Blackeye Bean Salsa

Blackeye beans, sometimes called peas, indeed sometimes called cow peas, also known as frijoles castilla in Spain, haricot cornille in France, find them as schwarze-augen-bohnen in Germany, zwartoogbonen in Holland while the Italians call them fagioli con l'occhio nero. They are a fabby little dried bean, very cheap to buy, and they have the most wonderful smell of fresh peas when you open the packet. They need to be soaked overnight before cooking but they don't disappoint. They swell to about twice their size and, once cooked, still have a lovely taste of fresh peas and a lighter texture than their more popular shelf mates like chick peas and cannelini beans. Yet, in the UK at least, they are not much loved or used.

A little while before Christmas my sister came to visit after spending a week at a cookery school in Portugal. Eager to share some of the lovely dishes she had learnt she offered to cook dinner one night - that idea got a big yes from me.

She created an amazing feast including, memorably, marinated pork fillet with migas and chorizo topped with fresh oranges and lemon, a gorgeous soup with spinach and fresh cheese and a sublime salad of tuna with blackeye beans. My small contribution - it was the man that had to clear up the bombsite that was the kitchen post supper ! - was to soak and cook some dried blackeye beans. Unsure how much would be needed I did a serious quantity and found there were many left. Popped them in the freezer for another day.

And now I am on a mission to clear the freezer - in part because it needs defrosting and in part because it is the frozen version of the cupboard under the stairs. Stuff goes in and never comes out! I have been good - see last week - but it is something I found remarkably difficult to do. My preference is always to start with a plan and then shop from there, and this requires me to see what's there and then make a plan. Challenging! I also have pork chops in the freezer - still ^o^ - and had been thinking the beans would make a good salad to go with them for a quick midweek meal. Just not really sure what kind of salad.

I googled idly and rejected most things I found till  simply recipes came up - a really interesting food blog I'd not come across. Elise made a salsa using beans which sounded most fine. I didn't have cooked green chillies or roasted poblanos, it's true but I was much taken with the principle of mixing different types of chillies / peppers as a base of many textures and variegating the flavour with coriander and onion. What I did have was a lovely bunch of dried oregano that my sister had brought from Portugal and it was the inclusion of a teaspoon in the dressing that really sold me on this recipe. I used (some of) the varieties of peppers I had to hand and was seriously delighted with the result. Great with sausages and roasted onion and green bean salad as wll as in lunchboxes, this was a proper winter treat but I imagine too it would make a great salad with barbecue. Bring on the sunshine!

Blackeye Bean Salsa

Best made an hour or so before eating it keeps really well for a few days in the fridge

About 4 cups of cooked blackeye beans/peas or 2 400g tins, drained and well rinsed
4 or 5 small hot pickled peppers, I used some I brought back from Hungary that are pretty to look at and HOT to eat
4 or 5 roasted peppers - I used some from a jar of roasted piquillo peppersbut you could as well roast your own from fresh
1 large fresh red pepper or a dozen or so tiny ones
1 bunch of spring onions
1 bunch of coriander, thoroughly washed

Dressing
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Large pinch of ground cumin
Salt and pepper to taste

Put the beans into a large bowl. Chop the pickled hot peppers very finely and add to the bowl. Deseed and chop the roasted peppers into 2cm squares and add to the bowl. Deseed the fresh pepper/s and chop to roughly the size of the beans and add to the bowl. Cut the spring onions into thinnish rings, white and green parts, and - you guessed it - add to the bowl. Strip the leaves from the coriander stalks but do keep the fine stalks. Chop roughly and add to the bowl. Put all the ingredients for the dressing into a screwtop jar and shake vigourously till emulsified. Tip over the bowl of bits and toss well.

Leave for an hour or so to develop the flavours.

Smoked Ham Hock & Avocado Salad

After the lovely ham and peach salad of last week I wanted to put this one on the blog too, partly because it was seriously great and partly to show how I used the other half of that meaty little beauty that was the ham hock. But really because it is supposed to be summer - it is July, July! and yet at ten in the morning the skies hang so heavy it is almost dark - and such quick and elegant meals for mid week should be de rigeur.


Ham and avocado make a tasty pairing. Actually I find almost anything and avocado make a tasty pairing. They are so incredibly elegant and smooth and wonderfully buttery to eat. Good for you too - giving you fibre, potassium and vitamins in every pleasurable mouthful. Americans love them most of all in guacamole - on Super Bowl Sunday, they eat about 8 million pounds of guacamole - though I suspect it's the corn chips used for scooping that brings the calories to the feast!

Smoked Ham Hock & Avocado Salad

Serves 2

The basil oil in the dressing really makes the salad - you can buy it in most general food shops or it is really easy to make yourself

100g broad beans, after shelling
250g smoked ham hock, shredded
1 ripe avocado, cut into small chunks
3 or 4 handfuls of mixed salad leaves
100g cooked butterbeans
1 small fennel bulb, halved then sliced thin as you can
3 tbspns basil oil
1 tbspn lemon juice


Bring a small pan of salted water to the boil, drop the broad beans in, return to the boil and cook for about 2 minutes. Drain and then drop the beans into a bowl of cold water, with ice added if you have some handy. This stops them cooking any further and so they stay a lovely bright green. Pop each of the beans from the thick casing and set aside.


Mix the basil oil and lemon juice with salt and pepper in a screw top jar and shake with enthusiasm till emulsified. Taste and correct the seasoning if it needs it.


In a large bowl toss the salad leaves with half the dressing. Add the ham, avocado, both types of beans and the fennel shavings. Toss lightly with the remaining dressing till you have an elegant tangle - or a rough approximation of one.

Serve and consume with delight, tasting summer in every mouthful.

Smoked Ham Hock, Peach and Butterbean Salad

Last week I bought a chicken from the Ginger Pig. Amazing thing, a cockerel that lived for one hundred days (most chickens get 65 max) that I poached with leeks and served with butterbeans then salad the next day and the stock enriched barley the day after for a salad with edamame and chilli. It cost about £18 and it was very special.

This week I dropped into Greensmiths for something unrelated and the Ginger Pig counter had a veritable mountain of smoked ham hocks atop it, a delicately scented golden jumble, just delivered. Three pounds each - seriously, only three of your finest British pounds. For the life of me I could not resist. No plan, no idea even - indeed it didn't actually occur to me to wonder till I was home whether it needed cooking....

A quick google suggested it might. I soaked it overnight in cold water, then poached it gently next morning for a couple of hours with onion, celery and juniper till the meat was literally falling off the bone. I flaked it into sizeable chunks, discarded the skin and all the fat that I didn't eat (warm lightly smoked pork fat, in small quantities, is definitely one of my cook's treats). Truth to tell, even at this point, I didn't really know what dinner would be.

Took myself to Brixton to do a few things and, wandering past one of the veg stalls in the market, caught the honeyed waft of peaches. A real scent of summer, the peaches are sweet but not sugary with a slight resistance to the bite before they give up their golden flesh, I just love them. I wandered on with that lovely perfume in my head, collecting a couple of things I needed. The peaches lingered -  I could suddenly taste them with the smoky hock, crisp peach with tender pork, juices mingling. Once I started on that flavour track there was no stopping me - I imagined salty threadsof  finely grated ricotta salata, big fat butterbeans for ballast and a mish mash of baby salad bits for air, flecks of parsley for bite.

Dinner!

Smoked Ham Hock, Peach and Butterbean Salad

For 2

I used fresh ingredients for this but you could certainly sub the ham with thick slices from the deli and butterbeans thoroughly washed from a tin for a spectacularly quick and pretty salad.

2 large handfuls of salad leaves
200g cooked ham hock, smoked is nice
150g cooked butterbeans
2 ripe peaches, stoned and elegantly sliced
1 tbspn flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped
3 tbspns olive oil
1 tbspn lemon juice
Salt and pepper to season
2 tbspns ricotta salata, finely grated (use Pecorino or Parmesan if you can't get salted ricotta)

Make a dressing with the oil and lemon and season. Put the salad leaves into a large bowl and toss with most of the dressing. Add the ham, butterbeans, peaches and parsley and the rest of the dressing and toss gently with your hands. Sprinkle with the grated cheese.

And that literallly is all you do for a *peach* of a summer salad. And a total bargain!

Lentils with curly kale, garlic and pork

Kale is an interesting vegetable. I had never come across it before I came to London - the most exotic green we had in Oz in my day was chard and we called that spinach. There is spinach there now but it is always prefixed 'english' and commands a premium. (Chard is of course still the one that locals go to for real spinach.) I brought my confused ignorance with me. I had no idea what kale was for a long time - and given that absolutely everything was new it took me some time to even notice it. Eventually I took in the big mounds of dark leaves, thick and frilled and totally alien. It looked so incredibly chewy, like it will never soften down, more like the outside leaves of cabbage you discard before cooking. Can't recall seeing it much on menus or even used widely on recipe sites, local or otherwise.

It demanded no attention so I paid it none.

More fool me. The trouble with ignorance is that it is so easy continue unenlightened through the simple failure of curiosity, the omission of enquiry, an unintentional blinkering - and this is probably the source of the definition of its blissful state. But to stand before a pile of unknown veg and wilfully persist in unknowing each time you catch sight of it? That is when ignorance turns to stupidity. To be ignorant is an acceptable thing - it holds within its very definition the possibility of learning something new, and knowledge dispels ignorance. To choose to not know knowing that you don't know but that you might? That's just plain wrong. And I do hate being wrong.

Baby steps - shredded and steamed some and served it with butter and pepper with roast pork and it was good. Braver, I made a kale salad with spiced sweet potato and almonds and loved every mouthful. Then last weekend I found a new Ted's Veg at Venn Street Market in Clapham and they had mountains of fabulous veg, including purple curly kale. Its deep rich colour was beautiful.

I could not resist the frill of those pretty leaves and brought it home without a plan, it's true, but with high expectations. Was a bit chill still in the evening and I had a small piece of cold roast pork and a new packet of green lentils. With the last of a head of celery and lots of garlic I could see what dinner might be.

Lentils with curly kale, garlic and pork

I used the last of the roast pork from earlier in the week but you could use 100g of fresh minced pork or omit it entirely if there's no meat in the house. Most important of all - be generous with the garlic, it is the secret.

Generous serving for 2 with a little left for one lunch next day

4-6 cloves garlic, peeled and very finely chopped
2 tbspns olive oil
2 sticks celery, cut into 1/2cm slices
If there are some celery leaves, chop them separately and leave to one side
About 100g cooked pork, finely diced or 100g fresh pork mince (optional)
250g green or brown lentils, sometimes called Egyptian lentils, rinsed
1 bay leaf
250g curly kale, very thick stem removed but leave the rest, shred the leaves into 2cm strips
Salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a wide pan and gently fry the garlic and chopped celery for a couple of minutes till fragrant and slightly softened. Add the pork and stir to coat, and cook through if using mince, for about 5 minutes.

Add the lentils, bay leaf and enough cold water to cover by about half a centimetre and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to simmer, cover the pan, and leave to cook for 20-30 minutes till the lentils are almost tender. Season with salt and pepper.


Rinse the chopped kale well then tip into the lentil pan and stir to incorporate. Put the lid back on the pan and let the kale wilt for 3 or 4 minutes. Stir again and add the celery leaves for garnish, if you have some.


Serve in big deep bowls with some bread if you have it.

Blissfully good. Just so many textures and flavours in one bowl.

The meat is optional, it adds more dimension but I have cooked lentils in versions like this for years with and without it and all are good, especially if you drape a gently poached egg on top for extra unctuousness.

All in all, this is a meal worth knowing!

Curried Lentil Soup

Really this is a creamy curried soup, but made without cream.... Not entirely a soup, either, more a dal but not really a true dal as the lentils are small and green and French. An enigma in a bowl.

Winter is revisiting London and it's all a bit bleak and damp and not quite light during the still too short days. Spring has arrived in the garden - buds are bursting out all over, pale new leaves are shyly displaying themselves and the snowdrops and crocuses are looking a little bedraggled by their rainy welcome - but in the kitchen winter reigns still.

Veg being less than inspiring, most of it the last of the winter store, I'm turning often to pulses. I have a secret supply of an exquisite french lentil - lentilles verte du berry - which were the first to come under Label Rouge - a distinct sign of quality. The friend, who acquires these lovely little things on her visits home, assures me they are best when served as a base for sausages, preferably toulouse but definitely garlic in one form or another. I will try that for sure come spring, but this week they made for a lovely rich warming dish.

The man loves curried parsnip soup with something approaching an unbalanced passion so I was fairly sure a midweek offering of curried lentils would be welcome. What intrigued me when I found the recipe on Serious Eats was using a chickpea purée to thicken the lentils and make them, it turned out, intensely gorgeously dreamily creamy.

Curried Lentil Soup

Lentils, chickpeas, curry powder, water - a dish where the whole utterly transcends the sum of its parts. Serves 4 with a side of crusty bread

4 tablespoons olive oil,

1 medium onion, chopped

1 medium carrot, finely chopped

1 stalk celery, finely chopped

2 large garlic cloves, chopped, divided

2 tablespoons curry powder, or more to taste

1 cup French green lentils

4 cups water

400g can chickpeas, drained, rinsed or a large handful of dried ones, soaked and cooked

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons butter

2 green onions, thinly sliced

1 lemon, cut into wedges

In a large heavy pot, heat half the olive oil over medium heat until shimmering. Add onion, celery and carrot, season with a pinch of salt and pepper, and cook until onion is translucent, 5-7 minutes. Add garlic and cook for an additional 2 minutes, then stir in curry powder. Cook, stirring constantly to prevent spices from burning, until spices are fragrant.

Add lentils and water and bring to a boil. Season with salt and pepper, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer until lentils are tender, about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, puree chickpeas, lemon juice, remaining olive oil, and 1/4 cup of water. Stir puree into lentils, along with butter. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and/or additional curry powder, then thin soup with water until desired consistency.

Divide amongst soup bowls and serve garnished with green onion and with lemons on the side.

The man was delighted, so much so he suggested they should be packed into jars and sold in shops in the way the french do with all things good. Bonne idée, non?

White Bean & Summer Vegetable Salad

Beans are wonderful things. As legumes - that is, the seed of a plant that has pods - they absorb nitrogen from the air, making them rich sources of protein - more than in any other plant food, in fact. They are, however, relatively low in the essential amino acid methionine which is found in many grains. Hence the different combinations of legume and grain round the world in pursuit of the perfect protein - dal and rice in India, Mexican refried beans stuffed into corn tortilla, soy bean tofu with rice in many Asian countries and, a definite favourite round ours at least, peanut butter sandwiches.

Beans are also one of the oldest things around--and one of the first wild plants to be domesticated, long before any wild animals truckled to mankind's hand. We eat a lot of them one way and another - I love their versatility. They add texture as well as creaminess, flavour and robustness to stand up well to bold additions like chilli and garlic and woody herbs.

They are capable of great subtlety too - think of creamy bean soups, beans mixed with pasta for minestrone or salad or the joy of butterbean mash. Pairing them with summer vegetables and herbs results in a surprising delicacy, making them an ideal ingredient all year round.

White Bean & Summer Vegetable Salad

Mixing the dressing into the salad while the beans are still warm gives great depth of flavour to this very summery salad.

Serves 6 as a side salad

200g dried white beans, soaked overnight in cold water

1 bayleaf

2 medium courgettes

1/2 aubergine

About a dozen baby plum or cherry tomatoes

3 garlic cloves

100ml basil oil

25ml lemon juice

Drain and rinse the beans, then put them into a large pan with the bay leaf and plenty of cold water to cover. Bring to the boil over a high flame, skim the inevitable froth, then simmer till the beans are tender. Add a generous teaspoon of salt and simmer for a few more minutes.

Meanwhile, halve the courgettes lengthwise, then cut into slices a little under a centimetre thick. You want the pieces to cook fairly quickly and make for a nice mouthful with the cooked beans. Cut the aubergine into 3 or 4 lengthwise, depending on its size, then cut into similar sized chunks to the courgettes. If small, leave the tomatoes whole. Flatten the unpeeled garlic with the blade of a knife. Put all the vegetables and garlic onto a flat, low sided baking tray and mix with a couple of tablespoons of the basil oil. Season.

Bake in a moderate/gas4/200F oven for about 15 minutes then stir. Bake for a further 10 minutes or so till the vegetables are softened and taking on colour but still nice and juicy.

Remove the tray from the oven and discard the garlic. Let the vegetables cool slightly till the beans are cooked. Drain the beans and wash with cold water for a minute.

Make a simple dressing with the rest of the oil, the lemon juice and salt and pepper.

In a large bowl mix the vegetables, including any oil on the tray, with the beans and the dressing.

Allow to cool for half an hour or so before serving.

Bean burgers

I have been trying to find a good bean burger recipe for a while now, but to date they have either been unutterably disgusting or have fallen apart whilst cooking. Sometimes both. Had begun to think they were some kind of mythical (non) beast from the sixties, apparently misremembered like much of that decade through substance abuse or non attendance.

Then, the week spring finally (sort of) came to London the new production of Hair has opened to much fanfare and rave reviews. Even Quentin Letts of the rabid Daily Beast can't entirely resist. Though at the start "Mr Swenson jumped up on my seat, tousled my own (receding) hairline and pushed his crotch towards my face." (The crotch in question, mark you, was loose and unclothed.) "It smelled faintly of matron's liniment and coconut butter," Letts says. "That didn't seem right." By the end even Charles Spencer from the Torygraph can only harumph ' "more than 40 years since its premiere, this greatest of all rock musicals can still inspire violent antipathy among the strait-laced. That strikes me as being one of its strengths." I'm seriously thinking of buying tickets!

This is also the week, serendipity or not, when I cracked the bean burger. Using cannelini beans as the base - tinned time but I think dried would be even better next time - their creaminess wrapped around the rest of the ingredients - rich toasted cashews, earthy slivers of celery - and all of it encased in crispy fried breadcrumbs. A most fabulous collection of textures and flavours.

Bean Burgers

50g cashew nuts, slightly crushed then toasted
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

2 cans cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
100g gruyere cheese, grated

2 spring onions, chopped
1 stick celery, thinly sliced

1tbsp tomato paste

2 tbspns flat leaf parsley, finely chopped

75g fresh breadcrumbs

1 egg, beaten

oil for frying

Heat a small pan over a medium heat and lightly toast the nuts for 2-3 minutes or until golden. Remove from pan and set to one side.

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in the pan and gently fry the garlic till also just golden.

Place the beans in a large bowl and mash with a fork to a rough consistency. Add the cheese, nuts, spring onions, celery, garlic, parsley, tomato paste and about a third of the breadcrumbs. Season and gently mix together until the ingredients are thoroughly combined.

Shape the mixture into 8 burgers. Coat the outside of each one first with the beaten egg, then with the remaining breadcrumbs. Cover and put into the fridge to firm up for about 20 minutes.

Heat 1cm oil in a large non-stick frying pan and add the burgers. Fry for 3-4 minutes each side until crips and golden and hot all the way through.

We ate them with a simple cucumber and radish salad and some crusty bread, and somewhere in the ether a tune floated towards us, faint at first let the sun shine, let the sun shine, the sun shine in....

Like wow Man.

Split Pea & Ham Hock Soup

I love this particular soup because it so easy to make and always tastes fabulous. Decided to make some for the weekend as I had a hock in the freezer, had some celery and some yellow split peas and a bag of lovely multi coloured heritage carrots. Even the last of a bunch of parsley so I was all set. I wanted something already made when we got home Sunday night without the faff of cooking a roast or whatever.

Best laid plans! I am currently much taken with heritage carrots - they come in shades from translucent pale to almost black, with many tinges of orange through purple in between. Some are scarlet or golden but all of them are beautiful. And I am a sucker for beautiful food. They come in numerous varieties from a time before commercial farming for supermarkets and large scale agriculture. They also taste great, particularly when roasted.

So I started the soup, chopped all the bits, added them to my giant stockpan and set the flame to high till it all came to a simmer. What I hadn't realised was that the beautiful dark as midnight purple carrots, peeled and chopped, would not make a lovely contrast to the yellow split peas which was my plan. They would rather leach their colour as well as their sweetness into the liquid, turning the whole lot a rather interesting shade of mud. Not an appetising shade, either.

Fortunately the finished dish smelled gorgeous, and tasted as good as ever. If I eat with my eyes closed I will never know the difference!

Split Pea & Ham Soup

1 ham hock

500g yellow split peas

4 sticks celery, washed and roughly chopped

4 carrots - choose your colour carefully! - peeled and cut into thin rings

2 onions, peeled and quartered and stuck with a couple of cloves

Bouquet garni of bayleaves, celery leaves, parsley and thyme

Peppercorns

Salt

Put everything into a really large pan and cover with at least 2 litres of water, more if the pan will hold it. Bring to a simmer over a high heat and skim the froth from the top as it forms.

Turn the heat down to allow the broth to simmer very gently and let it cook for a couple of hours, till the volume has reduced by about a quarter and the peas have collapsed. Take the pan off the heat.

When the contents have cooled - for me this was overnight - take the hock out. Strip all the meat from the bone, discarding the skin and the fat as you go. This is a wildly messy process, particularly if you've decided to do it in a hurry before you run out the door for work!

Stir the shredded meat back into the soup. Reheat and serve in deep bowls with crusty bread.

Funny thing was, by the time it was cooked, the carrots were a lovely bright orange. It's just the soup that's not! Perhaps all carrots are orange in their soul.

Watching Mad Men on the tele I left it a little longer than is perhaps wise, and we ended up with bowls of deeply comforting pottage closer to stew than soup, but lovely. A good end to the winter.

Chick pea soup

The world outside my window is struggling to reach zero. Ice on the pavements is a slick and shiny inch thick. Dangerous but probably not disastrous with a modicum of care. Which mainly involves moving slowly - which goes against all my natural inclinations - and not carrying much more than you need in a vain attempt to maintain my centre of balance. Nature versus nature really.

Decided mid week I really needed soup - thick hot and wholesome as possible. So I flicked through Lesley Bareham's Joy of Soup, pausing here and there to take in some details and imagine this one or that in a steaming bowl before turning the page to savour the next. Half way through the chapter on thick soups I came across one for chickpeas - which I love and have in my cupboard at all times (unless I've run out). It was simple, fairly subtle and as possible a contender as any of the others I had read right up till the last of the instructions for the preparation.

She says heat the remaining olive oil in a frying pan and fry the eggs. Serve the soup and slip a fried egg into each bowl. Possibly the best instruction that can be found for any dish at all at this -or if I'm honest - pretty much any time of the year. Soon as I read it I could imagine the little wrist action necessary to 'slip' the egg under the surface. I could practically taste the half submerged surprise of texture and rich liquid.

Chick Pea Soup

250g chick peas, soaked overnight

4 tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, finely diced

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tbspn chopped flat leaf parsley

700ml vegetable stock

juice of 1/2 lemon

6 eggs - if you're serving 6 and want eggs

Cover the chickpeas with fresh water and bring to the boil in a large pan over a medium heat. Simmer gently for an hour till quite soft. Drain over a bowl and reserve 300ml of the cooking liquid.

Heat 2 tbspns of the olive oil in a pan an soften the onions and garlic. Transfer to a blender, add the parsley and 150ml of the stock and purée. Add the chickpeas with the reserved cooking liquid and purée again.

Return to a clean pan, add the rest of the stock, and simmer for ten minutes, stirring well. Season generously with salt, pepper and lemon juice.

Just before serving, heat the rest of the olive oil and fry the eggs. Pour the soup into bowls, and slip a fried egg into each bowl.

Provide good bread for dunking and mopping.

Sadly the whole bowl didn't quite live up to that initial frisson. The soup was indeed lovely, thick and comforting, but not really needing the egg.

Plan to have the rest for supper Friday night, with duck fat toast instead of eggs, just to be greedy.

Tarka Dal

Food chain weekends are a total change in routine. The kitchen we use is based in Tooting, south east London, home to a large Indian community and a fabulous high street and market selling largely Indian and Pakistani foodstuffs and a string of restaurants doing the same. It's a real treat once our kitchen is sorted on a Saturday to try out some of the myriad of delights on offer. Often I go to Lahore and buy a few of their bhaji and samosa and kebab and the man and I sit in the garden of the community centre in the sun and have ourselves a fine picnic. When the weather is less welcoming we try out one of the multitude of restaurants.

And so it was a few months ago that we found ourselves in a small but busy restaurant on Tooting High Street. I ordered a few random things, including tarka dal. All the food that arrived was good - fresh and spicy and hot. But it only took one mouthful of the dal to fall in love. Rich and complex and much more textured than the dal I normally make, it wowoed me with it's fabulousness. Besotted, instantly.

So then I was on a mission to find a recipe so I could have some whenever I wanted. Miss Greedy Pants that I am. I tried a couple of versions for nothing but disappointment. Then, browsing an Australian Gourmet Traveller magazine, which I can buy round the corner for 75pence, I came across a reader request for tarka dal eaten somewhere in Melbourne. Quick perusal of the recipe and it sounded plausible. Had to give it a go.

Bought a packet of the required dried chana dal, which looks for all the world like yellow split peas but they are in fact much more closely related to the chick pea. Chana dal is younger, smaller, split, sweeter and has a much lower glycemic index than chick peas but otherwise similar. It is not another version of yellow split peas. This is crucial information - only I didn't know it at the time!

When I normally make dal I use red split peas and they cook down to a lovely porridgey sludge in about 30-40 minutes without soaking. When I cook with chickpeas I soak them and then cook them for an hour or so till they are tender, but still resolutely whole. With this dish, and the instructions given, I was expecting the former but was quite distressed to find it was much closer to the latter. I had no other plan for supper Thusday night and nothing much to rustle up in an emergency. So when the chana dal was softened but still whole like crushed gravel after more than an hour I let it simmer away for another half hour. Nothing much changed except we'd gone beyond hunger to that place where it seems easier to wait till breakfast.

Stuck a lid on the pan and let it cool down overnight and fridged it next morning. Did a little investigating on the web next day to discover the above, previously unknown, information. Most versions of cooking tarka dal process the chana once they are tender but still whole, about 40 minutes in. Then they add the additional elements before serving. My way worked out okay too - the residual heat had collapsed the chana down more in the night and heating it through next day before adding the cream was enough to make a really brilliant supper.

And only one day late.

Tarka Dal

400 gm chana split lentils
60 ml vegetable oil
1½ tsp brown mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 cm piece ginger (10gm), finely grated
10 curry leaves, fresh if you can find them
2 onions, finely chopped
2 vine-ripened tomatoes, finely chopped
35 gm (¼ cup) raw cashews, finely ground
1½ tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp each garam masala and ground chilli
½ tsp ground coriander
45 gm ghee
125 ml pouring cream
3 long green chillies, halved lengthways (optional)

To serve coarsely chopped coriander

Rinse lentils in cold water till it rins clear then soak them for 30 minutes. Drain.

Heat oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add half the mustard seeds and half the cumin seeds and stir for a minute until they start to pop.

Add garlic, ginger, curry leaves and half the onion, stir occasionally until soft (7-10 minutes).

Add tomato, cashews, turmeric, garam marsala, ground chilli, coriander and 125ml water and stir occasionally until thick (3-5 minutes).

Add lentils and enough water to cover (about 1.6 litres), bring to the boil, reduce heat to low and stir occasionally for 40-45 minutes. When the lentils are tender to bite into, process briefly with an electric blender stick.

Heat ghee in a frying pan over medium-high heat, add remaining spices and stir occasionally until fragrant. Add remaining onion, stir occasionally until golden (15-20 minutes).

Stir onion mixture through lentils, add cream and chilli if using, bring to the boil, season to taste and serve immediately scattered with coriander.

My way was to add the extra onions and spices and let it all cool down together, and then it had all softened sufficiently to be fabulous next day. This recipe made a lot - we had it with paratha one night then as spiced accompaniment to roast lamb and cold in lunchboxes with the rest of the lamb.

Seriously recommend it.

Carrot & Coriander Salad

This is a really good salad for this time of year as winter heads our way. Assuming you can get dill and parsley it can be made all year and it is light and creamy and very fresh in your mouth. Kind of a necessity by the time February rolls around. Had it with an omelette and then it made a delightful addition to lunchboxes.

Carrot & Chickpea Salad

200g dried chick peas, soaked overnight with a tspn of bicarbonate of soda

750g carrots, peeled and cut into little batons - use your food processor - done in seconds

1/3 cup olive oil

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

2 tbspns lemon juice

1 large clove garlic, crushed

1/4 cup parsley, chopped

3 spring onions, finely sliced

1/3 cup finely chopped dill

1 tspn salt

1 tspn cumin seeds, toasted in a dry pan for a couple of minutes till fragrant

Cook the chick peas in unsalted water till al dente - about an hour. Add some salt to the water after 50 minutes. Drain and run under cold water. Leave to cool.

Mix the cooked chickpeas with the carrots, chopped herbs, garlic and toasted cumin seeds.

Mix the oil, vinegar and lemon juice with the salt and a generous grinding of black pepper. Toss the salad with the dressing.

Possibly nicer the next day - and this recipe makes plenty.

Cheap, wholesome and yum.

Lentil and Piquillo Pepper Salad

Tuesday a friend from work who is currently on maternity leave was planning to come up for lunch. Because of the vast amount of stuff required to transport a sprog from the wilds of Essex to the terrors of Barbican, and also because it's a bad idea to take babies to pubs at lunch time or any time, we usually make something to have in the boardroom where we can all sit around and the offspring can gurgle to his hearts content. Though it has to be said last time they visited there was a meeting going on and the offspring screamed unrelievedly in the way that only babies can. Good as gold once lunch was served. But the offspring is now teething - have terrors at the tears that must be provoking - so lunch was postponed at the last minute. Only I had already started boiling eggs to make a nicoise. So I had 4 boiled eggs in need of a plan and it wasn't even 8 am.

I found a recipe on the Brindisa site for a lentil salad that included a garnish of boiled eggs and had tuna and piquillo peppers mixed in and I really liked the sound of it. And it would use a couple of the eggs. Piquillo peppers are one of the revelations of Borough. They are grown in Navarra, and have their own “Denominación de Origen” (D.O. Pimientos del Piquillo de Lodosa). These small red peppers are charred over wood charcoal / old vines, then peeled by hand, marinated in olive oil with herbs, and eventually eaten either alone or in a salad or stuffed. They are silky and sweet and like no other pepper I have ever eaten. They seriously enhance any meal that they are part of. Their sweetness here contrasted beautifully with the earthiness of the lentils.

Lentil & Piquillo Pepper Salad

200g green lentils or other favourite ones
1 small onion, peeld and cut into eighths
1 carrot, diced

1 small leek, sliced into thin rings
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 bay leaf

2 eggs
100 g piquillo peppers strips
1 Ortiz bonito in olive oil 112g tin
1 red onion finely sliced
3 tbs Forum of cabernet sauvignon vinegar
4 tbs olive oil
Handful fresh herbs ( parsley, chervil and mint )
Salt and pepper

Heat 2 tbspns olive oil in a heavy pan then fry the onion, carrot, leek and garlic for five minutes till they just start to soften. Add the lentils and coat with the oil. Cover the lentils in plenty of water and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Add about a tablespoon of salt and continue simmering until tender (approx 20 minutes). Drain.

Cook the eggs for 6 minutes in boiling water. Drain, cool, peel and quarter.

In a salad bowl mix the piquillo peppers, lentils, red onion and the tuna, and season.

Mix the oil and the vinegar, add them to the salad, and toss thoroughly.

Finish with the fresh herbs and the boiled egg.

Butter a little crusty bread and dinner is served!

Lentils with ewe's milk cheese

Busy with bits and pieces of other things Wednesday night I wanted something reasonably simple for dinner. I had a pot of ewe's milk cheese from Abel & Cole that needed using and was wondering about cheese omelette. I sampled a little and it was a delicate curd like cheese with a lemony tang. Very summery but I wasn't convinced it would melt into the eggs. I had omelettes Monday night but with tarragon and a carrot and fennel salad and that melded perfectly but I still had the cheese.

Jaey made a really nice lentil salad with the bbq Tuesday using puy lentils and that set me thinking. Decided if I used puy lentils rather than my favourite green ones, which are creamier when cooked, I could make a fab dinner with chorizo (because everything is better with chorizo!) and lentils served hot with little gobbits of cheese on top to add a tangy creaminess. Worked a treat.

Lentils with ewe's milk cheese

1 onion, roughy chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

2 tbspns olive oil

2 cooking chorizo, sliced into rounds (next time I'd make them quite thick)

1 stalk celery, washed and sliced thinly

200g puy lentils, washed

2 tbspns chopped flat leaf parsley

100g fresh sheeps milk curd cheese or ricotta

Fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil until translucent and fragrant, about 10 minutes, then add the chorizo and celery and cook for a few minutes more till the sausage starts to crispy a little around the edge.

Tip the lentils into the pan and stir to coat in the oily mixture then add cold water to cover. Bring the pan to a simmer then lower the heat and cover with a lid. After 10 minutes, check there is still enough liquid - add hot water if you need to - and season with salt and pepper.

Cook for another 10 minutes or so till the lentils are cooked then stir through the parsley. Serve in deep bowls topped with splodges of cheese.

Lentils with Chorizo and Morcilla

I've never eaten morcilla before this week though I am a fan of blood pudding - both the british and french versions. A trawl through my Moro cookbook offered a fairly lush sounding recipe stewing lentils with chorizo and tocino which in spanish is a kind of ham fat that I didn't have so replaced with smoked lardon but in the Philippines is a sweet cured pork dish traditionally served for breakfast with garlic fried rice and eggs which sounds like a fairly fabulous way to start the day. Might need to investigate.

Along with these essentially pork and bean things in my stew there was also morcilla a sausage that is properly thick - about 5 or 6 centimetres across and stuffed with pig’s blood, rice, onions and spices. During la matanza where family, friends and neighbours gather to celebrate the slaughter of the pig Spaniards make good use of just about every part of the pig from the trotters to the ears. The blood is quickly drained into a large pan and immediately taken to the kitchen where morcilla is made for the first part of the feast. What isn't eaten on the day is hung to be saved for another day. Proper nose to tail eating!

Lentils with Chorizo

4 tbspns olive oil - I used rendered pork fat from roasting crackling

2 sweet chorizo, each 10cm long, cut into 1/2cm rounds

1 medium onion, roughly chopped

2 carrots, peeled and diced

100g tocino - I used pancetta

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

2 bay leaves

2 dried noras peppers, seeds and stalks removed, broken into small pieces and soaked in boiling water for 10 minutes

250g brown or green lentils

2 small morcilla or half a big fat one, add the small ones whole, thick slices for a big one

2 tbspns roughly chopped parsley

Heat the oil or pork fat over a high heat till very hot then add the sliced chorizo and fry till crispy. Remove with a slotted spoons and set aside.

Reduce the heat to medium and add the onion, carrot, tocino or pancetta and a pinch of salt. Fry for about ten minutes until the vegetables are beginning to colour. Add the garlic, bay leaves and drained nora peppers and cook for 2 minutes more.

Return the chorizo to the pan and add the lentils and morcilla. Cover with 1 litre of water, bring to the boil then simmer gently for about half an hour till the lentils are tender, adding a little water if the liquid falls below the surface of the lentils.

Season with salt and pepper then stir through the parsley.

Serve in deep bowls with perhaps a drizzle of olive oil and definitely crusty bread.

Good cold next day for lunch.

Roasted Vegetable and Lentil Salad

I had food chain this weekend and I'd already decided I'd like to make corn bread for the evening meal as it's a tasty treat. But it does need a little something to go with it. Last time I added simple egg salads with peppers - for some reason I find the combination of sweet corn and sweet peppers a perfect match, I just love the mix of those flavours in my mouth.

I've been eating lots of spanishy things of late so thought I might extrapolate that experience into my companion piece. The other obvious restriction is that it had to be frugal (which is different to cheap!) - the whole budget for the day is only £3.50 a head. I wondered about roasting peppers with lots of onions then realised I could bulk it out very cheaply with lentils for their lovely earthy flavour and then tie it all together with a little garlic, sherry and olive oil dressing. Rather than just head straight in on Sunday with salad for 65 I tested it at home Friday night as the salad to go with our spinach omelette and garlic bread. Pleased to say it was a total triumph - a really lovely thing to eat. The man was very impressed.

Roasted Vegetable and Lentil Salad

3 peppers, red and yellow, cored and cut into 2cm squares

1 large spanish onion, or a couple of smaller ones, peeled and cut into 1 cm cubes

200g green lentils

1 clove garlic, peeled and puréed with a little salt

5 tbspns olive oil + oil for roasting

1 tbspn sherry vinegar

2 tbspn chopped parsley

Pepper

Spread the chopped vegetables onto a baking tray that has very low sides - it means the moisture escapes as they cook rather than steaming them. Drizzle generously with olive oil and season with salt. Roast in a moderate oven, Gas 5, for 45 minutes to an hour, mixing half way through, till the vegetables have collapsed and are a tiny bit charred in places.

At the same time cook the lentils in plain, unsalted water for ten minutes, then add a tspn of salt and cook for another 10 minutes till just al dente. Drain.

Whisk the oil, vinegar and garlic together with a little ground pepper.

When the onions and peppers are cooked to your liking tip them, with their cooking oil, into a bowl along with the drained lentils and chopped parsley. Stir through the dressing and check the seasoning. Serve at room temperature.

Worked a treat on a large scale on Sunday too - and my kitchen assistants loved it!

For the domestic version the cost is about £1.50 - and it kept very well in the fridge for a salad treat Saturday.

Risotto with borlotti beans and chorizo

Not entirely convinced that, strictly speaking, this is risotto though it does follow the conventions of that dish softening garlic and onions in butter and oil, then coating vialone nano in the oil before adding wine and then ladles of hot stock. But as well as the rice it has borlotti beans that have been soaked to swell them, then cooked before they are added, with the liquid that they were cooked in, to the pan with the rice and all that lovely starchy bean flavouring is incorporated into the finished dish. Obviously risotto is Italian, and chorizo is not - so that too gives me pause on the naming front.

Whatever you call it this is a lovely dish, rich and soothing with gradations of texture and flavour from the beans and the chorizo.

'Risotto' with borlotti beans and chorizo

3/4 cup borlotti or other speckled beans, soaked overnight
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 tablespoons olive oil
50g butter
150g chorizo, skinned and chopped coarsely
1 1/2 cups Italian short-grain, such as arborio, vialone nano, or carnaroli rice
1/2 cup well-flavored dry white wine
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan

Drain the soaked beans then put them into a saucepan with 2 1/2 cups of water. Bring to a simmer and cook on a very low heat, covered, until the beans are tender—about 45 minutes. Add a little more boiling water from time to time if necessary. About five minutes from the end add some salt. When the beans are done, set aside, but do not drain.

Bring the stock to a simmer in another pan.

In a large saucepan, melt half the butter with the olive oil and add the onion and garlic. Cook, stirring frequently, over a low heat until the onion and garlic are softened, about 15 minutes.

Stir in the chopped chorizo and the rice. Cook, stirring occasionally, for a few minutes until the bits of chorizo are softened and the rice is well coated with the fat in the pan.

Add the white wine, raise the heat slightly, and cook rapidly until the rice has absorbed the wine.

Stir in the beans with their cooking liquor and continue cooking until most of the bean liquid has been absorbed.

Add a ladle or two of the simmering stock, stirring to mix well. As the rice absorbs the broth, keep adding more, a ladle or two at a time, stirring pretty much continuously, until the rice is just cooked all the way through and the dish is creamy.

When the rice is done but still al dente, remove from the heat, taste and add season. Then stir in the 2 tablespoons of cheese and the rest of the butter.

Cover the pan and set aside, away from the heat, for 5 minutes or so to combine all the flavors well.

Serve in deep bowls.

Perfect Sunday night winter dish.

I had everything to make this at home - stock and chorizo in the freezer and the rest in the cupboard - but it would be cheap to enough to make. Around £5 I'd hazard, and you have the rest of the sauvignon blanc to drink, which puts it into a different budget!

Quick Chickpea Soup & (souper)Stardom

UKTV Food is - rather obviously - a satellite channel linked to an extensive website devoted to the joys of food. Lots of chefs and stories and recipes and a mix of old shows and newly commisoned programmes. Their flagship programme is Market Kitchen which goes out weekdays with an interesting mix of seasonal recipes, clever tricks and a starry array of chefs from all over, cooking and chatting with the regular hosts like Matthew Fort and Tom Parker-Bowles. There's a segment shot in Borough Market using some of their lovely produce to make great meals. For those who've yet to experience the delight that is Borough you can at least see it here in all it's glory. It's all shot in front of an audience at tables who get to sample the food as it is made - and be on the tv at the same time.

They are having a competition this month to find a new presenter - surely a gift to those of us who want to spread the joy of food. It simply involves doing a short clip - up to a minute - telling of your love of food and posting it on YouTube. Check out the full details here. The winner gets their very own Market Kitchen feature, filmed at Borough Market, and a cookery course and stay at Rick Stein's Seafood school with accommodation included. Got to be worth a shot!

One of the judges will be Rachel Allen who cooks dishes in her kitchen in Ireland that are broadcast on the show. Last week she made this quick soup with chickpeas and tinned tomatoes, flavoured with cumin. I liked the look of it, so made a version of it last night for an easy Sunday supper. She served it with chili pitta chips - since I topped mine with chilli and garlic oil, we had thick slices of light swiss rye on the side.

Quick Chickpea Soup

3 tbsp olive oil

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 onion, chopped

2 1/2 tsp freshly ground toasted cumin - toast the seeds till fragrant then grind in a pestle

pinch sugar

400g tinned chickpeas, drained and rinsed

300ml vegetable or light chicken stock

400g tin chopped tomatoes

1/2 lemon, juice only

2 tbsp parsley, leaves and stalks, chopped

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tspn chilli flakes

2 tbspns olive oil

Heat the olive oil in a large pan over a medium heat and add the celery, onion and some salt and pepper. Turn down to a low heat, cover the pan with the lid and cook the vegetables until soft but not coloured, about 10 minutes. Add the cumin and cook for another minute, then pour in the tomatoes and all their juices along with the sugar. Add the chickpeas and the stock and simmer for 5 minutes.

Simmer for 10-15 minutes then, with a stick blender, process about a third of the soup to thicken it. Add the lemon juice. Check the seasoning to taste.

In a small pan heat the olive oil and add the parsley, garlic and chilli. Cook over a gentle heat till the garlic is translucent and all is fragrant.

Serve the soup in deep bowls and swirl the spiced oil across the top.

Rice & Bean Pulao

They say you learn something every day. Some day's it's even true. My most recent increase in knowledge comes courtesy of Alexx's blogsite. Idly surfing I checked a link she had for a dinner she'd made of a rice dish called pulao. One of it's positives was that it was good next day for lunch, definitely a quality I like. I had vaguely heard of it but was quite sure it was a south American rice dish - information I confidently imparted to the man when I was explaining what treats lay in store for the nights dinner.

The finished dish was indeed a delight, though possibly the cuisine of south America didn't immediately spring to mind. Wishing to share my discovery with the world I did a quick google to find out a little more about it. And discovered it is a very well known - by most people - Indian rice dish. Which made a little more sense. At Maa Inti Vanta I found an interesting comparison between pulao and biryani - an Indian rice dish I do know. She explains that in a biryani, the parboiled rice is layered twice or more between the spices and the meat, and they are all cooked together. In a pulao, the stock forms the base and the rice is cooked with the spices so that it absorbs all the flavor, whereas biryani is made by the draining method of cooking rice. The end result though is pulao a more lightly spiced dish, its strength definitely in its subtlety.

Here's the version I made last night - the only curry powder I had was Korean and it worked a treat. I think you could be pretty free and easy with the vegetables you include, so long as they are fairly fresh. Don't forget to finish it with a little lemon juice - it lifts the dish. I suspect it would be very good with yoghurt.

Rice & Bean Pulao

200g of basmati rice
500ml stock or water, I used chicken stock
400g tin borlotti beans, drained and rinsed
1 onion peeled and finely sliced
100g of frozen peas
2 courgettes diced
1/2 head of cauliflower cut into small florets
Juice of half a lemon
2 tablespoon of sunflower oil
2 cinnamon sticks broken in half
2 cloves, 2 green cardamom pods (both spices crushed)
2 teaspoons of curry powder - of whatever complexion
1 teaspoon of sea salt
fresh coriander leaves to sprinkle over the top

Leave the rice to soak in a bowl of cold water while you chop the vegetables. Heat a large saucepan on a moderate heat and add the sunflower oil. Once the oil has slightly heated add all the spices and stir briefly. Then add the sliced onions and sweat for 10 minutes till they are translucent and smell good. Add the peas, cauliflower florets and courgettes. Continue to cook gently for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.

Drain the rice and add to the pan, along with the borlotti beans, salt and stock. Turn up the heat and bring the pulao to the boil. Then turn the heat down to low and cover with the pan with a lid. Leave to cook until all the water has been absorbed and the rice is cooked through, about 10 minutes.

Once ready, check the seasoning - it may well need more salt - and add the lemon juice.
Serve in a suitable warm bowl with fresh coriander sprinkled over the top.

The final dish is a fabulous gold colour laced with green peas. A great lesson to learn - it looks good, smells great, tastes even better!

White Bean and Bacon Stew

After a few days in France where the sun shone every day - I am aware that in summer sunshine from Friday to Tuesday is not exceptional but it seems nothing short of a miracle with all this bleak weather in London. It has been grey and overcast since our return with that miserable half light that is neither day nor dusk, dragging spirits into the dirt. In France we had lunches out and barbecue nights - wearing shorts! In London it's back at work for daytimes and cardies at night.

I had some smoked bacon pieces in the freezer from a couple of weeks ago so decided if bleak was to be the order of the week then perhaps autumnal food was the way to deal with it. A kind of matching food and weather rather than food and wine. I bought some dried white Argentinian beans - a white kidney bean grown in Argentina I'm guessing - and soaked them overnight with a plan to make a sort of frenchy peasant stew with flavour from the bacon and lots of vegetables. Robust ones like swede and celery and some duke of yorks red potatoes left from last week. And obviously garlic and herbs. I can't recommend it enough - cheered us no end!

White Bean & Smoked Bacon Stew

500g white kidney beans, soaked for 12 hours in cold water

300g smoked bacon pieces, fat and flesh separated and diced

Large swede, about 500g, peeled, quartered and thinly sliced

3 carrots, peeled and sliced inot 1/2 cm rounds

4 ribs celery, washed and cut into pieces 2 or 3 cms long

1 onion, peeled, halved and studded with 4 cloves

Bouquet garni of bay leaf, celery leaves, parsley, thyme, sage leaf and rosemary

10 peppercorns

3 fat garlic cloves peeled and finely chopped

6 sprigs of flat leaf parsley, finely chopped

500g new waxy potatoes, washed but not peeled and cut into quarters

Drain soaked beans and put into a very large pan with the diced bacon flesh and the clove studded onion and cover with water by about 2cms. Bring to the boil.

Meanwhile, heat the bacon fat in a heavy based pan till it starts to melt then add the sliced swede. Cook, stirring occasionally, till the swede is golden and slightly crispy and the bacon is the same.

Skim the white foam from the beans then add the swede and bacon, carrots, celery, bouquet garni and peppercorns. Bring to a simmer then cover the pan and cook for about an hour. Add the potatoes, parsley and garlic and about a tablespoon of salt. Continue to cook, uncovered, for another half hour or so till the potatoes are cooked. Check and adjust the seasoning.

Serve in deep bowls. Crusty bread optional.

This makes a lot! We've got three more servings in tubs in the freezer for other times.

Don't be put off by using the bacon fat - it is the only oil in the whole dish and, because it is all cooked in water it is in fact very light, sort of delicate and robust at the same time. Perfect for bleak summer nights.