Fresh and Wild Cookbook: A Real Food Adventure. Ysanne Spevack

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СКАЧАТЬ added not through evilness, but practicality – dunk a biscuit containing hydrogenated fats and the soggy bottom half will stay intact all the way to your mouth. The only trouble is, once you’ve eaten the biscuit, the hydrogenated fat is rejected by your body as an alien substance and, unless your kidneys and liver are feeling particularly zealous, the fat is laid out into a micro-thin coating inside your arteries. To my mind, I’d prefer to lessen the time between the dunk and the mouth dash, rather than risk artery fuzz.

      Anyway, back to the quiche. It’s made with gram flour, which is simply ground up chickpeas. These have the added benefit of helping ward off osteoporosis with their high levels of calcium and phyto-oestrogens.

      Personally, I love flours with gluten in them, such as wheat flour, just as much as those without. Sensible helpings of wheat within a nicely varied diet seems like a good idea to me, unless you’ve been diagnosed with coeliac disease. But eating wheaty toast for breakfast, wheaty sandwiches for lunch, a wheaty cake at teatime and wheaty pasta for dinner isn’t a good idea. It’s all a case of using a bit of common, and being aware of what you’re putting inside your body.

      The culinary reason this quiche is made with gram flour is so that it doesn’t rise. It produces a compact, crispy pastry that’s ideal for holding the filling without going soggy. It tastes pretty much the same as regular pastry, although it’s more crumbly in a delicate and really delicious biscuity way. And it’s great to have the added chickpea phyto-nutrients and protein, which help make this a totally top tart.

      Enjoy it hot or cold, with seasonal leaves or Balsamic Beets salad (see page 233).

      HAM GRAM FLAN

      MAKES A QUICHE FOR 2:

       FOR THE PASTRY:

       150g gram flour

       75g soft butter

       1–2 tablespoons cold water

       FOR THE FILLING:

       200g sheep’s feta

       A slice of ham (optional)

       100g fresh big spinach leaves, washed and thick stems removed

       1 small red onion, peeled

       2 garlic cloves, peeled

       A handful of fresh flat-leaf parsley

       1 medium-sized ripe tomato A dozen black olives

       2 tablespoons olive oil

       2 eggs

       Crushed black pepper to taste

      Make the pastry by using cold fingers to mix the flour and butter in a bowl. Let the mixture fall through your fingers as you lightly rub it – and enjoy the sensation. Alternatively, stick the ingredients in a food processor and zap. Either way, when it resembles breadcrumbs, mix in the water and lightly knead it into a ball. Wrap it in a clean plastic carrier bag and set it aside for half an hour.

      Meanwhile, finely chop the feta, ham, spinach, onion, garlic and parsley into little individual piles. Slice the tomato on its side, and pit the olives. In a large frying pan, heat the oil, add the onion and fry on a medium heat for a couple of minutes. Throw in the garlic, spinach and a tablespoon of cold water, put the lid on and reduce the heat. Take the pan off the heat after a couple more minutes. Pour this spinach mixture into a bowl with the other chopped ingredients and the olives, but not the tomato. Crack the eggs into the bowl and then stir everything.

      Grease an 18cm loose-bottom round flan tin, and preheat the oven to 180°C/350°F/Gas Mark 4. Take the pastry dough out of the bag and roll it out on a floured surface. It will break up a bit, but don’t worry. Press it into the tin, lining the bottom and sides, and trimming and pressing to make a nicely fitting layer of pastry.

      Pour in the filling mixture, sprinkle on the pepper and then place the tomato slices on top. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes, then test if the egg looks set. If not, give it another 5–10 minutes.

CORAL’S KASHA

       Coral is my mum and kasha is traditional eastern European roasted buckwheat. They’re a great combination. Buckwheat originally came from China, spreading across Asia and the Middle East into Eastern Europe with the Crusaders a thousand years ago. It’s now a staple part of Russian and Polish cuisine.

      Buckwheat tastes a bit nutty and is cute, with little triangular grains. It’s a rich, starchy whole grain that is high in the B vitamin group that’s so good for memory and general brain power. Buckwheat is also a gentle mood tonic, as it contains a compound called rutin that helps the body deal with stress. It’s handy to keep you hardy during the colder months of our Northern European island home, as it tones up the tiniest capillaries to become more resistant to frostbite and keeps broken veins at bay later in life.

      You can sprout buckwheat grain really successfully at home to use as part of a salad sandwich filling, or mill the grain into flour for traditional Russian Blintzes (see page 12). You can buy buckwheat either plain or roasted. The roasted grain is labelled in the UK by its Polish name, kasha, or simply as roasted buckwheat.

      In this recipe, the whole roasted grains are cooked up simply, to make a lovely warm winter lunch, or a cold summer grain salad. You can also serve it as a side dish with your dinner, instead of rice or potatoes.

      CORAL’S KASHA

      TO SERVE 2 PEOPLE:

       2 tablespoons olive oil

       1 large or 2 small onions, peeled and diced

       1 medium carrot, scrubbed and diced

       4 white or chestnut mushrooms, sliced

       200g roasted buckwheat

       1 egg, beaten

       500ml boiling water

      Heat the oil in a frying pan, over a medium heat, add the onions and carrots and fry for 5 minutes, stirring with a wooden spoon. Add the mushrooms, cover the pan, turn the heat down, and leave to gently saute.

      Wash the grain in cold water, then drain well. Heat the buckwheat in a deep frying pan, over a low heat, stirring with the spoon. Pour the egg over the grain and stir it in quickly to stop the egg СКАЧАТЬ