Borlotti bean minestrone

The finished product

We have had a tin of borlotti beans in the press for the last while. They were inherited when some friends moved house and cleared out their kitchen. We weren't really sure what to do with them, so I took a look on the web to see if I could get any ideas. A lot of the recipes that I found used them with tomatoes, garlic and olive oil, so I decided to make a minestrone.

First put a good glug of olive oil in a cast iron pot on a medium heat. I used some nice Greek stuff that I got in Aldi. Next you need to soften some finely chopped vegetables over a medium heat to make the soup base. I used a couple of carrots, onions and celery sticks, but I reckon you could vary that easily enough. About 20 minutes should be plenty to soften these.  

Then throw in the tin of rinsed borlotti beans, a tin of whole plum tomatoes and a litre of vegetable stock. Season with salt, pepper and plenty of fresh rosemary. I blanched and froze some chard from the garden earlier this week and so I added this to the pot. Cabbage is more common, but any boilable green leafy vegetable would be fine. Let this all simmer for about 20 minutes.

That's it done except for the pasta. This is best left until you are ready to eat. If you add the pasta too early and leave it to sit it will keep sucking up liquid and you will end up with a soggy mess. I used wholewheat spaghetti which I broke into chunks 3 or 4 inches long and threw them but pretty much any pasta will work. About one normal main meal portion of pasta is fine for these quantities. Just keep the pot bubbling until the pasta is cooked and you are ready to go. 

This fed both of us well for our main meal. It would be a very nice lunch or starter in a smaller portion. This is very healthy stuff. The only things to watch are that you don't over do it with the oil and that your stock is not too salty. 

Mackerel, beetroot and horseradish sauce

Jamie Oliver has a recipe for trout with a horseradish sauce. This is very similar, but with mackerel instead of the trout.

The beetroot in the garden is perfect at the moment. A couple of inches across each. We had 2 of these globes each for dinner. Washed them and twisted the leaves off. Then we steamed them for about 30 minutes, checking them with a skewer to see when they were perfect. They are easy to peel by hand under a slowly running cold tap. Just push the skins off with your thumbs and leave the beets aside on a plate until you have the other stuff on the plates. They will retain their heat for about 5 minutes in a warm kitchen as long as you don't slice them before serving.

The mackerel was from a fishmongers in Howth. They had cleaned it already and it was still cheap as chips. When mackerel is fresh there is nothing to touch it. When I got back from the shop I froze this in batches of 2. It defrosted fine at room temperature and then we roasted it for 15 minutes at 180 degreed c with a bit of salt and pepper on top. The skin crisped up nicely.

The sauce was made from equal quantities of natural yogurt and horseradish sauce in a jar. About a tablespoon of lemon juice and a good grind of salt and pepper. Mixed this up well in a bowl and stuck a spoon in it for serving ourselves at the table (or couch in this case).

We steamed some of the father in law's potatoes to go with this. Very tasty and healthy too.

Food rules

I have been trying to eat a bit healthier for the last while now. This means mostly vegetarian stuff. I found Michael Pollan's book very useful in deciding what's on the menu.

It all boils down to this pithy little line: Eat food, mostly plants, not too much . 

The eat food bit means stuff that has received little or nor processing. It turns out that by cooking from scratch you can stick reasonably well to this advice. It takes a while to change from using processed stuff to more natural equivalents, but it is worth the effort. Buying less meat saves money, so buying organic vegetables and oil becomes a more realistic choice. 

We threw out our Flora spread. Real butter for everything now. We had toast for breakfast with just butter. Delicious. No need for any jam or marmalade. Using fake spreads is just lubricant for your mouth really. I don't care what they say in the promotional material, factory produced stuff is not for eating.

Mostly plants. The garden is bursting with vegetables at the moment, so we are spoiled for choice. Made a mint and garlic dahl as part of dinner yesterday. Very nice. Good to find a use for the mint that is trying to take over my vegetable patch. Couple that with the huge range of fruit and vegetables at Lidl and Aldi and we don't have any excuse for not eating more vegetables. 

Not too much is a bit harder. I am a great believer in eating until you are full. Especially for the main meal of the day. As long as what you are filling up on is good food then it should not matter too much. Not that I am disagreeing with the evidence for calorie restriction, but I just don't want to suffer unnecessarily to be healthy. 

A Spanish pork and beans stew

We had this in Spain a couple of years ago. It is often served as a tapas portion with some white crusty bread and goes very well with strong red wine.

Fabada

Ingredients

400g dried butter beans. Most types of white beans will work fine here.
600g piece of bacon
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 Rashers of back bacon chopped up - include the rind if it is thin enough to fry and be edible.
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, sliced thinly
1 teaspoon paprika. I used La Chinata. (This is one of the most over the top websites for a spice that you will ever see. Take a look)
200g chorizo sausage
2 tins of tomatoes


Method


Soak the beans over night. Cook them according to the packet instructions. Usually about 40 minutes simmering is plenty. Drain them and put them aside. 
Cook the piece of bacon in about 2 litres of water with the bay leaves. This usually takes about 50 minutes. It will depend on weight. 20 minutes per 500g plus 20 minutes. 
Trim the fat off and chop the bacon into bite sized pieces.
Fry the rashers and cut them into strips. 
Cut the chorizo into matchsticks and fry it for a few minutes. Discard the oil that oozes out when you cook this. 
Fry the onion and garlic in the oil and add the chopped cooked meats. Add the tomatoes and bay leaves and simmer for about an hour.

Garden peas from Wexford

I was mad into growing peas when I was a kid. Something about the perfect little peas inside the pods that you would watch growing day by day. The number of peas I used to get would fit into 2 cupped hands (child's ones), so not a great yielder. I reckon they take too much work and produce too little yield in the garden to bother with them now. My father in law on the other hand has heaps of space and can turn his hand to any crop that he fancies. Good Wexford soil helps a bit, but he is just good at gardening full stop. He grew these beauties this year and gave us a big bag.

From Drop Box

The Flavour Thesaurus was a great help again and pointed in the direction of Pea and Mint soup. I know pea and mint are supposed to go together, but I had never tried it. The mint in the garden needed picking. I can never figure out what to do with it, but this was fantastic. Will be making it again. We have another batch of the Wexford peas left, but then I reckon I will try this one with frozen peas.

Pea and mint soup

Finely chop a carrot, stick of celery, a few cloves of garlic and an onion. Heat a glug of good olive oil up in a heavy based pot. Sweat the veg for about 10 or 15 minutes. Now add the peas. I used about 3 mug fulls of the garden peas. Add 3 teaspoons of Marigold vegetable stock powder. Cover the veg with boiling water and simmer the whole lot for about 30 minutes. Finally add a good bit of mint which you have finely chopped and puree the lot with a stick blender. 

I served this for lunch with some buttered home made brown bread. The photo is not great (no matter how many pixels your phone has it will still take naff photos), but the soup was gorgeous.

Beetroot and Apple with Horseradish dressing

I got a new book called The Flavour Thesaurus. It gives combinations of foods that go well together. This recipe is based on one of her recommendations on beetroot. The garden is full of it at the moment and we were looking for something to do with the glut. Don't like pickled beetroot particularly, so this was the first thing we tried:

Ingredients:
1 medium sized beetroot
Half of a nice tart apply - leave the skin on
Horseradish sauce (jar stuff is fine)
Natural yogurt


Method:
Wash the muck off the beetroot and twist the leaves and stems off. Steam it for as long as it takes to cook. This depends on size. For tiny beets its about 15 to 20 minutes, for the hefty one I used it was about 35 minutes. Use a skewer to check if it is done. Then hold the cooked beetroot under a running cold tap and rub the skin off. Use a knife to cut out any bits that garden nasties might have taken a chunk from.
Now chop the beet into small cubes. Leave this aside. Cut half an apple (I used a Jazz apple from Aldi) into similar sized chunks.
The dressing is made of 2 teaspoons each of the Horseradish and the yogurt. Mix these well in a bowl big enough to take the chopped beet and apple. Add some salt and pepper. Throw the chopped veg and fruit in and mix it all up. Dish this out on to 2 plates.

I served this with home made brown bread and a tin of mackerel from Aldi. Delicious. The quantities above serve 2 people for lunch.