One final Nopi for this week and it introduces the new ingredient of black garlic. Black garlic is normal garlic that has been extensively heat treated (we’re guessing smoking comes in here somewhere). This is actually the very first recipe in Nopi.
Because it’s Ottolenghi, he of the strong middle eastern tendency, it’s paired with slow cooked aubergines, pine nuts and yoghurt. Oh and basil, just to lift it slightly. We served it for lunches with pitta bread.
The black garlic goes in the dressing, along with rose harissa, pomegranate molasses, lemon juice, cocoa powder, chilli flakes and olive oil. The cocoa powder gave us pause for thought, but it worked very well. Also we weren’t able to get rose harissa, so we used normal harissa, which is much hotter, and left out the chilli flakes. We think we got the heat about right.
It was delicious, but it uses an awful lot of a quite expensive, difficult to source, ingredient. Admittedly I bought the garlic on a whim in a specialist spice shop in Brighton, so it probably wasn’t the cheapest buy, but it was either that or the Irregular Choice shop across the road.
Following the very meat based recipes we’ve been eating in the last few days, we thought we should investigate some more recipes from “a modern way to eat”, so we stepped outside our comfort zone with a “seeded pistachio and squash galette”. Even better, the picture in the book shows the brightest looking food stuff in the world.
The base is made from pistachios, sunflower seeds and chestnuts, blitzed and bound together with maple syrup and olive oil, and baked in the oven for 15 minutes.
The green bit is blended spinach, avocado and soaked cashews. We really could have done with a riper avocado and I’m still side eyeing the hell out the reasons for soaking nuts. Apparently it’s all to do with enzymes and germination, which would be fascinating, but I can’t find anything from a reliable source.
Blogs with “wellness” in the title do not count as reliable sources.
Finally the galette is topped with roasted squash, fried red onions and a sprinkling of chilli. Unfortunately we were so focused of roasting the aubergines that we over cooked the squash slightly.
Also Dan foolishly cut the squash up according to the instructions (0.5cm slices) rather than the picture (rather chunkier wedges), so we ended up topping the galette with something that more resembled a thicker version of vegetable crisps rather than roasted veg.
It was still very tasty, and we enjoyed the several meals it fed us for, but we’re not in any rush to do it again. May have to wait for a passing vegan to serve it to.
Whilst all this oven wizardry was occurring, Dan sneakily made some raspberry sorbet to replace the revolting stilton ice cream. Since it involves just sugar, water, a squeeze of lemon, and raspberries, of which we still have loads in the freezer, it was a pretty sensible choice.
thegreedyguineapig 