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.

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.

Monday's potato dumplings

My mum and I had shared the vegetarian sharing plate at a local restaurant for lunch but another dish on the menu inspired me for the evening meal: gnocchi. I had planned to make a lasagne for us all (me, mum and dad, Matt – my husband – and my mother-in-law) but I thought that gnocchi would be no more complicated and a bit unusual. The pressure was on because Matt needed to eat before 7pm. Normally this wouldn't happen on a school night, but I had the day off work so with a bit of planning and the assistance of my mum as sous chef it should be possible.

I've made gnocchi once before (or maybe twice), and they were slightly gloopy so I decided to try a different recipe. My thoughts were that the sauce(s) would be easy (and slack) so I concentrated my initial efforts on the gnocchi. We debated for sometime whether the potatoes should be peeled before or after cooking, the recipe said afterwards but this would increase the time because:

1. They'd take longer to cook if whole rather than chopped

2. They'd have to cool down before peeling

So I put mum to work peeling the potatoes. And then boiling them.

Then I thought I may as well start the sauce. This would be the ideal opportunity to use up the leftover butternut squash. I started off by chopping a red onion and some sticks of celery and putting them in a big pan to sweat. Then I peeled off the skin and chopped up the squash. This was looking more and more like a reprise of the risotto flavours from last week. And it was such a good flavour I added mushrooms to complete. I mixed thing up a little bit by changing the seasoning, obviously some veg stock and black pepper but I also added some thyme from the garden. According to my mum I need to give my thyme plant a hair cut. I also set off a very easy pepper and tomato sauce by chopping a load of peppers and putting them in the oven to roast with a couple of sprigs of rosemary from the garden. I don't think that needs a hair cut.

Once that was all under way, I returned to the gnocchi. The potatoes were cooked and now needed mashing. I don't really like mashing potato (which is a shame because I love eating mashed potato), but this wasn't so bad as you're actually supposed to leave it a little bit lumpy. Once that's done you add an egg, flour, cheese, salt and pepper. On this occasion I used a hard goat's cheese – mum had already displayed her sous chef skills in grating this. It looks really dodgy when you first start to mix it up but comes together fine and then you tip it out and kneed it a little bit. This is very messy – wear an apron and remove hand jewellery. When it looks a bit less messy you have to roll it out into long thin sausages (about 1.5-2cm diameter) and then chop into pieces 2-3cm long. Maybe you could roll it all into little balls, but maybe this risks “over-handling” (if this is possible with gnocchi).

When it comes to cooking the gnocchi use the biggest pan of boiling water that you have but they need to be able to move around freely – I did mine in 4 batches. They're done when they float to the top and you need to remove with as little water as possible – I used a slotted spoon. In retrospect a chip pan would have been ideal but I don't have a chip pan. You can keep them warm in a buttered dish in a warmish oven (not the same oven that you're roasting peppers and by now tomatoes too in).

I finished off the butternut squash and mushroom sauce with a load of crème fraiche, and removed the sprigs of thyme. This was a good tea from the point of view that I could put everything in dishes on the table for people to help themselves. As well as the gnocchi and sauces there were some green beans that my sous chef had brought from her garden and prepared for me. It all seemed to go down very well. An improvement on my previous gnocchi, although they would probably have benefited from even more cheese (but what doesn't). No-one had any space for pudding which was a good job because there wasn't any. And we were nearly done by 7pm.

Sunday's Thai experiment

The mange tout peas are proving to be one of my most productive crops. Very nice straight off the plant, or stir fry would be my usual default cook but I wanted to try something different.

Somehow I got it in my head that I would do a Thai curry. I have never done a Thai curry before and to be quite honest I don't really know how it differs from a non-Thai curry, except that I think it should have lemongrass in it. So I picked up some lemongrass at the supermarket the other day, as well as some spring onions which I thought would be appropriate, and hoped that I be able to cobble the rest of the ingredients together from the fridge/freezer/cupboards.

I thought that it would be a good idea at least get some sort of recipe to work to. I found one about how to make a Thai curry paste but had barely any of the components, and another for Thai vegetables with coconut milk. As it was I basically ended up making something up. We are trying to clear a bit of space in the freezer for more ice-cream so I decided to use up some of the white fish that we have stored away from various bargain purchases. Matt kindly helped out by defrosting.

The curry also had in it (in addition to the mange tout, lemongrass, fish and spring onions):

• Groundnut oil – in preference to olive oil, I thought it would be more authentically Thai (or at least more Thai than olives)
• Red pepper – I sliced this thinly and put it in to fry off before anything else. Red pepper never seems to cook enough so I wanted to give it a fighting chance
• Celery – the recipe had this in. I wouldn't usually put it in curry but didn't see that it could do too much harm
• Chilli – I put a whole one in (chopped) and just had to hope that this wouldn't make it too hot. Following my most recent chilli incident I am being most wary of touching my eyes / lips etc
• Cumin – Matt's favourite spice
• Ginger – my favourite spice
• Sweet potato – grated. The recipe suggested one and a half cups
  
  of grated pumpkin. I didn't have any pumpkin but was intrigued by this kind of thing so used a sweet potato instead. I don't like using “cups” as a measurement because it is not specific as to what size cup it should be or how densely packed the ingredient should be in it. So I used one medium sweet potato. It looked just like grated carrot and I am contemplating its possible role in a cake.
• Coconut milk, lime juice and vegetable stock – added as it was all looking rather dry.
• Broccoli – probably not very Thai but I love it. I put this in right towards the end so it steamed in all the vapour.

Due to my inability to reliably cook rice I would have been quite happy to eat the curry without any accompanying carbohydrate, but Matt volunteered to do some rice for us. As usual his rice came out perfectly. When I try to replicate his method I still fail.

We were a bit unsure as to how edible this would be – Matt suggested that it would be somewhere on the spectrum between average and excellent (it did smell good). I had barely followed any recipe and all the quantities were guesstimated. With the lemongrass I had used an ingredient that has never before graced my kitchen shelves, I sliced it up a little bit and crushed it a little bit before putting it in the pan; we decided that we wouldn't eat it and pulled the little woody bits out as we went along. But now I'm kind of curious to know what it would have tasted like.

The verdict on the whole thing was that it was towards the excellent end of the spectrum, but that it could have taken a little more spicing. Matt may regret saying that as next time I'll put two chillies in.

Monday's medley of soup

After a leisurely start to the day it was all systems go to equip the garden. The leisurely start included reading an old book – I’m sure I’m enjoying it more because it smells old.

The equipping of the garden first involved removal of junk from the boot of my car at the dump. This included:

1. An enormous and cute, but slightly mouldy teddy bear, that had been freed from our loft by my cousin, Alastair, in January. It had been sat around in a black sack in various locations since as I had been intending to fettle it up with a trip to the launderette but finally thought better of it.
2. A whole load of VHS tapes which I had discovered whilst spring re-arranging (more enjoyable than spring cleaning) yesterday. Both mine and Matt’s and none of them viewed in at least the last 7 years.
3. My condemned sandwich toaster.

Items 1 and 2 disposed of according to plan. Item 3 disposed of causing Matt great hilarity. Today I was fulfilling the role of dumping whilst Matt watched from the car. This is often beneficial as the men at the dump are generally quite keen to help ladies with their dumping. I was duly assisted with items 1 and 2 but today the electrical waste was unmanned.

Taking health and safety seriously I called out before throwing the sandwich toaster into the skip to check that there was no-one inside it. There was no response so I went ahead with the launch of the sandwich toaster. Unfortunately I didn’t launch with quite enough force and the sandwich toaster rebounded from the side of skip, plug flailing and narrowly avoiding my head. It was whilst I was picking up the bits that Matt wound down the car window and told me, between fits of laughter, to walk round the other side of the skip. Where the side was down and I could just place in the sandwich toaster with no risk of head injury.

A successful trip to the garden centre ensued and 8 terracotta, mosaic encrusted pots later we began the return journey. Matt had seat belted the larger pots into the back seats with the rest in the boot so there was limited capacity for shopping from a “luxury” supermarket. One of the best things about said luxury supermarket is that when they reduce things they do really good reductions. Today’s best bargain was watercress and I picked up 4 packets. I also picked up a packet of reduced salad which when put together with some reduced beetroot, the remaining salmon & prawn leftovers and a homemade dressing made a very nice lunch.

After lunch it was back out to another garden centre where we successfully equipped ourselves with garden tables (that sort of match the pots) and a hose. And what appears to me to be an extravagant hose attachment but Matt assures me that we will not regret it.

Once home I needed to turn the watercress into soup while it was still nice. I think that potato is the traditional thickening to go with this but I prefer lentils to add some protein.

Realising that we’d had watercress in the lunchtime salad I thought that I should mix up the day’s flavours, I decided to make another sort of soup too. I got a leek and potato one on the go. 

Then I thought: why stop at two? We had eaten the last portion of frozen soup yesterday (the parsnip and apple one) so there was scope for restocking.

One of my other luxury supermarket bargains was a pot of sun ripened tomatoes and I thought I’d try these with some slightly wrinkling peppers. Having started to heat some olive oil to sauté an onion I noticed that there was quite a bit of oil in the tomato pot and not wanting to waste this I got out another pan and heated that instead.

So now I had a spare pan with olive oil and the only logical thing was to use this to make another soup. I had used up nearly all of the fresh vegetables in the house but there were still some carrots. And I had a little knobble of ginger so decided to try carrot and ginger. To improve the flavour I oven roasted the carrots before adding to the onion and ginger. Whilst the carrots were roasting and I was pondering this creation I felt inspired to add orange juice. This would be the perfect opportunity to use up the oranges and satsumas etc that had been sat, unloved, for a good long while (some I fear since 2012) in the fruit bowl. This is because I love nice citrus and am often tempted to buy. But if I buy a pack, eat one and it’s disappointing then it puts me off the rest. But I hate wasting food so the citrus stay there. (If it’s nice the whole lot may well get devoured in one sitting.) Matt can usually be counted on to help consume food but he isn’t keen on oranges due to the peeling issue (not that I’ve ever perceived that as a particular issue). So I was pleased to be able to squeeze some semi-decent juice out of my languishing fruits, which I added with some stock and red lentils to the other ingredients.

The tomatoey-peppery soup was looking rather insubstantial so I added a tin of tomatoes to that. And some red lentils.

Once all the soups were blended up (separately) we faced the dilemma of which to eat tonight. Matt went for the watercress (with a dollop of crème fraiche) – I am told it was scrumptious. I went for the carrot / ginger / orange. It too was scrumptious. I think that I’ll call it velvet carrot soup as the lentils gave it a gorgeous texture (although I did miss a few bits of carrot in the blending process).

Now I’ve just got to find enough containers to freeze it all. And replenish the lentils.