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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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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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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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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a quick supper

We’re working very hard at the moment, and don’t have a lot of time to cook, but that doesn’t mean we don’t cook! Last night was pasta bake with courgettes and tomatoes, which is as quick as it gets, and utterly gorgeous.

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pasta with cauliflower, broccoli and blue cheese

I love “bitsa” cooking - just open the fridge and see what needs eating.

And last night, what needed eating was some veg and some cheese. This was ridiculously quick and easy.

Divide the broccoli and cauliflower into smallish florets. Put them in a pan with a couple of inches of water and salt, bring to a boil, cover, and simmer/steam for about - oh - 7 minutes.

In the meantime, finely chop an onion - feel free to use a food processor - and sauté it gently in some olive oil, in a deepish frying pan, until it’s soft. While that’s all happening, crumble some blue cheese. I used stilton, because we had some that needed using up, but anything would do. And cook some pasta; we had tagliatelle.

When everything is done, drain the veg, drain the pasta, hurl them in the pan, add the cheese and stir it round.

Took about 15 minutes from going into the kitchen to hitting the plate - fast food!

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simple food

The other night, Pete and I both had to be out of the house at 7.15. This is early for us - we don’t normally eat until about 8 p.m. And we forgot to get anything out of the freezer, and didn’t stop work till about 6.30.

So, one big pot of penne pasta. When cooked, drained it, ladled in some very good olive oil, stirred in some fresh basil, dished it up, sprinkled it with loads of fresh parmesan.

Gorgeous, and 20 minutes start to finish. I’d forgotten how good it was.

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dude! where’s the cheese?

Bought some nice fresh basil at the weekend. This week is busy, busy, busy with deadlines, and we’re both tired. So we decided to have a simple supper last night - pasta with mozarella, olive oil, and the aforementioned basil.

The discussion was had about what sort of pasta - we plumped for standard spaghetti from the Yellow Packet. We boiled the kettle. We put the water in the pan, brought it back to the boil, added the spag.

We got the basil and the moz^H^H^H - hang on … where’s the mozarella? Much rummaging ensued. Disaster - no mozarella. Meanwhile, the pasta bubbled on.

In great haste, we chopped an onion and sauted it in some olive oil, and chopped up some stilton. Stirred it into the pasta when cooked. Very nice.

But not what we wanted.

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red pepper and feta pasta

Quick, easy and delicious

Sauté a chopped onion and a few cloves of garlic in some good olive oil.  Add half a jar of grilled red peppers from Lidl (these are utterly gorgeous), sliced up.  When the pasta is done, drain, add some cubes of feta and the vegetable mess.

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