Dwarf Tales

Roast Vegetables This plate of vegetables is so easy to put together that it is hardly entitled to be called cooking. Basically its a load of different vegetables roasted for different lengths of time in one dish in the oven. Served on its own or with Greek yoghurt (and of course fresh bread!) it's a meal that even the most hardened bean baker can master in moments.

Egg Plant Aubergine or egg plant as the dwarfs will call it is an honorary meat on the basis that it is so substantial despite its soft texture. This recipe is a dwarfish adaptation of a recipe from the far south where the stars are strange and the people who are not people live. Traditionally this recipe involves enough oil to lubricate even the least slippery of dwarfs but to the modern (human) palate a little moderation has been added.

Aubergine and peppers can offer an excellent combination if the peppers are right. This recipe uses small sweet red and yellow peppers which have been stuffed with feta cheese. It provides a kind of vegetarian moussaka although this recipe doesn't use any form of thickening sauce or custard and so it looks a bit sloppy on the plate. However, with a bit of extra work a suitable sauce could be used. For my own taste I prefer the simplicity of the dish as it stands and apart from keeping the calories down without a bechamel sauce or a savoury custard, it is otherwise a very easy one-pot to prepare.

Fesh! Fish is honorary meat on the basis that they are critters that live in that most treacherous of environments - water, and in particular the sea - and dwarfs have a great respect for anything that goes over it on through it and yet lives. (At least until they catch it and kill it and put it in a pot!) One of the noblest of fish to the dwarf is the salmon because it lives in both salt and sweet water and therefore is a master of these most treacherous fluids. It should be noted, but only briefly here that the eel, being able to live for a while out of water, is regarded with even greater respect by dwarfs but more in the sense of grubby alternative hero than majestic conqueror. Here is a simple dish for salmon.