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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chicken stir fry

Using up: spring onions, red pepper, the last bit of courgette, half a lemon

The thing about a stir fry is you can lob pretty much anything in it, but you need to have it all ready before you start.

So, as you may see, I chopped four spring onions, a red pepper, a small piece of courgette.  Garlic and ginger were whizzed in the most useful kitchen gadget known to (wo)man.  Pete chopped up a red chilli.

Out of the larder came sesame seeds, and I had a tub of cold roast chicken in the freezer that was pressed into service - I marinated that in some shoyu and a teaspoon or so of sesame oil for about 20 minutes.

Into the wok went the sesame seeds, garlic and ginger for a minute or so, then added the white bits of the spring onion, the pepper and courgette.  Stir fried till done, then added chicken and marinade, the lemon juice and a teaspoon of five spice powder.  Oh, and a dribble of honey.

Left it to bubble while we boiled up some noodles, and realised it was a bit thin, so mixed up a teaspoon of cornflour with some cold water, and hurled that in.

Drained noodles and put them in the wok, mixed it round a little.

Served into bowls, then sprinkled with the chopped chilli and the green bit of the spring onions.

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broad bean enchiladas

Using up: almost everything left in the fridge!  Carrots, broad beans, potatoes, salad leaves, wheat wraps

I said this week would be weird meals … emptying the fridge can make odd but pleasing concoctions.

Boiled the remaining new potatoes, and 6 minutes before the end, put some broad beans, and the very, very last of the now fairly soft carrots in a steamer basket on top.  Waited till the timer went, then drained the spuds and veg.

Chopped up a red onion and some garlic, and started to sauté it in some olive oil.  Chopped up two chorizo sausages into small bits and added them to the pan.  (We buy these from Costco and keep them in the freezer - they’re very useful for jazzing up vegetables.)

Added the broad beans and carrots, and some thyme and savory from the herb garden.  Looked at the potatoes and realised there were way too many, so put some in a bowl.  They’ll be fried up and scoffed with sossidge later in the week.  Chopped up the rest and added them to the pan.

Got out a tin of tomatoes and realised it would be too much, so got a small tin of tomato purée out of the tin cupboard and hurled that in instead.

Then Pete distributed the filling across the last of the wheat wraps; we’d thought there were three, but there were only two, so they were quite … plump, and had to be held together with cocktail sticks.  I made a quick cheese sauce with gruyere and Red Leicester, and we poured it over the enchiladas, topped it with more mixed cheese, and baked for 30 minutes at gas 6.

Eaten with a bag of salad leaves dressed with walnut oil and lemon, and accompanied by random music from the Roku and, in my case, too much wine.  Perfect.

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pasta bake with red pepper

Using up: a red pepper, mozzarella

We’re off for a week’s holiday on Friday (hurrah!), so meals this week are going to be quite odd, I suspect :)

Here’s one of our standby meals; we eat this kind of thing often.

Cut one red pepper in half, remove the seeds and pith, cut into thin strips.  Chop 3/4 of a courgette (I wanted the last bit for a stir fry) into dice, ditto an onion and some garlic (whatever you feel appropriate - we like *lots*).  Sauté these in some olive oil slowly until the veg are softed - you want a nice silky feeling for the peppers.  Add a chopped dried chilli if you like such things; we do.

Boil some pasta - conchiglie are nice for this; they’re the ones that look like conch shells.  When the pasta is cooked, drain it and hurl it into the veg pan, and stir it all together.

Then decant into an ovenproof dish, and top with a mozzarella, cut into cubes.  Some basil or parsley works really well on the top too.

Bake for 25-30 minutes on gas mark 6.

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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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fried rice

I refer you, with pleasure, to Hanne Blank’s post on how to make - and indeed how not to make - fried rice.

Apart from telling you exactly what to do, in a style of cooking that is exactly like my own, it is screamingly funny.  Enjoy

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pasta with butternut squash and feta

Using up: the other half of the feta, the other half of the squash, a lone rasher of bacon

Peeled the squash and cut it into cubes. Chopped an onion roughly, ditto some garlic, and a rasher of back bacon.  All in a frying pan with some olive oil, and some oregano from our herb garden.

Put a lid on the pan, and left for about 20 minutes.

Then cooked some 8 minute fusilli, drained it and put it with the vegetables (thus giving the veg about 30 minutes in all, to get the squash into that gorgeous disintegrating phase), and half a block of feta.  Stirred it all about till the feta melted, then served in bowls.

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courgette and fennel “cottage pie”

Using up: fennel, courgette, potato

Chopped a courgette into chunks, and the other half of the fennel into thin slices, and chopped an onion.  All into a frying pan with some olive oil, and left to sauté down.  I left it for 20 minutes, but I think it would have been better to either put a lid on it, or left it another ten - the end result was quite crunchy.

While this is going on, I boiled some spuds for mash,

Added a tin of tomatoes to the vegetable mix, a dash of salt and a good grinding of black pepper, and cooked for another 6-7 minutes.

The spuds were mashed with a combination of Red Leicester and gruyere cheeses (that’s odd - why did I capitalise the red leicester and not the Gruyere?), with some reserved for the topping. With hindsight, I thought it was too much cheese - either in, or on - but Pete thought it was just right.  We also added some chopped chives to the mash.

Veg/tomato mix into an ovenproof dish, top with mash, sprinkle with remaining cheese. Cook at gas 6 for about 20 minutes.

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