True Food Co-op: healthy salad recipes - houmous

This morning I took over as tutor for the Reading True Food Co-op's healthy cooking course ... the members of my class are all young mums with babies in the creche round the corner, and toddlers at playgroup down the road. We made salads: houmous, Waldorf salad, tuna and white bean salad, and a couscous salad. Pretty standard stuff, you might think - I certainly did until mid-morning when I discovered that none of my students had ever heard of houmous, let alone tasted it, and three of them had never tasted celery before. The great thing was that they all liked both.

Here's the houmous recipe we used - it's got less tahini than my usual mix, so it's a good one to start with.

Houmous

400g can chickpeas
3 cloves garlic
2 tbsp tahini paste
3 tbsp olive oil
1 lemon
2 tbsp water

Squeeze the juice (pick out the pips). Put everything together in a processor and blend until smooth.

We garnished ours with a little paprika, as thinking about presentation is a feature of the course.


The photograph shows the view from my kitchen window when I came downstairs and drew the curtains open this morning.

Another pea puree

Yesterday was a day from culinary hell. At breakfast, 14 oarsmen said they would like supper. In the end, only eight of them turned up for the two sittings (some of them had pretty solid excuses, but one or two of them were old enough to have known better). There were also three extra family members at the last minute for one sitting, and later, much much later, I realised that the father of one of the Americans hadn't eaten, so I gave him some of the huge pile of leftovers.

Luckily it was stew, so that went into the freezer. The specially-cooked vegetarian number looked pretty filthy this morning on its dried-out plate. And then there were the peas.

I hate waste. I hate throwing food away. So the panful of peas sitting on the worktop (no room in the fridge) reproached me this morning. Then I remembered the lovely green pea paste we ate at Matilda's christening. Here's my latest version - almost a pesto, utterly delicious in its sweetness (I've been eating it for breakfast, and, if I'm not careful, I won't be able to stop!).

Another pea puree

440g cooked peas
a handful of basil leaves
a lump of parmesan, cut into chunky slices (if you have a Magimix, there really is no need to grate the cheese first - this is a really useful thing for cooks-in-a-hurry to know)
2 tablespoons pine nuts
2 tablespoons 0% Greek yoghurt
4 tablespoons olive oil
one fat clove of garlic, peeled and sliced

Whizz this in the Magimix until it's smoothish, and has stopped making that noise that tells you there are still a few big lumps in there.

Serve on toast or crostini.

Usually in this house the leftover peas get put into a green salad, where they are a very popular addition. Maybe not any more ...

Pea puree

My sister-in-law Kirsty and her family produced a delicious lunch on Sunday for Matilda's christening: a summer's cold buffet for a really hot spring day - cold salmon, ham, a delicious lentil salad, pink fir apples with chopped herbs. The bruschetta were particularly fine, striking and very pretty as you can see, with their strongly contrasting colours. The black ones were an olive tapenade, which you can easily buy in a jar in most supermarkets. The green ones were very moreish - peas, with garlic and butter.

Here's the recipe for my version:

Boil a couple of handfuls of frozen peas with one fat clove of garlic (peeled). When the peas are tender, drain them, and whizz to a puree (a hand blender is ideal for the small quantities here, but if you were making enough for a crowd, then the liquidiser would be better). Mix in one tablespoon of 0% Greek yoghurt, and serve on little toasts. You could also flavour this with mint, in which case, put one or two raw leaves into the whizzer.

Kirsty often makes the lentil salad, and it's wonderful: puy lentils, mixed through with a few sun-dried tomatoes which have been soaked in olive oil, and some little torn pieces of ricotta. This is all dressed in a vinaigrette, with chopped herbs strewn over the top. It would make a good light lunch all by itself.

Fantastic puddings, especially Emily's richly chocolate-y brownies, at least, those few not stolen by Coco, the black not-quite labrador (but labrador enough to be a well known food thief!).

My first photograph shows us walking through the field to the church, little Cecily running to catch up. The second shows Matilda with her parents Susie and Nat, and the vicar, my newly-discovered cousin Robin Ewbank.

Hearty oatcakes with smoked trout pate

Finger food. I'm well out of my comfort zone here ... cooking for my family and plonking it down on the table, yes; producing something wholesome-but-pretty-much-undecorated for 100 at a party, yes (although I have to sit down for a week afterwards!) .. but making it all look lovely - tricky. In this house, finger food means a plate of smoked salmon on brown bread squares (use fromage frais flavoured with lemon zest or horseradish instead of butter - MUCH nicer, much healthier). But the idea of The Heart of the Matter was that we all pool our ideas for healthy heart food so that we would all have a bank of new ideas to call on. This morning I'm climbing the learning curve as fast as I can!

Finger food is an important one to crack, because most of it is pretty unhealthy - salted peanuts, crisps cooked in who-knows-what?, little bits of nonsense on pastry, sausages on sticks. Years ago I went to an elegant party where delicious finger food was handed round - crudites, little bites of fish, oysters - and it was all so elegantly served that it was only on the way home that I realised my hostess was almost certainly on a diet. So, yes, I know that presentation is all-important here, and I'm going to do my best (!).

I've racked my brains for something I could do which I haven't already written about, and which I would actually want to do again. And for something which I could make look nice. I'm afraid I've gone with Ilva's idea for heart-shaped biscuits, because, as I've already said, presentation isn't my forte, so all ideas are gratefully received - thanks Ilva!










My biscuits are oatcakes. I've chosen them because one of the biggest surprises of our new diet was discovering that bought oatcakes are full of saturated fat, as they are nearly always made with lard. It seems such a pity, since oats are a terrific food in any healthy diet. It reinforces the point that reading the labels is hugely important when you're trying to eat a healthy diet. So I was pleased to find that they're very quick & easy to make, and making them with oil doesn't affect the taste. I suppose that they were originally made with lard because that was what was to hand; now, it's just cheap fat for the food industry.

Today's topping is a basic one: smoked trout pate. There are two more to follow before the deadline for Heart of the Matter expires on Wednesday. I'm aiming for something a little more sophisticated then, but it's also important to have something quick and easy up your sleeve for parties, the moment when my kitchen is most likely to go into meltdown!


Oatcakes - enough for 20 hearts
175g medium oatmeal (NOT rolled oats)
a pinch of bicarb
two pinches of salt
1 tbsp oil
4 tbsp water

Stir the salt and bicarb into the oats, then add the oil and water. Mix to a moist dough, and turn out onto a work surface strewn with oatmeal. Knead to a smooth ball. In practice, this means adding more oatmeal until the dough is quite dry. Roll it out as thinly as you can, and then cut out your shapes (the traditional shape is a circle cut into eight sections called farls). Place on a greased baking sheet sprinkled with oatmeal. Bake in a low oven (120-150C) for about an hour. Cool on the sheet.


Fish pate

This is easy and delicious. I am not going to give you exact quantities, because you do it by eye, and you make however much you need. I like this kind of cooking. Take roughly equal quantities of 0% fat Greek yoghurt (or 0% fromage frais) and smoked trout (or any other cold smoked fish ... mackerel, cooked kipper, salmon, etc etc), and mash with a fork in a small bowl. Add lemon zest and pepper to taste (you won't need salt). Top your oatcakes with the mixture, and decorate with more lemon zest and some finely chopped chives. Squeeze lemon juice over them before serving. (I expect you already know that you shouldn't assemble these too far in advance, because the crisp oatcakes will go soggy.)

Great at parties, and delicious at breakfast, too!










More toppings tomorrow.

Artichoke dip

I'm always on the lookout for quick and delicious things to eat instead of cheese. After Lucius had his heart attack, we were told to limit saturated fats, particularly in dairy foods. Cheese no more than twice a week, and never eat a piece bigger than a matchbox. I thought it would be difficult, I thought it would be depressing. Actually, it's been neither. These days I probably eat cheese once a fortnight at most, and then I make sure it's something really good. But that still leaves a number of meals when we would have been eating cheese, especially if it's soup, which it often is on a Sunday evening, or a Saturday lunchtime.

I'm not sure where the idea for this came from. Drain a jar of artichoke hearts. Whizz together with an equal quantity (by eye) of fat-free cottage cheese. At this point I added black pepper and lemon juice. It was good, but a little overwhelmed by the lemon juice. Next time, I think I'd add a quick grating of lemon zest instead. Good on toast and with crackers. Keeps well in the fridge.