green beans and pasta

I reviewed the contents of the veg drawer last night - to my shame, there were two small turnips going mouldy, so they had to go.  A wide assortment of carrots was hurled into the slow cooker for carrot and coriander soup for lunch today.  And there were a lot of green beans.

We like green beans, but we tend to do the same sort of stuff with them every time, and I wanted to try something different, so this is what I did.  It was lovely - perfect summer food.

Topped and tailed the beans, and then cut them into chunks of about 2cm.  Set them to simmer for about  seven minutes, I guess.

Put on some pasta quills to boil.

Got Pete to grate a lot of parmesan, rummaged for the tired half lemon in the fridge, and went and cut some fennel fronds from the garden, which I chopped up small.

Combined beans, pasta, parmesan, black pepper, lemon juice, fennel and some cream, and scoffed from bowls.

Followed it with local strawberries and a home made brownie.  Lovely.

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tortilla-ish sort of thing

As our regular reader will know, we are desperate to reclaim some freezer space.  So, on Friday evening, I removed two tubs - one labelled “black bean tortilla mix” and one bearing the legend “beef and mushroom pie filling”.  And yesterday morning I fished out the packet of organic wheaten wraps that had been languishing in there for a while.

But when I opened the black bean mix, we realised that it must have been planned for a swift lunch - there really wasn’t enough in there to do supper.  As far as we could tell, it was black beans, onions, garlic, tomato.

So I boiled up some potatoes (including, in an opportunistic sort of manner, enough to put towards a nice Sunday brunch), then fried them off in olive oil with some pancetta cubes, thus padding out the bean mix quite nicely.  This was divided between four wraps (a big mistake - it was far too much and we ate it all [groan]), skewered with cocktail sticks.

Then we made a swift sauce from onion and garlic fried off in olive oil, a diced yellow pepper and a finely chopped red chilli, carton of chopped tomatoes (and pinch of sugar).  Poured it over the wraps, scattered with chopped fresh coriander and half a package of feta.  Baked in the oven for 25 minutes.

Delicious.

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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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sometimes simple is good

There was a rather tired cauliflower in the fridge. So I made a cauli cheese, with breadcrumbs on the top. This is probably what posh people call “au gratin”.

We had it with spuds roasted in goose fat. Food fit for the ghods!

Oh, and more plum crumble. Groan. All gone now, however.

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weekend 19/20 april

We didn’t set foot out of the house. Made a batch of bananananana muffins on Friday night, and then we ate far too many of them, and both had a nasty sugar hit overnight. Serves us right.

Saturday, made soda bread for lunch, which we had with the previously mentioned chickie! soup. Supper was pork and pineapple - I went into autopilot while I was making it, and did a load of ginger, which isn’t actually in the recipe. Was still delicious.

Sunday was toasted soda bread for breakfast, and a moussaka for supper, followed - foolishly - by a plum crumble with ice cream. Belch.

I’m going to have to start photographing things, aren’t I ..

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knitting your own tofu

perlmonger and I cooked a charmingly retro supper last night, of brown rice and lentils. I wish we could say we donned sandals and kaftans while preparing and consuming it, but sadly no.

P is very good at dhal, and this one was delicious. I remain to be convinced about brown rice, but I’m too anti food waste to throw it away, and I have found a way to cook it where it’s ok, if not delicious.

In keeping with the theme of the evening, we found an episode of The Professionals on the Tivo. Nostalgia ensued - what where those round soda syphons called? So many Capris! Great fun.

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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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