Beef and Apple Tikka

I'd prepared ground beef beforehand, browned it in some sunflower oil, and cooked with spring onions, diced apple and carrots for twenty minutes, stirring frequently. Afterwards I added boiling water to the pan and cooked the dish under glass for an hour and a half at a low heat.

After which I added tomato Puree, Cardamom seed, Tikka spices, diced garlic, and one large deseeded and diced red chilli. Cooked for another half an hour at a low heat, adding some coriander and oregano.

Served with long grain rice, or basmati if you prefer. Dressed in this case with some diced and steamed curly kale (five minutes), or with some diced fresh coriander leaf.

Turnip and Potato Soup

Essentially a delicious and warming winter soup, made with half a turnip (bought to accompany a haggis), a large handful of chopped curly kale (a form of cabbage), diced potato, and some grains of Kamut (wheat grains).

The ingredients were boiled for about an hour, and then lightly mashed. I added vegetable stock, some black pepper, and the herbs Rosemary and Thyme.

Serve with potato bread.

Beef Olive

A popular favourite in Scotland, beef olive is rather mysteriously named, since it contains no olives. The essence of the dish is thinly cut beef which is wrapped around a filling, usually of some kind of sausage meat enriched with herbs. So it has been suggested that the association is with olives, which are often stuffed with pimiento once the olive stone is removed. So in a sense a beef olive is beef stuffed with sausage. 

The filling can be either beef or pork sausage meat, mixed with soya flour, rice flour, oat flakes, or something else which isn't wheat. The proportions should be about 50 per cent meat, 30 per cent flour, and about 20 per cent finely chopped red onion, enriched with lots of herbs. If the stuffing is pork, one of the best choices of herb to use is sage. The choice is yours. Add a little salt. 

Place the thin cut beef on a chopping board, dust the inside with a little flour and a small amount sunflower oil,  add the stuffing, rolled, and wrap it in the beef. Press the olive a little (with the overlap of beef on the bottom) to ensure that it will stay in its wrapping in the casserole dish (a bed of vegetables helps secure this). 

Place Beef Olives in the dish (with the lid on, otherwise the olives may dry out) and add  half an inch of water. Add seasonal vegetables (in this case curly kale and slices of red onion) and dress with some salt and pepper. Cook for approximately 50 minutes at 180 deg. C.  

Beef Olives

Raw Beef Olives on a bed of Curly Kale and Red Onion

Tomato and Celery Soup

Vegetable soup made with spinach, curly kale, chopped tomato, leek, celery, red onion, and garlic, with basil, oregano, vegetable stock, and fish sauce (Nam Pla).

The soup base was made with chopped celery, red onion and leek, plus one half of the spinach. Stir-fried until the onion and leek are slightly browned. Water was added, and the soup base ingredients were blended with a mouli blender. 

The chopped tomato, remaining spinach, and the curly cale were added, and more water,  The soup was simmered for an hour, before adding fresh basil, oregano, white pepper, the vegetable stock, and a teaspoonful of fish sauce.  

Served with two quarters of potato bread. 

Tomato and Celery Soup

Carrot and Leek Soup with Curly Kale

A simple soup made entirely with vegetables common in northern Europe: Chantenay baby carrots (200g), three medium sized leeks (500g), a bag of curly kale (300g) from Leicestershire, and half a swede (200g). Plus two ham stock cubes and a half teaspoonful of white pepper. 

The chopped leek was stir-fried in sunflower oil for fifteen minutes at a low heat, then the Chantenay baby carrots were added, after topping and tailing. The kale and the swede were added for the last five minutes, then boiling water was added, along with a third of cup of red lentils, bringing the volume of soup up to 2.5 litres. 

The soup was allowed to simmer slowly on the hob for two hours under glass, and was stirred occasionally. After one hour the contents of the pot were mashed. More water can be added if you prefer a thinner soup. 

Carrot and Leek Soup with Curly Kale