children on their birthdays

alright, so you've seen the first half of the two-days-in-the-making birthday meal. it would be remiss of me to leave you hanging in terms of the second half.

i would like to point out, actually, that nobody else in attendance was actually a vegetarian. this may not seem necessarily like a big deal to those not of the herbivore persuasion, but one thing i learned very rapidly after i gave up the flesh is that conversations about food turn very rapidly to having to justify yourself in a torrent of 'where do you get your protein?' 'give me a steak anyday' and 'what the hell do you eat anyway?'. so being able to cook a meal for people that actually impressed enough to actually prevent any of these questions was a personal triumph for me. the question of my vegetarianism did actually come up, courtesy of my talented musician friend corinne, who has known me since i was an insouciant, self destructive little teenager, and was a little baffled with trying to reconcile that with the green-conscience motivated young adult i've become. i think the question went somewhere along the lines of 'did you just decide you loved the fluffy bunnies then?'. i don't actually get into why i became a vegetarian unless i'm prompted by someone else, but people were very surprised to find that it has little to nothing to do with the moral objection to slaughter, and everything to do with environmental impact. i ended up explaining to them what a headache i used to be socially in terms of constantly label-scrutinizing, questioning, and arguing, in order to make sure what i ate came in line with my ethics about how food should be grown or sourced, and how it was easier, and actually less internal-conflict ridden for me to just give up eating meat entirely. this led to a fair few jokes at my expense about being basically an awfully polite 'hugh grant' vegetarian, which i'm cool with. especially when it's followed by talk of my food in excited, reverent tones. i think the kitchen is basically the only place where my ego isn't charlie sheen proportions, so i don't see any harm in sitting and basking in the praise.

so, let's actually get onto the food shall we? i think we'll start with the falafels. now, this is a recipe i started making semi-regularly in my master's year, when i was living above a one-stop convenience store and had perhaps the world's shittiest, tiniest kitchen. it was one of the few things i could make that pleased the whole household (there were four of us in total, and one girl was literally the fussiest motherfucker i have ever met). it got to the point where we'd be down the pub i worked in, and we all drank in, and someone would start talking about them and i'd end up inviting a whole bunch of people over for falafels later in the week. they were that good. and dare i say it, that easy. i've lost the recipe along the way, but it was originally written by simon rimmer, who if i remember rightly spoke of it as a recipe that, at the time of writing the accidental vegetarian, he considered a bit too 'wholefoods' to include, but upon a rethink and subtle shifts in tastes, had decided it was a recipe that deserved to be included in the veggie cooking canon. i couldn't agree more with him. i got it from one of his vegetarian features in delicious magazine, and here it is as i remember it:

falafels

2 x 500g chickpeas, drained, rinsed, and patted dry
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp plain flour
2 red chillies, chopped (in festing buildings i got into the habit of using whatever chillies lara had grown/whatever was in the fridge. the habit remains)
2 tbsp fresh coriander (original recipe said parsley but i cannot do parsley)
2 cloves garlic
zest of a lemon
sunflower oil for frying.

toast the cumin seeds and coriander seeds in a dry frying pan until they begin to release their scent and blacken slightly, which should take roughly a minute or two. grind using a pestle and mortar or a spice grinder.

place all the ingredients bar the oil into a blender and pulse until you have a smooth, thick, doughy paste. if the ingredients are being a little stubborn add the juice of the lemon, or some olive oil, to loosen things up, but you don't want things getting too liquid.

flour a surface and your hands, and roll tablespoons of the mixture into walnut sized balls. you should get about thirty. (note for the time constrained, you can make the recipe up to this stage the day before and the balls will sit happily in the fridge until you need them)

heat sunflower oil in a frying pan over a high heat, and fry the falafels in batches until browned all over, resting briefly on kitchen paper before serving.

et voila, a very bad, drunkenly taken picture of the falafels after the first attack on the pile had taken place:

but nevermind, you kind of know what a falafel looks like, as if you need me to patronize you by acting like you don't (excuses for my having drunk too much are my forte, by the way). like i said, this was after everybody's first attempt at the pile; there were four left before we embarked on our excursion to the pub, and there were literally none left in the morning. so i'd consider the falafels the success they always are. excellent.

so, the next recipe i found in my copy of yotam ottolenghi's vegetarian cookbook, plenty. now, technically speaking, this is actually the first recipe i have made from this book. this, my friends, is but mere technicality, as it is a compendium of recipes from his new vegetarian column in guardian weekend, and i have certainly made my fair share of those. i bought this book at the end of the meat-free month i did in october last year that was the beginning of this whole giving up meat thing, as a kind of 'here i go, being serious about things, let's make a gesture that inevitably involves a waterstones purchase' thing (i do it a lot. i got my copy of virginia woolf's a room of one's own that way when i moved to university, amongst many other books. yeah i'm pretentious fuck, it's my hot body, i do what i want). funny then, that i should only directly cook from it now. i think it has to do with the way the book is presented. it's so, i don't know, sparse and white and neat, in order to show off the riotous colours of the food; you kind of don't want to mess it up. but i never feel good about my cookbooks until they're covered in something from the kitchen, so i feel an overwhelming sense of relief at having a colossal oil stain over this recipe:

moroccan carrot salad

1kg carrots
80ml olive oil, plus extra to finish
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 tsp caster sugar
3 garlic cloves, crushed
2 medium green chillies, finely chopped
1 spring onion, finely chopped
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground coriander
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp sweet paprika
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp chopped preserved lemon skin (i used mine)
40g chopped fresh coriander, plus extra to garnish
120ml greek yoghurt

peel the carrots and cut them, depending on their size, into cylinders or semi-circles 1cm thick; all the pieces should end up roughly the same size. place in a large saucepan and cover with salted water. bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for about ten minutes or until tender but still crunchy. drain in a colander and leave to dry out.

heat the oil in a large pan and saute the onion for ten minutes or so on a medium heat until soft and slightly brown. add the cooked carrots to the onions, followed by all the remaining ingredients, apart from the fresh coriander and yoghurt. remove from the heat. season liberally with salt, stir well, and leave to cool.

before serving, stir in the coriander, taste, and adjust the seasoning if necessary. serve in individual bowls with a dollop of yoghurt, a drizzle of oil, and some chopped coriander.

so here it is (picture taken the morning after, because in my state i forgot; also i left the yoghurt and oil seperate so people could finish theirs accordingly):

okay, so i'm always amazed at the colours of an ottolenghi recipe. i have yet to make one that hasn't rivalled a pucci-print beachtowel in it's brightness. this recipe was fantastic. i agree with one mr. slater in thinking that occasionally the ingredients lists makes you wince at their sheer magnitude, but that he does very exciting things with vegetables and flavour combinations. the smoke and the spice of this recipe perfectly meld with the sweetness of carrots, and i didn't even mind that i ended up eating it with slices of grilled halloumi for the next couple of days as it languished in the fridge, as this was a pretty perfect example of tarting up leftovers to make them feel new. it looks like there was a lot leftover but let me tell you, a kilo of carrots is a fuckload, over half of it is gone in this picture.

lastly, and i am kicking myself a bit here, because i completely forgot to take a picture of this before it all disappeared, is another recipe from plenty. it, again, used my preserved lemons, and was part of a larger recipe involving roasted beetroot, but i can't not include the recipe, purely because it was just so good (hence it disappeared so rapidly):

preserved lemon relish

2 yellow peppers

3 tbsp olive oil

1 1/2 tsp coriander seeds

400g canned chopped tomatoes (with their juices)

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 tsp sugar

3 tbsp preserved lemons (when i initially posted this i forgot to include them. well done me.)

3 tbsp each chopped parsley and coriander

salt and black pepper.

preheat the grill to high. use a small knife to cut around the stalks of the peppers; carefully pull out the stalks and the seeds and discard. place the peppers on a grill pan lined with foil and grill for up to thrity minutes, or until they are cooked inside and the ckins have blackened, turning them once during cooking. fold the edges of the foil over the peppers to enclose them completely, then leave to cool down. peel and cut into strips.

pour the olive oil into a medium saucepan, heat up and fry the coriander seeds for thirty seconds. add the tomatoes, garlic, sugar, and some salt and pepper and simmer for fifteen minutes. add the preserved lemon skin and simmer for 10 more minutes. remove from the heat and stir in the herbs and yellow pepper strips. allow to cool completely.

again, so gutted i didn't take a picture of this, riot of red and yellow that it was. i am definite about making this again, so i will take pictures then. i can see it being useful a lot over the summer (which i am more than wistful for, as despite being a vegetarian, i give some seriously good barbecue; ask anyone who has ever been to one of mine). it was incredible, sharp and sweet in equal measure, and, no surprise given it comes from a recipe involving beetroot, was the perfect partner for my beetroot houmous.

phew. so those are the big hitters from the birthday feast. honourable mentions also go to an improvised pine nut and cranberry spiced couscous, and some fat green olives i marinated in a dressing made from the flesh of my preserved lemons. given how bored i am with my social life right now, i'll start taking my requests for dinner invitations now. form an orderly queue, guys.