Alien Hand Syndrome Cous Cous
capers, chick_peas, courgette, cous_cous, dried_apricots, harissa, olive_oil, onion, salt, subzi_polo, sundried_tomatoes
ingredients
makes an enormous plate of filling stuff that can be served as most of a meal for two
- 1 courgette
- 1 onion
- half cup of cous cous (medium)*
- half cup of vegetable stock*
- olive oil
- 260g can of chickpeas**
- As many sundried tomatoes as you can place along the diagonal of the chopping board***
- a great many teaspoons of harissa
- some mixed herbs of some kind.****
- a few capers
- some leftover dried apricots
* note - these must be bang on identical by volume.
** note - It will probably say
400g(drained weight 260g). Obviously this is post-soaking weight if you're doing things properly.
*** note - larger chopping boards are available
**** note - I'm rocking a subzi polo mix at the minute: parsely, dill, chives, coriander and fenugreek.
soundtrack
Thunderbirds theme tune, followed by Aleksi Virta.
process
First, chop onion and put it in the pan over a low heat to fry in olive oil. Then add small-ish blocks of chopped courgette. When stuff starts looking brown, put in the harissa, a strong tunisian chilli paste. When you get to this stage, you may think you should add amount according to taste, but you won't. You will just watch fascinated, and a little appalled as your hand moves back and forth seemingly of it's own accord ladling ever more firey potency into the pan where 'your' food is cooking. Then you regain composure by bunging in the chick peas and stirring to coat evenly. Then, having chopped the tomatoes and capers up with your special tomato knife, and hacked the dried apricots up a bit you add them to the.. oh dear gods no the left hand is ladling more harissa into the mix like some unstoppable ladling machine! How can this be happening and why won't it stop? Distract the hand by making it put the vaguely specified herbs in. As the mix fries, put the vegetable stock on to boil, add some salt and immediately take it off when it begins to boil. Chuck in liberal quantities of olive oil followed by the cous cous. Cover and ignore for a few minutes. When it's all fluffy and nice, stir the mixture through the cous cous and gingerly taste it with some hot pitas. Affect surprised noises that somehow exactly the right amount of harrisa was added.
There is still no decision about which microformat to use for recipies, otherwise this entry would be using them.
Sparrow Grass Penne
asparagus, chilli, gomaiso, olive_oil, pasta, pine_nuts, sesame, tamari, white_onion
ingredients
Servings: It's pasta. If more people turn up, make more pasta. It just means people get less sauce.
- Penne Rigato (by preference make it good durum stuff, the kind that looks white-yellow rather than brown)
- Asparagus (one bunch)
- Tamari
- fresh red chilli to taste, not much
- medium white onion
- pine nuts
- Gomaiso (if you can't find this see below)
- Good quality, acidic, lemony, fragrant olive oil.
Gomaiso. 'Go-My-Sew'. What do you mean you don't have any gomaiso? Ridiculous! Well then do you have
- An oversized bag of sesame seeds
- Sea salt
Mix 4 parts sesame seed with one part sea salt, and then pound it to bits in a granite pestle and mortar until the salt is almost invisible to the naked eye. Now you have
soundtrack
Anything incomprehensible, noisy and Japanese for making the Gomaiso
(Afrirampo would be a good choice, for example). Anything by Thievery Corporation
for the rest.
process
Add the halved, tailed asparagus spears briefly to a pot of boiling water, taking them out sooner rather than later.
Make the pasta using the asparagus water as you leave the asparagus to dry off.
Gently fry the onion and chilli up with a little olive oil, adding pine nuts a little bit later.
Splash a half tablespoon of tamari in and add the asparagus to finish cooking in this new environment without getting greasy inside.
Toss the (now cooked) pasta with plenty of olive oil, stir in the asparagus mixture and top with plenty of
gomaiso. Discard weary arms.
I feel obliged to point out that owing to an accident of genetics I, like many others, simply cannot smell 'asparagus wee',
the effect of which Marcel Proust described as transforming his chamber pot into a 'bouquet of flowers'.
Be aware that people who do have this superpower will probably be able to tell whether you have just
'been'. Also do not eat this before attempting to escape from supervillans with cost-effective access to sniffer dogs.
Consume with any of: pickled ginger, nori flakes, miso soup, garlic naan bread, mixed olives, goat's cheese, lime and sweet potato won-tons, scottish red ale.
There is still no decision about which microformat to use for recipies, otherwise this entry would be using them.
