It was delicious… and here it is!

A few days ago I write about a delicious vegetable dish I had made, just by accident rally, using what there was to hand. The secret was steaming the vegetables and adding a variety of spices! I used three different vegetables, as you’ll see, but really, you could use any, just adjust the cooking time!

I thinly sliced leeks and celery – I guess you could use onions but they might be too strong; leeks have a lovely sweet flavour too. If I’d had any celery leaves I’d have finely chopped and added them too… and I guess a small amount of any herb would be nice, but not too much so its overwhelming. I put them in a steamer with a tiny sprinkle of rock salt, and a more generous sprinkle of aromatic different spices (pepper, fennel, caraway, cumin, mustard seeds and kalonji but you could use any or none or just ground pepper) I cooked them for about 5-10 mins (not crucial, they can’t really over do!) and then yesterday I added chopped cavolo nero but you could use any sort of cabbage, or a mixture as long as you adjusted the cooking time… I had already added the chopped stems to the celery and leeks. I steamed that for about five minutes – and timing is a little more crucial, you don’t want overcooked cabbage! Just before serving I turned some butter through it – I guess you could use olive oil, for this I preferred butter.
The great thing I discovered about this, not only was it tasty hot, but it was also very nice cold… and I guess you could mix left overs with rice or pasta or almost anything else – add it to mashed potato and fry it to make exotic bubble and squeak!