Spinach, Mushroom & Sesame Udon Noodle Soup

We just came back from travelling in Singapore, which we absolutely loved. We had such a good time and I think it's probably the coolest Asian city I've ever visited, with a great vibe to the whole place. We will definitely be going back there. While we were there we did a bit of street market shopping. Singapore is by no means a cheap place to visit and travel, but I picked up a few knick-knacks to remind me of our time there. One of them were these cute pairs of chopsticks. My partner and I are both year of the Rabbit, so we picked up two pairs of rabbits and I got a pair of dragons for my best friend. In hindsight I should have got a pair for everyone - but maybe next time I'm in Singapore!

This beautiful soup is quick, easy and so very tasty and is a favourite go to quick lunch or dinner for me. Spinach is not a common addition to an Asian noodle soup, but the flavour and colour are so well suited. Don't scrimp on the sesame seeds, they are more than just a garnish!

Spinach, Mushroom & Sesame Udon Noodle Soup

Ingredients:

6 dried shitake mushrooms

2L vegetable stock

5 tbsp soy sauce

250g button mushrooms

150g oyster mushrooms

1 small tin of bamboo shoots

4-5 leaves of spinach (silverbeet)

2 small bunches of bok choy

2 tbsp mirin

4 x 200g packets of fresh udon noodles (or a large 800g pack)

4 tbsp white sesame seeds

Sesame Oil

To Make
 1. Put the dried mushrooms, soy sauce and the vegetable stock in your wok and set it to simmer while you do all the rest of your prep.

2. Prep the ingredients: slice the button mushrooms, slice the oyster mushrooms into strips, drain the bamboo shoots, chop the spinach into thin strips and chop the bok choy finely horizontally.

3. Once you’ve done all that (will take about 10 mins depending on how fast you chop) remove the whole shitake mushrooms from the stock and slice them.

4. With the stock simmering add the ingredients in the following order: shitake mushrooms, button mushrooms, bamboo shoots, oyster mushrooms, spinach.

5. Simmer for about 2 minutes once all the ingredients are in and then turn off the heat and add the bok choy and mirin.

6. Rinse the udon noodles gently under some hot water and put about 200g in the bottom of each bowl. Ladle the hot soup on top of the noodles in each bowl.

7. Heat a non stick frypan over a medium heat and dry toast the sesame seeds until just golden brown.

8. Drizzle some sesame oil over each bowl and top generously with toasted sesame seeds.

Serves 4 .

Spicy Chickpea Salad with Olive Hummus Dressing

This delicious salad uses four spices from my overflowing spice rack - and all of them red, giving this salad a lovely red-orange hue. Chickpeas fried in chilli and sweet and smoked paprika with a creamy olive hummus dressing and a sprinkle of middle eastern sumac.

Chilli

Well, you all know about chilli. There are hundreds of varieties of chilli and they have a long history in many countries. There is evidence that chillies were eaten by Mexican Indians as early as 7000 BCE. In modern times chilli has become a commonly used all over the world in a myriad of ways. Chillis apparently contain more Vitamin C by weight than any citrus fruit and are found in our spice racks in dried form, flakes and many powdered varieties including chilli powder, hot paprika and cayenne pepper. Chilli is also purportedly excellent for weight loss as it speeds up the metabolism (in my experience it also good in this regard because it limits the amount of food you eat - because I can't eat as big a quantity of really hot food as I can mild food!). The heat of chilli can depend on what you cook your chilli with - oils and fats can mollify the heat of a dish so adding a high fat coconut milk can tame your curry. When eating a super chilli dish it's natural to reach for a glass of water - but don't! Water will actually make it worse - the best relief will come from a spoonful of sugar, but beer is also a good accompaniment. Milky drinks using yoghout or coconut milk are also a good option.

Paprika

In the same family as chilli (Capsicum family), paprikas origins go back the same as chilli - to the Mexican Indians in 7000 BCE. However, it was the Spanish that first turned these fruits into a powder after Christopher Columbus brought them back to Europe from the new world. Paprika in it's many forms is now ubiquitous in Spanish and Hungarian cuisines in particular. But during the Turkish occupation of Hungary in the 17th Century, paprika was prohibited and it's use and trade was punishable by death! This resulted in many people growing paprika illegally and a black market for paprika evolved, keeping the spice firmly entrenched in Hungarian cuisine. Interestingly, paprika can be used to tone down a dish if you have accidentally added too much chilli.

Sumac

If you haven't spent much time eating oodles of middle eastern food, then this is a spice which may have passed you by! Sumac is made from berries which grow on a tree in the Mediterranean and Middle East. Since there were no lemons in this region during the Roman era, sumac was used as a sour flavour in many dishes. Not only was it used for flavouring, but the berries were also used for dying as they are a rich deep red. Sumac was brought to Australia by middle eastern migrants, you may have encountered it sprinkled on hummus, fleshly sliced onions or used in salads such as fattoush. When buying sumac, the colour can be a good indication of the quality - darker red sumac contains more berry and less stem and seed than lighter varieties. 

Reference: Hemphill, 2006

For my month of spices I'm using Spice Notes and Recipes by Ian Hemphill as my reference tool to learn about spices and for all the information above. Thanks Ian for writing such a great and informative book! 

Spicy Chickpea Salad with Olive Hummus Dressing

Ingredients

1 tbsp olive oil

1 x 400g tin of chickpeas (or 350-400g cooked chickpeas), drained well

1 tbsp sweet paprika

1 tbsp smoked paprika

1/2 tsp ground chilli (chilli powder)

3 cups baby spinach

3 tomatoes, chopped

Olive Hummus Dressing 

3 tbsp hummus

2 tbsp fresh lemon juice

4-5 kalamata olives, finely chopped

1 tbsp olive oil

Sumac

To Make

1. Heat the olive oil in a pan and add the chickpeas and spices. Fry, stirring occasionally until fragrant and the chickpeas are coated in the spices.

2. While they are cooking. Combine all the ingredients for the dressing (except the sumac) in a small bowl and mix well.

3. Remove the chickpeas from the heat and set aside while you put together the salad. Wash the baby spinach leaves and dry as much as you can. Place in a large serving bowl and sprinkle the chopped tomatoes over the top. Add the chickpeas and drizzle with the dressing. Sprinkle liberally with sumac.Toss just before serving.

Serves 2 as a main, 4 as a side.

Bosnian Spinach and "Cheese" Plait

Simple and spectacular! Nothing says "I'm a culinary whizz" like a plaited pastry (either that or you're a smug wanker who thinks too highly of herself, K-bobo). Either way you are in for a tasty treat here and one that will super impress any guests you happen to have lying around. As I've commented previously (in this post on the subject), Bosnia turned out to be a real Spinach-and-Cheese kind of country - which provides an interesting challenge for a vegan cook. I sure had fun with it though! 

This is my second spinach and cheese pie recipe, in my first recipe I used a vegan home made baked almond feta which I found on another blog (see here). Overall, however, I found that cheese a bit heavy and creamy (and also VERY expensive to make - being made almost exclusively of almond meal). So this time I used my own home made feta which I devised for Croatia Month (January 2012) when I made my Croatian Pizzas. It made a much lighter filling, which was appropriate for this delicate little plait! The plait formation also makes it very easy to serve, just cut it up across the plaiting and each piece you cut will magically already be in three individual pieces - making it quick and easy to serve up at a dinner party. You will need a helping pair of hands to roll these up and plait them though!

Ingredients

6 sheets filo pastry (thawed if frozen)

1 small bunch spinach (silverbeet)

300g hard tofu (meaning it should be a solid blog which retains it's shape when you squeeze it)

Juice of 1/2 lemon

2 clove garlic

1 tsp salt

1/3 cup almonds, toasted (you can do this in the oven for a few minutes or in a dry fry pan)

1/3 cup walnuts

Pinch of nutmeg (optional)

Melted Nuttelex (or other non dairy butter or margarine)

Sesame seeds

To Make

1. Chop the spinach and place in a saucepan with 1/2 cup of water. Cover and let it cook on a medium heat until the spinach is completely wilted (about 10 mins). Drain the spinach and squeeze out all the water. Allow to cool.

2. Crumble the tofu with your hands into a bowl. Crush the garlic into the bowl and mix well. Add the salt and lemon juice and stir through. Taste test and see if it needs more salt or it needs a bit more sour (if so add a bit more lemon juice). Set aside for about 15 minutes to allow the flavours to infuse into the tofu.

3. Pulse the walnuts and almonds in a food process until coarsely ground, add a pinch on nutmeg.

4. Combine the cooled spinach, nuts and the tofu mixture in a bowl and mix well (easiest to do with your hands).

5. Lay you sheets of filo pastry out on the bench and cover with a slightly damp tea towel when not using. Melt the butter for brushing the sheets with.

6. Take 2 pieces of filo pastry and lay them on top of each other. Along the longest edge of the pastry spread out 1/3 of the spinach and tofu mixture:

7. Starting from the edge with the filling, roll the pastry up like a loooong cigar or sausage roll, use melted Nuttelex on the last inch or two of the pastry to make it stick and hold it together.

8. Repeat with the rest of the ingredients. You should now have three identical logs. 

9. Line a baking tray with non stick paper and place the three logs onto it. Brush each log with melted Nuttelex to make them easier to plait. Pinch them together at the top and space make plenty of space between each log to allow some room for the plaiting:

10. Starting from the log on the right hand side carefully plait the logs until you reach the end, it should only be a few plaits but try and keep them nice and tight. Pinch the other end together as well to keep it together.

11. Brush with a bit more Nuttelex and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake in a moderate oven for 20-25 minutes, until browned on top and the pastry is nice and crispy. Serve immediately!

Serves 4-5.

Check out our other Bosnian recipes:

Bosnian Zeljanica (Spinach, Leek and Cheese Pie)

Razlevjak (Bosnian-style Cornbread)

Easy Bosnian Chocolate Walnut Cake

Prebranac (Bosnian Baked Beans)

Vegetarian Cufte

Bosnian Walnut Baklava 

Tufahija (Walnut-stuffed Poached Apples in Syrup!)

Bosnian Zeljanica (Vegan Spinach and Cheese Pie)

Welcome to March at Gormandize with A-dizzle and K-bobo!! This month we will be featuring recipes inspired by Bosnian cuisine and we're getting off to a pretty special start with this great zeljanica. Firstly, a bit about Bosnia! Bosnia is often used singularly to refer to the country of Bosnia & Herzegovina, a European country bordering Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro. Due to it's close proximity to Croatia there are several dishes which overlapped with the foods we presented for Croatia Month (January 2012 - to see our wonderful Croatian recipes visit here!) Bosnia & Herzegovina is almost entirely landlocked except for a tiny 20 kilometres of coastline along the Adriatic sea. Bosnian food is largely Mediterranean but with strong Turkish and Middle Eastern influences.

Image from www.sitesatlas.com

One big thing to start with in Bosnian Cuisine is the prevalence of spinach and cheese pastries! There are many, many dishes of spinach and cheese pies, strudels, triangles, rolls and any other way you could possibly think of wrapping spinach and cheese in pastry!This delicious cheese and spinach pie was a challenge to adapt to veganism - but the result was well worth it. This pie uses 3 substitutes for dairy-based cheese: tofu, vegan feta cheese and vegan cream cheese. The vegan feta cheese I made myself using this recipe from Maple Spice, it made a very rich and creamy feta using almonds and lemon juice. This is what mine looked like after baking (I think I overcooked it slightly but it didn't seem to make any difference):

It was delicious but it wasn't very cheap to make and it was a bit heavy. I've personally always had a love of the slightly crumblier Australian style feta, and this feta recipe is a poor substitute for this. To address this I made my own feta recipe which is designed to be crumbled and used in salads and on pizzas and in pasta, see this recipe here for my vegan feta cheese.

However, the baked almond feta from maple spice works very well in this recipe as it adds a creamy nutty-ness to it. The other thing I should note about this pie is that it has a slightly fresh flavour which comes from the fact that the leeks aren't cooked before they are baked in the pie. This makes for a slight raw onion-y after taste which is perhaps not to everybody's personal taste. You should give it a try - as my partner said he thought that it was the best thing about the pie. However, if you don't like the sound of that then you can just lightly sauté the leeks before mixing them into the rest of the pie filling.

The other thing you should know is that this make a big mother of a pie - so invite some friends around to help you eat it!

Zeljanica (Bosnian Spinach and Feta Pie)

Ingredients

600g hard tofu (this is sometimes also called 'extra firm' tofu)

4 tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp salt

1 tsp cracked black pepper

1 cup crumbled vegan feta (I think you can buy this in some places but not where I live so I made my own almond feta using this recipe from Maple Spice)

1 leek, thinly sliced

1 big bunch spinach, trimmed and thinly shredded

230g vegan cream cheese (1 tub Toffuti)

50g whole pine nuts

Plenty of olive oil (or you can use melted vegan margarine if you prefer)

1 packet Filo Pastry sheets (I recommend using the one you can find in the cold section as opposted  to the freezer section, however, if using frozen then take them out of the freezer the night before and thaw them in the fridge completely before use)

To Make

1. Preheat your oven to 160 degrees C.

2. Crumble the hard tofu into a big mixing bowl (use the biggest one you’ve got – just makes it easier for you). Add the salt, pepper and lemon juice and mix well.

3. Add the leek, spinach and vegan feta and mix well to combine (you’ll need to mix pretty thoroughly as the spinach will want to be on top and the tofu will want to be on the bottom but you mustn’t let them!)

4. Add the cream cheese and mix well, this will take a bit of effort and you may find it easiest to just get your hands in there.

5.  Pour some oil into a ramekin or bowl and use a pastry brush to coat the bottom and sides of your baking dish (you’ll need a fairly big one - use the biggest one you own!).

6. Now, open the box of filo and spread it out, covering it will a slightly damp tea towel (note – not too damp! A good way is to wet your hands well and then dry them on the tea towel and then repeat this) to prevent it from drying out while you work.

7. Peel the first layer of filo off and line the bottom of your dish (don’t worry if it breaks up a bit or splits, you will be putting more layers over the top).

8. Brush the filo with more olive oil and then repeat with a second layer of filo. Continue until you have 8 layers of pastry.

9. Put half the spinach filling into the bottom of the pan and press down to make it even. Sprinkle with 1/3 of the pine nuts).

10. Layer another 5-6 layers of filo dough on top of the filliing.

11. Put the rest of the filling on top of this layer and flatten the top out. Sprinkle another 1/3 of the pine nuts on top. At this point if you have any ends of filo hanging over the dish you can either fold them into the pie or trim them (I usually fold them in because I don’t like to waste stuff).

12. Layer the top of the pie with another 6 layers of filo. Trim the edges neatly.

13. Decorate the top by taking the remaining few pieces of filo pastry, rip them into big pieces and scrunch them gently. Place on top of the oiled top of the pie in a way that looks pretty. Brush with olive oil and sprinkle the remaining pine nuts on top.

14. Bake for about 30 minutes, turning half way to ensure even cooking.  Keep an eye on it during the last 10 mins to make sure the edges don’t burn.

15. Remove from the oven and allow to stand for about 10 mins before serving (this will make it less likely to break up as you are serving it out).

Makes 1 big pie! Serves about 6.

Check out our other Bosnian recipes:

Razlevjak (Bosnian-style Cornbread)

Easy Bosnian Chocolate Walnut Cake

Prebranac (Bosnian Baked Beans)

Bosnian Spinach and "Cheese" Plait

Vegetarian Cufte

Bosnian Walnut Baklava 

Tufahija (Walnut-stuffed Poached Apples in Syrup!)

Chadian Millet Balls with 3 Dipping Sauces (Peanut Sauce, Saka Saka Sauce & Harissa Lime Sauce)

So... let's continue to explore Chad shall we? As I mentioned in our first post about Chadian food, millet is a staple grain in Chad. Whilst trawling through websites for precious mentions of any form of Chadian food I cam across a lot of websites with the same regurgitated piece of information: in Chad they often eat millet balls which are dipped in sauces (if you want to see what I mean see these websites here, here and here). Yet, despite this piece of information being repeated on many different websites I couldn't find any recipes for this, pictures of this dish or any description of all of what these 'sauces' might be. So, essentially I was left to my own imagination in creating this dish. As a result I am sure that it isn't very authentic Chadian fare, however, it was most certainly inspired by my efforts to find a recipe or description of the elusive Chadian millet balls with 'sauces'.

This recipe uses whole hulled organic millet from my local co-cop, however, I gather that the more traditional Chadian millet balls would most likely be made of millet flour made into a paste. I like to keep my grains whole where possible, though, so I decided to make mine with whole millet. I also chose to bake them to make it more healthy, instead of frying them in oil. For my sauces I decided to go with: Chadian Peanut Sauce, Saka Saka Sauce (Spinach and Okra) and a Harissa Sauce with corriander and lime.

1) MILLET BALLS:

Ingredients
250g millet
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
5 tbsp millet flour
1/2 tsp salt
100g silken tofu
Olive oil spray

To Make
1. Cover the millet in plenty of boiling water and bring to the boil. Cook for 30-40 minutes or until cooked. Drain and rinse with cold water. Set aside to cool.
2. Toast the sunflower seeds in a frypan or oven for 1-2 minutes or until slightly browned (keep your eye on them as they burn really fast!).
3. Mix the millet, flour, sunflower seeds, salt, tofu and 1 tbsp water. Mix well into a thick pasty mix.
4. Take a bit of mix about the size of a walnut and press it gently into a ball (don't roll them too firmly or they will break up). Place on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Continue until all the mix is done.
5. Spray the millet balls with a bit of olive oil and bake at 180 degrees for about 30-35 minutes. (Every oven is different, so you might want to taste one when they come out to make sure they're not too doughy on the inside - if they are give them another 5 minutes).
6. Serve immediately with sauces (below).

2) SAUCES:

Peanut Sauce
Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup shelled unsalted peanuts
3 tbsp tomato paste
1 1/2 cups water

To Make
1. Heat the olive oil in a small saucepan. Saute the onion and garlic until softened. Add the chilli.
2. Chop the peanuts very finely.
3. Add the nutmeg and peanuts to the onion and garlic. Sauté for a further few minutes.
4. Add the tomato paste and water. Bring to a simmer and simmer for 5-10 minutes or until the sauce is thickened.

Saka Saka Sauce
Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 green chilli, chopped
4-5 okra, chopped
5-6 leaves of spinach (silverbeet)
Salt to taste
2 cups water

To Make
1. Heat the olive oil in a saucepan and sauté the onion, garlic and chilli until the onion is softened.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 5-10 minutes.
3. Process with a hand held blender or in a food processor until smooth.

Harissa sauce with Coriander and Lime
Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
1 tbsp Harissa spice mix (available in most health food or you can buy it online at Herbie's Spices)
1 tsp soy sauce
2/3 cup water
1/2 cup finely chopped coriander
The juice of 1 lime

To Make
1. Heat the olive oil in a small pan and sauté the onion until softened. Add the harissa spice mix and saute a further 2-3 minutes.
2. Stir in the soy sauce and water. Bring to a simmer for 3-4 minutes. Remove from the stove.
3. Add the coriander and lime juice. Serve.

Check out our other Chadian recipes as well: 

Chadian Breakfast Bouille

Chadian Sweet Potato Fritters

Chadian Irio (Mashed beans, potatoes and vegetables)
African Loz (Almond and Pistachio Bites of Amazingness)

Kachumbari 
Maharagwe 

2 Croatian side-dishes: Kupus Na Zagorski & Blitva

Well we've almost reached the end of Cabbage Month... I mean Croatia Month. So we're rounding the savoury recipes for Croatia off with a double whammy - two lovely side dishes (no surprises - one of them is cabbage!). These dishes are a great accompaniment to your main dish, or you can make them both because if you eat them together it makes a great full vegetable-filled meal.

Kupus na Zagorski

Ingredients:

½ a large cabbage, shredded finely
4 Tbsp of olive oil
2 tsp brown sugar
1  brown onion
4 Tbsp of smoky paprika
1  tsp cumin
1 green chilli
5 tablespoons vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

How to make:

1. Heat oil in a large pot over a medium heat and sauté the onion and chilli for 2-3 mins.

2. Add remaining ingredients and mix well, sautéing for 5 mins.

3. Turn the heat to low, cover pot and leave to simmer for about 20 mins (or until cabbage is cooked).

4. Enjoy!

Serves 10-12 (as a side dish)


I recommend having some of our Cabbage-Is-My-Friend Tea.

Blitva


Ingredients:
1 bunch chard/spinach
2 medium waxy potatoes, peeled
2 tbsp olive oil or to taste
2 tbsp nuttelex
Salt & pepper to taste


To Make:
1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the 1 tbsp nuttelex.
2. Rinse the chard well and remove the tough stems. Tear into large pieces. Cut the potato into 3-4cm cubes.
3. Drop chard and potatoes into the boiling water and cook until done (about 10 mins).
4. Drain and top with olive oil and 1 tbsp nuttelex. Stir well and season with salt and pepper to taste.


Goes perfectly with out fabulous Croatian Posna Sarma (Cabbage rolls stuffed with rice).

Vegan Spinach, Walnut and Sumac "Sausage Rolls"

These are absurdly simply and make a tasty snack food or if you serve them with a nice salad on the side it's dinner for four. Although they are so damn tasty that you might just want to make that dinner for two so you get to have seconds :)

Ingredients:

1 onion, finely diced

Olive oil, for frying

3 vegetarian sausages, chopped up

1 generous teaspoon sumac

7-8 big spinach (silverbeet) leaves

Salt and cracked pepper to taste

1/3 cup walnuts

2 sheets ready rolled puff pastry, thawed

Soy milk, for brushing

Sesame seeds

To Make:

1. Preheat oven to a moderate 180 degrees C.

2. Add a splash of olive oil to a saucepan or frypan (preferably non stick because you'll need less oil) and heat. Add the diced onions and sauté until completely cooked.

3. Add the chopped vegie sausages and cook, stirring frequently, for 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat.

4. Wash and remove the thick white stems from the spinach and chop finely. Add to a saucepan with 1/3 cup water and cook, covered, on a low heat until the spinach is completely wilted (takes 5-10mins). Drain spinach in a strainer (but don't squeeze as it will mush up your spinach).

5. Break the walnuts up with your hands. In a bowl combine the onion and sausage mix, spinach, sumac and salt and cracked pepper to taste. Mix well to combine.

6. Cut each of the pastry sheets in half. Add 1/4 of the mix to the centre of each pastry strip and fold the edges over the top of it to make a large sausage roll (will be bigger than the kind of sausage rolls you buy at bakeries!). Place each sausage roll with the fold side down on a tray lined with baking paper.

7. Brush the top of each roll with soy milk and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake for 20 minutes, or until nice and golden on top (you will probably want to turn the tray around about 10-15mins in to make sure that all4 rolls cook evenly).

8. Devour!

Makes 4 sausage rolls.

Homemade Spinach, Pine nut and Fenugreek Ravioli with Roast Pumpkin and Tomato

That's right I said home made ravioli! Now before you get into a bit of a panic because it is all just too hard let me assure you that actually it is very easy and once you have tried it once the next time you will whip it up so quick you won't even notice. Home made ravioli is ridiculously rewarding because sadly when you buy ravioli ready made it only seems to come in two kinds - beef and spinach and cheese. That's all very well but what about all the other things you can put in ravioli? Think pumpkin! Think mushrooms! Think eggplant! Maybe even zuccini! How great does that sound??

Ingredients:

Ravioli:

1 tbsp olive oil

1 teaspoon whole fenugreek seeds

¼ cup pine nuts

4 leaves spinach (silverbeet), chopped very finely

2 button mushrooms, finely diced

Small handful of fresh basil, finely chopped (or substitute 1 tsp fresh basil paste)

1 ½ cups fine semolina

½ cup plain flour

1 tbsp olive oil (extra)

½ cup water

Roasted Vegies:

Olive Oil (yeah, more of it.)

400g pumpkin

500g Roma tomatoes

3 cloves garlic

2 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Fresh rocket, to serve

To Make:
1. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees celcius.

2. Heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a heavy based saucepan or frypan and fry the fenugreek seeds until slightly golden – only a few minutes. Remove from the saucepan and grind to a fine powder in a mortar and pestle, food processor or spice grinder. Put the powder aside.

3. With the oil left in the pan toast the pine nuts until slightly browned and then either chop roughly with a knife or smash lightly in the mortar and pestle.

4. Now using the same saucepan lightly fry the chopped mushrooms and then add the spinach and basil and sauté until wilted. Take off the heat and mix through the pine nuts and 1/2 teaspoon of the fenugreek powder. Set aside.

5. Chop the pumpkin into small (1.5-2cm) pieces and the tomato into 8ths.  Drizzle a baking dish with oil and mix the vegies around in it to coat. Chop the cloves of garlic in half (just leave the skins on) and chuck them in as well. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes or so or until the pumpkin is tender (the tomato will cook a lot faster so it will disintegrate a little and become saucy). When it has 5 minutes left to cook add the soy sauce and balsamic vinegar and mix through, return to the oven.

6. While those are baking away make the pasta: combine the flour and semolina in a food processor and pulse to combine. With the food processor still on drizzle in the olive oil and gradually add the water. The mix should become sticky and clump together on one side, so if it seems to dry add some more water.

7. Turn out onto a well floured bench and knead very briefly to coat in flour until it is no longer sticky. Cut into 6 equal pieces. Put each the first piece though your pasta roller according to its instructions and roll to about a size 4 sheet of pasta. Put aside on the floured bench (keep everything well floured people, otherwise it will stick to your bench). Do the same with the next piece of dough.

8. So now you have two lasagne sheets lying next to each other on the bench.  Put a teaspoon full of the spinach mix in two rows along the sheet (Ok I explained that badly so just look at the picture:)

9. With a pastry brush or your finger brush a line of water around the edge of each box (remembering to do the outer edges of the sheet). Place the second lasagne sheet over the top of the first and press down gently to get the air out and to flatten the mix slightly. Then if you have one of those great zig zaggy cutters use that to cut the ravioli into squares (your pasta roller will probably come with one as an accessory), if you don’t have one just cut neatly with a knife. Put each piece aside while you do the same with the rest of the dough and mix.

10. When they are all done your vegies are most likely cooked so take them out. Bring a generous amount of water  to the boil in a big saucepan and gently add each piece of ravioli. Boil for 2 minutes or so and then drain.

11. Mix the vegies through the ravioli and serve on a bed of fresh rocket.

Serves 3-4.