Interesting greens

I love food; I love all kinds of food – apart from cauliflower – but sometimes it is hard to get excited about eating your greens. I do like greens (broccoli, kale, peas, cabbage and many more) but usually I incorporate them into a meal or lightly steam them and serve them seasoned as a side dish.
But then I stumbled on this recipe for an Indian style vegetable side dish on the BBC Good Food magazine website and all this changed. This recipe really kicks greens into shape and makes them stand out in a crowd. It is delicious as a side dish for a curry instead of rice or bread.

Indian spiced green

The first time I made the recipe as it suggests, with Kale and peas, and served it with an Indian dish of chicken thighs in a creamy yogurt sauce instead of rice. It went so well against the thick creamy sauce and made a much lighter meal than serving it with rice and naan bread.
The second time I made it with some Swiss Chard I had in the fridge. Recently, after being inspired by the series What to Eat Now, with Valentine Warner, I have been trying to eat seasonal local food. I picked up a bag of colourful chard at a local shop that sells organic fruit and vegetable from a farm in North Somerset, despite never having cooked it before. The taste is quite bitter and although I enjoyed it I didn’t relish the thought of eating mountains of it steamed with lemon juice for a week. This recipe really transformed the chard and was delicious as a side dish to a creamy potato curry.
A few notes:
Go for slightly larger portions of the cumin, mustard seeds, ginger and chilli for a better flavour and punch. The lime juice and desiccated coconut are essential, they really lift and sweeten the dish.
Whatever vegetable you decide to use I would still add the peas, they give a lovely sweetness and bite to the dish.
For a healthy portion for two people I suggest a 200g bag of kale, or an equivalent vegetable.
Follow this link, which will take you to the recipe on the BBC Good Food website http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5823/indian-spiced-greens

A Spanish adventure (sort of)

A view of the sea

In a previous post I wrote that I wanted my holiday to Spain to be a culinary adventure, trekking into traditional Spanish towns and sampling real Spanish food.
There was one thing that stood in the way of this plan. When myself and Will picked up our hire car the man asked for Will’s driving license and Will looked suddenly very pale. He just stared at me with that ‘I know I’m in trouble now’ look and I knew he had forgotten it.
Luckily I had my driving license with me but I had never driven on the right hand side of the road before. I don’t want to paint myself as a useless woman driver who is nervous and hopeless at parking, but it did take some getting used to, so I didn’t make any long or complicated journeys in search of the traditional food I was longing for.
All the same we enjoyed ourselves and we did manage to get to one Spanish market and have some good Spanish meals.
Most of all I love soaking in the Spanish culture and way of life. I love sitting, mid morning, having a strong Spanish coffee. I love retreating to the apartment during the mid-day heat to have a large meal and a siesta. I love sitting in relaxed bars and cafes sipping wine and nibbling on nuts and bread to stave off the hunger because everyone eats at 9pm or later. And I love taking two hours over a meal that doesn’t even include dessert (because they don’t really do dessert you know).

A delicious breakfast of fresh fruits, croissants and orange juice.

Getting back to England and having to get up and eat breakfast lunch and dinner by 7pm seems so rushed and stressful.
One thing doesn’t make any sense to me in Spain though and that is the Chinese restaurants. I don’t find it strange that they are there, because in England we have restaurants of all sorts of cuisine, but it is the crazy prices. They are so cheap it doesn’t add up. Will and I had a meal at a lovely family Chinese near my parent’s apartment in Spain. This is what we had: An aperitif, a spring roll each for starter, plus some free prawn crackers. To share for mains we had beef in oyster sauce, chicken in curry sauce, Peking duck, sweet and sour pork and some noodles. I had some ice-cream for dessert, Will had a coffee and we were each given a shot of Schnapps. All this with a bottle of wine cost 17 euros! How can this be? The food was excellent, nice flavour, well presented and good portions. We would all eat out more in Britain if it was a little cheaper. All the same I left them a hefty tip because it felt like daylight robbery.

A truly yummy slice of fresh fruit flan from a stall at a local market

Lastly, a few words on the ingredients over in Spain. The fruit and vegetables were the most wonderful shapes and colours, unlike the uniformed produce we have in our supermarkets. They don’t sell ‘free-range’ chicken but all their chicken tastes as good as our fresh free range birds, and in many places they have hot chicken stalls that travel around selling rotisserie chickens (so delicious). Supermarkets always have a good fish counter with plenty of fresh fish and mountains of prawns and deli counters sell piles of roasted vegetables (which I bought on countless occasions), croquettes and stews of chorizo and chickpeas to take away in little boxes – much better than fish and chips wrapped in paper.
Oh and not forgetting good red wine for as little as two euros a bottle. It’s all you need really.