not so much Reactive, as desperate

Having been diligent in using up absolutely everything before we went away, we found ourselves with hardly anything to eat when we returned on Friday night.

We got home just after 7 p.m., and I’m ashamed to say we had a Chinese takeaway that night.  Pete manfully cycled off to North Street and got a stack of fruit from the greengrocer on Saturday (the car is off the road while it waits for a no doubt expensive piece of pipe to arrive from Mitsubishi).  I did a big Sainsburys order for delivery yesterday (Sunday), and the Riverford box will be here tomorrow.

So Saturday was a tub of Indian lentils from the freezer, with basmati rice, and Sunday was a tub of chicken and chickpeas from the freezer, with brown rice.  And tonight will be black-eyed beans with tomatoes, and still more rice.  I’ll give you the recipe later - it’s very nice.

[edit] Here’s the recipe as promised.

But I *yearn* for some fresh veg … and to get back to actually cooking.

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holiday food

We went to Ireland; specifically, we went to County Galway, one of our favourite places in the world.  If I won the lottery, I’d be over there househunting tomorrow.

We spent the first night at a guest house in Ennis, which I will gloss over; suffice it to say that at breakfast, they gave us a thermos jug of hot water and a selection of teabags.  Quite.

We then moved on to Rosleague Manor - we’ve stayed here before, and loved it.  I’m not convinced that the food was quite as good this time, but it was still spectacular.  No Connemara lamb, though, which was disappointing.

We ate (between us, not each!):

• clams with coconut and lime
• veal with wild mushroom sauce
• king prawns with sundried tomatoes
• french onion soup
• guinea fowl
• chocolate mousse
• scrambled eggs and smokedsalmon
• asparagus with walnut dressing and Baronne ham
• scallops with roast red pepper
• mackerel
• pork with prunes
• lime pie
• goats cheese with vinaigrette
• honeyed duckling with spiced cranberry relish
• chicken liver pate
• bream with olive tapenade and pesto
• clafoutis

Then we moved on to the Park House hotel in Galway City. This is an odd hotel - in Eyre Square, the heart of the city, and trying desperately to be a chic 21st century hotel (white bed linen and burnt orange throws), but failing desperately.  And the food … I’ve never seen so much food.  The tables were too small, so things were piled upon things.  It’s too depressing to list what we ate, but here’s an example:

I ordered baked cod.  It came on a plate, accompanied by some sort of fish cake. The waiter brought me a baked potato.  The waiter then brought us mange touts and some sort of vegetable puree (it certainly involved parsnips).  The waiter then brought us potatoes in garlic and cream.

The woman at the table next door ordered  lemon meringue pie.  She got it.  On the same plate, she got some sort of red jelly, a brandysnap basket with ice cream, a dob of whipped cream, a strawberry, some blueberries, god knows what else.  It was as though the chef wasn’t really confident, and thus had to put a little bit of everything on every plate.  Just about every plate went back to the kitchen with food on it - nobody could eat all that. I must write and complain - the waste must be colossal.

We ate in the bar the next night - much less gargantuan.

We also ate crab sandwiches (at the (award winning) restaurant in the photo above) and scones and beef and guiness stew and irish cheese and apple pie and chowder and and and.

I love Ireland - can I go back now, please?

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off on holiday

So you won’t see anything about me using stuff up for a week or so - someone *else* is going to cook for us, for a change.

Last night’s supper, which I forgot to photograph, was thus (really scraping the back ofr the fridge):

1 red onion chopped, added to the frying pan with a packet of cubed pancetta, and sautéed with some garlic.  Added some fresh oregano from the garden.

Boiled some fusilli pasta, and when cooked, added it to the pan with a mozzarella.

It was very nice.  We finished it with some Maltesers - well, you don’t want them to go to waste either, do you?

My breakfast for the past two mornings has been 2 hard boiled eggs.  I’m really quite looking forward to some gourmet food.

Be good while we’re gone.

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carrot muffins

Using up: some extremely tired carrots.

This recipe is from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess, and I will type it up for you when I get a moment (ho ho).  She adds a frosting made of Phildelphia cream cheese, icing sugar and lime juice, but we never bother - far too sweet for us.

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in praise of spinach

Spinach is wonderful stuff - I don’t know why more people don’t like it.

This post is a bit of a cheat really, as I wasn’t using anything up per se; it’s more that I fell upon the spinach with cries of glee, and immediately got a tub of bolognese sauce (home made, of course) from the freezer.

This is because we have discovered that, if you put a layer of spinach inside the lasagne, between the bechamel and the pasta, the whole dish is raised from the “isn’t that nice” to the “gorgeous” level.  So that’s what we do.

I’ll be using up the rest of the spinach tonight.

We followed it up with a small fruit salad-ish affair, just chopped up peaches and grapes.  I do wish we were better at fruit …

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broad bean wrap

Using up: broad beans, cashews in salt and black pepper, salad leaves, roast chicken

Riverford brought us broad beans last week (I think these are fava beans in the US).  They’re not something we get excited about, and so they languished in the bottom of the fridge.  Last night I fetched them out and podded them; they took me instantly back to my childhood - the pods are filled with a sort of woolly stuff, and I spent hours podding broad beans with my grandmother, ready for her to salt down into kilner jars (no freezers in domestic houses in those days).  She did the same with runner beans.

So today, we had them for lunch.

In a bowl went the beans (I should mention that I steamed them for about five minutes first), a finely chopped shallot, some chopped herbs from the garden (mint, lemon balm, chives and flat parsley), some shredded chicken, some cashews, diced cucumber.

Also in went a dessert spoon of mayo, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard, a good sloosh of lime juice, and a grating of black pepper.  Mix ‘em all up, and place into wheat tortila wraps, with some salad leaves on the top.

You can see the finished wraps here.

Made a very nice change from our usual cheese and crispbread!

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sunday breakfast

We often have a cooked breakfast on a winter Sunday - although we usually do so much food that we lie groaning on the sofa for the afternoon, and just have some scones or something for supper.

We fancied something more substantial than usual today, but we were more restrained - four eggs scrambled with a little cream and some chopped chives from the garden, four rashers of locally “grown” bacon, and three bagels between us.  I had HP Sauce too - obviously.  Just enough, and leaving room for roast chickie! tonight.

We ate it while watching Turn Left, this week’s Doctor Who episode, which I thought was exceeding good.  And now I’m working, which isn’t, given it’s Sunday afternoon.  Ho hum.

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Tesco being vindictive?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has tabled a resultion at Tesco’s forthcoming AGM; he duly obtained the statutory support of 100 shareholders and tabled the resolution before the final deadline on 16 May.

“[This resolution]. would force it to adopt RSPCA standards or renounce its claim to allow its birds a life free of pain. The motion was tabled before a final deadline.”

Tesco, a company not famed for taking such things lying down, has decided that HF-W must pay them £86,888 for the cost of sending this resolution out to its 235,000 shareholders. Interesting that this year they sent out the AGM papers out 2 weeks earlier than last year; *and* his resolution was in in time.

For what it’s worth, I think Tesco - much as I loathe them - are quite entitled to sell chickens that are raised in appalling, yet legal, conditions, to people who don’t want to spend money on better quality food. The fault here is not, I don’t think, with Tesco, but with DEFRA (gosh, really?) and consumers.

But this tactic of theirs with regard to a legitimate shareholder’s legitimate concerns is really not impressive.

More from the Independent.

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asparagus and badger risotto*

Ah, asparagus - food of the gods. We eat loads of it when it’s around, but we won’t have imported asparagus, so it’s a short season for us.

This serves 2

Take half a bunch or so of English asparagus, trim off the woody bits, slice into 3cm-ish chunks, and blanch for about 5 minutes, or to taste. Drain the cooking water into a measuring jug, and set the asparagus to one side.

Finely chop some spring onions, and sauté them gently in an ovenproof pan in olive oil and butter, along with a packet of pancetta cubes. Add 5 oz risotto rice and turn it about in the pan.

In the measuring jug with the asparagus water, add the juice of a lemon and a couple of fl oz of white vermouth, then top it up to a pint with cold water. Add this to the pan, bring to the boil, and bung in a slow oven - gas 3 - for 20 minutes.

Remove, stir, and return to the oven for 15 minutes. Remove, stir in some shaved parmesan, dish into bowls. Utterly delicious.

Return to the kitchen afterwards to spot what you, dear readers, probably already had … the asparagus still in its pan. Sigh a lot, and eat it cold. Also delicious.

This is what is known in our house as a badger moment, since the day I looked in the mirror and saw the grey streaks in my hair, and shrieked to Pete that I was turning into a badger ..

* Yes, I know that strictly speaking it’s not a risotto, and I don’t care.

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unseasonal soup

It has rained here (near Bristol, UK) since Sunday, and the forecast says rain as far ahead as I can see (which is next Sunday). And so last night, I made some soup for our lunches. It seems ridiculous, given that it’s almost June, but we were actually sitting watching television last night with a rug over our knees - I utterly refuse to turn the heating on in the last week of May!

So - in the food processor, finely chop some tired carrots, a weary courgette, and most of a big onion (the rest went to something else). Sweat these over a low heat in some olive oil until they’ve softened a bit.

Add a carton of creamed tomatoes, a mug full of red lentils, and enough water till it seems about right - about 1 litre in our case, but there were a lot of carrots. Add salt and pepper, and some fennel seeds for good luck, bring to the boil, and simmer for about 90 minutes with a lid.

I’m just about to go eat mine now. Apologies for the lack of photo, either the camera is buggered or the operator is - I know where my money is …

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