Beetroot and Coconut Gnocchi with Green Tea Butter Bean Sauce

For me, the easiest way to make sure I eat well and healthfully is to be prepared. And because I can be seriously lazy, or time-poor (or both), I like to do prep work lazily too. One of the easiest tricks is to just cook too much and you have immediate leftovers. Whenever Lance and I cook a roast (because usually the prep work is a team effort on roasts), I always roast more vegetables than we’ll eat, which I then will use for lunches to take to work. Given that I don’t peel any vegetables, only scrub them before roasting, it really is no extra effort at all. So when Sunday came around and we popped a roast on, I also roasted 2 large beetroot and set them aside to make this dish.

You may remember my sweet potato and coconut gnocchi that was inspired by a dish I never ate at Solomon’s? Well, what we did eat was beetroot and coconut gnocchi, and that was amazing too. So I wanted to give that a go, as well, giving the flavours a Skamp twist. To be honest, these gnocchi were slightly too dry for my liking. I imagine they need either some egg, or perhaps just some oil added into the mixture to bind it better. The sweet potato texture didn’t require anything extra to hold their shape and the mouth feel was perfect. These were a touch dry, so next attempt I will add maybe 2 tbsp coconut oil to the beetroot mixture. Eating it with sauce took away the dryness, but it needed the sauce.

Seeing as the beetroot are really earthy, and I was going to add some leftover rosemary roasted lamb to the sauce, I decided to add caraway and rosemary to the gnocchi to enhance this rich earthiness and the flavour was unbelievable. For the sauce, I made a ‘creamy’ sauce out of butter beans and green tea, to add grassiness to the earthiness, with some fresh lemon and parsley to brighten the flavours up. Then added some peppery watercress and sweet bee pollen to garnish and round out the flavours even more. So. Good. To keep this vegan, you can omit the roast lamb (and bee pollen if that’s your deal). I tasted the sauce and some crumbs without the lamb and it didn’t need the meat.

Beetroot and Coconut Gnocchi with Green Tea Butter Bean Sauce

(serves 4)

2 large roasted beetroot

Coconut flour as necessary – I used 10 tbsp

½ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

½ tsp caraway seeds

1 tsp fresh minced rosemary

Coconut oil for frying

Sauce

1 tin butter beans, rinsed and drained

1 cup strong brewed green tea

2 shallots, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 zucchini, finely sliced into rounds

Big handful parsley, roughly chopped

1 cup shredded cooked lamb

Salt and pepper to taste

Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Bee pollen and cress leaves to serve

Preheat the oven to 150C to keep the cooked gnocchi warm. Pop the kettle on. Brew a cup of green tea, allowing to steep for a good 5 minutes at least, to develop the flavour. Set aside until ready.

Put the beetroot into your food processor and pulse to break up. Add the salt, pepper, caraway seeds and rosemary, and process until smooth. One tablespoon at a time, add coconut flour and pulse to combine until it forms a dry-ish dough, similar texture to play dough.

Scoop teaspoonfuls and roll to form gnocchi shapes, put on a plate. Heat a frypan to medium and add a knob of coconut oil and allow to melt and heat. Add a handful of gnocchi at a time, fry for 3 minutes or so until ‘golden’ and then flip and cook the other side. Set on a plate and pop in the oven to keep warm. Repeat with all of the gnocchi.

In your blender, blend the green tea and butter beans until smooth. In a pan or small pot, add the butter bean mixture and zucchini and gently simmer for 10 minutes or so until thickened slightly, warm and the zucchini is soft. Add the cooked lamb and after the meat has heated through (approximately 5 minutes) add parsley, lemon juice and salt and pepper.

Scoop some sauce onto your serving plate, gently place the gnocchi on top and scatter cress leaves and bee pollen to serve.

TV Inspiration - Rye Buttermilk Punch

Over the last year or so, I’ve become more and more of a Rye Bourbon drinker. It started with drinking Manhattans and has sort of developed from there. So when Lance and I started watching the new season of Justified with all their bourbon drinking, I bought a bottle to enjoy alongside Raylan Givens. Add to that the half bottle of buttermilk I had leftover from making this honey and buttermilk bread and I had the idea for a cocktail brewing. 

Have you ever had a Brandy Milk Punch? It’s one of the official cocktails of New Orleans and is a sweetened milk-based cocktail, similar to an eggnog without the egg. It’s pretty delicious and deceptively potent. I thought I’d make a Kentucky inspired version with the distinctly Southern ingredients of Rye and Buttermilk. Add some maple syrup for sweetness and you have what was for me the perfect cocktail. I must say though, I am a huge fan of buttermilk. I don’t know many Australians who would drink buttermilk, it’s usually reserved for cooking with. But it is quite a sour, tangy drink as it is cultured. It’s like drinking thinner unsweetened Greek Yoghurt. Which I love. So I love buttermilk. So whilst I love this cocktail, my husband thinks it could do with some extra sweetening. He doesn’t really like yoghurt at all though. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it! Like the Brandy Milk Punch, it is deceptively potent. So, take it easy on them. Rye isn’t hugely common at bottleshops Perth. My pick is Hogs 3 Bourbon, available at most Dan Murphy’s and extremely reasonably priced. If you can’t find it, you can use your favourite bourbon.

 Rye Buttermilk Punch(makes 2 drinks)120mL rye bourbon (such as Hogs 3) (4 shot glasses)240mL buttermilk (8 shot glasses)60mL maple syrup (2 shot glasses)Icenutmeg In a large glass or jug, mix the rye, buttermilk and maple syrup together and whisk until frothy. Pour into old fashioned glasses filled with ice cubes. Dust with nutmeg and enjoy!

Fusion Food - Curried Mango and Black bean Pizzarepa.

Ok, let me preface this post by saying I know this whole thing sounds weird. Even when I was putting this dish together in my mind, I wasn’t 100% sure it was going to work. But it does. The original idea was born out of two things; one, what weird random things are left in the fridge (remedied this weekend gone after a hugely successful visit to the farmer’s markets). And two, Lance making an offhand comment that he thought I would’ve made something a bit more interesting with a few of the mangoes from our tree, like a curry. This was after about a week of mango salsa and tacos. So in my mind I’m picking up and rejecting ingredients and flavours and just the general ‘idea’ of what to cook for dinner. And I came up with this. So a Mexican-Cuban-Indian-Italian pizza. Fusion food at it’s most-fused!

I somehow settled on wanting pizzas. But I didn’t have any pizza bases, or Lebanese breads with which to make them. So I immediately went to making my own. But a lot of recipes for pizza dough are yeast driven, and I didn’t want to wait for it to proof. When I thought of arepas. These are flat breads made out of cornflour the same kind as you use for tortillas. I also remembered the half tin of black beans I had in the fridge leftover from tacos a few nights earlier. Add a little mango, a little curry powder (I went the lazy route and used a pre-made curry powder blend – feel free to mix your own). A little cayenne for an extra kick, then grilled chicken, sliced mushrooms and some cheddar cheese. The black beans I used were actually pre-seasoned frijoles, so in the recipe I’ve just put salt to taste for if you use plain cooked black beans which are so much easier to come across in Perth. And the saltiness also depends on what is in your curry powder, if you use a pre-made mix.

This sauce made more than required for the pizzas.

Arepas
(makes 2 individual size pizzas)

1 cup corn flour (masa lista)
1 cup warm water
¼ tsp salt
oil to fry

Curried Mango and Black Bean Sauce

½ tin black beans

1 mango
3 tbs curry powder
¼ tsp ginger
½ tsp cayenne
¼ tsp turmeric
Salt to taste

Toppings

2 mushrooms, thinly sliced

1 chicken thigh, grilled, then sliced
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
Baby kale leaves, olive oil and lemon juice to serve

Mix all of the arepa ingredients together, knead until a smooth dough forms, the set aside for 15 minutes.

Mash the black beans and mango together in a bowl until completely combined, add the curry powder, extra ginger, cayenne and turmeric then check for seasoning. Salt if needed, or add more cayenne or spice if desired.

Preheat the oven to 180C

Heat a tbsp of oil in a frypan to medium-hot. Divide the arepa dough into two, and roll each into a ball. Place between two sheets of baking paper and roll out to form a disc just under 1cm thick.

Carefully place into the hot pan, cook for 2-3 minutes or until golden on that side. Flip over and sprinkle arepa with black pepper. Cook for a further 3 minutes or until golden.

Slide onto a lined baking tray and repeat for the second arepa.

Spoon and spread the curried mango and black bean sauce, then layer the ingredients and sprinkle cheese on top. Pop in the oven for 15 minutes or until cheese is golden and melted.

Serve topped with baby kale leaves, a drizzle of olive oil and a wedge of lemon for squeezing.

Breakfast of Champions - Coffee and Mango Chia Pudding

You’ll remember I was coffee-soaking oats for breakfast a while back. I still do that. It’s still delicious. You should still do it. (And incidentally, with these colder Autumn mornings, you should cook your oats in coffee). But my feeds were full of chia puddings, and so was my pantry so I thought I would just slightly alter my work breakfast of choice. Our mango tree was amazingly prolific this season. At final count we got 56 (!!) mangoes, so I knew that this would be an ingredient. Mango and coffee match really well even though at first thought they might seem odd together – the smoky bitterness of the coffee complements the sweetness of the mango. The ginger and cinnamon just round out the flavours and create quite a complex flavour profile. I don’t have a lot of sweet foods in my diet – I naturally crave salt – so the sweetness of the ripe mangoes was sweet enough for me. But feel free to add honey or maple syrup to sweeten things up.

I also eat mine with plain greek yoghurt for the same reason, substitute with a sweeter style yoghurt, or even cream or coconut cream for a more decadent breakfast. And finally, you can substitute whatever crunchy add-ons you have. I’m currently addicted to bee pollen. I first had it when I went to Germany around 16 years ago and am so glad it’s fairly readily available here now. I often just sprinkle some on nut butters on fruit toast, or on top of smoothies. Divine

 

Coffee and Mango Chia Pudding
(one serve)

¼ cup chia seeds

1/3 cup cold-brewed coffee
1 mango, finely diced
¼ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp ginger
Dollop greek yoghurt to serve
Toasted walnuts, coconut and bee pollen to serve

Mix the chia seeds, ginger and cinnamon (I shake it in a jar). Add the coffee and mango, stir well. Leave to sit at least 15-30 minutes for the chia seeds to swell. Add more coffee if it looks like some of the seeds didn’t turn gel-y. (I usually make this before bed and take it to work in the morning)

Serve with yoghurt drizzled with your crunchy add ons

 

 

Easter Treats - Chocolate Halva Spread

Sometimes you grow up eating something that you don’t realise isn’t common to the people you hang around with. One of those things for me is halva. We used to get halva mainly on full-family trips to the Nanna Shop or Kakulas as dad was it’s biggest fan in our family and he’d add it to our baskets. But it wasn’t until I was a bit older and telling someone about it and they had never heard of it that I realised it wasn’t a common food in Perth. If you’ve never had it, it’s a bit hard to describe. It’s a sweet that is made from processed sesame seeds and it’s texture is completely unique. It has a sort of ‘gritty’ texture that goes sort of chewy in your mouth like nougat as you eat it. When you cut it, it is almost sandpapery sounding. It’s only mildly sweet and has that lovely nutty flavour of sesame and this makes it perfect for cheese platters and the like. We would get two main flavours, just a plain one and chocolate. This was my favourite, as the chocolate is swirled through the halva in a marble pattern. It looked awesome, and tasted awesome.

I don’t eat halva that often now I don’t live at home, but occasionally I get nostalgic cravings for it. I saw a recipe for halva spread on the My Name is Yeh blog, I immediately got a craving. Then vowed to make this for an Easter present for my parents. This is a perfect spread for hot cross buns. I also love it spread on these chocolate hazelnut crackers from Alejandra’s Always Order Dessert. Traditionally, our family has Pasha on hot cross buns at Easter (an almond, lemon and vanilla cream cheese spread which is currently a secret family recipe), but this year I had to have two hot cross buns - one of each!

 
I used unhulled tahini, as the flavour is a bit milder which suits this sweet spread.

Chocolate Halva Spread

Adapted from My Name is Yeh
1x 385g jar of unhulled tahini
2 tsp vanilla extract
½ cup honey
½ tsp fine sea salt
2/3 cup dark chocolate chips

Pop the chocolate chips in a bowl and microwave in 30 second intervals until melted. Set aside.

Pour the tahini, honey and sea salt into a bowl and mix with a hand mixer on low speed until well combined. Take 1/3 of the mixture and put in a new bowl. Add the melted chocolate and blend until combined.

Alternate spooning the ‘plain’ halva and the ‘chocolate’ halva into jars to make a layered pattern.

Spread on toast, these chocolate hazelnut crackers or hot cross buns!