Yahoo News In praise of carbohydrates: a new cookbook rediscovers the joy of the essential macronutrient
Carbs are back on the menu, to the delight of food lover Laura Goodman, the author of a new cookbook celebrating carb-based meals in all their glory.
Entitled simply CARBS (£10.50, Amazon), it contains recipes for the classics, like macaroni cheese, as well as more novel ways to enjoy carbs, inspired by global cuisines and her own experiences of them – from Greek (skordalia potato dip with with pita chips) to Jamaican (sweet cornmeal porridge) via Californian fare and Italian-style dishes (risotto, cacio e pepe – in fact, there’s a whole chapter entitled “What Would Italy Do?”).
Meanwhile, her repertoire of “carbobowls” lend themselves well to mid-week sofa suppers, and there’s a whole chapter dedicated to chips: skin-on, truffle parmesan, chimichurri, sweet potato, chicken skin-salted (you get the idea: there’s pretty much every kind you could possibly imagine).
"I like to think of people sitting with a big bag of crisps, flicking through the book and marking things they want to make with rainbow post-its," says Goodman. "I basically just hope they have a nice time with it. We all like to get deadly serious about what we eat now and then, but it’s important to remember that food is fun.
"We've tried to hide it, shoving carbs aside for cauliflower rice and courgetti, but we're not fooling anyone. Carbs are what we want – what we really, really want. They make every meal better."
After the misery of the carb-phobic courgetti years, this is food to get excited about. Tuck in: after all, earlier this year, a major review even found that pasta can help you lose weight. And according to the NHS, carbs should be the body's main source of energy. As well as helping you to feel full, they're an important source of fibre.
We'll take that as carte blanche to dig in...
Pastitsio
"This dish is (to be crass, but ultimately factual) a Greek lasagne, with three layers. The bottom layer is traditionally made up of ziti, which is a long tubular pasta – the shape of penne, the length of spaghetti. It’s fun and it slices up a treat, but only available from specialist suppliers, so if you can’t get it, don’t worry – any tubes will do. Next comes a layer of meat sauce, and then – obviously – a cheesy top," says Goodman.
"The meat sauce is turned up nine notches withsweet Marsala, cinnamon and prunes, and the topping isn’t just béchamel – it’s yolk enriched pecorino béchamel that bibbles and wibbles – a very fine cheesy, custardy crown."
SERVES
5-6
INGREDIENTS
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
1 stick of celery, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tbsp tomato purée
500g (1lb 2oz) minced (ground) beef
100ml (scant ½ cup) Marsala
400g (14oz) can of chopped tomatoes
1 tsp dried thyme
2 cinnamon sticks
2 bay leaves
5 pitted prunes, finely chopped
25g (1oz) parsley, chopped
450g (1lb) ziti (or another pasta of your choice, ideally tubular)
115g (4oz) feta
4 egg whites
30g (1oz) Parmesan, grated
salt and black pepper
For the béchamel
90g (6 tbsp) unsalted butter
70g (½ cup) plain (allpurpose) flour
900ml (scant 4 cups) milk
80g (2¾oz) pecorino, grated
¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
4 egg yolks
METHOD
1. Add the olive oil to a large sauté pan and set it over a medium heat. When the oil’s hot, put the chopped onion, carrot and celery in the pan, and stir well. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring frequently, until soft. Add the chopped garlic to the pan and keep going for 2 more minutes.
2. Then add the tomato purée, stir well and cook for about a minute, or until the purée shifts to a rubier shade of red.
3. Add the minced beef to the pan, breaking it up with your wooden spoon as you stir. Cook it for 5 minutes, until evenly browned, then add the Marsala to the pan, and cook until it’s almost all evaporated. Now add the canned tomatoes, dried thyme, and some salt and pepper to the pan. Stir, and then bury the cinnamon sticks and bay leaves.
4. Turn the heat down to low, put the lid on the pan and leave it to simmer for 20 minutes. Then, take the lid off and let it simmer for 5 more minutes. Stir through the chopped prunes and 15g (½oz) of the chopped parsley, put the lid on, and pop the pan to one side.
5. Meanwhile, cook the pasta in plenty of salted water until just al dente (it’ll cook a bit more in the oven). When it’s done, drain it well and add it to the bottom of your oven dish. Leave it there until you’re ready for it.
6. To make the béchamel, melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat.
7. When it’s melted, add the flour, and stir with a wooden spoon until smooth and beautifully beige.
8. Add the milk bit by bit (about 100ml at a time), stirring all the while and switching to a whisk if it gets lumpy.
9. Once you’ve added all the milk, take the sauce off the heat and stir through the grated pecorino, followed by the nutmeg and some salt and pepper.
10. Now, reach for your egg yolks. Give them a quick mix with a fork, and then add a scant tablespoon of béchamel to them, mixing continuously so the yolks don’t scramble. Repeat this 3 more times to carefully warm up the yolks.
Then add the yolk mix into the pan of béchamel and stir really well. Leave it to one side.
11. Preheat the oven to 200°C/400ºF/Gas 6.
12. To assemble the pastitsio, crumble the feta and sprinkle the remaining chopped parsley into the waiting pasta. Then add half of the egg whites and toss really vigorously with your hands so that all of the pasta has met some egg white.
13. Stir the rest of the egg whites through the meat sauce, and spoon that on top of the pasta, spreading it out with the back of your spoon to form an even layer.
14. Top with the béchamel custard and sprinkle the Parmesan on top.
15. Bake in the middle of the oven for 35 minutes, or until the top is evenly browned.
16. Leave it to rest for 10 minutes before slicing and serving.
Kimchi and bacon fried rice
"Soon, kimchi fried rice will be like beans on toast. Making it will be second nature to you, and you will find that you just fancy it quite a lot. For instance, you’ll fancy it when you get home after a long journey, with steamed broccoli if you’ve accidentally been on holiday from nutrients."
SERVES
4
INGREDIENTS
300g (1½ cups) basmati rice
1 tbsp rapeseed (canola) oil, plus extra if needed
100g (3½oz) chopped smoked bacon or lardons
5 spring onions (scallions), finely chopped, greenest bits put aside to use as garnish
260g (9¼oz) kimchi
5 tsp gochujang
2 tbsp soy sauce
4 tsp sesame oil
2 tbsp tomato ketchup
a handful of frozen peas
4 nori sheets torn up, or any othersprinklable seaweed, to serve
4 fried eggs, to serve
METHOD
Rinse, wash and cook the basmati rice according to packet instructions or mine on page 62 and leave it to cool. Ideally, you’d do this a day or two in advance, but I know from experience that the impulse to fry rice can present itself without warning.
Heat 1 tablespoon of rapeseed oil in a large frying pan on a medium heat and when it’s hot, fry the bacon bits. When they’re nicely browned, take them out and rest them on a couple of sheets of kitchen paper.
Add the whites (and palest greens) of the spring onions to the pan and stir, gathering up any bacon residue from the bottom of the pan as you go. Cook the spring onions for 2–3 minutes. Add the kimchi and the gochujang and stir everything through. Cook for another 5 minutes, or until the kimchi has softened.
Add the rice, with a little morerapeseed oil if the pan looks dry. Stir to coat the rice in kimchi. Add the soy sauce, sesame oil, ketchup, cooked bacon and frozen peas. Stir thoroughly and cook for a couple more minutes.
Now, pat the rice down so that it neatly covers the bottom of the pan. Turn the heat up, and leave it alone, allowing the bottom layer of rice to crisp up. Be brave and give it at least 10 minutes.
Spoon the rice into bowls and top each with spring onion greens, seaweed sprinkles and a fried egg.
Rice pudding cream pie
"The concept of cream pies, the two words next to each other – cream and pie – fill my heart right up to the top. It’s so America to take a European concept (the primmer “tart”), top it with a puff of cream, and take it to town.
"I love banana cream pies, chocolate cream pies, vanilla cream pies, sugar cream pies, lemon cream pies and any other cream pies you can think of. This one is quite an obvious cross between a coconut cream pie and a coconut rice pudding."
SERVES
8-10
INGREDIENTS
55g (¹⁄³ cup) shelled pistachios, plus 2 tbsp to serve
110g (generous ½ cup) pudding rice
85g (scant ½ cup) light soft brown sugar
400ml (1¾ cups) coconut milk
260ml (generous 1 cup) milk
finely grated zest and juice of 1 lime
95g (6 tbsp) unsalted butter, plus extra for greasing
200g (7oz) Digestive biscuits (Graham Crackers)
300ml (1¼ cups) double (heavy) cream
15g (¹⁄³ cup) coconut chips
Salt
METHOD
1. Butter a 25cm (10in) pie dish and set it aside.
2. Chop the pistachios into medium–fine pieces. Put the chopped pistachios, with the rice, sugar, coconut milk, milk and a small pinch of salt in a saucepan over a medium–high heat and stir to combine.
3. Bring it to the boil, then let it simmer for about 25minutes, stirring regularly, until you have a fairly stiff ricepudding. Stir through the lime zest and juice and leave it to cool.
4. Meanwhile, make the biscuit base. Melt the butter and crush the Digestives. Mix the biscuit sand with the butter using your hands (as long as the butter is cool enough), then press it into the bottom and sides of your pie dish.
Rest the rice pudding and pie case separately in the fridge for 30 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, whip the cream to soft (not stiff) peaks (they look bouncier and more inviting that way). Chop the extra pistachios and toast them with the coconut chips in a dry frying pan.
6. To assemble the pie, fill the pie case with the rice pudding and top with the whipped cream – use a flexible spatula and be careful not to dislodge any rice. Decorate the top with the toasted coconut chips and the extra pistachios.
