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turmeric

Sweet and Spicy Snake Beans

by Linda on January 31, 2012

The  Tuesday Night Vego Challenge this week had to feature snake beans. Now I have them coming on, the poor old Blue Lakes and Purple Kings have dropped right out of favour, left to mature for seed for storing. Snake beans are more tropical than most bean varieties, adapted to the tropical summer monsoon belt.  They like hot wet weather. It has been a cooler than normal year this year, and the earlier rounds grew but slowly and didn’t set very many flowers or fruit. But we have hit the hot wet weather this month, and this is the first round now that is really bearing well.

They’re a beautiful plant – tall climbing and lush with lovely lilac flowers. They need a trellis or fence at least a couple of metres tall to climb, and when they bear well, they really bear well. I am picking about 250 grams a day from a fence-trellis just a couple of metres long. I like the brown seeded variety – it seems to bear better for me. Some years though, brown seeded snake bean seed seems to be just about unavailable, so it must be tricky for others to grow. Black seeds are much more readily available.

They’re fantastically good for you – one of the richest sources of folate and Vitamin A, even amongst beans which are all pretty good sources.  Lots of Vitamin C and good amounts of a range of minerals.

This recipe has chili in it, but it’s actually not very hot. I order “medium” in Indian restaurants, and this is mild for my taste. My partner orders “hot”, and he added a sprinkle of finely diced chili over the top. Non-spice-likers may want to reduce the chili right down, but the sweetness mellows out the spiciness nicely.

The Recipe:

Makes two large serves.  Leftovers are good for lunches.

This is good served over rice or noodles.  I served it over soba noodles, which take just minutes to cook. If you are serving over brown rice, get that on first because the rest of the dish is really fast.

The Vegetables:

Prepare the vegetables first, because once you start cooking, it goes fast.

You really just need young, crisp snake beans – 250 grams of them, trimmed and cut into 3 cm lengths.  The rest of the vegies are optional. I used a small onion, sliced lengthways (top to bottom) in thin slices, and a carrot julienned just for a bit of colour. You could also use capsicum or oyster mushrooms. But not much of them. The snake beans are the star.

The Spice Paste:

Use a mortar and pestle, or the spice grinder on a food processor, to grind to a paste:

  • 1 chili
  • Thumb sized knob of fresh ginger
  • Thumb sized knob of fresh turmeric (or ½ – 1 teaspoon turmeric powder)
  • 3 cloves of garlic
  • white part of a lemon grass stem

Cooking

Heat a wok or large fry pan up and add two dessertspoons of macadamia or peanut oil.
Add the spice paste, get it sizzling, and almost straight away add half a cup of cashews. Stir to coat and get them sizzling, then almost straight away add the vegetables.
Cook over a high heat, stirring, for a few minutes till the cashews get a bit of colour and the onion softens, then add
  • a cup of water
  • 2 dessertspoons of soy sauce
  • 2 dessertspoons of brown sugar
Cook for around 10 minutes until most of the liquid has reduced. Taste and adjust the soy – you may like it a little saltier.
To finish, add
  • 2 teaspoons of sesame oil
  • ¼ cup finely chopped herbs  - we did a taste test and decided our most favourite was Vietnamese mint, followed by Thai basil, followed by coriander.
Stir the herbs in then almost straight away take it off the heat and serve, over a bed of rice or noodles. Spice lovers may like to sprinkle with extra chili.
Are you Tuesday Night Vego Challengers? Feel free to add links in the Comments.

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The Breakfast Challenge – Turmeric and Mandarin Nut Butter

by Linda on April 22, 2011

Kids may not like this one (though it is surprising, sometimes, what kids like).  This is a recipe for people who like their chocolate dark, who like expresso coffee and olives and beer and marmelaide.  If you do like bitter flavours though, it is addictive and it’s my current favourite breakfast.

What led to this – a friend mentioned turmeric nut butter to me, and having fresh turmeric in the garden and a good macadamia season this year, and now the first of the season’s mandarins – I had to experiment.  I like sweet nut butters like the Macadamia and Pear Butter a couple of weeks ago, and the turmeric adds a lovely interesting spiciness to it.

Besides being an addictive taste, this is a real super-foods health breakfast.  Fresh turmeric is a really good source of anti-inflamatory anti-oxidants with some solid science behind it being a cancer preventative.  Macadamias are rich in the kind of oils that actually lower cholesterol, like the “clinically proven to lower cholesterol” margarines that are being so aggressively marketed these days (which are actually based on hydrogenated sterols from pine tree wood pulp).  And mandarins are a good source of “bioflavanoids” that, among other things, strengthen blood vessels (helping to prevent things like kidney disease and varicose veins).

(The Breakfast Cereal Challenge is my 2011 challenge – a year’s worth of breakfast recipes that are quick and easy enough to be a real option for weekdays, and that are preferable, in nutrition, ethics, and taste,  to the overpackaged, overpriced, mostly empty packets of junk food marketed as “cereal” ).

The Recipe:

This recipe makes enough for two slices of toast – one adult for breakfast.  It will store though, covered in the fridge, so if you decide you like it, you can make it in batches for a few days.  I actually think it is at its best on day two, though it is probably at its healthiest when fresh made.

First crack your macadamias.  This tool makes buying or harvesting macadamias in season in their shells a realistic option. (The recipe might also work with almonds, which are also in season now – I’d love to hear if someone tries it).

In a small pan, dry roast together 10 chopped macadamia nuts with a knob of fresh turmeric, peeled and chopped, about the equivalent to 5 macadamias – ie about half as much. Roast for just a couple of minutes, shaking, till the nuts start to colour.

Add the juice from one large-ish mandarin and a couple of dessertspoons of olive or macadamia oil and a good pinch of salt.

Blend this mixture in a food processor or with a stick blender till it is smooth and pale coloured, adding more juice or water if necessary to get it to the right texture.

Meanwhile  make some toast, and just warm some mandarin segments in the same pan.

Slather the turmeric and mandarin nut butter on toast, top with the warmed mandarin segments, and eat.

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Moroccan Style Spiced Kangaroo Mince

by Linda on April 19, 2011

We hosted a meeting over dinner at our place, which meant 10 people for a casual dinner on a weeknight.  I wanted to use kangaroo – kangaroo is my red meat of choice, for a whole heap of reasons – ethical, ecological, nutritional, and not least economic. Kangaroo mince is less than $7 a kilo, beef mince is nearly double that, and heart smart lean beef mince even more. Cooking for 10 it makes a difference!

But not everyone was used to kangaroo, so to be safe I decided to go middle-eastern. Many middle-eastern recipes use goat meat, or lamb that is from breeds much less fatty than Australian lamb, and the spice profile is designed for stronger flavoured game meat.  It means they often work well for kangaroo.

If you make your own hummus and bread and salads out of the garden, a Morroccan style feast like this can feed 10 people very well for less than $10, or a family for a few dollars.  Hah, Curtis!

The Recipe

Dice an onion and saute in a little olive oil in a heavy pan over a high heat.

As soon as the onion starts to soften, add 500 grams of kangaroo mince.  Cook over a high heat, breaking the mince up with a wooden spoon, until the mince starts to brown.

Sprinkle over 3 cloves of garlic chopped fine, and  3 good teaspoons of Moroccan spice mix.  I like to make my own spice mix because I can grow most of the ingredients and fresh turmeric, ginger, and chili are all super healthy.

To make your own, using a mortar and pestle, crush together:

    • a nut sized knob of fresh turmeric and one of ginger,
    • a fresh chilli
    • a sprig of fresh coriander or culantro,
    • a teaspoon of mixed dry cumin and cinnamon,
    • a pinch of cardamom and nutmeg and just a whisker of cloves.

Continue cooking, stirring, over a high heat for a minute, then add 3 dessertspoons of  chopped macadamia nuts, and 3 dessertspoons of sultanas.

Keep cooking and stirring for a few minutes more until the nuts start to brown.

The perfect way to eat is to slather hummus or babaganoush (or both) on a slab of Turkish bread or Pita bread, cover with spiced mince, tabouli, tomato salad, and cucumber-yoghurt salad and eat either as an open sandwich or a roll.

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Summer Kangaroo Kebabs in Green Paw Paw Marinade

January 1, 2011

We celebrated New Year’s Eve at a barbeque with neighbours. It’s one of the things I love about living in a functioning community – socialising within walking distance.  I could go on about greenhouse footprints but really it’s enough that I can drink half a bottle of red wine and wander home in the starlight [...]

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Roots and Perennials Planting in Late Winter – Turmeric

August 28, 2010

It is actually all but spring here, but a final burst of cold weather is making me a little cautious.  I am tempted to plant out all the spring perennials like asparagus but they are happy enough in the shadehouse at the moment so maybe I’ll wait a little. I’m planting another round of all my [...]

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Pumpkin and Chick Pea Curry

June 3, 2010

It’s the very end of the chilli season, and though it’s early in pumpkin season for everyone else, the turkeys have discovered ours. So the challenge is on to find just how many ways you can use pumpkin. This pumpkin and chick pea curry is a good one – tasty, easy, healthy, low fat, using [...]

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Lao Style Fragrant Fish Soup

May 27, 2010

It’s getting a bit cold now of an evening for barbeques, but my partner still loves fishing. Fish soup is a great way to make a dinner party of the catch, and using the whole fish –  head, bones and all - I feel like an ethical predator. This recipe works really well with bony fish [...]

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Ginger, Mint and Culantro Besan Pancakes

April 11, 2010

This all started with an item in the Sunday papers about how women really should do weights training. I looked at the weights, but that idea lasted all of about two seconds. But then I spotted the tray of beans drying ready for storage. The trusty old hand grinder and five minutes grinding beans and [...]

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Moroccan Pumpkin Salad

April 1, 2010

The first of the season’s pumpkins is ready, and though the turkeys have made a serious dent in them, there will still be so many over the next couple of months that we will be thoroughly over pumpkins by the time we run out. This is a very fast, healthy, easy, seasonal, meal in a [...]

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