Domestic Goddess?

I've decided to hijack the blog to post about one of my favourite pastimes - cooking and baking! My mother probably thought she would have never lived to hear me say that. Look Mummy - I'm all grown up! I can't knit or sew, but this is a start right?

Thankfully I have a more than willing subject to try out my cooking whims on. About 8 months ago I decided I was sick of being scared of vegetarian food as being boring/plain/tasteless/somehow difficult to cook and started experimenting. Experimenting really meaning - making stuff off this useful website: Healthy Food Guide. We've got some tried and true favourites such as Bean Burgers (which I can't make at the moment until I can justify buying an Argos food processor) and Bean Chilli which are now staples, but I wanted some new. So I searched for inspiration and found Carrot and Lentil Patties and tonight I made them.

I tend to alter recipes a little, if I'm a bit too unadventurous or unsure of an ingredient, or it's out of season or I just don't know what the hell it even is so I'll write out how I did the recipe as we go along.

So firstly - the mix! (not looking particularly appetising at this point!)

In here we have:

400g can of brown lentils drained and rinsed

2 grated carrots (around about, I nibbled on about 1/4 of each one).

3 spring onions chopped as finely as blunt knives allow

About a handful of fresh coriander leaves torn up (again, the knives here are terrible...the recipe originally called for parsley but we had to rely on our Sainsbury's Local, which only had coriander but it's okay cos we love the stuff)

Rind of half a lemon (we used the other half for our salmon treat the other night)

The recipe tells you to mash it with a proper masher, but I made a mess attempting that and decided if I was going to do that - I might as well just get my hands in there. So proved to be a much better solution, although I still managed to get this mix all over the kitchen anyway.

The next step would be obvious to most people (not me when I was 19 years old in my first flat and calling my Mum around six o'clock every night going "HELP! HOW DO I MASH POTATOES?") - you add one egg and really as much breadcrumbs as you need to make a mix that you can manipulate into patties. We needed breadcrumbs the other week and had to also go to the Sainsbury's Local for that (think Four Square but better, much much better) and all they had was coloured breadcrumbs. Yes they dye them like orange so they'll make your food look cripsy if you're using the crumbs to coat something. It's another reason I need a food processor. I assume a normal supermarket might have normal breadcrumbs? I hope so, England, I hope so.
And then, as I already alluded - we shape them into their namesake:

Then, the hardest part of all really - cooking them and hoping they don't stick or fall apart on you as normal with any homemade patties. You're supposed to spray them with cooking oil, and I'd recommend that from bean burger experience, but we just had normal oil. We went to borrow our flatmates can but it expired in 2008 and looked like a spray you'd use to clean your glasses with. Medium heat pan, make sure it's hot, spray those patties or throw in some oil and put them in. Now you're not really cooking them that much, just heating them through and giving them a golden touch.


I followed the serving suggestion which was a side salad and some tzatziki (guess where we got that from...). The salad just slightly cheats on the "vegetarian" meal as we stuck anchioves in there but our excuse is that a) we had a huge pot of them to use up before their best before and b) they're so delicious. Our salad was your typical sort of thing: cherry tomatoes, red and orange peppers, spring onions, iceberg lettuce and those fishies. This was the finished product:

By the way Oren ate it and his happiness at the end, I think he liked it. I did too but he didn't agree with my visions of salmon or spicy versions in the future. Can't improve on perfection...?

It's the good thing about not working I guess, having the time to sit down and think about new meals to have as it's always good to try something different even if it doesn't turn out good and you make Oren promise "never to speak of this meal again." I'm hoping that the next flat we move onto we'll have a bigger cupboard and I can start building up my baking collection again as I'm still yet to try make a cheesecake and feel that's one thing really holding me back from becoming a domestic godness.

One last thing - we picked up a Maggi mix in Germany for currywurst (yes it's in Germany!) and a few days after we were back tried to recreate Berlin. It wasn't too bad I thought! Just missing the curry powder. One day our herb and spice rack will be up to it's former Winchester St glory.