Red Kidney beans cooked in Garlic and Ginger

for 2 potions

This dish is one of the simpliest you will find on this blog. It is simple quick and tasty.

Ingredients:

Dry kidney beans

1. 1 tin of kidney beans
2. 3 garlic cloves
3. ½ small onion
4. ½ tea spoon of fresh grated ginger
5. 3 tablespoons of Olive oil
6. 1 barely ripen plantain
7. Spring of thyme
8.  ½ vegetable cube
9. Salt and pepper

If you prefer your beans slightly firm, I’d recommend that you use dried kidney beans and boil it in salt water for 30 mins.

Preparation:

Rinse the kidney beans, set aside.
Peel and chop garlic & onion.
Cut the plantain in half and cover with water in a deep pan.

Method:

Yellow plantain

Bring the plantain to boil for about 20 minutes, remove the skin, scrape the spongy looking layer on the plantain, rinse and set aside in a bowl with boiling water.

While the plantain is boiling, Fry the chopped onion in a very hot pan with 3 table spoons of olive oil and a spring of thyme. Fry for 2 minutes.

Add in the ginger and crushed garlic, then add the kidney beans, salt, pepper and crushed half of stock cube.

Stir fry for 2 minutes then add 50ml of water mix, cover and let the water reduce on medium heat for 5 minutes so the beans will absorb the seasoning. Do not let the water dry completely as this dish needs moisture.

It is ready to serve.
This dish isn’t great reheated. Since it takes about 10-15 to get the beans ready, it is better to just cook the quantities needed.
If the plantain the beans were to be cooked simultaneously. The whole dish will take 20 minute to get ready!

Next time, make it with some soya chunk and chopped tomato then serve with chips or rice or just a toasted slice of bread.

Enjoy!

Did you know that Kidney beans reduced cholesterol and that plantain contains vitamins A, potassium and calcium? now you know!

Home made orange sorbet

As the heat get at its best on this small island of ours here is something to cool you down! An orange sorbet… for 10 or 5

Serving suggestion

Ingredients:

100g of sugar

1 lemon juice & zest

100ml Fanta orange

10 medium oranges

2 apples

10 bay leaves for decoration

 Preparation:

1. Grate the lemon and press its juice. Set aside
2. Cut the top of every orange and carefully carve the inside completely.
3. Put all the pulp and juice collected in a bowl. Reserve the hollowed oranges and their “hats”.
4. Make a little hole on the “hats” and insert 1 bay leaf on each “hat”. Once this is done for all of them, put the “hats” and the coops in the freezer… they will later be used to serve the sorbet.
5. With a hand blender, wiz the orange pulp to liquidise it completely. Set aside.
6. Peel, core and finely chop the apples. Add it to the liquidised orange and blend again.

Method:

1. In a deep pan put the sugar, the lemon juice and zest. Simmer for 20 minutes.
2. Remove from the stove, leave to cool for 10 minutes and add the liquidised orange & apple mix and the Fanta
3. With a spatula, stir to mix. Taste and add more sugar or lemon if it not sufficient to your taste.
4. Now pour the mix in a big freezer bowl and put it on the top shelf of the freezer. Check it in an hour
5. After the hour has passed, bring the bowl out of the freezer and with a folk or with the hand blender, break the granules of ice starting to form. Once it is smooth. Put the bowl back in the freezer.
6. Repeat step 6 every hour trice. The sorbet should be ready then. It is ready to serve in the hollowed orange shells.

Enjoy!

Exotic roots stew

Ingredients for the stew
 

Lunch for 4

 

For this dish you will need:

• 500grs of yam
• 300grs of yellow sweet potato
• 100grs of coco

All the above are widely used in East Asia, south America, Caribbean and Africa. These root vegetables are mainly full of vitamin B12.

Though heavy in starch, they are actually really good for you. I cannot list all the goodness in them here, but feel free to Google them or visit this website.

The other ingredients you will need are:

• 

  Here you can see: yam, coco, taro and cassava - FYI

  Palm oil 3 table spoons
• 3 medium red tomatoes
• 100grs soya meat balls
• 1 small red onion
• 50grs leek
• 50grs parsley
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 2 vegetable stock cube.
• Few twigs of fresh thyme
• 1 medium dried chili

 Prep:

*Start by rinsing, preparing and blending the following: half the onion, leek, parsley, garlic and all the tomato. Set aside.

*Boil 200ml of salted water and pour over the dried soya meat balls to rehydrate. Leave it for 15 minutes and squeeze out the water. Set aside.
*Peel the yam, coco, and sweet potato, rinse and set aside in a container covering the content with water from the tap. Covering them with fresh waster will prevent them from darkening in the same way the avocado or aubergine does.
*Melt the two stock cubes in 700 ml of boiling water. Set aside.

Cooking the stew:

In a deep pan, heat 3 table spoons of palm oil and add finely chopped red onion with the thyme.

Once the onion is browned, add the soya meatballs and brown for 5 minutes so they can absorb the onion and thyme. Now add in the blended ingredients, stir and cover the pot for about 10 minutes, then stir again and the liquid from the ingredient dries. Add salt and black pepper.

Now drain and add the root vegetables and the whole chilli pepper. Mix well and pour in the 700ml of stock. Cover the pot and let it simmer for 40 minutes, checking that the water doesn’t run out completely.

The hardest to cook amongst the 3 roots vegetables is the coco. So, when the yam and the sweet potatoes are starting to loosen up and the starch is making up part of the soup, check that the coco is well cooked and falling parts. If it is the case, then your stew is ready. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Dish this might be hot… better serve it with a glass of very cold water… lol.

Looks yummy innit? Watch out it is hot!

Better have this for lunch and not dinner as it quit calorific.
Voilà!

This dish is so full of goodness. The colour will mainly come from the palm oil which contains vitamin B6, Carotene and Q10.

All three of the roots used here contain folic acid, vitamin B and C. They are a worthy replacement for the humble potato along with cassava. I highly recommend the use of these vegetables if you suffer from anaemia as I do.

Hope you’ll try it.

See you soon!