Beetroots & coriander soup

Serves 3

 Ingredients:

·         4 small precooked beetroots

·         1 big red sweet pepper

·         A big hand full of fresh coriander

·         1 small red onion

·         1 tea spoon wholegrain mustard

·         Salt

·         Mustard oil

Method:

Peel the outer layer of the beetroots, rinse and roughly chop. Do the same for the onion, cut the sweet pepper and the coriander. Rinse all and place in a deep pan with 1L water or stock. I did mine just with water and salt to keep it simple.

Add 2 tablespoons of mustard oil and 1 teaspoon of wholegrain mustard. Cover and place on the hob to simmer for 20 minutes. This will allow the vegetables to soften. If your pot is too small and spitting out. Leave it ajar…

To gauge that the soup is ready, taste the hardest to cook vegetable in the pot. Here it would have been the beet if they were not precooked. So, I tasted the onion quarters and sweet pepper.

Adjust the seasoning, take the pot away from the hob and using a hand blender. Liquidise the soup to your liking. Serve

I like my soup with bits in it and others prefer theirs smooth.

Serve with croutons or… potato wedges on a skewer.

Enjoy. x

 

Beetroot and avocado wrap

Serving suggestion with red currants

4 ingredients:

·         The Wraps
·         Beetroot spread
·         Avocado
·         Mix leaves salad

 The only prep needed is peeling and cutting the avocado length ways and about 2cm width.

Ingredients

Beet spread - Has chilli in it

To make the beet spread see the recipe on one of the previous posts here

This is there just because I like it!

Excellent for lazy afternoon snacks, just using left overs... the beet spread is really hot as in chilli hot and the current overly acidic... The Avocado here almost play the roll of a plain natural yogurt as a calming agent on my assaulted tastes buds.

Lovely!

Soy meat, Plantain and Beetroot dip

We are one week before pay day and by pure slackness I have decided not to step out of the house this week end. A quick look through my cupboard informs me that I’ve got plantain, precooked beetroot, flour and soy meat. Not very inspiring, but is it 12 o’clock, I have skipped breakfast and getting hungry! I make myself a cup of coffee, then, light bulb moment. I ate a beetroot puree not long ago. I could try that, but I want something warm all the way so… I wish I could have steak and chips and this is how I came up with this dish:

Soy meat steak, plantain chips and hot beetroot dip - Serves 2 portions

Ingredients:

Ingredients for the dish

·         250g Hydrated soy meat ball
·         25g plain flour
·         25g + 50g onion
·         4 garlic cloves
·         2 yellow plantain
·         25ml sesame oil
·         Chip oil
·         Olive oil
·         Salt & black pepper
·         A bit of herbes de Provence
·         Scotch bonnet (or chilli pepper)  

Preparation:

For the soy meat cakes; squeeze out the water from the hydrated soy balls, place them in a food processor with 2 table spoons of sesame oil and wiz in 2 or 3 quick bursts. We just want them chopped up finer than we can with a knife. When it is done. Empty in a bowl and set aside.

Now peel and crush two garlic cloves on the mix, finely cut 50g of onion and add to the mix. Then add the flour, salt and pepper. Mix well and form as if you were making burghers. Leave to the side

Prep done!

For the beetroot dip; rinse the beetroots, cut and place in a food processor with 25g onion, 2 garlic clove and the scotch bonnet. Also add 3 table spoons of water to help with the liquidizing. Leave aside.

As for the plantain, just peel and cut to your taste.
Now that everything is prep, clear out the mess and reset your work space.

Method:

To cook the soy meat, heat a non-stick frying pan without oil and place all four burghers on the pan and let them cook for 2 minutes on each side. If you want, you can add a tea spoon of sesame oil to help the process.

To prepare the dip, just fry the blended beetroot mix in 3 table spoons of olive oil. Add salt pepper and Herbes de Provence, stir and leave it to cook until there is no traces of liquid (water) coming out of the mix… this should takes 5-7 minutes. Don’t forget to stir so that it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

For the plantain, if you do not have a chip pan, just heat up 500ml of vegetable oil and fry in it the plantain as you would your chips. I recommend that you add a big slice of onion along with the plantain to give it an added flavour. The plantain should take about 5 minutes to brown. Once it is brown, remove it from the oil and place on some absorbing paper before serving.

I recommend deep frying plantain because it absorbs less oil than when fried in a frying pan. And it takes longer too, then the colour isn’t homogeneous.
All is ready! Time to serve and enjoy…

Oh the leaf? It just from one of my house plant. Lol

Serving suggestion