On Rice and Dhal

December 8, 2023Ocean Bream Cooking with Len, musings Tags: budgetfriendly, cauliflower, chicken, cooking, cuisine, curry, dhal, family friends, food, friends, guests, joy, lentil dhal, lentils, life, pakistani dish, personal, rice and dha, rice and lentils, spices, thoughts, unexpected, vegan, vegetarian, warm home, warmth, winter warmth, writing 2 Comments

I made a spelt loaf for my children yesterday when an unexpected guest popped by. Three people. An adult and two children. They stayed for lunch and we got to chatting, and then it was 5pm, then 6pm and we were still talking away so I eventually said, ‘why don’t you stay for dinner?’

‘Oh no I couldn’t possibly, we have outstayed our welcome!’

‘No no, stay, I insist!’

So they stayed. I opened my fridge door and said ‘let’s do eggs and beans and chips’ – only there weren’t any potatoes to make chips with so in the end we went with a Pakistani classic, rice and dhal.

My guest set about washing the dishes and we chatted some more while I pottered about making the meal.

Red lentils, white basmati rice. Wash both. Soak. Boil the lentils with a bit of chopped ginger and garlic, turmeric and cumin, chilli and salt. Then boil the rice with a dash of oil and a cinnamon stick. Fry the onions in butter until nicely browned and crispy, also add some cumin seeds, chopped garlic, sliced chillis. Pour that hot buttery fried onion right into the boiling lentils so it sizzles beautifully on top, give it a last stir, garnish with coriander.

We served it with rice and yogurt.

And for dessert I hunted through my cupboards, found some dates and almonds and cashews. And a packet of lotus biscuits. Cup of tea. More chatter, children being their noisy, happy selves. Then finally our guest stood up and said, ‘well, we definitely have outstayed our welcome now’, and made their way to the front door.

They didn’t though.

They were so very much wanted and welcome.

In this rushed, hurried world of nine to fives and fives to nines, it was nice for a day to forget rigid plans and schedules, sit back and make rice and lentils with a friend while our kids played together. And fought together. In the winter darkness, it felt good to have the warmth of friends staying unexpectedly for dinner.

Liver Pâté

December 6, 2022December 5, 2022Ocean Bream Cooking with Len, motherhood, Oatsies. Tags: blogging, cooking, family, life, liver pate, motherhood, motherhood worry, nutrients, parental worry, parents, personal, thoughts, vitamins, wordpress, writing 15 Comments

Are you a parent?

If you are, I think you can attest that one of the toughest, most worrying things as a parent is seeing your child ill.

My son has been so ill recently. He has caught one thing after another from nursery, and has developed huge dark circles under his eyes, and lost some weight. I can feel his little tiny bones through his skin, and he has lost that round chubbiness of toddlerhood.

It’s the most troubling thing and frankly I am just burdened by it.

Now of course we are having him checked up by doctors and whatnot, but I also sat down to research some ways to add nutrients into the body after bouts of illness and weightloss.

One of the biggest causes for dark circles around eyes is vitamin A deficiency. I have no proof (yet) that my son is deficient in vitamin A but it can’t harm to get some down him, can it?

Liver is apparently one of the biggest sources of vitamin A, so I sourced some liver from the local butcher.

I hated liver growing up. My father loves it, and the Moroccan way to cook it is to cut it into small pieces, fry it up with onions, garlic, coriander and a bit of cumin. Lots of seasoning, and the resulting liver in gravy concoction is eaten with some crusty bread. Freshly baked french loaf is the tastiest option, according to my family. I could never eat this food. The smell of liver alone put me off, and therefore eating it was simply impossible.

I am an adult now. And I know that liver is an excellent source of nutrients for my unwell child, so I looked up ways to cook it where it would not taste so… LIVERY.

One great way is making liver pâté! It’s liver cooked up with onions and garlic, some dijon mustard, balsmic vinegar, herbs and seasonings…. and a LOT of butter. You can spread it on toast or crackers and it’s just a really tasty savoury spread. So I made some tonight while my kids were in bed.

Let us see how well it goes down tomorrow, ey.

My Brother… Cooking

October 27, 2021October 27, 2021Ocean Bream Cooking with Len Tags: blogging, brother, cooking, family, life, personal, sibling fights, siblings, thoughts, writing 5 Comments

My brother takes the flour out. Bits of flour dust sail behind the paper bag as he brings it the counter.

He shakes the saucepan on the hob. It’s filled with caramelised onions. Sliced peppers. Sliced beef. He throws in some stock. It splashes over the edge and creates a symphony in the pot. Swirling, whirling. Drops of sauce on the sleek and shiny stainless steel cooker. A bit of half cooked meat on the counter, where it has lain there after flying out the pot during some aggressive stirring.

He slaps the dough on the counter. Kneads away. Somehow a glob of dough lands on the edge of the sink behind him. On the cupboard handle. On the edge of his shoe.

Wraps the dough in clingfilm. Pushes it into the fridge. The egg tray falls out, and the only egg in it cracks on the floor.

‘ugh’

Old rag, smearing egg yolk on the floor. Kick the mop over. Pour a glass of water over the egg. Mop it up. Leave the mop leaning against the door.

‘You done with the mop?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Ok…’

I know that’ll stay there for a few days. Until some unwitting person wants to mop and will smell the unholy stench of raw egg rotting.

The dough is ready. He slams it on the counter. Takes the rolling pin out.

Rolls. Expertly.

Sheet of dough. In the greased baking dish. Blind baked, fork holes peeping up at the searing heat of the oven curling the air over it.

Pours the filling into the pie shell. Drapes the other dough sheet over the top. Fork pricks.

Milk wash…. he had broken the last egg, remember?

I sit on the sofa in the next room with a good view into the kitchen. The beef pie is in the oven. It smells incredible. He can’t see me. He sees flour all over his hoodie. So he shakes the edge of it, and a cloud of flour dust flies into the air. He claps his hands on his trousers. Rolls down his sleeves.

‘Food’s nearly ready,’ he tells us, gruffly, as he heads upstairs.

‘Thank you darling,’ my mother tells him. She coos at my baby, who is sitting happily on her lap.

And I think, that boy hasn’t changed a single bit since he was a chubby little boy messing up the kitchen in a well-meaning attempt to scramble eggs.

Is it annoying? Yes, so much so. Does his food taste good? Delicious. Do I clean up after him? Yup. Does he think he has cleaned up after himself? Yes. Does my telling him he hasn’t done it well enough work? Nope. Hasn’t worked for over twenty years. What makes you think it will work now?

Also. I am at my mum’s house. Somebody else is holding my baby and somebody else is cooking dinner. Am I about to regurgitate an old sibling fight about messy cooking?

Hell to the no!

Food for Comfort

March 21, 2020March 21, 2020Ocean Bream Cooking with Len, Oatsies., Uncategorized Tags: cookbooks, cooking, cooking at home, coriander, food, food blogging, garlic, homemade food, lemon rice, lemon rice recipe, lemons, life, olive oil, personal, self isolation 4 Comments

There is this beautiful book that I have become acquainted with, and it is called Midnight Chicken by Ella Risbridger. It is the perfect recipe book, just filled with the most decadent, good quality foods you can imagine. You can just think of eating these lovingly made dishes in the comforting, cosy glow of lamps, on rustic tables, using aesthetically pleasing cutlery, while the city just carries on outside. A loved one to share food with you is always a bonus.

My favourite ingredients to use lately are lemons, olive oil, coriander and garlic. You can combine these any way you please and you are guaranteed that the outcome will be decadent. Comforting. Quality.

The best food, in my opinion, is rice. It is so versatile. So filling. You can do so many different things to it and have an entirely new outcome every time.

I take my saucepan out, and drizzle in some extra virgin organic oil, turning the heat to low. I hum while I smash my garlic under a large knife, peel the skin off, and chop it up into little pieces that I throw into my pot. The garlic sizzles gently and the warm smell of it cooking gently wafts my way as I deftly squeeze the juice from a lemon, turning my spoon around to pull out the pulp. I don’t mind pulp.

In goes the juice, just when the garlic is sizzling but not browned, and in goes some freshly grated lemon zest, and in goes a healthy amount of salt. And in goes some pre-soaked rice, and also a nice heaped teaspoon of bright yellow turmeric powder. I stir it and sniff it and pour in some water until it covers the rice so that when my wooden spoon is inserted in the pot it covers the spoon halfway when the tip of the spoon is on the rice.

I then make sure my heat is turned as low as possible, put the lid on my rice and let it cook gently.

I then take some coriander, garlic, olive oil, salt, curry powder and smash all that together in a mortar and pestle. I have a lovely paste, which I smear onto some freshly defrosted cod (or fresh!). Into an oven dish it all goes, shoved in the oven for a good 25 minutes.

While my food simmers and sizzles away, I chop up an avocado, some cherry tomatoes, some rocket, some coriander (yes, again!), some cucumber and squeeze some more lemon over it, salt and pepper, olive oil (YES!!!) and toss it all up. Maybe some sumac? How about a little sprinkling of chilli flakes? Yes, that’ll do.

And then the yellow lemon rice is done, on a plate with a piece of soft salmon, the salad on the side, a drink poured into a glass, set on my rickety green table that is actually an old garden table but we don’t complain.. and that is my favourite meal ever.

(for now).

What is your favourite meal ever? What are your go-to ingredients? If you could only ever eat one food for the rest of your life what would it be?

(mine would be rice!)

I LOVE lemons! Image credit: Still Life with Lemons and Oranges. Luis Melendez 1760s. (National Gallery, London)

Croissant

May 27, 2018Ocean Bream Cooking with Len, Oatsies. Tags: croissant, descriptions of food, food, food blogging, food photography, food writing, french, midnight snack, writing 12 Comments

Exquisite, dainty layers.

A golden road, winding round and round, tucking into itself in a nest of warm dough.

Still, glistening, as the sun melts upon its surface.

Rising, gently, to the occasion.

Crisp, yet soft.

And rich enough that you only need one with your morning coffee.

croissant-au-beurre

Inspired by my 1am snack!

Taking pictures of food.

August 27, 2017Ocean Bream Cooking with Len Tags: baking, cake, chocolate cake, humour, instagram, internet, life, millenials, millennials taking photos of food, modern age privacy, oversharing on social media, personal, picture sharing, pictures, privacy, social media, taking photos of food, technology 13 Comments

Someone once said to me, when we were eating burgers in a restaurant, watching people at another table stand in every position imaginable to take photos of their own burgers, that over half of millennials don’t get to eat hot food, because by the time they’re done taking photos of their food, it’s cold!

Wow. That was a whopper of a sentence.

Anyway. By the time I munched this chocolate cake, it was still warm, thankfully. Although my arm has cramped from trying to take a good photo of a mediocre cake!

This cake is deceiving. It looks tasty but it actually has a strong olive oil taste to it. I think I added too much. Next time I will use less!

Why do we do it, though? Why do we take photos of our food? Why do we share it on social media? What is the psychology behind it? What do we hope to gain from it?

I admit, I do take photos of my food from time to time. When it looks good, when I am especially proud of it, or when I just am enamoured by the deliciousness of it all. I don’t always share it on social media, and when I do, I insert it into a blog. It is not informative at all. I have not shared the recipe (I will leave a link to it, however!), I am not posting to talk about its contents or reveal the decadent history of cake.

I am just posting to say, ‘Hey! I made cake! Check it out!‘

Is that so bad?

Is it so deplorable that an entire generation of people just want to share what their food looks like, to other people who will double tap that photo and nod to themselves, thinking, ‘I want me some of that burger. I wonder where they got it from.’

But whoops, they won’t need to ask, because the location is geotagged! Some great advertising right there! I will admit, all the restaurants I have been to in the past six months (well, three, to be exact) have been because one or other of my friends had posted a photo of what the food looked like there, along with a comment on the taste.

And because I am a glutton, I thought, ‘hey, I want me some of that burger.’

Comfort

April 8, 2017April 8, 2017Ocean Bream Cooking with Len Tags: baghrir, buttery crumpets, childhood memories, comfort, comfort food, crumpets, english fry ups, family, food, happy, heritage, home, life, Moroccan culture, moroccan pancakes, morocco, personal, spring Leave a comment

There is honestly nothing like a hot, buttery crumpet, with a scrape of jam on the very top, washed down with a mug of sweet, well brewed tea on a sunny day in spring.

In Morocco they have a similar sort of food, a pancake called ‘Baghrir’, fluffy and filled with holes just like a regular crumpet. They refry these pancakes in olive oil sometimes, but my favourite way to eat them is fried in butter and honey, sweet and succulent, with a small glass of sweet mint tea, steaming and oxidised from pouring from a height. My dad was a baker back in his student days, and when I was particularly small, he used to make them for breakfast every so often. A massive family breakfast. Usually when we breakfast together on a weekend we have a fry-up. Eggs and beans and toast and mushrooms and hash browns and sausages and whatever else you can add to a fry-up. My dad hates baked beans. He doesn’t really like much English food because he is not English, you see, and growing up his palette included much more savoury, aromatic Middle Eastern foods. So on his breakfast days we had moroccan pancakes, Spanish omelettes, cream cheese, honey, olive oil, plenty of olives and round, flat arabic bread. And lots of fruit!

Both kinds were comfort food to me. A plate of buttered crumpets with a moroccan teapot (ibreeq) and lots of small, gleaming little tea glasses, bits of mint floating on top. A nice contrast of cultures, in a way!

Moroccan mint tea is made in a special way. You don’t just pour boiling water on the mint, because you then have tasteless peppermint tea. You put in half a tablespoon of gunpowder tea, or Chinese green tea leaves into the pot and simmer with some hot water for a while. Then you pour it out and add more hot water until the metal teapot is filled to its workable capacity. You boil it until it bubbles, and then add your carefully cut and washed fresh mint. You close the lid and boil for about a minute, then you can sweeten to taste. Moroccans love their tea sweet. Too sweet, sometimes. But oh the taste of that fresh liquid, hot down your throat. I can have five or six glasses in a row. When I was in Morocco they would joke about how many glasses I would have, one after the another, greedy in anticipation.

When I was very small my father used to cool the tea before he gave it to me by pouring it from one small glass into another a few times until the heat dissipated enough for me to drink. When I went to Morocco last summer, I noticed that the Moroccans did that a lot for their little ones. I hadn’t known it was a thing they do.

This is how to pour Moroccan tea. From as high above as you can manage!

Ah, the fluffy, buttery hot English crumpet.

Stop Motion Malteser Cookies

February 16, 2017Ocean Bream Cooking with Len Tags: baking, baking cookies, baking video, cookies, creativity, dessert, imovie, maltese cookies, maltese cookies recipes, malteser cookies, maltesers, maltesers cookies, recipe demonstration, stop motion film, sweet tooth, video editing, videos, youtube 10 Comments

Maltesers are delicious any time, right? But what about if they were stop motion baked malteser cookies?

Here is a small video I made demonstrating the baking process. Check it out if you are interested! It is my first ever video, and the beginning, I hope, of my dabble with the visual arts. If I can tell stories via words, then why not also via images?

Let me know what you think!

Mint Chocolate Chia Pudding (vegan)

January 28, 2017January 27, 2017Ocean Bream Cooking with Len, Uncategorized Tags: benefits of chia seeds, chia pudding, chia seeds, diet, diet loaded with nutrients, feeding the body nutrients, health kick, healthy, healthy breakfast ideas, healthy food, healthy meals, mint chocolate chia pudding, nutrient, nutritional breakfast, omega3 nut mix, vegan, vegan breakfast, vegan chocolate chia pudding 2 Comments

This health kick of mine has made me highly enthusiastic about my nutrition intake, and the easiest way through which I can consume plenty of vitamins. I want to spend as little time in the kitchen, but max out on the healthy benefits of nutritional cooking.

Last night I spent 5 minutes preparing a chocolate chia pudding which I would let sit overnight in the fridge all ready for my breakfast this morning. It did not disappoint, I assure you. I was in chocolatey bliss at breakfast, and was assured I was meeting all my nutrient goals whilst enjoying something a little sweet!

Chia seeds are loaded with nutrients and fibre, a good amount of protein. Did you know chia seeds used to be used as a currency at one point? They are great for the digestion and have been proven to reverse inflammation and reduce blood pressure. They boost energy and metabolism and are also used to treat diabetes. They are high in calcium which is beneficial to the bones.

Here is the recipe, if you are interested:

Ingredients:

-1/3 cup chia seeds

-1/4 cup cocoa or cacao powder

-1, 1/2 cups unsweetened almond milk

-3 tbsp maple syrup (or any other sweetener desired)

-1/8 cup plant based protein powder

-1/2 tsp peppermint essence

For the toppings:

-Ground almonds

-Small seed mix (I used OhMyOmega mix from Holland and Barrett)

-Bananas or any other fruit

Method:

Combine all ingredients in a bowl or a measuring jug and whisk to beat out the lumps. Cover and put in fridge for 3 hours or overnight. In the photo below, I have adorned the pudding with banana disks, ground almonds and an omega-3 seed mix I got from Holland and Barrett.

Vegan Chocolate chia pudding

Daily Cooking

January 25, 2017Ocean Bream Cooking with Len Tags: Cookery, cooking, cooking dilemmas, cooking for less, daily cooking, food, grilling, health, healthy cooking, healthy diets, healthy meals, lamb burgers, lamb mince, life, meal prep, meals for two, personal, quick food, quick meals, vegetables Leave a comment

Daily cooking has become a chore now. I used to love cooking but now that my interests have expanded to include devouring Knowledge, I find that the time frame to cook a decent meal has narrowed horrendously.

Also there are financial constraints to adhere to, and also health constraints.

One must eat healthy, else one will develop all the manner of mysterious ailments. By one, of course, I mean myself. I have bad poops, acne, weight gain, hair loss, bloating – the list goes on. And all these things only occur to me when I eat instant noodles or microwave meals.

The minute I eat gluten free oats for breakfast and plenty of vegetables, my body goes back to normal and I feel fabulous.

SO, with these limitations, I have to make sure we have a healthy meal for dinner every day. Because if I left it to my husband, we would be eating – well – probably nothing served with a cup of tea.

Daily cooking for me has consisted of an oven dish filled with chopped up veggies, drizzled with olive oil or coconut oil, sprinkled with some salt, pepper, oregano and sometimes paprika. A crushed garlic or two nestled in there somewhere. And baked until just decent enough to eat.

Today it was half a sweet potato chopped up into thin ‘fries’, some green beans and some lamb mince spiced with salt, pepper, garlic, paprika and maple syrup and patted into burgers and shoved in the oven with the veggies. I had some leaves in the fridge too (don’t ask me what leaves they were, they were green and tasted like they were full of vitamin A) which we had on the side with some lemon squeezed on top sharpish. Two plates, serve the lamb burgers on the side, pile the veggies on another side, put the leaves on the third side, and there was a decent meal for two!

Prep time took ten minutes, cook time (left in the oven while my nose was in a book) was half an hour, and eating time was half an hour too.

Basically, I spent ten minutes in the kitchen preparing dinner. WHAT. Also, it wasn’t crap out of a box. WHAT?!?!?!

Tomorrow it will be gluten free oats with almond milk and blueberries for breakfast, lentil and coriander soup for lunch, boiled brown pasta, grilled chicken breast, chopped up tomatoes with some spices and all mixed up together for dinner. And hopefully that will take around 30 mins prep time all combined (ten minutes for each). And also include plenty of nutrients for my bodayyy.

Here is a photo of today’s leftovers which will go to work for tomorrow’s lunch, I will also add some steamed spinach and green beans tomorrow to add some colour!

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