Tuesday's couscous gratin

Having been away for the weekend, and not yet having had the opportunity to go shopping, the food storage areas were looking rather sparse. Matt, my husband, had picked up a few essentials for Monday's pizza (mushrooms) and we had acquired a large number of leeks and apples, plus a couple of enormous wedges of pumpkin from various friends and relations but other than that the range was slightly limited. On further inspection I found a butternut squash that I had bought a few weeks previously, some aged and wrinkly cherry tomatoes and some aged and wrinkly peppers (partially deployed on Monday's pizza).

Mum, who was staying (along with dad), for a few days suggested roasted veggies with halloumi cheese (Matt ensures that we always have halloumi in the fridge since a barbeque incident a few years ago when the shops were all sold out) but this seemed a bit of a cop out that I serve to them frequently. I decided that the squash and the leeks would form the basis of the dinner since we had the most significant quantity of these. I still wasn't sure exactly what I was going to cook, we might be looking at risotto or something baked in the oven, but started off by putting the butternut squash (whole) in to pre-roast. This bought me some time, during which I decided the oven option would be preferable and I imagined up what I wanted to created. This was some sort of gratin, but rather than using breadcrumbs I would make a big couscous topping (that is a big topping based on couscous, rather than a topping made with big couscous – which we discovered does exist!).

I got one of the giant leeks and cleansed and chopped this (the squash was still roasting). Once I deemed that the squash had had enough time (skin going a bit black and wrinkly) I extracted it from the oven and, once it had cooled sufficiently to allow handling, peeled and chopped this too. In actual fact I only peeled and chopped half of it – I'm always amazed at just how far an apparently moderate butternut squash will go. I arranged the chopped veggies in a large oven proof dish. It was looking slightly dull and since I had those half used wrinkly peppers I sliced those thinly and scattered those over. Not wanting to risk under cooked veggies I put it all back in a hottish oven to roast a bit more before adding the topping.

 

It struck me that the whole thing was at risk of being rather low in protein, mum suggested adding sweetcorn (which I don't really think is a high protein food), but I decided on butter beans and tipped a (drained) can of these on top of the veggies. In order to evenly distribute these I ruined my beautiful arrangement of veggies and swooshed everything around in the dish. The ruining of the arrangement was not really too much of a problem as it was all going to get covered with the couscous topping. I covered the veggies and beans with a thin (but complete) layer of (raw) couscous dotted in a few lumps of garlic and herb soft cheese (left over from the pizza) and poured about a pint of hot vegetable stock over the top of it all. I sealed it up with some kitchen foil and returned it to the hottish oven.

This might seem like an unusual way to cook couscous, but I can assure that it works – a sort of steaming. The usual couscous rule applies of using about the same amount of water as couscous by weight, but in this scenario be mindful that the veggies / beans will soak up some of the fluid. So after about 20 minutes I extracted the oven proof dish and removed the tin foil, the couscous looked nearly done but for good measure I added a little bit more fluid and topped the whole thing off with the wrinkly cherry tomatoes that my mum had fettled up. Back in the oven (uncovered this time) for another 10 minutes (until the tomatoes look even more wrinkly and there are a few crispy bits around the edges and it was ready to eat.

It tasted really nice, a good mixture of flavours and textures. Dad even went back for seconds which, for dad, is most unusual. And pleasingly it only used one cooking dish. Really it should have been served with a nice green salad, or maybe some sort of green vegetable but we had only a few leaves left over from the previous day's pizza dinner which mum and I polished off afterwards. And mum pointed out that it might have benefited from some sort of extra sauce. I've been thinking about this and maybe a sort of fruity sauce along the lines of redcurrant would be nice. But that would rely on you having redcurrants available. It turned out to another good dish to reheat for the next day's lunch, maybe even tasting better once the flavours have had a chance to “mature” a little bit.

(In case you're interested butter beans have over twice as much protein per 100g as sweetcorn. My favourite yeast extract has 6.6 times more protein per 100g than butter beans but I'm not sure that I could manage 100g in one sitting and it wouldn't have been very nice in the dinner.)

Thursday's roast

A small thing made this dinner blogworthy. I will come to that small thing later.

We'd enjoyed fish and chips with my mother-in-law on Wednesday night and I was due out for a hen night meal on Friday so Thursday needed to be a healthy day. The most healthy thing would probably have been a salad, but I didn't fancy that. What I fancied was something that would use up my bargain aubergine that was looking like it wouldn't last much longer. And I didn't fancy another moussaka. So what I decided on was roasted vegetables with lentils. Augmented with some cheese, thus making a highly healthy dinner slightly less healthy, but with the added bonus of cheesy tastiness and calcium.

I selected the vegetables while heating a little olive oil in a big dish in the oven. As well as the aubergine, there was a golden courgette from our garden (it is supposed to be golden) and I decided to use a red pepper too. I could have added some carrot and potato but didn't want to break the theme (which I suppose was loosely Mediterranean). In the time it took to chop all the vegetables the oven had reached temperature (hottish) and so the roasting process started.

Many of my friends frown at me when I extol the tastiness of lentils, but they really can be delicious. Tonight I would be doing some simple braised lentils. I started off by gently “sweating” (sorry, horrible word) an onion, a couple of sticks of celery and a couple of carrots (all chopped fairly small). I didn't measure the lentils, probably about 100g (but I'm not good at estimating weight), enough to come up about half way in a normal size sieve. The lentils go in the sieve to be rinsed thoroughly. I once had a bit of grit in my lentils so at least by rinsing them the risk is reduced to clean grit. The lentils then go in the pan with the onion, celery and carrot and I added enough water (from a boiled kettle) to just cover everything. As is my preference I added some yeast extract (from a squeezy pot that Matt bought – here is not the right forum to go into the pros and cons of yeast extract in squeezy pots versus the traditional jar) and a spoonful of vegetable stock powder. Then all I did was to leave it to simmer on the hob and hope that it would be ready at the same time as the roasted vegetables.

The vegetables looked to be coming on nicely, but needed some seasoning. (Watch out, the small thing is coming up soon.) I added salt and pepper and sent Matt out to the garden to choose some herbs. He chose some oregano (at least I think it is oregano, it might be marjoram, but oregano and marjoram might actually be the same thing). Matt duly washed the herb (we have some unreliable neighbourhood cats) and threw it in on top of the vegetables in the oven.

This was all going on in the background while I topped and tailed some green beans that my mum had sent us home with from her garden. I was disturbed from my top and tailing reverie by a cry of “Quick get some tongs!”. It transpired that Matt's herb washing had failed to dislodge (or even identify the presence of) a caterpillar. Being the animal lover that he is Matt was frantic to save said creature. I extracted the dish from the oven, Matt found the tongs and extracted the caterpillar from the dish. Being the animal lover that he is that was not sufficient for Matt so while I returned to my beans he took the caterpillar to the park.

I wanted tomato to feature somewhere in this dinner – it would probably be ok added to either the lentils or the oven vegetables. If I only had tinned tomatoes it would have been a no brainer to add these to the lentil pan, but I had some lovely cherry tomatoes and decided that I'd put a few of these (minus caterpillars) in the oven. So it would be a kind of oven roasted ratatouille.

Everything was sort of looking ready so I took a chance and put the green beans in to cook. I also added a splash of balsamic vinegar to the lentils, it adds just a little sharpness otherwise they can be very rich. All that was left for me to do was to chop the feta (almost any strong / salty cheese would probably be fine but we had two blocks of feta for some reason) and beckon Matt to serve it all up (I am useless at serving food).

As usual Matt made a beautiful job of serving the food, and as usual this combination tasted delicious. There was no trace of caterpillar, which was a good job for a vegetarian dinner.

Wednesday's moussaka

I had a bit of time to make tea as Matt was off on a rescue mission to his grandad's. I had it in mind to make a moussaka because I'd bought a couple of cheap aubergines at my favourite cut price supermarket the day before. Usually the only thing I do with aubergine is curry so the extra time available would be a good opportunity to do something a bit different.

Lots of recipe books tell you that you're supposed to do some sort of fancy thing with aubergines that involves salting them but I have never done this before and didn't intend to start now. So I just sliced them and put them in the griddle pan to pre-cook.

In the meantime I got on with the main sauce. I was working totally recipe-free (I have made moussaka before so did vaguely know what I was doing) and my main challenge was going to be qauntities. In terms of proportions I knew what I was aiming for so started off with an onion (well actually one and a half onions because I had half of one left over from something or other last week) and a couple of sticks of celery. Next were some some mushrooms that were starting to look a bit wrinkly.

That all started to cook down and I started to contemplate my protein content. It was unconventional but I had most of a tin of baked beans left over and decided to put those in. The tomato sauce would probably be sufficient liquid for the whole thing. I planned to augment the beans with some vegetarian mince but when it came to it I found that we only had a tiny amount in the freezer, so augmented further with some vegetarian chicken style pieces. I seasoned with some veg stock, black pepper and a good dollop of yeast extract.

So far everything was going smoothly (if a little unconventionally) so now it was onto the white sauce. I suppose the white sauce for a moussaka has some sort of special name but I'm not sure what that is. I started off with a good dollop of butter substitute and about the same of flour in smallish saucepan and cooked these for a little while. I believe this is called making a roux. Next I added milk and then I left this on a low heat to thicken, whisking occasionally. At least that was the plan.

The sauce resolutely refused to thicken. I whisked a bit more. It still resolutely refused to thicken. I left it for a bit longer. It still resolutely refused to thicken. I turned the heat up. It still resolutely refused to thicken. I lost patience and chucked in a spoonful or so of cornflour. I knew as soon as I'd done this that it was the wrong move. Cornflour can be a very useful thing but it can also be a very disastrous thing. On this occasion it was disastrous. I should have learnt from previous mistakes and made a paste with the cornflour before adding but as I said I had lost patience by this point. The cornflour immediately formed lots of lumps in the sauce, which despite vigorous whisking resolutely refused to disperse.

At this point I should probably have cut my losses and started again, but I couldn't bring myself to do this. So I put the sauce through a sieve to catch the lumps and changed strategies. I would thicken the sauce by adding thicker things – cheese and crème fraiche – and try the microwave – rather than the hob – for heating purposes. This seemed to be somewhat successful.

I took a break from the sauce and returned to the aubergine and beany stuff; having chosen an ovenproof dish of what I had deemed to be an appropriate capacity I layered these up, finishing with a layer of aubergine. Clearly I had underestimated the required capacity because the dish was filled right up to the top, leaving barely any space for the sauce. So I got a fish slice and squished the contents of the dish down as much as I could.

Back to the sauce which had now slightly cooled and I whisked in an egg. This makes it rise a little bit which is kind of cool. I carefully spooned as much of the sauce as possible over the moussaka, which wasn't very much of the sauce. Rather than waste the rest of the sauce I decided to add another egg and try to make some sort of soufflé things. Never having made soufflé before this was exceedingly risky. I was now quite tired so rather than faff around looking for the most appropriate container to make soufflé in I divvied it up into some fairy cake cases. I had no idea about temperature so put everything in the oven at 180°C and would keep a close eye on it all.

After about half an hour everything was ready, this happily coincided with Matt's (partially successful) return from his rescue mission. We enjoyed our moussaka with a side of broccoli. I think it's unconventionality made it even tastier. I didn't partake of the soufflé things (I don't like the taste of egg) but Matt assures me that they were nice (if a little bland). It was certainly entertaining to watch him munch them from their paper cases, and maybe I'll even try an actual soufflé some time.

Thursday's fajitas

We had a good selection of vegetables in the fridge, including some home grown courgettes from my brother-in-law, plus peppers, onions, mushrooms and carrots. The obvious choice was going to be stir-fry but when I tried to identify some sort of protein to go with this (usually prawns or vegetarian chicken style pieces) the freezer was depleted. I went to the cupboard and extracted a tin of cannellini beans, these would be somewhat unconventional for a stir fry but edible nonetheless. I also got out a tin of pineapple that I found in my search for beans. Pineapple and soy sauce is one of my favourite types of stir fry.

I started chopping the onion and had a sudden change of heart. Stir fry was off, fajitas were on. This would have the bonus of using up some aged wraps from the freezer and could also involve cheese. I really fancied some cheese and it was hardly an appropriate pairing for stir-fry.

The first stages of the fajita process were identical to those for stir fry. Namely the extensive chopping of vegetables. I have found that carrot never cooks enough in these circumstances unless very thin so have taken to making ribbons out of it with the peeler. Some minor level of skill is required in the order of addition to the wok: onion, pepper, carrot (in ribbons, it would have to go in earlier if it was any fatter), fajita spice (I cheat and use a pre-mix from a packet), courgette, mushroom.

I decided not to add the beans to the main mix but to turn them into some sort of refried beans. I didn't think that I had much time before the veggies would be done so this was going to have to be a total improvisation (apart from containing beans of course). I whizzed the beans in the food processor with half a red onion (I figured if the onion didn't cook red was better than white) and 2 cloves of garlic. Then this went into a small pan with more olive oil than I would usually use (most of the time I use at most one tablespoon, here I heated up 3 tablespoons), I suppose I could have put some spices in but decided to keep it simply for my first attempt.

It was all just about ready when Matt decided that he wanted to go for a swim. I had already been and was feeling slightly peckish but I was not about to discourage my husband from engaging in some exercise, so I turned off all the flames and entertained myself for the next hour or so.

Matt let me know when he was leaving the pool and all that was left to do was cut up a bit of lettuce, grate some cheese (and eat up those little left over bits that you can't grate because it's too close to your fingers) and to reheat the veggies and beans. I suppose this could be seen as the re-frying part. At this point I realised that I hadn't seasoned the beans so hastily mixed in some vegetable stock powder (this was more easily to hand than the salt) and black pepper.

I am yet to discover a way of heating up wraps so that they stay both warm and soft. The loss of heat must be to do with their large surface area. Putting the wraps in the oven turns them into crisps so for now the microwave seems to be the best option for a bit of heat.

These particular wraps were on the small side and I grossly overfilled mine. To be honest I always grossly overfill, because I prefer the fillings to the wrappings. So I had to pin my wrap together with a cocktail stick and eat it with a knife and fork rather than my fingers. (Which is a shame because I do enjoy eating cutlery-less from time to time.) But (even with cutlery) the fajitas were very enjoyable – augmented with squirty salsa, gaucamole and sour cream.

The beans turned out to be delicious – I can't believe that I haven't done something like this with them before. I think this could be a very versatile technique.

In case you were wondering I had the pineapple chunks for breakfast this morning.

Wednesday's gratin

We had ended up with another high veg situation in the fridge. This included:

• Courgettes – bargain in the shop the other day.
• Mushrooms – seemed like a good idea at the time but I haven't had a chance to use them yet and they were almost getting to that horrible slimy stage.
• Spinach – I have no recollection of acquiring this. On questioning Matt said he picked this up some time ago when I was away and he didn't think there was enough green stuff in the house. On further questioning he didn't have any particular plan for it.
• Broccoli – because broccoli is really good.

We were talking about what we might have for tea whilst in the changing rooms at the swimming pool. But in terms of other useful ingredients we were somewhat depleted. When I say other useful ingredients I mean cheese – the last 60g having gone into some scones at the weekend. We did have some branded cheese triangles but these have limited culinary application. I suggested that with a bit of cheese I could do anything. Fortunately Matt had to take a trip out to the sorting office so was able to tag on a trip to the shop.

In the meantime I got on with cutting up the courgettes. I still had no idea what I was going to cook. A pasta dish would have been the obvious choice but I didn't really fancy pasta.

I put the courgettes in a large oven proof dish (I actually chopped up more courgette than needed to line the bottom of the dish – the rest will keep in the fridge for another day).

And then in a moment of inspiration decided to cook some sort of gratin. This not only provided the potential to use a lot of the vegetables but also:

• sour cream – purchased as a bargain at the same time as the mushrooms and surely not going to last in a healthy manner much longer
• bread crumbs – finally a use for the vast quantity we have in the freezer following the purchase some months ago of some extremely cut price sliced bread.

The question mark remaining over the meal now was protein. It would be quite acceptable to have some fish fingers or veggie sausages on the side but I didn't really fancy that. I decided to integrate some butter beans into the gratin. We have lots of tins of beans and pulses in our cupboards, most commonly they go in casseroles or curries and I was rather excited about using them for something different.

I narrowly avoided making a significant omission. Fortunately Matt called to ask if we needed onions. We didn't, but this did remind me to chop an onion up and put that in. I used a red onion, which I have subsequently learnt contain more quercetin than other types of onion (although how scientific this fact is I'm not sure and what the benefit of quercetin is I'm not sure). And for good measure I added some cloves of garlic too.

By the time I had layered up all the veggies (and beans and sour cream, intermittently adorned with black pepper and herbs from the new herb grinder that Matt's mum had brought us back from her holiday), Matt returned with the cheese. I grated a generous amount and mixed it up with the bread crumbs (and some more black pepper) and then poured this over the top of everything else.

I had no idea what temperature to cook this at, so I went for the default of 180ºC. I had no idea how long it would take, but long enough at least that I could hang up pretty much our whole household's worth of underwear and socks. I decided it was done after about an hour when it the top was starting to look a bit crispy (I love crispy things) and then put the broccoli on (I decided that would be better as a side than in the main dish).

I was a bit worried that it would be a bit soggy (I had poured over just a little bit of hot stock before it went in the oven) so got bowls out just in case. But it held together remarkably well. It tasted great, although I'm not sure what the sour cream added, but then I don't know what it would have been like without the sour cream. Maybe it would even have benefited from more sour cream. I had cooked vastly more than was needed to feed the two of us – probably more like enough for 6. So we both had some for lunch today (leaving it in a lunch box in a hot car is actually a rather effective (and free) re-heating method) and there's some more for picnic tomorrow.