chickpeas and green beans

I wanted to share my dinner tonight. It looks very ordinary, but it's really very good. It feels good, it was just right.



Ingredients:
chickpeas
garlic
onion
green beans
mushrooms
tempeh
celery
carrot
zucchini
red capsicum
chilli
cherry tomatoes
parsley
rind and juice of one lemon
olive oil
apple cider vinegar
salt
pepper
tumeric
cumin seeds
millet
hot water

1. Cook chickpeas with garlic and tumeric. Boil for about an hour or two.
2. Make a dressing for the vegies. Mix olive oil, lemon juice, 1 crushed garlic clove, salt, pepper and a bit of apple cider vinegar together. Let it sit for a while to let the garlic flavour soak into the oil.
3. Blanche some green beans in boiling water for two minutes, then drain and rinse with cold water.
4. Chop up onions, mushrooms, celery, tempeh, carrot, zucchini, capsicum and chilli.
5. Fry onions in oil for a minute or two, add mushrooms and tempeh and fry until mushrooms are soft. Add celery and carrots and cook for about 5 minutes. Add a bit of water from chickpeas if necessary. Add the zucchini and capsicum, stir for a couple of minutes then turn off the heat.
6. I should have started the millet earlier but this is a good opportunity to use any leftover water from cooking the chickpeas to cook the millet in. Heat some cumin seeds in a dry saucepan until aromatic, then add 1 cup dry millet and stir until it smells warm and nutty. Add 2 cups of hot liquid, let boil for a minute, then put the lid on and turn down the heat. Simmer gently for 20 minutes.
7. Add the green beans to the vegies. Chop up some cherry tomatoes and add to the vegies. Chop up lots of parsley and add to the vegies. Grate the rind of a lemon and add to the vegies.
8. Stir up the dressing again and pour over the vegies, mix it through. Combine the millet and vegies and stir (more vegies than millet).

This is a good meal to eat lukewarm, perhaps at body temperature.

pumpkin salad

This recipe comes from the lovely Dioni. She was in town for a few months last year, and we had some good times reconnecting. I love it when people make certain, wonderful meals for you that you start making yourself, then always associate with that person. It's like you bring a part of them to the table every time you make that meal again. All those things with smells, eating, memories, it can be a deeply intimate and rich experience over the duration of a meal.
I have a few of those meals:
Sue's avocado soup
Chloe's eggplant bake and turtle potatoes
Charlie's miso soup
Jessie's Chinese soup with eggplant and bamboo
Lill's dumplings
Jess's coconut curry
Mark's roast vegetable pasta stir-through
Denise's pear and miso pizza
Beth's roast Jerusalem artichokes
The list goes on, but I'd have to think about it for a while.
Anyway, here's how to make this very yummy salad:

Ingredients:
pumpkin, cut into smallish chunks
adzuki beans
red quinoa
rind and juice of a lemon
lots of fresh parsley, sage and thyme
olive oil
salt

1. Soak and cook adzuki beans for 40min - 1hr. Drain and rinse with cold water.
2. Roast pumpkin in oven with some oil and a bit of salt. Take out when done and let cool.
3. Cook quinoa on the stove, 1 part quinoa to 2 parts water. Bring to boil, then cover and simmer on a low heat for 10 min. Take off the heat and keep covered for another 5-10min.
4. Combine those ingredients in a bowl with olive oil, chopped herbs, and juice and rind of a lemon. Add salt to taste. It's amazing.

soup and millet

I love the way that things are enjoyed uniquely depending on the weather. In winter, the smallest gestures of warmth carry extra sweetness. Every little thing seems to have a big impact that is felt and held deeply.
Well, this is a simple thing but it was one of those meals that just feel kind of whole and soothing and lovely, like a blanket for your insides. I look forward to making soup in winter, and this mostly resulted from an unplanned combination of things I had at hand and left over. Every so often things just mesh in a beautiful way. Soups are good like that.

Soup:
-garlic (smashed whole cloves)
-onion, diced

-celery
-carrots
-cauliflower
-tomatoes if you have them
-daikon
-boiling water
-2 or 3 decent pieces of kombu

-lentils (I think they might have been du puy lentils? I'm not sure but they were very beautiful things)

-red kidney beans: I had already cooked these a couple of days ago. I soaked them overnight then cooked them for about a hour and a half with a couple of garlic cloves, half an onion, a bay leaf, a carrot and a stick of celery. I saved the cooking water, which was nice and thick, and added it to the stock of this soup.

-hummous: I also had made some hummous earlier in the week, and just put a couple of spoonfuls in.

-spinach (lots)
-lemon juice
-salt to taste

1) Wash the lentils and bring to boil in a saucepan with plenty of water. Let them simmer for about 20 minutes.
2) Heat up a bit of oil in a big pot and cook the garlic and onion for a couple of minutes.
3) Add all other vegies (except spinach) and stir. Add lentils and cooking water. Add more hot water if needed, just to cover everything. Add the kombu, making sure it is covered by the liquid, put the lid on and let simmer for a while. The longer the better I guess.
4) Later on I added the red kidney beans and cooking water, and the hummous. Add salt if you need it.
5) At the very end, add chopped up spinach (lots) and lemon juice (to taste but I think I may have put a whole lemon in).

Millet:
I served this with some millet, which is becoming one of my favourite foods. It completes this soup, so cook it while the soup is simmering away. This is how I like to cook millet:
-1 cup millet
-2 cups boiling water
-1 tbsp black mustard seeds
-2 tsp cumin seeds

1) In a dry saucepan, gently toast the mustard and cumin seeds until they start to become fragrant and pop, then added the dry millet and stir until it has a sort of nutty aroma.

2) Add the water (seems to work better if it's already hot), stir, turn the heat right down and cover with a lid to simmer/absorb for about 20 mins.

Put a big scoop of millet into each bowl and ladle soup over the top.

Los Microwaves

Is There Life After Breakfast?

Is There Life After Breakfast?

It takes more than wonderbread! 

It takes more than wheaties!

Footscray

Melbourne's winter is at it's dreariest. I took a trip out to Footscray yesterday and happened to pick up a jam doughnut from the Olympic Donuts van. The old Italian man told me that my doughnut was a special one, as he filled it with jam from a dolphin figurine jam squirt-er ( I will take a photo of this next time).

Most people don't know that these doughnuts are vegan, and they're warming on a winter's day.

Abundance.

Lemon season is upon us.

Nonna.

 

I visited my grandmother Maria for dinner last week. It was a rainy night and her house was toasty warm (we had to dry my clothes on her heater). Because I'm vegan, I think it's a challenge for my Nonna to resist making meat dishes, which are usually the special foods she prepares for the family. Instead she makes meals that are more everyday; peasant dishes like ceci and rice. This is a beautiful dish, the chickpeas are soft and melt in your mouth. Nonna said that she soaked them for one day and then slowly cooked them for 2 hours.

I also brought over some chestnuts and we roasted them in a special pan over the gas stove. They came out quite smokey. Like my mum, Nonna loves chestnuts.

 

One final tip for roasting chestnuts (courtesy of Holly Davis): after roasting, wrap your chestnuts in a thick tea-towel and let them steam. This helps greatly with peeling and also keeps them warm while you eat them.

Chestnuts.

Eating seasonally isn't a priveldged, elitist thing. Eating seasonally might mean that you walk around your suburb finding fruit hanging over peoples fences, or you grow your own produce, or you visit a market and buy things that have been grown locally. I'm sure that seasonal produce will give your body what it needs appropriate to the local conditions.

I have a real soft spot for chestnuts.  I've been roasting chestnuts in the studio this week and they've made me immeasurably happy. I remember eating them every winter with my mum, who probably imparted this passion on me. It's interesting how seasonal foods are good for producing memories; their regulated absence and seasonal specificity works on our senses and helps us to recall moments from other times. I find these memories aren't just nostalgic, but imbued with a whole lot of emotions mixed up together.

Chestnuts are usually ripe in late autumn and early winter. They are perfect for winter; roasted hot, they're a beautiful shape, have a golden colour and a gentle sweetness.

My advice for roasting;

- Using a knife, score each chestnut with a cross. This helps with peeling the chestnuts and also stops the nuts from exploding in the oven (a very powerful force, which used to scare the shit out of me as a kid).

- Roast chestnuts in a medium to low heat grill or oven for 25 minutes, give or take 5 minutes depending on the size of the chestnuts. A gentle heat is best, to avoid burning or drying them out (with a bit more attentiveness, you can also roast them on a fire if you have one going).

-Peel and eat them hot, the inner furry skin should come off easily if cooked well. Some chestnuts might be rotten, others will be heavenly. Take the good with the bad.

- A perfectly roasted, golden chestnut is a great achievement. Probably the greatest task a person might achieve in any given day.