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Easy recipes from Apple Tree

Tag: Vegetarian (Page 7 of 7)

Nasi Goreng

Cheat’s Nasi Goreng

20/10/2016 / / 0 Comments

Purists will say this is not authentic, I will say quick, easy and near enough! Here are the ingredients for one person, you can easily scale it up.

  • 60gm basmati rice, cooked then well drained
  • I carrot, grated
  • 1/4 small head of sweetheart cabbage or Chinese leaves, sliced thinly
  • 1/2 onion, chopped
  • 1 garlic clove or paste
  • 1 tbs light soy sauce
  • 1 tbs fish sauce
  • 1 egg beaten
  • oil for stir frying

Cook your rice and leave it to drain well. If it is too wet it makes the stir-fry a bit clumpy. Meanwhile,  fry the onion gently until soft. Add the garlic, fry 30 seconds then add the carrot and cabbage. Whack up the heat and stir fry the vegetables. After a couple of minutes add the rice and keep stir frying on a high heat. Add the sauces and stir again. Now shove the mix to one side of the pan to make a space on the bottom to fry your egg. If the pan is a bit dry add a splash more of oil. Now trickle streams of egg only the pan base. It will cook into a mini omelette almost immediately. Lift onto your rice pile and repeat until your egg is all cooked. Job done! I like to serve with a zingy chilli sauce.

Ingredients

 

Amazing Salsa Verde Sauce

20/10/2016 / / 0 Comments

If you want to experience a party in your mouth, try this fantastic sauce. Take the leaves from a large bunch of parsley, a small bunch of basil leaves, a few mint leaves, a tablespoon of capers, 3 anchovies or a blob of anchovy sauce, a gherkin, a tablespoon of wine vinegar and about four tablespoons of olive oil. Whiz it to a sauce with a hand blender. Add more olive oil to make it slightly runny but you don’t want it all oily. You can play around with the combination of herbs and seasonings, it should be herby and slightly sharp. Some people add a bit of Dijon mustard, I like to bulk it out with chives but that is because I have loads. This sauce keeps well in the fridge and wakens up any simple fish dish. Also good with grilled chicken, pork or any bland meat cut.

Crumble

Amazing Fruit Crumble

19/10/2016 / / 0 Comments

Olwyn can’t have enough of this. You can use any combination of fruit, but here is a recipe based on apple and summer fruits.

  • Three large Bramley cooking apples
  • 250g frozen mixed summer fruit (very reasonable in Tesco’s freezer section!)
  • Sugar

For the topping:

  • 100g plain flour
  • 75g butter
  • 100g demerara sugar
  • 50g porridge oats

Peel and chop the apples and put in a saucepan with a dash of water and a sprinkle of sugar. Cook gently for 5 minutes to soften. Transfer to a pie dish or similar and add the berries. Mix gently.

Now make the topping. In a blender, whizz the butter and flour for a few seconds. Add the sugar and oats and whizz briefly to mix. Shake over the fruit to make a crust. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 190C for 30  minutes.

Serve with creme fraiche, ice cream or custard.

Alternative fruits are rhubarb, apple and blackberry, cherry, peach and pecan nuts, pear and spices…anything goes. Probably not banana, although someone is bound to tell me it can be done.

Crumble recipe

Student Puddings

16/10/2016 / / 0 Comments

Easy and quick recipes for puddings in case you need to impress someone.

Banoffee Pie
Based on a flan dish about 20cm diameter. You need (in addition to the flan dish)

– 250g packet of digestive biscuits
– 100g butter
– 4 bananas
– 300ml carton of whipping cream
– Tin of Carnation Caramel
– Chocolate to grate over

Crush the biscuits by putting  three or four at a time in a plastic bag and rolling a tin over them. Melt the butter in a pan or microwave. Mix with the biscuit crumbs. Line the base of the flan tin and gently press down but not too hard or it will become an impenetrable crust. Put in the fridge for an hour to firm up. Then spread the base with the caramel. Slice the bananas and layer on top of the caramel. Whip the cream (this will be tough without an electric beater!), and blob it on the bananas. Sprinkle grated chocolate on top. (If you don’t have a grater, you can use a potato peeler). Done, and ready to eat – or chill but don’t keep it too long, a couple of days max.

Dessert in a Glass

This recipe is more a set of creative guidelines, and the options are endless. You will need drinking glasses – small tumblers or large wine glasses. Then you will create three layers.

Base layer: Crumbly. This can be based on crushed digestive biscuits, porridge oats or even Swiss-Style meuseli. Mix the crumbs with half their weight of melted butter. Layer in the bottom of the glass but don’t press down.
Middle layer: Creamy. This can be creme fraiche, plain yoghurt, or yoghurt with a spoon or two of lemon curd or seedless jam swirled through.
Top layer: Fruity. This needs to go with the flavour you have used in the middle layer (if you did), and can be rasberries, quartered grapes, chopped mango, chopped drained tinned peaches, a mixture (halves grapes, strawberries and pineapple look good (buy a lunch pot of prepared fruit if you only need a few)

Chill it to allow the base layer to go hard which won’t take long.
A slight variation on this is to use a can of rice pudding,  a jar of apple sauce and blackberries. Put a layer of rice pudding as the base layer, then a layer of apple sauce, then a few blackberries, then more rice pudding, then a few more blackberries. Sprinkle brown (demera or soft brown) sugar over.

P!ss-Head Trifle

Not your nursery food  version. Preferably use a glass bowl for this.

– A Swiss Roll
– Packet of rasberries
– 1 banana
– 500g ready made custard (or make a pint of thick custard and let it go cold)
– 300ml double cream
– Sherry – sweet, medium, dry, who cares.
– Toasted flaked almonds or “Hundreds and Thousands” cake sprinkles

Slice the swiss roll in 2cm slices and line the bottom of the bowl, packing closely together. Pour the sherry all over it. Delia Smith says 60ml, Olwyn uses three times that. More if you dare. Slice the banana and add as the next layer, with the rasberries. Then pour over the cold custard. Whip the cream, and layer on top of that. Decorate with the almonds, or sprinkles. Not exactly difficult! The volume of sherry makes this either kiddy food or wow! food.

Eton Mess

This is just a mixture of sliced strawberries, broken meringue and whipped cream in roughly equal quantities, stirred about to look like a mess. Mush a few of the strawberries to make it messier. It does look a mess, but tastes good. It is a British Classic recipe.

Carrot and Coriander Soup

16/10/2016 / / 0 Comments

This is for when someone bought more carrots when we already had a bag. This makes enough for four large bowls:

  • 500g carrots, sliced. No need to peel, just wash grit off
  • 1 onion
  • 1/2 tsp ground coriander
  • 1.25 litres vegetable stock (I use Marigold bouillon powder)
  • Chopped fresh coriander

This is very easy. Just chop the onion and sweat in butter or oil in a heavy pan for a few minutes. Add the ground coriander, sweat for another minute then add the stock. Bring to the boil and simmer covered for 30 minutes. Whiz in a blender or use a stick blender. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Chop and add the fresh coriander. Tastes very carroty!

Very nice with bread and cheese from Cowdray farm shop….

Bread

Mac Cheese

15/10/2016 / / 0 Comments

Ingredients (For one greedy person) – easily multiplied up for more people.

  • 350ml milk
  • 25g butter
  • 25g plain flour
  • 100g Cheddar cheese grated
  • 175g dried pasta shapes, penne or macaroni is best
  • 1 tsp mustard (optional)
  • Breadcrumbs

Cook the pasta according to the packet instructions. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a saucepan and add the flour. Mix together to form a paste. With the heat on medium to low, add the milk gradually while stirring to mix it it. Keep stirring and increase the heat slightly, and within a few minutes it should thicken. Add most of the cheese, and the mustard (this brings out the cheese flavour). Add some salt and pepper and stir well to melt. Mix in the drained, cooked pasta. You could eat it at this point, sprinkle on the rest of the cheese and forget the breadcrumbs. If can bear to wait, put the mac cheese mixture in an oven proof bowl, top with the breadcrumbs and cheese and bake in the oven at 180 deg C for 15 – 20 minutes. If you are going for the baked version make sure the sauce is not to thick as the baking will dry it out. If it looks too stodgy, mix in some more milk before you add the topping. For even more of a feast serve with grilled bacon and tomatoes, and even toast triangles.

Broccoli Soup

Broccoli and Cheese Soup

15/10/2016 / / 0 Comments

This makes enough for four or you can let it cool, keep in the fridge and heat up a bowlful at a time.
Ingredients (for four):

  • one onion
  • two potatoes
  • 500g broccoli
  • 1 litre vegetable stock made from cubes or pot
  • 100g cheese (any – hard, soft, blue), chopped or grated
  • 150ml milk
  • Oil, salt, pepper

    • Take your onions and potatoes and chop small. Heat the oil in a pan and sweat the veg until soft. Add the broccoli and sweat a minute or two more. Add the stock, cook for 20-30 minutes until everything is soft. Blend until smooth. Add the milk and cheese, heat through until melted and just on the simmer again. Take off the heat, and adjust the seasoning.

    Scone Recipe

    Best ever scone recipe from the National Trust

    15/10/2016 / / 0 Comments

    After much searching and much eating we have decided that the scones in the National Trust cafes are the best. Luckily for us they printed the recipe in there member’s magazine. Here it is, and foolproof. This makes 8-10 scones.

    Switch your oven on, 200deg C.

    • 450g self-raising flour
    • 115g soft margarine

    Whiz in a food processor or do it the hard way and rub into crumbs with your fingers. I have found a blender works well and is less faff too get out and put away (ours lives on the worktop). You may need to do this in two batches with a blender.

    • 85g caster sugar
    • 85g sultanas

    Mix in, better to use a bowl because a food processor blade may shred the sultanas

    • 1 egg
    • 150ml milk

    Beat your egg and add half the milk. Stir into your scone mix and make a stiff dough. If it is too crumbly add more milk.
    Flour your hands and work surface and roll the mix into a large ball. Flatten with your hands to a disc 2cm thick.
    Punch out scone shapes with a scone shaper-thing and place on a greased baking tray. Re-roll the off-cuts and you should get 8-10 scones out of it depending on thickness and size of your scone-thing.

    • 1 more egg, beaten

    Brush the top of the scones with beaten egg if you like a nice yellow glaze. You could use milk instead but the result is not quite as crusty.
    Now bake in the pre-heated oven for 15 minutes. DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR before 15 minutes are up. They should be perfect but if you have boobed with the temperature setting they may need a couple of minutes more.
    Best served warm and eaten right then, but they will keep a day or two in a sealed tin.

    Vegan version: Use Stork instead of soft margarine (100% vegetable fat), lose the egg and use Alpro milk instead of the egg and milk. Brush with Alpro milk before baking. Turns out very similar but not quite as rich.

    Alternative vegan version without the dried fruit:

    Exactly the same process as above but use these ingredients –

    • 375g self-raising flour
    • 0.5 tsp salt
    • 1tsp baking powder

    Mix well

    • 112g vegan margarine
    • 56g caster sugar

    Rub in to look like breadcrumbs or whizz in a blender/food processor

    • 1tsp vanilla extract
    • 2tbs lemon juice (= 1 lemon)
    • about 180ml soy milk

    Start with less milk and add more if you need it. Roll out, punch out, brush with soy milk and cook as above.

    Cuban Black Beans

    10/10/2016 / / 0 Comments

    Not as fiddly as the truly authentic version but pretty good.
    You need:

    • 250gms dried black beans
    • 1 onion chopped roughly
    • 1 green pepper seeded and chopped roughly
    • 2 cloves garlic
    • 1 tsp dried cumin
    • Olive oil

    Method:
    Sweat the onion, pepper and garlic in the oil for five minutes
    Add the cumin and dried beans
    Cover with water with 2cm to spare
    Boil like crazy for 10 minutes
    Simmer for 1.5 hours, keeping an eye on the water level. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking.
    Remove the vegetables and a few beans, and whiz to a gloop (or corner the veg and use a stick).
    Stir it back in so you have a nice thick sauce and very soft beans.
    Adjust the seasoning.
    Serve with rice and grilled pork or chicken.

    Courgette and Brie Soup

    10/10/2016 / / 0 Comments

    You need:

    • 500gms courgettes sliced
    • 1 onion
    • 2 potatoes
    • 1 litre vegetable stock
    • 200gms brie cheese
    • olive oil

    Method:
    Chop the onion and potatoes roughly.
    Sweat in a pan with a tablespoon of oil for five minutes.
    Add the courgettes and stock.
    Simmer 20 minutes.
    Whiz in a blender or a stick.
    Add the brie, and heat through to melt.
    Adjust seasoning.
    Done

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