White Bean, Sage and Roasted Garlic Spread

Snacks in this house often include a spread or dip that can be lathered onto crusty bread with some salad greens and tomato slices, or just on its own. Most spreads can be thinned a little and used as a dip with crackers or vegetable sticks. They can even be served as a sauce to accompany falafel, lentil balls or other vegetarian fritters or patties. Try adding them to salad dressing too, for creaminess and flavour. They can even be thinned out to form a great basis for soup!

This recipe is a classic White Bean puree with sage and garlic – some garlic is roasted, and some cooked with the beans for layered garlic flavours. Deborah Madison includes a recipe in her book, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

Similar recipes include Roasted Cauliflower and White Bean Puree, Chickpea, Almond and Sesame Spread, and Fava Bean Puree with Fresh Herbs.

Try other White Bean recipes: White Beans with Tahini, White Bean Soup, and Tuscan Beans with Sage and Lemon.

Or browse all of our Spreads, and all of our White Bean recipes. And explore our Late Winter dishes.

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Roasted Cauliflower and White Bean Puree | Dip, Sauce and Spread

Cauliflowers were so cheap and I bought a huge one, three times bigger than others. After making the Green Pea Soup (which has cauliflower in it), I estimated there were still 6 more dishes possible from this one cauliflower!

Today’s cauli dish is a beautiful puree of roasted cauliflower with cannellini beans. You can also use chickpeas.

Are you looking for other Cauliflower recipes? Try Aloo Gobi, A Plate of Cauliflower, and Cauliflower Slow Cooked with Lime and Spices.

What about some other Purees? Try Fava Bean Puree with Dill and Olive Oil, Spiced Tomato Puree, Georgian Coriander and Walnut Spread and Home Made Tomato Paste.

White Beans feature in White Bean and Tahini Salad, White Bean Soup, and Glorious Five Bean Salad.

Or browse all of our Cauliflower dishes and all of our Purees. Or take some time to explore our Early Winter dishes.

Fava Bean Puree with Fresh Herbs | Dried Broad Bean Puree with Herbs | Dip, Spread or Soup

Dried Broad Beans are a great substitute for fresh broad beans once their season has finished. They don’t exactly taste like the fresh version, but are pretty good in their own right and make the smoooooothest divine puree.

The downside is that they need to be peeled before cooking. They say that dried, peeled Broad Beans (or Fava Beans) are available, even split ones, but I have been unsuccessful in my search for them. Thus it is necessary to soak the dried beans for 12 hours, then slip the peels from them, and only then put them on to cook. Not every recipe you see will tell you this trick – it seems to be rather a secret.

This recipe can be used for older fresh broad beans – the ones that have lost their green freshness and are now rather white, and for the dried variety. Either way, the individual beans will have to be peeled.

Are you looking for Broad Bean recipes? Try Thirteen Treasure Happiness Soup, Glorious Five Bean Salad, and Fava Bean Puree with Dill and Olive Oil.

For our dried Broad Beans, we have Dried Fava Bean Soup with Turmeric and Herbs and Fava Bean Soup with Potatoes.

Or perhaps you are looking for dips for your Mezza table? Try Zhug (Coriander – Chilli Puree), Chickpea, Almond and Sesame Spread, and Turkish Cacik.

You can find all of our Dips here, or browse all of our Broad Bean recipes. You might like to look through all of our Turkish dishes. Or simply take some time to explore our Mid Autumn dishes.

Avocado Smash with Radishes | Spread, Dip or Salad

Sometimes you don’t quite want a guacamole, you want a bit more than smashed avo, and you want to use that ripe avocado, mashed and tasty, to pile onto sourdough toast. Or to use as a salad. Well, here we have that recipe for you.

Are you looking for other Avocado dishes? Try Avocado Salad with Pomelo, Cucumber and Avocado Salad, and Roasted Sweetcorn and Avocado Salad.

Or Radish Salads? Try Wombok and Radish Salad with Peanut Dressing, Radish Salad with Coconut Milk, and Cucumber and Radish Slightly Pickled Salad.

Or perhaps you are looking for other Dips and Spreads? Try Fava Bean Spread with Dill, Roasted Cauliflower and White Bean Puree, White Bean, Sage and Roasted Garlic Spread, Zhug – Coriander Chilli Spread, and Babaganoush.

Browse all of our Avocado dishes and all of our Dips. Or explore all of our Late Autumn collection of recipes.

Fava Bean Puree With Dill and Olive Oil | Turkish Fava | Dried Broad Bean Puree

It seems that no matter how you cook broad beans, they need peeling. Except perhaps for the extremely young fresh beans, you need to get your long thumb nail working and peel that outer skin off of the individual beans.

This applies also to the dried beans. I have heard that you can buy pre-peeled, dried broad beans, but I have not been able to find them. So trust me, it is not worth cooking the dried beans without peeling first. The dried skin is like a suit of armour, hard and tough even when the inner flesh has boiled away to nothing.

To peel these little battle beans, cover with boiling water, and leave to soak for 12 hours, no less, and up to 24 hours. The peels may have split a little, allowing you to peel the skin off. Once peeled, you can cook them as desired.

This recipe is a Broad Bean Purée with Dill, a Turkish dish. Turkish Fava is made with Fava beans (broad beans), unlike the Greek Fava which is made with yellow split lentils. Confusing, I know, but how great diversity is! The purée is left to set, then unmoulded or cut into cubes. It is then drizzled with olive oil, lemon, and some fresh dill.

Are you looking for Broad Bean recipes? Try Broad Bean and Butter Bean Dip, Glorious Five Bean Salad, and Tawa Broad Beans.

For our dried Broad Beans, we have Fava Bean Soup with Potatoes, and Dried Fava Bean Soup with Turmeric and Herbs.

Or perhaps you are looking for dips for your Mezza table? Try Green Tomato Salsa with Coriander, Roasted Cauliflower and White Bean Puree, Hummus, and Tomato and Chilli Jam.

Try some other Turkish dishes too. We recommend Beets in a Herbed Dressing, Semi Dried Tomatoes with Pomegranate Molasses, and Rose Petals and Yoghurt.

You can find all of our Dips here, or browse all of our Broad Bean recipes. You might like to look through all of our Turkish dishes. Or simply take some time to explore our Mid Autumn dishes.

Italian Tomato Sauce

This is a gorgeously herby tomato sauce with an Italian swagger. It cooks slowly down then is blended well (using a blender) or coarsely (with an immersion blender), and the sauce can be frozen. It pairs delightfully with cheeses like fontina, can serve as a fresh chutney, used as a spread in layered sandwiches and toasties, and of course serves as a sauce as well.

It was my daughter who first pointed out how good this recipe is. It has been in use in our household since 1998. That is how good it is!

Feel free to browse recipes from our Retro Recipes series. You might also like our Tomato recipes here and here. Or you might like to browse Sauce recipes here and here. Check out our easy Autumn recipes here and here.

Crushed Du Puy Lentils with Tahini and Cumin

It is a very very cool summer’s day, full of storms and we are all reaching for our unused jackets to keep warm. We look for something more substantial and comforting today from the kitchen.

I love the lentils of India and the Middle East, and I love the lentils of the West (although a much more limited range). Commonly, lentils soften much more quickly than most dried beans and peas, and take only 20 – 40 minutes to cook. While red lentils (masoor dal), fall apart in the cooking (so making them perfect for soups), brown and green varieties hold their shape, making them a very good base on which to layer other foods. A pan of cooked lentils – braised with carrots, onions, celery, hard herbs and vegetable stock – is a useful thing to have in the fridge, ready to for the basis for turning yesterday’s leftover dishes into a whole new meal.

You might also like to try Indian Du Puy Lentil Sundal Salad, or Du Puy Lentil Soup. Browse through our Du Puy recipes here and here, and you might like to explore all of our Ottolenghi recipes. Be inspired by our Summer recipes here and here.

Spiced Tomato Puree

A gift of home grown organic tomatoes, a surfeit in fact, had me reaching for my heavy Italian style pans to make some spiced tomato puree.

The beauty of this dish is that it can be sealed into jars and kept in the fridge for a week or two, or frozen in containers or ziplock bags for later use. It is great with pasta or stirred into dishes – curries, vegetable stews, sauces, dressings, dips, soups etc.

It takes about 30 mins to prep and cook – it is great to make on a Sunday morning in that lazy atmosphere that envelops the house on this day. Read with a cuppa coffee while the sauce bubbles away on the stove.

This is a beautifully simply recipe. You might also like to try this one. It is one that I make and freeze in Autumn. See how to preserve tomatoes for Winter. Or explore all of our Tomato recipes here and here.

Asparagus Pesto

Isn’t it great that there are lots of ways to mush things together and the results taste spectacular? Soups, for example, smoothies, combination juices. The wonderful pesto and hummus. The wonderful mushing together of pastes, oils, nuts, seeds, cheeses, yoghurts, creams, fruits, herbs, spices and vegetables make for an endless variety of goodies. Even lentils and rice, ground together, make amazing fritters and even better fermented or unfermented flatbreads.

Especially great in all things mushed together is that the variety is endless. For example, in the warmer months, I am likely to be seen picking green things from my small pot-garden. Nasturtium leaves, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, cardamom leaf, parsley, curry leaves, basil, lemon  verbena, rosemary, thyme – whatever looks good on that day. My handful of herbs gets chopped finely with some nuts or seeds, maybe some cheese or maybe not, garlic, maybe chilli, sometimes some rocket or spinach, lemon zest and whatever else is fresh and on my kitchen bench at the time.

Asparagus can also be used. Steamed and chopped, it makes a very rustic Asparagus Pesto. Glorious. Gentle.

You might also like to read The Joy of Asparagus, Spring Salads, and Cream of Asparagus Soup. All Asparagus recipes are here and here, and our Dips are here and here. Be inspired by our Spring recipes here and here.

Maintano Yiahni | Parsley Braised with Tomatoes and Olive Oil

We are obsessed these days with beautiful food. It’s a fashion. It will pass one day. We eat with our eyes before we eat with our tastebuds, because we no longer suffer from hunger or know what it is like to go without food.

This recipe isn’t beautiful, but it IS delicious. And it is a very versatile dish. Just right for those times when your parsley is overgrowing your back yard.

Yiahni means to cook in a base of good olive oil and tomatoes, an a la Grecque approach to slowly cooking the vegetable or bean in a flavoursome base and oil to produce an outstanding dish.

You can browse other Greek dishes here and here. Perhaps you are interested in Parsley recipes? We have them here and here. Perhaps try other a la Grecque recipes here and here.

How to Make Italian Tomato Paste

Every Autumn the wonderful juicy autumnal tomatoes are used to make tomato paste, which is then frozen in small bits, ready to bring out and pop into any dish that needs it. It lasts all winter.

Ii is usually stored in individual small containers, but it could be frozen in an icecube tray and then put the cubes into ziplock bags. The cubes will be ready for you to pop straight into the pan when required.

Broad Bean and Butter Bean Spread or Dip

It is easy to develop an aversion to Broad Beans. Prolific bearers and easy to grow, they are an easy choice for home gardeners and country kitchen gardens. Yet the poor bean is often misunderstood. Instead of being treated tenderly, cooks mistakenly overcooked them to a green-grey mush with a strong taste only masked by other strong tasting ingredients. Unaware that each individual bean has its own skin that needs to be peeled, they were being boiled until that outer skin reached a level of tenderness – and that mean that the inner bean was overcooked.

Yes, the secret to broad beans is that they need to be double peeled. First the fury pod is removed, and then, after blanching, the skin of each bean can be easily slipped off. Young beans are preferable to their older counterparts as their flavour is gentler.

What a difference a peel makes! You might like to read more about broad beans.

Are you perhaps after Broad Bean recipes? Try Fava Bean Puree with Dill, Broad Beans with Fresh Pecorino, Tawa Broad Beans, and 13 Treasure Happiness Soup.

Or are you looking for Dips and Spreads? Try Roasted Cauliflower and White Bean Puree, Spicy Moroccan Carrot Dip, Thick Yoghurt Tahina Dip, Avocado Mash, and a Quicky Hummus.

You might like to browse all of our Broad Bean recipes here.  We have great recipes for Dips here. Or explore our Early Spring recipes.