Mike van de Elzen: Christmas platters for the holiday season

Chili pickled vegetables 

Cook time: 5 minutes 

Prep time: 10 minutes 

Serves: 12 

 

Pickled vegetables can include:  

Carrots, fennel, baby beetroot, radish, red onions, cucumbers or red cabbage  

 

1 tbsp fennel seeds 

1 tbsp coriander seeds  

2 fresh chili, sliced  

2 bay leaves  

1 tsp mustard seeds  

300 ml cider vinegar  

250 ml water  

1/4 cup sugar  

1/2 tsp salt  

Jar and lid 

Firstly prepare the vegetables for pickling. Clean all the vegetables and cut in 1/2 or 1/4 or finely slice. Trying to make all the vegetable pieces roughly the same size.  

To make your pickle mixture, start by toasting your seeds in a pan until fragrant. Place the rest of the pickling mixture ingredients into a pot, adding seeds once toasted and heat until boiling. 

Remove the pickling mixture from the heat and carefully pour the hot mixture over the top of the vegetables and seal with a lid. (If pickling cucumbers or finely sliced veg allow mixture to cool first) 

 

Roasted beetroot & cummin hummus 

Cook time: 45 minutes 

Prep time: 10 minutes 

Serves: 6-8 

 

2 cups chickpeas, soaked overnight in water  

2 whole beetroot  

1 tbsp cooking oil  

2 tbsp tahini  

1 tsp baking powder  

11 tsp cummin powder  

Sea salt 

 

Pre-heat the oven to 180*c  

Individually wrap the beetroot in tin-foil, drizzle over a little oil and sprinkle over a touch of salt before wrapping.  

Place into the oven and cook for 30 minutes before testing. Test by inserting a small knife to see if the beetroot is cooked. Once cooked allow to cool before removing skin.  

While the beetroot is cooking, place the soaked chickpeas into a large pot, cover with cold water and add a touch of salt and the baking powder. Bring to the boil and cook until tender. Once cooked drain.  

Place the beetroot into a food processor and biltz until smooth. Add the chickpeas and biltz until smooth. Add the tahini, curry powder and seasalt to finish. 

 

Yoghurt flatbreads w coriander butter 

Cook time: 2 minutes 

Prep time: 10 

Serves: 6-8 

 

Flat breads  

350g bread flour  

2 tsp baking powder  

350g natural yoghurt  

1 tsp salt  

 

Coriander butter  

200 gm unsalted-butter  

1 cup fresh coriander, finely chopped  

1/2 tsp sea salt  

4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed 

 

For the flat breads  

Combine all the bread ingredients together in a bowl and mix with a spoon, then use your hands to pat and bring everything together.  

Dust a clean work surface with flour, tip out the dough. Knead for a minute or so just to pull everything together, before leaving while you make the coriander butter.  

For the butter, Add to the butter and mix in the rest of the ingredients.  

Re-dust a clean surface with flour, divide the dough into small balls.  

Flatten with your hands, then using a rolling pin roll roughly 3mm thick. Either place dough into a griddle pan on a high heat or onto a tray in a very hot oven.  

As soon as they are coloured remove and brush with a coriander butter and cut into random pieces. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News talks 'b right.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Joining us now is Mike vander Ellison.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Good morning, Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Right Over the next few weeks, you are very kindly
going to give us some Christmas menu inspiration, and today
we're going to start with the old platters and snacks.
And who doesn't like a platter and a snack?

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Well that the great thing about a platter or a
snack is it kind of takes a pressure off when
you're actually having to when you're having to serve a
massive amounts of deal, because you just put out a
platter and go there you go, people eat that while
I get everything else ready.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
Yes, it's a nice way to say if people entertain
the hours and stay away from me while I just
focus on what I'm doing here in the kitchen.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
I thought for the next couple of weeks or four weeks,
crazy though, isn't it four weeks to Christmas? So I
thought I'd go to the other side of Aukland yesterday
to buy something. And I got halfway and I turned
around and came home. It's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
It's just too busy.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
It's just too busy. It's just that time. Yeah, So
I thought i'd take the stress out of the actual
food side of things over the next four weeks. So
today I'll just run through platters and snacks. Next week
kind of small plates and salad salads are really important,
and then the week after main events, and then we'll
finish on sweet things. I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Okay, So we've actually going have got three recipes that
we're going to put up on our website. Today we're
going to run through one of them. But first of all,
what do you think. What do you think makes a
good platter?

Speaker 3 (01:32):
I think a little bit of variety. But also for yeah,
it's easy for me to say, I'm a chef, but
a platter is not go to supermarket, buy everything and
little containers, open them all up and put them onto
a big dish.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Oh, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
No, it is not. It is. Think of a few
things that you can make really easily yourself, and it
doesn't There doesn't need to be sixteen thousand things on
a platter. It could just be something as simple as
what we suggested today, roasted beetroot tumas. It might be
some yogurt, flatbreads and it might be some pickled cucumbs
or pickled veggies and maybe one or two cheeses.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Donno tick, Okay, excellent, what do you put?

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Well?

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Actually, the roasted bee trout to homas is really good
for vegetarians because sometimes I find that that can throw
things a little bit.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Yeah, and homis and people are like, oh homos, it's
so boring. But horce is delicious, and it is so
much different when you make it yourself. I find that
the homice that you buy has to have so much
citric acid in it, which is the preservative that keeps
it for a long period of time. So you take
that citric acid out and homice, and when you make

(02:40):
it yourself, obviously you don't need to put it in there.
It takes on a whole new flavor in itself. It's sweeter,
it's more luxurious, it's richer. So there's homas and then
there's your own homemade hormics.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Okay, take us through the roasted beetroot and cuman homics.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
So take I've got two whole beetroots, so wrap them
up in ten four. Just before you put the final
wrap into it, just put a limit of oil a
litt bit of salt, fire them into the oven one
hundred and eighty degrees. They're going to take about forty minutes
in the oven. And what you're looking for is like
a jacket potato. When you open up that tinfo your
knife clearly goes through it nice and easily. Once they've cooked,
set them aside, let them cool down, and then I've

(03:20):
sold two chickpeas or two cups of checkpias, two chickpeas.
That would make a lot with it. Two cups of
chickpeas overnight, and then the next day, fire them into
a pot, a pinch of salt, a pinch of baking powder.
What the paking powder does with the chickpeas are cooking
is it actually softens the chickpeas right up. Cook them
until they're just tender. Whilst they're still warm, chuck them
into a food process and blitz them along with I've

(03:43):
got two tablespoons of tahini paste and a teaspoon of
cooman or curry powder. That's the spice aliment. Add that
and give it a blitz. You might want to add
maybe a tablespoon of oil as it's blitzing, and that
just gives a nice smooth texture and kind of silky
rich sort of bright color and touch the salt in

(04:05):
a way. You go, that's a city in my ute,
and it's really raining.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
Going to say, I was just listening to the lovely
rain on the roof a little bit. Distract how really
quickly the chickpeas? Can you use a couple of tins?

Speaker 3 (04:22):
Yeah? Absolutely, just get the I get the chickpeas and
spring water, yep, versus the chickpeas that are in that
real sort of heavy salty slud. So you don't have
to soak those, you don't need to fake them, just
drain them. But when you drain them, actually keep a
little bit of what you've drained, the liquid that you've
drained out of them, because when you're blitzing your chickpeas,
you may need to add a little bit of that
liquid back in just to loosen your homess up. So

(04:43):
don't throw that liquid away.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Okay, brilliant, And then you just need some flatbreads with
it or something really simple and you're good to go.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
And that's it. Like my perfect platter would be delicious
hormus like that beet with homas, some pickled veggies where
you might have some spice in it, spices always nice,
chucking a few fresh chilies, and then some yogurt flatbreads
that you've just fired into the oven nice and quickly
pulled them out a little bit coriander butter, and then
serve those three things together and it's it's great. It's fresh,

(05:11):
it's vibrant, you've got the crunch of the cucumber and
it's good to go. And it's really starting to rain now.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
I was just thinking, I think it's the Santa Parade
and looked on today too, So let's hope that's passing
us by. Mike, Thank you very much. Take care out there.
We're going to put those three recipes up on our
website Newstalk ZB dot co dot mz ford slash Sunday.
So we've got the chili, pickled vegetables, the roast beetruit
and cuman hummus and the yogurt flat breeds with coriander
butter for you.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to news Talk ZB from nine am Sunday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio