Sesame Asparagus and Green Beans

I am not a tech-head, that’s a prelude to explaining my delight at finding an entire website dedicated to asparagus. (I can just imagine my sister’s face now – that same expression she had when I asked her what Pinterest was. Anyway she was the one who bought the asparagus and left me to find out a way to cook it). So here’s a dish that turned out surprisingly well on the first try. I’ve given the adapted version. The original recipe is called ‘Sesame Asparagus’ and can be found at www.asparagusrecipes.net

What I used:

½  tablespoon olive oil and ½ tablespoon sesame oil

1 ½ cups sliced asparagus

1 tablespoon sesame seeds

1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger

1 tablespoon minced garlic

½ small red onion, chopped, more or less a tablespoon

½ cup green beans, frozen

½ cup chopped red bell pepper

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon soy sauce

¼-½ teaspoon salt or to taste

What I did:

1. Heated oils in pan (used a mix of oils instead of sesame oil alone as the latter heats too quickly). When hot, added ginger, garlic and red onion. Fried for a few seconds, before adding asparagus, green beans (still frozen) and sesame seeds. Stir fried until beans lost their frozen texture. Then added red pepper; cooked for a few more minutes before adding soy sauce and salt. Stirred through until well-coated and it’s done.

Carrot Soup with Yoghurt and Rosemary

Having a week off in winter is perfect weather to stay indoors, pop Vitamin D pills and trawl the internet for recipes. (Yes, I’m living the high life…). This carrot soup came from a site dedicated to carrots and was promoted as healthy, despite having heavy cream and butter. As I didn’t think half a kilo of carrots was enough to counteract all that fat, here’s my attempt to make this ‘Creamy Carrot Soup’ a bit more ‘healthy’. Also the original recipe had ginger, but I prefer garlic with rosemary so made that substitution as well. If you’d like to see the original version, go to www.carrotrecipes.net.

What I used:

1 large onion, sliced

2 tablespoons olive oil

500g carrots, sliced

1 large potato, peeled and chopped

2 cups stock

2 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole

1 cup yoghurt mixed with 1 cup milk (used full fat - still lighter than heavy cream!)

½ - ¾ tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped

½  tsp salt

¼  tsp fresh ground black pepper

What I did:

Heated oil, added onions and fried until golden brown. Next added carrots, potatoes, chopped rosemary and garlic. Stir-fried for a few minutes, then added stock. Covered and cooked until vegetables are tender, about half an hour.

Turned off heat; added yoghurt, milk, salt and pepper. The yoghurt curdled (aargh!) but pureeing the mixture solved the problem (phew!) and the soup was creamy, ‘healthy’ and yum-licious.