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.

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supper 2 Sept 2010 – lentil bake

We eat a lot of this sort of thing – cheap and tasty. This one started with a tub of lentils from the freezer – no point in cooking just one meals’ worth. I finely diced carrot, red pepper and onion, and some garlic, fried them off, then added some ras el hanouh, and cooked it all through for a couple more minutes.

Then about a mugful of red lentils, and probably three mugs of water (although start with two and check as it goes). Sometimes I put a splash of red wine in; it’s a remarkably versatile base recipe. Bring to a slow boil, and cook for about 40 minutes. That will do us at least four servings, and probably six, depending on how much veg went in it. So that was the lentils.

I sliced an aubergine, put it on a tray covered in tin foil (saves washing up), drizzled with olive oil, and bunged in a gas 8 oven for about half an hour. Made a white sauce (with wholemeal flour – always use that for pretty much everything) while that was going on.

Then into an ovenproof dish: half the lentils, half the aubergines, a layer of spinach, half the white sauce, then the rest of lentils, aubergines, white sauce, and topped with grated parmesan. At least it should have been topped, but I got a bit confused :) and put the parmesan on before the last bit of white sauce. No matter. Baked in a hot oven for about 25 minutes.

This was using up a wrinkly aubergine, some spinach that doesn’t look as though it’s going to last long, and some grated parmesan I bought for our camping trip – I’d normally put feta on top of this.

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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?

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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!).

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blackberry and apple crumble

At our old house in Somerset, we had stacks of brambles at the bottom of the garden, and I really do miss them – I must make an effort this weekend to go out and find some blackberries.

However, Sainsburys yesterday had a couple of punnets of cultivated blackberries (not at all the same, but still) in their reduced section, at 99p per punnet, so I grabbed them. I knew there was a cooking apple in the fridge that needed eating, so we were hot to trot!

The Magimix now has a nice shiny new blade, as I lost the old one – no, I don’t have the slightest idea how that could have happened; we’re always very careful with it, as it is exceeding sharp, but there you go – lose it we did.  I imagined it would turn up as soon as I bought a new one, but there’s still no sign of it, which contravenes all laws that I know of.

Anyway, I digress. I peeled, cored and chopped the apple, and dumped it in a pan with the blackberries, a tiny bit of water (about 1/4″, I guess), and a couple of teaspoons of honey, and cooked that down until the fruit was soft, then decanted into an ovenproof souffle dish.

Into the food processor went 6oz of wholemeal flour, 3.5oz of butter and 3oz of caster sugar (any sugar will do – I’d normally use demerara, but the jar was empty and I couldn’t be bothered to rummage for the spare packet).

Whizzed these into a breadcrumb like consistency, then added 2oz of porage oats, and blitzed. Poured the mix on top of the fruit, patted it down and cooked at gas 5 for 40 minutes.

Served with cream. This will do the two of us three days, as we try not to devour such things too quickly.

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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.

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courgette stir fry

One courgette, cut into batons, and three spring onions, finely sliced. Lots of garlic and ginger, chopped finely. Some dried chilli flakes. Stir fried together, then a slosh of soy, slosh of rice wine.

Eaten with rice, out of bowls (I seem to eat less if it’s in a bowl, lord knows why).

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pasta with chicken, blue cheese and broccoli

using up: half a head of broccoli, some everlasting chicken

We had a mound of cold roast chicken left from Saturday’s roast – we had cold with steamed new potatoes and red cabbage, and chicken sandwiches, and dhal with shredded chicken, have put all the bits and bones in the freezer, and were still left with a bowlful of chicken that would feed us for two more meals.

We also had a half a head of broccoli to use up, and we wanted something quick last night as we were both going out.

So, cut the broccoli into florets, and steamed for 6 minutes. Fished it out into a colanader, topped up the pan with some more boiling water and put in some pasta. As an aside, I have taken to weighing pasta (120g) and rice (80g), as I’m watching my carbs – this is about half the amount of both we used to eat, and it’s plenty!

Fried off a roughly chopped onion in olive oil, and added some thyme from the garden. Then lobbed in some chopped up cold cooked chicken and stirred it all around. When the pasta was almost done, I added the broccoli to the chicken pan, then in went the pasta, and about 100g of blue cheese. Stirred all that around till the cheese melted, then served in bowls.

It was nice, but I thought it was lacking something – not sure what. I shall ponder.

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Malayasian-ish veg curry

We had a meal in the local Malaysian restaurant last week, and it was utterly delicious, so I thought I’d have a bash at creating my own. I didn’t bother looking up recipes – it’s more fun to try to recreate a dish, in my opinion.

In the fridge veg drawers was a load of stuff that really needed eating up, so I chopped up:

• 2 courgettes
• 1 aubergine
• 1 leek
• a bunch of lovely sweet carrots from my sister-in-law’s garden
• half a yellow pepper
• a butternut squash that was actually starting to go mouldy – oh the shame …

These were all hurled into the slow cooker. Then I fried off finely chopped garlic and ginger, and a chopped onion. Into the frying pan went a tin of chopped tonatoes, two dessert spoonfuls of smooth peanut butter (I think this might have been too much), some tamarind paste, cumin, coriander, allspice and cinnamon, black pepper.  Cooked the sauce down a bit, then left it to cool.

This morning, I heated it up again, then lobbed it on top of the veg and switched the slow cooker on while we were out for the day at Driffield County Show (cracking day out!).  There is a Smell from the kitchen, and I’m just about to put some rice on to accompany it for our supper.

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pasta with green beans

This was quick, simple and delicious and we’ll make it again!

I had some green beans from my sister-in-law’s garden; we normally stir fry them with mustard seeds, but I thought I’d be a tad more Reactive last night! Topped and tailed the beans, cut them into chunks,m and simmered until they were al dente – about 7 minutes, maybe.

In the meantime, fried off some chopped garlic and a chopped onion in olive oil, adding some pancetta cubes and chopped sage after a few minutes. Put some fusilli on to cook, then added some cream that needed using up, a dash of lemon juice, some ground black pepper to the pan. Put the beans in and warmed it all through, then added the drained pasta and quite a lot of parmesan. Lovely!

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