Bulwer-Lytton wrote
"We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man can not live without cooks."
As I seem to spend a fair amount of my time cooking, I thought I'd try a month of food.


When I started vegetarian cooking, my source of inspiration and advice was Rose Elliot's "The Bean Book". I still have a copy but it's in several pieces and brown with age.

These days, vegetarian cooking is lighter and more varied, but I still use some of her old recipes. So today is red kidney bean moussaka. I'm sure a Greek would be horrified by this -what, no meat?

If you're using dried red kidney beans, you need to soak them (preferably overnight), drain them, then bring to the boil and simmer for at least half an hour. Or you can use a tin.

The first step is to slice an aubergine and place the slices in a layer in a greased dish. Rose Elliott sugests using the aubergine slices raw, but I've found it helps to soften them. I put the slices in a dish in the microwave, with a little water and heat for a few minutes. You could sauté them in olive oil, but that might make the dish too oily.

You next make a tomato sauce, using onion, garlic, tomatoes and tomato purée, but you can flavour it with basil, cinnamon and red wine. Stir the drained red kidney beans into this and spread it on the aubergine slices

Over this spread a layer of cheese sauce. Depending on the size of your dish, you may want to repeat the layers, but finish by sprinkling a little cheese on top. Rose Elliott recommends baking in the oven for about 1 hour. I've found that I can put the dish in my microwave oven, on combination mode and cook it in 20 minutes.

My son doesn't like aubergines, and I've been known to make a double-ended moussaka, with slices of cooked potato substituting for the aubergine. It's even further from the dish's Mediterranean origins but it tastes good!