Peanut cucumber noodles

September 11, 2024

   

   

We bought a 1kg pack of fresh noodles to make a batch of char koay teow, which only needed 500g of them. Cindy had a browse through Anna Jones' One Pot, Pan, Planet and found this recipe, which is so incredibly easy that I decided I could squeeze it in before netball on a Wednesday night. It's probably better suited to summer than whatever second winter/fake spring Melbourne is going through right now, but it's still utterly delicious. You can put it all together in about 20 minutes, so we're definitely going to come back to it in the summer time!

Peanut cucumber noodles

(slightly adapted from Anna Jones' One Pot, Pan, Planet) 

1 Lebanese cucumber

200g snow peas

500g fresh noodles

peanut sauce

5 tablespoons peanut butter

2 tablespoons tahini

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 teaspoons sesame oil

4 teaspoons honey

5 teaspoons rice wine vinegar

1 tablespoon chilli oil (more if you're brave - I added some post-hoc so as not to ruin Cindy's meal)

2 cloves garlic, minced

garnish

roasted peanuts

a small bunch of coriander, leaves only

chilli oil

Halve the cucumber lengthwise, scoop out the mushy seedy bit and set it aside. Cut the remaining cucumber into matchsticks and halve the snow peas longways.

Make the sauce by combining the cucumber middle with the peanut butter, tahini, soy sauce, sesame oil, honey and rice wine vinegar in a food processor and blitzing until smooth. Stir through the chilli oil and garlic plus a bit of water if it seems too thick (ours was). 

Cook the noodles as per instructions - ours simply needed a soak in some just-boiled water for a few minutes and a bit of gentle prising apart. Drain and rinse them under hot water and pop them in a big bowl.

Stir the sauce into the cooked noodles and toss, add the veggies and combine again. Serve, topped with coriander leaves, peanuts and extra chilli oil.

Pasta shells with sweetcorn & green chilli

November 19, 2023

   

On a recent flick through One Pot, Pan, Planet this pasta recipe appealed to me for its warm-weather flavours: corn, basil, green chilli and ricotta. It uses one pot and one pan and, for the sake of the planet, I rounded up several ingredient quantities to suit how they're packaged locally.

There's a lot of washing and chopping involved, but not too much complication. My corn really didn't char as it was intended to, and I think I'll shift from our small-sized cast iron pan to our new-ish wok if I make this again. The basil leaves were gorgeous when dinner was served, but very bitter when I added them to leftovers, so I'll try picking them just one meal at a time.

With very little sauce involved and a dab of cool ricotta, this is a pasta dish that's almost as nice at room temperature as it is fresh and hot, so any leftovers can skip the microwave entirely.

Pasta shells with sweetcorn & green chilli

(slightly adapted from Anna Jones' One Pot, Pan, Planet) 

1 bunch silverbeet/chard, stalks and leaves separated and roughly chopped

2 green chillies, finely chopped

kernels from 3-4 corn cobs, or equivalent frozen kernels

500g packet small pasta shells

olive oil

salt and pepper

250g ricotta

zest and juice of 1 lemon

1 bunch basil, leaves picked

Bring a large pot of water to the boil. Chop the chard and chillies while you wait, and take the corn off the cob. (If you're using frozen corn, cover it with boiling water, then drain when thawed through.) When the water is ready, cook the pasta according to its directions.

While the pasta is cooking, set a frypan over medium heat and lightly cover the base with olive oil. Add the corn kernels and some salt and pepper, cooking until the kernels are tender and starting to brown (take them further than I did!).

Add the silverbeet stalks, cooking for a few minutes, then the silverbeet leaves and the chillies. Continue cooking and stirring regularly until the leaves have wilted.

When the pasta is ready, drain it but retain some of its water in a mug. In either the frypan or the pasta pot, stir the pasta and the corn-silverbeet mixture together. Stir in half the ricotta, and whatever amount of pasta water is needed to spread that ricotta across the pasta (very little, for me). Turn off the heat if you haven't already, and stir in the lemon zest and juice.

Spoon the pasta into bowls, garnishing with the basil leaves and remaining ricotta.

Crispy caper & slow-roasted tomato pappardelle

 January 23, 2023

   

We've been going back to the Anna Jones book recently, especially when we're short on ideas for a work-night lunch. While she dodges around the whole 'one pot' framing of the book pretty regularly, it's still a good source of relatively simple and reliably delicious meals. This week's choice wasn't especially speedy - you need to roast your tomatoes for 90 minutes - but was otherwise incredibly simple. And the results are pretty compelling: a rich, sweet, hearty pasta with little bursts of caper-y flavour. We'll go back to this again when Melbourne turns wintery, it's a very comforting meal.

Crispy caper & slow-roasted tomato pappardelle

(based on a recipe in Anna Jones' One Pot, Plan, Planet)

2kg mixed cherry tomatoes

1 head of garlic, peeled

1 red chilli, sliced in half lengthways

1 small bunch of oregano

250ml olive oil

6 tablespoons baby capers

500g dried pappardelle

250g ricotta

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Arrange the tomatoes in a couple of baking trays, with the garlic, chilli and chopped oregano. Pour over the oil and generously season with salt and pepper. Stir everything together well and bake for 90 minutes, gently stirring things around a couple of times along the way. 

Take the tomatoes out and let them cool a bit. Scoop the tomatoes out of the oil and blitz half of them in a food processor. The original recipe has you discarding the chilli and garlic here, but we just put them aside and used them as bonus flavours on sandwiches and things later in the week - seems a shame to waste slow roasted garlic. 

Pour about 6 tablespoons of the tomato cooking oil into a frying pan over medium heat. While the oil is heating up, pat dry your capers as best you can with paper towel. Pop them in the hot oil and fry for 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally to try to get them crispy (mine are never super crispy, if I'm honest). Remove them from the oil and set aside. 

Cook your pasta as per its directions, drain and return it to the big pot before stirring through the tomatoes, tomato sauce and a drizzle of the leftover oil. You can add water here if the sauce feels a bit dry. 

Serve, topped with capers and ricotta. 

Eggplant & peanut stew with pink onions

January 16, 2023

 

   

We scored a handful of bonus eggplants from a pal and immediately went trawling through the Anna Jones book for ideas. This eggplant and peanut stew immediately appealed, especially because she recommended eating it with flat bread and we had a freezer full of roti raring to go. I'm not sure we entirely nailed it - I couldn't find properly raw red-skinned peanuts at Barkly Square, so we used blanched peanuts instead, and my knife work left our pickled pick onion a bit thick and crunchy on top. Things still worked out pretty well - the stew is rich and peanutty, with a bit of warmth from the chilli and some smokiness from the charred eggplant and paprika. It can be put together on a school night if you're organised, and you'll get lunches for the next few work days. It's definitely another excellent stew for our rotation.

Eggplant & peanut stew with pink onions

(based on a recipe in Anna Jones' One Pot, Pan, Planet)

250g blanched peanuts (get raw, red-skinned ones if you can!)

4 medium eggplants, chopped

4 tablespoons peanut oil

3 brown onions, peeled and thinly sliced

1.5 teaspoons ground coriander

1.5 teaspoons smoked paprika

1 teaspoon chilli powder

3 bay leaves

small bunch of coriander, stems chopped, leaves left whole

8-10 tomatoes, roughly chopped

4 tablespoons tomato paste

1 red chilli, finely chopped

750ml veggie stock

4-5 tablespoons peanut butter

for the pink onions

1 red onion, sliced finely

1 tablespoon caster sugar

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

Soak the peanuts in 750ml of boiling water and set aside.

Combine the pink onion ingredients in a bowl, with a few of the coriander leaves and stir together - leave them to pickle until dinner is ready. 

Put a large saucepan on very high heat and dry-fry the eggplant pieces, turning them regularly until they're really charred up on all sides. We did ours in a couple of batches and it took about 8 minutes per batch to get them really brown.

Pop all the fried eggplant into the saucepan and add the peanut oil, frying everything for 5 minutes or so. Throw in the sliced brown onions and lower the heat a bit, cooking for 10 minutes until they're nice and soft.

Add the spices, coriander stalks and bay leaves, along with the chopped tomatoes and tomato paste - fry for a few minutes stirring so that nothing sticks. 

Add the vegetable stock and the finely chopped chilli, then drain the peanuts and throw them in too. Simmer for 10-15 minutes while the sauce thickens up.

Stir through the peanut butter until it combines well. Add in the liquid from the pickling pink onions and then adjust with water and salt until you've got the texture and seasoning right. 

Serve on flat bread or rice, topped with pink onions and coriander leaves.

Lemon, tomato & cardamom dhal

December 17, 2022

   

   

We're always on the lookout for more dhal recipes, and with the weather staying cool almost all the way to Christmas we delved back into Anna Jones' One Pot, Pan, Planet to try this one out. I made a lazy version of this recipe and basically skipped the fancy little topping, instead just sprinkling some roasted cashews on top with the curry leaves. I've reproduced the basic version below, but I'll probably try the proper version next time, incorporating finely chopped cashews, chilli, coriander and lemon on top. Even in easy mode this was an excellent addition to our dhal repertoire - full of flavour and easy to prepare. We made a bigger batch than the measurements below and the leftovers were perfect last-week-of-work lunches.

Lemon, tomato & cardamom dhal 

(adapted from a recipe in Anna Jones' One Pot, Plan, Planet)

2 tablespoons coconut oil

2 red onions, finely chopped

1 red chilli, finely chopped

1 green chilli, finely chopped

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1 tablespoon black mustard seeds

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

200g dried split red lentils

400ml coconut milk

500ml vegetable stock

100g baby spinach

4 tomatoes, roughly chopped

juice of 2 lemons

20 or so curry leaves

oil

salt and pepper, to taste

roasted cashews

Heat the coconut oil in a saucepan and fry the onions with a sprinkle of salt until soft, about 5 minutes or so. Add the chillies and cook for a few more minutes before adding the cumin, coriander and mustard seeds. Once the seeds start to pop, stir in the the turmeric and cardamom - you should have a rich, fragrant spice paste going.

Add the lentils, stock and coconut milk and bring the mix to the boil. Simmer over low heat for 30 minutes or so, until the lentils are nice and soft.

Stir through the spinach and chopped tomatoes and the lemon juice, cooking for just a minute or two until the leaves are wilted. Taste and add salt and pepper as required.

Finally, make the crispy curry leaves - heat some oil in a small pan until it's nice and hot and quickly stir fry the leaves for 30 seconds or so until they crisp up. 

Serve the dhal on rice, topped with crispy curry leaves and some roasted cashews.

One Pot, Pan, Planet

May 29-June 8, 2022

   

Michael's been relaying good reviews of Anna Jones' recipes to me for a few years, so for his most recent birthday I gave him a copy of her latest cookbook: One Pot, Pan, Planet. Since it's a relatively new release, we're going to show you the first five recipes we've made from it, hold off on reproducing the recipes themselves, and encourage you to buy the book if it appeals to you.

As you might guess from the title, the theme here is simple and environmentally-friendly cooking. It's all vegetarian, with vegan adaptations on almost everything. There's extensive text regarding Jones' philosophy of food, including (British) seasonality, centring vegetables, and reducing food waste and environmental impact. She makes an effort not to be overly preachy or elitist, and I'm ambivalent about whether she succeeds. 

   

That said, we're in it for the weeknight-friendly veg*n cooking inspiration, and there's plenty of it here. I invited Michael to pick a meal from the book that I would prepare as part of the gift. For dinner, he chose the saag aloo shepherd's pie (pictured top), which Jones admits is slower work than many of the recipes. The filling is a can each of beans and tomatoes with the full spice rack of Indian aromatics: turmeric, chilli, garam masala and cumin seeds. On top is a loosely mashed turmeric-yellow mixture of cauliflower, potatoes and spinach. It took two big saucepans, two baking trays and just short of two hours to make and we were satisfied with the results. This recipe includes ghee, but would be vegan with a coconut oil substitution.

For dessert, Michael requested the cherry and smoked salt clafoutis (pictured above). This was a one-bowl-plus-one-baking-dish affair that's heavy on the eggs and doesn't include a vegan option. The clafoutis was extremely simple to put together - a layer of jarred sour cherries covered in a layer of what looked like pancake batter, sprinkled with fancy salt and chunky sugar crystals. It baked in the still-hot oven while we ate our shepherd's pie. The batter set into something more like a custard, and it reminded me of this raspberry custard cake I made a year ago (and scored bonus points for not requiring egg separation or electric beating).

   

I had less success with the chocolate, olive oil and rosemary cake a week later. The skewer test failed me, and I had raw batter oozing out from the centre when I first attempted to cut some for afternoon tea! A second bake put that right but I still wasn't thrilled with the results. The recipe didn't call for sifting, and I ended up with little seams of bicarb soda flavour through the cake. That's easily solved on a second attempt. Less solvable is the effect of the olive oil, which seemed to pool up in the base of the cake. The vegan option on this cake uses sparkling water in place of eggs and dairy milk and I can't imagine the additional changes this would make to the texture. I've got such a strong selection of cake recipes at the ready (both vegan and non-) that I can't see myself revisiting this one.

   

The cake failure was followed up with our favourite One recipe so far: home-made flatbreads piled with a warmly spiced pumpkin mixture, pistachios, feta, pomegranate seeds and coriander leaves. This recipe took one bowl, one saucepan, one frypan and two people - mainly because the flatbread rolling and frying was a bit finicky. As you can see above, the result is a party on a plate and we'd love to make this again to share with friends for a weekend lunch.

   

Our final recipe trial thus far has been the carrot soup with rosemary and tahini. It's one pot, one frypan and one stick blender in the making, and vegan as-is. The soup is brightly coloured and flavoured with oranges as well as carrots. Michael took care to dry the canned chickpeas and master the crunchy, salty garnish, which is really what lifts the meal beyond one flavour note.

As you might have noticed, the One Pot, Pan promise of this cookbook doesn't quite deliver. Still, we're content to take on the level of effort and dishwashing actually required here. I'll likely pause on the dessert section a while, but I anticipate that we'll be exploring plenty more of the main meals in One Pot, Pan, Planet this winter.