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.)

Sunday's stuffing

We had a couple of slightly aging peppers in the fridge that I was keen to use up but as we were expecting a big delivery from the online supermarket on Monday so I didn't want to make anything for lunch that required the acquisition of any more ingredients. Unfortunately I discovered that we had no onions left. This was too restrictive but I would just pop to the shop quickly, I had to go out to buy tarpaulin anyway. Popping to the shop quickly didn't happen – it was absolute mayhem – but I was successful in acquiring an onion so lunch could proceed.

I decided to do stuffed peppers. Rather than bother with any sort of recipe I just made it up as I went along. One of the things that I sometimes don't like about stuffed peppers is when the peppers are crunchy. Crunchy peppers are for salads and dips, otherwise they should be soft and sweet. So I halved (lengthways) a yellow and an orange pepper, covered in boiling water and blasted in the microwave for a couple of minutes.

While they cooled I worked on the filling; this was going to be couscous based. I started by chopping and sweating my hard acquired onion, still unsure of what the rest of the filling was going to be like. I was tempted to go for my usual “camping” couscous but I'm trying to reduce the rate at which we get through tinned tomatoes. So for savouriness and protein I added a load of vegetarian mince to the pan – about as twice as much by volume as the onion. I cooked that for about 10 minutes and then tipped in the couscous, about the same amount by volume as the onion plus the mince, plus some veg stock powder and black pepper.

I have never quite recovered from a couscous incident when I was a student (my mum had assured me that you can't go wrong) in which I added too much water, so tried to correct the balance by adding more couscous, then it was too dry so in went more water. And so on until I had got through a whole packet of couscous and all I had was a gelatinous mess, too much for my jug and thus all over the work surface too. Since then I have been very careful with couscous, either being very precise with my measuring or adding water just a very little at a time. Today I went for the second of these techniques and added just a tablespoon or so of boiling water to the pan at a time. It was successful and I had lovely fluffy couscous.

Now to fill the peppers. I laid out the pepper halves in a deep pan and half filled each of them with the couscous mixture (it became apparent that I had far more filling than was strictly needed). Then I put on a sprinkling of feta (a bit of spontaneous cheese addition was sure to improve the whole thing) and then topped off with more filling. I could have saved the rest of the filling for another day but wasn't really in the mood for that so poured the rest of it around the peppers. Now I thought about, this would serve to stabilise the peppers in the pan.

Somehow it didn't seem finished. I keep coming across breadcrumbs in the freezer and thought that adding some as a topping would add a bit of interest in the texture. (I am mainly saving these breadcrumbs from a bargain loaf of bread in the Spring to make Christmas puddings, but the consensus is that this should be done in November). I augmented the breadcrumbs with a bit more spontaneous cheese (just a little grate of parmesan this time) and more black pepper, sprinkled over the stuffed peppers / loose couscous and put it all in the oven at 180ºC. Having never made this before I had no idea how long it would take, but everything was pre-cooked so burning was the main risk. I took it out when the top had started to crisp up nicely.

Really the stuffed peppers should have been served with a lovely crisp green salad, but we had nothing suitable from which to assemble this so I just served them with extra of the filling. They were really nice. The microwaving of the peppers had really done the trick to make them nice and soft, the filling tasted just good and the spontaneous cheese additions did indeed improve the whole thing. It would be nice with a few toasted pine nuts too.

Tuesday's courgette emergency

I managed to pop home for lunch today and was reminded of the remaining almost festering courgettes. I’m going out for dinner at a local garden centre with Barbara, my mother-in-law, tomorrow and there was no way that these would last two more days. So tonight’s tea would have to use them up.

The courgette is not an inspiring vegetable. The best thing I have ever done with it is an amazing cake with pine nuts, sultanas and lemon. But that requires lovely, sweet, small courgettes. It might feature in the summer, maybe with home-grown courgettes. I once made some courgette / cocoa muffins which I thought were quite nice but my camping companions did not seem to agree, although they were too polite to say so in so many words.

By the time I got home from work I was afflicted by the unfortunate trio of tiredness, hunger and coldness (particularly my feet). I didn’t know which to address first. As Matt, my husband, was due to go out for some stag-do planning the pressure was on for eating so I decided to get straight on with preparing something to feed us. Having, predictably, failed to find any inspiration for the courgettes I reverted back to one of our regular teas. Roasted vegetables. Along with the two courgettes this also involved half a butternut squash, half a sweet potato, a green pepper (also often at a loss at what to do with these but they also put them in those bargain pepper multipacks), an onion, some tomatoes (the ones that had previously been destined for toasted sandwiches) and 3 big mushrooms that were well past their best. There should have been 4 big mushrooms but one of them was irredeemable.

Using this many vegetables produced lots of scraps that would be ideal for our new Wormery. Unfortunately we haven’t got the worms yet. So we’re storing up the scraps in bags / boxes in the kitchen in keen anticipation of their arrival. There is clearly a limit to how long this scrap build up can continue. This limit will probably be tomorrow unless the previously mentioned garden centre is able to supply some worms.

To go with the vegetables I did one of my favourites: camping couscous. First made for me by my mum on a campsite in Devon, this basically consists of couscous and tinned tomatoes. Over the last few years I have made lots of different variations on the theme. Tonight’s included onion, red pepper (left over from the dumplings), and celery.

Tonight’s tea really called for cheese. Having not featured significantly in our diet since the original slack lasagne (although frequently as a minor to moderate addition) I felt it acceptable to have some tonight. The choice was feta, soft goat’s cheese, cheddar or halloumi. Since we had four block of halloumi in the fridge I opted for this (plus it bakes fantastically with the veggies). The large supply of halloumi is not explained by it being either mine or Matt’s favourite cheese (mine is a lovely squidgy brie-like thing called Vignotte, Matt’s a strong cheddar) but by our difficulty last summer in obtaining any on barbeque days. So Matt’s solution is to stock pile it (it has a very long shelf life) so that it won’t matter if the shops sell out on barbeque days this summer (let’s hope there are plenty).

Due to Matt’s early start tomorrow (and I think that I’m supposed to be taking him to the train station) he rescheduled the stag-do planning (which also means he can get a haircut at the same time), so there was plenty of time to allow the veg to cook. I like it when they start to burn a bit.

Despite the fact that I probably let mine cool down a bit too much before eating (distracted booking a bargain holiday) it was delicious.

And now I can deal with my tiredness and coldness in one go: with bed and a hot-water bottle.