Time and energy were in short supply this evening, but fortunately, broccoli was not..
Recipe - broccoli, spring onion and ginger stir fry
Preparation here is everything, because once this stir-fry starts, you don't have time to get anything ready!
In the pan
- 1 tbsp olive oil. If you have sesame oil, do a tsp sesame and 1.5 tsp sunflower oil. Sesame oil on its own is too pungent.
- 3 thin rounds of ginger, cut into small strips (about 1 loose tsp full).
- half a clove of garlic, sliced thinly.
Vegetables
- 1 small head of broccoli. Wash the stem and slice it thinly (into 2-3mm slices). Cut the florets with long stems - I like mine to be at least 2 inches long, but only about 1cm across.
- Spring onions - greens sliced into 1.5 inch sections, dense greens and whites sliced into thin rounds (mabe 1/8 inch).
To wilt the veg
- 1/3 cup chicken stock (I used Knorr gel stock).
Sauce
- 1/3 thumb-sized piece of ginger, skinned and finely grated.
- 1 large garlic clove, finely grated, mixed with the ginger.
- 1.5 tsp runny honey
- 2 tbsp light soy sauce
Carbs
- egg noodles. Straight-to-wok if you want them cooked in, or boil separately if you're like me and like to sit the stir-fry on top of the noodles.
Garnish
- I lacked sesame seeds, but suspect that these, toasted in a pixi-pan beforehand and scattered over the top would have been delicious.
Cooking:
Boil the water for the noodles.
Heat the oil, garlic slices and ginger pieces in a pan. Stir them occasionally. When they start to sizzle, add the broccoli stem rounds and the smaller bits of spring onion. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Don't let the garlic burn.
Add in the rest of the broccoli and then the chicken stock - don't do it all at once, and be mindful that it may spit, so do it with caution.
Noodles go in.
Cook a couple of minutes, flipping occasionally with a spatula until the broccoli is vibrant green.
Add the sauce. Cook until mostly absorbed.
Drain the noodles, allow to steam for a moment, then plate.
Serve stir-fry onto noodles.
If you have them, sprinkle over a few toasted sesame seeds.
Enjoy with a light, crisp fruit juice (cranberry, apple or a still lemonade), a lemon/ginger cordial, or, if you're drinking alcohol, a glass of vino verde or pinot grigio, or a light, zingy beer. I don't drink beer, so I can't make an honest recommendation here.
No photos of this one - couldn't get one without dreadful glare from halogen lights and in the end, gave up and ate it. Sorry! I'll post pics of the next one!
Sunday, 27 April 2014
Saturday, 26 April 2014
Summer's coming - bring on the Padróns!
Summer is coming. I wanted to use an exclamation mark here, but then realised I've been too caught up with delayed-onset Game of Thrones fever to miss out on the tenuous link. I'm only part way through the first book, so it'll be interesting to see whether I find myself inspired to do GoT themed food later on.
This is not Game of Thrones inspired. This is quick, simple Spanish fare, and if you haven't tried it yet, you have to. Go out and buy some Pimientos de Padrón (Padrón peppers) as soon as you can!
I do as my family does - these go with pre-dinner drinks if I have them, or are a cheeky afternoon snack instead of a packet of crisps. I tend to eat 4 at a time, only because the dimensions of my pixi pan limit me considerably. I love my pixi pan - it's a frying pan whose circumference is a little larger than the palm of my hand.
Here's what you do:
1. Heat oil in a little pan.
2. Pierce your Padróns once on each side with a sharp knife (no picture of this as I only figured it out during a later cooking escapade where one puffed up and exploded. Not fun or safe).
3. Put the Padróns in the hot oil carefully.
4. Allow the skins to blister and turn brown. Keep turning the peppers.
5. Once the peppers are well browned and soft to the touch, place onto a plate sprinkle with coarse-grained sea salt (I absolutely love sea salt, so I used quite a lot here -- you don't need nearly so much as is evidenced by the final picture in which most of the salt crystals are exactly where they were).
6. Allow to sit on the cool plate for a moment or two so that they're not mouth-ruiningly hot, then eat whole, seeds and all (leave the stem, though).
For beer-drinkers out there, this favourite Spanish bar snack goes well with a cold one. If you're more like me, a glass of crisp white wine or Prosecco is good, or if you're like the other side of my personality, a nice, zingy apple juice with a wedge of lime would work well, too. Make sure to add lots of ice.
Enjoy, and bring on the sunshine!
This is not Game of Thrones inspired. This is quick, simple Spanish fare, and if you haven't tried it yet, you have to. Go out and buy some Pimientos de Padrón (Padrón peppers) as soon as you can!
I do as my family does - these go with pre-dinner drinks if I have them, or are a cheeky afternoon snack instead of a packet of crisps. I tend to eat 4 at a time, only because the dimensions of my pixi pan limit me considerably. I love my pixi pan - it's a frying pan whose circumference is a little larger than the palm of my hand.
Here's what you do:
1. Heat oil in a little pan.
3. Put the Padróns in the hot oil carefully.
4. Allow the skins to blister and turn brown. Keep turning the peppers.
5. Once the peppers are well browned and soft to the touch, place onto a plate sprinkle with coarse-grained sea salt (I absolutely love sea salt, so I used quite a lot here -- you don't need nearly so much as is evidenced by the final picture in which most of the salt crystals are exactly where they were).
6. Allow to sit on the cool plate for a moment or two so that they're not mouth-ruiningly hot, then eat whole, seeds and all (leave the stem, though).
For beer-drinkers out there, this favourite Spanish bar snack goes well with a cold one. If you're more like me, a glass of crisp white wine or Prosecco is good, or if you're like the other side of my personality, a nice, zingy apple juice with a wedge of lime would work well, too. Make sure to add lots of ice.
Enjoy, and bring on the sunshine!
Catch-your-breath fruit salad - a zingy summer salad with a twist
I love fruit - I always have done. I've got some quirks about what I eat - I prefer peaches crunchy and bananas on the green side; pears need to be crisp, more starchy than juicy. This recipe, though, showcases some of my absolute favourite fruits to eat at their very best. I adore sour flavours, so this is on the sour side, but really light after a rich meal (egg and asparagus preceded this).
I've called it Catch-your-breath fruit salad because the zing really makes you stop and explore the flavours involved. I don't think that it's overpowering, but I do think that you need to get the balance of zinginess to sweetness right.
Here are the ingredients I used - please note that the photo doesn't show quantities:
For the salad:
3/4 of a large honeydew melon (ripe, peeled and cubed into 2-3cm chunks).
3-4 ripe red/purple plums.
1/2 punnet of ripe blueberries (shell out extra for those with big flavour - bland blueberries are very much all mouth and no trousers. Don't buy them.)
A whole pomegranate, seeds lovingly removed into a dish or if you're lazy, over the salad as you make it.
(NOTE: Pomegranate juice stains badly. Please don't wear pale clothes or do near surfaces that can't be wiped clean -- if you're doing on a white worksurface, make sure you've got a decent sized cutting board to avoid alarming red stains. Also consider your company - I am glad I was alone when I made this - I had hands like Lady Macbeth by the end of it!)
For the dressing:
The juice of a lime.
15 large mint leaves, shredded.
A tablespoon of honey (more/less to taste).
Half a thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and grated finely on a microplane if you've got one.
Putting it together:
Cut the melon up, then the plums. Get the pomegranate seeds on as quickly as you can, as I suspect that the acidity does something to prevent discolouration. I also love the way that a pomegranate bleeds all over the white flesh of the melon. Tip over the blueberries (do taste them beforehand to make sure they're adding to it flavour-wise). Then shred the mint, sprinkle on top and toss the lot together.
Now make the dressing. Grate the ginger, juice the lime and beat them together. Taste a tiny bit now to get a feel for how much honey you'll want to add. Get the honey in a bit at a time. I like a squeezy bottle here as it's less faff than doing it spoonful by spoonful. For an extra lime hit, add the zest (no pith!). For the daredevils amongst you, I reckon a finely sliced red chilli would be brilliant here. I shall try that next time.
Add a small drizzle (about a teaspoonful) to a shallow dish of salad and stir through. Add more if you need it. It doesn't take much - too much and you won't taste the melon.
Result: A fresh, light, zingy salad with a mint, lime and ginger hit, but sweetness from the lemon. Sour, crunchy pomegranate jewels and sweet, bursting blueberries set up a textural counterpoint while the plum adds a juicier, chewier sensation and the mild bitterness of the skin works beautifully with all the flavours. Get your spoon in and enjoy.
Picture taken after I'd realised that I hadn't yet shown the dressing. I honestly only used a teaspoonful for this helping, and it was plenty. It's not a great picture, but by this point I was no longer focused on getting a decent shot - I just wanted the next mouthful.
Hope you enjoy it!
I've called it Catch-your-breath fruit salad because the zing really makes you stop and explore the flavours involved. I don't think that it's overpowering, but I do think that you need to get the balance of zinginess to sweetness right.
Here are the ingredients I used - please note that the photo doesn't show quantities:
For the salad:
3/4 of a large honeydew melon (ripe, peeled and cubed into 2-3cm chunks).
3-4 ripe red/purple plums.
1/2 punnet of ripe blueberries (shell out extra for those with big flavour - bland blueberries are very much all mouth and no trousers. Don't buy them.)
A whole pomegranate, seeds lovingly removed into a dish or if you're lazy, over the salad as you make it.
(NOTE: Pomegranate juice stains badly. Please don't wear pale clothes or do near surfaces that can't be wiped clean -- if you're doing on a white worksurface, make sure you've got a decent sized cutting board to avoid alarming red stains. Also consider your company - I am glad I was alone when I made this - I had hands like Lady Macbeth by the end of it!)
For the dressing:
The juice of a lime.
15 large mint leaves, shredded.
A tablespoon of honey (more/less to taste).
Half a thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and grated finely on a microplane if you've got one.
Putting it together:
Cut the melon up, then the plums. Get the pomegranate seeds on as quickly as you can, as I suspect that the acidity does something to prevent discolouration. I also love the way that a pomegranate bleeds all over the white flesh of the melon. Tip over the blueberries (do taste them beforehand to make sure they're adding to it flavour-wise). Then shred the mint, sprinkle on top and toss the lot together.
Now make the dressing. Grate the ginger, juice the lime and beat them together. Taste a tiny bit now to get a feel for how much honey you'll want to add. Get the honey in a bit at a time. I like a squeezy bottle here as it's less faff than doing it spoonful by spoonful. For an extra lime hit, add the zest (no pith!). For the daredevils amongst you, I reckon a finely sliced red chilli would be brilliant here. I shall try that next time.
Add a small drizzle (about a teaspoonful) to a shallow dish of salad and stir through. Add more if you need it. It doesn't take much - too much and you won't taste the melon.
Result: A fresh, light, zingy salad with a mint, lime and ginger hit, but sweetness from the lemon. Sour, crunchy pomegranate jewels and sweet, bursting blueberries set up a textural counterpoint while the plum adds a juicier, chewier sensation and the mild bitterness of the skin works beautifully with all the flavours. Get your spoon in and enjoy.
Pretty colours and lovely flavours - if you don't like ginger and lime, the salad works well like this (above).
Hope you enjoy it!
A most excellent veggie dinner
Tonight, I had one of my favourite vegetarian dinners. It isn't vegan, as egg plays a major part, but it's light, relatively cheap and extremely nutritious.
I had: a soft boiled (free range) egg, asparagus and kale chips (excuse the rubbish picture -- I was extremely hungry, so the fact that I managed to snap this at all shows, in my opinion, a serious act of willpower).
The soft-boiled egg was a large egg and fresh today. I boiled it for about 4 and a half minutes. It probably could have taken another 15 seconds - the white was just a bit watery near the yolk. The asparagus was on the old side - I got it cheap as it was pretty clearly on its last legs, so it had quite a pungent flavour - not as sweet or delicate as the English asparagus coming in at the moment. Had I been feeling a) meaty and b) profligate, I might have bought myself some thin streaky bacon or even pancetta, and frizzled up three strips to have on the side. Instead, I ground some sea salt and black pepper onto the yolk. SO GOOD!
The kale chips were on the side to add a much-needed crunchy dimension - I wouldn't have needed them if I'd had the bacon. As usual, I rubbed torn up, de-ribbed kale pieces with olive oil, sprinkled on some coarse sea salt and baked in a 175oC oven for about 10 minutes until the kale was shiny and crisp, with the edges just turning brown.
Hints for making kale chips:
- Wash your kale first, but dry it really, really well. Use a salad spinner if you have one, and pat with a clean teatowl. The less extra water there is, the faster your kale will crisp and the less risk there'll be of overdoing it and burning it.
- Cut the ribs out, or tear them out like I do. They don't go crisp, instead going stringy, floppy and gross. If you don't want to waste them, suspect they'd either work well cut into small chunks and used early in a stir fry. Alternatively, use in soup.
- If you suspect your oven might run hot, turn it down and cook it for longer. What you're really doing here is dehydrating the kale.
- If you've a sweet tooth or particularly enjoy crispy seaweed with a Chinese takeaway, add a little fine brown sugar when you add the salt. Yum.
Next up: Catch-your-breath fruit salad -- my new favourite!
I had: a soft boiled (free range) egg, asparagus and kale chips (excuse the rubbish picture -- I was extremely hungry, so the fact that I managed to snap this at all shows, in my opinion, a serious act of willpower).
The soft-boiled egg was a large egg and fresh today. I boiled it for about 4 and a half minutes. It probably could have taken another 15 seconds - the white was just a bit watery near the yolk. The asparagus was on the old side - I got it cheap as it was pretty clearly on its last legs, so it had quite a pungent flavour - not as sweet or delicate as the English asparagus coming in at the moment. Had I been feeling a) meaty and b) profligate, I might have bought myself some thin streaky bacon or even pancetta, and frizzled up three strips to have on the side. Instead, I ground some sea salt and black pepper onto the yolk. SO GOOD!
The kale chips were on the side to add a much-needed crunchy dimension - I wouldn't have needed them if I'd had the bacon. As usual, I rubbed torn up, de-ribbed kale pieces with olive oil, sprinkled on some coarse sea salt and baked in a 175oC oven for about 10 minutes until the kale was shiny and crisp, with the edges just turning brown.
Hints for making kale chips:
- Wash your kale first, but dry it really, really well. Use a salad spinner if you have one, and pat with a clean teatowl. The less extra water there is, the faster your kale will crisp and the less risk there'll be of overdoing it and burning it.
- Cut the ribs out, or tear them out like I do. They don't go crisp, instead going stringy, floppy and gross. If you don't want to waste them, suspect they'd either work well cut into small chunks and used early in a stir fry. Alternatively, use in soup.
- If you suspect your oven might run hot, turn it down and cook it for longer. What you're really doing here is dehydrating the kale.
- If you've a sweet tooth or particularly enjoy crispy seaweed with a Chinese takeaway, add a little fine brown sugar when you add the salt. Yum.
Next up: Catch-your-breath fruit salad -- my new favourite!
Friday, 18 April 2014
Ultra-simplicity
This week is a week of serious austerity. In the run-up to Easter, when I know I'm going to be spending a little more on buying a couple of treats for loved ones, I'm cutting back hard. That means emptying my fridge and freezer down to nothing, and cracking open the store cupboard basics. I'm mindful of getting vitamins and minerals, but fortunately new job at a greengrocer's means I get to nibble on damaged fruit on and off throughout the day.
Today I have definitely OD'd on lactose - I'm lactose intolerant, but I had milk and cheese in the fridge that wanted using up, and a small tub of tomato and onion pasta sauce leftover from the night before.
Breakfast was super-simple porridge: 1/2 cup of porridge oats, 1/2 cup of milk (I use semi skimmed), 1 cup of water. Cook together stirring constantly until thick and bubbling. Decant into a bowl, allow it to cool slightly so a bit of a skin forms (yum) during which time you can be soaking the pan and the wooden spoon. Sprinkle liberally with demerara sugar (you'll use under a dessert spoon to cover the top of a bowl with a smallish circumference that is relatively deep). Fabulous. Ready, laid out, eaten and washed up in under 15 minutes. Got me through 7 hours of shop work.
Lunch (at 3:15pm) was leftover spaghetti, tomato and onion sauce and a little grated cheddar. Tastes of home and reassurance.
Dinner was a second pasta meal. That makes 3 pasta meals in the last 4 - that's probably a bit much. I'll have to eat extra fruit and vegetables tomorrow to make up for it. Pasta was served with a very simple cheese sauce. A chunk of butter was cooked until sizzling and just browning at the edges, then a heaped dessert spoon of flour was mixed into it to make a roux. I thinned the roux with milk to make a white sauce, shoved in about a teaspoon of fiery English mustard and ground an eye-watering quantity of black pepper on top. This was mixed in, after which, finely grated cheddar cheese was added. If I'd have had any, I'd have served this with kale chips on the side, or maybe some bacon pieces scattered over the top. As it stands, these things were not available, so I had a bland-looking meal that was made nose-twitchingly good with the addition of mustard and pepper. Next time, cayenne will probably join the party.
Snacks today: 4 pimientos de padron, cooked hard in olive oil, pierced before they exploded and served up with seasalt. Happened to have these knocking around - I received a handful of slightly sad looking ones as a bonus from work, and these were the last of them. My favourite treat at the moment. I also ate a rather indifferent satsuma that was on its last legs, a couple of leftover dried dates and a few raw carrots. I am about to treat myself to a rather small plum. You'll notice, possibly, that there is no chocolate. I've had to cut right back on chocolate as it was a serious food expenditure for me. I was also quite seriously addicted to it - if it's there, I can't say no. Dates are a reasonable substitute. I'm trying desperately to remind myself to enjoy it on Easter day rather than just plant my face into it and consume...
I don't like being short on cash, but I'm reminded often that it could be a lot worse. Living quietly like this is a great way to get myself into training for continuing to make sound financial and ethical decisions about food. My message to myself today is that I've cut my food wastage to almost nothing, and I need to keep going. I need to compromise on quantity, not quality - buy things because I know exactly what I'm going to do with them and when, and ask myself whether I can honestly say that the animals I have to thank for the meat and eggs on my plate (when I eat them, which is rarely) had a decent quality of life.
Camera currently AWOL -- once it has been recovered, I shall start posting awkward and badly framed photos of food. Promise. :)
Today I have definitely OD'd on lactose - I'm lactose intolerant, but I had milk and cheese in the fridge that wanted using up, and a small tub of tomato and onion pasta sauce leftover from the night before.
Breakfast was super-simple porridge: 1/2 cup of porridge oats, 1/2 cup of milk (I use semi skimmed), 1 cup of water. Cook together stirring constantly until thick and bubbling. Decant into a bowl, allow it to cool slightly so a bit of a skin forms (yum) during which time you can be soaking the pan and the wooden spoon. Sprinkle liberally with demerara sugar (you'll use under a dessert spoon to cover the top of a bowl with a smallish circumference that is relatively deep). Fabulous. Ready, laid out, eaten and washed up in under 15 minutes. Got me through 7 hours of shop work.
Lunch (at 3:15pm) was leftover spaghetti, tomato and onion sauce and a little grated cheddar. Tastes of home and reassurance.
Dinner was a second pasta meal. That makes 3 pasta meals in the last 4 - that's probably a bit much. I'll have to eat extra fruit and vegetables tomorrow to make up for it. Pasta was served with a very simple cheese sauce. A chunk of butter was cooked until sizzling and just browning at the edges, then a heaped dessert spoon of flour was mixed into it to make a roux. I thinned the roux with milk to make a white sauce, shoved in about a teaspoon of fiery English mustard and ground an eye-watering quantity of black pepper on top. This was mixed in, after which, finely grated cheddar cheese was added. If I'd have had any, I'd have served this with kale chips on the side, or maybe some bacon pieces scattered over the top. As it stands, these things were not available, so I had a bland-looking meal that was made nose-twitchingly good with the addition of mustard and pepper. Next time, cayenne will probably join the party.
Snacks today: 4 pimientos de padron, cooked hard in olive oil, pierced before they exploded and served up with seasalt. Happened to have these knocking around - I received a handful of slightly sad looking ones as a bonus from work, and these were the last of them. My favourite treat at the moment. I also ate a rather indifferent satsuma that was on its last legs, a couple of leftover dried dates and a few raw carrots. I am about to treat myself to a rather small plum. You'll notice, possibly, that there is no chocolate. I've had to cut right back on chocolate as it was a serious food expenditure for me. I was also quite seriously addicted to it - if it's there, I can't say no. Dates are a reasonable substitute. I'm trying desperately to remind myself to enjoy it on Easter day rather than just plant my face into it and consume...
I don't like being short on cash, but I'm reminded often that it could be a lot worse. Living quietly like this is a great way to get myself into training for continuing to make sound financial and ethical decisions about food. My message to myself today is that I've cut my food wastage to almost nothing, and I need to keep going. I need to compromise on quantity, not quality - buy things because I know exactly what I'm going to do with them and when, and ask myself whether I can honestly say that the animals I have to thank for the meat and eggs on my plate (when I eat them, which is rarely) had a decent quality of life.
Camera currently AWOL -- once it has been recovered, I shall start posting awkward and badly framed photos of food. Promise. :)
Monday, 17 March 2014
A really terrific sandwich
I love posh tinned sardines. Mum knew I was coming to visit so made sure we had some of the good Pamentier sardines in olive oil that we can get from the local Waitrose. There are also some cherry tomatoes to use up, and some sourdough. That means one of my favourite sandwiches.
Ingredients
2 slices of sourdough bread
6 to 10 small cherry tomatoes
Half a tin of sardines in olive oil (sustainably sourced)
A couple of leaves of a nice, crunchy lettuce
A little olive oil
A pinch of salt
A good grinding of pepper.
Method
Coat the cherry tomatoes in the oil, salt and pepper, and bake at 180oC until the skins are split and frizzling.
Toast the sourdough.
Smush the sardines onto one piece of the toast, top with the lettuce and the roasted tomatoes, then the other piece of toast.
Eat immediately. Yum!
Ingredients
2 slices of sourdough bread
6 to 10 small cherry tomatoes
Half a tin of sardines in olive oil (sustainably sourced)
A couple of leaves of a nice, crunchy lettuce
A little olive oil
A pinch of salt
A good grinding of pepper.
Method
Coat the cherry tomatoes in the oil, salt and pepper, and bake at 180oC until the skins are split and frizzling.
Toast the sourdough.
Smush the sardines onto one piece of the toast, top with the lettuce and the roasted tomatoes, then the other piece of toast.
Eat immediately. Yum!
Sunday, 16 March 2014
An easy dinner -- Fairly Lazy Pasta
I'm going away for a couple of days from this afternoon (I'll probably still write about what I've been eating) -- all the way to the other side of London. That means that I've been in the happy position of needing to use up the last odds and ends in my fridge. I'm not going to lie, I'd been careful with my ingredients this week so that I'd find myself in this happy position. This dinner is a stalwart favourite.
Fairly Lazy Pasta (offspring of Lazy Pasta, parent of Ugly Fridge Pasta).
Ingredients
Spaghetti
Handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
Baby corn, cut into chunks
Half a tin of sustainably sourced tuna fish in olive or sunflower oil
Cheddar cheese - grated or cubed (I like it cubed for this) - to taste - I eat a small palmful of cubes, but could tolerate far more.
Olive oil
Cayenne pepper
Paprika
Black pepper
Sea salt
Method
Preheat the oven to 180oC and set a pan of water boiling.
Toss the cherry tomatoes and baby corn pieces in a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkling of paprika and cayenne pepper, some black pepper and a small pinch of some good quality coarse-grained sea salt*. Bake uncovered in the oven for 20 minutes, or until the tomatoes are shrunken and the baby corns are starting to singe.
After 10 minutes, put the pasta on to boil.
While the pasta is boiling, sort out your half tin of tuna and cube or grate your cheese.
Drain the pasta, allow to steam off for a few moments, then tip in the tuna and toss it through. Plate up. Get the vegetables out of the oven and tip them over, then immediately add the cheese so it melts over the lot.
Allow to sit for a couple of moments so that the cheese melts and so that the tomatoes are no longer primed to explode in your mouth and take the skin off every surface the juice touches. IGNORE ME AT YOUR PERIL!
This is an easy, cheap and scrummy dish. The corn is not essential, in fact I rarely use it, but I had half a pack left over from something else that really was on its last legs. I'll add the variants of this (Lazy Pasta and Ugly Fridge Pasta) soon. All are inspired by rustic Italian (and to some extent, Spanish) cooking, and the habit of chucking the lot into a pan with some olive oil and turning a few flavours into something heartening and enjoyable.
*As you may know, I don't tend to add salt to food, but I do believe that baked cherry tomatoes are vastly improved by its addition - it works fabulously to dry out their skins and create sticky, bitter-sweet and salty caremalised bits at the bottom of the baking pan.
Fairly Lazy Pasta (offspring of Lazy Pasta, parent of Ugly Fridge Pasta).
Ingredients
Spaghetti
Handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
Baby corn, cut into chunks
Half a tin of sustainably sourced tuna fish in olive or sunflower oil
Cheddar cheese - grated or cubed (I like it cubed for this) - to taste - I eat a small palmful of cubes, but could tolerate far more.
Olive oil
Cayenne pepper
Paprika
Black pepper
Sea salt
Method
Preheat the oven to 180oC and set a pan of water boiling.
Toss the cherry tomatoes and baby corn pieces in a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkling of paprika and cayenne pepper, some black pepper and a small pinch of some good quality coarse-grained sea salt*. Bake uncovered in the oven for 20 minutes, or until the tomatoes are shrunken and the baby corns are starting to singe.
After 10 minutes, put the pasta on to boil.
While the pasta is boiling, sort out your half tin of tuna and cube or grate your cheese.
Drain the pasta, allow to steam off for a few moments, then tip in the tuna and toss it through. Plate up. Get the vegetables out of the oven and tip them over, then immediately add the cheese so it melts over the lot.
Allow to sit for a couple of moments so that the cheese melts and so that the tomatoes are no longer primed to explode in your mouth and take the skin off every surface the juice touches. IGNORE ME AT YOUR PERIL!
This is an easy, cheap and scrummy dish. The corn is not essential, in fact I rarely use it, but I had half a pack left over from something else that really was on its last legs. I'll add the variants of this (Lazy Pasta and Ugly Fridge Pasta) soon. All are inspired by rustic Italian (and to some extent, Spanish) cooking, and the habit of chucking the lot into a pan with some olive oil and turning a few flavours into something heartening and enjoyable.
*As you may know, I don't tend to add salt to food, but I do believe that baked cherry tomatoes are vastly improved by its addition - it works fabulously to dry out their skins and create sticky, bitter-sweet and salty caremalised bits at the bottom of the baking pan.
Mmmm. Frittamble. One piping hot mess.
I LOVE frittatas. I love creating a huge Italian omelette full of as many delicious things as I possibly can and then having a beautiful, rustic meal at the end of it. Herein lie my two core problems. I lack the patience, and more importantly the dexterity to be able to create a proper stove-top frittata (I cannot create an in-stove one as all of my frying pans have plastic handles and are non-stick). So today, I improvised.
I knew when I was making this that it was never going to win any prizes for beauty. This was oddly cathartic and meant that I could throw in whatever I wanted without worrying about how it was going to come out. This was a purely taste-and-smell driven exercise and my goodness it was delicious.
A frittamble is my attempt at a cute and kitsch name for a hybrid of a frittata and scrambled eggs - think the equivalent in culinary nomenclature of 'labradoodle'.
The process was simple: Get as many vegetables as possible into a pan and cook them with as many eggs as I could spare (3 and a half - I had a leftover egg white in the fridge from my turkey burger adventure earlier in the week) and make sure that it was all properly set and cooked through by repeatedly gouging and bludgeoning the dish with a spatula. There are no pictures. I was too hungry during the cooking process to have the forethought to locate my camera.
Frittamble -- serves 3 hungry people or 4 reasonably hungry people if there's a salad.
Ingredients:
A good drizzle of olive oil (probably a tablespoon, but you could use more if you felt it necessary)
3 and a half eggs - well-beaten (The half helped -- I suspect 4 would have been lovely but 5 might have made it too rich).
6 smallish boiled potatoes, skins on, cut into roughly half-inch cubes.
4 good-sized banana shallots, sliced into thin half-moons (use an onion if you've got one - I just love the bitter caramel taste of burned shallot).
A red pepper, halved, cored, relieved of pith and sliced into half-cm squiggles.
8-10 cherry tomatoes, halved
A handful of curly kale (a green in this is essential)
A half-teaspoon of paprika (smoked would be best)
A hearty grinding of black pepper
Cayenne pepper if you're like me and add it to pretty well everything. Add to taste.
Method:
Fry the shallots in the oil first over a low-medium heat. Get them golden brown with a few little stragglers turning crispy, or even a little burnt if that's your thing (that's how I like them). Keep them moving. You'll need to pop back to the stove frequently to prevent them all from turning to charcoal.
Next, add in your peppers and kale and allow to cook until the peppers are floppy, stirring frequently.
Then add in your potatoes and tomatoes. Keep the mixture moving, as the soft, starchy potatoes will begin to break down and coat the rest of your ingredients with the tomato juices, causing them to crust and start to stick together. Use a wooden or silicone spatula to keep the crust from burning on the bottom of the pan.
Once you've started to build up a nice, golden-brown crust on some of the potatoes and are getting some good flakes of it littering the pan, it's time to add your eggs. Make sure they're well beaten before adding. As soon as they're in, add your paprika and pepper, and cayenne if you're adding it (I only added a touch for zing).
Keep moving the mixture around. Don't beat it, as you don't want to turn the potatoes to total mush. Keep scraping off the bottom and sides of the pan and flipping the ingredients as best as possible, one spatulaful at a time.
Once the eggs have all firmed up and have a good, firm scrambled consistency wrapped around the other ingredients, you have yourself one piping hot mess.
I ate this as it was, from the pan, to a plate. This particular recipe did 3 servings for me, but I'm horribly greedy, so it would probably serve four, particularly with a salad.
Of all the things I've posted so far, this is the one I'm most excited to make again soon. Next time, if I'm feeling really profligate, I might add in a little bacon or pancetta (nothing meatier than that unless I happen to have some chorizo lying around - a rarity in my current state of austerity). You could add courgette as well, but you'd need to fry it down to dry it out first and prevent it from being too wet in the mixture and turning it slimy.
I knew when I was making this that it was never going to win any prizes for beauty. This was oddly cathartic and meant that I could throw in whatever I wanted without worrying about how it was going to come out. This was a purely taste-and-smell driven exercise and my goodness it was delicious.
A frittamble is my attempt at a cute and kitsch name for a hybrid of a frittata and scrambled eggs - think the equivalent in culinary nomenclature of 'labradoodle'.
The process was simple: Get as many vegetables as possible into a pan and cook them with as many eggs as I could spare (3 and a half - I had a leftover egg white in the fridge from my turkey burger adventure earlier in the week) and make sure that it was all properly set and cooked through by repeatedly gouging and bludgeoning the dish with a spatula. There are no pictures. I was too hungry during the cooking process to have the forethought to locate my camera.
Frittamble -- serves 3 hungry people or 4 reasonably hungry people if there's a salad.
Ingredients:
A good drizzle of olive oil (probably a tablespoon, but you could use more if you felt it necessary)
3 and a half eggs - well-beaten (The half helped -- I suspect 4 would have been lovely but 5 might have made it too rich).
6 smallish boiled potatoes, skins on, cut into roughly half-inch cubes.
4 good-sized banana shallots, sliced into thin half-moons (use an onion if you've got one - I just love the bitter caramel taste of burned shallot).
A red pepper, halved, cored, relieved of pith and sliced into half-cm squiggles.
8-10 cherry tomatoes, halved
A handful of curly kale (a green in this is essential)
A half-teaspoon of paprika (smoked would be best)
A hearty grinding of black pepper
Cayenne pepper if you're like me and add it to pretty well everything. Add to taste.
Method:
Fry the shallots in the oil first over a low-medium heat. Get them golden brown with a few little stragglers turning crispy, or even a little burnt if that's your thing (that's how I like them). Keep them moving. You'll need to pop back to the stove frequently to prevent them all from turning to charcoal.
Next, add in your peppers and kale and allow to cook until the peppers are floppy, stirring frequently.
Then add in your potatoes and tomatoes. Keep the mixture moving, as the soft, starchy potatoes will begin to break down and coat the rest of your ingredients with the tomato juices, causing them to crust and start to stick together. Use a wooden or silicone spatula to keep the crust from burning on the bottom of the pan.
Once you've started to build up a nice, golden-brown crust on some of the potatoes and are getting some good flakes of it littering the pan, it's time to add your eggs. Make sure they're well beaten before adding. As soon as they're in, add your paprika and pepper, and cayenne if you're adding it (I only added a touch for zing).
Keep moving the mixture around. Don't beat it, as you don't want to turn the potatoes to total mush. Keep scraping off the bottom and sides of the pan and flipping the ingredients as best as possible, one spatulaful at a time.
Once the eggs have all firmed up and have a good, firm scrambled consistency wrapped around the other ingredients, you have yourself one piping hot mess.
I ate this as it was, from the pan, to a plate. This particular recipe did 3 servings for me, but I'm horribly greedy, so it would probably serve four, particularly with a salad.
Of all the things I've posted so far, this is the one I'm most excited to make again soon. Next time, if I'm feeling really profligate, I might add in a little bacon or pancetta (nothing meatier than that unless I happen to have some chorizo lying around - a rarity in my current state of austerity). You could add courgette as well, but you'd need to fry it down to dry it out first and prevent it from being too wet in the mixture and turning it slimy.
Saturday, 15 March 2014
An unusual (and hypocritical) snack
I love leafy green veg, and have been eating lots of vitamin C-rich foods of late, so I'm primed to absorb iron from them. I bought a nice bag of curly kale the other day to go in my clear-the-decks soup, but was left with the majority of a bag left over. Some of it went into the frittamble (frittata/scrambled egg ... thing -- see next post), but the rest went on kale chips.
Kale chips are my hypocritical snack because they are very salty, and in my last post I said that I don't add salt to foods. This is one of a few exceptions. Oh my gosh so tasty.
The recipe is simple and available in lots of places online - here is how I did it today:
Drizzle a little olive oil over some bite-sized kale pieces with the thick, fibrous midribs removed. Rub the oil in so that it properly coats the surfaces of the leaves, including in the little crenulations. Then add sea-salt to taste. I really don't recommend using regular table salt for this - you want that really specific flavour that comes from good quality sea salt to match the bitterness of the leaves.
Bake the leaves low down in a pre-heated 150oC fan oven (170oC for a regular oven) for 8-10 minutes. Take them out when the leaves have darkened and are just starting to go a little brown at the very edges.
If the brown is spreading into the centre of the leaves, they will taste burnt, so try to avoid that (I still eat them).
Bung them into a bowl and enjoy with a cold glass of cranberry juice, or whatever you fancy.
Friday, 14 March 2014
The soup - a review, and how not to make melba toast.
I had the Clear-the-decks soup for lunch today. It worked quite well, though it was much, much too thick to eat as it was - more of a root vegetable puree. I split the puree in half and boxed some of it up to freeze - no point in taking up extra freezer space by thinning it beforehand.
The second half was thinned with yet another half litre of vegetable stock. In retrospect, milk might have worked, but I wasn't convinced that milk would work with the kale, and also I'm pretty lactose intolerant, and I'm still not too well, so it might have been a bridge too far.
Once I'd thinned it, I split it in half again. Half went back in the fridge, half went into a pan with a handful of shredded kale. I heated it through quite hard while I made a poor effort at some melba toast (see below). Once it was hot through and my toast was as ready to go as it was going to be, I gave it a try.
The first thing to say is that it was salty enough to make it taste like a canned soup, which was a shame - the stock I had used the second time was too concentrated.
It was thick and spicy and warm, and the kale had a tiny bit of a bite to it with that dark, sylvan green cutting through the brownish-orange of the soup itself. The flavour wasn't strong, but the mild bitter iron taste really cut the heaviness of the soup. Perhaps a squeeze of lemon juice would have made even more of a difference, but the soup is eaten and I am too full to try a taste test on another batch just now.
It was a good meal, and one that I feel far better for having eaten, though I am drinking copious amounts of water to counter the saltiness of the stock - I am reminded here, however, that I rarely add salt to food unless the flavour specifically demands it, as we do not eat extra salt in my family home for medical reasons (note: this goes out of the window whenever I am cooking chicken pieces with cherry tomatoes, which I shall do sometime next week -- I never cook this for anyone but myself and friends I know are not at risk from overdoing salty foods). Perhaps the soup would be fine if you're a human halophile.
Anyway: the melba toast disaster.
I love melba toast - when I can be bothered and have the right bread, it's a serious treat. Today I tried doing it a little differently.
Here is how I would do it normally for two people (and probably overdoing it at that):
- Lightly toast four slices of cheap sliced bread (granary, wholemeal or white are fine, but fruity would burn - the cheapness means that the water content is quite high so the bake is crisp and quick).
- Once out of the toaster, as soon as you're able to handle the toast without hurting yourself, cut it carefully into two identical halves through the edge of the bread. This can be done either by very carefully bisecting the crust width-wise, or by cutting the crusts off and using the soft non-toasted centre as an easy way in. You should have two thin sheets of toast the same shape as your original bread.
- Cut the half-toasts (which should be crispy on one side and fluffy on the cut side) into triangles and lay on a baking sheet, fluffy-side up. Do not pick off the little hummocks of balled-up dough that are made in the cutting process - they add pleasing texture.
- Put the baking sheet into a low oven for 10 minutes, or until the slices are golden brown, light and crispy to the touch and curling up at the corners.
- Eat immediately.
I really, really love melba toast. It spins a loaf out brilliantly, and is a great use for cheap bread.
What I did today was not so successful. Last week, when I knew that my finances were going south what with becoming one of Britain's ranks of unemployed (complex story - not up for discussion at present), I started thinking about ways to save money and to work even harder at preventing waste. There was a very cheap going-off-in-the-morning loaf of hovis sliced white in the supermarket, so I bought it and froze most of it. I've been pulling off slices to shove in the oven to heat through before toasting since then, and it's spun out really well.
What I did today was to try to cut out the 'middle-man' of toasting. I simply heated and slightly dried the bread in the oven, then attempted to cut it edge-wise. Did not work. The bread needs toasting to get the broad sides crispy enough to act as a barrier to the knife. Normally when I'm slicing melba toast, I can feel the difference in texture where I'm cutting and know if I'm getting too close to the surface. No such luck here. What I got was frankly a mess. I melba'd it anyway. Still tasted all right but as you'll see, looked a bit of a sight and was a bit too uneven for my liking. Nevermind. It hasn't killed me, I've thought about the process - learning is good. And I'm still full of soup and toast at the end of it all, and that was really my primary goal. All is well.
Thursday, 13 March 2014
Clear-the-decks soup
Tonight, I've eaten leftover turkey burgers and bubble and squeak (see previous post), but bubbling away on the stove is something for tomorrow, and for my freezer (supposing it freezes ok, which it might not -- expect an edit further down the line). I'm making 'Clear-the-decks soup' - what I make if I've got things going off in the fridge that won't last another night.
Tonight's recipe is this:
1 pack of diced onions (from the day before yesterday's yellow-sticker excitement)
2 leeks, sliced
2 medium-sized swedes, diced
1 butternut squash, diced
1 tbsp garlic puree
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
2 bay leaves
Cayenne pepper to taste
About 900ml chicken stock
Black pepper.
Use a big pot for this one!
I cooked the spices and garlic puree gently together for a few moments before stirring in the onions and leeks and cooking them on a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring frequently to stop the garlic burning.
I added the squash and swedes and stirred them into the leek/onion mix, cooking them for another 10-15 minutes, again stirring frequently.
Once they had cooked for a while, I added in the stock (I use the knorr jelly pots) and left it to it. It's simmering away nicely now, but the veg is taking its time to soften.
I've just tasted it again, and it's got a lovely light, zingy flavour, but there's a little too much swede in there for me (I put as much as I did in because they were 25p each and needed a home). To counter that, I've put in another stock pot, and will be throwing in a bit of extra cayenne pepper (my favourite spice of all).
I'm still in two minds about what to do with it once it's cooked through; I know that I'm going to blitz the soup down and try to get it smooth, but then I might add some milk to give it a velvety consistency. Not sure yet.
When it's done, I'll shred some curly cale (another bargain), and cook that through it for a few minutes (I love the bitter greenness of it with the sweetness of the root vegetables).
I'll edit this post once I've had a bit of a play with the final product. For now, I need to keep an eye on it and probably get it off the heat soon.
I'd like to know what sort of soups other people make when they're clearing the decks - if you've got one to share, add it as a comment :)
Tonight's recipe is this:
1 pack of diced onions (from the day before yesterday's yellow-sticker excitement)
2 leeks, sliced
2 medium-sized swedes, diced
1 butternut squash, diced
1 tbsp garlic puree
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
2 bay leaves
Cayenne pepper to taste
About 900ml chicken stock
Black pepper.
Use a big pot for this one!
I cooked the spices and garlic puree gently together for a few moments before stirring in the onions and leeks and cooking them on a low heat for 10 minutes, stirring frequently to stop the garlic burning.
I added the squash and swedes and stirred them into the leek/onion mix, cooking them for another 10-15 minutes, again stirring frequently.
Once they had cooked for a while, I added in the stock (I use the knorr jelly pots) and left it to it. It's simmering away nicely now, but the veg is taking its time to soften.
I've just tasted it again, and it's got a lovely light, zingy flavour, but there's a little too much swede in there for me (I put as much as I did in because they were 25p each and needed a home). To counter that, I've put in another stock pot, and will be throwing in a bit of extra cayenne pepper (my favourite spice of all).
I'm still in two minds about what to do with it once it's cooked through; I know that I'm going to blitz the soup down and try to get it smooth, but then I might add some milk to give it a velvety consistency. Not sure yet.
When it's done, I'll shred some curly cale (another bargain), and cook that through it for a few minutes (I love the bitter greenness of it with the sweetness of the root vegetables).
I'll edit this post once I've had a bit of a play with the final product. For now, I need to keep an eye on it and probably get it off the heat soon.
I'd like to know what sort of soups other people make when they're clearing the decks - if you've got one to share, add it as a comment :)
Turkey burgers and bubble and squeak - hurrah for yellow stickers!
So far, I've been rubbish at keeping up-to-date with my kitchen blog, and now find myself in a not-so-small kitchen! I do, however, still have very little storage space (I share with others), and a very, VERY small budget (currently trying to get back into employment).
So here is what is going on in my kitchen today:
Lunch - leftover bubble and squeak and pitta bread.
I got some beautiful red potatoes on sale (hurrah for yellow stickers!) and had a cabbage in desperate need of using up in the fridge. I had also picked up a couple of packs of pre-chopped onions which I normally deplore, but for the amount of onion in each one and the price, it was cheaper to buy them than the same quantity of whole onions - yellow stickers again. My last yellow sticker bargain was a pack of leeks for £1.27 -- not the cheapest of the cheap, but far better than the £2-something that I normally refuse to pay.
I steamed the cabbage, sauteed the leeks and onions and boiled the potatoes. Once everything was cooked and cooling, I popped the potatoes out of their skins and crushed them with a little butter. I stirred through the cooled onion and leek mixture, and then the cabbage. I formed half the mixture into little patties, dusted them with a little flour and fried them in a butter/oil mixture until they were golden brown. Really tasty. Today, I had some of the leftovers, cold from the fridge, stuffed into crispy toasted pitta. Really, really good!
This evening, I had the last of the leftovers along with a leftover turkey-burger from yesterday, too. The turkey burgers were another bargain. The turkey was from my freezer and really wanted using up. When I fried off the leeks and onions for the bubble and squeak, I kept some back and kept it cooking and added in a cubed red pepper. I took it off the heat and cooled it, then mixed it by hand through the defrosted turkey meat along with some paprika, cayenne pepper, lots and lots of black pepper, some oregano and an egg yolk. If I'd been more prepared, I'd have set aside some breadcrumbs, too - the mixture needed a bit of extra stability.
I fried them in a pan with hot olive oil until the edges were blackened and crisp, and the peppers on the outside had taken on that glorious bitter, burned sugar taste. I found that the mixture was too wet (I ought to have drained the meat a bit, or used less egg, and certainly to have added some toasted breadcrumbs), but I got 3 nice little burgers out of it, plus a pile of 'deconstructed' turkey mince with some veggies through it ;)
Proper recipes will go up at some point, once I've got some quantities. For now, I hope you're inspired, or at least hungry!
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