Brown Rice, Lentils, Vegetable Soup, Pea Soup, Onion Jam, Spotted Dick, Lao Fish Soup, Vietnamese Chilli Sauce

Brown Rice

Take equal volumes of brown long-grain rice and water (0.5 kilo rice is 1 (Imperial) pint by volume). Place in saucepan, put lid on saucepan, bring to boil. Turn heat down as low as you can get it. Simmer for about 25 minutes. Turn heat off. After a few minutes remove lid, give rice a good stir with wooden spoon. Put lid back on, leave for another 10 minutes or more. Rice is now cooked.

It’s important to minimize the amount of water lost as steam. Don’t lift the lid too much when cooking (you can lift the lid occasionally if you like, rice isn’t souffle), and if the lid doesn’t fit well then you might like to add a splash more water at the beginning. Turn the heat down as soon as the water starts boiling, don’t let it boil too vigorously for too long.

Lentils

Use the green “continental” lentils or Puy lentils (smaller, with a slightly nuttier taste). Chop a couple of onions as small as you like, fry for a while, add a few chopped cloves of garlic, fry for a little longer, add the lentils and about 1.5 pints of water per 500g of lentils. Add some stock powder (Marigold is good), two or three teaspoons will do for 500g of lentils (use a low salt variety if you can, too much salt retards the cooking of pulses, I guess it reduces the osmotic pressure or something). Give it all a good stir, put a lid on the saucepan and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 45 – 60 minutes, giving it all a good stir once in a while. If it looks like it’s going to be a bit too liquid, feel free to take the lid off and turn up the heat. If it looks like it’s going to be too dry, put some more water in (turn the heat up a little to get it back to a simmer). If you like, just before serving add the juice of one or two lemons, or some chopped parsley or coriander.

Alternatively, add some chopped spinach or chard leaves 10 minutes before end of cooking time, or fry a few chopped red chillis with the onion.

If you’re not a vegetarian (and aren’t Muslim or Jewish), fry the onion in lard and add some streaky bacon for an extra special treat.

Vegetable Soup

Take some potatoes, carrots, leeks, onions, turnip, parsnip, etc. Chop or slice into smallish pieces. Fry onions, leeks etc. gently in oil (sunflower, olive, etc) for 10 minutes or so. Add root vegetables and perhaps some chopped garlic towards the end of the cooking time. Cover with water or stock (again, Marigold stock powder very good), simmer gently (slow cooking keeps the natural flavour of the vegetables better), stirring occasionally, for half an hour or until vegetables are soft (turn the heat right down low for this).

Add salt, pepper, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar etc. to taste. Either serve as is, or liquidize. You could add herbs, parsley, coriander, etc, or green vegetables, cabbage, kale etc, but I prefer it without.

Pea Soup

Fry a good few rashers of streaky bacon, chopped, until starting to go crunchy. Add 500g or so of dried split peas, yellow has the best flavour. Add 2 or 3 pints of water or stock (not too salty; as usual, Marigold stock powder is fine for this), depending on how thick you want the soup to be. Simmer slowly for an hour or so, stirring occasionally, until the split peas are starting to disintegrate. Add salt and pepper to taste. If you like, garnish with a little chopped parsley. Serve with bread.

Onion Jam

Slowly cooked onions reduced down to a deliciously unctuous caramelized mass.

Slice lots of onions, fry gently in lard or oil until they develop brownish spots. Turn heat right down low and cook uncovered for an hour or longer. Stir occasionally, scraping the caramelized material off the bottom of the pan as you do so. If the onions look like they are getting too dry, replace lid, perhaps leaving slightly askew. The onions should not burn. Garlic, red wine or balsamic vinegar are good additions.

Spotted Dick

A traditional English pudding. I prefer the old-fashioned boil in a cloth method rather than using a new-fangled pudding basin. The pudding develops a more interesting crust this way. The same method may be used for steak and kidney pudding.

Mix together good beef suet, white flour, currants and enough water to make a stiff paste. Roll into a ball and wrap in a cloth (avoid toxic or unstable dyes here). Place cloth in water and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook for a few hours. Serve with custard. [Need some quantities here, and should the flour be self raising? Haven’t cooked this for a while.]

Lao Fish Soup

Crush some lemongrass and place in a couple of pints of water. Bring to the boil, remove lemongrass and add fish sauce (Squid brand is good). Add fish. Traditionally freshwater fish is used (Laos having no coastline, but many rivers) but I usually use frozen cod or haddock (not having easy access to the Mekong). Add the fish, chopped up in to bite-sized chunks, together with some sliced tomatoes. Bring back to a simmer and cook until the fish is done (ie. not very long at all). Add the juice of a lemon, some chopped fresh coriander and some sliced spring onion. Serve with some sticky rice and chilli sauce.

Vietnamese Chilli Sauce

Coarsely chop two or three red chillis (the large, juicy, medium heat ones that are common in the UK at least – you could use scotch bonnet or birdseye chillis if you like though) and about 4 cloves of garlic. Mix with about 2 tbs of rice vinegar, the juice of a lemon, about 3 tbs fish sauce and add a splash of water. Liquidise for a minute or so. Rinse out the liquidizer with another 3 tbs or so of fish sauce. Put mixture in a jar and leave for a couple of hours in a cool place (this allows the color of the chillis to diffuse out, and the flavours to mingle).

This is more or less Vietnamese Nuoc Cham, traditionally made by crushing the ingredients in a mortar. Delicious with sticky rice.