beef stroganoff

Using up: ribeye steak, mushrooms

Along with the three sausages, we also returned from Summer Camp with a heap of ribeye steak, which simply didn’t get eaten.  I flung it in the freezer in the general melée of dealing with wet tents, missing cats, etc., but a carton of organic mushrooms in the fridge gave me pause for thought …

So: cut a big onion in half, and slice it as thinly as you can.  Sauté that with lots of butter (this is not a good recipe for cholesterol haters) and oh, about a tablespoon of paprika until the onion is soft.  Then add mushrooms, sliced, and continue to cook until the mushrooms are soft.

Decant this paprika-y mess on to a heatproof plate and keep it warm.  Wipe out the pan.

Take steak (it really does need to be good quality for this, trust me), slice it into 1/4″-1/2″ strips across the grain. Fry this in batches in sunflower oil until it’s done as you like - we keep it fairly rare.  Drain out the oil from the pan, put everything back in, add soured or double cream, lemon juice, seasoning and chopped flat-leaf parsley.

It may be thought of as heresy, but we always eat this with chips.  I know, I know, but if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it properly.

By the way, chips, peas and ice cream are the only frozen goods I buy - everything else I freeze myself.

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stir fried broccoli with almonds

Using up: a head of broccoli, and some of a tin of roast salted almonds we found in the depths of the cupboard

Chopped the florets off the broccoli, and then sliced the stalk into rounds about 1/2″ thick.  Blanched for about 4 minutes.

Mince up garlic and ginger, chopped an onion.  Put some groundnut oil in the wok (not too much - I’m trying to cut down on oil and salt and stuff [sob]).  Added a teaspoon or so of sesame seeds when it was hot, then the garlic / ginger / onion.  Stirred them about until they were looking cooked, then added the broccoli and almonds; about 2 tablespoons of almonds, I would guess.  Then added a goodly sloosh of shoyu, and a little water.

Boiled up some egg noodles to go with it - stirred them all round in the wok together before service.  Quick, light, lovely.

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sausage, runner beans and stuff

Using up: runner beans, sausages

Apologies for lack of posting - we have been camping for a few days in West Wales, and we should have taken an ark rather than a tent.

I brought back three fat butcher’s sausages, and this is what I did.

Drizzled the sossidge with a little olive oil, and set them in a tray in the oven at gas 6.

Headed, tailed and sliced up the runner beans that were ten days old {mea culpa], put them in a pan with cold water, brought to the boil, and simmered for 8 minutes.

Chopped up an onion and some garlic, removed some of the sausage-y oil from their pan, added a bit more to it, and sauteéd it in a pan.  Chopped sage and rosemary from the garden, and added to the pan.

Drained the green beans, and put in about 2/3rd of them - the rest will go into a wrap with some other bits for a lunch.  Looked at it all and decided it wasn’t quite right, so opened a jar of roast yellow peppers, cut up about half, and slung them in.

Cooked some macaroni, and while that was going on, cut the sausages into 1″ chunks and put them in the frying pan.

Then macaroni and cubed feta added, with a good grate of black pepper.  It really was *delicious*.

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no freezer?

An article in today’s Guardian claims that “foodies” don’t have freezers any more.  Can this be true?

We have two* - a huge USanian fridge/freezer in the kitchen, and an upright in the shed outside.  Inside is used for things we’ve cooked and frozen - at any time, it will contain some permutation of chilli, casserole, lentil dishes, bolognese sauce, Indian chicken dishes, etc.  It also holds sausages, turkey mince (for the cats), duck breast, breadcrumbs, peas, vanilla ice cream.

The outside one is more for bulk stuff. We buy our beef from the inestimable Mr Rawlings’ Dexter farm - only about once a year, because we don’t eat much meat these days. We buy lamb in half an animal at a time.  I freeze stock, too.

I wouldn’t be without our freezers, myself.

*we used to have another small upright one under the stairs, which we used for frozen ox cheek for the cats. You had to buy a lot at a time - 100lbs or so - so a dedicated freezer was the only way.  Then our supplier stopped doing it, so the cats had to eat something else.  I’m not sure Iggy has got over it even now …

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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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from veg to meatballs to pasta bake

Using up: veg

As stated last week, we are over-vegged, and need to use it up before we go away for the long weekend that’s coming up.

So, on Friday night, I chopped up four red peppers, two onions, several mushrooms, and four (I think) courgettes.  These were sautéd down in my huge shallow Circulon pan (the one that’s too big to go in any of the cupboards) with some olive oil, a fair bit of garlic, and sage and oregano from the garden.

Then I took a bag of Ikea meatballs (great standby for the freezer!) and turfed them into the mix, and added a carton of creamed tomatoes (another great standby).  Bit of salt and pepper, and left to cook through for about 20 minutes.  We consumed two goodly portions with spaghetti.

On Saturday morning, I put another 3 meals’ worth into 2-portion tubs, and froze them, keeping back about 300ml of veggy sauce.

And on Sunday evening feeling, as we were, rather depleted, due to an *excellent* party on Saturday, 120 miles from home, we boiled some pasta shells, dumped a can of borlotti beans into the leftover sauce, and mixed the pasta and sauce together.  A mozzarella chopped over the top, and some basil from the garden, 20 minutes in the oven - bosh.  Dinner.  Hardly any effort, and really nice.

So, one bag of meatballs, an assortment of tired vegetables, a tin of borlotti beans and a carton of passata - 10 meals.  Gotta be good :)

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green cleaning

I try very hard not to buy proprietary cleaning stuff - they’re stuffed full of chemicals, cost a fortune, and are usually not needed.  What we do buy - washing up liquid, washing powder - we try to have eco-friendly stuff.

Normally I get buy with bicarb of soda, and vinegar (but not together!).  Bicarb is a magical thing - you can clean almost anything with it; I used it to clean some tarnished silver earrings the other day!  For bad stuff - perhaps a burnt-on pan (but not an aluminium one, please) - just make a paste of bicarb and water, and brush it on.  Leave for an hour or so, then clean it off and voila - no burn.  You can get grease off a cooker with it, too.

Vinegar is a great cleaning substance too - and don’t worry about the smell, because it will disappear within 20 minutes or so.  I use it for worktops and so on.  Also, for cleaning the floors, I have a handy steam mop, which uses no chemicals at all; it’s also terrific at cleaning the bathroom tiles, windows, and so on.

Also for the bathroom, I can strongly recommend the bathroom set from Deeply Clean -  the sponge cleans the bath with no added chemicals, and gets all the horrid soap scum off.  You can get this from Sainsburys, and I think Oxfam shops sell it too.

And this post was actually inspired by Sharon’s post on Finding Simplicity, about making your own multipurpose cleaning fluid innabottle, which I shall try out forthwith - thanks!

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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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planning ahead

Me and himself have been a bit unwell this week, and not up to cooking.  We are thus building up a bit of a glut of vegetables, and we are away this Saturday night, and Friday/Saturday/Sunday next weekend.

I’ll cancel next week’s veg box, but we have about 6 courgettes, 4 red peppers (I foolishly bought some on Saturday, then more arrived in the box), an aubergine, half a cabbage and a stack of runner beans to deal with.

The thought of having to chuck any of this away fills me with horror, so I’ve been giving some though on how to deal with it all, especially as I’m not likely to have much time before we leave for the Bank Holiday weekend.

There’s a bag of naked meatballs in the freezer, so I’m going to make a sauce with tomatoes, red peppers and courgettes (and onions and herbs from the garden) and freeze some portions of that.  I’m going to have a bash at a lentil moussaka filling, which will see off the aubergine, and the runner beans will be cooked up in an Indian style, and a portion or two frozen.

The cabbage we will see off tonight, with some mozzarella and bacon (which also needs dealing with).

Oh, and there’s a pak choi left - I have a vague plan to stir fry it with some other bitsa, and put it into wraps for lunch tomorrow.  I feel really quite remarkably organised!

[edit] Aaargh - there’s a stack of fresh peas too!  Help …

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