A Vegetable Feast

Like a veritable feast, but with more vegetables. ALL OF THE VEG.

I haven't been cooking as much recently: there, I said it. Things have been too stressful and busy (which is why there hasn't been much blogging - there hasn't been anything to blog...), BUT last week I decided enough was enough and that I needed something super healthy and delicious to make up for it all. So I made this: baked, stuffed aubergine with cous cous, feta and all things lovely.

Ingredients (serves 1):
- half an aubergine
- 1 small red onion, roughly chopped
- 10 cherry tomatoes
- 3 cloves garlic, peeled but left whole
- 100g cous cous
- 200ml veg stock
- 3 spring onions, chopped
- 100g feta cheese, crumbled
- handful of fresh coriander, chopped
- salt and pepper, to taste

Method:
1. First, preheat the oven to 220°C. Place the aubergine into a baking dish with the onion, garlic and tomatoes, then drizzle with olive oil and a good amount of salt and pepper. Put this into the oven for 40 minutes, taking it out half way through to flip the aubergine and stir the rest of the veg.
2. Put the cous cous into a pan with the hot stock and heat gently for about five minutes, until the grains have expanded and the liquid has been absorbed.
3. Scoop the middle out of the roasted aubergine and add it to the cous cous, along with the onion, tomatoes and garlic (the cloves will be soft enough to just squash now). Stir in the spring onions, feta and coriander, then place the mixture back into the aubergine skin and bake for a further 15-20 minutes.

 
NB: There will be cous cous mixture left over but this is a good thing - my extras were eaten by our house mouse (aka Rebecca) but it would be great to put in the fridge and have for lunch the next day.
4. Sprinkle with an extra bit of coriander to make it look pretty, then serve with something delicious like sweet potato fries. Yum.

Oooh. Red Wine Risotto

Okay. I admit it. I really like cooking with alcohol.

I blame my mother. 

But this  risotto is pretty awesome. Normally, you make risotto with white wine, which is lovely and mellow. This risotto is made with red wine instead. I had this mad idea to make risotto with red wine a while ago. I googled it, and it turns out other people had the same idea. So I decided to just go for it, make up a recipe and see what happened. And what happened was pretty successful. The red wine becomes the dominant flavour, whereas normally the white wine tends to form the back drop to whichever other flavours you choose to add. And it went down well with the housemates, so yknow. I think it works.

I made this quite a while ago, but I think it serves about four people. We ate it with lots of Bryony's  excellent garlic bread.

What you need: 

1 Aubergine

Olive oil

Butter

3 Cloves of garlic

1 Leek

300g Risotto rice

1 Very large glass of red wine

2 Oxo cubes

1tsp Dried rosemary

1/2 tsp Mixed herbs

1/2 tsp Pesto

2 tsp Wholegrain mustard

1 handful of Parmesan cheese, grated

Fresh basil, chopped

Fresh parsley, chopped

Goats cheese to serve

And what to do:

1. Roast your aubergine. Chop it up into small pieces, place in a roasting tin and drizzle with olive oil. Stir it all around and place it in the oven at 180C. It'll take about half an hour to roast.

2. Chop the onion and the leek. Melt about 25g of butter in a large pan with some olive oil over a low heat, then add the onion and leek. Let it cook for about four minutes, then crush your garlic (or chop it up very finely) and add it to the pan for a further minute or so. Then add your risotto and stir it in to the onion/garlic/leek mix, coating it in butter and oil so it becomes shiny.

3. Now add the red wine and let it simmer and reduce. Once it has, you can either make up some stock with the oxo cubes and add this gradually, or just crumble the cubes into the risotto and gradually add hot water as youre going along. I tend to do the second, Bryony generally does the first but it's up to you.

4. Add your herbs and your pesto and your mustard, and stir it all through. Then let it all simmer as the rice cooks, adding more water or stock as it evaporates. 

5. After it's been cooking about half an hour, check on the aubergine, and once it's ready add to the risotto. 6. Keep stirring the risotto, and once the rice is cooked add the parmesan cheese and most of the chopped fresh herbs.

7. Serve sprinkled with goat's cheese and herbs, with garlic bread on the side.

Give it a go if you fancy something slightly different to "normal" risotto...

Alive and Cooking Ratatouille Pasta

So I'm still alive. Promise. And I'm still cooking, just about... 

For those newcomers to the blog, HI I'M ZOSIA. I'm the other half of the "we" that Bryony's always talking about when she talks about our blog, and this year I've been ridiculously busy. University work and students' union commitments have taken up all my time, which has meant that I haven't been able to cook anything more ambitious than tomato pasta sauce and a few risottos here and there. Being completely honest the majority of my eating has been done in the library. I'm THAT girl...

Eating one of Bryony's cupcakes in the library

But Bryony's been bugging me to blog. For a long time. A reaaaalllyyy loooooong time. Thing is though, when I do have time to cook, I don't have time to even take photographs, let alone write up a blog post afterwards... 

But now it's exam term, so I have time to think for once. Which means I've actually got time to de-stress by cooking. I was sat there in the library today thinking about cooking, and I went to the weekly fruit and veg market at the SU and bought all sorts of vegetables, and after I came home from my eight hour library session I made Ratatouille Pasta Sauce.

Serves three people, plus enough for lunch the next day, plus some for the freezer... Possibly about six people...

For the sauce:
1 Large Onion
2 Cloves of Garlic
Splash of Olive Oil and a Knob of Butter
3  Courgettes
1 Medium Aubergine
1/2 a Large Red Pepper
3 Tins of Chopped Tomatoes
Red wine (I half filled one of the tins with wine, topped it up with water and added this)
2 Teaspoons of Chilli and Tomato Pesto (or just use red pesto with a dash of chilli powder instead)
1 Teaspoon of Herbs de Provence
1 Teaspoon of Italian mixed herbs
1 Oxo cube
Salt and Pepper to taste
Generic Chopped Fresh Herbs (I used some basil and some parsley, but use what you've got. Rosemary would work)
Grated Cheese to Serve.

Plus pasta, however much you fancy.

Here's what you do:
1.  Melt the butter in a pan with a splash of oil. Chop the onion nice and small. Chop the garlic too, then add this all to the butter and oil. Let it simmer for five to ten minutes while you're chopping the rest of your vegetables.
2. Chop your courgettes into round slices and add to the pan. Stir it all around and let it simmer for a few minutes while you chop your aubergine.
3. Add the chopped tomatoes to the pan, along with the wine and water. Mix in the aubergine, the herbs, the oxo cube and the chilli and tomato pesto.
4. Make sure everything is combined well, put a lid on the pan and let it all simmer for ten to fifteen minutes.
5. After ten minutes or so, put your pasta on. Season your ratatouille sauce with salt and peper, and about five minutes before the pasta is done, stir in the chopped fresh herbs.
6. Serve your sauce over your pasta, with some more basil and plenty of cheese. Unless your name is Harry. In which case you don't eat cheese. Because you're quite frankly a bit weird.

We served three people (Harry, Bryony and Me), and I had enough for tomorrow's lunch, plus a sizeable amount to put in the freezer.

Dinner with Hazzaaa

(Dear Bryony: I COOKED. I BLOGGED. Are you happy now?)

Aubergine Not-Cannelloni

This one's for Rebecca. Because I have loads of other things still to blog and now I'm all out of sequence but I'm doing this one first because she asked me to and I rock.

This one was an awesome one. Inspiration was taken from here, and once I'd seen it the recipes-part of my brain wouldn't stop whirring 'til I'd done something.

You will need (for 4):
- 2 aubergines
- 300g pot garlic and herb Philadelphia
- 125g pot soft goats' cheese
- large handful of fresh spinach
- 1 large onion
- 2 cloves garlic
- 2x 400g tins chopped tomatoes
- sprinkle dried oregano and rosemary
- oxo cube
- glug of red wine (or a desert spoon of red wine vinegar and 1 tsp sugar)
- fresh parsley

The aubergines: Begin by prepping these. They should be topped and tailed, and sliced as thinly as you can get them - about 5mm is ideal. Sprinkle with salt and leave to the side for about 20 minutes, until water droplets begin to appear on the surface. Rinse off the salt and pat dry, then brush both sides of the aubergine with olive oil and grill for approximately 4 minutes each side.

The sauce: Chop the onion and garlic and throw into a large saucepan with a splash of olive oil. Cook for 8 minutes, then add the tomatoes and the dried herbs. When this begins to bubble, put the oxo cube and red wine into the saucepan as well. Cook on a low-medium heat for about 10-15 minutes, stirring regularly, until it begins to thicken. Season to taste.

The filling: Empty the pots of cheese into a mixing bowl, and stir together thoroughly. Add to this a sprinkle of black pepper, some fresh parsley and the spinach leaves (when I made it I had a mixture of spinach, watercress and rocket, so they all went in). Stir again so that everything is incorporated.

The assembly:
1. Put a spoonful of the cheese mixture onto each slice of aubergine, and roll the aubergine around it.

2. Pour enough sauce into a baking dish to cover the bottom of it, then place the aubergine slices on top, with the end of the roll facing down. As you can see with mine I used a courgette as well, as I only had one aubergine. It wasn't bad - I'd recommend sticking to the aubergine but if you have any fussy eaters who don't like it they can be easily appeased this way.

3. Pour the remaining sauce over the aubergine rolls, and bung the remaining cheese mixture on the top too. You could also sprinkle over some breadcrumbs or seeds.

4. Bake at 200°C for 30 minutes and then enjoy thoroughly. I like serving it with a mixed leaf salad with a balsamic and olive oil dressing, but you could do anything at all.

What to do when you win a coconut

First of all, I'm sorry for being a bit MIA recently. Life is mad, especially since I got a job at my local fruit and veg shop (yay vegetables), but I will make it up to you. Starting with this.

Because at the Royal Holloway Summer Ball this year, I won a coconut on the coconut shy. Here is a picture of me with my coconut.

Zosia would like to add here that she really reallllly was very very excited.

I named him Tarzan. I was very very excited and full of ideas of what to do with it... but a month later it was still sitting on my shelf, though at home now as we'd left uni. And then my sister suggested I used it to make some sort of Thai curry. AN IDEA WAS BORN. And my coconut became this:

Which was pretty darn good really.

What you need for a Bryony-style Thai green curry:
- 1 coconut
- 8 spring onions
- 2 cloves garlic
- half a red pepper
- half an aubergine (a whole one would be fine)
- a thumb-size piece of ginger
- 2 chillies (I used 1 red and 1 green, but it's up to you)
- 6-8 new potatoes
- handful green beans
- handful mange tout
- 1 1/2 tsp soya sauce
- 1 tbsp soft dark brown sugar
- 350ml water with half a knorr stock pot or 1 oxo cube
- zest and juice of 1 lime
- fresh coriander
- jasmine or sticky rice, to serve

And the SECRET ingredient (less secret now I put it on the internet in capital letters) is a 'Thai Taste: Easy Thai Green Curry Kit'. Which sounds like a massive cheat, but actually it isn't and is also the best money-saver ever. It includes coconut milk, Thai green curry paste and herbs - which, if you bought them seperately, would come to about £5-6, and I think this was £2ish. So no complaints.

It's quite a lot of ingredients, but I promise nothing is lost and it's totally worth it. This amount served three, but it would be a good one for bulking up and cooking en-masse, too - especially if you get people to pitch in for cost.

1. Start by getting into your coconut. We used a hammer and chisel, but the internet is full of suggestions. Once you're in, cut the fleshy bits into small, thin pieces and dry-fry them in a wok or frying pan until they're toasted. This alone is amazingly nice. Put the coconut water aside, and put the toasted coconut pieces in a bowl to cool down. Meanwhile, put your new potatoes on to boil for about 15 minutes.

2. In the now-empty wok heat up some oil, and then add the spring onions, garlic and ginger. Stir-fry these for a couple of minutes, and then add the aubergine, followed shortly by the green beans.

3. Once the vegetables are starting to colour and the aubergine is beginning to shrink, add the pepper, chillis and Thai herbs. Stir-fry all this for another 5 minutes or so, before adding in the boiled new potatoes (chopped), the curry paste and most of the toasted coconut. Cook for another few minutes.

4. Next, add the mange tout, the coconut water (the stuff that was inside your coconut), the coconut milk, the water and the stock pot/cube. It should be beginning to look more like a curry. Turn up the heat slightly and stir, and add in the sugar and soya sauce. Now is also a good time to put your rice on to cook, though it depends what sort of rice you're using.

5. After 15 minutes or so, your liquid should have reduced by about half, and should now be thicker and more sauce-like (although it isn't a particularly thick sauce, so don't worry). When you're happy with the consistency, add in most of your fresh coriander, the lime juice and most of the zest. Cook for another couple of minutes and then try the sauce and adjust whatever you need (if you need to) until you're happy with it. 

Serve with the rice, and the rest of the coconut, coriander and lime zest. You won't be disappointed.