A lovely friend made us a delicious bowl of soup to replenish our bellies after a walk round the Holmfirth countryside a few weeks ago, so I decided to recreate the flavours and use up some limp carrots from the bottom of the fridge. You can flavour this soup with whatever you like, but the warming ginger and chilli work well with the sweet carrot.
Category: ginger
Lamb, Date and Almond Lentil Tagine
I adore Moroccan food. Absolutely, totally love it. Thankfully Fuz does too 😉 This was an easy and quick meal to use up some of the left over lamb from our Sunday roast. It would work well with leftover beef too.
For 2 portions you need
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, sliced
4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 inch piece of fresh ginger, grated
1/2 tsp each turmeric, ground cumin, chilli flakes and ground coriander
1 tsp each of ground cinnamon and ground ginger
salt and pepper
1 can chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp dates, roughly chopped
1 cup diced cooked lamb or beef
300ml lamb stock
1/2 cup red lentils
2 tbsp whole skinned almonds, toasted
Begin by frying the onion in the oil in the base of a tagine or other heavy based pan. Add the garlic, ginger and spices and cook for another 5 mins or so. Add everything else apart from the almonds and bring to the boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook, covered, for 30-45 mins.
Add the toasted almonds 15 mins before you want to serve, and remove the lid to thicken the sauce. Delicious with the orange, onion and almond salad.
Pasta with Tomatoes, Chilli, Ginger and Garlic (v)
I don’t have a picture for this, boo. So you’ll just have to imagine in your minds the bowl of steaming hot pasta topped with a gloriously vibrant red sauce, speckled with pungent ginger and chilli and garlic…
This was made for me a couple of weeks ago and was a revelation. I had never ever thought to add ginger to a tomato based pasta sauce but it works so well. Usually I reserve the holy trinity of ginger, garlic and chilli to Indian or Chinese style dishes, not pasta. But try it. You won’t be disappointed.
For 2 people you need:
150g pasta of your choice
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1 red chilli, finely chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, crushed
good knob of ginger, finely grated (only a microplane will do imho)
1 cup fresh baby plum tomatoes
salt and pepper
Cook the pasta. Meanwhile prepare the fresh tomatoes by chopping them and then pulverising them in the pan. Add the ginger, garlic and chilli and heat. Season. Serve on the pasta. Groan with pleasure, even moreso if you have been spoiled and someone else does the cooking and washing up…
Double Ginger Cookies with Stem Ginger (v)
Sticky Date and Ginger Loaf (v)
I love love love gingerbread and sticky gingery cakes and my staple vegan cake of choice is thus Rose Elliot’s fabulous parkin. But we all fancy different things at times and my recent decision to go totally vegan has meant my vegan cook books are getting more of a read of late. This is another Rose Elliot recipe, from her Vegan Feasts book (p164). I have tweaked it slightly in the method and by adding some of the ginger syrup in place of golden syrup.
For 2 2lb loaf cakes you need:
250g plain flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp bicarb
125g stoned dates
50g (about 4 balls) stem ginger in syrup
125g light soft brown muscavado sugar
150g treacle
100g golden syrup
50g ginger syrup from jar
125ml grapeseed oil
125ml soya milk
Heat the treacle, sugar, golden syrup and ginger syrup until everything has melted together. Leave to cool (this is important! If it’s too hot the cake will collapse).
Meanwhile mix together everything else in a food processor to roughly chop the dates and ginger. Add the cooled sugar/syrup and pulse quickly to bring it together. Pour into lined loaf tins and bake in a moderate (150 degree) oven for an hour or so. The cakes last well and get stickier over a week or you can slice and freeze ready for lunches.