Pepper Soup for a Simple African-style Supper

Last night I was looking for something to eat, something that I could make quickly and I ended up with this... Basically made from a few things I had in the freezer and the fridge married with some fresh chillies I had growing an a few fresh herbs. The best of what I had around the house. It ended up being a very tasty meal for two, made quickly with very few base ingredients.

Simple Pepper Soup with Spiced Couscous Recipe

Serves 2

Ingredients:
For the Pepper Soup:
2 fillets of firm white fish, cubed
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
4 Birds eye chillies, finely chopped
2 tbsp tomato purée
1 tbsp mixed herbs (thyme, oregano, chives, savory), finely chopped
2 small red bell peppers, de-seeded and finely diced
2 tbsp olive oil salt and freshly-ground black pepper, to taste
2 tsp curry powder
1 tbsp cornflour (cornstarch)
2 tsp fresh mint, finely shredded

For the Spiced Couscous:
120g couscous
seeds from 4 cardamom pods
1 star anise
1 dried cayenne chilli, coarsely chopped

Method:
Begin with the pepper soup. Heat the oil in a frying pan, add the onion and garlic and fry for about 4 minutes or until the onion is just soft. Scatter in the curry powder then add the fish pieces. Stir-fry for about 5 minutes, or until the fish is lightly coloured then add the bell pepper and chillies. Stir-fry for 2 minutes then add 300ml boiling water. Bring to a simmer and add the tomato purée and the chopped herbs. Reduce to a gentle simmer, cover and cook for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes mix the cornflour (cornstarch) to a smooth slurry with 2 tbsp water then stir into the pepper soup. Bring back to a simmer, cover and continue to cook so the stock thicken as you prepare the couscous.

Combine the couscous and spices in a saucepan. Pour over 200ml boiling water then place on the hob and bring to a boil. Cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute then take off the heat, cover and set aside to stand for 5 minutes. After this time, fluff up the couscous and divide between two plates.

Adjust the seasonings of the pepper soup to taste, stir in the shredded mint, divide between the tow place and serve accompanied by a nicely chilled dry white wine.

For more recipes like this, see the Celtnet Recipes Forum.

For more African Recipes, see the Celtnet Recipes Blog African Recipes page.

This list of African regions and African recipes is brought to you in association with the Recipes of Africa eBook. With over 1000 recipes covering each and every country in Africa, this is the most comprehensive book of African recipes available anywhere.

If you love African food, or are just interested in African cookery, then the Recipes of Africa eBook is a must-buy. You get information about every region of Africa and every African country along with a selection of classic and traditional recipes from that country.

This is a must-get book for anyone interested in food. Learn about a continent that to this day remains mysterious to many people. The recipes presented here are written by someone who has travelled extensively in Africa and who is a published Author. The book is a properly-produce and published eBook and the collection is immense.

Don't delay, get yourself a copy of the Recipes of Africa eBook today!

Help the Celtnet Recipes Site

The Celtnet Recipes Site needs your help.

Welcome to Celtnet Recipes, the home of on-line food and Recipes. 19 300 recipes, 10 free historic cookery books 180 wild foods Help keep this site free and make it Ad-Free.

Celtnet Needs Your Help Please help support this site to keep it on the web! I have been personally funding this site for 8 years now, but it has grown too large for its current hosting. I need to move hosting and I need to re-write the codebase. This is a lot of work and I need to raise money... You can donate via PayPal using the button, left, or you can buy one of the site's Kindle eBooks. Just think, a typical recipe book is $9.99 and you get 500 recipes. This site gives you the equivalent of almost 40 recipe books... and more. If you want to help, then you can learn more about this campaign's aims on the Free Celtnet Recipes page.

The Celtnet Recipes site is a large food website with over 19 000 recipes and information on spices, herbs, wild food, edible flowers and much more. There you can find recipes recipes from every country on earth as well as many historic recipes.

The site also puts historic recipes on the web for free and much of its content is linked in Wikipedia. It is a large recipe and food resource. However, it has been supported solely by its creator for 8 years and now it wants to expand and needs to move hosting, codebase and provider.

This needs money and the site is asking for your help in supporting it and its expansion.

You can contribute via paypal or by buying one of the site's Kindle eBooks (all sold through Amazon). You can donate here, or you can learn more at the Free Celtnet Recipes web page.

Any donator who wishes it will have their name published on the support page and if your donation is $20 or more you get a free eBook.

If enough donate then the future of the website will be secured (it has been taken down several times of late through hacking attempts) and it will be made ad-free. But the content will still be free for everyone...

You will be securing the future of a very special recipe resource on the web.

Life as a Recipe Collector and Food Writer

I was thinking about this last night, and I realize that I have been cooking for over 35 years now and I have been collecting recipes for well over 20 years.

Even my website, Celtnet Recipes has been live for over 8 years now and for that I have written well over 20 000 recipes, with 19 300 currently live on the website. I've copied and made available 10 historic cookbooks with translations (where needed) and modern redactions of the recipes. Everything form Ancient Roman cookbooks, Medieval English cookbooks, Tudor and Elizabethan cookbooks, Stuart cookbooks, Georgian cookbooks and Victorian cookbooks. 1500 years of cookery writing form the 4th century to the 19th century.

But the truth is, compared with the amount of time required to write and publish new content almost every day, the income from the website has become pitiful. But, about a year ago a friend of mine, whom I had taken through the contents of the site asked me why I had never published the recipes as a book... That got me thinking, and being a bit of a geek I looked into eBook publishing. This resulted in my first eBook, The Guide to Spices and Their Uses, with 88 spices described and over 800 recipes given being published for the Amazon kindle eBook reader (You can find the Guide to Spices and Their Uses on Amazon and you can also find the Guide to Spices and Their Uses on Amazon.co.uk).

I made a few sales, but I really wasn't clued in to what I had to do. There followed a long period where I had to learn the ins and outs of publishing (both traditional and eBook). This led to my publishing an even larger eBook, The Big Book of Curry Recipes (again you can find the The Big Book of Curry Recipes on Amazon and you can also find The Big Book of Curry Recipes on Amazon.co.uk).

For this eBook (which covers much of the world of curries, both historic and modern and presents a global view) I got more involved in the marketing and making links to the books more visible. This one started to sell much better from the get-go than the original book and I was very pleased with it.

So pleased that I began on a new journey... I started a new blog and began to write down my experiences there. This grew into the blog Dyfed's Adventures in Publishing with articles and anecdotes on publishing and how to make the most of the programs and tools out there. And how to leverage what web marketers have been using for years, but applying that to eBooks. So, yet another project that I am invested in, but which will probably bring me little income... hey ho...

Anyway, as my latest eBook is all about curry, today's recipe will be a spiced mackerel masala from Goa in India.


Goan Mackerel Masala

Ingredients:
6 large mackerel (bangda), cleaned and scaled
salt, to taste
1 tsp ground turmeric
80g grated coconut
5 black peppercorns
1 tbsp mustard oil
5 onions, sliced
5 cloves
1cm length of cinnamon
8 whole dried red chillies
1 tbsp coriander seeds
1 small tamarind pod (or equivalent of tamarind pulp with the seeds removed)
6 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp ground turmeric

Method:
Wash the mackerel and cut each one into four pieces. Season liberally with salt and set aside for 5 minutes. After this time wash the fish pieces and pat dry.

Place in a pot with 1l water, a pinch of salt and 1 tsp of the turmeric. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes. After this time drain the mackerel pieces and put aside to cool. When they can be handled, strip off the skins and remove any bones. Chop the flesh into small pieces.


Heat the oil in a wok and use to stir-fry the garlic, black peppercorns, cloves and cinnamon until aromatic. Remove with a slotted spoon then add the coriander seeds and chillies to the oil left in the pan. Stir fry for a few minutes, until aromatic then remove the spices with a slotted spoon.

Combine all the spices in a coffee grinder and render to a fine powder. Add the onions to the oil remaining in the pan and fry for about 8 minutes or until a dark golden brown.

Mix the spices, grated coconut, remaining turmeric and the pulp from the tamarind in a food processor and blend together (add a little water and oil if needed so that the ingredients can be chopped finely). Add this paste to the fried onions and mix well. Bring to a boil then mix in the mackerel pieces.

Reduce to a simmer and cook, stirring frequently for about 3 minutes. Take off the heat and serve hot with rice and flatbreads.

This recipe is reproduced, with permission from Celtnet Recipes and you can find the original version here: Goan Mackerel Masala Recipe.

For now, though, I am back to the Dyfed's Adventures in Publishing blog to add its latest post.

New Jersey Potato Dog

The New Jersey Potato Dog is a classic and rather unusual American-style hotdog that is ideal for barbecues. It's made from a grilled spicy hot dog in a bun served topped with stewed sweet potatoes that are flavoured with mustard.

New Jersey Potato Dog


Ingredients:
8 spicy hot dogs
8 hot dog buns
250g (9 oz) sweet potatoes
10 tbsp Dijon mustard
4 tbsp English mustard

Method:
Bring a pan of water to a boil, peel and die the sweet potatoes, add to the pan and cook for about 20 minutes or until tender. Drain the sweet potatoes, mash and add to a pan with a little of the cooking water. Bring to a simmer and stir in the mustards. Cook until soft and almost dry then take off the heat.
In the meantime place the hot dogs on your barbecue or under a hot grill and cook, turning frequently, until nicely coloured and heated through (about 8 minutes).
Wrap the rolls in foil, place in an oven pre-heated to 150ºC (300ºF) and allow to warm through for about 15 minutes.
When done, set the grilled hot dogs in the buns and top with the spicy sweet potato mixture. Serve immediately.

This classic American hotdog recipe is brought to you by the Celtnet Recipes website's Barbecue and Grilling Recipes pages.

If you are interested in Barbecue and Grilling recipes, then you may well be interested in the 'Big Book of Barbecue Recipes' which contains over 900 recipes for barbecue and barbecue-associated foods.

You can find the Big Book of Barbecue Recipes on Amazon and you can also find The Big Book of Barbecue Recipes on Amazon.co.uk.

The eBook is competitively priced, and if you do not have an eBook or Kindle reader, do not worry, Amazon provides software that allows you to view and read their ebooks on iPads, iPhones, PCs and Macs. The price for The Big Book of Barbecue Recipes is very reasonable and the content is well worthwhile. Go and get your copy now! It truly is a worthwhile buy.

Tea is an Herb Too!

Possibly because it's typically used to make a beverage, but most people forget that, by any definition, tea is an herb. It's the young growing tips of the tea tree, Camellia sinensis that can be used fresh, or dried, or processed in many ways.

Where the different kinds of teas are processed as follows:


White tea: Wilted and unoxidized
Yellow tea: Unwilted and unoxidized, but allowed to yellow
Green tea: Unwilted and unoxidized
Oolong: Wilted, bruised, and partially oxidized
Black tea: Wilted, sometimes crushed, and fully oxidized

In Japan, green tea is finely milled to make matcha, green tea powder, which is not only the tea used in the Japanese tea ceremony, but is also used as an herb to flavour other dishes. In Britain, black tea is often used to flavour and moisten cakes. People forget that tee is often used to cook with.

Indeed, a little tea added to a smoker greatly enhances the flavour of the meat or fish being smoked. It's even very easy to make an indoor smoker for fish or meat strips at home with a wok. Mix sugar and tea leaves together (add hickory or applewood shavings if you like). Line the base of a wok with kitchen foil and sit the smoking mix in a foil cake liner. Sit this in the base of the wok and place a trivet on top. Place over high heat and heat until the smoke appears. Add your meat or fish on the trivet, close with a lid an seal with foil. Smoke for about 20 minutes, or until the meat is cooked.

Below is a classic Japanese recipe for a green tea flavoured cake:

Green Tea Kasutera

Ingredients:

2 tbsp warm milk
1 tbsp matcha (green tea powder)
5 large eggs
150g icing sugar
60ml honey
3/4 tsp baking powder
105g plain flour
icing sugar, for dusting

Method:
Crack the eggs into a bowl and beat until frothy. Gradually work in the icing sugar with a whisk then continue beating until the mixture drops as ribbons from the whisk (about 15 minutes). Mix together the milk and honey (the warm milk will make the honey more liquid) then work this into the egg and sugar blend.

Sift together the flour, baking powder and green tea powder into a bowl. Gently fold this mixture into the egg mix until just combined. Carefully pour the batter into a greased and lined springform cake tin. Transfer to an oven pre-heated to 180°C and bake for about 35 minutes, or until the cake has risen, the top is golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake emerges cleanly.

Remove from the oven, and allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes. Turn out of the tin and place on a wire rack to col completely. Store in an air-tight tin and serve the following day (the cake will mature over night if stored).

Originally the cake would have been steamed rather than being baked and, indeed, steaming does give a cake that is wonderfully springy and light.

This recipe is reproduced, with permission from the Celtnet Recipes Green Tea Kasutera recipe page. On this site you can find more information about the use of tea as a herb, including a large number of tea-based recipes.

This recipe is brought to you as part of Celtnet's Geographic list of World Herbs and Spices page, which gives a listing of some of the world's most important spices by the region in which they first grew, with links to description pages for each herb and spice and a list of classic recipes using that particular herb or spice.

Musk Mallow Seeds — Re-creating an Ancient Taste

The seeds of the Musk Mallow, (Abelmoschus moschatus) represent an almost completely forgotten spice. The plant itself is an annual or biennial that is closely related to okra (the immature seed pods can be cooked ad eaten like okra). The plant's mature seeds have a deep musky smell, and contain myricetin and macrocyclic lactone compounds and it is these that give them their musky aroma. Indeed, an oil, Ambrette oil is extracted from the seeds and is used commercially in the perfume industry as a substitute for musk.

What is rather less well know is that musk mallow seeds are a spice that lend an unusual, musky, note to foods. In fact, musk was an important flavouring agent all the way through the Medieval, Tudor and Stuart periods and recipes for sweetmeats, preserves and candied fruit would often include a grain or two of musk as a flavouring ingredient. During the 1600s, with increasing trade to India, musk mallow seeds began to find their way into lists of ingredients as a cheaper substitute to musk.

Though not common, they can be purchased as a spice even today. They are great when reconstructing historic recipes as ground musk seeds can be substituted for very expensive musk in recipes, whilst maintaining the aroma profile.

As musk was believed to be an aphrodisiac, a little ground musk seed also makes an excellent addition for desserts and cakes made for Valentine's day.

Below is a version of Crème Brûlée that includes this exotic spice as a flavouring ingredient:

Musky Crème Brûlée

Ingredients:
600ml double cream
5 egg yolks
50g caster sugar
1 tbsp water
2 drops vanilla extract
1/2 tsp ground musk mallow seeds
caster sugar (for topping)

Method:
Combine the egg yolks, sugar, cream, musk mallow seed powder and vanilla in a bowl and whisk until combined. Divide the mixture evenly between 6 ramekins and place in a roasting tin. Add boiling water until it comes half way up the sides of the ramekins then place the roasting tin in an oven pre-heated to 170°C and bake for about 40 minutes, or until the cream custard has set.

Bring out of the oven, remove the ramekins from the roasting tin and allow to cool to room temperature. When ready to serve sprinkle a level teaspoon of caster sugar evenly over the surface of each ramekin then either place under a hot grill to caramelize or use a blowtorch. Allow to cool for a few minutes so that the sugar forms a hard crust then serve.


This recipe is brought to you in association with the Celtnet Guide to Spices where you can find detailed information on over 80 of the world's common (and not so common) spices, along with recipes showing how each spice can be used in your own cooking.

Sea Spaghetti, The Latest Wild Food Fad

It is often hard to get people to even consider eating seaweed (sea vegetables) despite their health benefits and their traditional use in coastal communities around the globe. However, sea spaghetti (Himanthalia elongata). Despite being a seaweed, it is dried and packaged like spaghetti and can be substituted in any recipe that calls for spaghetti, tagliatelle or spaghetti squash. It is suitable for those who are gluten intolerant and is becoming popular with raw food enthusiasts, as it only needs to be soaked over night (or even, at a pinch, for 30 minutes in warm water) before it is ready to eat.

The recipe below is a classic dish where Sea Spaghetti has been substituted for the more traditional tagliatelle.

Sea Spaghetti Mediterranean Salad Recipe

Ingredients:
50g dried sea spaghetti
8 ripe tomatoes, chopped
2 small yellow onion, peeled and diced
75g pitted black olives, sliced
4 garlic cloves, minced
6 tbsp olive oil
6 tbsp dry white wine
1/2 tsp dried oregano leaves, crumbled
6 tbsp fresh flat-leaf parsley, finely shredded
freshly-ground black pepper, to taste
2 balls of buffalo mozzarella, diced (optional)
torn basil, to garnish

Method:
Rinse the sea spaghetti well, place in a bowl, cover with water then set aside to soak in the refrigerator over night. The following day, rinse the sea spaghetti thoroughly, place in a pan of boiling water and blanch for 2 minutes (this restores the vibrant colour of the seaweed) then drain.

In the meantime, whisk together the olive oil and white wine in a bowl. Add the tomatoes, onion, olives, garlic, oregano and parsley. Toss to coat and season to taste with salt and black pepper.

Arrange the sea spaghetti in a serving dish and pour over the dressing. Garnish with the mozzarella and torn basil then serve immediately.

For more information on edible seaweeds and links to descriptions of various edible seaweeds and their recipes see the guide to edible seaweeds (sea vegetables).

This recipe is reproduced, with permission, from the Celtnet Mediterranean Sea Spaghetti Salad recipe page.

On the same site you can find information on over 180 wild foods along with thousands of recipes incorporating them as ingredients on the Celtnet Wild Foods Guide pages.

For all the wild food recipes on this blog, see the wild food recipes page.