Superfast superfood supper

Some times I look in the fridge and think, "Oh, there's nothing for dinner".  At first glance that may have been how the fridge seemed tonight but when I thought about it I realised there was any number of delicious and nutritious combinations just waiting to be created.

I had my usual trusty stock of humus, various fresh veggies, sweet potatoes and salady bits.

So, I did the following:

Slice 1 red pepper
cook 1 sweet potato
Cut 1 avocado in half
chop up 2 carrots in the hand blender
lightly saute some kale with garlic
open a jar of almonds!
Dolloped on some humus.
Drizzled over some tamari sauce (like soy but wheat free and tastier)

Everything was raw bar the sweet potato and the kale making it super easy.  The sweet potato I pricked, wrapped in kitchen roll and whacked it in the microwave for 6 minutes.  The Kale took less time in a big saute pan.

Then all I had to do was divide it all between 2 plates and we were ready to go.

It was really lovely and very satisfying thanks to all the different textures and colours.  Filling but light and guilt free.

It was a good reminder that good food doesn't have to be created from a 'recipe' as such, or combined together to make it into something else.  Sometimes the raw (and literally raw in some cases) ingredients do as good a, or a better, job just as they are on the plate.

Kale convert

There are very few foods that I do not like.  But when I don't like a food, I really, properly do not like it. At all.

I can count on one hand the foods that fall into this category (that I know of so far):

- Parsley
- Anchovies
- Kale
- Crab
- Whitebait
- Sardines
(there's a small evil fishy theme here)
- and weirdly, cream cakes (not strictly 'food' as such in the cleanest terms but can be eaten nonethless!) or anything involving starchy white things alongside sweet red things, ergo jam sandwiches.  I know, I did say it was weird but I can handle not liking this manky stuff. It just gives me an instant headache and makes me go all woozy and whatnot.

I've also just noticed that either I can't count or I have a deformed hand with rather more fingers than it should have.

The point is, I like most things apart from the above.

Or so I thought.

Turns out my taste buds, my attitude, my sense of adventure or my willingness to challenge convention and the stories I've made about myself based on previous experience, has changed.

I now regularly use parsley in dishes, in fact it's now my herb of choice for freshening things up.  I've eaten crab twice in the last week...I just fancied it, and it didn't kill me (although the smell nearly knocked Alex out, he's not budging on his absolute distaste for any form of seafood).

And I now absolutely love, adore and worship the ground kale, um, grows in.  For something that looks just so green and vegetabley, it's so so tasty. It has its own natural saltiness somehow. And it is unbelievably and ridiculously good for you in so many reasons it's almost impossible to list them. It's basically a very super, superfood.

I think the thing with kale, and parsley actually, and broccoli before them, is that my opinion of them had been formed by 1970s and 1980s style cooking of them - ie boil them to within an inch of their life (and beyond).

I remember a particularly harrowing kale experience where a giant, curly, spiky lump of the stuff got stuck in my throat and threatened to kill me. Ish.  It wasn't nice anyway and I've never forgiven it. Until now, armed with the proper knowledge and skills as to how to actually cook and use it properly.

Tonight's dinner was a case in point.

I'd saved a recipe for warm quinoa and kale salad to my pinterest board a while ago from MindBodyGreen that I wanted to try and having been out all day and eaten a fairly large lunch quite late on, I realised I had all the ingredients so decided to give it a go.

The full recipe is here and to avoid any kind of copyright I won't re-post.

I fully intended to stick to the recipe religiously for once but alas, my tahini had seen better days (mostly prehistoric days judging by the use by date and the state of it) so I adapted a little and used some houmous I had in the fridge in the dressing instead.  Not ideal as it was shop bought rather than home made but life is too short sometimes...anyway I couldn't make my own due to aforementioned tahini sitch.

Another thing that appealed about this salad was the quinoa, of which I am a huge fan.  For any quinoa virgins, it's keen-wa, not kwinowa, and is a sort of peruvian protein packed grain thing that is super easy to cook, yummy to eat and general all round fab and versatile meal base.  It's also gluten free and doesn't seem to bloat me out like couscous etc.

If you're interested, check out my Quinoa Queen post for some tips on cooking the perfect quinoa.

So, the verdict.  It was delicious.  It really packed a punch on the flavour side of things. The houmous and tamari (a kind of wheat free soy sauce) dressing was really rich, musky and tangy, it reminded me a little of miso. The kale had a lovely nutty flavour from the coconut oil and the avocado on top added a light freshness to it all.  I was careful to only cook the kale until it was wilted to retain the crispness and bright green-ness of it which also helped.  The recipe said to season with salt and pepper but I didn't bother as I didn't think it needed it at all.

So, we've decided to add this to our staples and might experiment with a few different varieties or toppings.

Alex's inspiration

Every now and then Alex goes all culinary creative.  He'll suddenly get a craving for a food or mixture of foods and will talk me through the sort of dish he envisages them forming together.  My challenge is to take his musings and turn them into an actual dish.  Sometimes what he invents in his own head sounds amazing, other times I adapt here and there.

Tonight's effort was courtesy of one of said moments.  The other day Alex said:

" Tomorrow night love, is it alright if we have some butter beans, maybe warmed through with some garlic and olive oil, and some herbs of some description, with some roasted tomatoes and asparagus with maybe some avocado on the side or something?"  He gets all Italian chef with his hands when he talks this through as well.

I thought that sounded really rather nice, minus the avocado on the side thing, and so that is what I created tonight.

Firstly I chose baby tomatoes on the vine for the super sweet tastiness and I roasted them on a bed of chopped up fennel (because it is ridiculously good for you and it was £1 for a giant bag full at the market), crushed garlic and torn basil, drizzled with olive oil, black pepper and Maldon salt (obvs). 

While all that was doing I lightly steamed some baby asparagus.

For the butter beans I used coconut oil (SO nice and excellently healthy alternative to other fats) and very lightly fried a load more garlic in that before adding the beans to just heat through - I wanted the garlic to retain it's tang and the beans to retain their bite rather than go mushy.



Then I added the juice of half a lemon and a load of chopped up fresh parsley (having determined that as the best herb to use here, I think because it's very fresh and peppery so would counteract the soft buttery beans) and seasoned it too.

Then I just lobbed it all on a plate really.

This time, Alex done good. Very good.  We both made lots of "mmmm" type noises during consumption.

Food like this just makes me SO happy.  A. because nutritionally these sorts of natural whole foods just do, fact. B. because we invented this all by ourselves and worked together C. because it tasted super yum and D. it's all just so darn satisfying...from an appetite and an accomplishment sort of point of view.

It's this making stuff up using lovely ingredients type of cooking (and eating!) I really love.