Chermoula pumpkin with quinoa and yogurt

This was hands down my favorite dish that we cooked during my class at the Agrarian Kitchen. A perfect mixture of spicy, savory and sweet, the flavors are rich and complement each other well.

Ingredients:

4 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tbsp ground cumin

1 tbsp ground coriander

2 tsp chili flakes

2 tsp sweet paprika

1/3 cup finely chopped preserved lemon skin

280 ml extra virgin olive oil, plus extra to drizzle

½ medium sized pumpkin (note: if buying in America, go to an Asian market and look for the squat green-skinned pumpkin, not a standard orange American pumpkin.)

300 gm quinoa

100 gm sultanas (raisins)

40 gm fresh coriander, chopped plus extra to serve

20 gm fresh mint, chopped

60 gm flaked almonds, toasted

4 spring onions, chopped

60 ml (1/2) cup lemon juice.

240 gm Greek yogurt, plain

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
2. In a bowl combine garlic, cumin, coriander, chili, paprika, preserved lemon, two-thirds of the olive oil and 1 tsp salt. This is the chermoula, set aside until required.
3. Cut the pumpkin into wedges or rounds, leaving the skin intact. Scoop out the seeds and discard.
4. Spoon the chermoula over each half, spreading it evenly, and place on a baking tray cut side up. Road pumpkin until very soft, about 40 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, cook the quinoa as described on the box, or in a manner similar to how you would cook rice. I prefer to cook with chicken stock added to the water for better flavor. Once cooked, fluff with fork and set aside.
6. Soak raisins in 100 ml warm water for 10 minutes, then drain and add to quinoa with remaining oil, herbs, almonds, spring onion, lemon juice and season to taste with sea salt.
7. Serve pumpkin warm or at room temperature topped with quinoa, spoonfuls of yogurt, scattered with coriander and a drizzle of the extra virgin olive oil.

The Agrarian Kitchen’s Goat Curry

 

Goat Curry with Flaky Flat Bread (serves 8-10)

This curry was absolutely amazing, guys. The flavors are so savory and vibrant, but not overwhelming or overly spiced. The actual goat itself might be a little bit difficult to find, but some butchers may have it in your area, and if not you could always substitute it for another type of meat of a similar texture.This recipe is surprisingly simple, and probably won’t be too tough for those cooking along at home! Also, I apologize to my American readers for listing the measurements in metric terms, but thats how they’re written on my recipe and I think its most accurate to copy it verbatim from the sheet. Note: one tablespoon in this recipe (Australian) is slightly smaller than an American tablespoon, at 15 mls instead of 20.

Ingredients:

9 cloves garlic

2.2 kg goat leg or shoulder, cut into 3 cm pieces.

4 cups plain yogurt

1 tbsp cardamom pods

1 tbsp ground coriander

1 tbsp whole black peppercorns

2 tsp cumin seeds

2 tsp chili powder

1 tsp whole cloves

750 ml (c cups) sunflower oil

7 cm piece ginger, peeled and julienned

6 French shallots, peeled and thinly sliced

thick plain yogurt, to serve

coriander sprigs, to serve

Directions:

1. Place garlic cloves into a blender, add 60 ml water and blend until smooth. Pour garlic into a large, heavy-based pot, add venison, yogurt, spices, 160 ml sunflower oil, ginger, and 2 tsp salt.

2. Place pot over high heat and stir until mixture comes to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer mixture, stirring occasionally to scrape up browned bits from the bottom of the pot, and cook until meat is tender, about two hours.

3. Heat remaining oil in a large saucepan or deep fryer to 170 degrees celsius. Add shallots and deep fry until golden brown, about two minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and move to an absorbent paper-lined plate and let cool.

4. Place shallots into a mortar and coarsely grind with a pestle. Add shallots and two cups water to venison and cook over medium heat until sauce is reduced and thickened, about 45 mins.

5. To serve, spoon some goat into a bowl or onto a plate and top with a dollop of thick yogurt and coriander sprigs. Serve and enjoy!

 

Eggplant Mozzarella Bake!

Alright, guys. This dish is delicious. And healthy and gluten free. Those are the only three positives about this dish.

Although it totally messes with my new minimalist cooking style (one pot, one pan, one plate) and used just about every dish that I own and then some, I’m going to post it anyway because 1) its super tasty, 2) its healthy and satisfying and 3) its still gluten free. So if you have a lot of time to kill and a dishwasher, I’d recommend giving it a shot!

Eggplant Mozzarella Bake

(like eggplant lasagna only without the gross ricotta)

Suggested Ingredients:

• 2 medium eggplants
• 1 onion
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 can of crushed tomatoes, 28 oz (or more! I’m a bad sauce budgeter so I struggled a bit with this amount.)
• 1 container fresh mozzarella, large balls (there should be four or so in the container).
• salt and pepper

Optional:

• fresh basil
• parmesan cheese

Instructions: 

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Prepare your onions, garlic and basil. Chop the onions thoroughly, mince the garlic and sliver the basil. Cut mozzarella balls into thin slices. 
3. Over medium heat, add 1 tbsp oil to a pan. Note: it might be useful for you to do this in a pot if you don’t have more than one large frying pan. Add onions and cook for five minutes. 
4. Add garlic and continue to cook for two minutes.
5. Pour in the entire can of tomatoes and stir. Add salt, pepper and basil. Continue to cook for 20 minutes.
6. While sauce is cooking, heat a large frying pan or griddle until smoking hot.
7. Slice your eggplant lengthwise (as pictured). The original recipe I used suggested coating the eggplant in oil and salting and peppering it, and I used a brush in order to do so. This is extremely messy and inconvenient. HOWEVER, my recommendation would be to take a baking pan and pour oil into that, then dip the eggplant in the pan on both sides. Salt and pepper while its sitting in the pan and then move immediately into the griddle. Don’t worry about the seeds–you won’t even notice them!
8. Cook eggplant until it becomes somewhat squishy and browned on bottom side. Flip and repeat. 
9. Remove sauce from heat and pour several ladelfuls on the bottom of a bakesafe pan. As eggplant cooks, layer eggplant along the bottom, side by side. 
10. Place mozzarella on top of the eggplant, then pour another layer of sauce to cover. Repeat until you run out of ingredients. 
11. Sprinkle parmesan cheese over the topmost layer of sauce and put into the oven. Bake until the cheese on top (and probably some mozzarella seeping through) browns slightly. Enjoy! 

Same idea, new direction!

Lovely people of the internet!

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything, and I promise I have good reasons for that! Coming home from my year of studying abroad was incredibly difficult, and coming back to sub-par housing and a completely inefficient/terrible kitchen made cooking anything of value difficult. In addition, I’ve recently learned, through trial and error, that I’m moderately gluten intolerant, which has made it difficult for me to make a lot of the foods I’m better at cooking and, for the time being, has made baking a non-thing. I don’t know if any of you have tried gluten-free baking, but its basically the worst and most difficult science project ever. And, seeing as I’ve never been very good at complex scientific endeavors, I’ve found that learning how to do GF baking is basically impossible, and at the very least more hassle than it’s worth for the time being. I was just starting to get the hand of normal baking!

Trying to do GF baking has left me with a lot of questions.  What is Xanthan Gum and why is it so expensive? Why does my pumpkin bread taste like I’m licking a festive, autumnal-flavored ashtray? How much money am I going to have to spend before I actually create something edible? And for the time being, I’m going to go ahead and let those questions just sit unanswered because I live near a co-op that bakes/imports tons of tasty GF baked goods for me so that I don’t have to put myself through the torture of doing it myself.

Unfortunately, eating and gluten free is a task in its own right, and I’m only just starting to get the hang of it. Of course there are some awesome GF substitutes for “normal” foods, but they tend to be expensive and often aren’t especially good for you. So I’ve been experimenting with some recipes at school, trying to find out what works and what doesn’t. Lately I’ve been in a bit of a rut and have been eating a lot of soups and snacks and basically eating my entire weight in clementines on a weekly basis. But I know that I’m going to be facing a much more difficult/awesome problem soon: as some of you may  have read on my travel blog, I have a trip booked for this summer to Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam and possibly Lao. Although I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to manage fairly well in Southeast Asia, where few foods contain gluten anyway (except pesky soy sauce!), I’m actually more worried about eating GF on the cheap in Australia and New Zealand.

Which brings me back to my main point– a new(ish) direction for the blog! I will be trying out some recipes that will translate well to cooking in hostels and use my blog to compile a list. I’m going to say in advance that the recipes might be a step down from the recipes I’ve posted to date; the whole goal is to make them manageable in situations in which I might only have one pot and one frying pan and one bowl, not to mention on a time crunch. Simple, cheap, healthy, wholesome gluten-free meals that can be made on the fly and don’t involve a lot of obscure, single-use ingredients.

So there you go! As time goes on I may try and modify some old recipes to make them GF, but as mentioned above with my pumpkin bread endeavor, this may be more difficult than I initially thought it would be. Hopefully I’ll be getting something up for you guys soon!

-Natalie

Upcoming Recipes!

Hi all!

I know I’ve been slacking about posting lately, but I haven’t been able to cook much of anything fun lately! However, I do plan on trying a home made macaroni and cheese dish tonight, so hopefully it’ll be good enough to put up on the blog. My French housemate Juliette also has an amazing cookie recipe that I want to try myself and post eventually, so I’ll try and get that up as well.

In other news, I’m almost completely out of idea of new recipes to try! If anyone has a favorite dish that they would like me to try or a specific type of recipe (vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, etc), please let me know! I love hearing suggestions and it will give me some (much needed!) inspiration for cooking and blogging.

Hopefully you’ll get some good posts out of me soon! =]

 

Big Cooking Day!

Hi all! Today I’m taking a day off from the gym, which leaves me with a lot of time to start preparing some recipes! I’ve got a bunch that I’m going to be making for posts to come, and I thought I’d give an update as to what I’m going to be preparing for the next couple of blog posts.

Recipes:

• Garlic hummus with home-baked pita chips
• Homemade Pizza
• Semi-homemade lemon Greek yogurt
• Kale salad with baked goat cheese, prosciutto, and cranberries with a maple balsamic vinaigrette
• Unsweetened Iced Green Tea

I’ll get back to you all later on how the cooking went!