Winter Slaw (or the only way to eat red cabbage)

Red cabbage and sprouts. Two vegetables best eaten raw. 

After a childhood of sprout and red cabbage aversion (in which I am fully aware I am not alone) it was a revelation to discover that neither require nor, in my most humble opinion, benefit from cooking. 

Nine. That was the number of sprouts on my plate as a child. Nine. What sort of parents make their sprout-detesting child sit and look at nine whole sprouts? Mine. Although of course they'll laugh and dismiss the very idea if I ever mention it. I recall my attempts to disguise them from myself by smothering them in mashed swede (why sully a decent element of my roast dinner with the dreaded sprouts when I could combine two of the most revolting foods on my plate?). Luckily for me I had younger siblings who were rather partial to a sprout or two. So with a little distraction and the odd flick of a knife here and there, I managed to offload a few. The requirement to eat nine did eventually reduce to three. Three. Still three too many. 

The first time I willing ate, and (gasp) actually enjoyed, sprouts was with family in France last Easter. A simple salad of finely shaved raw sprouts, lemon, cheese and hazelnuts made by Lisa. I even had seconds. 

Red cabbage at its best

Red cabbage was no better. As a child I only ever knew it slowly braised with apple or pickled and served straight from the jar along side homemade shepherd's pie. (I'm guessing that's a northern thing). Pickled I could live with, crisp at least, even if the vinegar it was doused in was of the most mouth-stripping, astringent kind. But braised was up there with the worst of the over cooked sprouts. Slightly sweet, heady with clove and allspice. It has a bit of the marmites about it. Love it or hate it. 

A winter slaw is where red cabbage excels. I'm not overly fond of the traditional coleslaw. Vegetables which have spent too long languishing in a creamy, almost cloying, sauce made with excessive amounts of cheap mayonnaise. (Although that is not to say that a simple, well made celeriac rémoulade would be banished from my plate. An entirely different beast. Crisp celeriac given the briefest of introductions to lemon juice, Dijon mustard, good mayonnaise and a little natural yogurt. Perhaps tinged pink with grated beetroot stirred through moments before serving). 

When a red cabbage finds its way into my fridge it is for the sole purpose of making a salad. A crisp, colourful, wintery salad. Or three or four. It is a bountiful vegetable which keeps on giving, staying fresh long after the parsley has wilted, making this salad a great fridge foraged lunch.

You don't have to use the same ingredients every time, it really will depend on what is lurking in your fridge, but the crisper and more robust the better. Celeriac, beetroot, cabbage, kohlrabi… 

Winter Slaw

Ingredients

¼ tsp salt

juice ½ lemon

2 tbsp light extra virgin olive oil

1 carrot, peeled

¼ medium red cabbage

½ apple, core removed

½ pomegranate

2 or 3 mejool dates

small handful of flat leaf parsley leaves

Method

Begin by making the dressing. Put the salt and lemon juice into a medium sized bowl and whisk with a fork. Add the olive oil and whisk until combined.

You can use a mandolin to prepare the carrot, red cabbage and apple, or (like me) a chopping board and a big sharp knife. Julienne the carrot and finely slice the red cabbage. Add them to the dressing and stir well to combine.

Finely slice the apple (I like to leave the skin on) and add to the carrot and red cabbage before it has chance to start turning brown.

Remove and discard the stones from the dates and finely chop the dates. Remove the seeds from the pomegranate (I do this by holding the half a pomegranate over a bowl and bashing the skin side with a wooden spoon or rolling pin).

Add the dates, pomegranate seeds and flat leaf parsley to the slaw, stir and serve immediately. 

Winter Slaw

Spelt, Sprouted Bean & Tomato Salad

The glorious Isle of Wight tomatoes which have brightened my days all summer are still tasting pretty good, but my mind has already begun to wander to the the delights of autumn.  My favourite season, with its orange tones, majestic squash and gutsy fruit puddings.  But before I bid the summer farewell, there is that short period where my light lunchtime salads slowly become a little more robust and certain ingredients start to reappear like long lost friends.

I had dug out a box of Sharpham Park pearled spelt last week when the weather was damp and dismal with thoughts of a spelt risotto with squash, chestnuts, spinach and goat's cheese, but the summer has decided to grace us with one last hurrah.  So one short fridge forage later, the risotto was ditched in favour of a hearty salad.

The tahini gives the dressing a lovely creamy texture.  Go easy on the garlic - it really does only need one small clove or half a large clove. 

Ingredients

200g pearled spelt

125g sprouted beans

4 or 5 medium tomatoes

8 radishes

a small bunch flat leaf parsley

For the dressing:

1/2 tsp Maldon sea salt, ground

1 small clove garlic, crushed

1 tbsp light tahini

1 & 1/2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

3 tbsp olive oil

Method

Cook the pearled spelt according the the packet instructions.  I usually wash mine well, put in a small pan, add 300ml water, put the lid on the pan and bring to the boil, then reduce the heat to the lowest setting and cook for 20 minutes or until tender.  If there is any moisture left, I remove the lid and stir over a low heat for a minute or two.  Spread out on a plate to cool.

In a medium sized bowl mix the ingredients for the dressing until emulsified (one of those little 'wonder whisks' does this job brilliantly).

Cut each of the tomatoes into quarters and chop or slice the radishes.  Roughly chop the parsley - leaves and stalks.

Add the spelt, sprouted beans and chopped parsley to the dressing and mix well.  Then add the tomatoes and radishes, stir lightly and serve.

Serves 4 for a light lunch.

Spicy Prawn Noodle Soup

Who knew there are calories in ground cumin?

I watched Michael Mosley's Horizon documentary, Eat, Fast and Live Longer, on BBC2 last year with interest.  Michael Mosley set himself the challenge to live longer, stay younger and lose weight. Goals that many of us can identify with.  His research concluded that intermittent fasting could help achieve those goals and settled upon the 5:2 way of eating.  That is 5 days of normal eating and 2 days of fasting (when you limit the calories you eat to 500 calories for women or 600 calories for men) each week.  I'm no scientist, but the potential (not yet proven in humans) health benefits seem to make sense and, for that reason, I decided I was willing to take a punt and give it a go for a little while.

I have never counted calories before in my life.  A little naive maybe, but I had no idea that foods like cucumbers actually contained much in the way of calories. Aren't cucumbers about 90% water?  Don't get me wrong, it's not that I've never had to reign it in to lose the pounds that have crept on, but I've done that by reducing portion sizes, cutting out snacks, limiting my monstrous cheese intake and laying off the booze (...well, just a little).  Never has the way I've eaten been so scientific.  And believe me, for someone who abhors maths, all the calculating and counting had my head in a bit of a spin at the beginning.

I love food. I love cooking. I love creating new recipes. So I saw this as a challenge. Making nutritious food that is both delicious and low in calories.  After eating the 5:2 way on and off since Christmas (with a big break thanks to pneumonia) I've found that the best way of approaching fast days (for me) is to abstain from food all day and then have a decent sized main meal in the evening, which means that sometimes I can even have carbs.

This is one of the tastiest, most satisfying fast day dinners I've had so far.  A huge bowl of comforting, spicy soup.

Serves: 1

Prep time: 15 minutes (excluding making the stock)

Cook time: 10 minutes

Calories per portion (approx): 360

Ingredients

100g king prawns (peeled weight - approx 4 large unpeeled prawns), peeled & deveined

100g pak choi, sliced

50g mange tout

50g beansprouts

30g oyster mushrooms, sliced

2 spring onions, sliced

1-2 bird's eye chillies, finely sliced

2-3cm piece fresh ginger, finely sliced

300ml good vegetarian stock (see more below)

1/2 tsp brown miso paste

1 tsp fish sauce (or soy sauce)

fresh coriander

50g glass noodles (cooked according to packet instructions)

Method

Put the stock in a pan with the miso paste and fish sauce and heat through.  Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary.

Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil.  Blanch the pak choi, mange tout and oyster mushrooms for 1-2 minutes, remove from the water and set aside.  Then cook the prawns in the same water until pink and cooked through and set aside (again 1-2 minutes depending on the size of your prawns).

Put the glass noodles, vegetables, prawns, spring onions, chillies and ginger in a big bowl and pour over the stock.  Add some roughly chopped coriander to serve.

Good vegetarian stock:

I use this recipe from Kellie's blog Food to Glow to make vast quantities of vegetarian stock which I then freeze in 1 person portions so that I have some to hand whenever I fancy noodle soup.  I then add in whatever other flavours  and seasoning I want before I use it.