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!

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veg shopping on Chanterlands Avenue

I know I bang on about the price of food here in Hull, but here’s what I got this afternoon in a greengrocer on Chants Ave:

• 3 courgettes
• 2 leeks
• 1 savoy cabbage
• 4 sticks English rhubarb (yum!)
• 1 red and 1 yellow pepper
• a dozen or so shallots
• 1 head fennel
• 3 large oranges
• 1 bag spinach
• 1 butternut squash
• 1 head broccoli

For the princely sum of £12.91.  Bargain, I reckon.

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chickpeas with chicken

We had a load of cold cooked chicken left over from a roast, some rather tired coriander leaves, a wizened yellow pepper, so time for one of our favourites.

Roughly chopped two onions, several cloves of garlic and the yellow pepper, and sauteéd them off in some olive oil. Added some chopped chorizo and let it cook down, and then added some cumin seeds. Hurled in the chicken, a load of chickpeas (which I’d soaked and boiled, but tinned is fine).

Made a stock of Marigold bouillon powder (no home should be without it) and a teaspoon or so of arrowroot to thicken it. Squeezed in the juice of a lemon, and some salt and pepper.  It looked a bit unbalanced, so I bunged in half a jar of roasted yellow peppers, sliced thinly. Left to cook for about half an hour with a lid on, then added the chopped coriander and cooked for another ten minutes.

Delicious!

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indian style aubergines and potatoes

I bought a pack of baby aubergines at the weekend – I’m not normally seduced by such things, but they were so pretty …  We had about a third of them in the roast veg on Sunday, and I was left with not enough for moussaka, but some.  There were also some cold cooked new potatoes lurking in the fridge. So:

Heated some groundnut oil in a shallow pan, and put in some black mustard seeds. Added a chopped red onion, and cooked till translucent.  Lobbed in some standard Indian spices, ground (tumeric, cumin, coriander) and a fresh red chilli, sliced. Stirred it all round.

Added the aubergine and potatoes, cut into largish dice. Stirred round some more. Added about 1/2 mug of water, put lid on, left for 15 minutes.  Stirred in a load of fresh coriander at the end.

It was utterly lovely – we shall be eating *that* again!

We used up the last of the button mushrooms in a poor man’s mushroom pilau – shallot, cinnamon, mushrooms, rice.

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fusion stirfy

We had a simple roast chickie on Sunday, with roast veg. So on Tuesday we had a stir fry, with some cold roast chicken, some button mushrooms, and the remainder of the roast veg.  It worked remarkably well!

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chickpeas bitsa

We accidentally (as you do) consumed a small fry up while on a 7 mile walk today – this is progress, as normally we’d have gone for the large version, but we did feel we deserved it, especially as I’d already walked 2.5 miles and swum 16 lengths this morning!

Anyway, we didn’t want a lot for supper, so we had a rummage in the fridge.

Into a pan went three small chorizo chopped up, with some olive oil – the chorizo came from Discover Unearthed, who very kindly sent me a whole load of new stuff to review this morning, so you’ll be reading about those soon.

Then we added chopped onion and garlic, and a thinly sliced red pepper, and cooked it all down for about 15 minutes.  Added some sesame seeds, chopped rosemary, a dribble of honey and about a wine glass water, popped in the last of the chickpeas, and left it all for another ten minutes.

Ate out of bowls, accompanied by toasted wholemeal pitta – delicious, quick, healthy, tasty.  Perfect.

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