LIVING A TAGINE DREAM

Recipe of the week...
... Sweet Potato Tagine

Ingredients: 1 large glug of cooking oil, 1 onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 aubergine, 1 sweet potato (or 2 if they’re quite small), 1 courgette, 2 stalks of celery, 1 x 400g tin chickpeas, 1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes, 1 handful of dried apricots, 2 handfuls of raisins, 1 tablespoon tomato puree, 2 teaspoons sugar, 2 mugs of couscous, 1 vegetable stock cube, 2 teaspoons coriander, 2 teaspoons cumin, 2 teaspoons paprika.

Time taken: An hour (Half an hour prep and half an hour to cook).

  

Hi readers,

Hope this finds you well. More than well! Hope you’re having an all guns blazing start to the week!! Firing out emails and answering the phone WITHOUT hesitation.

As I write, readers, it’s a Monday afternoon in April and Brits everywhere are recovering from the hottest weekend of the year so far… may I speak for the nation when I say what cracking weather we’ve had! It really didn’t disappoint! Clear blue skies, ice cubes fizzing in lemonade, feeling the warm sun on your face, barbecues sizzling, ice creams melting fast, lawn mowers mowing away, and beer gardens overflowing… we turn out for the sun.

Me and my lovely friends
enjoying sangria in the sun

Back to work today and I’m not the only one sporting a lobster-like sunburn! As it’s April, and all good thing come to an end, the weather’s settled back down to normal today and we’re waving goodbye to our heatwave. But, along with our glowing noses and singed shoulders, it feels as though everyone’s putting their best foot forward today and getting the week off to a good start.

Doesn’t the sun bring out the best in everyone? I think so. When the sun comes out, it’s something everyone can enjoy and it’s an event that we all share in. We rip up any plans we’d made and get ourselves out in the garden instead. We invite friends over, crack open a beer and speak with neighbours we haven’t seen in months (and don’t mind all that much). We get our legs out, cream each other up, and burn all the same. We laugh about it.

And proud

I love the sun. Love love love it. I hope you all got to enjoy it while it lasted, readers, and I hope you had a cracking time this weekend. Don’t be too sad to be back to work today! There are still great shows on TV (Broadchurch! One Born!), new films out at the cinema (I want to go see City of Tiny Lights – has anyone seen it?), and there’s ace new music to discover (I’m listening to a playlist I found on The Hungry Yogis’ blog.. which you can find here) and so much to look forward to in life. Just think.

Like FOOD.. glorious food. If you aren’t feeling too weighed down by the immense amount of BBQ food inside you, readers, I’m sure you can appreciate we’ve only six days left to go until Easter Sunday. That’s right – just six days until we’re tucking into a delicious roast and scarfing our way through more chocolate eggs than a bunny could imagine.. even in his wildest bunny dreams.

Even more than that

And, meanwhile, we can’t have any one starving before Easter! Not when we’re this close. Six days allows plenty of time for some wonderful recipes. No matter how busy your week ahead looks – why not carve the time into your calendar to cook a proper meal? Treat your insides! I’m writing to you this week, readers, to share a tasty recipe that I first tried out for a dinner party I threw not long ago.

I had a bunch of friends over one weekday evening, for food and chatter, and needed an all-in-one-pot kind of recipe to feed lots of hungry mouths! I try to broaden my friends’ culinary horizons when it comes to veggie food (and my horizons, too!) and give unusual dishes a go, and have one friend who’s allergic to milk, so I was looking for something a bit different to try, and it had to be dairy-free.

Next time we're having a
compulsory dress code

In the end, I settled on a recipe I found in Vegetarian Nosh for Students. This recipe book is a favourite of mine (and will probs continue to be cherished loooooong after my student days are past) as its recipes are straightforward and fuss-free, with cheap ingredients and inventive shortcut steps, and you always end up with filling, tasty food at the end of the day.

I found recipe for a colourful-looking vegan Sweet Potato Tagine, tripled the quantities of ingredients (to feed a houseful of friends) and hit the shops to get everything in. Prepped veg the evening before and had no trouble on the night, cooking and chatting away with a wine in my hand! All went to plan and everyone tucked in and said they’d really enjoyed the food. Which is a big relief.. one bad recipe and they might stop coming round!

Just me, then

Do you have a dinner party coming up soon? Or maybe you just fancy cooking something a bit different? Trying out new flavours? Giving a colourful veggie recipe a go? And munching through for 5-a-day in one plateful?? Hell yeahhhh! Readers, if you’re tempted to give this Sweet Potato Tagine a try for yourselves, here’s the recipe in just twelve simple steps…

Recipe: Sweet Potato Tagine

1.     Set some sensational tunes playing and – as there are quite a few of them – gather all your ingredients together on one counter where you can see them all and where nothing can be forgotten.

2.     Time for veg prep! Arm yourself with a sharp knife aaand cut your aubergine up into bite-sized amounts, peel your sweet potato(es) and chop into cubes, cut your onion up into wedges, finely chop your cloves of garlic, cut your courgette into bite-sized chunks, and chop our your stalks of celery.

3.     Heat the oil in a wok or a large saucepan and add the onion and garlic. Fry until you see the garlic browning and the onion beginning to soften.

4.     Then, add the coriander, cumin and paprika to the pan, and fry for a minute more.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: Of these three seasonings… I only actually had paprika. So I cheerily described the dish as “off season” to friends and cooked hoping for the best. I switched coriander for Herbes de Provence and subbed cumin for a sprinkling of chilli flakes instead. And the dish turned out pretty well considering! I’m a lucker sometimes. But, I will advise, that if you’re in a shop and you’re not sure your spice rack is as well stocked as you’re hoping it is.. maybe invest in the proper ingredients!

5.     Add the courgette, aubergine, celery and sweet potato to the pan and fry for a few minutes, stirring well to combine everything together.

6.     Add the tinned tomatoes and a mugful of water, along with the raisins, apricots and sugar. Stir to combine and turn the heat up high.

7.     Once your tagine begins to boil cover it with a lid or some foil, and turn the temperature back to a medium heat. Leave to simmer gently for ten minutes.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: I use this time to set the table, top up drinks, and breathe deeply. Keep going… you’re nearly there! The house should begin to smell tasty.

8.     Add the chickpeas and tomato puree to the pan, stir to combine, and then cover again to simmer for a further five minutes.

9.     Now, while your tagine finishes cooking, fill the kettle and boil some water. Pour the couscous into a large bowl and crumble a stock cube over it. Add boiling water until this rises a centimetre or so above the couscous, and stir the contents of the bowl.

10.  Then cover the bowl with a plate and leave your couscous to stand for five minutes until all the water is absorbed.

11.  Uncover and use a fork to fluff up your couscous, then spoon this evenly between the four plates.

12.  Then – last but not least – switch off the hob and dish up your tasty tagine, spooning on top of the couscous. Serve dinner to your horde of hungry guests!

A real crowd pleaser ... Sweet Potato Tagine

Readers, to say the ingredients list looks quite dauntingly long.. isn’t this such a simple recipe?! You just add everything to a pan, bit by bit, cook through and then serve on a bed of couscous. This is my kind of recipe! I promise you, readers, if I can cook this at the end of a busy day at work, with several pairs of eyes watching me, and a glass of wine in my hand… then anyone can do it! And I believe you can.

Fancy giving this recipe a try? I highly recommend! Going into this, I was a bit unsure about adding fruit to a savoury dish. Would it be a Hawaiian pizza kind of fandango? A sweet and sour sauce? A cranberry stuffing? I am not a fan, readers, in general of recipes that mix sweet and savoury flavours. Only recently have I opened my mind to the notion of sweet and salty popcorn. It’s a whole new world.

But, of course, I wouldn’t be writing to you if this recipe didn’t taste KNOCK OUT. I think Sweet Potato Tagine is a keeper, readers! It’s fruity and vegetabley and – somehow – it just works. No one turned their nose up at the table. In fact, everyone was full of (genuine, I hope) compliments, and I took tagine into work as a packed lunch for days afterwards and it didn’t get old. A tagine dream.

Give this recipe a go, readers? And fill me in on how you do in the kitchen? And let me know whether or not you like the tagine? Sounds a plan. Meanwhile, my housemate will still be telling everyone he had tangerine for his tea and it didn’t taste all thar orangey…

Power on and have an amazing week, everyone.

Chef safely,

Hayley

And look at my pretty new tealight holder!
A thing of beauty, I think.

SPARE A THOUGHT FOR A COBBLER

Recipe of the week... Root vegetable cobbler!

Time taken: About an hour prepping veg. Then 45 minutes getting it all together. Then half an hour to bake and serve. 2 hours and 15 minutes in total… but it’s so worth it!!

Serves: 4 (or double all the quantities – like I did – if you’re feeding 8 hungry friends)

Ingredients:

For your hotpot… A couple of splashes of olive oil, 2 red onions, ½ a butternut squash, 300g swede, 300g carrots, 2 leeks, 300g parsnips, 200g long-life beetroot, 2 celery stalks, 1 teaspoon caraway seeds, 2 cloves garlic, 3 tablespoons tomato purée, 1 stock cube, 400g can chopped tomatoes, 1 tablespoon vegetable gravy granules

For the cobblers… 175g self-raising flour, ½ a teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1 teaspoon dried rosemary, 25g butter, 50g grated Parmesan cheese, 1 large egg, 6 tablespoons milk (plus a little extra for glazing).

Good evening readers,

And with this… we reach the end… of another week.

As I write, curled up on the settee with a glass of red, it’s an extremely cold Friday night in January. We’ve had clear skies all day in Sheffield, with a gorgeous pink sunrise this morning and then a sky full of stars this evening. I hope, readers, that you got to look up today and saw a sensational sky.

I hope, too, that you got to stretch your legs and breathe fresh air. That you laughed, even if you don’t remember why. That you achieved something you set out to do. That you ate delicious food, and spent time in great company. Perhaps you helped someone out, or was it that they helped you? Maybe you understood something you didn’t before, remembered something you’d forgotten, realised something that made you stop in your tracks.

I hope, readers, that today might be a day you will remember. And remember not only as at the days of President Trump’s inauguration… but instead as the day that something far more fun occurred! Do you reckon you will? Think hard! What’s been ace about your day today? Or what could still be ace yet?? There’s time left! Do something memorable with it!

Today, readers, I somehow managed to get an evening doctors appointment (these are as rare and unobtainable as the gold dust found in unicorn tears on a full moon). I was tired and heading into work early but then I saw the incredible pink sunrise and was cheered up. And my phone shuffled me a song I didn’t know I had and have DEFS never listened to before – my new favourite song!

Then, when I was leaving work I found one of my boss’s lost Bluetooth headsets just lying on the floor outside. So he’s missing one less now. And I took a taxi driven by a man named Bash and we didn’t crash (though I worried). Then, this evening, I made it to Friday yoga and held some killlller stretches. And now wine!

You know what… to some, maybe that is not a remarkable day. I’m tired. Full of cold. Have a large workload. Had to pay for a taxi just to make it to a weekday doctors appointment, as the doctors don’t open on weekends. And I work every weekday. I ate soggy cucumber as my eccentric fridge had frozen it. And then when it thawed it wasn’t the same, but was already on its way to my work.

Giving zero shits… I thought my day today was great!! Take this attitude, readers. I hope your day was funtastic, too! Hope you’ve had a terrific week this week – with plentiful, memorable fun times. Any bad times – just dance them off. Find a new song that you can play on repeat and groove around to and reeeeeally appreciate every time you hear it. Own that song.

My jam this week, you ask? It’s ‘Be Right Back, Moving House’ by Ghostpoet. Give it a listen.

And a quote that’s really stuck with me through the week: “When your past calls… don’t answer. It has nothing new to say.” I like that sentiment.

AND… my recipe of the week?? Root vegetable cobbler ahhhh! You’re going to love it, readers. You’re going to love it like a restaurant plate of food. Or like a takeaway in your pyjamas. Or like chocolate – aaaany damn time.

Root vegetable cobbler is the recipe I cooked, on Wednesday night, for a bunch of friends I had over for tea. There were eight of us, in total, to feed. And I’d been at work all day, so didn’t have a lot of time to prep before people arrived. LUCKILY… I had a plan in action and that plan was root vegetable cobbler. I shopped for veg on Saturday; I spend two hours chopping veg on Sunday. I read and reread the recipe while commuting in the week.

You’re cooking for 5+ people? Some are on January health kicks (including you)? One has a serious allergy? All expect a lot from you in the kitchen? And every single one needs further evidence – that vegetarian food is real food? THIS RECIPE IS YOUR LLAMA.

If you have the budget to buy all these veg, the time to source them (go to M&S), the will to prep them, and the strength to spend a focused hour in the kitchen on the night before you start drinking… then this recipe is for you, readers. I’m telling you. And it tastes great! Such a colourful dish. Your friends will be really wowed and rave reviews. Many of your 5-a-day. No presentation skill needed. Very filling. Lots of vitamins… just doooo it.

Feeling brave, readers? Feeling like root vegetables are just what’s been missing from your January health kick?? Here’s how to rustle up one mighty root vegetable cobbler in (I shit you not) just 27 easy steps…

1.     Find something decent on TV and settle in with a hot drink and your largest knife… for some serious veg prep!

2.     Peel your red onions and cut them into wedges.

3.     Peel your butternut squash and dice into bite-sized chunks.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: Unless you’re a total squash head and want to go wild and throw it all in, set half your squash aside to use in another recipe.

4.     Peel your swede and dice into bit-sized chunks.

5.     Peel your carrots and thickly slice.

6.     Trim the ends off your leeks and then thickly slice.

7.     Peel your parsnips and – you guessed it – thickly slice.

8.     Cut your beetroot up into quarters.

9.     Trim the ends off your celery stalks and then, yes, thickly slice.

10.  Peel your cloves of garlic and crush them into smithereens.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: This is the end of the veg prep and if you’ve made it this far you’re probably like… I FUCKING HATE VEGETABLES ARRGGGH. So, I recommend taking a little time away from the veg at this point, to get the fury out of your system. Open a window and dance around a while?

11.  When you’re feeling up to it, heat your oven to 200°C.

12.  Look at your pile of vegetables, look at your pots and pans. You need either a giant pan or a large casserole dish – anything that looks big enough to hold all those veg.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: If, like I did, you’ve doubled your quantities and are now dealing with a real shitload of veg, you’re going to need 2 (maybe even 3) veg vessels. And some luck.

13.  Heat a couple of splashes of oil in your pan/dish monster and add the onions, butternut squash, swede, carrots, leeks, parsnips, beetroot, celery, caraway seeds and garlic.

14.  Fry all this over a high heat, stirring throughout, for 5 minutes. Keep it moving.

15.  Boil the kettle meanwhile and make up your veggie stock, by mixing your stock cube with 300ml boiling water.

16.  Then add the purée, stock and chopped tomatoes to the pan/dish.

17.  Stir in the gravy granules and cook, stirring, until the liquid thickens a little.

18.  Bring it all to the boil, put the lid on the pan/dish, and leave to simmer for half an hour.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: Take some deep breaths now. Notice how you’re breathing and try to slow that down a little. Pour yourself a cold drink and take a few minutes out of the kitchen.

19.  When you feel well enough to return, it’s time to make the cobblers! First, sift the flour into a mixing bowl, and stir in the pepper and the rosemary.

20.  Use your fingertips to rub in the butter, until the mix resembles crumbs.

21.  Stir in the Parmesan. Inhale its cheesy, foot-like aroma!

22.  In a mug, use a fork to beat together the egg and milk.

23.  Next, gradually add your milky mix to the dry ingredients, and use your fingers or a wooden spoon to bring it all together into a soft dough.

24.  Dust a clean kitchen surface with flour, and roll out your dough til it’s 2cm-ish thick.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: Don’t go too thin with your dough! You want to make good chunky cobblers, not flimsy fancy ones. Man cobblers. Sumos! With girth.

25.  Use a glass or a round pastry cutter to stamp out 8 to 9 rounds.

26.  Take the lid off your hotpot and arrange the scones on the top, around the edge of the casserole, and brush the top of each with milk.

27.  Carefully transport into the oven (my tired arms were wobbling!) and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the scones have risen and turned golden. Then serve immediately to your horde of hungry guests, and sit yourself down my dear. The dishes can wait.

Based on a Morrisons recipe found here. 

And BOOM! Readers, that’s how you make a root vegetable cobbler. The one and only. What do you think?? Is anyone going to give this recipe a go? Because it’s got so much good stuff in it! So many wonderful vitamins to power you on, through January! Really, if you think you can do this, then definitely do it, readers! Do it. Root vegetable cobbler is a taste sensation.

Has anyone tried this before, maybe? Or tried cooking this recipe before? Or – if you’ve read my blog and decided to have a go – how did it work out?? Did it go well? Any thoughts you have at all, readers, on the wonderful root vegetable cobbler – share them here! Let me know your recipe reaction / give feedback / any tips to make this even better… fire away!

And have a cracking weekend, readers. Look up at the sky. Dream big.

Veg safely,

Hayley

So yummy I only got a pic of the leftovers!