When I was a vegetarian during my student days in the 1970s we ate a lot of brown rice and vegetables, usually topped with tahini and gomasio. These days on Eat to Live I've had to cut back on the tahini and, ever since I discovered it, dukkah has replaced the gomasio. Seasoned Pioneers sell a tasty version but it's so easy to make your own. Dukkah is great sprinkled on top of a bowl of soup or stew or it you're not on Eat To Live, dip some homemade bread into a flavoured oil and then sprinkle it with dukkah - yummy.
Dukkah
100 g hazelnuts
100 g pistachios
50 g sesame seed
1/2 Tbsp cumin seeds
1/2 Tbsp coriander seeds
1/2 tsp sea salt
black pepper
Spread hazelnuts on a baking tray and roast in the oven at Gas Mark 2 for about 20 minutes until golden. Set aside to cool. Dry toast spices in a frying pan until the coriander seeds start to pop and then crush with a pestle and mortar. Dry toast sesame seeds until they turn golden and begin to pop. Place the nuts and spices into a food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped - be sure not to over-process.Stir in the toasted sesame seeds, mix well and store in airtight jars.
Variations: Add 25 g toasted pine nuts,
Add 1/4 tsp dried mint
Add 1/4 tsp fennel seeds
Replace the pistachios with pumpkin seeds
A couple of the recipes I want to make this week use harissa, which is a very spicy paste used in Moroccan and Tunisian recipes. In the past I've either bought a jar of harissa paste or used a harissa spice grinder which I bought from Oxfam a few years ago Today I decided to make harissa from scratch.
I only had bird's eye chillies which are very hot. This was possibly a mistake. As I started to process the harissa, microscopic fragments of chilli were released into the air - my nose started to run and tears rolled down my face. Perhaps a mask might have helped! The resulting harissa is exceedingly hot - when a recipe calls for a teaspoonful I am going to try using half that amount and the next time I make it I shall use a milder chilli.
Harissa
25 g red chillies, de-seeded and diced
1 small red bell pepper, de-seeded and diced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 Tbsp fresh coriander (cilantro), chopped
1 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
1 tsp cumin seeds, crushed
1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 Tbsp vegetable stock
Blend all of the ingredients together to form a paste.
Storage recommendation in all the recipes I've read is to put the paste into a jar and cover with a layer of olive oil. This would not be Eat to Live friendly so my plan is to store some in the fridge and to freeze teaspoonfuls in an ice cube tray for storage in the freezer.
