weekly_food_challenge | Entries tagged with garlic

Mood: relaxed

Traditionally, bigilla is made with dried tic beans. Tic beans are a smaller, darker relative of broad beans, but in this country they seem to be mostly used in animal feed. Like much Maltese cookery, recipes will vary a lot according to family tradition amongst other things. I based my recipe on one from the Food & Cookery of Malta - my go to cookbook when cooking any new-to-me Maltese recipes. However, there are also some recipes on the internet here, here and here. Most recipes seem to suggest adding pretty much all the ingredients raw (aside from the beans), but I decided to cook my garlic and chilli a little before adding to the beans.

I used tinned broad beans rather than dried, because my local supermarket did not have any dried ones. Plus I didn't have to bother soaking them or cooking them for too long.

This recipe makes enough for 4 - 6 people as a starter/snack.

Ingredients
1 1/2 tbsp Olive oil
1 mild red chilli, seeds removed and finely chopped
4 large cloves of garlic, minced using a garlic press or finely chopped
2 x 300g tins broad beans, drained and rinsed
Juice of one lemon or 2 tbsps bottled lemon juice
Salt (to taste)
Handful of fresh herbs, finely chopped (I used parsley and mint)

Method
Heat a small amount of olive oil in a pan and very gently fry the chilli and garlic, stirring often, for about 5-10 minutes until soft. Take off the heat once done, but leave in the pan. Meanwhile cook the tinned beans in some water for a few minutes (technically you don't really need to do this bit, as the beans are already cooked, but I decided to heat mine as I thought it might make them easier to mash, plus you can serve this dish warm or cold). Once the beans have cooked for a few minutes, drain and add to the pan with the chilli and garlic. Add the lemon juice, the rest of the olive oil and the salt. Using a fork or a potato masher, roughly mash the bean mixture. Finally, add the mixed herbs and stir it all together.

Serve with toasted bread or crackers. Or for a proper authentic Maltese experience serve with galletti.

norfolkian

Mood: creative

I costed this dish at 99p for the whole thing (using J*mie Ol*ver maths) and it can serve 3 - 4 people.

Ingredients
1 tsp oil - 1p (I checked how much Jack Monroe costs oil on her recipes on her blog, as I couldn't work this out...)
1 small onion, diced - 5p (60p/kg at Sainsbury's)
1 stick celery, finely diced/sliced - 10p (60p/450g at Sainsbury's)
2 cloves garlic, crushed or finely chopped - 2p (35p for two bulbs Sainsbury's basics range)
1 tsp dried mixed herbs - 1p (£2.50/85g at Sainsbury's)
1 400g can chopped tomatoes - 30p (Sainsbury's basics)
700ml water (arguably free)
1 vegetable stock cube - 5p (45p for a pack of 10 - Sainsbury's own brand)
100g dried spaghetti, broken up into small lengths - 5p (20p/500g Sainsbury's basics)
1 300g can mixed vegetables, drained - 40p (Sainsbury's)
Salt and pepper to taste

Method
Heat the oil over a low/medium heat and add the onion and celery. Cook gently, stirring, for 10 - 15 minutes until softened. Add the garlic and herbs and cook for two more minutes, stirring. Pour in the tomatoes and water and bring to the boil. Crumble the stock cube into the pan, stir well to dissolve, and turn down to a simmer. Cover and simmer for 10 - 15 minutes. Uncover, add the spaghetti and simmer uncovered for about 10 minutes. Add the mixed vegetables and cook gently for 3 - 4 more minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Maybe break your spaghetti into smaller lengths than I did... But either way, this was tasty!

norfolkian

Mood: tired

The cookbook I hadn't used yet was one I got for Christmas: Jack Monroe's A Year in 120 Recipes. I like Jack Monroe's recipes because they use easy to source ingredients and are often quite simple to make but tasty. For whatever reason, I just hadn't got round to cooking any recipes from it yet.

I ended up making quite a few changes, partly to do with availability of ingredients (e.g., the fresh tomatoes I bought annoyingly had started to go mouldy even though I only got them at the weekend) and partly because it was after work and I was tired (e.g., the recipe says to roast the aubergine in the oven then add the flesh to the sauce at the end, but I just chopped it up and did it all in the same pot).

So, this is based on Smoky aubergine, tomato and red lentil pasta sauce from the above book, but with my changes included. It was filling and pretty tasty.

Serves 2

Ingredients
1 tsp olive oil
1 onion, peeled and diced
1 small green pepper, deseed and diced
1 small aubergine, diced into 2cm cubes
2 large garlic cloves, chopped or crushed
a couple of pinches of dried chilli flakes
1 tsp dried mixed herbs
75g dried red lentils
400g tin chopped tomatoes
zest and juice of half a lemon
salt and pepper

Method
1. Heat the oil in a saucepan and add the onion. Cook gently for 5 - 10 minutes until starting to soften. Add the green pepper and aubergine and cook for a few minutes. Then add the garlic, chilli flakes and mixed herbs and cook for another minute or two.
2. Wash the lentils and then add to the pan. Stir, then add the chopped tomatoes, the lemon and about 200ml water.
3. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 25-30 minutes until the lentils are soft and the liquid has reduced into a thick sauce (add more water if it starts to dry out).
4. Season with salt and pepper and serve with the pasta of your choice.

Some grated cheese would be lovely on this too, but I didn't have any cheese in the fridge. Booooo.

cosmolinguist

Abel & Cole, who I get my veg box from, have a great recipe search so you can type in whatever ingredient you want to use up or don't know what to do with, and that's how I found this recipe.

I used to be a bit intimidated by kale when it turned up but now I'm excited to see it, as it's an excuse to make this dressing. It'd work with spinach or any dark leafy greens, but I now associate it with kale.

You will need:

Knife/chopping board
Measuring spoons/jug
Whisk
Big bowl
Big pot and stove if you're cooking your greens

Ingredients for the dressing:

4 tbsp of tahini
4 tbsp of olive oil
2 tbsp of water
1/2 tsp of ground cumin
2 lemons, zest and juice*
3 garlic cloves, finely minced**
Salt and pepper
A pinch of chilli flakes or chilli powder, if you like

* when I don't have lemons, 4 tbsp of juice from a bottle is fine
** one of the things I like about Abel & Cole recipes is that they don't pretend a single clove of garlic is sufficient for everything; three is enough for me as someone who really likes garlic but you could always use more or less if you prefer

(The original recipe also calls for 2 tbsp of red wine vinegar, which I've always ignored because I can't cope with much sourness and the lemon is enough for me, but feel free to try that if you'd like!)

The A&C recipe is a bit more complicated, suggesting you add the garlic and half the lemon juice/zest directly to the cooked greens, but I just whisk all the ingredients together in a big bowl while the kale is on the stove, and then drain the kale and add it to the bowl.

Prepare the greens however you like. The recipe suggests simmering it for just a minute. Kale is one of the few vegetables I boil, otherwise I find it too tough, so I remove the stalks, chop it finely and leave it for however long it takes me to mix up the dressing. If I used spinach I wouldn't cook that at all.

The result is great by itself as a side, or I add halloumi, chickpeas, lentils and/or chopped nuts for protein, and sometimes other salad-y stuff, like veggies or couscous. Meat-eaters could have chicken or lamb or something with it.

miss_s_b

You do need to think in advance to prep this, but the actual cook time is very small indeed, which is great for if you're hungry.

You will need:

- 3 tablespoons wholegrain mustard
- 2 teaspoons red chili powder
- 1 350ml tub of natural yoghurt
- 3 tablespoons ginger and garlic paste
- 2 teaspoons lemon juice
- 1 kilo chicken mini fillets or similar - reasonably sized bit but not huge.
- a big glass dish, preferably one with a lid
- 1 tsp powdered cumin seeds, 1 tsp ground black pepper, 1 tsp turmeric powder, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1 tsp powdered cloves and 2 tsp powdered cardamom, all mixed together.
- grated cheese of your choice - I like a good cheddar but obvs there are probably more authentic ones you could use
- salad of your choice

Method:

- mix the first five ingredients into a goo
- rub the goo into the chicken mini fillets with your hands
- roll the engooed fillets in the spice mix
- place them in the glass dish and leave them to marinate overnight - so probably best to do this after you've eaten on the previous evening if that makes sense. If your big glass dish doesn't have a lid just cover with clingfilm.
- after marination, grill the chicken bits until golden brown and cooked through, then plate up with the salad and sprinkle a small amount of cheese on top of the chicken so that it melts (don't overdo it, you want a delicate lattice, not a thick wodge).

moetushie

Save money! Improve your curries! Make your own garlic and ginger paste!

There's no recipe, just take an amount of roughly chopped fresh ginger (you don't have to peel it if you don't want to -- just wash thoroughly -- it's extra fiber, it's fine), and the same amount of fresh, peeled garlic cloves into a food processor (or robust blender) with just enough water to lubricate things and let it rip, until you have a moderately thick paste. You can also make this in a mortar and pestle (like my grandma used to do) -- you'd definitely tone your arms with this method. I commend you.

Anyway, I usually go for 1/2 cup of each with 1-2 tbsp water to begin with. It keeps in the fridge for a couple of weeks. If you don't think you'll be able to use it up in that time, it also freezes well. You can throw it in soups or curries, as you like.

Ways to use garlic-ginger paste:

- As mentioned above, in curries. I usually throw a tablespoon or two in when sauteing onions. Garlic, ginger and onions is basically the Indian culinary trinity, after all.
- Add toasted spices in it for an instant curry paste. Cumin's good. Coriander. Black pepper. Cinnamon. Cardamon. Whatever strikes your fancy.
- Thicken and flavor soups. I like to put a dab in my miso soups, or in dal.
- Makes a great addition to a marinade.
- Combined with honey, makes a powerful facial cleaner. No, I am ...fully kidding. Though I've an aunt who drinks ginger and hot lemon water along with breakfast and swears by it. I've had it and it is certainly .... cleansing is a good way to describe it. Uh.

Anyway, hope this was at least mildly helpful! You can, of course, find premade garlic-ginger paste at your local Indian grocery, but why buy when you can make it yourself, with ingredients you can recognize?

spiralicious

Garlic Ranch Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients:
Red potatoes, as many as needed (I used four)
Garlic, minced (As much as you can handle. This time I used about eleven cloves. It was the center of the garlic bulb, so they were mostly small)
Butter
Half and Half
Homemade ranch dressing (recipe is below)*

Because I used red potatoes, I left the skins on. If you are using a different kind of potato, peel them first. Wash potatoes. Boil the potatoes until tender. Drain. Or if you are in a hurry or are like me this week and don't have access to a working stove, you can “bake” them in the microwave.**

Once the potatoes are done, plop them into a large bowl. Take potato masher of choice and break them up a bit. Add butter to preference and mash until well incorporated. Add Half and Half. Continue to mash and add half and half until potatoes are creamy.

Stir in minced garlic.

Stir in homemade ranch dressing to taste.

Ta-da

*basic homemade ranch dressing:
( Read more... )

**Microwave instructions:
( Read more... )

norfolkian

Mood: listless

This was a good challenge this week considering both my husband and I have had colds. I decided to have a go at some garlic bread, as I've never actually done a homemade version before (the bread is not homemade, but you know what I mean...).

This serves roughly two people.

Ingredients
1 small-ish ciabatta loaf
About 25g butter
4 cloves garlic, peeled and either chopped finely or crushed with a garlic press
1/2 tsp of mixed dried herbs

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 220C. Slice the ciabatta into chunks. Mix the butter, garlic and dried herbs together. You can soften the butter a little if you like to make this easier. I just kind of smooshed it together. Spread the garlic butter mixture on the slices of ciabatta. Bake for 5 - 7 minutes until brown. Eat.

miss_s_b

This recipe serves three, which is why so many of the ingredients are in multiples of three. It's important to leave the cloves of garlic as whole as possible (obvs there's going to be a bit of cracking etc from topping/tailing/peeling) so that you get nice soft lumps of garlic in the casserole. Don't worry that these will be overpowering; once they've stewed in the slow cooker for 8 or more hours they just become soft and delicious.

Equipment

Slow Cooker and wooden spoon
Knife and chopping board
Frying pan and hob

Ingredients:

9 sausage links - today I used Cumberland ones.
at least 1 bulb garlic, depending on the size of the bulb
3 carrots
3 smallish onions
3 sticks celery
9 mushrooms
a tin of tomatoes
oregano, rosemary, whatever other herbs you think go with this sort of thing
salt and pepper
Henderson's Relish

Method

Put the frying pan on to warm
Put the sausages in the pan to brown
While the sausages are browning, chuck the tin of tomatoes in the slow cooker, then peel and add the garlic in whole cloves
chop and add all your veg, to the chunkiness you prefer (I like it pretty chunky)
add in the salt, pepper, herbs, etc and give it a bit of a stir. It'll still all be mostly solid at this point, but don't worry about that.
Once the sausages are browned, put them in the slow cooker and deglaze the pan with the Henderson's relish.
Turn the slow cooker on to low and leave to cook for a good 8 hours or more, stirring as infrequently as you can stand to
Serve with jacket potatoes

miss_s_b

Mood: guilty

what? No I totally didn't miss last week due to a combination of post conference flu and brain fart, you must be thinking of someone else!

Hello, and welcome to this week's Absolutely Definitely Weekly We Never Miss a Week At All Weekly Food Challenge! Your challenge this week is to cook something with garlic, to keep the vampires away.

norfolkian

Mood: grateful

I really loved the challenge this week - it inspired me to cook something I haven't cooked in a long time and also to spend more time in the kitchen than I have been lately and I really enjoyed it!

My mum was born in Malta and she would cook Maltese dishes fairly regularly when I was growing up. One of my favourite dishes that she made (and that I regularly make) is a pasta sauce, but I already used that in a previous challenge (admittedly about six years ago!) where the theme of the week was Italian - you can see the recipe here.

Anyway, one of my mum's favourite dishes to cook is stuffed aubergines with Maltese style potatoes (in Maltese: bringiel mimli bil-patata fil-forn). And I think it is pretty yummy too and it brings back fond memories of my youth. :) My recipe is cobbled together from my memories of how she used to cook it and from a couple of Maltese cookbooks.

This serves 2 people, very generously (which is the Maltese way...)

( Under a cut... this ones a bit of a long one. )

moetushie

Mood: cheerful

I've eaten lentils my whole life, but this is the first time I've attempted lentil soup. (Dal is different, after all, and kichiri, my true food love, is different still.) It was cold! I was cold! Lentil soup is almost freakishly hearty! After eating a bowl of it, I don't think I'm able to eat anything else for a long time.

( Under the cut, a recipe and a picture. )

el_staplador

This is one of my favourite things to cook in the slow cooker. I'm posting the recipe as it's meant to be done rather than as I did it, because the changes were borne of necessity and didn't improve it. That said, you can mess around with the quantities without hurting it - e.g. it doesn't matter much how big the sausage is (fnarr fnarr), or whether you get the full 400g of tomatoes.

1 chorizo sausage (200g or so), cut into thick slices
2 garlic cloves, peeled/sliced
250g new potatoes, washed and cut into thick slices
400g cherry tomatoes, halved
2 tbsp dry sherry
1tsp caster sugar

With the slow cooker on High, cook the chorizo and garlic for 30 minutes until the fat has started to melt from the chorizo.

Meanwhile, cook the potatoes - either on the hob in a pan of boiling water, or nuke them in a microwaveable bowl with a dribble of water - for five minutes. Drain.

Add everything to the slow cooker and cook (still on High) for another two hours.

Salt and pepper as necessary. The book says to finish with chopped parsley, but I can never be bothered.

For what it's worth, the changes I made this time were:
- an extra clove of garlic, because it was beginning to sprout. Fine.
- old potatoes rather than new. Not recommended - they started to break up, although the taste was still fine.
- skipped the first step and just bunged everything in together, because I was going out. Not recommended - it meant stuff stuck to the sides.

ewt

Equipment needed:
-slow cooker
-chopping board and knife unless you're using all pre-chopped ingredients
-big frying pan or saucepan of some sort, moderately optional but pretty helpful
-roasting tin for some veg

It's not a recipe so much as a description of what I did. I cook fairly intuitively, and I'm not a technical writer. But

el_staplador asked me if I'd be happy to post this here, so here it is.

( description )

miss_s_b

Mood: chipper

When my daughter was tiny she always called Garlic Bread "Dalek Bread", because she was brought up in a properly Whovian household and we thought it was cute and we never bothered to correct her. These days she is a much more world weary 13, but we still have one of these, which is the perfect size for a loaf of bread...

Equipment

One Dalek baking mould
Two big mixing bowls (or one Kenwood Chef)
Weighing Scales
Oven
Large, clean, dry, flat work surface

Ingredients

500g strong white bread flour
1 1/2 tsp Fast Action Bread Yeast
1 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp garlic granules
1 tbsp dried oregano
1/2 tbsp dried basil
1/2 tbsp dried rosemary
A good 20 grinds of black pepper from the pepper grinder
360ml hand-hot milk
Some light olive oil

Method

If you're lucky enough to have a working Kenwood Chef (or similar) throw it all in and set it going with the dough hook. For those of us whose Kenwood Chef is broken, however...

Put all the dry ingredients in one of your mixing bowls and mix them together so they are all evenly distributed. You can use a well-washed hand for this, you'll be using your hands a LOT in this recipe.
Pour in the milk and a little dribble of oil - no more than a tablespoon of oil - and then mix throughly with your hands till you get a (quite sticky) dough
Oil your work surface with some more of the olive oil.
Knead. Knead like your life depended on it. Or, if you're me, get matgb to show off his kneading prowess.
Oil the inside of bowl #2
Place your kneaded D'Oh in the oiled bowl, cover the bowl with clinging film, and leave it to rise until it is roughly doubled in size. This will take a couple of hours. Go have a bath or something.
When the dough is doubled in size, oil the inside of your dalek.
Knock back the dough on a floured surface, roughly shape it till it fits the dalek, and then carefully fit it into the mould
Leave it to prove in the dalek
Preheat your oven to 220^oc/gas mark 8
Once the bread is proved and the oven is preheated, bake for about 30 minutes.
Take it out, tip it onto a cooling rack, and leave to cool completely before cutting into it.

Your end result should look like this, and be very tasty and garlicky.

missdiane

My roomie and I observed US Independence Day by eating...Cuban food. Heh. Cuban food always reminds me of one of the best meals I ever ate with a friend in Los Angeles at a place called Versailles (the one in Manhattan Beach, specifically). They're famous for their garlic chicken and WOW is it amazing. You can actually smell the roasted garlic when you walk in the front door and for garlic lovers, it's the most beautiful perfume. The garlic is so infused into the chicken that when we took home the well-wrapped leftovers, you could still smell the garlic when the refrigerator door was shut. GUH.

Anyway, here's what I made for the Caribbean food challenge:
( Urp. )

miss_s_b

Mood: creative
Location: sofa
Music: Rizzoli and Isles on the telly

This is how my brain works: eggs are great for protein, but they are also bad for hearty/circulationy things because of their high nasty fat content. How can I make them better? I know! GARLIC!

Garlic Scrambled Eggs

Meal: Breakfast
Serves: One
Fatteningness: lots

Ingredients

Two eggs
Butter
One clove of garlic*
Black pepper
Something to serve the eggs on - toast is traditional, but I used potato waffles

Method

Finely (very finely) chop or crush the garlic
Slowly heat the butter in a saucepan; when it's stopped frothing add the garlic and take it off the heat so it cooks out really slowly
Put your bread/waffles in the toaster.
Break your eggs directly into the pan, put the pan back on the heat, and stir constantly with a wooden spoon
Grind the pepper into the cooking eggs
Keep stirring
Remove the pan from the heat about 30 seconds before the eggs are cooked; you don't want them overdone and they keep cooking in the pan.
Plate up your toast/waffles and put the eggs on top
Eat
Enjoy breathing all over your collegues all day
Enjoy farting eggy AND garlicky farts all night

* anybody who thinks I would ACTUALLY use a mere one clove of garlic in this has never met me. I generally use at least 3. At least.

miss_s_b

Mood: full

I suspect all of these were about as Italian as a fourth generation New Yorker, but like that fourth generation New Yorker I choose to call them Italian anyway ;) The meal consisted of: warm bruscetta with tomatoes, basil and cheese; followed by vegetarian spag bol; followed by Italian-style baked fruit and ice cream.

I just et all that lot, and am fit to asplode, so if there are typos and/or some of this doesn't make sense, blame the food.

( pics and recipes under here )

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Weekly Food Challenge

A challenge for cooks every Wednesday

Entries tagged with garlic

Challenge 52: Beans - Bigilla (Maltese Broad Bean Dip)

Challenge 47: Less than £1 - 99p Minestrone

Challenge 46: Unused cookbook - Aubergine, tomato and red lentil pasta sauce

Kale with tahini dressing

Challenge #42: Iftar - Amritsari-style Chicken, roughly as served in my local south Asian restaurant

CHALLENGE #41: GINGER - GARLIC & GINGER PASTE

Challenge #37: Garlic Ranch Mashed Potatoes

Challenge 37: Garlic - Garlic Ciabatta Toasts

Challenge #37: Garlic - Slow-cooked sausage casserole

Challenge #37: Garlic

Challenge 31: Recipe from a loved one - Stuffed Aubergines

CHALLENGE #30 - SWEET POTATO - Saturday Lentil Soup

Sneaking in before miss_s_b changes the theme: slow cooker chorizo in sherry

Challenge #24: Bourgignon-inspired slow cooker beef stew

Challenge 14: Bread - Dalek Bread

Cuban Mojitos and Garlic Pork

Challenge #5: Eggs: "Healthy" Scrambled Eggs

Three Course "Italian" Meal

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