indian vegetarian meal

[no photo - sorry]

Pete brought a huge bunch of coriander home from the Indian supermarket on Saturday.  We had some with a vegetable tagine, some with sour pork with rhubarb, but there was still a reasonable wodge left.

We have lots of spuds to eat too, as the rain got through the shed roof and into the sack, and I don’t know how long they’ll last.  So …

We had:

• Madhur’s potatoes with ginger and garlic
• basmati rice, cooked with cinnamon and black cardamon, with a big mushroom chopped up to make a sort of pillau
• a small tub of lentils and spinach that I found lurking in the freezer at the weekend

We sprinkled a lod of coriander over it all.  A feast fit for anyone, for peanuts.  The potatoes are utterly lovely - highly recommended.

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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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cauliflower cheese

Last night’s supper was cauliflower cheese, accompanied by potatoes roasted in duck fat.

Not especially “reactive”, but a lovely meal concocted out of things we had.  I’m not going to tell you how to make a cheese sauce, because I don’t weigh or measure anything - I’ve been making it too long for that.

But add some grain mustard to the sauce mix for a bit of bite, and sprinkle some breadcrumbs on the dish before it goes into the oven (this is why I don’t like bread thrown away!). The potatoes were parboiled, then roasted in duck fat (which keeps forever, as far as I can see, in a bowl in the fridge).

So you can make a really lovely meal out of a few bobs’ worth of veg and a bit of cheese and stuff.  And no meat, so cheaper, and kinder to the environment according to the UN.

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a brace of banana cakes

Using up: bananas

We had a lot of bananas, so I decided to make some banana cake.  And then I realised we had even more bananas than that, so I thought I’d make two, and freeze one.  Better than letting the bananas go to waste, I thought.

So I duly made two - it really is no more work than making one, except you have to peel more bananas.  And as I took them out of the oven (they smelled heavenly) I thought of my new next door neighbour, who has had about as bad a year as one can have.  So when they’d cooled a little, I wrapped one in a tea towel, and took it round for her and her two boys (she has a baby daughter too, but she might be a bit small for banana cake!)

Recipe (for one cake):

4oz butter or margarine
8oz self raising flour
6oz golden caster sugar, plus a little more if you like
2 eggs
1 generous tsp vanilla extract
2 medium, or 3 small bananas

Peel the bananas, and mash them with a fork.  An old plate is best for this, I find.

Cream butter and sugar together till fluffy, then add the eggs and vanilla extract.  Add the banana gloop and stir in.  Add the flour and stir in.  This is the most ridiculously easy cake recipe I ever saw!

Put into a greased* 2lb loaf tin.  Sprinkle, if you like, with some golden caster sugar, to give a nice glaze.

Bake for 40 minutes at gas 4, then turn the oven down to gas 2 for 30 minutes.

It probably does freeze well, but I can’t say for sure, as I gave away the spare :)

*I always use the precut liners from Lakeland - I’m a lousy baker, so I like every little bit of help going.

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a day in the kitchen

Click on the photo to see what it all is

A lot of veg in the fridge, a grey day, and some space in the freezer - how better to spend a Sunday afternoon than cooking?!

I did:

• red cabbage with apple (thanks to Sharon J for the reminder - love it, and haven’t made it in ages). That used up the half red cabbage that I bought on Saturday, and 2/3 of the cooking apple lurking in the veg drawer
• Thai veg curry (recipe here), using half the butternut squash, courgette, half the green beans, a couple of carrots, the red pepper from the last veg box
• Lentil moussaka (recipe here), just because there is An Aubergine in the fridge, and the recipe takes a long time from start to finish
• Veg soup - courgette, carrot, a tired leek, celery, 1/4 butternut squash, blitzed in the Magimix; gave it 5 minutes in the microwave with some olive oil, then put in a pan with some soup mix (cooked down in the water I boiled the butternut squash in) and some beef stock from the freezer.  That’ll do us for lunches this week
• The last quarter of butternut squash, and third of the cooking apple, made us a risotto for supper. Recipe to follow in a separate post.

So I was cutting and chopping and blanching and frying all afternoon - including deepfrying about a pound of potatoes in some groundnut oil in the wok, for adding to both the thai curry and the moussaka.

Not a bad haul, I think - go me!

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veg box v.greengrocers

As regular readers (all three of you :) will know, we have a weekly fruit and veg box from Riverford.  The price has recently gone up one pound, to  £14.75.

I understand this - their costs have increased a lot due to fuel increases. But it seems that the box, for us at least, is giving less value.  I also really object to having to choose between paying online, with a (admittedly small) surcharge, or paying by cheque and having to use a stamp.

Last week’s box contained: 1 bunch black grapes, 5 bananas, 2 large sweet potatoes, 1 cabbage, 4 (I think) courgettes, tomatoes, a lettuce (which we hate), 2 red peppers and 4 apples (I think this is right - don’t have the list any more).

Yesterday, we went to the greengrocers in Bedminster, and £14.54 bought us:

4 pears
5 small plums
1 bag spinach
1 cauliflower
3kg organic potatoes
1 punnet of blueberries
1 red pepper
2 bulbs of garlic
1 bag carrots
1 large handful of green beans
2 sweet potatoes
1 bunch spring onions
1 aubergine
1/2 red cabbage (all they had)

I have suspended the Riverford order for now - that sort of saving is too big to ignore, really.

I’m still not going to plan meals - that would be very restrictive!  I shall just buy what looks nice in the greengrocers.

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let them eat cake

Using up: half a lemon, dried cherries

I fancied a cake - both making one, and consuming it.  We don’t have them often, but last night I decided I would.  And it would use up the half a lemon that was in the fridge :)

This is based on a Nigella recipe, and works really well.

Cream 250g marge or butter, then beat in 200g golden caster sugar.  You really do need a food mixer for this - or a very strong arm.

Sift 210g of self raising flour, and 90g of plain (or just use plain with 3tsp baking powder - less faff).

Add three eggs to the butter/sugar mix, one at a time, following each with a tablespoon of flour (does that make sense?).  Then fold in the rest of the flour.  Add 1 tsp of vanilla extract.

The recipe says 4 tablespoons of milk at this stage, but I don’t bother measuring - just pour it in slowly until you get a soft, dropping consistency.  Then I added a handful of dried sour cherries (I bought a big bag full in Costco, and forgot about them), and the juice of the aforementioned half lemon.

Put in a loaf tin, and ust the top with more caster sugar if you like - it gives a nice shiny sugary finish. Bake at gas 3 / 170° for an hour, or until a skewer comes out clean.

Tip: I buy loaf tin liners from Lakeland - I’m not very good at cake, and this means the beasts emerge from the tin with no hassle.  Well worth it, IMV.

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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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kind words

This came to me in an e-mail - I won’t say who from.  I was dead chuffed!

I have to say that my renewed interest in using up what’s lurking in the fridge is mainly down to reading the very inspiring recipes on your reactive cooking blog - thank you.

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