 |
| Recipe of the week... ... Vegetable tagine with chickpeas & raisins |
Ingredients: 2 large courgettes, 2 tomatoes, 2 onions, ½ tsp
each ground cinnamon, coriander and cumin, 400g tin chickpeas, 1 mug of dried
couscous, 4 tablespoons raisins, 3 vegetable stock cubes, 300g frozen peas,
fresh coriander leaves, olive oil
Serves: 4
Time taken: 45 mins-1 hour
--
Hi readers,
Welcome to the new week! How are you all today? Are you
well, and coping in the warm weather?? I hope you have a fan in your office,
readers, and ice cubes and windows that open all the way. And I hope you can
wear airy clothes and sit out in the sun on your lunchbreak!
Remember to take it easy, readers, and keep a cool drink
nearby. People soldier on and don’t really appreciate, but I think it can be so
hard to work in an office when the temperatures soar! Trying to remain focused
and hold your concentration when it’s stuffy at work is really difficult.
Be kind to yourself, take an energy-loaded packed lunch, and
get outside for some fresh air midday if you can. Power through and it will
soon be 5pm… then back to the garden!
--
- Food for thought -
I have a thing or two to recommend! This week, readers, I’ve
been…
Listening
To: Summery pop tunes
My fave songs to sing along to in the car lately are Anne-Marie – 2002 and Years & Years – If You’re Over Me…
such feel good tunes! With the sun shining, the windows rolled down and the
volume turned up loud. Great music for driving in summer.
Watching
I visit my mum’s once a week for some yoga and a catch up,
and often we settle in for some TV and I pull out my knitting. Already this
year, we’ve been gripped by the BBC’s Keeping
Faith and The Split, and now we’ve
launched into The Affair. Good easy
watching for a weekday night on the settee – but we’re not sure who to trust!
Reading
Back through favourite book quotes of mine
For a couple of years now, at least, I’ve turned down the corners
of pages in books when I come across a line or a paragraph which hits a chord
or seems particularly well written. Then, when I finish reading, I scribble
these down in a notepad before I pass the book on. I recently wrote the best up
to hang about my room, for daily inspiration, and I still like to read and
reread them today. Do you have a favourite book quote?
Enjoying
Good company
This weekend, to jointly celebrate my friend’s birthday and
mine coming up soon, we headed out for cocktails in Sheffield. Everyone dressed
up a bit and came out for the afternoon to toast to our ageing! It’s so easy,
with social media, to go a while without seeing friends in real life. I was fab
to catch up in real life, and be merry, and spend quality time together.
Wondering
Will I feel any wiser
at 24?
An opinion poll of friends who’ve already hit this great milestone
would suggest that – no – I’m not about to wake up on Wednesday blessed with
all the knowledge I need to see me through the next fifty years. But imagine if
I did wake up wiser! Who knows what I’d know? I suppose it’s an unknown known –
as I don’t know what it is I don’t know – but come Wednesday…
--
- Feeding a friend -
My recipe this week, readers, is one I prepared recently for
a Friday night in at home with my Vegan Mr. It was a cloudy evening, at the end
of a long week, and we both fancied a hearty tea to soak up the Chilean red
wine we were knocking back.
I lit a vanilla tealight and set some power ballads playing
while I cooked, as it was Friday night after all! In between bursts of karaoke,
we caught each other up on the weeks we’d had. I shared some wild tales of my
friends and their men, and the Mr tried to get me in to the World Cup spirit.
I can’t say I was particularly in the spirit, readers, but
we caught some of the Portugal vs Spain game on telly (the one with a big goal
right at the end) and the Mr brought over a dessert pizza to win me round.
That’s right, readers, a dessert pizza.
There is such a thing, apparently. You buy it frozen and
then oven cook for ten minutes. It’s almost entirely brown – everything about
it is in some way chocolatey. It tastes like a giant chocolate Pop Tart and
it’s hard to eat very much of the stuff. But… SO good.
 |
| Thank you, Mr. |
This week’s recipe, readers, for Vegetable tagine with
chickpeas & raisins, comes from the BBC Good Food website. I found this
recipe recently while searching about online for high-iron dishes I could
prepare, as I’ve been feeling a little light-headed lately. BBC Good Food have an ‘Iron-rich
Vegetarian Recipes’ section to their website – which is spot on!
I chose this recipe because it’s vegan, so I could cook it
for a night in with my Vegan Mr, and also just because the food looked
colourful, straightforward to prepare, and healthy. If you fancy giving this
dish a go for yourself, readers, here’s the recipe in just eight simple steps…
--
- Vegetable tagine
with chickpeas & raisins -
Ingredients: 2 large courgettes, 2 tomatoes, 2 red onions, ½
tsp each ground cinnamon, coriander and cumin, 400g tin chickpeas, 1 mug of dried
couscous, 4 tablespoons raisins, 3 vegetable stock cubes, 300g frozen peas,
fresh coriander leaves, olive oil
1.
Start by setting the scene, readers. Don’t skip
this! It’s absolutely essential that you pour a drink, light a candle, set some
music playing, open a window, stretch reeeally
tall, wipe your surfaces, gather your ingredients… and, only then, can you
begin.
2.
First off, start with some veg prep. Chop your
onions and your tomatoes, but your courgettes up into chunks, finely chop your
coriander leaves, and measure out 300g frozen peas.
3.
Then, drain your tin of chickpeas and rinse them
under the tap. Pour a mugful of dried couscous into a small bowl and crumble a
stock cube over it. Set your couscous and your chickpeas aside, for now.
4.
Boil a kettle and heat some cooking oil in a
large frying pan or wok. Crumble your two remaining stock cubes into a
measuring jug and add 425ml boiling water, stir together to make up a jug of
vegetable stock.
5.
Once the oil in the pan is heated, tip in the
onion and fry for 5 minutes until soft. Then stir in the spices.
6.
Next, add the courgettes, tomatoes, chickpeas,
raisins and stock, then bring to the boil. Cover and leave to simmer.
ChefBeHere Top
Tip: In the original recipe, it advised that the pan should simmer for ten
minutes, but my chunks of courgette were still rock hard after this long. I
recommend leaving your pan, returning to stir occasionally, until your
courgette chunks begin to soften. For me, this took around half an hour.
7.
Once your courgette chunks are beginning to
soften, stir in the peas and simmer for 5 minutes more. Meanwhile, boil a
kettle and pour some hot water over your dried couscous. Cover the bowl and
leave for 5 minutes to cook.
ChefBeHere Top
Tip: While my pan simmered and my couscous cooked, I used this time to warm
some bowls in a microwave, set the table, and top up our glasses.
8.
Finally, remove the pan from the heat and turn
your hob off. Spoon couscous evenly between the bowls and then generously ladle
tagine over the top. Sprinkle with coriander, to serve.
--
- Recipe round up -
A success, readers! We both enjoyed our food and this tagine
did the job – it filled our bellies with healthy veg and soaked up copious
amounts of Friday night wine.
This recipe was simple to follow and stress-free to carry
out. I didn’t have any trouble along the way and didn’t spend my evening
chained to the kitchen. After you’ve prepped your ingredients it’s all very
hand-off – you can leave the pan to simmer and go watch telly while your tea
cooks.
I liked the taste of this tagine as it’s flavoursome and warms
your tongue without being spicy (which is key, as I can’t handle the heat!).
The tagine doesn’t seem too healthy –
which is a common gripe of mine when it comes to vegan food. You get a decent
portion, readers, it fills you up, and it’s packed with lots of great tasting
veg. Even the raisins in a savoury dish didn’t bother me (which, often they
would do, a sign of the strange world we live in).
If you’re looking for a hearty, healthy and iron-rich dish
to try for your tea, readers, then I highly recommend. Serve with any grain you
like, if you’re not a fan of couscous, and pair with a summery soft drink if
you aren’t in the mood for a wine.
I’ll leave
you to your barbeques and the beautiful weather. Wishing you a wonderful week
ahead, readers! Get out in the sun and soak up some Vitamin D while it lasts.
Adios, amigos!
Simmer safely,
Hayley
--
- Closing thoughts -
If you’ve been inspired to give this recipe a try, readers,
whether I’m speaking to you on the day of this post or you’re reading some far
out time in the future... please drop me a line to let me know whether it went
okay. I’d love to hear how you got on in the kitchen and your thoughts on this
dish. Plus, it’d be fab if you’re able to share any tips you have for success,
or your suggestions to improve the recipe? Please send your wisdom my way.
Thank you for reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment