Chick peas and noodles in sweet potato sauce

Some weeks ago now, Becca at Amuse Your Bouche posted a recipe for chickpea dumplings in sweet potato gravy.  I made it, and it was delicious, but the chickpea dumplings were really rather solid.  I think they would have been better with some kind of raising agent added. 

Anyway, I wanted to put my own take on it.  I was vaguely thinking of trying to make noodles with chickpea flour, but I've tried that before and it was a disaster.  So I thought I would make ordinary noodles, and then add some chickpeas to the recipe.  This was how I adapted it.

1 medium-sized sweet potato
1 leek
1 onion
2 cloves garlic (I have some lovely garlic just now, from my brother's garden!)
1 sweet pepper
1 quantity cooked chickpeas (1/2 cup uncooked, or a drained tinful)
1 tin tomatoes
500 ml stock
Seasoning, including cumin and turmeric

250 ml plain flour
1 egg
Enough water to mix

Chop the vegetables and sauté in a little cooking oil.

Add the tomatoes and stock, season, and simmer for 20 minutes.

Then take  a stick blender and puree the stew - you don't want it soup-quality, but just so it's nice and gungy.  Add the chickpeas. 

Now make the noodles by putting the flour into a bowl, adding the egg, and mix it with dough hooks on a hand mixer, adding water as necessary, until you have a really smooth dough. 

Go on mixing for a few minutes, then press through a noodle maker straight into the sauce.  Bring back to the boil, stirring, and allow to cook for a few minutes.  Serve with a green vegetable.

It was delicious, but I now have indigestion.....

Squid in black bean sauce

This was a (fairly successful) attempt to re-create a favourite of mine from the Chinese take-away across the road that closed its doors several years ago now, and I still miss!  I bought the squid bodies from Sainsbury's - Tesco's only sell squid rings, which aren't quite such good value for money.  Sadly, I don't quite know where to source whole squid, complete with tentacles - they are quite the nicest.

About 100-150 g squid (I didn't weigh, but it was 4 of Sainsbury's frozen squid bodies), thawed and cut into smallish pieces.  Or a similar weight of raw squid rings.  Or use whole squid if you can get them.
1 chunk frozen ginger (or grated fresh - a piece about the size of your thumb)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 chilli pepper, chopped (seeds removed)
1 onion, peeled and chopped, but not too finely
1 green pepper, cut into chunks about the same size as the pieces of squid.
1 sachet black bean sauce
Oil for frying

Melt the oil in a wok or large frying pan, and add all the vegetables.  Stirring all the time, once they begin to cook, then add the squid pieces, stirring again, and finally the black bean sauce.  Bring back to the boil and serve at once with rice or noodles, or even vegetable noodles, as liked!

Vegetable rice

I nearly called this bottom-of-the-fridge rice, as it can be (I imagine) made with lots of different vegetables, depending on what wants used in your fridge.  I served this with bought chicken kievs (don't judge me - they are nice once in awhile), but I imagine it could be a meal in its own right if you added some cooked beans, or cheese or an egg, depending on whether you wanted it vegan or vegetarian.

2 tbs cooking oil
1.5 tsp asafoetida (only because I cba to chop an onion!  Use an onion instead if you prefer)
1 tsp dried garlic (or 1-2 cloves of fresh; again, I cba to prepare it!)
1 leek
1/2 small swede (rutabaga)
Handful Chantenay carrots
1 chilli pepper
1/2 cup long-grain rice
250 ml chicken stock (from a cube is fine if you don't have any home-made; obviously if you want this to be vegetarian or vegan, use vegetable stock or plain water - if the latter, up the seasoning a bit).

Cook the asafoetida in the oil for a few minutes - don't let it burn if you can help it - and then add the prepared vegetables.  Allow them to cook in their own steam for a bit, then add the rice and stock.  Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat to the minimum and leave to cook for 15 minutes.  It comes out quite different from a risotto, much more (in my opinion) of a side dish.

Garlicky aubergines with goats' cheese* and root vegetable noodles

* If you don't eat goats' cheese, substitute either regular cream cheese or, for a vegan alternative, hummus or a simple tahini dressing.

2 carrots
2 parsnips
1 chunk daikon

1 medium aubergine
2-3 cloves garlic
2 tbs cooking oil
Salt and pepper
1/2 tub goat's cream cheese (I used one with chives, which was really nice!) (or ordinary cream cheese, or hummus, or a simple tahini dressing)

Spiralize the root vegetables,

and put into a pan with the oil, salt and pepper.  Cook on a low heat, stirring frequently, while you dice the aubergine

and crush the garlic.  Add these to the pan, cover, and allow to cook on a low heat for about 15 minutes, stirring frequently.  Stir in the goats' cheese (or substitute), heat through again, and serve at once.

You could also use sweet potato or butternut squash noodles with this.  Either as well as, or instead of, the carrot and parsnip.  I do like to add a bit of daikon (aka mooli), though, as it lightens things up a bit.

Macaroni cheese revisited

Macaroni cheese is, of course, infinitely variable, but this particular casserole has a couple of new things.  First of all, I discovered that home-made spaetzle should really be kneaded for several minutes, and this certainly does improve their texture and the length of the finished product in my noodle maker.

Secondly, I decided to try Amuse your Bouche's crispy garlic breadcrumbs instead of my normal breadcrumb-and-cheese topping; the first time I tried to make these they were a disaster, but, but I realised that if I made the bread into breadcrumbs first, it would work rather better.   It did!

Thirdly, I used a tin of tomatoes instead of the normal béchamel - I used to do this a lot in the past, but haven't done it with leeks before.

So:

The noodles:

1 cup (roughly 250 ml by volume) plain flour
1 egg
Salt, pepper and mustard to taste
Enough water to make a stiffish dough.

Knead the above - ideally using dough hooks on a stand mixer - for several minutes, until it is really smooth and stretchy.  Press through a noodle-maker into boiling salted water; bring back to the boil, then drain, and rinse the noodles in cold water until they are cold (this helps set them).

The main event:

1 leek, chopped
About 1/4 small pumpkin or butternut squash, diced
c 20g butter
c 1 tbs plain flour
1 tin tomatoes
Seasonings - salt, pepper, mustard, maybe sweet paprika
Several handfuls grated cheese

Cook the leek and pumpkin (or any other vegetable you fancy) in the butter until no longer raw; using a blender, whizz the flour with the tin of tomatoes and pour the result on to the vegetables; bring to the boil and add the noodles and grated cheese.  Smooth the surface, and top with: crispy garlic breadcrumbs (see recipe here).  Bake at Mark 5 for about 45 minutes, until the breadcrumbs really are crispy.

Edited to add: I was not totally convinced by this.  The garlic breadcrumbs were wonderful, a great addition to the repertoire, but I think with a tomato sauce I do prefer onions to leeks, and I'm not sure the home-made noodles showed to best advantage like this.  Maybe commercial pasta would have been better (the dried kind - one can buy fresh spaetzle anywhere on the Continent, but not in this country as yet).  The pumpkin worked well, though.

Well, duh!

There are times when I really think I am a bear of very little brain, and long words bother me!  I have been cooking for - what - the best part of 60 years, and I always, but always, made a béchamel sauce to go with cauliflower, especially if I was going to make it into a cauliflower cheese bake.

But we have been travelling, and space in our motor home is limited.  So it occurred to me - when I make nachos, I just melt the grated cheese in a little milk - what would happen if I poured the result over the cauliflower?

And, of course, it worked splendidly!  I didn't realise quite how dim I was not to have thought of that that long since....

Barley Salad

I had been making lemon barley water this morning, so had some cooked barley.  It has been very hot, although it is cooler today, so I decided to use the barley as I would have used rice in a salad.  I think, in hindsight, I should have rinsed the cooked barley, but it's not a bad fault.

c. 100 g barley (I used 1/2 measuring cup - 125 ml by volume)
1 litre water
1 large clove garlic
1 tbs olive oil
2 tbs lemon juice
1 large or 2 small avocados
1 large or 2 small tomatoes

Rinse the barley, then put it in your pressure cooker with the water and cook on high pressure for 15 minutes.  I used my lovely Instant Pot for this, which was marvellous, as I could put the barley on and then go and shower and dress without having to hover over it!  If you don't have a pressure cooker, then use 1.5 litres of water and cook for 40 minutes on the stove.  Drain, and use the resulting liquid for barley water.  This, then is what you do with the barley itself!

Put in a large bowl, and crush the garlic clove over it, ideally while it is still warm.  Stir in the olive oil and lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste.  Now add the chopped avocado and the peeled and chopped tomato, and stir thoroughly.  Allow to chill before serving.

I love this with cold chicken, but the original recipe that inspired it was from a vegetarian cookbook, Rose Elliott's "Not just a load of old lentils".

Bean Casserole

I recently bought an Instant Pot, which is a gadget that combines the functions of a pressure cooker, sauté pan, slow cooker, yoghurt maker and rice cooker.  So, of course, I have been using it quite a lot - it is a great deal easier to use than my conventional pressure cooker, which will be retired from active service now.  I tended only to use it for the occasional pot of beans, and for cooking the oranges when making marmalade.  I rather think I shall use this electric one more often!  I have yet to try the yoghurt maker or the rice cooker, and doubt I shall (although I did have a yoghurt maker at one stage; I am not quite sure where it is). 

Anyway, this bean casserole is very versatile; you can use whatever vegetables you have around. Makes masses - enough for at least four people.

½ cup each (dry volume) red kidney beans, cannellini beans and those pink ones (or any other sort you like), soaked overnight in cold water to which you have added a little bicarbonate of soda.
1 tbs cooking oil
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
½ chilli pepper, deseeded and chopped (it was going to be a whole one, but I dropped half of it into the bin and couldn't find it again!)
Neck of a butternut squash, cubed
1/2 punnet of mushrooms, sliced
1 tin chopped tomatoes
A little extra water,  if needed (it shouldn't be)
Seasoning as liked.

When you have soaked the beans, drain them and rinse them well, then place into the cooker with about 2 litres of cold water.  Cook at high pressure for 10 minutes, and allow the pressure to come down at room temperature, if possible.  Drain, and set aside.

Using the sauté function of the cooker, add the oil, then the various fresh vegetables.  Allow to cook, stirring frequently, just as you would if you were cooking them on a normal stove.  Then add the tomatoes and the beans and stir very well.  Add a scrap more water if you think it needs it, but don't forget the mushrooms and the courgettes will yield quite a lot.  Season as liked, and then, using the slow cooker function, cook on low for about 6 hours.  I put it on the timer so it sat for 2½ hours before it started to cook.  If you aren't going to be out all day, of course, you can cook it using the pressure cooker function, probably for about 10-15 minutes.

Serve with grated cheese.

Fried spätzle

When we were travelling in France I noticed that they sold, in the supermarkets, gnocchi which one was intended to fry, rather than the normal boil.  I bought some, and very delicious they were, too.  Then when we were in Germany last month, I saw packets of obviously pre-cooked spätzle (noodles) that were intended to be fried, and, again, they were very good. 

One can buy spätzle in this country, and I sometimes do, but nothing really beats fresh pasta, so I thought that I would try to replicate these German offerings at home.  And again, they were very good with a chicken casserole.  You do need a noodle maker, although if you don't have one you could try rolling out the dough very thin, rolling it up, and cutting it in thin strips to make noodles that way.

1/2 cup white flour (strong, if you have it)
1 egg
Enough water to make a dough
Salt, pepper, dried parsley or other herbs to taste.

Mix this all up to form a stiff dough, then press through a potato ricer/noodle maker (on the disc with the fewest holes) into boiling salted water.  Bring back to the boil, stir, and drain very well.  Now melt a knob of butter in a frying pan and fry the noodles on one side until golden (it doesn't matter if they clot into a sort of pancake), then turn and fry the other side.  Serve at once.

"Indian" cauliflower cheese

Well I was bored of our usual cauliflower cheese bake and I had half a packet of paneer that wanted using, left over from last week's mattar paneer. So, I thought, well, why not?

Spice mix:
Roughly 1 teaspoon each of
coriander seeds
cumin seeds
asafoetida
garam marsala
turmeric
fenugreek
ground ginger
ground chillis
mustard seeds

Or you could just use curry powder, of course

½ large cauliflower, cut into florets
3 potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
1 chilli pepper, deseeded and chopped
1 tin tomatoes + 2/3 tin of water (rinse out the tin!)
1 small tin sweetcorn
1 tablespoonful coconut milk powder
½ packet paneer, diced
2 tsp coconut oil

Grind the coriander and cumin seeds in a pestle and mortar, and then add the rest of the spices, except the mustard seeds.  Melt the coconut oil in a large sauté pan or casserole dish, and add the mustard seeds.  When they start to pop, add the rest of the spices, stir well, cover, lower the heat and allow to fry for a minute or two while you chop the potatoes into bite-sized chunks.  Add these and stir well, cover and allow to cook for a few minutes while you chop the cauliflower and chilli.  Add these, then add the rest of the ingredients.  Bring to the boil and allow to simmer for about 25-30 minutes, until the vegetables are cooked, stirring occasionally.  Taste, and adjust the salt if necessary.

This made enough for 4, although I'd only intended it to serve 2!

Ash Wednesday Casserole, revisited

Some years ago now, I posted my recipe for what I call Ash Wednesday Casserole, or Ash Wednesday Stew.  I have always made it in my slow cooker, as if there was an Ash Wednesday service in the evening, one could go, and it would be ready to eat on one's return.  However, this year, the services were in the morning, and what with one thing and another, I didn't have time to put it in the slow cooker.  And we reckon we like this version even better! 

1/2 cup of your favourite beans, soaked for at least 1 hour in boiling water, or overnight in cold
1 onion
1-2 cloves garlic
1 large leek (it is St David's Day, after all!)
1 chilli pepper
1 sweet red pepper
1-2 sweet potatoes, depending on size
1 tin chopped tomatoes
1/2 tinful water (rinse out the tin so you don't waste any tomato juice)
Seasoning to taste - I used salt, pepper, a little soya sauce and some chilli-garlic sauce.  You could use a vegetable stock cube of some kind, but I forgot!

To serve: 1 tbs peanut butter; peanuts or cashew nuts to sprinkle (apologies if you have a peanut allergy - either use some other kind of nut butter, or tahini, or I expect you could use grated cheese, but this is essentially a vegan dish).

Rinse the beans and cook in fresh water - if you use red kidney beans, make sure they boil hard for at least ten minutes.  Or you could use a tin of beans, drained and rinsed, but I prefer dried.  Traditionally the recipe uses red beans, but you could use any kind you like.

Chop onions and leeks and fry very gently in a little oil until they don't look raw.  Add the chopped chilli, red pepper and sweet potatoes (which you will have peeled and cut into chunks).  Stir well, then add the beans, tomatoes and water, and season to taste.  Bring to a simmer and cook for about 45 minutes.  Stir in the peanut butter and serve with nuts sprinkled on the top.

Mattar Paneer

Last week the Swan Whisperer and I took our grandsons to a local cookery course (they are regular attenders with one or other parent when it's on a Saturday, but as it was half-term the course was on a Thursday).  Normally the Walthamstow tutors use their own recipes, but this time, the recipe was taken from Bags of Taste, an organisation that teaches people how to cook cheap, nutritious and delicious meals for less than £1 a head.  We made a fish curry, but the vegetarians on the course made this delicious recipe, and I tried to replicate it tonight.

1 tsp coconut oil
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tin chopped tomatoes
Spice mix, as follows:
      1 tsp garam marsala
      1 tsp turmeric
      1 tsp ground fenugreek
      1/2 tsp each ground ginger and hot paprika
      Pinch of salt
2 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp sugar (optional)
1/2 packet paneer
Nice amount of frozen peas
1/2 cup raw rice, to cook however you normally would.

Put the coconut oil in a deep frying-pan and add the onion.  Cook very gently for several minutes, until beginning to be transparent, then add the spice mix and crushed garlic (you can also use fresh ginger, but for a variety of reasons I chose not to this evening).  Stir vigorously, and then add the chopped tomatoes.  Bring to a simmer and leave to cook  while you cook the rice, adding a little water if it looks like drying out.  Just before the rice is ready, add the cubed paneer and frozen peas, and bring back to the boil before serving.

Curly Potatoes

I do love my spiraliser.  This is an interesting alternative to chips, and very quick to cook.

3 potatoes, spiralised on the larger holes
1 tbs cooking oil
Salt and pepper

Spiralise your potatoes (sorry, if you don't have a spiraliser - I don't think I've seen spiralised potatoes in the vegetable department of the supermarket, even if they did have spiralised courgettes when whole ones were unobtainable last month!), and put in a large frying pan or sauté pan with the cooking oil, salt and pepper.  Cover and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring frequently but keeping it covered in the meantime. 

I served this with fish, but it would be lovely with an egg, or even a steak.....

"Egg pancake"

My grandsons are not very good at eating eggs. But I wanted to cook them something quick for their evening meal yesterday, and with vague memories of this post from Chocolate and Zucchini in mind, I told them they were going to have an egg pancake, and would they like it with cheese, ham, both or neither?  As it turned out, there didn't seem to be any ham in their fridge, so I made it with cheese.... but I'm sure it would be lovely with ham, or herbs, or a mixture....  They had a slice of bread and butter with it.

Serves 2

2 eggs
Small amount (c 25-30 g, but I didn't measure!) grated cheese
A little black pepper (they don't have salt in their food yet; I would have added a little for an adult)
Butter for frying

Whisk the eggs until they are a uniform colour and texture.  Stir in the cheese.  Melt the butter in a frying pan and pour in the eggs, which you allow to spread out (or use a spatula) until they are as thin as a pancake (crepe type).  Allow to cook until it is beginning to dry out on top, at which point use a fish-slice to turn it over and cook for one minute on the other side.  In an ideal world you then roll it up and cut it in half, but mine didn't exactly turn over very well.... so I just divided it into two and watched it disappear......

Their mother tells me they will eat omelettes if they are called crustless quiches, too!

Mushroom Soup

We spent a day and a night with a friend in France recently, and she made the most delicious mushroom soup for lunch.  I was moved to try and emulate it, as it was so good, and this was the result.  Very quick and easy.  Serves 4, unless you are greedy and have all of it, as we did!

1 punnet mushrooms
2-3 cloves garlic
2 tsp plain flour or cornflour
500 ml milk
500 ml stock (or water, and then you add a Stock Cube/Stock Pot to it)
A couple of dollops of butter
Salt, pepper, parsley

Slice 2/3 of the mushrooms and fry up in 2/3 of the butter with the peeled and crushed cloves of garlic.  When they are cooked enough to release their juices, sprinkle on the flour or cornflour and stir well, then add the liquids and season, and bring to the boil.  While this is happening, chop the remaining mushrooms finely.

Transfer the soup to a blender, and while it is not in the saucepan, cook the chopped mushrooms in the remaining butter.  Once they have released their juices, pour the soup back on top and bring back to the boil.  Serve at once.

Potato gratin, sort of.

This is definitely not a gratin dauphinois, as that does not have cheese on it, as any foodie will tell you!  Nor, I think, does it contain onions, but only garlic.  But I wanted a warming potato casserole to go with salmon and Brussels sprouts for Sunday dinner, and wanted to play around with spiralising potatoes and onions.

Heat your oven to Gas Mark 4, 180 C.

1 medium onion, which I spiralised on the flat blade of the spiraliser
1 clove garlic, chopped
4 potatoes, spiralised into noodles
The end of a 200 ml pot of creme fraiche, filled up and then refilled with milk (so c 400 ml milk/cream mixture in total)
Salt and pepper, to taste
The end of a packet of grated Emmenthal - probably about a tablespoonful.

Fry the onion and garlic for a few minutes in vegetable oil in a casserole dish that will go on both the top of the stove and in the oven.  Add the potato noodles and stir well.  Season, and stir again.  Now add the milk/cream mixture, and top with the Emmenthal.

Bake for about an hour, until the potatoes are cooked.

Dried fruit compote

A winter favourite, infinitely variable.

About 200-250 grammes of dried fruit - you can buy mixes in places like Lidl, or you can use up the ends of packets - prunes, dried apricots, maybe some dried apple, pear or mango.  Also a sprinkle of sultanas, raisins or dried cranberries.

Cover the fruit in boiling water and leave to stand for an hour or so.

Then add a little sugar - it really won't need much, a couple of teaspoons.... but to your taste.  And a teaspoonful of cornflour which you have whisked into a little more water.  And - and this is the Sekrit Ingredient - a teabag.  It doesn't have to be Yorkshire; in fact, this is one of the occasions when a perfumed tea is good.  Earl Grey, or, better still, that Indian spiced tea you can buy that gives me indigestion to drink.  This time, I used an infusion which I like called "Winter Spice Mix" 

This all goes into a saucepan, which you put on the stove (duh), bring to the boil, and allow to simmer for about 30 minutes or so until the fruit is plumped up and soft.  Taste to adjust the sweetness, discard the teabag, and serve hot or cold with natural yoghurt, cream, custard or even ice-cream.

Pelau?

My mother used to make this often in our childhood; she always called it "Pelau", although I am not at all sure this is the correct name.  I called it risotto when I first made it, but then I learnt how to make "proper" risotto, so have reverted to its original name.  And updated the seasoning a bit, too!  You can also make this with chicken; and probably with any leftover cold meat, but I usually use lamb.

1 quantity cold cooked lamb (enough for two people - I can't be specific as to quantities), cubed
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed or finely chopped
1 quantity frozen peas (again, you know your family's appetite!)
1 quantity sultanas or raisins (I used a 70g tub)
1 quantity roasted peanuts
Leftover gravy
Seasoning (I used pepper - no salt, as the peanuts provided that - Worcester sauce and ras el hanout)
1/2 cup by volume uncooked rice (125 ml)

Cook the rice as you normally do, and while this is happening, sweat the onions and garlic in a little cooking oil.  When they start to turn translucent, add the rest of the ingredients and allow to simmer until the rice is cooked.  Mix together, and serve, with mango chutney if liked.

If you have leftover vegetables, by all means add them!  And if you don't have any gravy, use a little water and perhaps a "Stock Pot" - I see they do them in lamb now.

Emergency chicken soup

This was made in rather a hurry as my daughter went down with tonsillitis.  I put a great deal of immune-boosting foods in there, and the end result was really rather spicy.... not unpleasant, though, with a spoonful of cream in there to cut the spice!

For the stock:

1 chicken carcase (I bought a cooked chicken from Lidl, and removed all the meat from the bones; we used the meat in salads, sandwiches and suppers, so nothing was wasted)
1 onion
2 carrots
1 parsnip
2.5 litres water
1 chicken "stock pot"
1 chicken bouillon cube

Boil all this up together in a pressure cooker for 30 minutes. Allow to cool, then drain, and discard solids.

For the soup itself

1/2 cup "soup mix"
1 small onion
5 cloves garlic (or more - why not?)
1 chilli pepper
1 cube frozen grated ginger (or use about 25g fresh ginger)
1 leek
1 sweet red pepper
1 tsp turmeric powder
Salt to taste

To serve: spoonful of creme fraiche or sour cream

Soak the "soup mix" (grains, beans and peas) in boiling water with 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda for at least 30 minutes. 
Put the onion, garlic, chilli and fresh ginger (if using) into a food processor with a little water, and blitz until smooth.  Put this mix in to a casserole dish to which you have added a little cooking oil.  If you are using the frozen ginger, put that in, too.  Cook gently with the turmeric until just not raw any more.

Add the stock to this mixture, and put the drained, rinsed soup mix into the empty pressure cooker with 1 litre fresh water and boil for 10 minutes.  When it has come down from pressure, drain and add to the soup with the leek and sweet pepper, which you have chopped very finely.  Bring to the boil and simmer for about 15 minutes.  Adjust seasoning - I found this extremely spicy, so am serving it with a dollop of creme fraiche or sour cream in each bowl to "cut" it.  But it is very good.

Oodles and Oodles of Vegetable Noodles!

I was feeling a bit silly this evening, and it is silly to leave the spiraliser in the cupboard doing nothing. So.....

The following vegetables were chopped, and they were all, except the peppers, peeled:
1 onion
1 clove garlic (actually, this was crushed, but same difference)
1 leek
1 chunk butternut (I would have spiralised this, but it wasn't the straight neck bit but the curvy bit that goes round the seeds, and it didn't want to)
2 tomatoes
1 pointed sweet red pepper
1 chilli pepper

The following were spiralised. If you don't have a spiraliser, of course, you may continue to chop, but I have to say I did like the difference in texture that the spiraliser gave.
1 courgette
2 carrots
1 parsnip
1/2 sweet potato.

 For the baba ghanoush dressing: 
1/2 aubergine, peeled and diced
1 clove garlic
2 tbs olive oil
1 large tbs tahini
1 tbs lemon juice
A little boiling water, to slacken

Put everything into a large sauté pan or casserole dish into which you have put about a tablespoonful of cooking oil. Add the veg as they are ready, so prepare those that take longest to cook first, and stir the result every time you lift the lid. Season to taste - I used salt, pepper, soya sauce and a little chilli sherry. When all the vegetables have been added, leave to cook for a further 15 minutes or so, until everything is cooked to your taste.

Meanwhile, also peel and dice the 1/2 aubergine, and put this in a separate saucepan with the olive oil and crushed garlic. Allow to cook on a low heat until the aubergine is very soft. Transfer to a food processor and add the remaining ingredients, except the hot water.  Process until it stiffens, then add hot water and continue to process until it reaches the desired texture - what I think in cake terms is called a "dropping batter" - it will drip off your spoon, but not too runny.

That is not a very good photo, sorry!  I never pretended to be a food photographer....

When the vegetables are cooked to your liking (I like them more cooked than many people do), stir the baba ghanoush (it isn't quite that, because that requires roasted aubergine, but almost) through the stew, and serve.  It makes enough for four, and I'm debating poaching an egg in the leftovers before I serve them....

One day I shall learn that my phone casts its own shadow when I photograph my plate!!!

Stuffed vegetables

Returning  from a weekend in Sussex, I was loaded down with produce from my mother's and my brother's gardens, including an overgrown courgette and a very large onion.  Which both, obviously, lent themselves to stuffing. And after a bit of thought and research, I came up with this:

For the filling:

1/2 cup by volume bulghur wheat, soaked in 1 cup by volume boiling water
The inside of the onion, chopped (or, if you are stuffing a pepper, for instance, use a small onion or shallot, and peel and chop it)
A couple of tomatoes, peeled and chopped
A few olives, cut in half (either green or black, but I think black works best)
A sloosh of tomato paste
1/2 pack feta cheese, cubed

Vegetables to stuff - a large onion, cut in half, or vegetable marrow/overgrown courgette with the seeds removed, or a hollowed-out butternut squash (you stuff the hollow where the seeds were), or sweet peppers.... whatever, really.

Fry the chopped onions in a little oil until they are transparent, then add the tomatoes and allow to cook for another few minutes.  Then add the rest of the ingredients, and season to taste (I used pomegranate molasses, ras el hanout, sumac and dried parsley.  But you can use whatever you like.

Transfer the stuffing into the hollow of the vegetables

 and bake in a hottish oven for about an hour, until the base vegetables are cooked. 

Noodles and - noodles!

I recently treated myself to a spiralizer - it was a special deal on Amazon, reduced to £10, rude not to, really.  I've been wanting one for ages.

But you know me, I'm not one to eat chopped-up cauliflower and pretend it's rice, or chopped-up courgettes and pretend it's pasta, but what's wrong with mixing them?  So, as I wanted to try to play with the spiralizer, I thought I'd make some vegetable "noodles" and then some home-made ones, and serve them with a bacon, mushroom, tomato and sweetcorn sauce.

Well, it took some experimenting, and I ended up "sharpening" one of the courgettes, but by the time I'd got to the butternut squash, I'd worked out what to do.

I was really rather impressed with myself!

So that was two small courgettes and a chunk of butternut, more-or-less successfully spiralised.

For the sauce:
1 packet lardons (bacon bits), ideally unsmoked
1/2 punnet mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
1 packet passata (or a tin of crushed tomatoes)
1 small tin sweetcorn
Season with pepper and maybe some chilli sherry - it doesn't need salt.

Fry the bacon until it renders, then add the sliced mushrooms and crushed garlic.  When the mushrooms collapse, add the rest of the ingredients and leave to simmer while you prepare the various noodles.

1/4 cup plain flour
1/4 cup buckwheat flour
1 egg
enough water to make a stiff paste

(if you add too much, add more flour)
Mix to a dough, then press through the larger holes of a potato ricer into a saucepan of boiling salted water. 
In a wok, heat some oil and add the vegetable noodles, stirring all the time.  When the flour noodles come to the boil, allow to cook for one minute and then drain, and add to the rest of the noodles. 

Continue to stir-fry for another minute or two, then divide into two plates and put the sauce on top.

Oeufs Florentine

I am not at all sure this is the correct way to cook oeufs florentine.  In fact, it probably isn't - but who cares, because it's very quick and very easy.  I had planned to take a photograph when I had served it, but it flipped over and all you could see was an unpretty mound of spinach!

I never used to like spinach when I was a child, but I think that, rather like kale, modern cultivars are milder in taste.  But even though it must be fifteen years or so since I discovered that actually, it was edible, I was still a bit wary of it as it seemed to have a taste that overwhelmed everything else on the plate, rather like coriander can if you use too much.  But the baby spinach, sold for use in salads, is also very mild when cooked - yes, it tastes like spinach, of course, and if you don't like that you won't like it, but it doesn't dominate or overpower.  My brother, who has always liked spinach, says he just snips the corner of the bag and shoves the lot in the microwave!  But don't do that if you aren't sure that the spinach has been washed, or it's a good way to get a mouthful of grit!  And, of course, it is also lovely raw, in a salad or sandwich.

1 dollop of butter (about 20g - what Americans would call a teaspoonful, I suppose)
1 large handful baby spinach, washed if necessary
1 egg
Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a small saucepan - a milk saucepan is ideal - and put the spinach on the top.  Allow it to cook for a minute or two, and stir vigorously to make sure all of it wilts and cooks.  Now lower the heat and break and egg on the top, leaving this to cook (cover the pan, if possible) for several minutes until the white is firm and the yolk as firm as you like it.

Serve on (ideally) a toasted muffin or a slice of toast.  Or not, if you're being low-carb and can digest an egg without bread....

Cheese and onion flatbreads

This is still slightly a work in progress, so no photos - they didn't really work tonight!  I know what I did wrong - I added all the water at once, as I would had I been going to make the dough in a bread machine, when really, I should have added it bit by bit.

1/2 packet (250 g) cheese and onion bread mix
up to 160 ml warm water

Put the bread mix into a bowl and add the water, working it all the time (a hand mixer with dough hooks is a plan, or use the dough hook on your food processor, if it has one, but you can do it by hand if you wish) until it is smooth and non-sticky.  Let it sit for about 30 minutes, until it has risen a bit. 

Knock it back, and roll it out as thin as possible on a floured board.  Cut in half (or thirds, or quarters, but this amount is ideal for two) and heat a little sunflower oil in a frying pan.  Add the flat bread and cook for a minute or two on each side, as hot as possible.  Then cook the second/subsequent ones in the same way.  Serve at once.  

Fish'ash

Well, it's sort of a hash, and it contains fish, so.....

2 white fish fillets (if frozen, thawed as much as necessary to cut into bite-sized chunks)
Additional fish - shrimps or prawns, if liked, or crayfish tails, or, as here, squid rings (just a handful).
1 onion, chopped
2 large potatoes, peeled and diced
A sensible amount of cabbage, chopped
I added 1/2 green pepper, as I had it in the fridge and it wanted using.
Seasoning, to taste
A little cooking oil

Put the cooking oil into a large sauté dish or casserole and add the vegetables.  Season, and cook on a low heat, covered, until the potatoes are soft (the other veg will be cooked by then, too).  Then add the fish, raise the heat slightly and cook for another couple of minutes until the fish is cooked through.  Serves 2.

This might have been nice with sweet chilli sauce, but I couldn't be bothered to go and find any...

Pasta au Nicholas

I do fail as a food blogger - I forgot, once again, to take a photo of my dinner before I ate it, and nor did I think to take a photo of that which inspired this meal.

My younger grandson and I were at the parent and toddler group we frequent most weeks, and he decided to "feed" me from the toy kitchen.  With the selection of toy food he brought over, we decided that a meal of pasta, mushrooms, garlic  and grated cheese would be delicious - and so it proved!  So, in his honour, I have named this dish "Pasta au Nicholas".  Serves 2.

100 g pasta (I used dischetti, the original "toy" pasta was farfalle)
 A dollop of butter
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 punnet mushrooms, halved
1/2 tbs creme fraiche
Sprinkle dried parsley
2 tbs grated cheese (I used Emmenthal, but Parmesan or Cheddar would be fine, too).

Melt the butter, and add the crushed garlic and halved mushrooms.  Stir, then cover, and cook on a low heat for about 10 minutes, while you cook the pasta.  When it is cooked, drain it and add the remaining ingredients.  Season to taste, and eat at once.

St Patrick's Day Casserole

Drat it, I keep forgetting to take photos of what I cook until all there is left is an empty plate....

The American-Irish may eat corned beef and cabbage on St Patrick's Day, but the Irish at home traditionally ate bacon - this turned out to be either unobtainable or desperately expensive when they arrived in New York, so they turned to beef as a good second-best, and now have forgotten they ever ate anything else! 

But here it is bacon, and this is my take on the tradition.  As I said to the Swan Whisperer, I could have just served grilled rashers alongside steamed potato and cabbage, but I thought this would be tastier - and it was!  Enough for 2.

1 packet lardons
1 onion
5 small potatoes
¼ green Savoy-type cabbage

Cook the lardons gently until the juice and fat run, then add the rest of the vegetables which you have peeled, chopped and shredded, as appropriate (leave the potatoes in dice, chop the onions and shred the cabbage).  Season with pepper - it does not need extra salt - and stir several times while you leave it to cook on a gentle heat for about 15-20 minutes, until the potatoes are cooked.

Mine-stew-ne

I had been going to make minestrone soup for lunch, but somehow the morning got away from me and it didn't happen.  And I hadn't the least idea what to make for supper.  And then I thought that a minestrone soup isn't that different to the large vegetable stews I so often make, and what if I made it more stew-like that soup-like..... so I did, and it was really rather delicious.  Enough for 4 people.

 1/2 cup dried cannelini beans (or 1 400g tin, drained and rinsed)

1 tbs olive oil

A few basil leaves
2 cloves garlic
1 chilli pepper

1 onion
1 carrot
1 small parsnip
A chunk of swede (rutabaga)
2 small potatoes
1 leek
1 courgette (zucchini)

 ½ punnet mushrooms

1 400g tin tomatoes + ½ tinful boiling water

Salt, pepper, marjoram, oregano, thyme, 1 vegetable "Stock pot"

100g small pasta

Parmesan cheese, to serve.

Soak the beans for several hours, then drain and rinse, and boil in fresh water for about 30 minutes, until cooked.   Meanwhile, blitz the garlic, chilli and basil together in a food processor.  Then grate the rest of the vegetables, except the mushrooms.  As the drum of the food processor gets full (you didn't think I meant you should grate them by hand, did you?), empty it into a heavy-based casserole dish into which you have put the olive oil.

Slice the mushrooms and add them to the vegetables, and finally add the tomatoes, water and seasonings.  Stir thoroughly, then bring to the boil and simmer for about 30 minutes.  Then add the beans and the pasta, and cook for a further 9-10 minutes, until the pasta is cooked.

Serve with masses of Parmesan or other grated cheese.

Shaksilla

This was going to be shakshuka, and then it sort of morphed into a tortilla.  So Shaksilla, no?

1tsp coconut oil
1 onion
½ large red pepper
3 small potatoes
½ pack Lidl small sausages (Nurnberg bratwurst)
1 large tomato
4 eggs
Seasoning as you would season shakshuka - harissa or Lebanese seasoning or chilli or what you use.

Peel and chop the potatoes and onion, and cook gently in a covered pan in the coconut oil.  Chop the peppers, and cut the sausages into 3 pieces each, and add to the pan.  Season, and allow to cook for 5-10 minutes.  Chop the tomato and add that.  Cook for a further few minutes, stirring occasionally, until all the vegetables are cooked.  Now whisk the eggs until they are all one texture, and then pour over the vegetable/sausage mix.  Cover again and cook on a gentle heat for another 5 minutes, until the eggs are set. 

Home made noodle bake

I thought that, as an experiment, I'd try using home-made noodles in my usual leek and broccoli pasta bake.  They worked very well indeed.

The quickest and easiest way to make noodles is to use a potato ricer like this one, and use the disk with the fewest holes.  However, if you don't have one, you can always rest the dough in the fridge for a bit, then roll it out as thinly as possible, flour it, roll it up gently and then cut the resulting cylinder into strips, as Becca does over at Amuse your Bouche.  If I were making it that way, I'd use a strong flour, but in a ricer, any flour will do.  I did once try making noodles with gram flour and binding them with tahini, but this was a dismal failure! 

Anyway these ones were made with a mixture of buckwheat flour (which is gluten free, so if you needed to you could make them with 100% buckwheat) and ordinary plain flour.

So.  To the recipe.  Apologies for lack of photos, but it might not have worked well.....

Serves 2.

1 leek
1/2 head broccoli
250 ml milk
2 tsp plain flour
25 g butter
Salt, pepper and mustard powder to season
2 large handfuls grated cheese (probably about 100g each, but maybe less)
1 large tomato
125 ml (1/4 cup) buckwheat flour
125 ml (1/4 cup) plain flour
1 egg
A little water

Cut the broccoli into florets and steam them until al dente.  Chop the leek very finely and cook gently in the butter until soft. It saves time if you can do this in an oven-proof dish that will also go on the hob.

Meanwhile, make the noodles by mixing the last 4 ingredients in the list together until a stiff dough is formed.  I seasoned with salt, pepper and mustard, just as I did the sauce.  Press through potato ricer into boiling water, and when the water comes back to the boil, drain and reserve.

Put the 2tsp flour and the seasoning into the milk and whisk well until combined.  Pour this over the leeks and butter, and bring to the boil, stirring all the time.  When the sauce thickens and boils, remove from heat and stir in half the cheese, and all the broccoli and noodles.  If it's already in an oven-proof container, smooth it down, if it's not, transfer it into one (another pan to wash!) and smooth it down.

Top with thin slices of tomato and more grated cheese.  Bake in a moderate oven for 35 minutes or so. 

Kidney bean, cauliflower and peanut curry

When you have a meeting at 7:30 and need a quick supper..... I had been going to make ratatouille with beans, but had neither courgettes nor aubergine and hadn't got round to going to Lidl to get some!  But the kidney beans had been soaking all afternoon, and needed to be used.  So it was a matter of finding what to cook with what I had - and the end result was surprisingly delicious!

1/2 cup red kidney beans (or you can use a tin of)
1 tsp coconut oil
2 tsp curry powder
Additional spices if liked - I used asafoetida and turmeric and some dried garlic powder
1 onion, chopped
1/2 small cauliflower, chopped
1 tin tomatoes
1/2 tinful water
2 tbs salted peanuts
1 tbs sultanas
1 tbs coconut milk powder
Vegetable "Stock pot" (optional)

1/2 cup long-grain rice

To serve: mango chutney

Soak the beans in water with a teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda for a few hours.  Then drain and rinse, and cook in fresh water, making sure they boil hard for at least ten minutes before you turn the heat down.  They'll probably take 30-45 minutes to cook, depending on how old they are.

Meanwhile, fry the spices in the coconut oil for a couple of minutes, then add the onions and stir well.  Add the rest of the ingredients (except the rice, but including the cooked beans), bring to the boil, and allow to simmer for about 15 minutes while you cook the rice.

Serve with the cooked rice and with some mango chutney (spicy or not, as liked) on the top.

Mum's cheese biscuits

Until this year, Mummy made these every week in the shooting season, and very good they are too.  I have just found the recipe again, so thought I'd post it here where I can find it again!

This makes a baking trayful:

2 slices bread, and the same weight of flour, cheese and butter. Any kind of bread; plain flour (wholemeal is fine) and any kind of cheese, but the stronger-tasting the better.

Whizz in food processor until beginning to come together, knead lightly and roll out. Stamp out with cookie cutter, bake on greased baking tray at Mark 5, 180 (fan oven) or 190 (non fan) for 15 minutes.


Edited to add: Forgot to say you can season this with Tabasco and/or dried chilli flakes, 1/4 tsp dry mustard powder, and a sprinkle of dried mixed herbs. And, of course, you can scale up the quantities really easily - the idea is equal quantities of bread, flour, butter and cheese!

Douceur de courgettes au Vache qui Rit

I first came across this rather odd-sounding soup in a Tetrapak in a French supermarket, and liked it.  These days they seem to do it with goats' cheese, instead, but when I wanted to make soup for our lunch the other day, I thought I'd have a go.  And it is very good, although I used too much garlic (but we both have viruses, so I did that on purpose) - more than the recipe says.

1 tbs coconut oil
1 smallish onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed (optional)
2 small potatoes, peeled and chopped
About 750g courgettes (zucchini, to my American friends), chopped
1 Knorr (or supermarket own brand) vegetable Stock Pot
1 litre boiling water
 2 Vache qui Rit (Laughing Cow) triangles
1 tbs crème fraîche
Salt and pepper to taste.
1 small tin sweetcorn (optional, but if you like a bit of crunch in your soups, as I do....).

Place the oil, and all the chopped vegetables, in a heavy-based pan, and allow to sweat for a bout 10-15 minutes, stirring cocasionally.  Then add the water and stock, bring to the boil and simmer for around 20 minutes. 

Blend until smooth, then return to pan and add the crème fraîche, cheese triangles and sweetcorn, if using.  Bring back to the boil, stirring, until the cheese has melted.  Serve at once. 

You could, of course, use grated Emmenthal or Cheddar instead of the cheese triangles, in which case I would add them to the soup bowl, rather than to the main body of the soup.  Or as well as.....

Mushroom, pepper and cream sauce

This goes with steak or magret de canard - it would probably also go with salmon, or anything you fancy, really....

1 small or 1/2 large onion
1 clove garlic
1/2 punnet (c 125 g) button mushrooms, or 2 large field mushrooms
1 large tablespoonful crème fraiche
1 tsp each black and Szechuan peppercorns
2 tsp cognac, armagnac or Calvados (optional, but does add to it!)
A little butter for frying

Chop the onion, crush the garlic, and halve the mushrooms if they are small; larger ones can be cut into relevant-sized pieces. Fry the onions and garlic gently in the butter until transparent, then add the mushrooms and continue to cook until they release their juices. Meanwhile, crush the peppercorns coarsely in a pestle and mortar. Now add them, and the remaining ingredients, to the sauce, bring to the boil, and serve at once.

Courgette crumble

Missed a phone call from the Daughter last night, but she texted me this morning to say not to worry, she had just wanted my recipe for courgette crumble, which she then found in a bunch of recipes I'd typed up for her when she first left home in 1998.  Quite why I included this one, when she was not, at the time, fond of courgettes I don't know, but I did.  I've actually adapted the recipe over the years since then, mostly making it smaller, so I'll say this amount serves 4.... you could halve it, of course, for two, but obviously you can't halve an egg, so just use a whole one - or maybe use two if you use this amount!

1 cup (250 ml by volume) rice (uncooked)
4-5 small courgettes (zucchini)
3 slices wholemeal (wholewheat) bread
3-5 oz cheese, grated
1 egg
1 gill (about 1/2 cup) milk
Salt and Pepper to taste

Cook rice in the normal way. Slice courgettes very thinly. You can saute them briefly in a non-stick pan with a spray of olive oil, but I don't bother. Drain rice, and stir in the courgette slices, the egg, milk, seasoning and half the cheese. Put into ovenproof dish.
Make bread into crumbs and mix with remainder of cheese. Spread on top of rice mixture, and bake in moderate oven for about 30 minutes until crust is crisp.

We had an interesting variation on this this evening, as I had two leftover cooked sausages, so instead of putting cheese in the rice mixture, I put the sliced sausages.  The topping still had cheese in it, though!

Home-made lemonade

Two posts today!  But I don't think I've posted this recipe yet, and it is so very good when one is poorly, as I have been the last few days.  In an ideal world, you will possess a large plastic jug - holding maybe 2 litres.  We have a lovely one that fits into the door of the fridge.  But you can use a plastic measuring jug for the first bit, and then transfer into a non-heatproof jug when it has cooled a bit.

3 lemons
3 level tablespoons granulated sugar

Peel the lemons with a vegetable peeler or zester or similar, being careful to get as little of the white pith as possible.  Put the peel and the sugar into a heatproof container, and cover with boiling water.  Stir vigorously until the sugar has dissolved.  Now add the juice of the lemons, and about a litre of cold water, and then a tray of ice-cubes.  You'll probably drink the first glass straight away, but put it in the fridge to chill right down.  It will keep about 24 hours in the fridge, but may well not last that long!

More inspiration

I was originally going to make this, from the Amuse Your Bouche blog (I'm not, as readers will have gathered, vegetarian, but we do eat quite a lot of vegetarian meals).  But we had far more cherry tomatoes that needed using, and I do like a bit of onion in my supper, and she didn't say what, if anything, she served it with.... plus I only had feta, not halloumi, which was going to make it a bit different anyway.  So I ended up with this, and very good it was, too.  Serves 2.

½ aubergine
 1 onion
1 pack cherry tomatoes, plus any you might have over from another pack
½ pack feta cheese
100g pasta - I used coquillettes, but use whatever you have.

 Chop the aubergine and onion, and place them in a lidded pan with a tablespoonful of cooking oil - well, all right, maybe a bit more than that.  Pierce the cherry tomatoes and add these.  Cover, and cook for about 20 minutes on a lowish heat, stirring occasionally, and turn down the heat if it looks like catching.  Season with salt, pepper, and what else you like - I used pomegranate molasses and za'atar:

Chop the cheese into cubes about the size of the cubes of aubergine.

Meanwhile boil the pasta for the length of time specified on the packet, drain it, and add it to what's in the pan, together with the chopped feta.

Cook for another minute or so, stirring constantly, until everything is mixed together and the cheese is hotted through - it doesn't really melt.  Serve immediately.

Banana pancakes

You will have seen these online everywhere, I shouldn't wonder, with massive great headlines: she made these wonderful pancakes with just two ingredients, or similar.

But the point is, they are delicious, and they are easy, and you can make them for afternoon snack with your five-year-old grandson in a very few minutes.

You simply whisk 1 egg per small, or 2 eggs per large ripe banana together until everything is smooth - my daughter, at whose house I was making these, had small bananas, so we mashed them first and then whisked them until they were more-or-less smooth.  Then I heated some oil in a frying pan - not a lot, only about a tablespoonful, if that, and when it was hot we ladled tablespoonfuls into the pan.  You cook them like drop scones or Scotch pancakes, nice and thick.  It looked disgusting in the frying pan.  The Boy said it looked like custard, but actually, it looked like puke (it was not as smooth as it could be, and the bananas were somewhat over-ripe).  Anyway, once they are dry-ish on top, you turn them over and cook the other side until golden, and serve immediately.  A professional cook would probably dust these with icing sugar, but they are actually sweet enough as it is, and really don't need anything with them.  And of course they tick all the boxes by being gluten-free, low carb and no added sugar!  And vegetarian....

Well worth doing.  Even my grandsons, who don't like eggs much, like these.

Fusion Trout

The Swan Whisperer wanted trout for his supper yesterday (Sunday), and I was wondering how to serve it, as there are so very many ways of cooking and serving trout.  So yesterday and today (it was a large trout) we had it, first with a Chinese-style stir-fry and then with a Moroccan-style couscous.  And I cooked the trout "à la Meunière", which is French..... 
1) The Trout

1 large trout, defrosted if frozen
A little milk
2 tbs flour, seasoned to taste

Dip the trout in milk, and then in the flour.  Fry in butter in a covered pan for about 7-8 minutes each side, or until cooked through.

2. The Stir-fry

 ½ cup (125 ml by volume) rice
1 cup (250 ml) boiling water, possibly with a Stock Pot.  I wanted to use a fish one, but found I had none, so used a vegetable one instead.
1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 courgette, chopped
1/3 pack beansprouts (which I happened to have)
(You can use whatever vegetables you like here - peas and broad beans work well.  The onion is pretty much mandatory, but apart from that....)
1 egg
Soya sauce

Chinese stir-fries traditionally contain crushed ginger and garlic, and chopped chillis, and are seasoned with 5-spice, but I didn't what to overwhelm the trout, so left out the ginger and chillis, and didn't fancy the 5-spice, so used Lidl's "Stir-fry seasoning", which I'm not sure what it contains but is very nice.

Put the rice in the boiling water or stock, bring back to the boil, cover, turn the heat down to the bare minimum, and leave undisturbed for 15 minutes (40-45 minutes if it's brown rice).  Meanwhile prepare the vegetables (and cook the trout), and stir-fry them for about 5 minutes.  Add the cooked rice and soya sauce to taste, and then make a gap in the middle of the rice and add the egg, which you stir and stir through the rice until it's cooked.  Serve with the trout on top.

3. The couscous

I actually had some of the vegetable stew left over from last week, which had spent the weekend in the freezer, but I make it like this:

1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 leek (optional)
2-3 carrots, peeled and chopped
1 large or 2 small courgettes, chopped
Either 1 tin chick peas, drained and rinsed, or 1/2 cup dried chickpeas, soaked overnight then boiled for about 30 minutes, drained.
About 12 dried apricots, cut in half
1 tin tomatoes, chopped or pureed.

Put all this in a frying pan or saucepan with some oil, and cook on a low heat until all the vegetables are cooked, probably about 30-35 minutes.  Season with ras-el-hanout, if you have any, and/or Moroccan seasoning, and then make a hot sauce with some harissa paste diluted with the juices from the pan, or with boiling water if you haven't quite enough juices.

Meanwhile, put ½ cup (125 ml by volume) of couscous in a bowl or jug with some salt and 1 cup (250 ml) boiling water and allow to sit for 10 minutes; then stir with a fork to break up any lumps.

Serve the couscous at the bottom, the stew in the middle, and the trout (as this was leftover, I hotted it up in the microwave) on the top, and pour over the hot sauce to taste.

Sorry there aren't any photos. 

Halloumi with chickpeas, mushrooms, tomatoes and noodles

On Monday, the Swan Whisperer and I went into Brixton to explore the new Pop Brixton that has opened where the ice-rink used to be, but as it was Monday, everything was firmly closed.  So we got our lunch from a street stall called Pots of Brixton, which was a jacket potato place.  The SW had a meat filling, but I chose the veggie one, which was halloumi, chickpeas, mushrooms and tomatoes.  So, of course, I had to try to recreate it at home, only with noodles instead of potatoes.

½ packet halloumi cheese, sliced, and each slice cut in half.
½ punnet mushrooms, sliced
4-5 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed, or the equivalent amount of dried chickpeas, soaked and cooked (which is what I used, as they are nicer)
Seasonings to taste
100 g rice noodles (this was too much - 75g would have been better)

Place the vegetables in a lidded pan with a little oil, and allow to cook in their own steam for about 10-15 minutes.  Do NOT do what I did and leave the heat too high so that it dries out - this would have been a lot nicer if I hadn't!

 Add the cooked chickpeas, and heat through.  Cook the noodles according to the instructions on the packet.

Meanwhile fry the halloumi on both sides (it doesn't need any oil) until golden.  

Mix everything together and serve.... as I said, it was lovely, but would have been nicer if it hadn't dried out a bit, and we really didn't need so many noodles.

Not-bubble-and-squeak

Traditionally, of course, bubble and squeak is made with left over mashed potatoes and cabbage, maybe seasoned with onion, and fried.  But I didn't have any left-over vegetables - well, I do, actually, but neither potatoes nor cabbage - and I wanted this particularly to eat with Nurnberg sausages, which I thought it would complement nicely.  It did.

2 medium onions, peeled and chopped
3 medium potatoes, cut into small pieces
1/2 green cabbage (or less - the amount you would prepare for two of you, basically)
1 tbs cooking oil
1/2 tsp caraway seeds
Salt and pepper

Put everything into a large frying-pan and stir.  Cover, and reduce the heat.  Allow to cook for about 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Serve with sausages or bacon and eggs or something delicious like that.....

Quick tomato and red pepper soup

1 onion
1 sweet red pepper
1 400g tin tomatoes
A few cherry tomatoes, if you have spare ones
1 small tin sweetcorn (optional)

Sweat the chopped onion, pepper and cherry tomatoes in a little cooking oil.  Add the tin of tomatoes and a full tin of water.  Season - I used salt, pepper, herbs, chilli sherry and a vegetable "stock pot".  Bring to the boil and simmer for ten minutes.

 

 Blend to the desired consistency and then, if liked, add a tin of sweetcorn.

This is nicest with a dollop of creme fraiche in it, but I didn't have any.... Tomorrow, perhaps....

 

Gran's extra-special macaroni cheese

My Boy ended up coming to tea today, so a quick change of plans - I had been going to make a butternut squash and mushroom risotto, but I know his favourite food ever is macaroni cheese.  So I thought I would introduce him to the version that his mother adored when she was a little girl, as I could make enough for 3 and then just pop his share under the grill while the cheese melted.  His verdict?  "I do like it, but it's not my absolute favourite.  That's the one they make at school!"

1 small onion, chopped
1 packet lardons
1 small tin sweet corn
1 tin tomatoes
1 heaped tsp flour
Pepper to taste
A little dry mustard powder, to taste (about ¼ tsp)
About 100 g Cheddar cheese, grated.
100-125 g macaroni-type pasta (depending on how many are eating it)

Put the onions and lardons into a pan, and allow to cook until the onion has softened.  Meanwhile, put the pasta on to boil according to the instructions on the packet.  Place the tin of tomatoes, the flour and the seasonings into a jug, and whizz with a stick blender until smooth (or use a regular blender).  Pour this mixture on to the top of the onions and lardons, and bring to the boil, stirring all the time, until it thickens.  Add the sweetcorn at some stage.  When it is boiling, turn off the heat and add half the grated cheese*, stirring until it melts.  Stir in the cooked pasta, top with the remaining grated cheese, and either put under the grill until the cheese bubbles, or, if you have let it sit for any length of time, shove it in a moderate oven for half an hour.

* My daughter's absolute favourite was if I topped it with a slice of bread made into breadcrumbs and mixed with the grated cheese, but the Boy is on record as saying he didn't think he'd like that.  And anyway, that really does need to be cooked in the oven, and time was slightly of the essence here!

Salmon Fried Rice

I forgot to take a photo of this before eating it, and I don't think a photo of my empty plate would quite have the same effect!  It was excellent.

2 salmon fillets
½ cup uncooked white or brown rice (125 ml by volume)
1 small red onion
2 cloves garlic
1 block frozen ginger (or similar amount of grated, fresh ginger, or even ½ tsp dried powder)
1 piece turmeric root (optional, but I had some to use up)
1 fresh chilli (if you don't have one, use dried or powder)
A large amount (I can't be more specific - a soup mugful?) of frozen peas, sweetcorn and broad beans.  You could, of course, substitute other vegetables - broccoli would be nice, or mangetout, or whatever you fancy.
2 eggs
Chinese seasonings of your choice (soya sauce, 5-spice powder, whatever else)

Cook your rice as you usually do. Meanwhile, stir-fry the onion, garlic, ginger, chilli and turmeric root, if using, fresh vegetables if you're using them, and the frozen veg.  You can either fry the salmon in a separate pan, or cut it into chunks and stir-fry it with everything else, up to you.

Beat up the eggs with the seasoning, and add the cooked rice (you can cook this in advance, if you like - isn't it supposed to reduce the carb content? - but if you do, make very, very, very sure you chill it thoroughly and quickly) and eggs.  Stir until the eggs are cooked and everything is piping hot.  Serve at once, with chopsticks.

Inspired by......

For me, part of the point of recipes is that they can be a jumping-off point for your own dishes.  Unless I am seriously trying to re-create a dish, I tend not to follow recipes too slavishly, especially when it's something like stew or a curry that can, and should, be modified to suit your own tastes. 

So, anyway, the other day I read this recipe, for leek and feta croquettes.  I thought they sounded lovely, but I know from past, bitter experience, that if I try to roll things in breadcrumbs and fry them, they go all over the place and seriously don't look like what they are supposed to look like.  Probably because I rush them, but anyway.

And I had some butternut squash that wanted using up, and one of my favourite things to do with butternut squash is to mix it with feta and couscous in a tomato sauce.   And I had far too many leeks.... and found a packet of udon noodles in the cupboard.  And this was the result:

½ butternut squash, cut into chunks.
1 large leek, finely chopped
1 400 g tin tomatoes
2 tsp plain flour
1 tbs cooking oil
1 oz butter
½ packet feta cheese, crumbled
1 packed udon noodles

Put the squash, the leeks and the cooking oil into a frying-pan with a lid, and cook on a low heat, stirring fairly frequently, until the squash is soft and beginning to caramelise around the edges.  Whizz the tomatoes with the flour with a stick blender until smooth; season to taste.  In a separate saucepan, melt the butter, then add the tomato mixture and bring to the boil, stirring all the time.  Stir in the crumbled feta and pour over the leeks and squash.  Adjust seasoning.   Serve with the noodles which you have prepared according to the instructions on the packet (you can, of course, use another sort of noodles, or pasta, or whatever).

Seville Orange Marmalade

You can scale this up, as you wish.  Each batch makes about 2½ kg, c. 5lbs of marmalade.  There are a couple of different ways of doing it, both a hassle, but worth it in the end.

Ingredients:

1 1kg bag Seville oranges
1 kg preserving or granulated sugar
1 lemon
1 litre water (or less, depending which method you use).

First Method:

Place the whole fruit and the water in a pressure cooker, bring to pressure and cook for 20 minutes at high pressure.  Allow to cool.  When fruit is cool enough to handle (you can leave it overnight, of course), cut each piece in half, scoop out the insides and return them to the pan, and chop the peels very finely.  Boil the insides in the pan for 5 minutes, then strain to remove the pips.  Add the chopped peel and sugar, and proceed as below.

Second Method:

Cut fruit in half and juice it.  Measure the juice, and make up to 1 litre with water.  Boil the pips with some of this liquid (about 150 ml) for 5 minutes, and make up the jug to 1 litre again.  Strain the pips.  Meanwhile, you have been chopping the peels, which is a lot harder when they are not cooked, but you save time by not having to wait for it to cool once the pressure cooker has lost pressure.  Boil the chopped peel in the juice at high pressure for 20 minutes, allow to cool at room temperature, and then proceed.

Both Methods:

Put the sugar into a large pan and add the cooked fruit/water/juice mix.  Stirring all the time, heat gently until it comes to the boil, then allow to boil, stirring frequently, until setting point is reached, which you test on a plate you had previously put in the freezer.  "When it gels, it's jam" to quote Elizabeth Goudge.  Allow to sit for ten minutes, then stir, pot in glass jars which you have sterilised in a warm oven while all this has been going on, and seal.

This is two batches.  I'm wondering if it would be a best or worst of both worlds to cook the oranges after halving and juicing them, but before chopping.  One would still have to wait until they were cool enough to handle, though, which is a nuisance unless you cook them before you go to bed and finish off next day.  Still undecided about which method I prefer.....

For Susan Gerules.

Oh bum, just discovered I already posted this recipe back in 2012.... oh well.  I could delete this, I suppose, but I've written it now....