Source:
https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-fgwtj-164fc34
Join Elaine Boddy as she takes you on a tour of her favourite ingredients in her kitchen cupboards and prepares one of her appetising and delicious vegetarian meals. Elaine demonstrates how to cook the perfect grains without them becoming mushy along with some roasted vegetables in a basil oil. She also prepares her version of Loubia, a Lebanese dish of tomatoes, garlic, green beans and spices. Add to that a Tahini sauce and you have Elaine’s idea of food heaven – delicious dishes that will also appeal to non-vegetarians looking for an accompaniment to a main course.
Find out more and see the recipes featured at: https://foodbodpod.com
Watch Elaine in action in other episodes on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@foodbodpod
hi I’m elain body and welcome to the food bod pod brought to you in partnership with Matthew’s cocka flour and shaana [Music] sourdough in this episode we thought we’d do something slightly different on this occasion it’s just me in my kitchen so I will be cooking some things for you later typical of the kind of foods that I like to make but before then I thought I would just give you maybe a bird eye view into my cupboards and the things that I have as a standard my staple Provisions I guess I don’t know if you’re like me whether you have favorite Cupboards in your kitchen I do my baking cupboard is very much one of my favorites but also the cupboard that I’m looking at right now and in this cupboard you’ve got some of my favorite foods so we’ve got lots of nuts nuts I’m a huge fan of so we’ve got some roasted unsalted nuts they’re brilliant I don’t want salted personally but I like roasted nuts from Costco they’re really nice but also some roasted and chopped unsalted peanuts which are really good for adding to things and a lot of the things I have in these cupboards are things that I would add to porridge or I would throw over a salad or I would have with some yogurt or any meal really if I’m having a warm vegetable meal often I will throw some nuts or some seeds over them as well because as a vegetarian it gives you the protein but also it gives you a crunch so I’ve got lots of whole nuts and the chop nuts and then an array of seeds I have golden flax seeds I have poppy seeds I have sunflower seeds pumpkin seeds Lin seeds sesame seeds also some black sesame seeds and these are all useful again either on my Foods or um often they end up in my bread I also have some dried barberries which are a middle eastern product which are they’re little dried berries that give you the kind of sour Tang that you would get typically in Middle Eastern recipes so they look like they’re going to be sweet but they’re not I have some Zeta which is um Mediterranean Middle Eastern herb mix that has often gone into my bread often also goes over my vegetables I have a whole fabulous selection of handmade Chutney from the very brilliant Lush Lada which are mine and mine alone I guard them I guard them very well just like I have a selection of Mana life peanut butter best peanut butter in my opinion always crunchy for me again I guard them very carefully and I try not to just stand here and eat them with a spoon and alongside them I have my grains so I have some uncooked grains I um bought these recently so that I had them to show in a class but also I use them in other ways so I’m going to cook some later and use some in like a warm salad to show you a different way of using them I have a variety of very dark chocolate uh we only eat very dark chocolate my son and I so there’s some dark chocolate little pellets here which he will put with yogurt and granola and berries I have some really dark chocolate discs for the odd occasion that I found see something and this is very much a cupboard where I will open and go oh the joy obviously you know I’m in England so there’s also maride I also have a cocoa stick which is something you might have heard Sheree talk about on one of our previous podcasts it’s a solid stick of packed cocoa that you can grate over things it’s a very cool thing I then move on to cupboards next to me this is one of my other favorites well let’s just be honest I like food so I have many favorite Cupboards in this kitchen H but this is my spice rack spices and dried herbs and here for me a couple of my real standards that I like to use a lot I have smoked paprika I have pull bber or Aleppo chili flakes which either one you want to call it and they’re lovely because they give a nice amount of heat without being too strong enables you to control the heat in a meal I have got roasted ground cumin I’m a big cumin fan like it even more when it’s roasted I’ve got whole cumin seeds whole coriander seeds ground coriander I have got uh ground ginger and then in amongst those I do also have some mixes I have a Cajun spice mix that I’ve made I have an Indian spice mix and majority of these I’ve made but I do also have some that I have bought I have something in particular that we like to put on a load of stuff which is a bravas mix and it’s it’s based on bravas potatus I I guess which is um a Spanish dish and we use it for roasting potatoes and it’s got salt garlic sweet smoked paprika kayenne and oregano in it and it’s really it works beautifully on potatoes I also have here a jar of sumac amazing stuff again you have the slight sourness that comes with Middle Eastern products and sumac is a berry so it’s another dried Berry that’s been ground to be able to use over dishes on the other side I have various things I also have some all spice and cinnamon and Nutmeg things that you might use more in cakes obviously I use everything in bread I do have some dried herbs I’m more of a spice person but I do have some dried herbs particularly I’ve got some dried chives which are lovely in your bread and I have a recipe coming in my new book with dried chives and red onion and some Pacha oh it’s so good I do have some spice mixes from my very favorite spice kitchen some Tandoori Masala another cajun spice I have a jerk spice mix and these things these things are often used on vegetables for me but often on meat for my husband and son so a lot of things go on chicken I have some everything but the bagel seasoning that my friend bought me from America also that she recently gifted me from America this flaton pepper company mix which is dried and ground roast roasted garlic jalapeno and toasted Red Onion it’s very good we have some calabrian chili peppers uh and we have a truffle parmesan and black garlic mix they’re going to be interesting to try I’ve got various balsamic glazes balsamic vinegars some nice special ones from Northern Ireland there’s always a tub of tahini always and for me always Middle Eastern tahini there’s a big difference if you have Greek tahini it tends to be thick thick like peanut butter Middle Eastern tahini is more pourable um and for me I always have the Middle Eastern version uh so there’s always a tub of that there’s always sauces various condiments various oils various Honeys you know all these things that we collect so these are some of my favorites there’s obviously other Cupboards in this kitchen you know there’s lots of Oats that go through this kitchen there’s chickpeas there’s oat milk but another favorite of mine is the freezer I’m a big big fan of frozen vegetables and frozen fruit it takes the pressure of me making sure they get eaten in time whilst they’re still good but also we just like them especially the fruits we all have frozen blueberries on stuff and I particularly like if I’ve got lots of chunks of Frozen mango and if you mix that with some natural yogurt or some Greek yogurt and leave it briefly it starts to freeze some of the yogurt so you get kind of like a similar experience as if you’re having ice cream I don’t eat ice cream it’s all too sweet for me so it’s a kind of version of which always works nicely we always have frozen berries everyone in this house has frozen berries with porridge or an yogurt and but I really like frozen vegetables and I’m going to use some of them later I think they’re so useful and I recently found some really good Frozen little mini okra in my local Turkish food store which really easy to use so they’ll be coming up and then alongside that is you know also some fresh things if we need them I’ve always got Tomatoes carrots but I do tend to rely on the freezer more to be honest but there one thing that always is in our fridge is a lot of great yogurt a lot of plain yogurt milks dairy milk for the boys oat milk for me just cuz I like it I don’t have milk that often to be honest but I do like to use it in my bread so that’s just a little snippet of the things that I’m looking at and the things that I always have available and when I’m going to make food or when I’m going to make dough I will always open my cupboards and kind of Peru bruise and think what do I fancy putting in something or putting over something or what needs using up so these are the the typical Staples I guess that I will have obviously alongside the flower and all those other things and there is a cupboard in this kitchen which is the man cupboard for my husband and son which is full of things that I don’t eat so that’s their domain we’re not going to look in that one and want to open a cupboard and see lots of healthy choices which is why I have this lovely selection in front of me everything’s in glass I decant everything into glass jars or you know glass tubs of some sort I think it helps things to be to last longer but also I like taking them out of especially if things have come in plastic the same with my spices I decant everything into glass jars in every sof f i just open the doors and look at it all because I just I like food I like flavors I like textures so that’s a little introduction into the things I have in my cupboards and now we’re going to move on to actually cooking some things so let me move over to my hob you’re listening to the foodb Pod with elain body shanana sourdough has everything you need to start making making beautiful sourdough from the starter to The Roaster and everything in between Matthew’s Churchill strong white bread flour is an extra Strong high protein bread flour finely milled from a blend of high protein hard wheat sauce between the cotwood village of Churchill and blenin palace and this is the flower I [Music] like now let’s do some cooking so in front of me I have got some of those grains I’ve gone for the spelt grains because they’re easier for you to be able to find and the first thing I want to do is get them going that’s the pan on the stove I want to get them cooking so when it comes to cooking grains my best advice is ignore everything it says on the packet if you follow packet directions especially for something like quinoa you end up with a really mushy horrible cooked grain at the end of it so this is how I cook my grain you’ll find this in my first book you’ll find this on my food blog my original food bod one so what I want is any cup full of the grains so I’m just putting the uncooked grains into a cup and then putting that into a weight in medium siiz saucepan so what I’m then going to do is fill the same cup with water so that is the same cup that I used to measure the grains filled with water into the waiting pan I’m now going to put that over the Heat and leave it come up to the boil so the pan isn’t covered just the saucepan H with the water and the grains over the heat I’ve got the lid out ready to go so whilst that is doing its thing in a pan next to it a big pan I’m going to cook some of the frozen vegetables from my fridge that uh from my freezer that I was telling you about so these are a standard pack in my local supermarket they are Mediterranean style roasting vegetables in a basil oil so this includes Char grilled corett OB jein peppers and cherry tomatoes and I use these so often they’re so simple and I’m just going to pour them into another pan so that’s in the pan next to the grains and I’m just going to put that again on a medium heat cuz all I want to do is cook them through and I prefer doing this on the hob rather than in the oven I found when I have roasted these in the oven the pieces the sizes are all too dissimilar so you get some things cooking through really well and some not so actually I prefer to do them on the hob and then you can move them around and keep an eye on them whilst that’s going on in another pan I’m going to start cooking something else so this is made this is a creation based on uh a dish called luia l o b i a a Lebanese dish that I have in a local restaurant of ours and it’s going to be Tomatoes uh garlic and green beans all cooked in olive oil and spices so I’m starting off with some baby plum tomatoes and this is a this is a pack of 300 G fresh tomatoes and I’m just cutting them in half and adding them to the saucepan which is sitting on the side next to me and you could do this with some tin Tomatoes you could do this with cherry tomatoes you could do it with bigger Tomatoes I like using these cuz I like the taste of them and all I’m going to do is put them in some olive oil initially so that they start to cook so you can start to hear the vegetables sizzling a little bit because they are frozen in the own oil that they were cooked in you don’t need to add anything to the pan whereas with these Tomatoes I am going to add some oil so that they don’t burn in the pan there we go so that’s all of them and I’m just going to drizzle a little bit of olive oil cross them all and then put that other p pan over a medium heat so it’s just a standard nonstick frying pan got the tomatoes in and the olive oil and in the pan next to it we’ve got the vegetables and then at the end we’ve got the grains cooking so we’ve got lots of nice things going on next I’m going to chop up Garlic to be going in with this this is a dish that has liberal amounts of garlic so that’s me just giving the uh other vegetables a little Shake shimmy and a shake you could of course chop up all of these fresh these vegetables fresh you don’t have to use the Frozen version I just think they’re so easy and the size of the pack of the vegetable BS is 700 g and I’ve just used half a pack so you can start to hear sizzling now so the sizzling is the olive oil in with the tomatoes so what I want is for those to start to break down a bit in the meantime I’m going to cut up a couple of cloves of garlic big fat cloves so the pan with the grains and the water is starting to show some life so just peeling the garlic and we want some nice slices some nice chunks of garlic this just don’t mince it actually you want to be able to get your teeth into some if you don’t like garlic you can leave it out if you fancy putting in some onion would be good you could add in some sliced onion if you want to for me sticking with the dish and trying to recreate the dish that I had in the restaurant it was very much green beans tomatoes and garlic and again I’m going to use frozen green beans you can use fresh ones top and F them do whatever you like so with this garlic cuz it’s quite fat I’m just chopping it in half and then put cutting it into slices add a lot more garlic if you wanted to I mean this is a a dish packed full of garlic and my view is you can never really have too much so I’ve gone with two fat bulbs there but you know looking at that I think I’m going to do another one so the grains next to me are starting to Bubble so I want that to come to a boil once it comes to the boil just going to turn it down briefly let’s just peel this extra clove of garlic and whilst I’m doing that let’s just give these vegetables a quick stir so little stir of these roasted vegetables they look good and just a stir of the tomatoes oh they smell amazing I haven’t added the garlic just yet so that it didn’t burn but we’re keeping it quite thick so you can probably add it earlier than normal so the grains the grains are bubbling and boiling so all I want to do with them is I want them to simmer for 6 minutes exactly six minutes and this is a full immersion method because what’s going to happen is is once it’s simmered for 6 minutes going to put the lid on turn the heat off and let the grains absorb the water and this is how to have lovely chewy separated grains none of this mushy overcooked stuff so at the same time I’m just going to add these lovely slices of garlic to my tomatoes that’s the garlic going in the pan let them start to cook briefly before I add add some spices to them so the vegetables really we just want them to cook through and be warm enough to add to the salad so this I will eat as a warm salad and then have the leftovers cold the following day so it can or you can make it to eat it specifically cold it doesn’t have to be eaten warm olive oil garlic po what is not to love I mean I could just eat that as it is I have to say and I have done without adding anything else to it so I’m adding a couple of teaspoons of ground roasted cumin couple of teaspoons of the chili flakes I’m just going to give that a little bit of a stir don’t want the spices to get burnt if your pan is getting dry add a little bit of water so the spices don’t get burnt but they shouldn’t do because you’ve got the liquid coming out of the tomatoes and actually it starts to get a bit nice and gooey and past like so in that pan now I’m going to tip in some of these Frozen beans so this is a new one to me normally I buy the uh uncut ones but this is a pack of cut green beans it’s a 450 g pack and I’m tipping in about half of it just going to stir that round and then let it cook through the grains are just simmering away and the vegetables are cooking so whilst this is going on I’m going to make a sauce you’re listening to the food bod pod with Elaine body shanana souro for all of your food bod souro baking Essentials the perfect Pizza needs the right flour cotwall pizza flour is an award-winning finely miled white pizza flour for pizza dough perfect for pizza Matthews cotwall flour to make a sauce to go with this and you could eat this straight as it is I think it’s nice to have something to go with it you could very easily make uh some hummus buy some hummus have some babagan or mutabal the oine version or eggplant depending what country you’re in I always think it’s nice to have something that goes with it the grains look good so I’m just going to mix some tahini with a bit of lemon juice and some water and just make a tahini sauce it’s a little bit thinner you could also uh mix it with some yogurt I often mix tahini and yogurt oh fabulous mix you can use it like I said to make hummus so if you’re making hummus you’ve got chickpeas tahini lemon juice and garlic but you could replace the chick peas in it for anything any vegetable you could use a cooked sweet potato you could use some car carots I’ve done it with some roasted garlic and tomatoes in fact there pretty much isn’t anything that I haven’t whizzed up with some tahini works really well with some roasted cauliflower you can do it with some spinach you can do it with some cooked broccoli really you can replace the chickpea element with whatever you fancy just don’t call it a hummus because hummus is the word for the chickpeas so just turn turning off the grains and putting the lid on so that they can soak up for a bit longer and you should just you need to leave them about I don’t know 10 15 minutes so I’m just going to turn off those roasted vegetables for now in that pan turn that back on again when we add the grains and just give the beans tomatoes and garlic a stir oh it looks so good and because you you’ve got moisture coming out of the Frozen beans it’s also stopping it from burning in the pan so we want them really to cook and defrost slowly to take in some of the flavors so the trick is not to have everything on a mega high heat all the time so I’m going to take a small bowl I’m going to put some tahini and some lemon juice now lemon juice cuts through the oil a little bit in the tahini and some water in there and you could add garlic to this you could add some herbs to this it’s just a way of lightening up the tahini a little bit just giving it a stir with a spoon and this is an oil tahini is an oil so it will take a little bit of time for it to mix up and give I think it’s nicer to do by hand and sometimes when you I know when you do it in a blender to me you don’t necessarily get the desired effect so when you first start mixing it as I am it will look like it’s going to separate [Music] and it looks like it’s just coagulating stops it looking particularly appetizing but as you keep going it will mix together and what you get is it lightens up the color and it makes it slightly smoother oh let’s have a try oh it’s good so what you can do is I’m going to add just a tiny bit more water to that because it’s still become quite thick and if you do this with yogurt instead becomes really creamy don’t just think you can use that for Savory things because you can use that over anything works really well over fruit yep you got to think about it tahini is just Blended sesame seeds so there’s a massive similarity to peanut butter so anything that you would do with peanut butter you can do with tahimi I’m just giving my bean mix to stir now this if I go to the local restaurant this is what I will choose as a main dish so I will have the beans cooked like this with the garlic and tomatoes and it will be served with rice and salad and for me that’s that’s the main CA I love it so we just back to our tahini sauce and that’s good it’s a bit more of a pouring mixture so that will be nice to drizzle over the food you could use the tahini just direct because this is Middle Eastern tahini and it has that pouring consistency you could just use it direct from the tub if you wanted to but it is nicer to add bit of lemon juice to it just cut through the oil a little bit and some water just to thin it out a little bit so the beans beans tomatoes and garlic are looking good you will find photos and details of these on our website the food Bo pod.com apologies for the lack of video it’s how the day went so we’ve got the veg in the other bowl next to it what I’m going to do is put the grains the vegetables and warm it all up again that will then be served in a bowl with dried barberries over the top some seeds uh you could have a Sprinkle of Zeta you could have a Sprinkle of any kind of seeds that you like a Sprinkle of ground nuts anything as a bit of a finisher you’re listening to elain bod’s the food bot pod with Matthews cotswald flour and shamas I’m going to tip those lovely cooked grains into the pan with the roasted vegetables which have all been cooked and warmed through just going to spoon the grains into the pan with those vegetables we’re just going to cook it all through warm it all through again at this point you could add in whatever you fancy if you wanted to add in some seeds here you could if you wanted to add in some of the zat here it would work well if you wanted to add in some spices so that’s going to warm through what you’ll notice is I don’t add salt to my food I think there’s enough flavor with everything I’ve used and personally I leave that to the diner to make their own decision as to how they want their FL food to taste for me I don’t need the extra salt that is just warming through so I’m going to get some of my beautiful Crockery we’ve got our tahini sauce here I mean really it’s lucky that it’s made it this far and I haven’t just eaten it all with with a spoon going to put my bean and garlic and tomato mix my version of lubia into one bowl and this this for me is the meal yes I’m vegetarian but for me this is a complete meal I don’t see why it needs anything else to go with it but it’s very easy you can make this and have it alongside meat or fish lovely with some eggs so for me this is my meal you know it’s very different when you eat as a vegetarian you don’t start with the meat and the fish and then build on it and add to it this is the meal so I won’t I don’t need anything else with this I’m just putting the grains and vegetables into a bowl but you could have this as an accompaniment this would be great these dishes would be great alongside some barbecue stuff because they they’re lovely warm but they’re just as good cold so it doesn’t matter if they start to cool down it doesn’t matter if you’ve got them sitting there and the longer I think sometimes the longer you have these things waiting actually the more that they build their flavors so we have everything in their bowls all I’m going to do with the grains and just putting a handful of the dried bares across the top I’m going to put some sesame seeds so what might be nice is that um mix that I mentioned earlier that my friend bought for me so the dried roasted garlic jalapeno and toasted onion but that be nice to put across the top and then I’m just going to drizzle some of this tahini sauce across the top and you could leave that until it’s served you can let people add their own or you can drizzle it across the top to serve it we’ve got store cupboard stuff we’ve got freezer stuff really really easy simple things so let’s try this is the green bean dish M oh that is good flavors and then a bit a bit of my warm grains and vegetables M that is so good cuz you’ve still got the chewi of the grains a bit of crunch from the seeds over the top bit of dressing from the tahini sauce oh oh I am now going to sit and have my meal of the day this is my main meal of the day and on this occasion David I know you would love all this and you were missing out and I’m quite happy not to be sharing it with you so I hope I’ve given you some ideas and inspiration from my kitchen I hope it encourages you to just get out a pan look at what’s in your cupboard and fling it in and see what you can create these are not things that have been made with a specific recipe in mind just from years of experience of making things in my kitchen I guess and you’ll find more things like this on my original food blog which is just called food b.c. because this is my world this is my kind of food this is just things that yeah from things I’ve tasted things I’ve seen things I’ve experienced and it’s just yeah it it is just a case of open your cupboards open your freezer Chuck it in a pan and see what you get so I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode it’s a bit different this one I’m missing David being here my producer but I’m not missing him to have to share the food with so I really hope that you have enjoyed listening do have a look on the website you will find photos and whatever details I can to share with you remember if you’ve got any questions that you can get in touch please do listen back to other of our my pod bites my shorter episodes our longer podcasts and as always huge thank you to my producer David Treadway who will be back with me in my kitchen for our next episode I am Elaine body this has been the food bod pod brought to you with Matthew’s cots sword flour and shanana sour until next time I’m going to fill a fork and I’m going to fill my face Bon Appetit m [Music]