october roots

Brown rice salad with sweet potato, prune, apricot

It's finally hit me.

I tried to avoid it.

I ignored all the signs.

I have a cold...

At least it's an excuse to lay low for a while and feel a little seasonal. I wondered why I'd been craving chai tea, sweet potato, and extra cinnamon in my porridge.

This is a very 'warming' rice salad, inspired by Ottolenghi (of course) and includes what I was crying out for:

A few ingredients

• 200g of brown rice
• 2 small sweet potatoes (or 1 large), chopped
• 3-4 garlic cloves
• 1 tsp sumac
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• handful of pistachio nuts, lightly toasted
• handful of pine nuts, lightly toasted
• 2 spring onions, sliced
• 4-5 dried apricots, finely chopped
• 4-5 prunes, finely chopped
• handful of coriander
• juice of 1/2 lemon
• a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper

Boil the rice until al dente, and set aside to cool.

The raw sweet potato ready for roasting

While the rice is boiling, chop up the sweet potato and put into a deep non stick oven pan. Throw in the garlic (un-peeled). Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle sumac, cumin, paprika, salt and pepper ontop, making sure to cover every piece. Pop in the oven to roast for about 25-35 minutes, on about 200'C. Occasionally check on the sweet potato and stir well.

Be careful not to burn! Toasting pistachio and pine nuts

Lightly toast the pistachio nuts and pine nuts and set aside, with the chopped spring onion, dried apricots, prunes and coriander.

Once the rice has cooled, add all the ingredients and toss together. Mix in the cooked sweet potato and extract the garlic pulp, and add the lemon juice and another little drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste.

I marinated some chicken breast in the same sweet potato spices and pan fried. Alternatively, eat a larger portion of the rice for a packed lunch and add some chopped feta cheese.

Pan fry a little chicken to go with...

If you're still stuck for ideas with that roasted sweet potato, try having on a bed of rocket and sprinkle with feta and toasted pine nuts for a lunch or light supper...

Need another idea?

the scraps

Take a sweet potato and put it in the oven...

Use some left over ingredients (my vegetable drawer was starting to look a little lack lustre) and make a salad. I had lettuce, cucumber, sweetcorn, feta, mint and coriander. I dressed it with just a little balsamic vinegar and a little bit of extra virgin olive oil and then I seasoned with salt and pepper.

Et voila! An easy quick meal. I find sweet potatoes a little too sweet and rich sometimes and so the feta really adds a much needed sharpness to it. Sun dried tomatoes are also a really good companion.

party party

After gyrating in a Jessie J fashion the night before, it took a serious amount of willpower to wake up the next morning energised and ready to prepare food for a group of friends coming over that evening. I had promised home made burgers. Why did I promise? Promise is a big word and one that you can't get out of, even on a hangover. Nonetheless I did promise, so...wake up at 10am and yes oh yes, start with a trip to the tip! That's what good time girls like to get up to on a Saturday morning...and swiftly moved onto the supermarket, narrowly avoiding a car parking ticket. This is a penny saving partaaaay and is incredibly cheap and easy to prepare. In fact the money mostly goes towards the drinks (but you can get your guests to bring that!). So with this blasting out on the tv...

...the sun blazing and Charlie Sheen's mantra running in my head I only had 'one speed, one gear. GO!'

Home made burgers

The burgers are easy. I used 3 x 500g packs of beef mince, and you literally just use a fork and mash it up with lots of chopped spring onion, chopped coriander, chopped mint, ground cumin, smoked paprika, salt and pepper and more mixed chilli/onion spice. 2 egg yolks to bind it all together and then roll into balls of your desired shape. Nothing else involved. You can use anything you like and put it in there, whatever flavour you want. I left them chilling in the fridge, ready to cook later.

Take them out when you're ready to eat and cook both sides in a frying pan until rare, medium rare or well done.

Roast potato and sweet potato

These would have been more like chips if I had divided into two pans. I rather overcrowded them so they came out a little more roasted style. Chop up potato and sweet potato and lightly coat them in a bit of oil, salt, pepper, smoked paprika and cumin. Let them marinade until roasting. They took about 40 mins in the oven.

more after the jump...

a day in food

Have you ever done a food diary? Well I can probably guess that you might have missed half the things you ate that day. We like to forget the little things. 'They don't matter...do they?' Well they do and they all add up. This isn't for the purpose of a food diary, but I thought it would be a rather good idea wouldn't it? To photograph everything you eat in the day? Then you really can't get away with it...
Breakfast

Scrambled egg on toast with green pesto

Breakfast is my favourite meal of the day. My very good flat mate told me of this tip. A dollop of green pesto. Added at the end of cooking really livens it up. I use 2 eggs and I always cook in a little bit of butter.