) onto a plate, add beetroot, orange and goats cheese. Et voila! - a dish full of rustic charm and bursting with flavour, without the kitchen staff breaking a sweat.

Except... my rustic charm gene had turned itself off the day I decided to make this salad. When I went to assemble the ingredients, the result was tasty but looked like a dog’s dinner. The more I tried to fix it, the more it fought back.

I refused to be beaten by beetroot! If it would not be bullied into submission, then I would just have to charm it onto the plate. How to charm it? Just add flowers.

Beetroot, Orange and Feta salad - greater than the sum of its parts

For each serving you will need...

1 beetroot, cooked and peeled

5 orange segments, pith removed
25g feta cheese, roughly crumbled
a selection of salad leaves, including some flat leafed parsley

As well as these essential ingredients, I added the following embellishments:

a tablespoon of fresh rocket flowers(arugula flowers)*

a teaspoon of fresh lavender flowers, unsprayed, organic

Beetroot tends to stain!

1                 Thinly slice the beetroot (a mandolin slicer is best for this job – mind fingers!) Place the beetroot slices on absorbent kitchen paper to blot up any excess juices. I used heart shaped cutters to stamp out pretty shapes for this salad.

2                 Arrange the beetroot in the centre of the plate. Arrange the other ingredients to please your eye. It is as simple as that (most days).

This salad needs no salt as the already salty Feta acts as a seasoning. You could add some vinaigrette to the leaves for an extra layer of flavour.

* I ended up with rocket flowers because I turned my back for a moment and my rocket plants went to seed. The flowers taste just like the leaves. If you are not a careless gardener like me, and don't have an accidental supply of rocket flowers, you could use other edible flowers like nasturtium, or borage as suggested by Mona of Wise Words.

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