Black Bean And Lentil Shashlik

I thought I’d try something slightly different last night, usually when I make a shashlik curry I use quorn pieces or mince, but seeing as I’d bought a bag of black beans, I thought I’d use them instead. And I’m really glad I did!

One of the many good things about living in Chorlton is the range and availability of produce and ingredients. One which I’m particularly grateful for is The Hungry Gecko Shashlik Paste

I first fell in love with The Hungry Gecko’s food when Jackie set up her Winnebago in the garden of The Beech Inn. Many a Saturday lunch was spent eating amazing far eastern street food cooked by a Masterchef finalist, so I was delighted when Frosts the Butchers starting selling this delicious paste.

Anyway, for this recipe, you’ll need

1 cup/jar of black beans
Half a jar of shashlik paste
6 tablespoons of mixed lentils
1 onion
1 pepper
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
4 cloves of garlic
6-8 closed cup mushrooms
Tomato Purée
1 teaspoon of chia seeds (optional)
1 teaspoon of mustard seeds (optional)

This is such an easy dish to make, thanks to the amazing taste of the paste. I didn’t use a tin of beans so I soaked the black beans and lentils overnight. Prior to cooking the main dish, I cooked the black beans for 30 minutes and left to the side.

Method

Slice the garlic fine, then in a large saucepan, heat some oil and fry the garlic and seeds (if you’re using them) for 2-3 minutes. Then add the black beans and fry them for a further 2 minutes.

Add the onion and pepper next, I chopped them chunky so that they retained some crunch. Once they’ve softened slightly, add the magic ingredient, the paste!

Stir everything together with the paste and savour the aroma, if it doesn’t get you salivating, I’d get to the doctor to get checked out. After a few minutes, stir in the tomatoes, drain the lentils and add them.

I used a cup of water and a squeeze of tomato purée to create more sauce, this will thicken up brilliantly during the cooking process, so don’t worry if it all looks a bit liquidy.

Let the pot simmer for half an hour and that’s it! Keep stirring occasionally and after thirty minutes, you’ll have a delicious, cheap and healthy dish. This will make 4 portions, so for me, that’s two for the plates and two for the freezer.

I served this with jasmine rice and a roti. So easy to do, so easy to eat and enjoy!

As someone with no culinary training, I welcome feedback and advice on improvements. I hope you enjoy this dish as much as I did.

Spicy Risotto – A Cure For Colds*

I just made possibly the nicest risotto I’ve ever made. And it was really easy!

My wife is a big fan of risotto, usually I make it cheese free with tomato and pepper. However, she is a bit under the weather with a cold and I had promised to make risotto for her. I thought I’d make it a bit more spicy than normal. So, what I used was….

4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
6 spring onions, finely sliced including the green bits at the end
6 cherry vine tomatoes, finely chopped
4 red shallots
2 heaped tablespoons of paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons of cumin
A pint of vegetable stock
3 mushrooms, finely chopped
1 sweet pepper, finely chopped
100g Tomato purée
1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
250g risotto rice
Salt and pepper
Handful of mustard seeds.

Right, this is a piece of piss to make. Firstly get your vegetable stock on the go. I use a pint or so of water and add two or three vegetable stock cubes and boil that bad boy up. I use frozen peas as well as it adds a bit of green to the proceedings.

When that is nearly boiling, heat up some oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds, shallots and garlic. What I did as this point too was get a bit of ginger, used a garlic press and added the result to the pan. Once that has fried for a minute, add the rice and fry it all up for about 5 minutes.

Then, add the tomatoes, paprika, cumin and chilli powder. Stir it in and when the rice takes the colour, add the tomato purée. This should stick everything together, stir it around so it all takes and then add about half of the stock.

Stir in the stock until you get a nice consistency, the rice should become “Unstuck together” at this point. Keep stirring it and add the mushrooms, pepper and spring onion. Gently stir it, probably best to keep doing this for about five minutes, risotto can be a right unsociable bastard to cook, and when the rice has started to absorb the sauce and fluff out, add the rest of the stock.

You can leave this for a minute or two and then carry on stirring. Add the salt and pepper, it’s up to you how much, or even if you want any at all. The rice will absorb the sauce so after about twenty minutes from when you started frying the rice, it will be ready to eat.

If you want to add meat, chorizo is probably your best bet. All the paprika in the risotto makes it well suited. Slice your chorizo and fry it up about three minutes before the risotto is finished. We had it with some chopped raw mushroom, olives and sliced tomato.

The best thing about this risotto is the is no set way to make it, add and subtract whatever you like veg wise or even meat wise, and you’ll have a nice, thick and creamy spicy risotto.

If you throw up, I shall blame someone else. Lets say…Jamie Oliver? Yeah, Jamie Oliver.

*Not really a cure for colds.