Today saw the sad demise of the
sandwich toaster. Probably inspired by the delicious fried bread I had enjoyed
at breakfast, I felt inspired to make some cheese and tomato toasties for
lunch. This included the slightly taxing task of purchasing tomatoes. Available
were 2 packs (of 5) for £2 or loose for £1.99 per kilo. But the packs didn’t
have a weight on them. And I’m dreadful at estimating weights. Having found
some scales, weighed the loose ones and worked out that I could get five for just
about £1 I went for this option. I don’t know why I bought five as the toasties
would only need one.
But upon opening the sandwich
toaster (which had lain dormant for at least 2 years), the inners appeared to
have decayed. So toasties were off and reheat soup was on. This is always a bit
of a gamble as I make soup in big batches and freeze in smaller portions which are
invariably unlabelled. Today I extracted a tub at random, reheated and we
enjoyed parsnip and apple soup, accompanied by toast with my favourite yeast
extract spread. The soup was an improvement on its first consumption when I had
failed to add enough water and it was more like eating runny apple sauce
fragranced with parsnip. I don’t know why I didn’t think it out previously.
Suitably fuelled for an afternoon
swim I left Matt with his skirting boards. My exercise was impeded (quite
literally if this word comes from ”ped” which I think means to do with feet) by
my blistered feet. Having enjoyed 2 night’s dancing in Torquay (hence the
cooked breakfast) my feet were rather the worse for wear. Blisters the size of
a 50 pence piece on the ball of my left foot and a 20 pence piece on the right,
and on both little and big toes. Which resulted in diminished pushing off from
the ends and discomfort from the turbulence of the water flowing around my
feet.
And then it was time to think
about tea. We had a butternut squash which I’d been intending on cooking today
and when I inspected it there was a suspicious looking blemish suggesting that
it needed using. We had both eaten butternut squash yesterday – Matt as a soup
and me in a pasta dish. So the pressure was on to do something creative. Also present
was somewhat of a glut of vegetable suet (due Matt’s supermarket enthusiasm a
number of weeks ago) and he was keen for some dumplings today. So I decided to
go for a vegetable stew. And I decided that as well as the butternut squash I’d
use red peppers and mushrooms.
I set the stew off with some onion,
celery and garlic. And when I went to vegetable drawer I was confronted with
some rather sorry looking courgettes. So one went into the stew. And then I
thought I might be putting too many vegetables into the pot. Hence the
idea of putting the red pepper into the dumplings.
Once the veggies were sautéed off
a bit I had to think about liquid. I would usually chuck in a tin of chopped
tomatoes but thought this might be too overpowering for the other relatively
subtle veg. So opted instead just for vegetable stock. And then thought I’d add
some sherry. This wasn’t totally random. I have made a lovely soup recently
with squash and sherry so was this was an extension of that concept. It
simmered away, smelling lovely, but not happy leaving well alone I threw in a
couple of cups of red lentils.
And so to the
dumplings. This was high risk. I am not an experienced dumpling cook but have
had relative success when I have done them before so was prepared to be a bit
adventurous. I chopped up the red pepper really small and fried it up in the
little fried egg pan before adding to the dumpling mixture with some salt and
mixed herbs. And then it was just a matter of hoping that the whole thing
worked out ok.
Which it did. Not the most attractive
looking of dinners but really tasty and the dumplings were lovely.
I’m looking forward to more adventures
in dumpling land but first have two dodgy courgettes in urgent need of
consumption.
Red pepper dumplings (will make 8
large / 16 small dumplings)
- 45g (vegetable) suet
- 100g self-raising flour½ a red pepper, chopped up as small as you can & fried so it’s soft
- Sprinkle of dried mixed herbs
- Bit of salt (which is about as descriptive as “pinch”)
- 70ml cold water
Mix it all up and form into
dumplings. Cook in your stew for about 20 minutes, just before serving.
No comments:
Post a Comment