a sort of chicken tagine

I bought a pound of diced chicken last Friday, and soaked and boiled some chickpeas, with the full intention of making a tagine with them on Sunday. Didn’t get to it, due to an unfortunate cycling incident (OK, I fell off), so I stole 30 minutes yesterday morning to make it.

Browned the chicken pieces in olive oil, and put them in the slow cooker. Cut two peppers (one red, one yellow) into chunks, and fried them off until they were just starting to blacken at the corners, added them to the cooker. Hurled in a sliced courgette which was getting a bit tired, a lemon cut into 8, salt, pepper.

Cut a red onion into chunks, and chopped four cloves of garlic, fried them off, added some ras el hanout to the pan and cooked it for a few seconds. Rummaged in fridge for ideas, and found a jar of tomato and pepper relish, so bunged in a couple of tablespoons’ worth, then a squirt of honey and some water. Brought all that to a simmer, hurled it into the slow cooker with the chickpeas, switched on.

The smell drove us demented all afternoon, and we ate some for supper with rice, and chopped coriander sprinkled over the top.

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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.

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chicken with blue cheese

I did another stuffed chicken breast on Sunday evening – this time with blue cheese, chopped sage, shallot and some walnut oil. I was going to add pine nuts, but we seemed to have run out, which is very bad planning, I know.

It was delicious – accompanied by steamed new potatoes and asparagus. But I should have used more sage. And it only occurred to me yesterday that it would probably have been far more successful, and much easier to stuff, had I beaten the chicken flat first with my trusty meat hammer, so I shall do that next time.

Next time won’t be far away, as when I sent Pete up to the CoOp to get the chicken, they had a stack on special offer as it was approaching its sell-by date, so there are six more in the freezer.

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Tesco is no champion of the poor

“Forget the eulogies to Sir Terry Leahy. The legacy of Leahyism has been damage to our towns, countryside and environment, and the promotion of a much poorer diet that we’ll all pay for”

Excellent piece by Alex Renton from the Guardian.

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roasted asparagus with pasta

“What’s this?” you cry; “two posts in one day? You’re spoiling us.”

We are going to a meeting tonight at 6 p.m. and thought we’d eat our main meal at lunchtime, and just grab a sandwich before we go out. I bought a bunch of  English asparagus at the greengrocer yesterday – don’t suppose there’ll be much more this year, so must gorge while we can. We have a handful of standard recipes we cook with it, but fancied a change. So:

Trimmed the asparagus and put it in a baking tray lined with foil – I generally do this now, as the washing up is so much easier. Drizzled it with a generous quantity of olive oil, and sprinkled some sesame seeds on it. Pete finely chopped a couple of cloves of garlic, which were duly added, then I mussed it all up with fingers; sometimes that’s the only way to do it.

It went into the oven at 180C for 15 minutes, while I cooked some fusilli to accompany it. Then further inspiration struck, and I whipped up a dressing of olive oil and lemon juice.

Pasta, covered with asparagus, covered with the dressing. It really was rather nice, and there’s still half a bunch of asparagus left!

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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.

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pork with leeks, sour cream and cider

I looked in the fridge before we went out yesterday, and found a number of things that needed using up: a head of broccoli, some cooked new potatoes, a rather wizened leek, some cream that had gone over. So I got a pork steak out of the freezer with the intention of cobbling something together with it all.

While hurtling round Asda for bulk supplies of cat food later, I bought a basil plant and was seduced by the thought of a Thai stir fry, but by the time we got home, I’d reverted to Plan A. And here it is.

I cut the pork steak into thin strips (I only used one, because we try not to eat much meat, but you’d probably want one each), and browned it off in some olive oil. Fished out the pork and set it aside (in the microwave, as there were a number of hungry cats marauding thereabouts).

Washed and sliced the leek, and chopped three cloves of garlic, and cooked them down in the olive oil, with a small knob of butter for good measure. Added four chopped sage leaves from the garden. When the leeks were softened, I put the pork back, seasoned it, and added about half an inch of cider, stuck a lid on and put it on a low heat.

Cooked it for about 25 minutes, by which time the cider had evaporated, and the dish had almost caught at the bottom of the pan (horror!) then added a couple of tablespoons of cream, stirred it round, warmed it through.

Ate with the broccoli, steamed, and the potatoes, fried in a little olive oil.  Lovely.

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