Tag: “reactive cooking”

cabbage in coconut

 This works really well with purple sprouting broccoli, or spring greens, and is delicious.  I’d never actually made it with cabbage before, but nothing ventured, etc.

It was a small hispi cabbage, and I cored out all the thick stem, and shredded it up.  Blanched it in boiling water for a couple of minutes, then put it in a colander to drain off.

Then chop some garlic, and a dried red chilli, and fry them in groundnut oil for a couple of minutes.  Tip in a tin of coconut milk, and cook it down for about 10 minutes, so it’s thick and gloopy.  Then add the cabbage, and cook for another five minutes or so.  Add a few drops of sesame oil, and the juice of half a lemon, at the end.  Serve with basmati – at least, we did!

From Reactive Cooking.

this week's soup 11 feb 08

Bit late with this, as first we finished last week’s soup, and yesterday we had -shock horror- Tuscan bean soup from the Co-Op, as I have a cold and hadn’t made any and wanted soup.

The Co-Op was selling bags of “stew pack” veg reduced to 99p – a bunch of carrots, a swede, a parsnip and some onions. Seemed ideal, so I hurled one into the basket …

Read more at Reactive Cooking.

aubergine and chickpea curry

using up: aubergines, a sweet potato

I bought some aubergines from the farm shop last weekend – they were a bit tired, but when I looked at them on Tuesday they really did need cooking. So I bunged in some chickpeas to soak, boiled them yesterday morning, and off we went. Read more …

Originally published at Reactive Cooking.

left over belly pork

We had roast belly pork on Saturday – I love this cut, although it’s getting more and more expensive, as it seems to be used by TV chefs and the like now.

I spent a staggering (!) 3.30 on a biggish piece for Christmas Eve, but we’d had so much lunch it got put into the freezer, and I fished it out for the weekend. We slow roasted it, and ate it with mash and brussels sprouts, and there was about half left.

It looked a bit dry and woebegone, so I cut it into bite-sized chunks and put it in the Remoska. Then I made a gravy/sauce with some cornflour, apple juice, chopped sage and a bit of water, turned it on and hoped for the best.

More mash, more sprouts (extra of both cooked for bubble and squeak for tomorrow’s lunch), and a small tub of leftover red cabbage from the freezer. The pork was just delicious – the gravy made a huge difference.

Originally published at Reactive Cooking.

green beans and mustard

This may well sound disgusting, but trust me – it’s delicious, vegetarian, and very cheap. An odd fusion of flavours, I know, and I do have a slight pang about the green beans flown in from Kenya …

Put some basmati rice on to cook whatever way you like – there are, it seems, dozens of effective ways of cooking rice, so I won’t tell you how to do it.

Trim the beans, and cook them in boiling water for about six minutes. Drain and set aside.

Chop an onion and some garlic, and a dried chilli if you like that sort of thing. Put some groundnut oil in a wok, and heat it, then add about a tablespoon or so of black mustard seeds , and cook them in some groundnut oil until they pop. Add the onion/garlic/chilli, and cook until the onion is just starting to turn brown at the edges. Then add the drained green beans, and stir them round with a heaped teaspoon of grain mustard. Add a splash of rice wine and some tamari, and heat everything through.

Originally published at Reactive Cooking.