Butter Bean Korma Curry

1 tbsp oil
1 lg onion, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp garam masala
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chilli powder
¼ tsp ground turmeric
¼ cup chopped fresh corriander
400g coconut cream
500g button mushrooms (halved)
100g ground almonds
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 x 300g cans butter beans (drained)
1 red capsicum, sliced
2 tsp lemon juice

METHOD
Heat the oil in a large pan and fry the onion and garlic until golden. Add the ground spices; cook for 1-2 min, or until fragrant. Add the coconut cream and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and add the mushrooms, ground almonds, tomato paste and 1 cup (250ml) water. Cover and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Add the beans and capsicum and cook for 5 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened. Stir in the lemon juice and coriander. Serve with steamed rice and plain yoghurt.

Yummy Food!

Hi guys
Yummy food from last week guys - thanks.. Heres some recepies that I have made the last few times. I have loved being involved with the food group. I think that my confidence in my cooking has improved, plus I really enjoy the get togethers! - Lisa

North African Couscous

2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 cup chopped red pepper
½ cup chopped spring onions
2 garlic cloves chopped
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp turmeric
2 pinches of cayenne
2 cups hot vegetable stock or hot water
400 grams plain or flavoured tofu cut into cubes
¾ cup fresh or frozen green peas
1 cup quick cooking couscous
1 tbsp margarine or butter
Salt and pepper to taste
Coarsely chopped toasted almonds
Chopped fresh parsley
Lemon wedges

Method
Heat the oil in a big saucepan. Add the peppers, spring onions, garlic, coriander, turmeric and cayenne and sauté on medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the stock or water. Add the tofu and cook for another 3 – 4 minutes until the tofu is hot. Stir in peas and cook for another minute. Mix in the couscous and butter. Cover, remove from the heat and let stand for 5 minutes.
Uncover the pan and using a fork, stir thoroughly to fluff up the couscous and break up any lumps. Add salt and pepper to taste. Serve on a platter, topped with toasted almonds, parsley and lemon wedges.

This dish is great to eat hot and cold and is very quick and easy to make (once you have chopped everything!). Its a good one to take to pot luck dinners - Lisa

Vegetable Curry

2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 cups vegetable stock
2 brown onions
1½ cups water
2 cloves garlic
¼ cup tomato paste
2 tsp cumin
½ cup red or brown lentils
2 tsp curry powder
1 cup lite coconut cream
2 tomatoes
Handful fresh coriander,
Vegetables of your choice chopped eg sweet potato, cauliflower,
zucchini, carrots, potato

Method
Heat oil in large saucepan, gently cook onion garlic, cumin and curry powder until onion is soft. Add vegetables (except zucchini) tomatoes, tomato paste, vegetable stock, water and lentils.
Simmer covered for 15 mins, add zucchini and simmer for another 10 mins or until vegetables are tender. Stir in coriander and serve. - Lisa

Chickpea Curry

2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 onion finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed peeled,
2 tsp grated ginger
1 tsp turmeric
3 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground cumin
*optional: 1 tsp chilli powder*
400g can crushed tomatoes
1 onion, finely chopped
500g kumara (sweet potato) cut into 2cm pieces
1½ cups vegetable stock
400g can chickpeas drained and rinsed
1 bunch English spinach (washed & chopped)

Method
Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add onion. Cook, stirring, for 3 minutes. Add garlic, ginger, turmeric, coriander, cumin and chilli. Cook, stirring, for 1 minute.
Add tomatoes, kumara and stock to saucepan. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat to medium-low. Partially cover. Cook for 25 minutes, or until kumara is tender.
Stir chickpeas into curry. Cook for 5 minutes. Add spinach and cook for 1 minute, or until wilted. Serve with rice or naan bread. (Feel free to improvise with other vegetables.) - Serves 4

This one is so yummy, theres something very satisfying about measuring and adding the individual spices to the food. I always fold the spinach in at the last moment so it doesnt wilt too much. Try it with garlic nan bread. Its the perfect complement. Lisa

Vegetarian Lasagne

My days as a teenager working in a lunch bar making lasagne

of the meat variety for the bain marie came in handy when I remembered the first couple of hours of the day were spent doing

"prep". So "prep" I did. 4-5 medium onions chopped, 5 cloves garlic crushed- fry in olive oil (bottom left). Trees- aka to those over 4ft broccoli 2 heads, 5 carrots diced little (to be a child friendly vege sauce), One small butternut pumpkin cubed, One zucchini diced. One bunch of spinach washed and roughly chopped

Mix the fried onion and garlic with a catering sized can tomatoes (2.5kg) and catering sized can kidney beans (2kg). Add about 3 Tbsp tomato paste and carrot (I work on a principle of adding the things that need the most cooking first. Meanwhile roast the pumpkin

Its the little details that count. The roasted pumpkin tastes sweeter and has a soft yummy texture

Add broccoli and zucchini half way through the cooking process and the spinach at the end. It will cook in the oven when you layer the lasagne. Add Italian herbs (fresh if possible) and salt and pepper to taste

I am not much of a recipe person and telling you how I cooked the cheese sauce is a bit vague. A block of butter about 1 cup of corn flour (very rough estimate) mix together to make a paste, Add milk (about 1.5L-2L) and stir over low heat. Don't do anything else, make sure the baby's not due a breast feed(Or you have a wonderfully supporting husband who will take over gentle stirring and take your OCD directions...Keep stirring, get your spoon into the corners of the pan (do round pots have corners??). Cheese sauce requires all of your attention the whole time you're making it. When it thickens up add about 700g Cheese and fold in

Layer the vege sauce on the base of your chosen vessel

Place pasta on. It doesn't need to be pretty, I am not so good at cleanly breaking it but it all comes together well in the oven

Layers go vege sauce-pasta-vege sauce (and a drizzle of cheese sauce if you have enough)- pasta vege sauce- pasta then cheese sauce. 3 of my 4 lasagnes were missing the last layer of vege sauce and pasta once I realised i didn't have enough, On reflection I should have made 3 taller lasagnes but cest la vie

Bake for about 25 mins then take out the lasagne adding a layer of grated cheese, pepitas and paprika. These are the secret ingredients to give you the lovely crunchy homebaked look

Bake for another 25 minutes or so until delicious looking. The other key to lasagne is to cook it well before you need to eat or cut it. Rest for at least 4 hours otherwise it will all fall apart when you cut it. Overnight is better.

ENJOY

Lessons- You need almost triple the vege sauce to cheese sauce ratio. I was shocked when I realised my vege sauce wasn;t going to make it. In future i would use only one catering can of tomato, 2 of kidney beans which didn't seem to feature, and a bit more pumpkin. Maybe no trees if you have fussy kids. They don't hide well.

Any other suggestions?

Spicy Potato and Lentil Pie

This is the second time I have posted this, Blogger must have really approved of my pie and eaten it! Anyway, Second time lucky!

I made my first ever pie for this weekends for food group/

Pastry from scratch....for the first time ever.

The ingredients are (per pie)

Pastry

1 cup wholemeal flour

1 cup rolled oats

125g Butter

salt

approx 1/2 cup water

Filling

1-2 onions

2 cloves garlic

3-4 potatoes

1-2 sweet potatoes

150g (ish) green lentils

vege stock

2tsp tumeric

2tsp cumin

2tsp garam masala

1 can tomoatoes

1tbsp tomato paste

And here's how it all went

Entertaining the 4month old who unexpectedly woke up in

filling making, in the toddlers high chair, with the forbidden apple

Fry onion, garlic and spices

chop potatoes and cover with vege stock (in future I would probably cut them slightly smaller, This is a 11L pot with 4 x the recipe

Add tomatoes and tomato paste, boil for 10-15 mins

Add onions and spices

Boil until the potatoes are slightly softening. Add lentils and simmer(I left the mixture for 6 hours to cool and the lentils soak up all the liquid)

Then it looked like this

We got making the pastry

Rub the butter into the flour, oats and salt

Add water as required to make a dough and rest for at least 30 mins

Roll out the pastry

Remember- this is my first pastry, first rolling experience...teach yourself cooking... Note the rustic shapes!

Add cooled filling

Top, squish the sides together, I used a fork to make that 'pretty-ish' pattern around the sides. And personalisation, this is a V for Village, the rest had smily faces :)

Bake for 50 mins on 180-200C (The one that has already been tasted was cooked for the whole time, the others taken out with 10 mins left so people can heat them in the oven for 20 or so mins and brown them off.

ENJOY!
All comments, suggestions etc welcome. Its all a fun learning experience

Lessons in cooking for the Village

Starting this group I had many more questions than answers...

Would anyone be interested? Seems so...a lovely beginning with a good amount, though not too overwhelming,of interest.

How much food will I need to cook? Still learning on this one.

Then there were lots about the tools. After 3 weeks I am starting to learn more about this and the photo is from a shopping trip to FAL- a bulk warehouse, with some of my new tools of the trade.

Here are a few things we're working out..

What will be the best way to store food? So far we've been using large takeaway containers, cooking two for each family. For our little family that is enough for two nights. If the meal was soup or had pasta/rice/cous cous included we have made 3. The thing I noticed last week was a lunch box style container wasn't quite right for soup, so on a recent trip to the bulk supermarket we invested in 50 round containers which hold 750mL. I think they'll work much better, and will be slightly bigger which is also good as the 3 lunch boxes of soup weren't quite enough for two nights.

I've also invested in different types of baking trays, trying to work out the best, most cost effective way to make lots of lasagne, potato and lentil bake and canelloni etc. I have bought a roasting dish to see if that works as well as some pyrex dishes of different sizes

What about pies? I'd love to cook pies... the pie dishes are often very shallow. I have got two metal pie dishes and 3 cake tins (a bit deeper) and might experiment a little with a pumpkin crusted mushroom pie in coming weeks, Just need to find out where to buy lots of mushrooms.

Then i'll just give them in the dishes and get them back next time, pies wouldn't look as appetising all chopped up in plastic containers I figure.

The other goodies in the pic, some new, some old, are 10kg rice, 4kg lasagne sheets, catering sized cans (2.5kg) of chick peas, tomatoes and kidney beans. a 15L pot, The various cookbooks that I take inspiration from. The best one Wild Morsels, a self published vegan cookbook. Recently picked up by a publisher and renamed Wild Vegan, available at all good book shops.

So, I look forward to more bulk shopping, more discoveries and more cooking. Lasagne next week I think!

What is Village Food?

In this crazy, busy world we live, its becoming increasingly hard to fulfill our roles as parents, children, employees, employers, friends, beings! There is a group in Perth called It takes a Village, which is trying to rebuild the village it takes to raise a child.

This blog is a group in the village who cook big meals every fortnight, meet and give each other nutritious, healthy food to stock the fridge/freezer. It saves money (buying and cooking in bulk and buying less takeaways), saves time (one big cook up and you have one weeks worth of food complete with variety), saves the environment-(less packaging) and creates friendships. The company and conversation on food swap day is a wonderful added bonus.

This blog will be where we keep recipes, discuss if they worked well or anything we learnt in the cooking process and organise dates, times and venues for food swaps.

If you want any more information e-mail Bek bekleds@yahoo.com.au

For more information on It Takes a Village contact ittakesavillage@optusnet.com.au