mushroom, garlic and cream sauce

Using up: mushrooms, cream

We popped into Bristol on Wednesday to buy my iPhone (bounce!), and found that the farmers’ market was on. Bristol is really badly served for food markets; this one is nice, but we work at home and so it’s not easy to pop into town during the week on a regular basis.  The freezers were full, and we were well stocked too, but we bought a couple of Pieminister pies, which we had for lunch when we got home, a couple of beautiful muffins (white choc and raspberry, and double choc chip), a bag of Worcester Pearmain apples, three varieties of sausage, a small punnet of local strawberries (hence the cream left over), and these lovely chestnut mushrooms.

So - a mushroom sauce.

Finely chopped two shallots and about five cloves of garlic.  Cut the mushrooms into chunks of about 1.5cm.  Put this lot in a pan with a BIG knob of butter and some olive oil.

Mushrooms are bastards - they slurp up all the oil and butter and you think everything’s going to burn and stick, and then all of a sudden they start exuding it all out again, so I cook them very slowly to confound them; these were done for probably 20 minutes.  At some point during this process I hurled in some chopped rosemary and sage from the garden.

Five minutes before the end, I put on some tagliagelle, and added a tiny splash of white wine - probably only a tablespoon, some double cream, and black pepper to the mushrooms.  Pete had parmesan on his, but I felt it didn’t need it.

We followed it up with the remains of a plum and pear crumble I made on Monday, and the very last of the cream.  All entirely gorgeous.

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chickpeas and chorizo

using up: chickpeas, a courgette, fresh coriander, a rather shrivelled lemon

I soaked and boiled some chickpeas for Saturday’s vegetable tagine, and as usual, I did too many.  I found a courgette in the fridge that was going a bit manky at one end, so that needed eating up as well, and the freezer audit revealed *14* chorizo sausages, which really does seem rather too many.  A plan was formed.

I chopped up:

one red onion, most of one courgette (see above), three cloves of garlic, one red pepper and two chorizo sausages. Set these to sauté over a low heat in some olive oil.  When you cook chorizo, they give off a lovely paprika-y juice, so don’t use too much oil if you’re doing this.

I let them cook for about 20 minutes over a fairly low gas, then added the chickpeas and the juice of a lemon, and carried on for, oh, about ten minutes on as low a gas as possible, just to warm them through.

Just before serving, I stirred in a handful of chopped coriander.  Decanted it into bowls and scoffed.

Followed it with local strawberries - yes really, in mid September!  More on that story later.

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vegetable tagine

Using up: bits of veg - courgettes, carrots, aubergine, spinach

As I said a day or so back, I wanted to do something other than moussaka with the aubergine.  We also had some green beans that needed eating up, a fair number of carrots and a lot of courgettes, so they seemed like suitable candidates for this.

Firstly, I simmered the cut green beans and carrots for 5-6 minutes, as they would need longer to cook than the other veg. I also cooked the last third of the bag of spinach for a couple of minutes, rinsed it under cold water, drained it, and marmalised it in the food processor.

We chopped up two red onions, lots of garlic and two green chillis, and cooked them down in olive oil in my old faithful Le Creuset cast iron casserole.  Then we added some spices, ground up in our trusty spice grinder; Pete did them, and there’s no point in asking for quantities - just do what you think is right.  He did cumin and coriander seeds, allspice, dried ginger, cinnamon and turmeric, and some black pepper.

We added this to the pan and fried them a bit to release the flavour.  Then we added one each of aubergine and courgette, cut into dice, and stirred them around a bit until they were coated with oil.  Added the carrots and green beans, and quite a lot of chickpease (I’d put a big batch into soak on Friday night, and cooked them up yesterday; not sure yet what I’m going to do with them).

Added a tin of tomatoes and a little salt, brought it to the boil, put a lid on it, and simmered for about 25 minutes, then added the spinach puree and simmered for another ten or so.

Ate it with couscous.  I put three tubs in the freezer this morning, so that made eight portions for what can’t have been more than about four quid, which I think is pretty good.  And it was delicious too!

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lentil lasagne

[sorry - no photo]

Using up: some spinach

As my regular reader will know, I made some lentil moussaka mix last weekend for the freezer. I even bought an aubergine to go with it.  But then I thought “we always make moussaka when we have aubergine”, and decided I might try something different with it.  Which I will be doing tonight, so you can read about it in a couple of days - unless, of course, it’s a disaster.

However, as I had removed the lentils from the freezer, I had to think what to do with them.  And this is what I came up with.

Make a white sauce with plenty of nutmeg.  Layer half the lentils in a dish, cover with lasagne verdi, add a thick layer of spinach and half the white sauce.  Repeat, but without the spinach this time.  Sprinkle the top with a mixture of parmesan and gruyere, grated.  Bake at 200/gas 6 for about 30 minutes.

It was spectacularly nice - I’m not sure I didn’t like it better than lasagne with a bolognese sauce.  We’ll be doing that again.

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roasted veg

Using up: sweet potatoes, other veg

We haven’t had this for ages, and I really don’t know why. It’s simple to prepare, and utterly lovely.We had a couple of sweet potatoes in the veg box this week; not enough to make a sweet potato mash, so this is what I did.

Cut up into chunks: 2 medium sweet potatoes, 1 courgette, 2 carrots, 1 red pepper, 1 red onion.  Finely chopped 3 cloves of garlic.

Put all this in a bowl with some sea salt, and some good, strong olive oil and mixed it up with my hands. I have discovered through trial and error that this is the only way to get everything coated.

Put in an oven at gas 6 for about 45 minutes - 1 hour.  It’s hard to be precise because of the size of the veg chunks.  I was running late due to the cake making, and so I covered the veg with a tin foil hat for about 20 minutes to give them a kick start, or you could give them 5 minutes in the microwave.

Serve with cous cous.  Delicious!

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beef and borlotti bean stew

Using up: ribeye steak, tin of borlotti beans, 2/3 jar roast yellow peppers

As previously mentioned, we brought back some meat from our Wales camping trip.  Neither Pete nor I are that fond of steak in its natural form these days - we are too old and badgery to digest it properly :) But we still had three left (P stirfried one a couple of nights ago, and it was delicious).  However, we do like a nice casserole.

So … rummaged in the cupboards and this is what I concocted.

Chopped up 2 sticks of celery, 2 carrots, 1 large courgette into small dice.  Sautéd these down with a chopped onion, several cloves of minced garlic, and a sloosh of olive oil.  I just stuck a lid on the pan and let it get on with it for 20 minutes or so.

Found two tired mushrooms in the fridge and chopped them very small - more for flavour than appearance. Retrieved the jar of roast yellow peppers that I opened last week and had forgottten (oops), and sliced up the remaining contents. Sliced the steaks into chunks and put all these in a big cast iron casserole dish.

I added a tin of borlotti beans that was so old it was going rusty (!), a tin of chopped tomatoes, half a glass or so of red wine, the sautéd veg, seasoning, and sage / thyme / rosemary from the garden.

This sat on a very low light at the back of the cooker while I cooked our supper (we always try to leave casseroles till the next day, they taste so much better), then it was put in a very slow oven to cook overnight.

At about 2.30 a.m. the smell was driving me mad, so I came down and switched it off.  I found Liessa sitting on the worktop beside the cooker, basking in the heat from the oven :)

This morning, I decanted most of it into three tubs for the freezer, while leaving enough for our supper tonight (nom nom nom).  So three steaks have made eight servings - not bad :)

p.s. Photograph taken before it went into the oven, as the “after” pic didn’t come out very well.

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lentil moussaka

Sorry - forgot the picture!  Using up: aubergine, some grated cheese

This turned into a bit of an epic, and was lovely.  I looked up some recipes, both on the interweb and in my copious collection of cookery books, but nothing seemed quite right, so I made it up as I went along.

I put some olive oil in our small Le Creuset casserole, while I chopped a large onion and some garlic.  Then I realised it would be *too* small so decanted the oil into the next size up. Sautéed the onion and garlic  until the edges started to brown.  Then I added half a sachet of “Egyptian spices”, which has been on the shelf for ages.  It consisted of cumin, coriander, ground hazelnuts (!) and some other stuff - easy enough to replicate.  Stirred that around a bit, then in went a mugful of puy lentils, a tin of chopped tomatoes, and a mugful of water (with which I swilled out the tomato tin first), and a sloosh of red wine.   Put the lid on, moved to the back on a low light.  A little later, when I thought of it, we added some thyme and rosemary from the herb garden.

Regarded the oil sticking to the small casserole, and decided that I couldn’t waste it.  So I chopped three potatoes into dice, boiled them for five minutes then fried them in the small casserole, with more olive oil.  That’s reactive!  Set them aside.

Sliced an aubergine into, um, slices, and Pete fried them in olive oil (we must have used a lot last night).  Set them to drain on kitchen paper.  Made a bechamel-style sauce, and added half the grated cheese; it was red leicester and gruyere, I think, and had been grated on Sunday night for the pasta bake, but we decided to use a mozzarella instead.

The lentils were done by now - I think they had about 45 minutes in all.  I put the potatoes into the lentil mix, then took a pyrex dish, and layered lentils / aubergine / cheese sauce twice, and scattered the remaining cheese over the top.  It had about 20 minutes at gas 6/200°, and then we ate it and it was divine.

Half the lentil mix went in the freezer for another day, so this would serve 4 quite hungry people.

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Belatedly, a mongrel stew

Mac mentioned the meal I cooked last Thursday; I’ve finally got round to typing up what I did. This really was reactive cooking with a vengeance: I had hardly the slightest idea what I was going to do and just let myself be guided by what ingredients were to hand, sniffing and tasting, and what passes for instinct.

Ingredients:

half Polish caraway seed sausage cut into ~1cm chunks
broad beans
courgette, chopped
large onion, roughly chopped
garlic
ginger
juniper berries
pomegranate seeds
cinnamon bark
cumin
allspice
black pepper
paprika
black mustard seeds
thyme and mint from the garden
red wine
oil

basmati rice
olive oil
some finely chopped red onion (in the absence of shallots)
pine kernels and lemon wedges

Method:

whizz ginger, garlic, cinnamon bark, juniper seeds, pomegranate seeds

grind allspice, cumin and black pepper, and add to mustard seeds and paprika in a tiny brown bowl

boil broad beans for ~10min and drain

heat oil
add dry spices and fry for a bit
add whizzed components
add onion and fry for a bit
add courgette
add sausage
cook for a bit
add slosh of red wine
simmer for a bit
add beans
cover and simmer for a while
add fresh thyme and mint
add water
simmer a while longer
uncover and reduce as appropriate before serving

the pomegranate seeds were probably a mistake done this way, as they left hard seeds in the food as served; soaking in hot water and adding later might have been better.

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things to do with green beans

Seen on LiveJournal, and here as an aide memoire - sounds gorgeous:

Roast them. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, some garlic, chopped onions and pine nuts. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil and lemon juice and roast for about 15 minutes. You could also throw some pancetta in there.

Steam them and serve with some crumbled feta, mint and olives. Season and dress with olive oil and lemon juice.

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potato and chicken bake

Using up: cold roast chickie!, old potatoes, spring onions from a friend’s garden, cream bought for supper on Saturday and not eaten (due to circumstances beyond our control)

This is a real bitsa one - I’m pleased with it, because it was lovely.

Chopped some very elderly potatoes into slices about 1/4″ thick, and layered half of them into an ovenproof dish.  On top of that went the chopped spring onions, and the chickie! from the carcass I boiled up for soup a couple of days ago.  Added some cream and seasoned, grated a little gruyere cheese onto it, then layered the rest of the potatoes on. More cream (you need quite a lot, really), more seasoning, then cut more gruyere into very small dice and scattered them over the top.

I gave it 5 minutes in the microwave to get it started, then it had about 40 minutes on gas 5.  Should you try this, make sure you put the dish on a tray in the oven, because ours oozed a bit.

We had it with a bulb of fennel, sliced up, put in a little casserole dish with some of the chicken soup broth, and cooked in the oven alongside the potatoes, to save gas.  I really must think more about gas consumption when I’m cooking.

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