Junglefrog Cooking

Chickpeas kerala – bookreview Under the Walnut Tree

Simone (junglefrog) — Thu, 24 May 2012 08:00:13 +0000

Indian flavored chickpea curry

Every once in a while I get my hands on a book that is just sooo full of fabulous recipes that I keep cooking from it. Under the Walnut Tree is just one such book. Written by mother and daughter, Anna and Fanny Bergenström, it focuses on fresh seasonal produce and is partially Scandinavian inspired and partially very international. Fanny, daughter of Anna and photographer Nisse Peterson, took all the photos of the book herself, a lot of them under their old walnut tree, which is what inspired the title of the book. Anna herself was the foodwriter for the leading daily newspaper in Sweden, the Dagens Nyheter and knows a thing or two about creating good and reliable recipes.

Combine the forces of these two ladies and you’re left with a beautiful book. A book that has made me, in a little over a week, make more then 6 recipes out of the book already and I have little post-its marking the pages where I definitely want to cook another recipe. In no particular order I have made this delicious Chickpea Kerala style, I have made lemoncurd, chicken salad from Laos, the lemony chickpea salad I shared with you before, lemoncream and coconut lime prawns (and the prawns are so good, that we’re eating them two days in a row now. Can’t resist!). Every single one of the recipes I made was absolutely delicious. Sure I changed a few things in the one I am sharing with you today, just because I didn’t have certain ingredients on hand, but in essence I followed the recipes.

What I also love about the book, is that it is divided across the different ingredients. Ingredients that Anna and Fanny love and use a lot, so it is easy to find out what is in season and just go to that particular chapter. Each chapter starts with an explanation on the ingredients or ingredient group and goes on to list a variety of recipes. And ultimately it is the recipes that did it for me. Try it out, I am sure you’re gonna love it!

Under the Walnut Tree is published by Hardie Grant Books

Hardie Grant on Twitter

Hardie Grant on Facebook

Chickpeas Kerala-style

Print recipe

Serves	2-3
Prep time	10 minutes
Cook time	10 minutes
Total time	20 minutes
Dietary	Vegetarian
Meal type	Main Dish
From book	Under the walnut tree

Ingredients

400 gr chickpeas (from a tin)
1 red chili
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons curry madras paste
300ml coconut milk
100g spinach
12 cherry tomatoes (halved)
1 lime (juiced )
pinch seasalt
coriander leaves (to serve)
1 ginger (about 3 cm piece)

Directions


Deseed and chop the chili. Peel and roughly chop the onion. Peel, gently bruise and chop the garlic. Do not use a garlic press or the taste will be too acrid. Also peel and grate the ginger.

Put the chickpeas in a colander and rinse well, leave to drain.

Gently saute the chili, onion, garlic and ginger in the oil. Add the curry paste and the coconut milk. Stir to combine and add the chickpeas in. Taste and if too spicy, add a bit more of the coconut milk. Bring the stew to the boil and simmer for a few minutes.

Fold in the (roughly chopped) spinach leaves and tomatoes. Simmer for just a few minutes more, and then season with lime juice and a touch of salt. Sprinkle with fresh coriander and serve with basmati rice.

Orange fennel salad by Sonia, the healthy foodie

Simone (junglefrog) — Wed, 23 May 2012 08:00:22 +0000

Sometimes you come across a blog that instantly captures your attention and Sonia’s blog The Healthy Foodie is just one such blog. I love her recipes and her witty way of writing around those recipes and I think her photos are amazing too as you will see below! You’ll have to come and take a look for yourself as it’s one of the blogs I always go to first whenever I have time to browse through my backlog of things to read online! I was thrilled when she agreed to write a little something for ~~Beetroot and Halloumi~~ Junglefrog Cooking and below you can read all about it! And can I just say that I’m very flattered about all the words she wrote about me! Blushing behind the computer now!

Giving it over to Sonia now!

When I heard that Simone, who happens to be one of my most favorite bloggers and photographer extraordinaire, not only had decided to take a little walk down the healthy path, but had also decided to start blogging about her experience, I was ecstatic.

After spending all this time drooling over pretty much every single picture that she’s ever posted, I was finally gonna get to actually give her recipes a try! Big yay!

Now can you imagine my excitement when she asked me if I would consider writing a little piece to be featured on this new baby of hers? I just couldn’t believe it! Me? Making an appearance on one of Simone’s sites? No way!

I have to admit that I am extremely humbled to have my photography being featured in such close proximity to hers. You see, Simone would be one of the foodographers that I look up to the most: her pictures are always so amazing, so mouth watering, so perfect in every possible way. For me to be posting my work here, where her work resides, is an unbelievably humbling experience.

I thank you very much, Simone, for letting me expose my “beginner level art” in your top notch professional gallery.

Whoa, but wait a minute. How very rude of me. Here I am, jabbering away, while most of you don’t have the slightest idea who I am…

Well, my name is Sonia, I’m a 38 year old French Canadian from Québec (Canada), single mother of 2 fully grown kids, who’s recently turned her life around and decided to embrace embrace a healthier approach to living.

Now, if someone had told me, not even 5 years ago, that I would be sitting here today writing these very words, I’d have probably called them crazy.

The thing is, back then, my life was nothing like what it is today.

You see, I used to smoke… A LOT!
And drink… way too much!
Food? OH YEAH! I did lots of that too, of course. And my choices in that field were not always the greatest, really…
As for exercise… Well, that word was not even part of my dictionary!

I eventually had enough of all this and decided that things had to change.

Of course, I quit smoking, quit drinking and eventually, over time, started eating better and exercising. I became totally enthralled by this healthier lifestyle, and to help me stay on track while perhaps inspiring others to follow in my tracks, I eventually created a blog: The Healthy Foodie.

There, I share on a regular basis, thoughts and recipes that I find sit well with my perception of what healthy living can be.

For health, I think, is a very personal concept, really.

In fact, I believe that there are probably as many descriptions of the word as there are people using it. What I consider healthy might be totally unhealthy, to you, and what is healthy to you might be total junk to your neighbour…

Where do I stand?

I personally tend to adhere more to the principles of “clean eating”. This, to me, is a form of health that is totally unrestrictive and super fun and easy to follow.

Quite simply, it implies eating food that is as close as possible to what nature intended. Choose whole, natural foods and try to avoid everything that’s highly processed or refined.

Just remember… Food does not grow in a box! Reach for fresh produce, lean cuts of meat and whole, unrefined grains.

Also, try and include a form of lean protein, complex carbs and healthy fat in every one of your meals. Oh, and be careful not to drink your calories! Opt for water or herbal tea instead of sugar laden fruit juices or sodas!

Last but not least, being healthy implies that you stay active! Keeping your body moving is the best way to rev up your metabolism and get those calories working for you, instead of against you!

I guess, in the end, healthy is what you make it.

And to me, salads such as this one just SCREAM healthy.

Orange fennel salad

Recipe type: salad

Author: Sonia, the healthy foodie

Serves: 2

Ingredients

1 fennel bulb (shaved paper thin)
A few sprig fennel leaves
2 navel oranges (supremed)
1 bosc pear (sliced)
45g walnuts (chopped)
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Instructions

Cut the oranges into supremes, working over a bowl, in order not lose any of the juice. When you’ve got all your supremes done, make sure to squeeze all the juice out of the “membrane” that is left behind.
In a medium to large mixing bowl, add all your ingredients, including orange juice.
Give everything a quick toss and transfer to divide between 2 serving dishes.
Garnish with fennel leaves, if desired.

Want more healthy recipe ideas? Head on over to The Healthy Foodie

And here is a sample of a few recipes you can expect to find…

Aperture and DOF – foodphotography exercise I

Simone (junglefrog) — Mon, 21 May 2012 08:00:53 +0000

Aperture 5.6 left and 13 on the right

Whenever I give a workshop, it turns out that aperture and in general lighting is one of the most confusing things about photography. It doesn’t help that all those numbers mean virtually nothing to someone who is just starting out and is trying to get to grips with his or her camera. So when Aparna from my Diverse Kitchen started a series with exercises in foodphotography I figured it would be a great thing to join in and explain a few things here. You can find Aparna’s post here and her explanation on how to join in too.

I get many emails asking me for information on how to take photos, which camera to buy, which lenses to get and general tips on improving food photography. You can already find some of the articles here on the foodphotography page but the exercise of today is to take two photos of the same subject from the same angle with the only variation being the aperture.

I shoot a lot of my photos in aperture priority. It’s easy, I don’t have to worry too much if the light changes and I still have full control over the DOF. (Depth of Field) Now what is the aperture you may ask… It is essentially the hole in your lens that let’s the light in. I always give the James Bond intro as an example as the ring he stand in is what it looks like, more or less.

100mm macro on 5.6 and f11.0 respectively

But apart from the fact that it controls the light coming in, it also controls (for a part) the depth of field in your photo. And depth of field is the area in your photo that appears sharp to the human eye. The smaller the number of your aperture (i.e. F2.8) the smaller the depth of field in your photo, but the bigger the opening in your lens. The bigger the aperture number (i.e. F22.0) the bigger the depth of field in your photo, but the smaller the opening in your lens. In the image above the mint tea you can clearly see the difference between the first and the second shot. This is a dramatic difference as I shot the first on F5.6 and the other on F32.0, which is really an aperture I never use.

50mm macro on F2.5 (left) and F5.6 (right)

Now the exercise that Aparna has us do is to shoot two photos on a 50mm lens. In the image above I used my 50mm macro which has as a widest aperture 2.5 so that’s what I used for the first shot and I used 5.6 for the second one. As you can see the difference between the two shots is not so dramatic as the difference in the first two photos, but that is partially due to the type of lens used and the fact that the difference between aperture 1 and aperture 2 was not that big. For the first two comparison photos I used my 100mm 2.8 lens which I use for 90% of my foodphotos.

I love a photo with shallow depth of field, but there can be too little of it, so play around with your camera and your lens and see what the result is. Every camera and every lens has a slightly different outcome. Also be aware that if you close the opening in your lens (so your aperture number becomes higher but the opening becomes much smaller) your shutterspeed will rapidly go down. Using a tripod is then essential!

Now hop on over to Aparna’s blog and check out the tips she is giving and the exercises that the others have done there too!

The recipe for the lemoncurd will follow shortly!

Chickpea salad for foodrevolution day – Dutch foodbloggers

Simone (junglefrog) — Sat, 19 May 2012 06:00:46 +0000

I’ve always been a big Jamie Oliver fan. I think his passion for food and his commitment to making people, all people, eat better, healthier and homemade is unique. I love his food, his cookbooks and his tv-shows. So it’s sort of a weird thing that I had not heard about the upcoming food revolution day at all. I must have been focused on something else I guess. Who knows! So when I received a tweet this afternoon from Monique Tielemans from Dutch Food Rules, I could not do anything else but respond and join in the fun. Being very last minute I had to think fast and decided to make a chickpea salad I had seen earlier in a new book I will soon tell you more about Under the Walnut Tree
.

Chickpea salad with lemon and chili

Because I can talk all I want about food and the importance of real food and good food, without giving you a recipe this post would not be complete right?

If I look at the way a lot of young kids these days get fed it sort of scares me. When I was younger there was not as much junkfood around as there is these days and there certainly weren’t as many obese kids either.

I’ve seen a couple of episodes of the schoolfood program that first ran in the UK and I was shocked that kids didn’t even recognize a tomato! How weird is that. The show didn’t air here but I watched most episodes on youtube as I was entirely fascinated by the whole process.

For me – looking back over the years – my take on food has changed dramatically. A couple of years back I ate a lot of processed foods. Convenience foods so to speak. We would come home, rip open a package of ‘macaronimix’, add some veggies to it and some protein and we would have a meal. The funny thing is that not too long ago we did a test. We didn’t feel like cooking (yes, that happens!) and we ate one of those pre-made meals and we totally hated it! It was too salty and lacking in flavor and overall made us feel really bad.

I’ve mentioned here before that my mum hated cooking. I didn’t grow up eating real food, so it has taken me a while to change my habits. Which only goes to show that it is so important that the basis of all the kids today is sound. That they understand what a tomato is or an eggplant and that they know the difference between grabbing some junk food and eating real food. You can’t start soon enough with educating them!

In our current society where it is all about living a fast life, I find it is important to take a step back and really think about the food we’re consuming. Not only from the perspective of our own health, but for me it is also important to think about the health of the animals we’re consuming and the vegetables that are grown. Rather then eat supermarket fare every day, we rather pay a little more for organically raised meat. Yes, it is more expensive and a little harder to find too (it is in our area!), but that just means that we can eat less of it. So we eat more vegetarian meals and a little less meat then we’re used to in the past. Even supermarkets are becoming more aware of the importance of good food so it’s becoming easier to find sensible options.

Nothing wrong with vegetarian!

As for the role that food bloggers can play in all of this; I would say, we can lead by example. I’m not a person who tells others what to do and there have been a couple of discussions going around lately on the importance of our educational role and what we should or shouldn’t post about.

My friend Jamie had a brilliant article published on The Huffington post which you might find worth checking out.

Foodrevolution is not about never having dessert or cake again, but it is about good food. Food that is sourced locally, maybe even grown in your own garden or on your window sill and not preprocessed and packaged foods that are filled with ingredients no one ever heard of. If it has too many E-numbers on the ingredient list you can be pretty sure there is a better alternative.

You don't need a lot of space to grow your own herbs!

Check out the foodrevolution website to find out more information, events that are taking place today, people that got involved and lots more. You can also follow the discussions that will – no doubt – be on twitter today via the official hashtag #foodrevolution. What’s your take on real food? Leave a comment and let me know! The links below are from my fellow Dutch Bloggers who also participated. Check out their websites for more information and their take on real food!

De volgende FoodBloggers en FoodLovers doen ook mee aan Food Revolution Day en geven hun kijk op ‘real food’:

www.uitpaulineskeuken.nl www.dutchfoodrules.nl www.wildvleesch.nl www.vandeboer.nl www.foodnext.nl www.veggiechallenge.nl www.spinazieacademie.nl www.kleuropjebord.nl
www.smulpaapje.nl (= @cookstr2009 organizes a Twinner) www.alexstyling.nl www.junglefrog.nl www.thefoodagency.nl www.kimvanvelzen.nl

Zin in een dagje Rotterdam? Check dan dit Food Revolution Day Event Dutch FoodBloggers @Eetlokaal Meet-up

Lemony chickpea salad

Print recipe

Serves	5-6
Prep time	15 minutes
Cook time	10 minutes
Total time	25 minutes
Meal type	Lunch, Salad
Misc	Pre-preparable, Serve Cold
From book	Under the walnut tree

Ingredients

600g chickpeas (either homecooked or from a tin)
5 potatoes (boiled (about 400 gr))
1 red chili
1 large red onion
1 organic lemon
0,5-1 teaspoon garam masala
1 pinch sea salt
mild olive oil (to taste)
handful flat leaf parsley (chopped)

Directions


Cook the dried chickpeas until tender. Or if using canned chickpeas, rinse them well under cold water and leave to drain. Peel and dice the boiled potatoes. Deseed and finely chop the chili and peel and finely chop the red onion. Scrub the lemon in warm water and dry well. Grate the yellow lemon peel, avoiding the bitter white pith. Squeeze the lemon juice.

In a salad bowl combine the chickpeas, potatoes, chili, red, lemon zest and lemon juice, then taste and adjust seasoning. Sprinkle with the garam masala and a pinch of salt. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with the chopped parsley then gently toss to combine.

Strawberry feta salad

Simone (junglefrog) — Fri, 18 May 2012 09:00:27 +0000

Simple yet delicious

I’m a moron, you know that right? A downright idiot sometimes, if you will. I am impulsive. Act before I think about what I’m doing on many occasions. I change my mind often and radically too. Not to fear though, it usually effects only myself, so any harm done, is usually only done to myself and time spend… Starting yet another website was one of those insane actions. An action that – looking back – was just plain ridiculous and why would I do that if I have two good running ones? Why would I go through all that trouble? Well, I told you; I’m an idiot..

I do come to my senses usually at some point. And such is the case now… I had an epiphany last night… And don’t think no one told me that before, but it always takes a while to sink in my thick skull (moron, I told you!) I figured I could do a separate health section here on Junglefrog Cooking. Duh… Not exactly rocket science I would think… So the adventure of Beetroot and Halloumi will come to a full stop. I will – in time – transfer and repost the guestposts that were so graciously done there to here (might get my guestposters some more traffic too!) but for now I will just share this delicious salad with you.

It’s part of my ongoing quest at getting a healthier me. Part of that is the fact that I will be starting Michelle Bridges 12WBT very soon, starting beginning of June for the next 12 weeks. It’s in preseason now meaning that we’re shaping ourselves up to get fitter and healthier. And because I love salads, especially in summer (even though it looks more like autumn really) I always throw together a few ingredients and it ends up being delicious. This is a no-brainer really as it features strawberries and feta, which I think is a classic combination, rocket and mint. I could have added pine nuts to it, if had thought about it too.

I’m also sending in this recipe for the foodblog event (Dutch one) for May which has the theme of strawberries! Perfect match. It is hosted by Caroline this month. Check out all the awesome entries here

Strawberry feta salad

Print recipe

Serves	1
Prep time	5 minutes
Meal type	Lunch, Salad
By author	Simone van den Berg

Ingredients

150g strawberries (hulled and chopped in half or quarters depending on size)
75g feta (crumbled)
1 handful rocket
1-2 sprig mint (leaves picked)
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 tablespoons cameroon mango vinegar (or another suitable sweet vinegar)

Directions


Clean and hul the strawberries and then put them into a bowl, together with the rocket, feta and mint. Combine the olive oil and the vinegar together, season to taste and sprinkle over the salade

Junglefrog Cooking

Chickpeas kerala – bookreview Under the Walnut Tree

Chickpeas Kerala-style

Ingredients

Directions

Related Posts:

Orange fennel salad by Sonia, the healthy foodie

Related Posts:

Aperture and DOF – foodphotography exercise I

Related Posts:

Chickpea salad for foodrevolution day – Dutch foodbloggers

Lemony chickpea salad

Ingredients

Directions

Related Posts:

Strawberry feta salad

Strawberry feta salad

Ingredients

Directions

Related Posts: