"Tex-Mex"

This has been my most delicious week of blog-based cooking so far. I called it Mexican food for shorthand, but some Google searches inform me that most of these dishes originated in the United States as the Americans appropriated Mexican cuisine, so I thought I'd take a stab at being politically correct and call it "Tex-Mex", with quotation marks to cover me in case I go off on my own tangent.

Everything's so warm and full of flavour that I could eat it right through winter. On a side note, most of these seasonings I didn't conjure from scratch; they came in nice Old El Paso or Santa Maria packets, and in my personal opinion tasted just as good (and probably better) than mixing flavours together bit by bit.

Enjoy: go forth and eat.

Chilli

I used dried Tesco mince to replace the meat as well as a can of mixed beans, since, well, I prefer beans over fake meat. Green peppers and diced onion bulk it up, and a can of chopped tomatoes bring it all together. I also gave brown rice another try, and it wasn't too bad. Roasted a cob of corn with it, smothered in FryLite butter spray, because side dishes make food look like meals, I guess. This was my first meal of the week, so I experimented with seasoning it: stock cube, pinch of salt, dash of black pepper, cayenne and chili powder, and some turmeric because it smelt nice.

Tacos

I made these for a friend visiting from Leeds, and they tasted so delicious I didn't want to stop eating them. I used an Old El Paso taco kit (shells, seasoning, salsa) and we got through all ten shells, plus salad -- but with calorie-free dressing, since we're health-conscious like that ... 

Set pinto beans to simmer with red onion chunks and chopped tomatoes, and garnish with a homemade salad of lettuce, cherry tomatoes and white onion. Get messy!

Enchiladas

These look so enticing I want to eat them all over again. Fried up red peppers, mushrooms, white onion, and kidney beans with a Santa Maria seasoning packet and some chopped tomatoes so it wasn't too dry, before wrapping in (wholeweat!) tortillas and covered with passata. I sprinkled the last of the seasoning on top and baked for about half an hour, during which time I chopped up lettuce, cucumber and red onion for a pretty side-salad.

Fajitas

These seemed kind of dry without the chopped tomatoes or passata; maybe next time I'll try breadcrumbs so that the crunch compensates for the dryness, making it a more deliberate texture. Fried yellow pepper, mushroom slices, onion rings, and some spinach in Santa Maria fajita seasoning before wrapping them up, but the real triumph was the home-made chips you see nestled so cutely on the plate. Boiled a potato and sliced it up; then I covered them with the leftover seasoning mix and FryLite spray and popped them in the over, turning and spraying/seasoning after about fifteen minutes. They were lush.

Mexican Spicy Bean Burger and Golden Vegetable Rice

I'm including this not because it's any great culinary achievement, but because the burger was described as "Mexican," it tasted pretty good, and cooking doesn't have to be labour intensive. The burger came from Tesco at a decent price (can't remember how much, but they also had a deal on if you bought two packs with four in each box) and was flung haphazardly into the oven while a packet of rice, pre-flavoured and already packaged with bits of veg, came to the boil and then simmered for a bit. I mean, you don't really even have to know how to cook. 

Mexico City

Named after the most populated city in Mexico, this is one huge bowl of leftovers. There's pepper, sweetcorn, chopped tomatoes, red and white onions, mushrooms, spinach, and passata. And then I had three tortilla wraps left, so they became part of it, too. Plus anything left over from the seasoning packets. It tasted AMAZING.

That was a good week for food, I'm telling you guys. While the Old El Paso kits probably don't work out as good value for money (you can buy tortilla wraps for 50p and seasoning packets for a pound -- supermarkets also do their own salsa) the ready-made flavouring packets are the bomb and you need to have them in your life. 

Cheating with Salads

Apart from hayfever plaguing me throughout this otherwise gorgeous season, summer for me is also accompanied by apprehension that the girls around me will be transformed into one of those feminine creatures that I both deride and envy: the females that eschew the sofa and the TV for the gym, and carbs in favour of salad. Worse, some people seem to think that vegans live on salad, despite it making a rare appearance in my diet (i.e. once every couple of months on top of a burger or served on the side with a restaurant meal).

But then I got run-down because I was eating too much crap, and I wanted to lose some weight without abandoning my favourite food group, so here is a quick-fire post (juggling work, blogging, uni work, and independent writing is more time-consuming that I had anticipated) on how to eat salads the fat way.

Heat It Up

Thought I'd get the weird one out of the way first. In my humble (and apparently aberrant) opinion, everything tastes better when it's cooked. Except cherry tomatoes, as evidenced by the photo. I cook mushrooms and onion on my George Foreman grill for ten minutes, chucking on some sweetcorn and lettuce towards the end. Then I fold it up in a tortilla wrap and stick that on the grill too, so that it holds everything together and has a bit of a crunch to it (makes it easier to cut in half, too). Just try it. You'll love it.





Roll It Up

Tasty and portable, especially as wraps can come in different flavours (I recall Tesco doing garlic and herb, and sun-dried tomato). Slice up your veggies, in this case cucumber, red onion, sweet red pepper, cherry tomatoes, and lettuce, and then drizzle with a sauce -- I chose sweet chilli. 









Stuff It

I always find it a bit of a trial to find good pita breads: the white ones from Tesco are too floury whereas the Lidl brown ones are a bit too dry. Toasting them makes them expand, and then just fill them with your salad.









Sandwich It (Father-Style)
My father obliged my blog by rustling me up a sandwich with a fresh Tesco sub roll and tablespoons of Branston pickle. I'm sorry, but that stuff is delicious. You need to try a cucumber and pickle sandwich: just trust me on this. Made a bit of a mess, but s'all good.

Sandwich It (Go Fast Food)
I'm just gonna come out and admit it: I ate my Subway sandwich before I could get a pic of it and I'm too poor to spend a fiver on a sandwich just for the sake of taking a picture. So use your imagination to construct an Italian sub loaded with veggies (no veggie patty) with onion sauce.



Finally, I'll leave you with the message that sometimes I'm so self-conscious (or, you know, out of appropriate carbs) that I just have to bite the bullet and eat a regular salad. Bulk it up with some protein (falafel or butter beans are my favourites) and smother it in dressing. Incidentally my local health store, For Goodness Sake, are selling a zero calorie dressing, which I'm intrigued by. The dressing in the picture is a Tesco Finest that's really nice.

Enjoy the ambivalent British summer!

Italian Food

I think, as a nation, we Brits love Italian food. For me, Italian is pasta/dough, chopped tomatoes, and garlic, which are probably my three very favourite things to eat: expect to see them featured heavily in this post. I think that it should be hearty, filling, and full of flavours. 

Note: I'm not big on putting quantities in recipes. First of all, who can really be bothered weighing food? In baking, quantity is kind of important; if you're just rustling up dinner a few grams here and there aren't going to make a huge difference. More importantly, you know how hungry you are, and how much you like a certain ingredient, so chuck it in how you fancy.

Tomato Risotto with Mushroom and Onion

If I'm kicking about at my parents' place, I tend to make this at least once a week. I heard the horror stories about how difficult it is to make risotto, but maybe I'm just not fussy enough because mine always seems fine. There's always some thick liquid left, but I like it that way. It's quite a simple dish: the garlic is subtle, the rosemary gives it a herb-y taste, and pine nuts add an interesting difference in taste and texture.

Add Aborio rice to a frying pan, and half fill the pan with vegetable stock. While it's simmering away and absorbing, chop white onion and mushrooms: add them when the stock is about half-gone. Remember to keep stirring, especially as the stock reduces. Crush a clove or two of garlic and stir in. Add half a carton or so of chopped tomatoes and mix in with some rosemary. Add the pine nuts when the liquid is almost entirely reduced, or sprinkle on top.


Pizza

I've never really been a fan of cheese, and, although I appreciate the effort that's gone into making vegan alternatives, to me vegan cheese tastes simply of sweat. I mean, don't let me put you off it: go try it! Cheese just isn't my thing: so this pizza is made without any at all. For the base, I used pre-made ones: who can really be bothered making them from scratch? And, if you're living in a student house-share, do you really want to be that guy who's filling the worktops with flour and sticky dough? But if you have the inclination, there are vegan mixes which always turn out nice. I used pre-made Napolina ones, from Tesco: the ready-made bases with the fresh garlic breads and pizzas have milk in, but these ones are with the pasta sauces and are dairy-free.

Coat the pizza base with chopped tomatoes. Chop up and add your favourite veggies: I used white onion, green pepper, mushrooms, and sweetcorn. Spiral tomato paste over the top (optional), and sprinkle with herbs: I used Schwartz for pork, which had a nice garlic and thyme mix. Pop in the oven for fifteen minutes or so.


Spaghetti and Falafel

I'm sure that there are vegan meatballs out there, but I'm a major falafel fan. I used to be addicted to the fresh Cauldron falafel, and just eat them straight out of the packet. For this, I used Tesco Value frozen falafel, which aren't quite as tasty but much more budget-friendly.

Put the falafel in the oven on a baking tray according to the instructions appropriate to your oven. Dunk your spaghetti in boiling water. Fry up chopped onions, yellow pepper, and mushrooms -- chunky or fine as you like it. Stir in a bit of chopped tomato, and then a pasta sauce until you get the consistency you like. I was torn between spicy and chunky tomato sauce, and in the end opted with the chunky vegetable. You can mix the falafel in with the sauce once they're cooked, but I tend to find that the Tesco Value ones fall apart quite easily, and so arranged them on top instead (plus it looked better for the picture).


Spinach and Mushroom Cannelloni

This always seems to go down well when I make it for a family dinner. Unfortunately this week has been a hectic, and I didn't get chance to do a side-dish: normally I cover potatoes in olive oil and rosemary and chuck them in the oven, or at least get some little poppy-seeded rolls.

Boil cannelloni tubes in water. Fry finely-chopped mushrooms (and a bit of white onion if you like) and add about a third of a tub of vegan cream cheese -- I usually use garlic and herb but black pepper and spring onion sounds nice (for some reason, when I search online they don't have any of those options, but my Tesco Extra always stocks them). Throw in about a third of a pack of spinach and mix it up until it reduces -- you can always add more spinach if the mix looks too white with the cream cheese. Stuff the cannelloni tubes with the spinach mixture on a baking tray: if the tubes are soft, it's easier to slit them open, lay them out, add the mixture, and then fold it closed again. Cover over with a tomato sauce and bake in the oven for 10 minutes or so.



This week's been a bit mad, so unfortunately I didn't do as many recipes as I had planned. Hoping to get back on track this week -- once I've decided on a topic! Hope you enjoy.

P.S. This post was done in bits and pieces between completing a Renaissance essay and monitoring the bad dog, who wants to be either outside enjoying the sunshine or in the corridor shredding toilet roll.

Nigerian Cooking

The UK is finally inching its way towards summer, however tentatively -- but enough for me to justify putting my coat and dark clothes into storage and bustin' out my brighter summer wardrobe. Theoretically this also means ditching heavier meals in favour of light refreshing food. For me, that means putting aside (or cutting down on, rather) my obsession with Nigerian food.

I've made a fair few friends from Nigeria at uni, and they've introduced me to some new foods, such as plantain (delicious), yam (growing on me), and pumpkin leaf (surprisingly tasty despite the smell). So in a simultaneous ode to leaving the cold weather behind and some of the best food I've ever eaten -- no, seriously -- I've dedicated this post to Nigerian-inspired recipes, whether someone made it for me or I scavenged it from the internet.

Plantain and Ejike Gravy

This is literally one of my favourite dishes of all time. I've only ever heard it called "vegetable gravy" but for me that only connotes the plain brown liquid poured over Sunday dinners, so I named it "Ejike gravy" after the friend  who first made it for me and then taught me how to cook it myself. He cooked yam as well as plantain, but I wasn't too fussed on the powdery taste. I live less than a mile from an Afro-Caribbean shop, which is where I buy the pumpkin leaf (frozen -- the dried ones always taste too bitter for me) and plantain. 

If using frozen pumpkin leaf, I defrost it in a tub on a low heat in the microwave. Peel and slice the plantain, and fry it in oil until yellow and brown at the edges. To make the ejike gravy, add the pumpkin leaf,  and chopped onions and bell pepper to a frying pan with a little oil. After a couple of minutes, add some chopped tomatoes. Mix in a vegetable stock cube and some chilli seeds or powder.  It doesn't sound like much, but it is so good.

Rice and Beans

I just made this up one night at about 9pm after a day of drinking. The premise was simple: throw everything I had leftover into a wok and wait for the magic to happen. It would have gone great, if I hadn't been so drunk that I thought that the way to make it taste as nice as possible was to include every single spice and herb that I had in my cupboard. God, that was vile.

But the basic ingredients were good, and it turns out that it's similar to a Nigerian dish, too.

Set some rice to boil (being careful not to overcook it like I did in the pic). All you really need is kidney beans, half a tin (... or a full tin) of chopped tomatoes, a bit of onion, and chilli and thyme (and a stock cube if you want an extra boost of flavour). I also added chopped cherry tomatoes, a tiny bit of courgette, and some leftover pumpkin leaf for extra nutritional value as well as mushrooms because, well, everything tastes better with mushrooms. Throw it all together and let it simmer.

Vegetables and Boiled Plantain

This is the first recipe inspired by the awesome blog The Vegan Nigerian, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Recipes regardless, it's reassuring to know that there are vegan Nigerians (one Nigerian I met claimed to be a vegetarian but ate chicken; he thought being vegetarian just meant eating healthy). As you can see, it doesn't look much like the original. I didn't have a julienne peeler and didn't feel hungry enough for wheat spaghetti, so just stuck with the vegetables. I added some water to the cooking vegetables so that I could sop up the juices with the plantain (in hindsight, maybe too much water).

Chop up a plantain and boil in salted water until the pieces turn yellow and are soft all the way through. The original recipe said to keep the pieces in their skin and remove afterwards, but I accidentally misread that part and peeled mine before boiling, but they turned out fine. I used a 1 calorie spray to cook chopped cherry tomatoes, bell peppers, mushrooms, and courgette with a little salt and pepper. I think that this is one to keep around for summer.

Indomie 


Indomie is an intimidating name for noodles. I've heard over and over "It has to be Indomie," which is a brand name of packet noodles, but one packet of noodles is much like another. It seems to be a staple in student houses, probably because it's easy, cheap, and filling. I've seen oil put in "to stop it from becoming sticky," which just seems unnecessary to me; the oil can also be used for frying up egg that typically accompanies this meal.

Set water to maybe three inches deep to boil. Chop up a bit of carrot and throw it in to boil (for my first time using non-frozen veg, I used tinned carrots, which turned out to be a huge mistake: they tasted burnt even though I added them towards the end). Add a packet of noodles, and as they soften stir them up to separate the block. Chop up a bit of red pepper, quite finely, and add that to the water. Remember to stir in the flavour packet -- I think chicken flavour works well but curry is my favourite. Add peas: typically garden, but I love marrowfat so I used them; seriously, while I was waiting for the water to reduce I was eating them out of the tin with a fork. Mix everything up (add a tsp of curry powder -- or chopped chillis -- if you want a bit more flavour) and just wait for the water to reduce before chowing down.

Pasta Ndu

Another recipe from the Vegan Nigerian: I changed the name only because she used Yoruba language and I'm trying to learn Igbo, so Ndu is the Igbo word for green. And, as you can see, it's extremely green: I wouldn't hesitate to say monstrously so. Think I added too much water -- I don't even know what happened but it kind of looks like baby food. Threw in some chilli powder and cayenne powder for extra flavour, but it was still too bland for me. Maybe garlic? To be honest, I don't think I'd make this again, but it was definitely worth a try -- and, if nothing else, a different experience to the usual tomato-based sauces I do.

Set a pan of pasta and a pan with a small (chopped up) potato to boil.  Fry up some chopped onion and mushroom. When the potato's soft, add it to a blender with some green veggies: I used courgette, green pepper, and spinach. I still can't be bothered shelling out for fresh chilli peppers, so I'm sticking with the powder until I've used them all up. Mix pasta, green stuff, and the fried bits.

Agege Club Sandwich

Again, the inspiration for this comes from the Vegan Nigerian , by which I mean that it's from there that I heard about a sandwich with three slices of bread. Why am I only just learning that three layers of bread is an acceptable thing?? Anyway, this was just an excuse to buy a loaf of Agege bread. I'm not kidding around here: if you haven't tasted it before, you need to go out and buy some. I always prefer brown seeded bread, but once every two weeks my local Afro-Caribbean shop gets batches of this bread (and the proprietor assures me that he sells out of it within a few days) and I had to get some. Just buy it. That's all I can say.

Cut three slices of Agege bread. If you want to make your own hummus, blitz a can of chickpeas, garlic, some lemon juice, and some chilli in a blender to whichever consistency you like (don't add any liquid). Fill up the sandwich with sliced tomatoes, lettuce, and onion -- and anything else you fancy. Liven up with the hummus and some sweet chilli sauce. This is a sandwich best enjoyed in private: on the other hand, if you're significant other sees you getting through this mammoth beast, with the mess it entails, and still finds you sexy, then you know s/he's a keeper.

This is my first post on Nigerian food, but I'm positive that it won't be the last. Although I'm a real wuss when it comes to spicy food, there's something extremely enticing about the rustic flavourful dishes of Western Africa.

P.S. Late-night blogging was accompanied by surreptitious cuddles with The Good Dog (who also makes sure no scraps of food are left on the floor)

Fresh Start

There's something very satisfying about beginning anew -- or even just counting down to the day when you're going to jump into being the better you.

For me, May is Deadline Month -- but I have to feel optimistic when it seems like summer is peeking round the corner. While I wouldn't say that I'm that student living off takeaway, pot noodles, and oven chip sandwiches (all of which are delicious and I kind of wish that I hadn't written them since it's been months since I've had a chip sandwich but oh well), there are definitely numerous aspects of my diet that I could improve.

My aim for the first of May was to kick-start the new me (who says things like "I'll just have a salad" and "There's no way I'll ever finish all this") with a 24-hour fruit detox. Yeah, I just made that up. I liked the idea of a green/mint tea detox to flush out my system ... but I felt faint just as the thought of not eating food for a full day.

So, I decided to compromise. My mother "kindly donated" an old smoothie maker in that considerate way parents have of offloading the crap they no longer want, and I set to work on creating my own concoctions. I tried to look at recipes online, I really did, but they wanted things that sounded either incredibly expensive (organic goji berries: sound delicious but don't think my bank balance agrees), incredibly disgusting (celery and kale that I couldn't stomach raw never mind blended into something I'm meant to drink), or just too complicated -- who wants to be chopping and slicing six different vegetables at 08:30 just for breakfast? Naturally, in my typical gung-ho style I chucked a load of fruit in a blender with some soya milk and here are the results.

Breakfast: Raspberry Smoothie

The raspberry probably turned out the best of the trio.

I tipped a punnet of raspberries (one of the shallow packs from Lidl) into the blender, filled up to the 500ml line with soya milk, and blended.

Lunch: Strawberry Smoothie

This one seemed a little too much like strawberry milk for my liking.

I think my mistake was blending the strawberries (medium-sized punnet, stalks removed) before the milk, so that it reduced quite a bit and I added too much milk. Next time I'd do the same as with the raspberries, and just chuck it all in and blend together.

Dinner: Mango Smoothie

I have to admit that this one was a bit of a disaster. I used half a mango and removed the flesh from the skin; I usually eat the skin with the flesh, but didn't feel adventurous enough to add it in with the smoothie. Basically, it ended up as thick gloopy milk with a vague mango flavouring. Not good. Next time I'll try half and half water and milk, and see how that goes.

It does feel quite invigorating to have fruit smoothies for breakfast rather than toast or cereal, so it's going to be something I keep trying. Please add a comment if you have some tasty, easy, cheap breakfast smoothie recipes to share, or if you just feel like commenting.

P.S. This post was brought to you by candlelight.