Category Archives: Food

Runner bean slicing

One of my favourite childhood memories was slicing runner beans. Yes, you read that correctly, slicing runner beans!

My Godparents Joe and Joanie had a metal runner bean slicer and I had the great joy of feeding their beans into the machine whenever they had a roast dinner!

It was all quite a process. We’d go to the farmhouse at the back of Banstead Road (Near Oaks Park) to get the veggies and I loved hearing the tick tick tick noise as I sliced the beans to my hearts content!

Sometime during December 2020, I had a very vivid dream about my Godparents and remembered my childhood bean slicing nirvana; turns out that the Universe is a very strange twat. My beloved Joanie passed away around the time I had my dream, I had been estranged from her for over 8 years due to her very spiteful ‘family’. Very odd 🙂

Anyway! I am ridiculously nostalgic, anyone who knows me well knows this!  So I procured a slicer from Ebay!

The slicer is secured to the kitchen counter by a clamp and you feed the runner bean in the top hole, then use the handle to turn the circular blade. A very satisfying pile of sliced beans builds up as you go.

To do the slicer justice, I grew my own runner beans this year! Some of them are bloody massive 🙂 think I’ll grow them every year now!

So here we go, nostalgic box well and truly ticked. Roll on dinner time!

Bread

When the first lockdown kicked in last year, it was very difficult to get hold of decent fresh bread; I quickly realised that it was one of the things that I missed most!

A baguette! A crusty roll! My kingdom for a poppy seeded bloomer!

My love affair with bread started quite early on in life.  On occasion, I used to go with my Godparents and pick up warm bread from a local bakery in Carshalton Beeches in Surrey.

I can still remember standing in line at the bakers very early on a Saturday morning, knowing that I would soon hold the warm bread in my hands; the smell in the bakery was bloody AMAZING and the loaf radiated its own mouthwatering scent in the car on the way home! Torture it was!

The vacuum packed baguettes that you can chuck in the oven or the bog standard pre-sliced loaves that you find in Supermarkets simply do not cut it. I vowed that I would learn how to make my own bread to an acceptable level, to satisfy my craving!

Now that the UK has returned to a second lockdown, I felt it was time to start making my own bread.

I was determined to do so with my own fair hands and without the convenience or dependency of the expensive bread making machines; said machines are currently sold out anyway, largely due to covid-19 panic buying and the logistics nightmare that has currently paralysed importing (shitty Brexit).

Thanks to a Jamie Oliver video on YouTube, I have already made a couple of loaves in 2021 and I am very pleased with the results! https://youtu.be/aUtxKeupYFg

For the recipe within the video, you only need strong flour, a sachet of yeast in water, a pinch of sugar and a pinch of salt. Couple of periods where you leave the dough to prove before you bake it in the oven for 35 mins on 180oC. Very simple.

My next goal is to add in a little wholemeal flower and top the loaf with black poppy seeds or seseme seeds 🙂 watch this space!

Give it a go! It is fun! Especially the kneeding of the dough, a good stress relief.

Santorini Tomatoes

Today I harvested the first batch of my Santorini tomatoes! I am pleased to report that they are every bit as tasty as they look!!!

Santorinis, or Mafiosa tomatoes, as they are known in Tooting, take a little longer to ripen compared to all the other varieties that I have grown this year, but they are well worth the wait!

They are comparable in size to a beef tomato, so I roasted these in the oven with a little olive oil, vegan spread and garlic. Then stirred into pasta.

Perfecto!

Kev’s Vegan Bombay Potatoes Quick Quick!

The longest thing about this dish is peeling the potatoes and waiting for them to boil!  It’s well worth the wait though.

Mumbai (offensive) Bombay potatoes are as much a quick snack as they are a side dish to go with curry and rice; personally, I love to scoop them into some paratha and scoff them! 

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This recipe is completely vegan and contains no small children or rabbits.   In fact, it’s fucking pukka.

Serves 4-6 people

Ingredients.

Generous pinch of salt

3 large potatoes (around 1KG in total), halved

15g root ginger, peeled

3 garlic cloves, peeled

2 large tomatoes, one quartered,
the other cut into slim wedges.  You can also use tinned chopped tomatoes if you wish!

4 tbsp vegetable oil

¾ tsp cumin seeds

1 tsp mustard seeds

1 large onion, roughly chopped

2/3 tsp turmeric

2 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp garam masala

½–¾ tsp chilli powder

Large handful of chopped coriander leaves

Method.

Boil a large pot of water and salt it well. Place in the peeled potatoes and boil until tender (up to 30 minutes). Drain, then cube or half the potatoes. 

Blend together the ginger, garlic and quartered tomato until smooth.

Heat the oil in a large non-stick frying pan.

Add the cumin and mustard seeds and, once the cumin starts to darken, add the onion.

Cook for a minute before adding the ginger and garlic mixture, the ground spices and salt.

Sauté gently for one to two minutes or until the garlic smells cooked. If you are not sure, taste.

Add the tomato wedges, stir well and cook for three to four minutes. Tip in the potatoes and cook for three to five minutes to absorb the flavours.

Check the seasoning, salt to taste and stir in the chopped coriander and serve.

Kev vegan veg curry mk2 potatoes and chickpeas

It’s turning bloody cold; so I decided to have another go at making the veg vegan curry!

For the general list of ingredients, see this previous blog entry here:

I used a tin of chopped tomatoes and popped some squished up organic tomatoes into puree to give it a different base; I also left the onion chunkier than last time, didn’t use a blender at all!

There was also no spinach left in the fridge, so I threw in a load of new boiled potatoes along with some beans and a bit of lime juice. 

I’m definitely much happier with this version of the curry; the absorbing nature of chickpeas definitely makes for a better consistency!!!

Oh, and I also have a Tefal ‘Madras’ curry pan which is very cool!  Bit better than the wok, sure you’ll agree!

Bud bud bud.

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Kev’s totally Vegan Vegetarian chickpea, brocolli and spinach curry

I decided to take up the challenge of ‘Veganuary’ and have adopted a totally vegan diet for the entirety of January; so far, I’m happy to say, it’s been a fucking piece of piss.

With this curry, you can probably add just about any veg that you want; next time, I’m going to add some boiled potatoes and a little more chilli!

As you can see, I cooked it in a wok (it’s not just for Chinese food you know!) and the curry was a little more liquid based than I would have preferred, which I put down to the reduced amount of chickpeas.

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Once it’s drained off (as per the tupperware box picture), it’s fantastic to keep for lunches.

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Very healthy, doesn’t half make you fart though!

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INGREDIENTS

1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
3cm ginger, grated
6 ripe tomatoes
200g of tinned chopped tomatoes
1/2 tbsp oil
1 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp turmeric
Pinch of chilli flakes
1 tsp of yeast extract (Marmite)
4 tbsp lentils
6 tbsp coconut cream
1 head of broccoli, broken into small florets
400g Chickpeas, drained
200g of Butter beans or similar
100g baby spinach leaves
1 lemon, halved
1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds
1 tbsp chopped cashew nuts

METHOD

  • Put the onion, garlic, ginger and tomatoes in a food processor or blender and whiz to a purée.
  • Heat oil in a large pan. Add the spices, fry for a few secs and add purée and yeast extract.
  • Bubble together for 2 mins, then add lentils and coconut cream.
  • Cook until lentils are tender, then add the broccoli and cook for 4 mins.
  • Stir in chickpeas and spinach, squeeze over lemon and swirl through sesame and cashew mixture.
  • Serve with rice and toasted pitta bread, if you are so inclined!

 

Yufa – Whitehorse Road

I used to love going to Yufa in Whitehorse Road, Croydon; located just around the corner from Limes Road studios, Kebabs and Pizza were often scoffed here in between music sessions and Anglo-Indian shenanigans.

From memory, it was originally located a bit further up the road, but they were so reliant on our business that they moved 20 or so shops closer to Alex’s place.

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Mmmmmmmm, Yufa(kincunt).

Behtareen – Indian Street Food – East Croydon

Behtareen is a funky new Indian-style cafe in Dingwall Road which is just down from East Croydon train station.

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At the risk of sounding Tolkienesque, you will find Behtareen next door to Zabardast!  The observant souls amongst you will probably notice that the cafe and Indian sandwich shop are both owned by the same people!

Simply put, there are times where I **NEED** curry and have become something of a regular to Zabardast since it opened in 2014 (fueling my Seekh kebab roll addiction on a Friday!).

Therefore, I was overjoyed when Bethareen sprang up because Croydon has been lacking a decent Indian cafe since ‘Spice Cafe’ left Surrey Street many moons ago.

Inside, the cafe’s decor is visibly very bright and clean with park/pub bench style tables; if you look around, you’ll also notice a load of Indian ‘stuff’ in frames up on the walls.

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I’ve only used the very swift take-away option so far (they conveniently have a card machine for payment!), but I took the time to observe the friendly table service whilst I waited for my food and have vowed to sit in there in the near future.

So far, I’ve tried the lamb biriyani, tandoori paneer and paratha; all of which were very tasty and reasonably priced!!!

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Anyway, give it a whirl sometime!   Antikrish recommends!

Here’s the menu! behtareen menu