This is a ‘quick’ recipe I made up which turned out to be so good that I made it twice in a week, so I had to share it on here. I’m going to split it up into two stages because the first stage you can do well in advance. First we’ll make the falafels. A few months ago I made a huge batch of ~ 30 falafels. They’re great, they store fine in the freezer and only take ~ 10 minutes to cook. Very handy if you’ve run out of food like the day I made this up.

Falafels

Ingredients

I’ve tried a few recipes before, this one from The World Food Cafe is the best I’ve found though, it serves 4-6.

• 1 tin chickpeas (225 g dry)
• 2 pitta breads or 2 slices of dry bread
• 1 large onion, coarsely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 dsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground chilli
• 2 dsp plain flour
• 1 tsp salt
• handful of chopped parsley
• sesame seeds

Method

1. Using a food processor, make breadcrumbs from the bread.
2. Add everything apart from the chickpeas and sesame seeds, blend to a paste.
3. Add chickpeas, with water/more breadcrumbs if needed.
4. Roll into 1″ balls, coat in sesame seeds.

These will happily freezer for several months. To cook, just take them out a fry in sunflower oil until golden.

Constructing the Wraps

I found some massive multi-seed wraps on sale which I gave a try, I thought the size of them worked really well. I also bought some Moroccan-style Houmous (which Alice recommended).

Ingredients

Jenny and I ate two each, you could probably get away with one if you eat ‘normal’ portions. This is what I used for two wraps:

• 2 Wraps
• 3 Falafels
• 2 tbsp Tahini
• 3 tbsp Moroccan Houmous (or you could add something like Harissa paste to normal Houmous)
• 1 x Boiled Egg
• Cheddar Cheese
• Salad Leaves (Spinach?)

Method

1. If you haven’t already, fry your falafels until golden.
2. Spread a tbsp of tahini just south of the equator of the wrap, taking up 2/3 rds of the width.
3. Layer 1.5 crushed falafels on top
4. Top with Houmous, Egg, Cheese then Salad
5. Fold in the sides, Cover with the bottom, roll.
6. (Optionally) slice in half if you don’t want to look greedy

Ingredients

• 200g Tortiglioni Pasta
• 125g Purple sprouting broccoli (florets)
• 100g Wiltshire ham, coarsely chopped
• 2 tbsp Pesto rosso
• 3 tbsp Crème fraîche
• 2 tsp Fresh Basil, finely sliced
• 1 tsp Fresh Rosemary, finely sliced
• 1 Onion, coarsely chopped
• 2 Garlic Cloves, finely sliced
• 1 glass Pinot Grigio

Serves 2 big portions.

Method

1. Heat a pan with olive oil, add the glass of wine. One heated, add the onion, garlic and ham for ~5 mins, or until the onion becomes translucent.
2. Heat the pasta in another pan. Steam the broccoli on top until cooked but slightly crunchy.
3. Add the broccoli, herbs and pesto to the onions. Mix thoroughly.
4. Once the tortiglioni is cooked, toss in a dash of olive oil. Add to the other pan.
5. Blend in the crème fraîche and stir until heated.
6. Serve with salad and a sprinkle of Parmesan.

Lamb Mechoui originates from North Africa – Morocco/Algeria/Tunisia. It’s a rich, warming flavoured method of marinading and roasting meat. Traditionally it’s done with a whole lamb, complete with all organs. Typically if you’re not feeding a whole tribe, it’s just done with a leg of lamb, I guess because it can be quite tender. The word Mechoui originates from Arabic, and means to roast over a fire. In the book it details how to do a poacher’s roast, suspending the joint off a tree over some coals. With the weather being as it is I opted for a rather less exciting oven method.

Using an oven method I read on some other variations of the recipe, they recommend boning and butterflying the joint (or asking your butcher to) to cook quicker and allow it to remain tender throughout. If you’re cooking in the poacher’s way, the leg is kept whole.

The first stage is to prepare the marinade. For 2lbs (1kg) of meat (excluding bones) I used:

• 1/2 oz Mint Leaves, chopped
• 2 tbsp Lemon Juice
• 2 tbsp Olive Oil
• 2 Garlic Cloves, crushed and chopped
• 1 tbsp Ground Corriander
• 1 tsp Ground Cumin
• 1 tsp Paprika
• 1 tsp Cayenne Pepper
• Salt

Just mix that all together and rub into the (or over the meat), leave to marinade for 12-24 hours in a cool place (refrigerator). Once that’s done preheat the oven at 180C, place on a roasting tray and cook for 15-17mins per 500g/1lb. That’s it.

Couscous with Caramelised Onions and Raisins

I decided to serve the lamb with another recipe from the book. This went really lovely with the meat – balanced the flavours really nicely, kept things quite fresh and was also very easy to prepare. It was also the nicest couscous I’ve had – it’d be lovely for a lunch idea. The recipe has four stages:

• Hard boil two eggs. Peel and chop. Lightly toast some almonds in a dry pan. Chop.
• Sweat one onion in 1.5 oz butter. Add 2oz Raisins, 1 tsp Brown Sugar, 1 tsp Grated Ginger and 1tsp Cinnamon. Caramelise.
• Prepare 200ml chicken stock with a pinch of saffron. Put 3oz (100g) Couscous in a bowl. Add stock and knob of butter. Leave for 10mins. Fluff with fork.
• Once couscous is ‘dry’ add the caramelised onions mixture, almonds and egg. Top with chopped mint.

Notes on Lamb Stock

Not part of this recipe, but I seem to have found plenty of recipes lately requiring lamb stock and very few shops selling any. Since I opted for the butterflied and boned method I made use of the bones and leftovers to make a lamb stock whilst I waited for the lamb to marinade. This was my first attempt at a meat stock, it was far less hassle than I’d expected it to be. Tasted lovely and rich though. Once it cooled I’ve just stuck it in the freezer until I need it. Apparently it’ll last for about 3 months.

You need:
* 160g of basic savoury bread sponge – there’s plenty of recipes for this on the web.
* 120g plain white flour
* 40g stoneground flour
* 75g water
* pinch of salt
* about 10 ml olive oil

Mix all the above together, knead until smooth and leave to rise for an hour.

For the filling I used (apologies for the lack of quantities, I can’t remember exactly how much)
* castello blue cheese (Andrew uses gorgonzola which Sainsbury’s didn’t have, but I think would work better)
* green peppers
* mild sweet peppadew piquante peppers, which we’re really addicted to at the moment
* red onions

I fried the onions, then added the green peppers, and finally mixed in the piquante peppers and the cheese.

To construct the calzoni you need to divide the dough into four and roll gently into rounds. Leave to relax for 2 minutes and then roll out into a circle about 15cm diameter. This bit was the really fun bit. The dough is so nice and soft and stretchy and quite forgiving. You can throw it around and pretend you work at dominos.

Brush the edges with egg, put a dollop of filling in the middle and fold over. Finally brush the tops with beaten egg and leave to prove for an hour. Bake at 200C for 15-20 minutes.

To be honest the filling wasn’t a huge success. The creamy blue cheese, bitter green pepper and sweet and spicy red peppers clashed a bit. However the dough was so nice and soft and light that they were gone within 5 minutes flat. Even the two I’d made for lunch the next day.

I’ll definitely try this again but experiment with some different fillings. They taste fantastic fresh, but they could also be good things to make a batch of at the weekend for lunch during the week.

Any suggestions for fillings? Andrew says it’s better to go for things that don’t change in size dramatically when cooked otherwise you end up with an empty calzoni.

Roll out the dough into mini pizza bases, place on a baking sheet. Lightly fry some chopped shallots and mushrooms. We used some tinned artichoke – make sure you rinse these thoroughly or they’ll taste quite salty. Since we’re in Wiltshire we used some Wiltshire ham. Add it all and stick it in a 200C oven for 25 mins. We had ours cold but it’s probably a lot nicer slightly warmed.

A while ago now, whilst visiting some of the local asian shops I found a jar of Date Syrup. Being quite into Dates I decided to buy some without anything particular in mind to use it for. It’s sat at the back of our cupboards for a few months now, partly because I keep forgetting its there but also because I can’t find many recipes that use it.

I’d been promising Jenny for a while now that I’d make some peanut butter biscuits, again that’s not happened either. Today I decided to experiment and mix the two together – rather than biscuits I made flapjacks, making use of the many packets of seeds and oats we had.

Ingredients (10 bars)

• 4 oz Butter
• 1.5 oz Muscovado Sugar
• 2 tbsp Date Syrup
• 2 tbsp Peanut Butter (unsweetened is good, flapjacks are sweet enough)
• 2 tbsp Sultanas
• 5 oz Porridge Oats
• 1 tbsp Sesame Seeds
• 1 tbsp Sunflower Seeds

Method

There really was nothing to this:

• Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Cover baking tray with grease-proof paper.
• Melt the butter in a big pan.Once melted, add the sugar, syrup and peanut butter. Let it all dissolve into a smooth paste.
• Add the sultanas, oats and seeds, mix it all together.
• Layer the mixture onto the baking tray, 1/2 inch thick. Cook for 18mins.
• Let the flapjack cool for 15mins, cut into bars.

Rather than the overly rich and sticky flapjacks you’d get these turned out to have quite a wholesome, almost malty taste. They’re also slightly crumbly – perfect for having with some (ice) cream.

Some notes on Date Syrup

The Date Syrup was pretty much as you’d expect – dark, rich, sweet, syrupy. Although it’s sweet, it’s not sickly – something I could tolerate – less sweet than golden syrup. I definitely intend to use some more of the stuff, I think it works really well with nuts, I might try some sort of cake with Walnuts. It might even work with some sort of Moroccan Lamb dish.

This recipe is a king of thrift and simplicity. Quite often if we’re making a quick meal utilising some time saving pie technology (shop bought pastry) we end up with a surplus of puff or shortcrust. We’ve started trying to use it up by making lunch time snacks.

There really wasn’t much to it – roll out the pastry into rectangles roughly 6″ X 8″, fairly thin. Fry up some onion. I used some off-cuts of Salmon which are signifcantly cheaper than the nice slices – you don’t need pretty pieces for a pie. Just shred them up a bit if needed. We added some crumbled Feta, we always seem to have some feta in the fridge (cos it lasts ages). Stuff it all in one half of the rectangle, fold and seal using your fingers. Poke a couple of slits in the top, stick it in the oven for ~ 15mins. Done.

They tasted fairly nice. If we’d planned it beforehand I’d probably substitute the Feta, it was slightly too salty. Goats cheese and add some spinach could work.

Since sundried tomatoes are dry, I soaked them in water for a while and used some of the infused liquid to moisten the paste.

I’ve tried a couple of times in the past to make Pirozhki but I’ve never been pleased with the result – either the filling or the pastry wasn’t right. Given another surplus of cabbage from our veg box and a new recipe for them in the Bread Matters book, I tried it again, this time with tasty results.