Tamarind

A recipe for 1, ready in 30 mins.

Over two years ago I was wandering the international food isle at Tesco and bought a block of tamarind. The purchase was triggered by a wave of nostalgia. The Tamarind is a delicious, top restaurant chain in Kenya, where I had a lovely meal with my extended family years ago. You can check it out here.

So I bought the block of tamarind, but I had no idea what to do with it. At first I considered making something Asian and looked up a bunch of recipes, but I did nothing. I moved flats and I took the tamarind with me. Then, I cleaned out my cupboards and figured it was about time to do something with the tamarind. So, I made a quick, thick molasses like sauce to put on grilled pork chops.

Tamarind looks like this:

You have to boil it with water to get the juice out. If you put 50 g tamarind with one cup of water on a low heat it looks like this:

You should keep it boiling for about 20 minutes. Topping it up with half cupfulls of water when the water is about to boil off. Then boil it down to slightly less than 1 tablespoon.

Tamarind juice is sour. It is often paired with sweet or creamy things. I wanted to make something that was sweet, sour, hot and smoky, almost like a BBQ sauce. So, in a little saucepan, I combined:

• 1 tbsp tamarind juice
• ¼ cup water
• 5 dates chopped into small pieces
• 1 pinch hot smoked paprika
• ¼ tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 drop honey
• Salt & pepper to season

Cook the mixture on a low heat until the volume reduces and the dates start to disintegrate. It should be thick and shiny.

Season 2 pork chops with salt and pepper and pre-heat the grill to its top temperature. Grill them for 2.5 mins, flip them and grill for another 2.5 mins.

Top the chops with the sauce and enjoy! It is indeed sweet, sour, hot and smoky.

@ShopMakeEat

Light & healthy muffins

A recipe that makes 12 muffins in 40 - 45 mins (20 mins prep and 20-25 mins baking time).


Following on from the jam, it seemed a pity to make jam to go on store bought bread, so I made healthy muffins to go with them. After some googling, to find a recipe with ingredients like this:

I adapted this recipe for 12 muffins. 

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Wet

• 1 ¼ cups dates, dried apricots and dried figs, coarsely chopped
• 3 tbsps honey
• 1 cup skim milk
• ¼ cup orange juice
• 2 large egg whites
• 2 tbsps vegetable oil
• 1 banana mashed

Dry

• 1 tbsp orange zest
• 1 ¾ cups oats
• ½ cup flour
• 5 tsps baking powder
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• pinch cloves

Combine the top 7 wet ingredients in one bowl and the bottom 6 dry ingredients in another bowl. Mix them each up well separately and then combine and mix well together.

Spoon the mix in two 6-muffin silicon muffin tins. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean. (Check them at 20 minutes.) Hoik them out of the muffin tin and cool on a rack.

The muffins are not very sweet at all and quite plain so a good base for a flavourful jam. The muffins are very soft believe it or not. With all the oats I suspected they would be much more stodgy then they actually were.

I ate them like this, hot out of the oven with a dollop of sweet, tangy jam and a dollop of creamy fromage frais.

They were delicious!


@ShopMakeEat

Rhubarb!

A jam recipe which takes about 15 mins prep time and 45 mins cook time (total 1 hour) to make slightly less than a litre.


I don’t bake a lot as it all seems a bit too much like chemistry. I don’t like faffing around with exact measurements, as there is too little room for experimentation. But I made an exception over Easter weekend because of rhubarb. I have been walking past rhubarb in the various London markets for weeks. I have wanted to buy it and turn it into something new and delicious. I mean, look at it, it’s beautiful!

So, I decided on jam. Partially because the desire to make jam has been hounding me for months. It’s something I have never done and I really like fresh fruit jam, not the kind with gelatine in it, but the kind that’s really runny and drippy, with chunky bits of fruit. The kind that soaks into your toast and is not super sweet. This kind of jam:

To get there I went down to Portobello market and bought Yorkshire rhubarb, and turned it into jam by combining:

• 5 stalks rhubarb, washed and chopped
• one cup - apricots, dates and figs chopped
• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 tbsp grated orange zest
• 1 cup OJ
• ½ cup water

All the raw ingredients looked so pretty together, the colours were gorgeous:

I brought it to a boil and then kept on a low heat, adding water and cooking it down until the dried fruit was well incorporated.

It is a beautifully tangy jam, and I ate it on toast, muffins, with yoghurt and stirred into porridge.

@ShopMakeEat

A romantic green

I love green leafy things like kale and broccoli and rapini (not spinach – too flimsy). So when I saw this at Portobello market, I had to know what it is ...

... puntarelle

Great name, isn’t it? It sounds beautifully romantic – a romantic green. 

Two additional facts that add to the romance: it is only available for a very short period of time at the beginning of the year and hails from Italy. 

There are two parts to it. The long outer leaves and the small shoots in the middle, as you can see once it's cut through the middle.

Both parts taste bitter (so I would only recommend this if you like bitter flavours), and the outer leaves should be cooked while the inner leaves can be eaten raw. 

That’s my friend Kyra’s hands in the photo. She led the charge on making a salad with the inner leaves, which we tossed into a simple tomato and cucumber salad. But, I hear the proper way to eat the salad is with a lime and anchovy dressing, like this recipe on The Guardian's website.

The lady who sold me the puntarelle had this salad made for her by an Italian customer so she could taste it for herself. It sounds delicious but, when I went back to the market to buy another puntarelle and try it the proper way, the season was already over. Now, I will have to wait another year to try it out – something to look forward to next winter!

As I love my greens with eggs, I steamed the outer leaves, put them on some toasted seedy bread and topped it all off with poached eggs.

@ShopMakeEat