Diplomatic Immunity

Welcome to the Year of the Rat. Perhaps appropriate this new Chinese year should start with global virus panic. Here in the Middle Kingdom there is a definite sense of unease: facemasks in shops have all but sold out and at the time of writing at least five cities are in lockdown mode with all exit and entry denied. And yet this time of year will see mass transit from most of other Chinese cities to all corners of the world.

What are you going to do? Stay at home all the time fearing the apocalypse, barricading yourself in and hoarding supplies?

I think fortifying yourself is the best prevention. That, and some prudence and common sense. Washing hands, general hygiene, that kind of thing.

People with a weak immune system are most susceptible. Good idea then to make sure your diet includes plenty of ingredients that can boost your system, such as these. You can almost feel the body crying out for it sometimes. I’ve got into the habit in the morning of foregoing my usual tea for a cup of hot water with a pinch of turmeric and lemon juice.

I made a simple lunch which featured a few key immunity boosters: garlic, ginger, citrus and spinach. It was to be a lentil-based stew, something I could do in one pot and stir from time to time, an action that in itself has – at least for me – psychological healing properties. So I was to be toughening parts both physical and mental .

Turned out to be really rather good. The initial zingy trill of thyme, lemon and ginger faded to warmer bass notes of chilli, smoked paprika and cinnamon. Texturally it was kept at least fairly interesting with chunks of carrot and sweet potato.

I used (for one person):

• good handful of red lentils, picked through and drained
• squeeze of tomato puree
• big bunch of thyme
• thumb-sized knob of ginger, finely chopped
• one garlic clove, finely sliced
• hefty handful of spinach, rinsed, drained and chopped roughly
• quarter of a large red onion, chopped
• one carrot, cut into biggish dice
• one sweet potato, ditto
• half a vegetable stock cube
• one bay leaf
• quarter a tsp of chilli powder
• half a tsp of smoked paprika
• half a tsp of cinnamon
• half a lemon, to squeeze
• salt and pepper

In a pan heat a tablespoon of olive oil and then add the carrot, sweet potato, onion, garlic, ginger and herbs. Dash in a little salt. Cook everything until all the vegetables have softened, about ten minutes on a medium-low heat. Squeeze in the tomato puree and let cook for a minute. Then the spices and keep cooking for another minute. Now stir through the lentils, crumble in the stock cube and pour in about 400ml of boiling water. Let it bubble away, stirring from time to time, until the liquid has reduced, about fifteen minutes. Add more water if the lentils haven’t quite softened. Remove the herbs from the pan. Now fold in the chopped spinach, a spritz of lemon juice and check for seasoning. I found this was substantial enough to eat without anything else.

新年快乐。恭喜发财。

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Beans and Greens

Happy New Year to all my readers.

2019 was interesting and challenging in many ways and this year shows every sign of being just as much if not more so. 2020 will be for me a year of fairly significant change and I’m excited about the journey in prospect. Excited, yes, as well as apprehensive. This time next year I have almost no idea where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing. All I have is a kind of idealisation and a desire for change.

A writer, I forget who, describes the revelation of a new idea for a story as something already perfectly formed, a butterfly freshly emerged from its chrysalis. However when it comes to writing the story itself she has to do one thing first: let the butterfly go. She has the wisdom and experience to know that any idea of perfection is an impossible one. What’s more, she has faith in her ability to let the writing journey dictate where the story will go.

I have a little life experience, perhaps even less wisdom; I struggle with faith in my ability. And yet the one thing I am certain about is that to deal with uncertainty one must keep faith alive. We can all only do so much. There is much – too much – beyond our control. Over the past year there have been times when, faced with global disasters especially involving the effects of climate change and the responses of those in power, life has felt overwhelming. What’s the point of trying if nothing improves?

But what if everyone thought it was all useless, a waste of time? We find strength in resilience, by sticking to our beliefs and not letting things get us down. We find friends, and with them, hope. Dark cannot exist without light. Every wave has a trough and a peak.

This year all I’m going to do is my best and see where it takes me.

__________________________________

Veganuary is a thing. It’s not a bad thing, per se, although I am always uneasy about these periods of purging. It’s like saying well, I’ve done my bit for the year, I am free now to live purely and guiltlessly, to float on a cloud of self-congratulation….until the next time my conscience gets the better of me. Veganism is becoming something of a fad in any case, a luxury only afforded in the west. There is now as much of an argument to remove almonds and avocados from our diets as there is meat.

I am more of a believer in the qualities of constancy and moderation. People who know me might struggle to stifle a chortle of disbelief here, and it’s true I am guilty more frequently than perhaps is prudent of various excesses, but I think these qualities can underpin a very balanced way of living, necessary I think for insecure times.

To that end I want to concentrate in this post on a real kitchen staple of mine, a dish whose key constituents appear on my table on a regular basis, always in slightly different forms. It’s my fall-back meal, the kitchen cupboard scramble on a busy weekday, the weekend lunch for an unexpected guest.

I took as my inspiration this fantastic recipe from Anna Jones, a vegetarian kitchen cook whose ideas are always full of creativity but emphasise flavour above everything. She incidentally also promotes a kind of vegan detox at the beginning of the year, but terms it a ‘reset’; the sensible emphasis is on looking after oneself rather than any grand notions of saving the world. We can’t do anything with an unhealthy body, let alone an unhealthy mind.

I basically followed her instructions and used her ingredients, with a few alterations.  I replaced the black-eyed beans with borlotti and the chard for another type of slightly bitter brassica, akin to cavolo nero, which I found in the local greengrocer’s. Instead of a leek I used a base of red onion and carrot – which I had in the fridge – and the ‘green herb smash’ was more of a pesto (without the cheese) with added pine nuts – lightly toasted – and no honey.

Turned out to be a very vibrant and deliciously warming lunch, just the thing for adding some energy into a fairly dreary Saturday. My version isn’t quite as colourful as hers but I bet it tasted just as good.

The combination of beans and greens can be a base for many a simple, cheap and satisfying meal. Below is a rough recipe and ingredient guide with some suggestions on how to augment the dish. I do think though that apart from the obvious main ingredients, there should always be tomato to add richness and lemon to lift it.

The brilliant thing about it is you can add many things, adapt it to your own tastes, using whatever you’ve got in the fridge or cupboards.

You’ll need (for one person), at least:

• 1 400g tin of beans (cannellini, borlotti, kidney, black-eye etc.)
• Half an onion
• 2 big handfuls of chopped greens (purple-sprouting broccoli, kale, spinach etc.)
• 1 tomato
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper

Might be handy, but not essential, if you also have:

• Lemon
• Tomato puree
• Half a vegetable stock cube/ stock powder

COOKING INSTRUCTIONS:

Dice the onion and roughly chop the greens. Drain and rinse the greens. In a pan with a heavy bottom add one tablespoon of olive oil and heat over a medium-low flame, then put in the onion with a pinch of salt and fry lightly until soft, about ten minutes. Chop the tomato and mix with the onions, squeeze in some tomato puree if using. Let things cook together for a couple of minutes. Then add the beans with their liquid and let everything combine for another minute or two. Pour in half a glass of water and the crumbled stock cube if you have one, stir all together and bring the temperature up so the water is bubbling. Turn the heat down low and cover the pan with a lid. Let everything cook together for about ten minutes. Add in the chopped greens, making sure they have been properly washed and rinsed. Cook for another few minutes until the greens have started to wilt. Most of the water should have evaporated by this time although you don’t want it completely dry. Check if you need any more salt and then grind over the black pepper. Finish with a squeeze of lemon and serve.

For more people, just double the quantities of everything. To store, let it cool before putting into the fridge in sealed container. Should keep for a couple of days. Can also freeze any leftovers.

EXTRAS:

This is good just as it is, but you can add various things and change the quantities easily if you only want a side dish. Here are some suggestions.

• At the onion frying stage add all or some of the following: pinch of chilli flakes or powder; chopped bacon or ham; palmful of chopped thyme or rosemary leaves; one bay leaf (remember to remove this at the end); sliced clove of garlic; diced stick of celery and/or half a carrot.
• To finish, instead of (or as well as) the lemon juice, sprinkle over any of these: Worcestershire sauce; sriracha hot sauce (you need a gentle touch with this!); light soy sauce; a little grated nutmeg.
• At the end stir in a handful of chopped fresh parsley and/or some grated cheese, perhaps cheddar or parmesan, even smallish chunks of blue cheese will do. 
• Have it as a side dish for grilled meat like sausages or chops.
• Pile it onto hot toast or muffins for a more substantial meal.
• Let it cool before stuffing the mixture into a tortilla wrap, perhaps with some chopped avocado and a little yoghurt.

Remember the idea is to get creative and have a bit of fun messing around, seeing what works and what you like most. The best thing about cooking is the journey!

 

Goo

I know a secret or two about goo. It won’t mind if I tell you.

Last post I said I was planning on a potato salad, Asian-style, which would include at least miso and soy. Well that came to fruition sooner than I had imagined, basically because on Sunday I was once again in the vicinity of the basement market and once again I bought a little rustling bag of potatoes.

I’d been thinking of pairing the spuds with some kind of thick-stemmed Chinese leafy green, carrots and spring onions. What I found on an adjacent stall to the potatoes was the bonus of some purple-sprouting broccoli – a rare thing here, especially given the season – so into another bag that went. The other ingredients followed.

Once home same process of par-boiling the spuds, with mint (just for the smell of it), and then dividing them up. This time I quartered them into smaller sizes because I felt the flavours I had in mind would lend themselves better to a lighter forkful.

Said flavours being a marinade of olive oil, sesame seeds, miso paste and dark soy sauce, all whipped up together into a kind of liquidy pulp and then smothered over the steaming potatoes. Into the oven on about 200 although I probably tinkered with the temperature a couple of times and left to cook until crispy, about 30 minutes.

Meanwhile in a lidded flat-bottomed pan I had the carrots – four smallish ones – and broccoli (a fistful) cut into rough strips with about half a glass of water. Brought that to the boil the covered it and left it to kind of steam/boil on a lowish heat until tender. Removed the veg and chopped up into chunks commensurate with the potato sizes. Finely chopped the spring onions, I used three or four.

Now, the goo. I hadn’t anticipated the miso-based marinade to form such a mouthwatering smear of crispy but chewy goo. Sure, I burnt it a little, as the picture demonstrates, but there was a delicious sweet saltiness to it, something almost indescribable, something….umami.

Bundled all together in a bowl with a dressing of oil, teaspoon of soy, good squeeze of orange and generous grating of ginger. Surprisingly hefty for a salad, and not really a summer dish, but I’ll be making those potatoes again.

Crispy spiced cauliflower and chick peas

I think this dish might become my fall-back failsafe lunch or supper. I adapted it from a Waitrose magazine recipe – one of my Christmas cuttings – which I’ve included in this post further down. As the whole thing is cooked on a single oven tray there is scope for additions, different textures and tastes.

To the original basic cauliflower and chickpea foundation I decided to include a few chunky croutons – to help soak up any last drops of the delicious spiced oil in the tray – as well as some halved cherry tomatoes for an extra burst of moisture and flavour. I didn’t have any ground coriander although I realise I could have thrown in some seeds for a last minute citrus hit

spot the difference…

. I used a squeeze of lemon instead. The following serving is for one person.

• about half a medium cauliflower, stalks roughly sliced
• three-quarters of a tin of chick peas (I’ll use the rest for something else, hummous perhaps)
• 1 tsp garam masala
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp turmeric
• two ends of a baguette, cut into chunks (any bread going stale will be perfect too)
• handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
• salt and pepper
• olive oil, a generous drizzle

Gather together the cauliflower and chick peas in a bowl, sprinkle the spices and pour over the oil. Massage everything together. Jumble the cauliflower and pulses on a roasting tray so you create a kind of vegetable forest with the odd small clearing. Put in a preheated oven on 200ºC and roast away for a good thirty minutes. There should be wonderful smells in the kitchen.

The chick peas and cauliflower should have crisped up nicely by now, should maybe even be catching slightly and show signs of charring. Now’s the time to add the bread and tomatoes, grind in some salt and pepper, once more mixing everything up, and cook for another five minutes. Add a little more oil if it looks too dry. The tomatoes will have softened slightly and the bread have a slight crunch to it.

As I said I just finished this with a squeeze of lemon although a coriander yoghurt, as per the original recipe, would also go down a treat.

Other things to potentially do:

• carrots or parsnips (or both) cut on the diagonal and roasted together with the cauliflower (or instead of it)
• sliced onions, added about halfway through the cooking
• broccoli florets instead of the cauliflower, briefly blanched in boiling water before putting in the oven then finished with toasted sesame seeds

 

spot the difference…

Chickpea and carrot tagine with homemade harissa

 

Some recipes for harissa call for peppers, others do not. I used one for mine simply because I had one. Other ingredients were:

• coriander seeds
• cumin seeds
• tomato puree (I used Hunt’s paste)
• two small red chillies
• bunch of coriander
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• two cloves of garlic

First I got the skin off the pepper by blackening it on the hob flame then flaking off the burnt bits and getting rid of the seeds and pith so that only the flesh remained. I dry-roasted the seeds over a short flame before pounding them up in a pestle and mortar. To a container I added the chillies, garlic and coriander, all chopped, as well as a good dollop of tomato puree, the pepper, seasoning and seed powder, before glugging in some olive oil. Then it was a simple matter of whizzing it all up with a stick blender until smooth, I had an empty and sterilised jam jar ready and after I had spooned in the harissa I topped it up with olive oil. This should be done after each use to exclude the air and will ensure the paste lasts at least a month in the fridge.

In many dishes meat is just a texture that can easily be replaced. Here I used carrot and sweet potato, keeping the slices large. Here’s the list:

• harissa paste (see above)
• two large carrots
• one sweet potato
• one can of chick peas, drained
• half an onion
• one small bunch of both coriander and parsley, chopped roughly
• two cloves of garlic
• one tsp of turmeric
• one tsp of smoked paprika
• honey
• bunch of greens – I used a type of Chinese spinach
• quarters of lemon to serve

Slice the onion and garlic and gently fry in olive oil until soft. Meanwhile chop the carrots and sweet potato on the diagonal so that you end up with thick wedges. Add the turmeric to the onions and let it amalgamate for ten seconds. Do the same with the smoked paprika. Pour in a tablespoonful of honey. Then stir in a generous spoonful of the harissa and stand back to appreciate the wonderful spiced aroma in the kitchen. Next add the carrots and sweet potato, making sure they are caked in the sauce, then pour in enough water to half cover everything. Cook with a lid on a gentle heat for about 15 minutes. Add the chick peas, a pinch of salt and a little more water if necessary, put the lid back on and cook for a further 10 minutes or so. Chop up the rinsed greens and stir into the stew. When they have softened put in the herbs, turn off the heat and let it sit for a minute. The result should be colourful and inviting.

Bread can be used to soak up the delicious liquor and a squeeze of lemon will lift the whole dish. Keep the harissa handy in case you want an extra heat hit.

Mushrooming

So far 2019 has been a flurry of house moving, getting back to work and dealing with both another gas leak and a bout of gastric flu. However I have managed to stay true to the promise I made at the end of last year, to seriously reduce the amount of animal protein in my diet for reasons of sustainability.

It hasn’t quite manifested as I’d thought. Originally I had envisioned a fairly strict regime, almost a timetable, with certain days and mealtimes being allotted for those ‘meat-treat’ moments. As it transpired the process has been a much more natural one. As my awareness of what I eat has slowly been nurtured throughout the past year, so I find myself acting on instinct. The whole concept of meat-eating now seems largely unattractive and although I am against the idea of extremes – ruling some things out completely is unhealthy for the psyche – I have encountered little or no opposition to what are becoming commonplace culinary habits.

You could say that my habits have mushroomed. As Rebecca Solnit writes in Hope In The Dark:

What we call mushrooms mycologists call the fruiting body of the larger, less visible fungus. Uprisings and revolutions are often considered to be spontaneous, but less visible long-term organizing and groundwork – or underground work – often laid the foundation. 

Solnit is making a point about societal and ideological changes in a global context, but the metaphor stands for personal lifestyle rejigging too. As I let the ideas I first read about over a year ago ferment inside me so their power grew to the point where, now, I am fully embracing a new way of cooking and eating.

Stands to reason I should include a mushroom recipe in my first post of the new year. Indeed ever since I returned to China I have had a craving for fungi-based food. I had the foresight to buy a few packets of dried wild mushrooms to bring back with me,  mixtures of chanterelles, ceps and horn of plenty, among others, and I’ve been scouring the mushroom varieties in the greengrocer’s – under new and friendlier ownership – finding selections of button, oyster and enoki.

Last night I followed an Ottolenghi recipe from his book Plenty. Before I came back I studiously went through all my mother’s cookbooks and magazines, taking photos of all the – mostly – vegan recipes I could find so I now have a ready collection to turn to. This mushroom ragout features both duck egg and sour cream, as well as butter at some point I think, but I omitted all these and to my mind didn’t make the dish worse for it.

A technique I learned was to cook the fresh mushrooms first in hot oil for a minute or two, not moving them around so that they browned on one side, before flipping them over to obtain an even golden-ness. The smell in the kitchen during this bit was heavenly and if I shut my eyes I could fancy that I was in fact frying a piece of steak. Once I’d removed the mushrooms I added half an onion, chopped, to soften with a bit more oil. I’d already put my dried fungi in to soak in warm water and I drained out the rich liquor to pour into the pan with a glug of red wine. I let the broth simmer with some thyme and a pinch of salt for about twenty-five minutes, after which I added all the mushrooms and reduced until I had a fantastic dark and glossy stew. I made croutons out of a baguette, toasting them in the oven with oil, salt and a garlic rub until crisp. Then it was a simple matter of stirring some chopped parsley into the stew and heaping it over the bread on the plate.

Absolutely fantastic this. I had thought to use polenta instead of the bread, cooking it then letting it cool before frying it up in wedges, but I couldn’t find any. It’s something I’d like to try in the future because I can see it working just as well.

 

 

 

Life in plastic

I had a hankering for a vegetarian curry in the evening and some spiced apple sauce to stir into my breakfast porridge. I got off at the last-but-one subway stop to my apartment so I could buy the supplies I required: a couple of apples; a bunch of coriander; a sweet potato and cauliflower.

The picture below shows the amount of plastic used to wrap all the produce. Especially unnecessary are those styrofoam nets around the apples. I know, I know, keeping things in plastic keeps them fresh for longer. And plastic producing companies argue that it lightens the load for transit purposes, thereby enabling more products on fewer journeys, saving the world in that way. And the irony is that plastic is a good product. Cheap, durable and versatile, it has myriad uses, from the dashboards of millions of cars to the containers we use for our lunch boxes.

We’ve seen it too as a massive moving carpet of filth across the Pacific Ocean, choking up the water and the life within. We’ve read about tiny particles of the stuff that contaminate our drinking water supplies meaning serious health risks. Plastic, we can confidently say now, is bad news.

We can make lifestyle choices. We can carry around our own shopping bags and re-usable water flasks, we can try to shop in places which don’t offer plastic bags or drink without using a plastic straw. We can compartmentalise our waste so that plastics are deposited into the appropriate boxes where available. This is all good. We feel better about it all. We feel less guilty.

What? Wait, guilty? Where did that come from? After all, it’s not our fault that a very large percent of products are made of some form of plastic. The stuff is everywhere. As consumers, ourselves a product of the times, we are trapped into buying it. Life in plastic. It’s fantastic.

Because we are beings blessed – or cursed – with a conscience, we feel it being pricked with every news article, shocking docu-reveal and plastered image. That conscience leads us to question our own activities, we secretly blame ourselves for the predicament. And so either we forget about it all – someone will work something out won’t they – or we start to change the way we live our lives.

And the plastics industry helps fuel this sense of individual responsibility. Plastic is petroleum-based and an essential by-product of the fossil fuels industries. In response to the growing environmental crisis, a by-product of mass disposable consumerism, littering initiatives were funded by this industry who, having shifted the onus onto the individual to do something about it, did not cease the production of the damaging materials.

Nowadays, gratifyingly, it is more than just individuals who are taking action. Bill McKibben writes recently about the divestment of funds from carbon-intensive companies, signifying a huge realisation from a vast variety of former investors including, amazingly, the Rockefeller family.

Like the Pacific trash vortex, however, the real issues lie even further underneath the surface. It is, as William Catton points out in his groundbreaking work, Overshoot:

‘…easy to succumb to the temptation to vilify particular human groups and individuals …”if only those_____ weren’t up to their nefarious business…then history could resume its march of millennial progress…'”

The journalist and activist George Monbiot, while directing a lot of his ire towards those ___________ in power, is even more concerned with the insidious all-pervading nature of consumerism.  Whatever we consume, he says, is already too much. The planet cannot give us any more than it has. Richard Feinberg, of the Post-Carbon Institute, echoes this by saying we need to become ‘conservers, rather than consumers.’  We use too much of everything. A simple life, with dependence on localised resources, seems to be one of the solutions.

It is with this in mind I have made at least one serious resolution. That is to cut down by at least 75% my weekly intake of animal protein: meat, fish, eggs, dairy. This means that during the course of seven days I am allowed a maximum of five meals including some or all of these ingredients. Monbiot calls for total global veganism, his principal beef with animal grazing, however I am not yet convinced such an extreme is necessary. A collective cutting-down will itself have positive effects, as outlined comprehensively here. All food for thought.

With this new dietary regime in place, I will endeavour to be a bit more regular with my posts as I am forced into further experimentation very much out of my comfort zone. Experimentation also involves what to do with food waste, stuff I’d normally discard. To this end I have already started using sweet potato skins and apple peel, crisping them up in the oven with oil and cinnamon, for moreish snacks. I am also trialling the utilisation of rotten satsumas as compost for my window-ledge plants.

Happy to say while this post was being composed I was also working on a rather delicious warm salad which fit my new profile.

The inspiration was a roasted chick-pea soup I had for lunch the other day in a cafe near work. Roasted chick-peas eh? I could see them being the main player in a kind of lightly-spiced melange. The one I have fashioned and devoured included these ingredients:

• chick peas, two tins, drained
• one carrot, diced and left raw,
• one cucumber, ditto carrot
• one tomato, ditto above
• one head of sweetcorn
• broccoli
• mixed nuts and seeds (cashew, pumpkin, sunflower)
• ras-el-hanout
• smoked paprika
• coriander, one bunch, chopped

I roasted the corn and the pulses at the same time, although the former I wrapped in foil with some thyme, garlic rub and oil. The chick-peas I laid out on the tray, glistening with salt and more olive oil. Temperature 200 degrees. It all took about twenty minutes and everything was ready together. As soon as the pulses came out of the oven I sprinkled them with the paprika. Meanwhile I blanched the broccoli until tender in boiling water, chopping it up into florets. After scraping the corn off the husk I mixed it all up, throwing in the nuts and seeds – lightly crushed and toasted in a pan – and the herb. The final addition was the ras-el-hanout mixed with a little oil. As is my wont, I have made enough for a couple of meals.