Pumpkin soup and chickpea and feta salad

 

Here's Coco's dish of the day, with the chickpea and feta salad again and a stonker pumpkin soup. We don't have a recipe because she 'Yolo'd it'. There were some nice spices in there. 

Chickpea and feta salad with babaganoush and croutons

 

OK could definitely do better with the pic, but it was tasty. Arizona's dish of the week .

The salad: plenty of chickpeas, cubed feta, cucumber, red onion, mint, parsley, lemon or lime, seasoning. 

The babaganoush: baked aubergine (cut in half first), mashed with cooked garlic (actually microwaved in the lemon juice), tahini, lemon juice, seasoning. 

The croutons: Yeah you need more croutons that that but all good. The chickpeas are carby too. 

Tasty schmasty. 

Braised silverbeet with chickpeas and fresh tomato

• Swiss chard (1 bunch)
• 60 ml olive oil
• 2 crushed garlic cloves
• 1tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp grated ginger
• 4 diced tomatoes
• 400g tin of chickpeas

Fry and bubble. Can add onion to this. The original says to discard the stems of the beet – that would be madness! Just leave enough cooking time. Yum. (You don't need the order things go in, do you.)

 Serve with rice.

Ovened bean-veg with Nutty Rice and EggMato

You’ll need:

• Butternut squash, red onion, garlic, lima beans (broad beans), corn kernels, brown rice, random chopped nuts, an apple, 1 tomato and 1 egg person, possibly a bit of fetta and pesto.

For your ovened veg:

• Chunk up your butternut and red onion, oil up with some crushed garlic, make introductions with the oven until they soften to the idea of being comestibles. Meanwhile have your corn kernels and double-podded broad beans ready- and add them when the other veg are nearly done.

For your Nutty Rice:

• Cook your brown rice in plenty of salty water, drain if necessary, heat it up again with your random chopped nuts and a chopped apple. Season.

For your EggMato:

• Get a LARGE tomato per person, slice top off (reserve), hollow out, season, add a smidgeof feta and pesto if there’s room and the ingredients, break an egg into each tomato (whole), put the reserved top of the tomato back on and pop in the oven. It does take a surprisingly long time considering it’s only tomato and egg – I’d allow them 20-25 minutes of cooking time in the general scheme of things. If you don’t put the fetta in be sure to season well.

The whole lot makes a very interesting-textured ensemble, lots of stuff going on there. Good health points too, I’d imagine. Have fun!

Lentil Lasagna

First, catch and immobilise your lentils. You need to do this by boiling them slowly in some very good stock – I had some excellent beef stock and it did the trick nicely. On this occasion, using a mix of Green lentils and Red lentils – the green ones take far longer to cook, so simmer these slowly until almost completely done, then add the red. Don’t cook the red for any longer than 20 minutes or they’ll turn into mush.

Once this is done, prepare your sauce base – a nice bit of mirapois, can of tomatoes, good bit of seasoning, and a generous cup of red wine – simmer it down, then add the lentils. The longer they can sit there with the heat turned off (possibly even in the fridge overnight) the better – it takes time to get to know a lentil properly.


Armed with this sauce, make the lasagna as usual – the white sauce and the lasagna sheets rarely change. Cooking it slowly on quite a low heat gives it all time to mulch through without burning on top. You can also prepare it quite a while ahead, and it can just sit there, quietly expectant in the oven, ready for you to turn the heat on. Always lovely served with a nice salad. Enjoy.

Condiments to the Chef (a.k.a. Veg and Tofu Rice)

Well well, this was surprisingly OK actually - especially after being condimented and generally pepped and whaleboned to the hilt (hence the alternate name). It's a permanent problem when you've got very differing degrees of heat-tolerance among your clientele. We meant to serve it as rice/tofu with barbecued veg, but it was raining so we called that off and just fried the veg instead.

First:
Make a marinade of 2 tbs honey, a crushed garlic clove, (meant to be preserved lemon juice but I couldn't find preserved lemons so used lime juice instead, always nice), balsamic vinegar, bit of fresh chopped chili, possibly harissa (couldn't find any again) and marinade the tofu in it while you cook some rice and either grill or fry your chosen veg (think peppers, red onion, courgettes, that sort of stuff).

Then:
Combine. Serve.

We recommend serving with a selection of the following: crushed chilies from a jar, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, lots of fresh ground pepper. I'm sure you could think of other things as well. Fact is it's pretty mild but a good base to pile zing on, and really you can't score many more points for healthiness than this one so go for it.