It’s that asparagus time of year, a herald of early summer, although you wouldn’t know it in Sweden, where the weather remains distinctly chilly.
Spears of destiny – stir fried with broccoli and red onions
We wrote about asparagus in our very first post, a bulgur risotto, back in 2016. Already this summer we’ve come across locally grown varieties in Kazakhstan and Sweden.
These tasty spears are great in a vegan stir fry served with rice or noodles, or if you eat eggs, then you can turn it into an omelette or a quiche.
With spring greens making a welcome reappearance, it’s time for a brunch special – green shakshuka, North Africa’s breakfast star.
Grip Green Shakshuka
This dish, usually made with tomatoes and peppers, is originally from Tunisia but has now spread all over the Middle East.
For our spring greens version, we made a bed of cumin fried onions, banana peel, radish leaves and spinach on which to poach some eggs for our sublime, zero waste brunch special.
Ingredients (for two servings)
one medium onion
one banana peel
100 g spinach
50 g radish leaves
four eggs
one teaspoon cumin seeds
one teaspoon chilli powder
25 ml olive oil
Method
Heat the oil in a heavy-based pan and add the cumin seeds. When they start to pop, add chopped onion and cook for five minutes over a low heat. Add the banana peel (to prepare, use a knife or spoon to scrape off any remaining banana flesh (use this in a cake, smoothie or banana bread) and then slice the peel into 1 mm strips).
Stir fry for another five minutes and then add the chopped radish leaves and three minutes later add the washed and chopped spinach. Cook until the spinach starts to wilt.
Make a depression in the mix and pour an egg into it, repeat with the other eggs, sprinkle chilli powder over the eggs put, put a lid on and steam until the eggs are set
There has been heated debate in the UK recently over whether or not a Scotch egg (a boiled egg covered with sausage meat and breadcrumbs) could be considered to be a “substantial meal”, a status that would allow pubs in parts of the country affected by COVID-19 restrictions to serve alcohol alongside this hearty snack.
Does this falafel egg look substantial to you?
This has inspired Knidos Cookery Club to try out its own test to see if the Scotch egg’s vegetarian cousin, the falalfel egg, makes for a substantial meal or a light snack. We first came across this combination in Harissa, a Middle Eastern restaurant in Almaty, Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, the falafel covered egg arrived after many other courses had been served and it did prove to be too substantial for dessert.
Falafel egg platter
To test the theory again, we knocked up a batch of millet falafel mix, boiled some eggs and then combined the two and baked them in the oven. The result was indeed quite a substantial feast, so feel free to accompany your falafel egg with a glass or two of your favourite tipple!
Ingredients (makes 4 falafel eggs)
four eggs
150 g millet
300 ml water or vegetable stock
25 ml olive oil
one small onion
one garlic clove
one bunch of parsley
one teaspoon cumin
one teaspoon coriander
one teaspoon chilli powder
Method
Rinse and then soak the millet in a pan for four hours. Drain the millet and put to one side.
Boil the eggs for five minutes and then allow to cool completely.
Fry the finely chopped onion, minced garlic and spices in the olive oil for 10 minutes over a medium heat. Reduce the heat to low and stir in the millet. cover with water or stock and bring to a boil. Simmer until the liquid is absorbed. Stir regularly as the millet will stick to the bottom of the pan if not watched carefully.
Finely chop the parsley, both leaves and stalks and mix into the cooked millet. When the millet has cooled, peel the eggs and then form the falafel mix evenly around the egg. Place on a baking tray and oven bake for 20 minutes at 200 c or until the falafel case turns a golden-brown colour.
Serve with salad and sauces of your choice. These falafel eggs will keep in the fridge for a few days.
With reports coming in from allotment owners in the UK of a bumper post-lockdown vegetable crop, we’re revisiting an old favourite — a quiche made with courgettes, peppery radish leaves and a healthy dash of horseradish.
Courgette, radish leaf and halloumi quiche
In a topical touch, we’ve added a dash of horseradish (хрен in Russian), the latest plant to be touted as a defence against coronavirus in Central Asia, following hard on the heels of garlic.
Horseradish sauce with beetroot
Demand for horseradish, a root vegetable which is traditionally mixed with honey to fight colds and coughs, has soared in in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in recent weeks, along with the price. We bought a jar of horseradish sauce, flavoured with beetroot, as the fresh roots are in short supply.
Going a bit crackers in lockdown
Crackers have also been hard to find in Almaty in recent weeks, so we used up the leftover pastry from making the quiche to prepare our own. Simply roll the pastry out to a thickness of 1 mm and then use a glass or mug to cut out a round shape. Bake in a hot oven (200 c) on a baking tray for 8-10 minutes until they start to brown.
Ingredients (3-4 portions)
For the pastry:
250 g flour (we used a 50/50 mix of rye and wheat flour)
60 ml olive oil
120 ml cold water
One teaspoon cumin seeds
One teaspoon sesame seeds
Healthy sprinkling of black pepper
For the filling:
One medium courgette
Bunch of radish leaves
One teaspoon horseradish sauce (or freshly grated if you can find it)
One small onion
One egg
100 g halloumi
50 ml olive oil
Method
Put the flour in a large bowl with the cumin and sesame seeds and a sprinkling of black pepper. Mix the flour and oil together with a fork and then slowly add the water and keep mixing until it starts to come together. Knead with your hands for 5-10 minutes until you have a stretchy ball of pastry. Leave in the fridge covered in clingfilm for an hour or so.
Heat the oven to 200 c. Roll the pastry on a lightly floured surface until it is about 2 mm thick. Grease a baking dish and then put the pastry in the dish to form a pie crust. Prick all over with a fork and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes. You can use any leftover pastry to make crackers – put them on the top shelf of the oven at the same time as you’re baking the pie base.
Heat 25 ml of oil in a heavy based pan and chop the courgette into 5 mm slices. Cook the courgettes on both sides until browning. Put the courgettes to one side and add the rest of the oil to the pan. While the pie base is baking, cook the sliced onion and chopped radish leaves in the hot oil.
Add the horseradish sauce and the egg to the mixture when the radish leaves are wilting. Stir well and then pour this into the pie crust. Place the fried courgette slices on top and put strips of halloumi around the courgettes. Bake for another 20-30 minutes at 180 c until the pastry is starting to go brown and the cheese has started to melt.
Nearing the fifth week of lockdown here in Almaty, Kazakstan. We’ve found that one of the ways of coping with this situation it to try and stick to as normal a routine as possible. This means logging on in the working week to see if there’s any work around and then trying to switch off from everything as much as possible at the weekend.
Bubble and squeak: the great British hangover cure
With this in mind, we’ve come up with a classic weekend, switching-off brunch featuring that classic British comfort food – bubble and squeak, or fried potato and cabbage cakes to the uninitiated. You really can’t beat a good fry-up after a hectic evening spent zooming and netflixing and supporting the local viniculture industry.
Bubble and squeak takes its name from the sizzling, spitting sounds the mixture makes when being fried. Its a great way to use up any leftovers you have – you just need the base of mashed potato and boiled cabbage. We’ve spiced it up with some coriander, cumin and turmeric and also added in some fresh spinach. Serve with baked beans and a fried egg to get your weekend off to a flyer.
Ingredients (makes four hearty cakes)
One large potato
100 g cabbage
50 g spinach
Two spring onions
One teaspoon cumin seeds
One teaspoon turmeric
One teaspoon coriander
Oil for shallow frying
Method
Cube the potato, cover with cold water and bring to the boil in a heavy-based pan. Simmer for five minutes and then add the finely chopped cabbage along with the coriander, turmeric and cumin seeds. Simmer for another five minute and than add the chopped spring onion and spinach.
Drain off any excess liquid then mash all the ingredients together with a fork or a potato masher. Season with salt and black pepper according to taste. Heat the oil in a frying pan. Form the mixture into golf ball-sized pieces and then place in the frying pan. Flatten the balls with a spatula or fish slice and fry on a medium heat. After five minutes, turn the bubble and squeak over and cook for another five minutes until a golden-brown colour on both sides.
We are currently in the middle of Maslenitsa, a week-long festival in which Russian Orthodox believers take the opportunity to indulge in rich foods like eggs and milk, personified by blini, pancakes, and some hard partying before the 40-day fast for Lent begins – this year on 2 March.
Here comes the sun – a KCC egg hopper
Maslenitsa is based on a Slavic pagan sun festival that marked the coming end of winter. Pancakes were seen as an image of the sun and were prepared to help banish the winter gods and bring on the warmer days of spring. There are more nods to paganism with Maslenitsa week ending with the burning of an effigy of Lady Maslenitsa, whose ashes are then mixed with the snow to fertilise the soil.
Hopper mix bubbling away
To mark the festival, this year we’ve gone for a non-traditional take on the pancake front with egg hoppers, fermented Sri Lankan rice flour and coconut milk pancakes with an egg in the middle. Spring is coming! The word hopper comes from appa, the name given to these pancakes in Sri Lanka and southern India.
Egg hoppers – the real McCoy from Sri Lanka
Ingredients (makes 4-6 hoppers)
100 g rice flour
200 ml coconut milk
One teaspoon dried yeast
One teaspoon sugar
4-6 eggs
60 ml warm water
Oil for frying
Small bunch of fresh coriander
Method
Mix the yeast with the warm water and sugar. After a few minutes it should start frothing. Add to the rice flour in a large mixing bowl and stir. Now add the coconut milk stirring until the batter has a consistency that is not too runny and not too thick – it should pour easily. Cover the bowl and allow to ferment in a warm place for a few hours. The mix should double in size.
To make the pancakes, heat a few drops of oil in a small (6-7 cm), high-sided frying pan. Wipe with kitchen towel and pour in the batter, swirling it around the pan so that a thin layer coats the sides. The pancake should be thicker at the bottom. Crack an egg onto the pancake, cover and cook over a low heat until the egg is cooked. Serve with fresh coriander or a grating of black pepper (or both, if you wish).
Knidos Cookery Club has just arrived back at its home base on the Datça Peninsula in Turkey. We’re going to soak up some more culinary inspiration from the place where the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas meet around the ancient Greek settlement of Knidos.
Piyaz – Turkish White Bean salad
To celebrate being back in Turkey, we’ve prepared a piyaz salad, one of the classic dishes of Turkish cooking, that combines small white beans with some readily available staples of the local kitchen; namely tomatoes, onions, green peppers, parsley and lemons.
Turkey’s çarliston peppers aka banana peppers
The secret of this dish is in getting the beans just right – not too mushy but not too firm either. They need a good, long overnight soak and some slow cooking to achieve the required consistency.
The dressing used varies across Turkey from the basic lemon, olive oil and apple vinegar one favoured in Istanbul to the tahini-infused one from Antalya, paying tribute to the Arabian influence from the Middle East on the city’s cuisine. We have opted for the creamy, nutty taste of the latter.
Ingredients (makes 3-4 servings)
200 g dried haricot beans or other small white beans soaked overnight
1 medium-sized plum tomato
1 long, green pepper (e.g. çarliston pepper – see photo above)
1 small onion
2 lemons
Small bunch of parsley
50 ml olive oil
50 ml apple vinegar
25 ml tahini
2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon red chilli flakes
Optional: Two boiled eggs or one avocado
Method
Cook the beans over a low heat until tender but not starting to go mushy. When cooked, drain off the cooking water, reserving 100 ml to make the dressing. Pour the vinegar and sprinkle the thyme over the beans and leave to cool.
After leaving for a few hours, add the vinegar the beans were soaking in to the reserved bean juice and then blend with the olive oil, tahini and the juice of one lemon to make a smooth sauce.
Finely dice the tomato, slice the pepper and onions into rings and chop the parsley finely. Add these to the beans.
Cover the salad and put it in the fridge for a few hours. Serve with wedges of the second lemon and sprinkle the red chilli flakes over the salad.
Just before serving, pour the dressing over the bean salad and season with black pepper and gently mix all the ingredients together with a wooden spoon.
You can garnish with quarters of boiled egg if you wish or, for a vegan twist, you can garnish the salad with slices of avocado.
While shopping at Datça market recently, this spectacular-looking, knobbly, bright orange fruit grabbed our attention.
What’s in the dragon today? Bitter melon, of course
Subsequent googling revealed it to be a bitter melon, or bitter gourd, kudret narı in Turkish. Despute being popular in pan-Asian cooking, we couldn’t find too many Turkish recipes using bitter melon so we decided to mix it in with menemen, that breakfast fave in Turkey.
You’ll probably be able to track down bitter melons in your local Asian grocer’s. When picked they are yellow-green, resembling a bumpy cucumber, and when ripe they turn orange. Cooking helps remove some of the bitter taste of this curious-looking member of the squash family. Inside are bright red coloured seeds that can be removed and eaten.
Step one: Fry the bitter melon
Step two: Add the tomato
Step three: add the eggs and scramble
Ingredients (serves 2-4)
100 g bitter melon
60 g green peppers
2 spring onions
1 medium-sized tomato
1 teaspoon each of dried thyme, oregano, black pepper and red chilli flakes
4 eggs
A dash of soy sauce
25 ml olive oil
Method
Heat the olive oil in a frying pan and when hot add the chopped spring onion. Cook for two minutes over a medium heat and then add the peppers and seeded bitter melon, cut into 1-2 mm strips.
Cook for another two minutes and then add the chopped tomato, herbs and spices and a dash of soy sauce. Fry for 5 minutes and then reduce the heat and break the eggs into the mix. Keep stirring until you achieve the desired consistency of scrambled egg to your taste.
In keeping with the ‘Waste not, want not‘ mantra, this week we’ll be using some radish greens in a mini quiche.
Often discarded, these peppery leaves taste great when fried up with some spring onion, garlic and a dash of soy sauce.
Ingredients ( makes four mini-quiches)
150 g radish leaves
1 radish (for decoration)
2 spring onions
1 garlic clove
Dash of soy sauce
60 g crumbly white cheese
2 eggs
25 ml olive oil
150 g filo pastry or shortcrust pastry
Method
Saute the chopped onions and garlic in a little olive oil in a heavy-based pan for 2-3 minutes, add a dash of soy sauce and then add the radish leaves and cook for another 2-3 minutes until the leaves start to wilt.
Allow the mix to cool for ten minutes then mix in the eggs and cheese. Prepare cases in small baking dishes with the filo pastry, brushing each filo leaf with olive oil.
Pour the mix into each pastry case to half way and then bake for 20 minutes in an oven pre-heated to 180 c.
Garnish with radish slices and serve with a green salad laced with more sliced radish!
This time round on Knidos Cookery Club we’re revisiting an old favourite – mücver, Turkey’s tasty courgette fritter.
Could this be called a pea fritter?
The mücver usually served up in Turkish eateries are made from grated courgettes, so we’ve decided to spice up this old favourite by adding some other ingredients. Why not try them with fresh peas or grated carrot? Mushrooms work well, as do green beans.
Putting some carrots in the mix
You can even add all these ingredients to the basic mix, chuck in a few chopped almonds or walnuts and, hey presto, you have a chunky veggie nut burger!
Serve the fritters in a pita, on a baguette, in a burger bun, rolled up in flat lavaş bread or just plain with a salad and condiments of your choice.
Ingredients (for around 8 fritters)
Two medium-sized courgettes
One small onion
One egg (or 15 ml of olive oil for vegan version)
Choose one or more from: 100 g chopped mushroom / grated carrot / peas (fresh if you have them, otherwise frozen or tinned) / sliced green beans (use 50 g of each if using more ingredients)
50 g of plain flour
Bunch of parsley, mint and/or dill (if you like that sort of thing)
Dried herbs to taste
A generous sprinkle of sesame seeds
An optional dusting of chili flakes and grated cinnamon
Salt and pepper
A dash of olive oil for frying
Plain yogurt for serving
Method
Grate or chop up the courgettes and the extra of your choice (mushroom, carrot peas, green beans or even all three) finely and mix with the chopped onion. Add fresh parsley, mint and/or dill, dried herbs, chili flakes, cinnamon, sesame seeds salt and pepper and blend well.
Make a well in the centre of the mix and break the egg into it. Sprinkle in the crumbled white cheese. Mix well. (Vegan readers should skip the egg and add 25 ml of olive oil instead)
Gradually add the plain flour and blend until the mixture has quite a thick consistency – you don’t want it to be too wet and sloppy.
Drizzle some olive oil in a frying pan and put over a medium heat.
Place golf ball-sized scoops of the courgette mixture into the pan and flatten with a spatula or fork.
After a few minutes turn the fritter. Keep cooking until both sided are a golden-brown colour.
Turkey’s çarliston peppers aka banana peppers
Knidos Cookery Club 