aubergine, spinach and lentil bake

Using up: aubergine, some red wine that had gone vinegary, 1/3 of a bag of spinach

We love this sort of food, and eat it often.  In the fridge was an aubergine, spinach, and some feta cheese, and Pete had  opened a bottle of red wine last week and inexplicably failed to drink most of it, and it had gone over, despite being properly stoppered.

So … I fried a roughly chopped onion and some garlic in a pan until it was soft, then put in about 1 tablespoon of Ras El Hanout spice mix, a fab standby in the cupboard, and fried that round.

Then I added two mugfuls (mugs full?) of red lentils and stirred, 2.5 mugfuls of water, and about 2/3 mug of red wine.  Stirred well, brought to the boil and set on a low light to cook for about 45 minutes.  You might need to add more fluid - lentils can go splurp and stick to the pan in an unexpected way.

While the lentils were cooking, I sliced an aubergine fairly thinly and fried it till browned, in batches, in olive oil, and set to drain on some kitchen paper.  Then I made some basic white sauce with nutmeg grated into it.

Then into an ovenproof dish went the lentils, then the washed and drained spinach, then the white sauce, and topped it off with the aubergine slices.  Then we put half a block of feta cheese, diced up small, on top of all that, and bunged it in a hot oven for about 25 minutes.

Cheap (because it works perfectly well with water, or vegetable stock, rather than wine) and delicious.

That amount of lentils made enough for six servings, by the way, so two tubs went into the freezer.  You can use it for a faux lasagne too, should you wish - works very well.

And I split the rest of the red wine into two small boxes and froze that too - it might not be good enough to drink, but it’ll be fine to cook with!

Powered by Bookmarkify™

another potato bake

using up: cold roast chicken, half a bag of spinach, a mozzarella past its sell-by date

A proper Reactive meal - first for a while.  We are still ploughing through Sunday’s chicken, and had some other stuff that needed eating up.  This worked really well, although next time I would poach the chicken in the cream for a few minutes - it somehow didn’t meld in properly.

Grease an ovenproof dish (I use an olive oil spray for this).  Ideally, get someone else to slice some potatoes very thinly, or otherwise you’ll have to do it yourself, and it’s a bit tedious without a mandoline (which I don’t have, unaccountably).

Wash some spinach, and chop up the cold chicken into small pieces.  Chop a couple of cloves of garlic finely.  Layer half the potatoes in the dish, then add the spinach, the chicken, the garlic and some double cream.  Grate some nutmeg over it.  Add the rest of the potatoes, and add some more cream. Dot the mozzarella, torn into chunks, over the top.

Bake at Gas 5 for about an hour - it will take longer than you think.  Worked really well.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

a fish pie

using up: a piece of fish, a bulb of fennel, the last third of the bag of spinach.

We’re having a fairly traumatic week, and the reason for this was the cause of the existence of one not very big fillet of anonymous white fish.  One of our cats, our beloved Bada, has been and remains exceedingly ill, and a pair of fish fillets was bought to tempt her (it didn’t work).

When I’m unhappy, I cook, and I don’t like to waste food as you know, so here’s what I did.

I poached the fish in milk and water and a little black pepper for a few minutes, then set it aside on a plate to cool. I put the chopped up fennel in the fish water, and simmered it for, oh I don’t know, maybe 12 minutes with no lid, so it cooked and the milk reduced down.

Then I made some white sauce, chunked the fish, and added fish, fennel, and a pack of prawns from the freezer.  Put that in an ovenproof dish^H^H tin (the lasagne dish is broken, remember).  Piled a layer of spinach on top. Boiled some potatoes, and mashed them with Red Leicester cheese, and added that.

Baked at gas 5 for 25 minutes.  Scoffed - gorgeous comfort food.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

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 …

Powered by Bookmarkify™