Spelt and tahini cookies, sugar-free

Seemingly overnight Spring has brought with it many wonderful things: shiny, new leaves on the trees; showers of cherry blossoms; the first warm rays of sunshine and also, happily, it has also returned to me my love of cooking. Motherhood dimmed my passion for the act of cooking somewhat in the first few months as I focussed exclusively on the butter bean (who's not so little these days). Yet here I am, joyfully spending an entire weekend by the stove. Over the past few days I have baked sourdough bread, made aubergine curry, an Alfafa sprout salad and these spelt cookies, twice. They were good the first time but I felt like I could improve the recipe by subtracting half the butter. Yes, you read it correctly the recipe has been improved by adding less butter.

150g spelt flour

4 tablespoons tahini 

100ml runny honey 

2 tablespoons ground almonds

1 tablespoon soft butter 

1 tablespoon raw cacao nibs

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 

1 egg

Topping: either Eridanous Sesame Paste (you can buy this at Lidl) with honey or 2 tablespoons tahini and 1 tablespoon set honey and 1 tablespoon soft cheese like mascapone or Philadelphia

Pistachios/pecans/almonds

Melt the butter in a large pan. Once it has melted add the tahini. Stir for 1min on a low heat then turn the heat off. Stir in the flour, followed by all the other dry ingredients. Finally, add the egg. Mix it well to a paste the consistency of peanut butter. Pull off bits of the dough and roll it into a ball about the size of a golf ball. Flatten the top and lay them all out of a greased baking tray or on a baking tray covered in baking paper. Bake for 12min at 180 degrees C.

Egyptian breakfast with eggs, dates and tahini

The first ever post on this blog was about breakfasts, complete with my 29 year old self's inquisitive attitude and some rather gross-looking pictures of food. Breakfast is still an obbession of mine, but that's one of the few things that has remained constant. Over the past 5 years I have met many great breakfasts: these seedy, turmeric oats have been a firm favourite of late; there has also been "placki" with roast cherry tomatoes; quinoa; congee rice soups with butternut squash and radish and spinach and egg, not to forget fruit-oat pots. But the reason that I am blogging about this today is because there is a new breakfast in town! This Egyptian breakfast was introduced to me by my love and has made me fall in love with Tahini once more (for many years I couldn't bear the sight of it, but that's another story).

That's scrambled eggs up there, with dates! Yes, sweet scrambled eggs, with tahini and mini pitta bread on the side (just because they're cute). You melt some butter on a frying pan and fry the chopped (and pitted) dates first for a couple of minutes, before cracking the eggs in. The eggs don't need any milk. Stir the eggs while they're frying on a low heat, season with salt and white pepper, and serve. Simple. Delicious. Reasonably healthy breakfast.

Honey and almond yoghurt cake with orange icing (no sugar)

I told you about the cake I baked for my boyfriend's and his mum's birthday, which ended up having a big hole in the middle... so the problem was that I had so little time on that day that I tried to do everything too quickly, including taking the cake out of it's mould. The heavier, still wet bit in the middle therefore stayed put. Sad times. Alas, today I made the cake again. Actually, I made it yesterday, and learning from the my previous mistake, I left it to cool overnight, then today I finished it off with the icing and the eating, while musing happily over the deeper life lesson learnt here. Which is "don't rush", if you're interested. Simple

You can probably detect the Middle-Eastern influence in this recipe - I replaced sugar with local honey, as they sometimes do in baklava, and the yoghurt is a little trick that my Greek friend Karina taught me, to keep the cake moist. The addition of ground almonds and orange blossom water completes the picture. A flying (or at least hovering) carpet to eat it on would be the ideal cherry-on-top, but clearly we're not quite there yet in terms of technology (seriously?)

Ingredients

Cake 
250g unsalted butter
100g ground almonds
200g plain flour
150g good quality honey
2 eggs
1 tablespoon orange blossom water
150g greek yoghurt

Icing
250g cream cheese
100g icing sugar
2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
1 tablespoon orange blossom water

I used my special method of cake-making whereby I melted the butter in a pan first, then added the honey and then the ground almonds. Once everything was gloopy, I turned the heat off and started to sift the flour in. Then an egg, then more flour, another egg, more flour... mixing all the time. Finally, I added the orange blossom water and honey and poured the whole lot into a greased baking tray and popped it into a pre-heated over for about 30min, 180 degrees C.

Note: This cake tastes great refridgerated

Another bento lunch: falafel, couscous and roast veg

I've been a bit slack with blogging recently. There's a lot going on in my life right now, a kind of transition time I guess and I'm in the middle of figuring out my priorities and new routines. I have a few things that I would like to tell you about, but I will start with a bento I made as this course came to a close

The falafel were dead simple to make: mince the chickpeas with some cumin, lemon juice and a red onion, add an egg and a bit of plain flour, make into little balls and fry on all sides. The roast vegetables are a combination of parsnips, carrots, sweet potato, red onions and courgette (zucchini), roasted with grape seed oil, thyme and salt and pepper. The couscous I made with just water, and just added a bit of butter at the end (took all of 5min). Those massive things at the top are the biggest caper berries I've ever seen. As part of the last bit of homework for the Bento 101 course I needed to choose something to stash in the cupboard, fridge and freezer for future bento making. For some reason, I found this part of the course really hard (some kind of strange commitment issues perhaps). Finally, I chose caper berries for the cupboard, mini peppers for the fridge and froze some of those falafels up there

Ingredients - falafel balls (makes about 10)

2 tins of chickpeas
1 red onion
1 egg
1 tablespoon plain flour
2 teaspoons cumin
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Grapeseed oil for frying
Salt and pepper

Middle-Eastern Chicken Soup

Eating certain foods, even their smell, has the power to take you back in time. There's the obvious dishes associated with certain countries and there's the more subtle - corn-on-the-cob, for example, will always make me think of childhood summers spent in Hungary, Spanish rosé - of one particular, pebbly beach on Ibiza Island and a chilled, cut up Mars bar (this is the only way I ever eat a Mars bar now) takes me straight back to a tent in the Himalayas. This is precisely why I haven't eaten this soup in about 3 years, even though there was a time when it was one of my favourites. We used to eat it nearly every Sunday in my last long-term relationship,  the stock made from the bones left over from our lunchtime roast - sometimes this was chicken, more often it was game birds. Perhaps it was less often than that, and this is just how I've remembered that period. Either way, it has always reminded me of the sweet moments in that relationship, which I didn't want to be reminded of for a very long time. Now, I don't mind anymore

You cook the chicken carcass with an onion in a large pan of water for as long as you can - I usually manage 2-3 hours. Remove the meat and the onion from the pan and add the (rinsed) rice. Once the rice is cooked, season the soup well with salt and pepper and put any nice bits of chicken meat back in. Take it off the heat. Beat the eggs, add a spoonful of soup and carry on beating, then add some more. Keep doing this for a little white before adding the mixture back into the soup and beating all together - the idea is that the soup becomes creamy without the egg curdling in it. Finally, stir in the lemon juice and serve. I love sour things, so I may squeeze more lemon in, but I would suggest you start off with just the one and see how it goes. There isn't much that I don't love about this soup - it's comforting and creamy, wholesome and healing, it fills you up without making you feel stuffed

Ingredients

Chicken carcass

1 onion

100g rice

2 eggs

Juice of 1 lemon

Salt and pepper

Black garlic hummus (no tahini)

I should have told you about this earlier. I don't know why I didn't - the time never seemed right until now. And black garlic hummus is a dark and seductive thing - sweet yet intense, strange yet familiar,  it definitely lends itself to being kept a secret

But a secret is no fun unless it's shared, so here we are... blend the chickpeas with the lemon juice, paprika and black garlic. While they are blending, slowly add the olive oil, in a trickle. Add some sea salt too while it's blending. Keep doing this until the mixture is mostly smooth with a few cheeky chickpea bits here and there. Serve with more paprika sprinkled on top

Ingredients

Tin of chickpeas

Juice of 1 lemon

1 black garlic bulb

1 heaped teaspoon paprika

Sea salt to taste

About 1 tablespoon mild olive oil

Middle Eastern-style lentils

Sometimes life gets a little hectic. There are so many things to do, projects to finish, people to see... It's a time when priorities are changing but I haven't quite decided how yet. All you can do is follow your instincts at this point. And be easy on yourself. I have a tendency, like my mother, to beat myself up over things left undone, treating life like one massive to-do list. This is something I am trying to move away from, because I know it leaves you feeling permanently dissatisfied, and actually the bits of life that really matter, the ones that you'll remember when you're old, are the ones in between the to-do lists. So this is my excuse for not blogging much recently. This weekend my good friend from Poland, Magda, is here, taking a breather from her massive to-do list. It's necessary to get away sometimes, to view your life from the outside and reassess what's really important to you. I will be doing this in a couple of weeks myself when I go to Sardinia with my boy LT. I can't wait. But right now, I am trying to look after myself and preserve my (seriously flagging) energy. This lentil dish from my favourite cookery book is the sort of simple, peasant food that gives you the nutrition and energy to keep going when you really can't be bothered anymore

Ingredients

375g lentils 

1 onion

1 clove garlic

2 tablespoons butter

Salt and black pepper

1 tsp cumin

Juice of 1 lemon

As usual, I made amendments. The recipe called for brown lentils, I used green. I used more butter and lemon juice than was called for. Once the dish was ready, I also cracked some eggs in there and allowed them to poach nestled between the lentils, a method which I borrowed from a Portugese recipe. You fry the onion and garlic in half the butter until soft. Add the lentils and fry for a couple of minutes, stirring constantly, before adding cold water and bringing to the boil. Remove the scum from the top, season and  add the cumin. Cover and cook on a low heat for about half an hour. Add the lemon juice at the end. I served this with bulghur wheat and the eggs for lunch. Eating this kind of food makes me feel connected to humanity in a way - people the world over have been eating like this for thousands of years. Tomorrow, we're planning a Polish-style dinner with these lentils, reheated, with pork and leek sausages and garlicky mash

Food in Belgrade

Ah, Belgrade. If you're not aware as yet, I have totally fallen in love with the place. It's beautiful, interesting and romantic, what else do you need? Actually, there's also chemistry, and Belgrade definitely has that in spades - an energy that can't really be explained. It's like when you fall in love I guess - you can tell people that the object of your affection is good looking, intelligent and talented, but it's never really that, it's just how you feel. And so it follows that you could go to Belgrade and think it's no big deal. Everyone has their own special cities and spots. Apart from London and Warsaw, which are like family to me, I also keep going back to Athens, Paris and Barcelona. Perhaps Basque Country and Belgrade will also become my special spots, I'd like that, but only time will tell...

Belgrade has many culinary influences, especially Turkish since it was ruled by Turkey for something like 500 years. The "?" restaurant is the oldest in town, and that's where we ate the vine leaves and corn bread that you see up there. The vine leaves were the best I'd ever eaten, completely melt in your mouth delicious. Here, they are eaten with sour cream, which was something new to me

Belgrade as a town reminds me of Eastern Europe, Greece and South-east Asia all mixed up together. You may think the last bit is my imagination working overtime, but just look at that photo with me in it. Can you see all the houses on the water? Very South-east Asian. The photos with the beautiful views were taken in the Austro-Hungarian district, Zemun. I got shown around Zemun by my mate Maja's best buddy, Zozo. Yes, it was Zuza and Zozo in Zemun

Apricotina with almond stuffing

I don't know if you've heard, but I am trying not to eat (processed) sugar. It's become a bit of an ongoing joke at work, because I blatantly do still eat it. The point is, I am trying. I definitely don't eat it every day now. You may be thinking "why?". Well, it's because I feel that I am addicted to it - I swear that trying to give it up has been harder than giving up smoking. I also want to be free of the ups and downs in mood that sugar creates. I have enough of those without it, thank you very much. Having said all this (and now you'll know why this has become a bit of a joke), I have a friend coming round for dinner today, and I'd hate to deprive her of a dessert. I can't blog about any more sugar-free flapjacks, as the whole point of this blog is to introduce you (and me) to new things, to be creative and inspiring, so I will give up on the giving up for one night only. And probably a few other days and nights when I am tempted by something which is worth breaking the rules for. After all, life would be pretty joyless if you never broke your own rules

Apricotina are Middle-Eastern apricot drops, which take about 5min to make. You grab some dried apricots and mince them - I used about 150g and a blender, you could also chop them really finely. You then mix them with about half a tablespoon of icing sugar, kneeding them to paste, before rolling them in more icing sugar until they're pretty little balls. I stuffed an almond in the middle, Claudia Rodin (A New Book of Middle Eastern Cooking) suggests a mixture of ground almonds and sugar as stuffing. I think they're delicious with mint tea, my friend Mariana says they're like something from outer space

Moroccan mint tea

If any of my neighbours looked out of the window this morning and saw me kicking the door of my shed, they'd be forgiven for thinking that I don't particularly enjoy gardening. They would, however, be wrong. Despite my momentary anger at the shed door, the fact that I only do it every month (at best) and my considerable lack of green-fingered talent, it is something that gives me great pleasure. Today, for instance I found that some mint was growing near the rosemary bush. Where did it come from?

I took it as a sign that it was time to make Moroccan mint tea. I have been making this tea, ever since I went to Morocco in 2001. Of course, I've developed my own method by now, and it has been transformed into something that perhaps isn't 100% authentic, but is, nevertheless, delicious and refreshing. The main difference is that I don't sweeten it with sugar, but with honey. And I don't make it anywhere near as sweet as they do. It's a matter of taste, I guess. You take a green tea bag and put it in a pot with about three sprigs of mint and a tablespoon of honey, before covering with freshly boiled water. Allow to brew for about five minutes, then pour into individual teacups. Or small glasses, if you want to be Moroccan about it. If I'd found some pinenuts, then I would have toasted them, and let a few float on top, just like they did in Quarzazante, on the edge of the Sahara desert

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's lamb with pearl barley

I found this recipe in the Guardian weekend supplement that someone had left on the train and liked the simplicity of it, as well as the photo, which made it look very tasty and just like the sort of thing I like to eat at this time of the year. I also liked the idea of using pearl barley, because I hardly ever cook with it, and did you know that it only costs 37p for a big (500g) bag?! I tried to follow the recipe as best I could, but of course I had to make some additions and substitutions. Hugh's recipe does not use beer, or paprika, for example. As I did not have neck of lamb with the bone in it, I used a lamb stock cube. And I decided to just add the pearl barley to the stew, rather than cooking it separately. I also didn't use anywhere near as much butter as Hugh suggests for frying the onions

So I fried the onions in the butter for about 20 minutes, then tipped them into a bowl and reserved. In the same pan as I had just used to fry the onions I browned the seasoned lamb chunks in olive oil, for about 5 minutes, before covering with cold water (there was about an inch of water covering the meat), adding the bay leaves and bringing to the boil. Once it was boiling I turned the heat down and allowed it to simmer slowly. At this point, I added the stock cube, a pinch of paprika and the cinamon. It cooked for about an hour. Finally, I added the pearl barley and cooked for a further half an hour. When the barley was soaking up all the liquid, I started adding the beer, bit by bit. I refried the onions near the end, until crispy, and then added these to the stew. I ate this for dinner the night I made it, and the next day my brother came round and I warmed this up, adding a bit more beer while it was heating, to keep it all moist and stewey, and we ate it washed down with more beer. As it's a dish of Turkish origin, next time I may have it with the Turkish drinking yoghurt that I buy from my local shop - yum! Anyway, thanks to Hugh I have another simple and delicious dish to add to my repertoire, I highly recommend

Ingredients

2tbsp olive oil

50g butter

2 onions

700g cubed lamb 

Lamb stock cube

2 bay leaves

200g pearl barley

1tsp cinamon

Salt and pepper

Half a pint of beer

Pinch of paprika

Finger food: hummus, pastries and greek salad

I love eating outside! The weather was so crap all day on Friday, and then as we left work, the sun came out - what a miracle! I had a couple of old friends, Rob and Jim, coming over for dinner, and decided to cheat a bit and just do mezze-type finger food, and concentrate on the vodka martinis rather than spending lots of time in the kitchen. It took me just an hour to put everything together before they came round, and then we went for drinks in the courtyard for half an hour while the pastries were baking in the oven. We ate moroccan style humus (without tahini) and pitta chips, pastries with feta and spinach and moroccan-spiced lamb, and a greek salad.

Ingredients - hummus:

Tin of chickpeas

Half a teaspoon cumin

Half a teaspoon paprika 

Juice of half a lemon

Salt

About a tablespoon olive oil

With the hummus, I just blended the chickpeas, lemon juice, salt and spices in a blender, slowly adding the olive oil into the mix. I wanted to use dried chickpeas originally, as I prefer their flavour, and even soaked some overnight, but then I realized that I would need to cook them for ages and promptly changed my mind. You may think I was being lazy, but it was a Friday night, and sometimes the priority has to be to have a good time! I cut the pittas into strips and stuck them in the oven for about 20 minutes on 100 degrees C, while waiting for my mates to come round. For the greek salad up there, I just used cucumber, tomatoes, feta and onion. Dressing was the simplest possible - lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper, which I put it on immediately before serving. When my friends arrived with the ice, I made dirty vodka martinis, with an unusual spelt vodka I picked up in Poland. I have recently learnt that I needn't have spent lots of money on the vodka, because the best vodka martinis I have tasted, at Milk and Honey in Soho, are made with Wyborowa - a cheap Polish rye vodka - apparently the rye cuts through the brine really well. Still, mine were pretty good too. I make dry ones, so all you need is vodka, and olives in brine. They say you should never shake a martini, so I just stirred the vodka ice, and brine for a minute or two in the cocktail shaker, and drained into a chilled glass. I can't say how much vodka and brine I used exactly - I like it quite dirty, so I'd say about 2 parts vodka to 1 part brine, but it's entirely up to you

Ingredients - pastries:

Feta and Spinach

Packet of puff pastry

Bag of fresh spinach

200g feta

Juice of half a lemon

Salt and pepper

Butter for sticking

Moroccan spiced lamb 

(Adapted from A new Book of Middle-Eastern Food by Claudia Roden)

Packet of puff pastry

Half an onion

300 grams minced lamb

Cinamon stick

Teaspoon grated fresh ginger

Pinch of paprika

Salt and pepper

2 eggs, beaten

Olive oil for frying

Butter for sticking

With the feta and spinach pastries, I simply shredded the fresh spinach and blanched it for 5 minutes. When you drain it, make sure you get as much water out as possible, by squishing it with a fork. Then put it in a bowl, with the lemon juice and feta, and keep squishing, adding the salt and pepper at the end. My Greek friend who taught me to make these folded them in little triangles, but I find that you don't get that much filling in there, so I do squares - putting the mixture in the middle,  folding once over and sticking the sides together, into a pillow shape. For the lamb pastries, you brown the onion for about five minutes before adding the minced lamb and spices. You use a fork to break the meat up while it is cooking and it needs to cook for about 10 minutes. Then turn the heat off and pour over the beaten eggs. Use the same fork to push and blend the eggs into the lamb mix. Then allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. I was supposed to roll this into cigar shapes, however, wanting to put as much lamb in as possible they turned into sausage roll shapes. The thing with pastries is that anything goes really - as long as you get the filling right, they will taste lovely. I cooked them at 180 degrees C for half an hour. This recipe will make 24 pastries all together, which was way too many for just three people, but they are quite nice cold the next day too

Middle-eastern chicken soup with egg and lemon

Sometimes it takes a long time to fully appreciate a gift. When my friend, Matt, gave me Claudia Roden's new book of Middle-Eastern food, I felt that it was a thoughtful gift, since I'm into cooking, but I didn't realise that this book was going to become my bible for about 3 years! I could talk in length about why this is probably the best cookbook in the world, but I'll spare you this monologue and simply tell you about a soup that I adapted from this book , which I make every time we have a chicken (or pheasant) roast on a Sunday...

I put the carcass, along with any vegetables I have lying around (this weekend it was some celery stalks and leaves, half an onion and a carrot) into a big pot, and cover with cold water. I then bring this to the boil and simmer for about 3 hours. If we had an early roast then I put this on immediately afterwards and we have the soup as a light supper. Sometimes, I cook it for half the time, and just leave it in a cold kitchen overnight, then cook it for another hour, and finish it off, the next day
Then, you need sieve all bits from the soup, leaving a clear broth. To this, I add washed, brown rice. Meanwhile, you beat a couple of eggs in a separate bowl with the juice of 1-2 lemons (I use 1 and a half but then I love all things sour). Finally, when the rice is cooked, you take a tablespoon of the broth from the soup and beat in with the eggs and lemon, then another, and repeat about five times - this is so that the egg mix doesn't curdle on entering the soup. Also, turn the heat off now. And eventually, pour the egg and lemon mix into the soup. I always beat this as it goes in. You need to season this soup really well with salt and plenty of pepper (I use both black and white peppers). Yum! I make this soup all the time, though I have a distinct feeling Jamie would like me to make a different chicken soup now and again, and maybe I should broaden my horizons a little bit. My mum's Polish/ Jewish clear chicken soup was eaten so much in my childhood (especially when ill), that I have grown allergic to it now unfortunately - I don't want the same fate to befall this lovely soup