November lunch for 7 - including a vegetarian!

I was planning a lunch for a group of wine-tasters recently, when I realised that one of them is a vegetarian (I always check with people these days). This put a different perspective on lunch, as up to that point, I was planning a warming lamb casserole with Indian spices and flavours, which I had planned to prepare the day before. I know that a lot of vegetarians hate the idea that they are left with the 'side dishes' while everyone else scoffs down the dish that is the centre-piece of lunch, so I had to rethink my approach. It was made even more complicated by the fact that said vegetarian has also been diagnosed with wheat intolerance. So, I decided that a series of 'help yourself' dishes would work well - that way each dish would be interesting in itself, and the vegetarian luncher could simply not eat the meat dish. It worked out extremely well! I included the following:


Roasted squash (yes, more of the wonderful Crown Prince!), with lots of rocket, roasted pine nuts, little chunks of goats cheese, pink peppercorns and dressed with a mix of olive oil, lemon juice and cider vinegar. Because this dish is quite robust and filling, I reckoned that the vegetarian would get enough to eat! I hadnt reckoned on it going down as well as it did for the carnivores around the table, so it was just as well that I had hedged my bets with some 'meaty' aubergine as well! Everyone commented on how delicious the squash was - most people saying that they are sick of butternut squash at this stage, so something different and more interesting in taste was great. I forgot to take a photo of it, but I will the next time I make it and post the photo to my blog.


Tomato salad - I used the last of my home-grown toms, and the rest of them were bought at the market, so they tasted delicious! I added some red onion, some long red pepper slices and some basil, then drizzled some olive oil on top.


I made some tztaziki, and bought some really good hummus from Lilliput Stores in Stoneybatter, and I made some flatbreads with spelt flour. I also roasted some aubergine that morning.


Last, but not least, I roasted some lamb in the oven - fillet of lamb off the leg, which had marinated in garlic, mint, olive oil and thyme for a while beforehand. Unfortunately, while concentrating on making the flatbreads, I left the lamb in the oven for about ten minutes too long, so it was more done that I would have liked, but otherwise it was delicious!


We had a lovely meal out of all this - everyone just helped themselves to the various dishes and I dont think that anyone else realised that one of the guests was a vegetarian at all! And just about everything we ate was healthy - lots of organic vegetables, healthy fats, dips made from healthy ingredients (hummus with chickpeas and tztazaki from yoghurt, cucumber, garlic and mint), organic lamb, organic spelt flour, etc...


To drink with the food, we had a French Syrah Les Grands Augustins from Tardieu Laurent in the Vin de Pays d'Oc, which complemented the food beautifully!

Let me know if you would like any of these recipes, I would be delighted to send further details to you... The whole meal took about an hour and a half to prepare, so a great option for a relaxed Sunday lunch maybe followed with some more cheese and fruit to round it off...

On cooking rice...and other grain topics

While finalising my Tips & Tricks Guidelines for my Asian Inspiration cookery workshops, I decided to do a bit of online research on other people's experiences with cooking brown rice, which is the only type of rice that we now cook with (in fact I actually dont like white rice anymore when compared with brown). There seems to be a bit of mystique out there about how to cook brown rice, when I have found it to be much more forgiving than its white counterpart, which is apt to turn into a gelatinous mess if you turn your back on it for a minute! Brown rice on the other hand is difficult to overcook, and each rice particle remains separate even when the rice has gone cold. All this and its so much better for you - holding onto its vitamins and minerals and all the fibre that makes it a low-medium GI food to eat - and it tastes better - what more could you want?! So, go on, get out there and buy some brown Basmati rice, cook it for 30 minutes with double the quantity of water to rice and hey presto - great rice!

On a related carbohydrate topic - have you ever traipsed around a city mid-afternoon with someone who is wheat intolerant, in search of something quick to eat to tide you both over from an insubstantial and early lunch through to a late dinner? Well, it is an experience that you wont want to repeat if you can help it, but it is one that I went through recently in Dublin. Outside of lunchtime, the food options for people who are wheat intolerant - and up to 20% of people apparently have serious difficulties in digesting wheat - reduces to almost 0! Unless you count fast-food joints, which ironically are probably the only option available, where you can have chips and a burger, but you would prefer something slightly more healthy than that. We went from one end of the city centre to the other, and the vast majority of places which were serving food had wheat-based bread and no other options. So there was traditional Irish soda bread, Italian panini, French baguette, brown sandwiches, white bread sandwiches, pasta, pizza, but no other form of carbohydrate in sight! Why hasnt anyone tried to provide even spelt-bread based sandwiches as an option around the city? Perhaps we could have gone as far as the Maison des Gourmets in Castle Market - where they do sell spelt bread in their bakery - they might have managed to put something together for us. However, by the time we had got to that part of the city, our will to continue the search had waned considerably, so we ended up in a Mexican restaurant, which in fairness to them, they managed some corn-based tortillas and nachos for us - which at least gave us enough of a boost to contemplate the bus ride home!

Bread-making

I spent most of today doing a bread-making workshop with a small group of people (all female!). We had a great day - the sun was shining in through the conservatory roof, and it was warm enough for our bread dough to prove outside in the sun. We started the day with some coffee, fruit and my experimentation with a new health bread which I had baked the other day. The taste combination of spelt flour, honey, bananas, blueberries and nuts went down a treat, so I'll have to write up the recipe and publish it (contact me if you would like a sneak preview!).

After the bread and coffee, we got down to the real business of the day. We made up our dough for focaccia and set it aside to prove. We then moved onto the healthy wholemeal spelt bread with its linseeds and pumpkin seeds, and made scones and a loaf each. Then revisited the focaccia dough to give it its second stage - putting it back out in the sun for its second proving, while the scones were sampled, straight out of the oven, with some butter and homemade strawberry jam. The group got on really well - career advice was exchanged as well as many foodie conversations!

We finally made up the focaccia bread - keeping it classical with toppings of garlic, rosemary, olive oil and salt. All the breads were a great success - I'm not sure if that was down to the creative talents of the group, or my teaching ability, or maybe a combination of both! One of the group has promised to send me on the photo she took of the fruits of our labour - and when she does, I'll publish it to my blog... Hopefully everyone will try out the recipes at home and get to the stage where they'll be making bread without having to even think!