Old carrots second life. Sauce, dip, spread.



Sauce, Dips, Spread in ramekins

This is something I often do when I have not had the time to use the vegetables purchased in my monthly shopping.

Can you tell I have raided the fridge?

Using vegetables this way is great because it give them almost a second life and the bins are starved!

 

Ingredients:
·         500g carrots
·         100 onion
·         10g spring onion
·         1 pepper (optional)
·         6 spoons vegetable oil
·         1 fresh tomato
·         Salt & Herbes de Provences

Method:

Just peel rinse and chop everything. Place the onion, pepper, carrots, spring onion and tomato in a blender with just about 10 ml of water. Blend until very fine. But not liquid. Like on the photo.

In a sauce pan, heat about 6 tablespoons of oil, carefully empty the content of the blender in the pan, add salt and Herbes de Provences. Stir and cover the pan so the ingredients would cook though for 5-7 minutes. That is the first stage.

blended ingredients

At this stage, this carrots mix can be used as a spread for sandwiches as they need a bit of moisture. This spread will keep for 3 days.

The mix can also be used as a dip on a platter. If this is the way it is intended to be used, add Alpro single cream, leave to cook for another 2-3 minutes. Leave to cool before serving. Mine here is served with homemade crisps (recipe of crisps in the next post).

The one with the cream

If it is going to be used for pan fired red meats or warm dishes, instead of using cream, use mustard oil or any other spiced oil then spread on the meat either before serving or before frying.

If using it as a sauce, first fry some chopped onions before adding the content of the blender. Leave to simmer and dry completely before adding 100 ml of vegan stock and cook down to the constitution wanted. Here the carrot are used on a salad served with a warm steak Hache (mince beef steak).

 



The one with mustard oil



The spread

End of January sandwich all leftovers #skint

Skint? make your own (burnt) crisps

 

Used in a main meal - see last week's post

Voila!  Now go create and send me pics of what your have done with your old carrots!

 

Here is the collection: Carrots dip, spread, sauce…

Tip: if your carrots are shrivelled up and wrinkled, soak into fresh water to rehydrate. After an hour, the will look plumb and revived!

C Ya next time!

Chestnut and Broccoli Salad

Serving suggestion

This dish could be a starter, but it is great for lunch with a little glass of wine.

Ingredients:

Ingredients for the salad

·         1 medium onion
 ·         A hand full of crinkled beetroots
·         5 whole chestnuts in brine
·         1 green pepper
·         1 medium tomato
·         About 200 grs of broccoli
·         A hand full of roasted almond flakes.
·         A pinch of thyme and salt

Method:

Start finely cut the whole onion and fry with a pinch of salt and the thyme. Once the onion is brown, set aside and leave to cool down.

Floret the broccoli, cut the crinkled beetroots, roughly cut the chestnuts, the green pepper and the tomato.

Place all the above in a bowl and toss. Then, add the fried onion and crush the roasted almonds on the lot, mix well and serve.

No need for a vinaigrette here. The fired onion and the flavouring from the crinkled beetroot in some ways removed the need for a vinaigrette for this dish.

Enjoy.

Marrow / potatoes layer with beet and sweet corn stir

Marrow & potatoes layer with beet and sweet corn stir

Serves 3

Ingredients for the layer:

600grs Marrow
2 medium potatoes
3 medium firm tomatoes
100grs Tofu sliced and deep-fried to give it texture
1 small red onion (optional)
3 cloves of garlic
30grs butter (dairy free)
100ml Alpro single cream
50grs Flour
Vegetable stock cube
White pepper
Salt

Preparations:

1 - Peel the marrow and keep the skin strips for decoration. Now slice the peeled marrow in 1cm width and set aside. Peel the potatoes and cut in slices about the size as the marrow. set aside. Now do the same thing for the tomato and red onion. Make sure that your Tofu is deep-fried as it will give texture to your dish. Set aside.

2 – for the batter: Melt about 25grs of the butter and crush the whole stock cube in it to melt it. Add the cream to the mix then add the flour and the finely chopped garlic. Mix well, add salt and white pepper. Set aside.

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees.

Layer ready for the oven

Method:

Butter a regular size loaf tin, place 1 layer of potatoes, then marrow, then onion, then tomatoes, then tofu.  Dust with a pinch of salt and white pepper. Then repeat the process. If you can, make sure that a layer of potato is at the top of the dish simply because you will use it as indicator to judge if the dish it cooked.

The dark green strips you see on this photo are strips of peels from the marrow that I am using to decorate my dish. The strips were placed on the bottom of the baking tin, then folded over the dish and held with tooth pick just before placing it in the oven.
Once the layers are done. Stir the batter previously prepared and pour it, not on top, but on the sides of the layers.

Now place your dish in the oven for 1hr 20 minutes.

Now time to prepare the accompaniment.

Beet & corn stir

For this, you will need:
1 big fresh sweet corn
1 precooked beetroot or a fresh one if you can find it
1 yellow sweet pepper
1 very small red onion
50grs roughly crush walnut
2 twigs of thyme
Fresh parsley
25grs Butter (dairy free)
Black pepper & salt obviously
 

Start by shelling the corn kernels from the cob or simply go through the cob with the knife like I did.

Chop separately all the elements of your dish then set aside.

Now, in a frying pan, melt the butter and fry the chopped onions and thyme until brown. Now, add the sweet corn and stir for 2 minutes. Then add the sweet pepper in the mix, stir for 2 minutes, add the beetroot and the fresh parsley, stir well for 1 minute and add the crushed walnut. Season with salt and pepper, Mix, cover and remove from the stove. It is ready.

 

Time to check on your layers in the oven. The hardest ingredient in the dish is the potato. If you put a knife through the dish and it goes through smoothly, and comes up just slightly moist, then your dish is ready. if not, add cooking time to your oven.

Please note: not all oven perform with the same power

Leave your dish to cool for few minutes then, serve.

Serving suggestion

Don’t forget to post a comment!

Bon appétit. 

Nash

 

Lentils, Quinoa and soya chunks salad



Salad without parsley

Salad ingredients

  Ingredients:

• 20 or more soya chunks
• 1 small onion few
• 3 twigs of fresh thyme
• 1 medium tomato
• 1 lemon
• 1 glass of precooked quinoa
• 1 glass of precooked lentils
• A small bunch of flat parsley (optional)
• Olive oil  3 spoons
• Salt

Method:

Soak the soya chunks in a bowl with salt and boiling water. Make sure there is enough water to cover the chunks. Cover the bowl and leave the chunks to rehydrate for 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes squeeze out the water and cut the chunks in smaller pieces… 2 to 3 pieces per chunk perhaps?

Cut the onion and fry into 2 spoons of olive oil with the twigs of thyme. Fry for 2 minutes and then add the cut soya chunks with one spoon of water. Simmer fry until the water dries and the chunk start browning and become crispy. The purpose of this is so that the soya chunks absorb the flavours from the onion and thyme.

Remove the chunks from the pan and set aside.

Now cut the tomato in small pieces, grate the lemon to obtain zest and squeeze the juice.

In a salad bowl, pour your lentils, the quinoa, the fried onion and soya chunks, the tomatoes, lemon zest and juice, a pinch of salt and the chopped parsley. Drizzle the last spoonful of olive oil. Mix well and leave in the fridge to cool.

This dish is best served on its own very cold. Do prepare some additional lemon quarters for serving is needed.

Serving suggestion wit parsley

This would be great for brunch and for the pack lunch.

Enjoy

All vegan fry up!

For 2 people:

 ·         Half a mug of oat bran  ·       Half a mug of soya milk or rice milk  ·         2 tomatoes ·         2 giant mushrooms

·         2 cloves of garlic  ·         Herbes de Provence  ·         White ground pepper  & salt ·         Sunflower oil

Ready batter

 The pancakes:  mix the oat bran, milk and 2 pinches of salt in a bowl. Stir well, leave to soften and bind for 15 minutes. After, stir again until the mixture looks like batter… it is ready to fry.

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a non-stick pan. Measure 3 tablespoons of the batter then spread it in the pan.  Leave it to cook for one and half to three minutes each side depending on how crispy you want the edges to be.  With the measurements given, you should obtain 3 medium size pancakes.  The third one is for the road!

The stack

The mushroom and 1 tomato: Peel the mushroom and remove the stalk. Slice 1 tomato in 3 rondelles.

Dust the tomato and the mushroom with salt, white pepper, diced garlic and herbes de Provence.  Heat  a tablespoon of Sunflower oil into a frying pan. place the tomato rondelles and mushroom in the pan and let them fry until brown on each side. Leave to one side.

Chunky tomato sauce: Dice the last tomato and garlic cloves then fry both together until they are soft. Cook for no more than 3 minutes in a hot oily pan. Add 3 tablespoons of water then let it cook for another 1 minute. (Don’t let this dry as the moisture from the mixture is essential for the whole dish. Just as bake beans would.)

Breakfast is ready w/red fruits tea & compote

Now all the elements are ready to serve. I served mine stacked in this order: pancake, mushroom, tomato rondelles, then the chunky tomato sauce on top.

Bon Appétit.