pass it on

Food waste is a crime and I am guilty as charged m’lud.

While lamenting my cooking mojo, contents of my fridge lie in risk of rotting. With a busy week ahead, featuring too many late nights’s home from work, I excavated the nether regions of my pantry to unearth some dried beans. While I was there I threw out the sad culprits who’d more than hit their use by date. In my defence the offending items were ones that I’d inherited when the Significant Eater first moved in many years ago.

Cooking beans is easy. Soak overnight. Drain, rinse and boil the next morning. It seemed to have upset people when I wrote previously that I could cook up a batch of beans before going to work. I do like a leisurely start to the day and am happy to sacrifice sleep for the pleasure of sipping a hot beverage while reading the digital news, wrangling the cat and organising my day.

It’s a Virgo thing.

The aforementioned planning involved making a batch of chilli beans – take a big dollop of homemade harissa, onion and assorted end of the week vegetables (pumpkin, parsnip and a lanky carrot, finely grated), simmer with tomato paste and vegetable stock. Throw on the heat diffuser mat and ignore for an hour or two.

But there was a problem. I’m home alone at the moment and not fond of leftovers. In fact I’ll do anything to avoid eating the same food two nights in a row (with the exception of the gingery tomato-y tofu dish, I think the sugary content makes it highly addictive). So night one was augmented with not-feta and night two, a handful of marinated olives.

There was no way there’d be a night three. A man-size serve remained. But throwing it out seemed criminal. In desperation, I texted my neighbour. Her adult son became vegan this year and lives a few blocks away, was he coming to dinner tonight? It turned out he wasn’t but her husband loves hot food (she doesn’t) and would be very happy for a chilli hit.

Problem solved.

One of the unexpected pleasures of passing it on is the boomerang effect. On my doorstep this morning was the plastic container with a note of thanks scribbled on some butchers paper, inside was nestled four of the cutest eggs.

Perhaps my cooking mojo just needs a little bit of neighbourhood recycling to kick it back to life?

Frittata anyone?

Starring

Summer Beans
Chilli Beans – soaked plus a twist of smoky paprika
Chili Beans – the breakfast leftover version

Co-starring
Tofu and
Eggplant in a Gingery Tomato Sauce

Crew – the Mighty Fridge Fixings

Stripped Back Harissa Paste
Marinated Olives

simple food - harissa prawn recipe

No need for a DNA test, I am definitely my father’s daughter. Bob is often heard to lament, “You can’t get decent prawns in New Zealand”. So, as the daughter in exile here in the land of “throw another shrimp on the barbie”, I do my best to eat his quota of our favourite crustacean.

While it’s easy to gorge on prawns, a mere half dozen per person is easy on the budget to add a little bit of special-ness to a meal. Though with medium-sized prawns being sold locally for a mere 40-50 cents a pop, a larger serve can still be much cheaper than a fillet of fish or a steak. Or even a block of organic tofu, come to think of it.

With an abundance of hot red chillies growing in the garden (do you want some?), every few weeks I’m making a batch of harissa paste to throw into a tagine or just spice up some vegetables. I have always been a sucker for sizzling plates of old-fashioned garlic and chilli prawns served in Spanish restaurants, so going the whole spice route hog and rubbing them with harissa made total sense to me.

Harissa prawns

1 tsp of stripped back harissa paste for every 6-8 prawns*

Rub paste on the prawns and refrigerate for about an hour.

Heat vegetable oil (olive, raw sesame etc) in a heavy based fry pan and cook prawns a couple of minutes. Drain on a paper towel. As this doesn’t take long, cook in batches so not to overcrowd the pan.

The prawns are simple and stunning. The cumin in my latest batch of harissa is quite coarsely ground, imparting a tantalizingly nutty flavour. They can be served hot or cold, though it is very difficult to not scoff the lot en route from pan to plate.

Serving suggestions

A platter of harissa prawns goes well with a selection of salads. The nuttiness compliments brown rice, toasted almonds, green beans and white bean salads in particular. Or try a simple potato and green salad combination .

Substitute harissa prawns for tempeh in a cross-cultural version of my meat-free nasi lemak.

As canapés, for finger food with a kick.





* Here’s my version of harissa again
6 medium hot red chilies
6 plump cloves of garlic
2 tsp coriander seeds
2 tsp fennel seeds
2 tsp cumin seeds
Salt
Oil

Toast the seeds in a pan, swirling all the time so they don’t burn. After a couple of minutes the aroma will tell you they are cooking nicely. Keep swirling until the coriander seeds begin to brown. Remove immediately from the pan (residual heat = burnt seeds) and grind with a mortar and pestle.

Chop the chilies into quarters (if you really don’t like the heat, deseed or use less chilies) and process with the garlic, a touch of salt and a drizzle of oil. Throw in the pounded roasted seeds and whiz until you have a nice paste. The consistency I aimed for was runny enough to process easily but a paste rather than a slurry. I used raw sesame oil not necessarily out of authenticity, just because we’ve got a surplus of it at the moment.

The raw paste had a kick but a nice rounded flavour from the other herbs as well. Given that I have a heavy hand when it comes to heat, this quantity of paste would be enough for a meal of about 6 people with good tolerance, or two meals of 4 for those who like things a little milder.