cucumber stir fry

I’m always looking out for things to eat for lunch that aren’t “crackers, cheese and cold meat”, especially at this time of year when soup is off the menu.

I found 1 1/2 rather tired cucumbers in the veg drawer, which is odd, as we normally demolish them quite quickly.  They’re only courgettes in another form, so I decided to cook them for lunch.

I chopped them into chunks (didn’t bother skinning them), and peels and cut an onion in half, before slicing it as thinly as I could (not very :).  Minced up some garlic and fresh ginger.

Put some noodles on to cook, and heated some groundnut oil in the wok.  In went a teaspoon or so of sesame seeds, followed by the garlic, ginger, cucumber and onion.

Stirfried it all for about 5 minutes or so, then added a little soy sauce, and some torn basil leaves, as we happen to have a basil plant on the kitchen window sill.

Drained the noodles and added them to the wok.  Made a really nice change.

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leek and feta risotto

I looked at all the pods from the broad beans, and thought “I should be able to make some stock with those”, so I threw them in the slow cooker with some water for a few hours.

There were two rather tired leeks in the fridge, so they were sliced and sautéd in olive oil and butter, then I added 5 oz of arborio rice and stirred it round.  I added some finely chopped lemon balm from the garden too.

Then in went 1 pint of the pod stock (which was not great, but OK), bit by bit, stirring as I went to allow the rice to absorb it..  Some sea salt and black pepper, and half a block of feta at the end, chopped into small chunks, which made it nice and creamy.

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broad beans with pancetta and tuna

A bag of broad beans arrived in the veg box on Friday; we like ‘em, but you don’t get many once you’ve removed them from the huge furry pods.

I simmered them for about ten minutes, then drained, blanched, and put in a big bowl.  I fried off a pack of pancetta cubes and put them to drain on some kitchen roll, then fried some cold potatoes from the fridge in the fat, and drained them similarly.  Then they went into the bowl with a tin of tuna and a dressing made from the juice of half a lemon (that was in the fridge in clingfilm), a little walnut oil, and a generous teaspoon of dijon mustard.

Lovely summer food.

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chinese style green beans

Still more green beans to eat …

Topped and tailed them, chopped into 2cm chunks (this is starting to sound like a repeat :).  Simmered for 6/7 minutes.   Drained and rinsed in cold water.

Chopped an onion and some garlic, oh and some fresh ginger.  Heated groundnut oil in the wok, added about a dessertspoon of mustard seeds and waited for them to pop.  Then hurled in onion, garlic and ginger and cooked until soft, splattering self in hot oil in the process.

Added the beans and some five spice powder,  stirred about for a couple of minutes, added a good splash of tamari, cooked for about 2 minutes.

I used too much oil, but it worked really well.  We had it with basmati rice, which had the juice of half a lemon added to it, which is really nice.

And now the green beans are all gone - hurrah!  But another veg box arrives tomorrow …

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lentil dosas

I’ve been wanting to make these ever since I spotted them in one of my bread books, but I’ve never been organised enough to do it - they’re remarkably simple, but you need to start them 32 hours in advance, according to the book.

Take 3/4 cup of long grain rice (I used Basmati, as we had no long grain), 1/4 cup of red lentils, and combine in a bowl with 1 cup of warm water.

Cover with clingfilm, and leave for 8 hours.

Then, blitz the contents of the bowl in a food processor, and return to the (rinsed out) bowl, recover with the clingfilm, and leave for 24 hours.

Then stir in some salt, ground black pepper and 1/2 tsp (ish) of turmeric.  The recipe said to add fresh coriander; we didn’t have any, but I did lob in some grated fresh ginger.  It claimed it would make 6 x 6″ dosas, but I made them a bit smaller for ease of scoffing - just heat up a heavy based frying pan, add some oil, and cook them like drop scones or whatever.

They were utterly delicious - we ate them with some leftover black-eyed peas in tomatoes that I cooked up at the weekend to accompany our (home made) chicken dansak.  We shall be having them again!

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green beans and pasta

I reviewed the contents of the veg drawer last night - to my shame, there were two small turnips going mouldy, so they had to go.  A wide assortment of carrots was hurled into the slow cooker for carrot and coriander soup for lunch today.  And there were a lot of green beans.

We like green beans, but we tend to do the same sort of stuff with them every time, and I wanted to try something different, so this is what I did.  It was lovely - perfect summer food.

Topped and tailed the beans, and then cut them into chunks of about 2cm.  Set them to simmer for about  seven minutes, I guess.

Put on some pasta quills to boil.

Got Pete to grate a lot of parmesan, rummaged for the tired half lemon in the fridge, and went and cut some fennel fronds from the garden, which I chopped up small.

Combined beans, pasta, parmesan, black pepper, lemon juice, fennel and some cream, and scoffed from bowls.

Followed it with local strawberries and a home made brownie.  Lovely.

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kabanos stew

Pete likes a kabanos sossidge with his lunch, and for years we bought packs of long ones (fnaar) from Costco.  Of late, sadly, they have only had the shorter kabanos in stock, which simply aren’t the same, and thus they don’t get eaten.

I opened the box in the fridge a few days ago, because I fancied a kabanos for my lunch, and horror - they were developing a bloom which looked very like mould.

So I chopped them up, discarding the suspect bits, and put them in the slow cooker.  Added 3-4 carrots, diced small, a chopped onion, the last of the mushrooms (which were a bit wizened) and a sliced yellow pepper.  And a tin of tomatoes, and a sloosh of red wine, and some savory from the garden.  No seasoning, as I though the kabanos would do that themselves.

And they did - cooked it all day on Monday, and drove ourselves wild with the smell, ate it with mashed potatoes and steamed green beans.  It made a tub for the freezer too.

At some point, we’re going to have to eat some of this stuff in the freezer, you know …

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peach cobbler

I’ve wanted to make a cobbler for ever, but have never actually done it.  We were a bit overrun with soft fruits (we’re really bad at eating them), so I decided to have a bash.

Cut up the peaches and nectarines, took out the stones, and put them in an ovenproof dish.  I tossed them in some plain flour, and drizzled with honey.  With hindsight, I should have added just a bit of water, but hey ho.

Then made the cobbler crust with 6oz plain flour, pinch of salt, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tbsp caster sugar and 3 oz marg, blitzed in the Magimix to a breadcrumb texture.  Then added 5oz of soured cream (which I had gone out and bought *specially*! - I’m pretty sure yogurt would do fine).

Made little scone-ish shapes, quite thin, and laid them over the fruit.  Dusted with caster sugar, and baked at 200/gas 6 for about 30 minutes.  ’Twas delicious - we shall be having that again.

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chickpeas and chard

There was a bunch of swiss chard lurking in the fridge; and we were slightly over-tomato’d.  So I soaked some chickpeas overnight on Friday, and bunged them in the slow cooker with some boiling water at early o’clock on Saturday, so that we could construct something for supper.

Sliced the chard into 1 cm strips, and blanched it for 2-3 minutes.  Skinned and chopped three fat tomatoes (actually, I got Pete to do that, as raw tomato makes me heave).

Fried about 1 dessertspoon of caraway seeds and an onion in some olive oil, then added tomatoes, ground coriander, some tamarind paste (watered down), some water and cooked that down for about 20 minutes, then added chickpeas and chard.  Chopped fresh coriander went in at the end, along with the juice of half a lemon.

We ate it with rice, and it was lovely.  A tub went in the freezer, and the last couple of spoonsful served as a base for a chickpea salad to go with yesterday’s barbie.

As usual, of course, there are Still More Chickpeas.  Some are being dealt with for tonight’s supper (details to follow), and the rest will go for hummous, I think.

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green beans and tomato

We’re a bit over veg’d this week, as we bought mushrooms and asparagus as well as the box, and so we’re starting to panic a bit over what’s left this week, given another box arrives tomorrow.  Think I’ll have to cancel next week’s …

Tonight, we looked at the large number of runner beans, and I used half of them thus:

Topped and tailed the beans, cut them into chunks of about - oh - 3cm, I guess, and simmered them for about six minutes.  While that was going on, Pete chopped an onion and some garlic, and I sautéd them in some olive oil till soft, then added a carton of passata (sieved tomatoes, for those who haven’t tried it).

Put some fusilli on to boil.

We had half a bunch of parsley in the fridge, left from making a beef stroganoff on Saturday (bad, bad …) - I wouldn’t normally buy parsley at this time of year, but mine has been slow to take off in the herb garden this year.   So Pete chopped up the remains and we added it to the tomatoey mix close to the end; added some fresh ground pepper too.

We topped it with grated parmesan, and it was really nice - very simple summer food. It would work with all sorts of veg, I reckon.

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