This is a meal in itself. Serves 2.

Chop up some garlic, chilli, root ginger, onions, and fry in frying pan with just a drop of sunflower oil. Sprinkle liberally with organic ground black pepper, and maybe a bit of asafoetida. Add chopped red peppers, courgette, potatoes as you like.

Cook for about 20 – 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Beat 4 eggs thoroughly. Really thoroughly.

Gently press down the mixture in the frying pan, and pour the eggs over the top. Put the pan under a grill until the omelette turns golden brown. Cut into pieces and serve.

Ingredients:

– cod or haddock (1 pound)
– 2 small (or 1 large) onions
– 1 (or more) clove(s) of garlic
– 2 slices of bread
– pepper
– salt
– 1 egg

Finely chop the fish. In a food processor, puree the onions, garlic and bread. Mix with the fish, egg and salt in a bowl. Form into flattened balls and leave to rest on a board for a few minutes. Shallow fry until golden brown, turn and fry the other side. Dry the balls on kitchen towel.

Serve cold (or at least cooled) with salad and potato salad.

Serves 3 – 4.

Fry some chopped chilli, ginger, onions, red pepper with some organic ground black pepper and a dash of asafoetida. When it’s a bit fried, add some mincemeat and chopped garlic. When it’s a bit fried, add a dollop of tomato puree and some muscovado sugar. Add wine / tamari sauce / water in whatever combination you fance, to make it a bit wet but not too runny. Cook for about 15 minutes. Maybe add salt.

Take lots of red, yellow and orange peppers (one or more per person, depending on how bothered you are). Use fork to make holes in all of them. Place in an oven tray and bake in a high oven (can’t quite remember what setting, probably 200C in a fan over), or grill, until the skin is fairly brown, turning once or twice (or more if grilling). This might take 30 minutes.

Allow to cool. Carefully peel off the outer skin of the peppers, cut open and discard the pips into a sieve, catching all the juice in a bowl. Make sure to catch all the juice when you’re peeling, as well. If it’s hard going removing the skins, you probably haven’t baked/grilled them long enough.

Slice the peppers and put them in a serving dish. Add all the sieved and caught juice. Put a bit of water in the oven tray and scrape off/dissolve all the solids and add to the juice. Add olive oil and lime or lemon juice, and a bit of salt if needed. For industrial/military grade, slice or dice some/loads garlic and mix in.

Get 3 large aubergines, make holes all over with a fork.

Grill under a hot grill on all sides till quite charred on the skin and the flesh is all soft. Don’t give up too soon. Leave to cool.

Scoop out flesh from skin making sure to get the gooey bit closest to the skin. Put flesh in colander to drain, discard any liquid that drains off.

Chop the aubergine and put in a bowl with chopped shallots, a little crushed garlic, chopped (preferable flat leaf) parsley, salt, pepper, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, a little sugar, 1 chilli finely chopped [if you like that sort of thing].

Irit’s Special Rice Salad
This dish was inherited from our former neighbours the Winters and adapted by Irit. It has a salad component and a dressing component. A bit like araldite.
Salad:

• 2 cups brown rice
• 2 chopped red peppers
• 2 bunches chopped spring onions
• 2 good handfuls of raisins
• Cashew nuts

Sprinkle salt on the nuts and heat in a microwave for 2 minutes at a time until they go brown. Stir in between each session.
Simmer the rice in 4 cups of water until all the water has been absorbed.
Mix the rice with the other ingredients (except the nuts).

Dressing:
Mix in a massive jar:
• Half a jam jar of olive oil
• 125ml soy sauce
• ¼ jam jar balsamic vinegar
• Lump of root ginger, grated
• A few cloves garlic, crushed
Make far too much dressing. It should be moist.
Add dressing a few hours before serving so it can soak in.
Add cashew nuts at the last minute.

Chicken with chickpeas (serves 5-6)

This is my version of a traditional Iraqi Jewish dish. You may notice similarities to an earlier recipe.

Get a tin (or 2) of chickpeas, rinse them.

Peel and cube 2-3 potatoes.

Tip: both the chickpeas and potatoes are optional. If you leave out both, you get Chicken and Nothing.

In a large pan, heat a bit of sunflower oil, add the chickpeas and potatoes, stir, cover a leave on a low heat. Stir occasionally These ingredients tend to burn slightly (caremalize) which gives the dish its characteristic flavour. Don’t let them burn too much. I always panic about the burning but it’s always ok.

Meanwhile, take a medium size organic chicken (about 5 lb) and cut into pieces (see Chicken and Squash for instructions).

Add the chicken to the pan. Keep it tightly covered. Then finely chop 3 – 4 cloves garlic and add to pan, mix in.

Then add about 200g of double concentrate tomato puree (that’s the best part of a jar), a large handful of salt, and enough cold water to just cover the chicken. Cover, bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes.

After the 20 minutes is up, leave to stand for a few hours. Skim any fat from the surface. Reheat for 20 minutes before serving. Serve with basmati rice.