the weather outside is frightful …

Here’s the forecast for Kingston-upon-Hull for the next few days – not really what you might call an Indian Summer, is it? Pete and I both have a Lurgy, so soup is called for.

Last night I Magimix’d four carrots, a courgette and a leek; the food processor does well with the first two veg with its chopping blade, but it really doesn’t like leeks, so I had to fish out the big bits and chop them by hand. Dumped all the veg in the slow cooker with some olive oil and left them on low for a few hours.

Pete then had to get out of bed to turn the slow cooker off, as we’d forgotten it …

This morning, I dumped in about 1.5 pints of goulash stock from the weekend, together with assorted bits of veg and beans and pork, about 2.5 pints of boiling water, and a mug of lentils, and hopefully it will make a rather nice soup by lunchtime.

This is what’s known in this household as mongrel soup, and generally is far finer than any contrived soup recipe I’ve tried :)

Powered by Bookmarkify™

butchery

It’s so nice to have a good, old-fashioned butcher within walking distance. Our local, Norman, is the sort of place where they keep most of the stuff out the back, and you ask for what you want.

I popped in this morning for some pork to casserole; explained what I wanted to do, discussed the various merits of different cuts, and was then presented with three different slabs of pig to choose from. I appear to have bought 8 rashers of local green bacon and 4 butcher-made sausages too – oops.

Total cost: £7.60 (and the pork will feed four). Can’t grumble at that.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

lunch 2 Sept 2010

We usually have crackers or bread for lunch, with cheese/cold meat/whatever, with the addition of soup in the colder weather. But occasionally, it’s nice to have something different.

As I said, last night’s red cabbage turned out to be lentils when we got the lid off – why do gremlins get into my freezer and relabel things? So I rummaged about and found a tub of aubergine and potato curry.

We tend to freeze Indian style food in small boxes, so we can have two different dishes with a meal – it just works better – so there’s generally a few different things in the freezer, and the aubergine and potato was what came out first.

Zapped the two tubs in the microwave, toasted a couple of wholemeal pitta breads. Delicious, and now the house smells like a takeaway :) And I’m off to find a bit of fruit for pudding – apple or pear?

Powered by Bookmarkify™

supper 1 Sept 2010

Last night was venison burgers brought back from our camping trip, new potatoes and baked beans.

It was meant to be venison burgers with sweet potato wedges and red cabbage, but I ran out of steam when it came to making supper, and just dumped a bag of new spuds in the pot – we’ll use the rest of them in a curry or potato scones or fried with sossidge or, or, or.

And the red cabbage, removed from the freezer in a box labelled “red cabbage”, turned out to be lentils. We felt these wouldn’t really go with burgers, venison or otherwise, so we’ll have them for supper with maybe an aubergine and potato curry (see above!).

Powered by Bookmarkify™

veggie stir fry

We’ve been away camping with a bunch of friends for a few days, so I bought some of those handy little jars of Stuff – garlic, ginger, lemon grass, chili – all ready to be spooned into the wok. So useful, but I always feel guilty! But I brought most of the contents back, and they’ll be used up.

After eating barbecue and so forth for a few days, we just want simple food at the moment; last night was just rice and dhal – one of my favourite Desert Island Meals :)

Tonight , I dumped a teaspoon each of garlic and ginger into the wok, together with half a teaspoon of red chilli, in some hot groundnut oil. In went a red pepper and two big mushrooms, chopped.  Cooked that off, added the juice of half a lemon and some sliced pak choi, and a splash of tamari went in at the end.

Simple and fresh and just exactly what we wanted.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

very quick lentil soup

P and I have been struck down by some summer lurgy, and fancied soup for lunch; it’s a standard comfort food for us. However, we had no suitable ingredients in, and no energy to make it either, so I toiled up to the local small supermarket. We always call it Jacksons, because that’s what it was before Sainsburys took it over about ten years or so ago. God knows why *I* call it Jacksons, because it’s always been Sainsburys to me, but there you go – I’m being assimilated.

Anyway, I digress. They had cartons of fresh soup for £1 each, so I bought a lentil and bacon, which we ate on Monday, and a tomato and basil. Yesterday morning, I put a mug of lentils in to soak in some cold water for a couple of hours, then into a pan went the soup, the lentils, and about 1.5 soup pots of water. Simmered it for about 35 minutes, and while not anywhere near as nice as home made tomato/lentil soup, it really wasn’t bad at all, and there’s enough for today too.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

sapo in the hole

(sapo is Spanish for toad)

We had some snacking chorizos left from this month’s Discover Unearthed tasting box – they’re the first thing we’ve had from them that we didn’t really like, so after the first taste, we decided to cook something with them. And thus a chorizo toad in the hole was conceived.

I made a batter from 3oz wholemeal flour, 1 egg, good pinch of salt, 5oz of semi-skimmed milk. This batter was in itself an experiment – I’m trying to cut down on white flour – and it worked very well.  Cooked down the chorizos in a little oil on the hob first and drained off the excess, then added the batter, and bunged it in the oven at gas 7 for about 30 minutes – came out lovely!

While it was cooking, I bunged a finely sliced onion in the Remoska with a little olive oil, then at the end turned it into onion gravy with the aid of some cornflour and a beef stock cube. Consumed it all with steamed cabbage.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

a quick trip to Aldi

I used to turn my nose up at Aldi and Lidl, but now we are poor people :), I’m a huge fan. There’s an Aldi about 10 minutes walk from home, and after a stroll round the park to see the new ducklings, we popped in for a couple of bits.

£17.38 bought:

• 1 pack of green beans
• 1 cauliflower
• 1 big pack of mushrooms
• 1 block of pate
• 2 packs of smoked mackerel
• 2 packs of oatcakes
• 1 pack of pastrami
• 1 pack of kabanos sausages
• 1 pack of another cold meat that I can’t quite remember
• 2 mozzarella
• 1 pack of Danish Blue cheese
• 1 litre of semi skimmed milk
• 2 tubs hummous
• 2 tins of pilchards (inexplicably, Pete likes these for lunch)

There might even have been more, but I don’t have the energy to go down and check; Aldi do a cracking range of continental meats and other deli type stuff – go take a look!

Powered by Bookmarkify™

cheap as chipsH^H chicken

From time to time – actually, quite often – our local CoOps (and probably yours, if you have one) do great offers on fresh chicken. I like to take advantage of these and stow them in the freezer. The most recent was two packs of chicken thighs for four quid, which seems like a bargain in anyone’s eyes.

I fetched two packs out of the freezer on Saturday, and yesterday turned them into Madhur Jaffrey’s lemony chicken and coriander, which is one of our very favourite things to eat. That recipe is a good guideline, but we use far more garlic and ginger, and I tend to do it in the slow cooker, then the meat falls off the bones.

We tend to eat this with rice and dhal, so we have small portions, and the two packs of thighs made 10 servings – £4 for the chicken, 75p for the coriander, and sunk costs for the ginger, garlic and chillis, which we always have in, I reckon about six quid the lot.  Can’t grumble at that.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

a couple of roast peppers

We had a couple of roasted yellow peppers languishing in the fridge in a jar – not enough to do anything substantial with, but needed using up all the same.

Working at home, lunches get very samey – usually soup, bread and cheese or cold meat, although I have to be careful with cheese now :(   So occasionally, we branch out and do something a tad more exotic, and the peppers proved to be inspiration.

I chopped an onion in half and sliced it thinly, then sautéd it in some olive oil with some chopped garlic. Added some ras el hanout and stirred it about, then added the peppers, thinly sliced.  Then in went a can of drained kidney beans, and a little stock made from Marigold bouillon and some arrowroot to thicken it). Warmed it all through for about 10 minutes.  We ate it with toasted wholemeal pitta – delicious!

Powered by Bookmarkify™