Category Archives: Plant Based

Gnudi.

Spinach Ricotta Gnudi

This dumpling either Malfatti or called Gnudi…. essentially gnocchi, because of the rough look called Malfatti in Siena or Gnudi as it is called in Florence translating to naked basically without an outer dough like ravioli. We like serving it with a tomato sauce or a burnt sage butter with hazel nuts and more parmesan. In this recipe we have a lot more parmesan than in some, but then that is how we like it, cheesy. With a lot of the older recipes the egg is omitted as it is rested for longer in semolina before cooking forming a barrier. Use some of the liquid when finishing in the butter, gives some body to the sauce.

Ingredients
  

  • 200 g Ricotta Cheese
  • 200 g Parmesan Cheese grated
  • 180 g spinach sliced chiffonade or chopped very finely and cooked (steam or boil and drain well)
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 eggs yolk
  • 1 Tbsp 15 ml fresh sage, chopped
  • 1 Tbsp 15 ml fresh parsley, chopped
  • 60 g flour
  • salt
  • white pepper
  • roughly ½ C 125 ml semolina
  • Sage Beurre Noisette
  • 100-120 g butter
  • 12-16 sage leaves
  • 50-80 g macadamia nuts coarsely crushed and toasted
  • Parmesan shaved or grated as needed

Instructions
 

  • Gnudi (best made a day ahead)
  • Combine the Ricotta, Parmesan, spinach, eggs and egg yolk and chopped herbs. Fold in the flour and combine, add more flour if the mixture is too sticky (must be able to roll into balls). Season to taste with salt and white pepper.
  • Line a dish that you can seal to refrigerate with a thin layer of a semolina. Portion the gnudi mixture and roll into equal sized balls. Roll the gnudi in extra semolina making sure each is coated. Place the gnudi into the dish with the layer of semolina, don’t let the gnudi touch each other or the sides of the container as they may stick. Refrigerate.
  • Repeat this step every 2-3 hours. Do this about six times. Remove from the semolina.
  • Sage Beurre Noisette
  • Method
  • Place the butter in a heavy bottomed saucepan and heat, allow to bubble and froth. Do not burn, it should become nutty as the butter browns. Add the sage leaves and allow to cook and crisp up..
  • To cook the gnudi, bring a saucepan of salted water to the boil. Place the gnudi into the water until they rise to the surface and float (±2-3 minutes).
  • Remove from the water and gently coat in sage beurre noisette and top with crushed macadamia nuts. Serve with shaved or grated Parmesan.
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Roasted Vegetable Tart.

Roasted Vegetable tart

This is a great summers day dish, served cold with a rocket salad and some prosciutto. I did this recipe the first time for Food & Home a couple of years ago, it features on the Oasis buffet as a firm favourite. Yield: 1 large tart 28-30 cm diameter

Ingredients
  

  • I like making my own slow roasted tomatoes if you are on the lazy side use some sundried tomatoes
  • 650 g plum tomatoes cut in half dried will be 220g – 280g
  • 1 crushed garlic clove
  • 10 ml olive oil
  • Pinch black pepper
  • Maldon salt to taste
  • 1 tsp Thyme picked
  • 40 ml olive oil
  • 3 baby marrows
  • 2 medium brinjals
  • 2 red peppers
  • 1 red onion
  • 15 g parmesan
  • 15 g pine nuts
  • 7 garlic cloves roasted more if needed
  • 40 g pitted olives
  • 80 g cream cheese
  • 40 g parmesan
  • 1 tbsp chopped parsley
  • 350-400 g Short crust pastry

Instructions
 

  • Season tomatoes with salt and pepper, add olive oil and thyme. Place in roasting tray with garlic bake at 70 C for 3-5 hours. This can be done the day before
  • Rub red peppers with a little oil and char grill until black, place in a plastic bag to sweat and leave before peeling.
  • Roast onion in oven at 180 C for 1 hour with garlic placed in foil and a touch of seasoning and oil. Re move skin, cut into 8 and put one side until needed.
  • Allow the garlic to cool slightly, cut across the whole bulb and squeeze out the soft sweet flesh. Set on side.
  • Wash trim baby marrows and slice into 5 mm slices.
  • Wash and trim brinjals slice into 5 mm slices.
  • Cook until golden remove and set one side.
  • Clean peppers remove skin and seeds, season cut into 3-4 cm pieces
  • For the base, mix garlic pulp, chopped parsley, cream cheese, Parmesan and ½ roasted chopped onion with pitted olives. Adjust seasoning.
  • Pre heat Oven
  • Line greased tart mould with rolled out pastry 3mm thick. Allow the pastry to hang over the sides.
  • Prick the base and blind bake at 200 C for 10-15 min
  • Remove and allow to cool slightly Trim excess pastry
  • Fill base with the cream cheese mixture
  • With alternating layers start on the outside overlapping tomato then brinjal, then pepper, baby marrow, onion start again with tomato repeat process until the whole tart is filled.
  • Sprinkle with Parmesan and pine nuts
  • Bake for 10-15 minutes at 180 C until golden brown
  • Cool serve
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Brinjal

brinjal

Brinjal

I love eating and it is because of all fond food memories that I continue to enjoy food above making or cooking it, no ingredient has left such a deep impression like this fruit. From early childhood memories, enjoying grandma Dennie’s brinjal breyani, I remember every little detail up to the table cloth in her small Berea flat. My first vegan meal with brinjal and peanuts at the Hare Krishna house in Hillbrow, the aubergine  chutney served with the Flying Boar Burger by Wynand van Rooyen. My first outside catering function where we served fried egg plants. Every time I make salad at home it ends up having brinjal in it, and my daughter loves me for this.

How can I forget, two years ago while travelling through Malaysia on the Eastern Oriental Express en route to Singapore, we had just passed the River Kwai when lunch was served, a fiery Thai chicken curry with the tiniest little brinjal (makhuea pro).

As a young executive chef one of my first gourmet wine evenings working at the Parktonian hotel in Braamfontein, I got this amazing recipe from Art Culinaire, a pressed vegetable terrine with layers of delicately cooked vegetables, each flavoured to perfection then brought together in one moment with grilled brinjal, slow roasted tomatoes, roasted peppers. It was so simple but at the same time it was complex.

Call them what you want…… they are amazing, my new favourite baked with miso, so unbelievable!

If eaten raw it has a bitter taste, but once cooked it becomes a vessel that works with so many applications absorbing and highlighting the richness, as Fortunato Mazzone makes his “parmigiana di melanzane”, fried and baked with tomato and Parmesan, this is a recipe that is worth killing for.

Moussaka, Ratatouille, Baba Ghanoush, İmam bayildi, Caponata. It is clear that it is an important part of any vegans and vegetarians diet and it is clear to see why. Even dried brinjal that is seasoned with vinegar, salt, coriander and pepper then dried to look like biltong sticks.

Greatest thing about a brinjal is that it is available all year round, original word brinjal derived from Portuguese name beringela. Derived from the Arabic term badinjan. The French transformed it to Aubergine. Called egg plant when introduced to Europe and America because of the common variety grown resembled hen’s egg.

So call it what you want melanzana, garden egg, patlican, brinjal, egg plant, aubergine, badnijan

Baba Ghanoush (Egg plant dip)

4 ea large Brinjal
2 tbsp parsley chopped
2 tbsp mint chopped or chiffonade
4 Garlic cloves roasted and 1 raw chopped crushed fine

30ml lemon juice and 1/2  tsp lemon zest
2 – 3tbsp / 20-30ml tahini
40 ml olive oil
salt and black pepper, to taste
2 tbsp sesame toasted
METHOD

Prick the aubergines with a fork.
Grill the aubergines on an open flame grill until charred. Brinjal will be soft. This will take a good 20 minutes.
Allow to cool and remove pulp and chop fine
Combine garlic, zest, lemon juice, tahini, olive oil and pepper.
Combine the flesh with garlic mixture, parsley and mint.
Adjust seasoning and serve.

If you prefer a more smokey Baba Ghanoush, slice brinjals into thick slices, season rub with olive oil then grill.

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Baby Marrow & Patty Pan Salad

Baby Marrow and Patty Pan Salad

Ingredients
  

  • 100 g Baby marrows thinly sliced
  • 100 g Patty pan Yellow thinly sliced
  • 5 g Toasted sunflower seeds
  • 5 g Toasted sesame seeds
  • 5 g Toasted Pumpkin seeds
  • 10 g Baby mix leaves
  • For the dressing:
  • 1/2 clove Garlic Crushed
  • ½ tsp Ginger
  • ½ Chilli deseeded, chopped
  • 1 tsp Chopped coriander
  • ½ tsp Dijon mustard
  • ½ tsp Honey
  • 25 ml Canola oil
  • 12 ml Rice wine vinegar
  • Juice of ½ lime
  • Little zest
  • salt and pepper to taste

Instructions
 

  • Finely chop or grate ginger and garlic add chopped coriander and chopped chilli.
  • Whisk the honey and mustard and add the vinegar add oil slowly to form a dressing.
  • Add the remaining dressing ingredients and stir.
  • Assemble the salad by tossing all the ingredients together with the dressing as required.

Notes

Serve Immediatelly while still crunchy
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Hummus

hummus

Home made hummus

Hummus

This has become a ritual in my own kitchen, the other being cashew cheese. What we don’t eat we put in the freezer. Making our own hummus has made everything in the shop so bland and pointless. If you have a great blender you have no excuse. Some simple things can be done before making, like soaking the chickpeas, only if you have to use tinned chickpeas we roast the garlic the day before, this is a personal preference as it gives smoother garlic taste. Remember to reserve some liquid when straining chickpeas, you will need some of for when you make the puree. Part of the reason why we keep hummus is because we eat a lot of wraps and for us this is an essential part of making any wrap. Yield: a lot

Ingredients
  

  • 500 g Dried chickpeas
  • Whole house garlic roasted whole
  • 5 -7 TBSP Tahini paste
  • 80 ml-100ml fresh lemon juice
  • 4 TBSP Parsley chopped
  • 40 -80 ml Olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon Salt
  • 1 tsp Cumin
  • 1 tsp Paprika
  • 1/2 cup Cooking liquid maybe more

Instructions
 

  • Soak chick peas for 12 hours
  • boil 2 hours until very soft
  • reserve a 2 cups of cooking liquid just in case
  • blend all measured ingredients together to a smooth paste.
  • Check seasoning add fresh parsley at end
  • If you enjoy the taste of garlic add a little raw garlic when blending. I like the add some lemon zest for that extra lemon taste. Making hummus is very personal, you need to add and change what you enjoy.

Notes

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