sweet potato and cauliflower curry

The veg box brought us a pair of sweet potatoes, and we had a cauliflower left over.

Not wanting to cook too much in the heat, I peeled the sweet potatoes and cut them into 2cm-ish chunks.  They were simmered for about 18 minutes, and I put the cauliflower florets in the steamer basket for the last 7 minutes.

I chopped an onion and a red pepper, and minced ginger and garlic, and fried that lot off in some olive oil, while Pete ground some spices with a Morrocan twist (including pomegranate seeds), and I put them in the frying pan with the onion mixture for a couple of minutes.

Tipped everything into the slow cooker, and added the rest of the broad bean stock. Cooked on low for about 8 hours, and ate with rice, but cous cous would have worked too.

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the rest of the asparagus

scrambled eggs and asparagus, originally uploaded by ramtops.

Well, we had it for lunch on Wednesday - I simmered it for five minutes, and I made some scrambled eggs with cream and butter, while Pete made some toast.

When the asparagus was ready, I’m afraid we tossed it in butter too; if you’re going to have a cholesterol attack, you may as well have a proper one.

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Sunday morning breakfast

Sunday morning breakfast, originally uploaded by ramtops.

Pancakes (made by Pete), raspberries and cream.

Nom nom nom.

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two more years

I’ve just paid to renew this domain for another two years, so I guess I’ll have to continue writing Stuff.

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local food for local people

Last Friday, Pete and I skived off for the day in order to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, and went down to deepest, darkest Somerset. En route to Porlock, we screeched to halt at a sign advertising “locally picked asparagus”, and bore home a bunch that was reassuringly expensive.

On Saturday, the local farm shop had Axbridge strawberries too.

So we roasted the asparagus in the oven with olive oil and sesame seeds, and ate it with angel hair pasta and feta. The pasta stuck together a bit - I should have added some oil when it was cooked - but it was sublime. And the strawberries were consumed with brownies and double cream.

Nom nom.

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yet another gammon

I pulled this hunk of MP^H^H pig out of the freezer yesterday morning, meaning to check later in the day as to whether it was cooked or not (I really should label things better).

I didn’t check, and it is uncooked, sadly, so there will be no gammon for lunch today. But there will be gammon for lunch tomorrow, as I have hurled it into the slow cooker with 1l of coke (all that was in the house, as we don’t drink it), two oranges cut into quarters, juice squeezed into the pot and the orange remains put in too, a dessertspoon or so of coriander seeds, and half a cinnamon stick.

We shall see how that turns out!

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Homecoming

After our little weekend away (see the last post), we felt the need for simple food and an early night; having brought back a few Dexter rump steaks uneaten that can’t be refrozen, I decided to throw together a beef stir fry to use up half of one of them at least.

We also have a surfeit of oranges, so I cut the steak into strips and marinated it in the juice (and a bit of pulp) from one, along with a slosh of teriyaki, a larger slosh of rice wine and a bit of maple syrup.

While that was sitting, I chopped three small shallots, julienned some garlic and ginger, cut a tired courgette rescued from the fridge into small batons, and finely sliced a deseeded red chili.

I fried the shallots, ginger and garlic in some groundnut oil in the wok, added some fivespice then the courgette, fried some more, and then added the chili. The beef along with its marinade went in next and cooked down for a few minutes. I added a slosh of tamari at the end, then tossed in cooked noodles, and stirred in some fresh basil just before serving.

Just the thing to eat whilst watching the extended HIGNFY off the Tivo, and nicely followed by the last two slices of chocolate, walnut and coffee cake warmed in the microbe and an episode of Boston Legal before bed.

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Team Waste cooking

Every year, a whole bunch of us gather at a mate’s place just outside Carmarthen, and spend a few days drinking and talking (mostly) bollox.  It’s been traditionally held over the August Bank Holiday, but Geoff decided to give it a try in May this year, and it worked - I have returned sunburned and insect-bitten!It’s hard to explain what it is, really - this was the 11th year, I think; it’s possibly my favourite weekend of the year, catching up with old friends, drinking whisky round the table till the early hours then stumbling back to the tent to sleep, watching some of the guys completely wreck a piece of automotive machinery … I suspect that pictures will give a far better idea than words, so take a look at the Team Waste Flickr group for more edification, should you be interested. I provide dinner on Friday nights, cooking up a huge gammon (5 kgs this year), using Nigella’s poor white trash method of cooking it in full fat coke.  The rest of the time we eat mostly barbecued stuff, and I fancied a change, so this year I packed a huge cast iron pan and a travelling larder of Stuff, together with chopping board, knife, wooden spatula and slotted spoon, and stopped at a butcher in Monmouth for things to cook. So, on Sunday afternoon, armed with lots of chicken breast, and fortified by quite a lot of cold white wine, Jacqi and I constructed a stir fry.  Using a heavy duty burner on the end of a tank of propane, and the aforementioned pan, we started with two rashers of bacon that hadn’t been put back in the fridge - fried them off to get the fat.  Then we cooked unfeasible amounts of strips of chicken breast - in batches - and set them aside with the bacon. Then in went onion and garlic, begged from Sheena (the lady of the house) and olive oil.  It was quite hard to keep these from burning, as the burner seemed to be pretty much binary - hot or off - but we managed, and kept adding more oil, although I switched to rapeseed quite quickly due to the heat.  Then heaps of sliced mushrooms were added and fried off. Back went the chicken and bacon, together with sea salt, black pepper,  plum sauce, teriyaki, and garlic and chilli sauce (it was a very well stocked travelling larder!), together with a few slooshes of white wine to keep it at the right consistency. We hurled in some chopped basil (which I’d picked up from the supermarket for mini pizzas) at the last minute. Quite a few slooshes of white wine also went into the cooks - it was very hot out there in the sun, never mind the cooking! Sheena had made a pork curry and cooked a stack of rice, so it all blended rather well together. I was going to do something with steak and red wine in the evening, but everyone was a) full, and b) suffering from the sun, so I brought it home again; there’ll be some recipes from there later - it came out of the freezer, so needs to be used up.

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mini pizzas

Our hostess at the weekend did these for Saturday lunch - so simple, and utterly delicious.

Take pitta bread, spread with tomato paste, cover with grated mozarella and bake in the oven.

I’d brought a pot of basil back from the supermarket that morning, so some of that was chopped and added, and you could add any number of things to make them interesting.

Top idea, Sheena!

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this week’s veg box

From Box Bush Farm, £15 bought us:

• 1 bag potatoes
• 1 bag carrots
• 1 bag rather nice pale green beans
• 1 bag small chestnut-y mushrooms
• 1 bag rocket
• 1 lettuce
• 1 bag spinach
• 2 small cabbages
• 1 bunch asparagus
• apples, oranges, bunch of bananas

Difficult week, as we have people round for Eurovision tonight (cooking Indian, details later), and are away for a few days from Friday morning.

Must use up asparagus, spinach, rocket first.  Will ponder. Suggestions welcome.

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