chickpea & olive stew

I like to make huge batches of soups and stews, especially in the fall and winter, and freeze them in empty peanut butter jars. It’s super comforting in my lazier moments to be able to grab something out of the freezer for lunch or dinner, plus it’s a lot cheaper than getting take-out, which is my main tendency in these lazy moments. And generally healthier.

This stew is really easy to put together, very hearty and filling and vegan. It’s also very inexpensive to make, mostly coming from tins of things in the pantry. The generous olives and garlic make it especially rich and briny. I like to make it fairly spicy, but feel free to ramp up or down the chili flakes to your liking. Ladle over some fluffy (and practically instant) couscous for a real quick dinner. It’s easy to scale this recipe up or down, I like to make a huge vat for freezing but you can easily halve or double this.

chickpea and olive stew:

• 4 large tins chickpeas

• 4 tins whole tomatoes

• 4 cups vegetable stock

• 1 cup mixed olives

• 1 whole bulb garlic, peeled and smashed

• 1 shallot, very finely sliced

• 1-2 tsp crushed chili flakes

• 2 tbs olive oil

• Juice from 1 lemon

• ½ cup parsley chopped

Saute garlic, chili flakes and shallot in oil until fragrant and beginning to colour. Add tomatoes cook for a few more minute. Add stock and about half the olives. Reduce heat to low and cook for about an hour, or until the stew is thick and tomatoes are broken down. Add lemon juice and remaining olives and cook for about 5 more minutes. Serve with couscous and lots of parsley sprinkled on top.

Note: to cook couscous, combine equal volumes dry couscous and boiling water in a pot. Cover with a lid and steam about 10 minutes. If you have stock, use that instead of water. Otherwise throw a bouillon cube in there. I like to add crushed chili flakes, dried minced garlic and parsley flakes. A glug of olive oil or a pat of butter wouldn’t go amiss here.  

lemony artichokes and olives

Artichokes are the best vegetables. I want to eat them in everything, on pizza, in pasta, smushed and spread on bread - they improve everything you put them on. But they always seem to be a topping rather than a main vegetable in their own right. Maybe that’s why they seem quite precious and fancy, and I always want more of them. In this dish artichokes are the star - they are shining in the spotlight. They have some support from garlic and olives, but artichokes are the main act.

This dish is so simple is barely constitutes a recipe, but so tasty that I really wanted to share it anyway. These artichokes make an excellent side and they are great as a little tapas-y type dish with lots of other little nibbly mediterranean-inflected food. They are awesome tossed into pasta or heaped up on some crispy toast, if you want to use them a topping. They take less than five minutes to cook so you can feel comforted that you are never far away from basically instant artichoke goodness.

lemoney artichokes and olives:

• 2 tins artichokes (in water, not marinated)

• ½ cup kalamata olives

• ½ bulb garlic, cloves peeled and smashed

• 2 tbs olive oil

• large pinch chili flakes

Over medium heat, saute garlic in oil until just beginning to colour. Add all remaining ingredients and cook, stirring occasionally, until the juices have thickened. Eat right away, piping hot.

fish in tomatoes & olives

This is an easy, one pot dish. It does take a while to cook the tomato sauce, so it's excellent for a Sunday afternoon when you want to put dinner on and curl up with a book. We are having a big windstorm in Victoria and things are thumping and bumping around outside. It is a rather blustery day. Exactly the sort of day when you should slowly cook something on the stove that will fill your house with the best garlicky-tomato smell while you hide out under a blanket and listen to the wind rattle the windows.

The tomato sauce cooks for about an hour and once it's thick and rich, pop in the fish and cook for a few more minutes. Serve with some crusty bread to scoop up all that sauce. 

fish with tomatoes and olives: 

• 1 whole bulb garlic, cloves peeled and smashed
• 1 shallot, thinly sliced
• 3-4 anchovy fillets
• salt and pepper
• large pinch of crushed chili flakes
• 2 tbs vegetable oil
• 1 finely chopped fresh jalapeno
• 2 pounds tomatoes: any combination of tomatoes fresh, canned or frozen will work well
• 2-3 sweet red peppers
• 1 cup mixed olives and capers
• 3 tbs lemon juice
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp cumin
• 2 fillets of thin white fish, I used snapper

In a large frying pan on medium heat, sauté garlic and shallot in vegetable oil, stirring occasionally until they soften and begin to brown. Add anchovies, salt, pepper, chili flakes and jalapeno. Cook for 3-4 minutes and add tomatoes, sweet peppers and olives. Reduce heat to medium-low and ook until the peppers and tomatoes are broken down and form a thick sauce, about 40 minutes to 1 hr. Add lemon juice, paprika and cumin and stir to combine. 

Preheat the oven to 400°. Lay fish on top of the tomato sauce. Spoon a little sauce over the fish and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven until the fish is flaky and no longer translucent. Serve with some crusty bread. 

Happy windsday Piglette.

grilled patty pan salad

I found the most beautiful, alien-looking patty pan squash at the market this week: little knobbly, pale green flying saucers, bright yellow miniature crooknecks, two-toned oblongs. They are such strange, lovely shapes it almost seemed a shame to cut them up and cook them.  I spent a day just looking at them, trying to decide what recipe would do them justice. 

I decided to make them into a warm salad with some feta, olives and lemon. This salad is great on it's own or heaped up on a crispy piece of toasted sourdough. Leftovers are really good tossed with some pasta or cooked wheat berries and arugula and keep really well as a pasts/grain salad. It lasts really well so you won't have to turn on the stove for a couple days if you make a big batch. 

grilled patty pan squash salad: 

• 1-2 pounds patty pan squash, halved

• olive oil

• 1/2 cup feta, crumbled

• 1/4 cup kalamata olives

• chili flakes

• parsley, chopped

• juice from one lemon

Brush patty pan with olive oil and grill on medium high heat on a BBQ or grill pan until dark grill marks appear. Flip and grill until all sides are browned. Toss with feta, olives, chili flakes, parsley and squeeze lemon juice over the top. 

Serve heaped over toasted sourdough, rub the bread with half a clove of garlic after you toast it, or toss it into some pasta, or just eat the salad on it's own. 

beef, olive and goat cheese ragu

Ok, so just because something takes ages to cook, it doesn't need to be intimidating or especially involved. This dish takes 3-4 hours from start to finish, but for almost all that time it's quite hands-off. This recipe is ideal to start in the middle of a weekend afternoon - almost all the actual work is at the beginning and takes about 20 minutes. Then you have a lazy afternoon ahead of you while your dinner cooks itself! It really cooks itself, just like in Beauty and the Beast. Your knives and forks will dance all around, your candlesticks will flirt saucily with you while your sauce cooks. 

This ragout simultaneously rich and hearty as well as bright and peppy. Olives add salty bite and balance out the richness of the ragu.

beef and olive ragu with goats cheese

Adapted from Donna Hay Issue 68

• 1 pound fresh tomatoes or two cans tinned tomatoes
• 1 1/2 pounds stewing beef, beef shin or other beef cut suitable for slow cooking, cut into 1.5 inch chunks
• 2/3 cup kalamata or other olives of your choice 
• whole bulb of garlic, peeled and smashed 
• 2 shallots, sliced
• 2 cups beef broth
• 3 tbs grapeseed oil 
• salt and pepper 
• parsley, chopped
• goats cheese

In a large pot or dutch oven on medium high heat, sear beef on all sides until browned. Remove beef from pan and set aside. 

Add shallots and garlic to the pan and sauté until translucent and fragrant. Add tomatoes, olives, beef, broth, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a very gentle simmer. Cover with a lid and cook for 2.5-3 hours, until the beef is fall-apart tender. 

Serve over pasta and top with parsley and crumbled goat cheese.

Try the grey stuff, it's delicious!

big herb salad

Perhaps you are feeling, as I am, just a little overfed after the holiday season. My personal chocolate:vegetable ratio has been way off for a few weeks and I needed a little correction. This salad is an excellent and delicious way to get an entire day's vegetable servings in one meal. So efficient! Any new year's resolutions you may have about eating mountains of vegetables will be so easy to follow now. 

The abundance of bright, sunny herbs in this salad has been helping to combat my feelings of cold weather grumpiness. It's the opposite of standard winter fare, cozy warm, soups and stews and hearty, heavy dishes. Those are good too, but sometimes I want another kind of comforting winter meal, one that feels light and bright and reminds me that winter cannot actually last forever. It feels really luxurious to use herbs this way, as generously as a vegetable rather than as a sparse topping. 

Adding some roasted salmon or falafel makes it into a very filling meal. You can swap or add herbs; cilantro and basil would be great in this too. 

big herb salad: 

serves two as a main meal, more as a side

• 1 cup shredded purple cabbage
• 1/2 cucumber, thinly sliced
• 2 cups baby spinach
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved 
• 1 cup pea shoots
• 1/4 cup kalamata olives, roughly chopped 
• 1 cup fresh parsley, chopped
• 1 cup fresh mint, chopped
• 1 cup fresh dill, chopped
• a few slices of feta cheese 

Combine all ingredients and dress with yogurt dressing. Salt and pepper to taste. 

spicy yogurt dressing:

• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• juice from one lemon
• 3 tbs olive oil
• 2 tsp dried dill
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1  tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp crushed chile flakes 
• 1 tsp salt 

Blend all ingredients together and drizzle over salad. 

Photos: Tyrel Hiebert