For the first time in a long time, last week we cooked, and ate, all seven meals as planned. It felt good to be in control to be honest. All to often, if we deviate, it is because we have "accidentally" gone to the pub after work and ended up ordering a takeaway or eating toast in lieu of an actual meal OR it is because we have been infected with a generous dose of ennui and ended up not eating a proper meal at all but grazing. To make a plan, stick to a plan and actually enjoy eating all meals on said plan was really nice.
Oh, and Beth - chickpea mash? The recipe is here. A pleasant twist on the classic bangers and mash although I found that the chickpeas did need a judicious whack of seasoning and lemon juice to perk them up and the inclusion of a scattering of caramelised onion was a welcome note.
Onto this week, and the plan is to be in every night again and eat as follows:
Monday: carrot, tomato and feta soup (the other half of the batch we started last week.)
Tuesday: a freezer dive - chilli con carne with rice and a decent dollop of cooling sour cream.
Wednesday: pasta with nduja pesto and roasted cherry tomatoes. Now, this pesto is part of the Sacla range which tend to be pretty good for a weekday meal. But I'm not clear on how nduja pesto is different from just plain old nduja. I guess I am soon to find out!
Thursday: a red wine and mushroom risotto, from The Silver Spoon.
Friday: and diving once more into the recipe book library, tonight we will be cooking Gung Bao chicken from Fuschia Dunlop's fantastic "Every Grain of Rice". If you are a fan of Chinese food then I would highly recommend this tome.
Saturday: lamb seekh kebabs - sides tbc.
Sunday: Pollock (or whatever white fish looks good at the fishmongers) with chickpeas and chorizo, courtesy of Mr Tom Kerridge.
Have a good week one and all!
Monday, 12 August 2019
Thursday, 8 August 2019
Recipe corner: carrot, tomato and feta soup
A beautiful soup is a wonderful thing and I haven’t posted a soup recipe for AGES.
It was partly, perhaps, a reaction to Weight Watchers (where zero point soup, aka joyless, fatless veg purée) is heavily endorsed that I had all but stopped making the stuff. But one day, after yet another disappointing pot of ready made supermarket offering, fishing around for the one, desultory chunk of chicken in what purported to be chicken soup, D pointed out that we should really go back to doing it ourselves. He’s right; given that one only has a finite number of meals, why waste your time on crap?
Here then is a delicious, sweet and summery concoction, courtesy of Nigel Slater. I did mine slightly differently to him in that I blitzed the carrot element to be quite silky smooth (I like a smooth soup) and then stirred the tomatoes through to add texture at the end. The carrots were the mellow backdrop to the peppery, sprightly basil flecked tomatoes with a final zing from the feta. Lovely. I must admit, I also used a bit less oil than he recommended. Weight Watchers habits die hard...
Ingredients
Tbsp olive oil
Large onion, roughly chopped
400g carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
Litre of very dilute veg stock (I used a tsp of Bouillon powder in total)
Tbsp olive oil
500g cherry tomatoes, quartered
Garlic clove, peeled and lightly bruised
Small handful basil leaves, shredded
To garnish:
120g feta cheese, crumbled
Basil leaves, torn
4tsp olive oil
Serves 4
Place a nice, large saucepan over a low heat. Warm the oil and then cook the onion until pale and soft. Then in go the carrots with a hefty whack of salt and pepper to cook slowly for a further 10 minutes. Pour in the stock, bring to a gentle simmer and allow to bubble away for half an hour until the carrots are soft. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly before blitzing to a smooth purée with a stick blender (or in a processor). This can all be done in advance.
Shortly before serving, put the quartered tomatoes in a second pan with the oil and garlic and cook down, over a low heat, for 10 minutes or so until you have a sweet mush. Season, stir through the basil and then add to the carrot mix and heat the whole gently.
To serve, garnish with the crumbled feta, some torn basil and a drizzle of olive oil.
It was partly, perhaps, a reaction to Weight Watchers (where zero point soup, aka joyless, fatless veg purée) is heavily endorsed that I had all but stopped making the stuff. But one day, after yet another disappointing pot of ready made supermarket offering, fishing around for the one, desultory chunk of chicken in what purported to be chicken soup, D pointed out that we should really go back to doing it ourselves. He’s right; given that one only has a finite number of meals, why waste your time on crap?
Here then is a delicious, sweet and summery concoction, courtesy of Nigel Slater. I did mine slightly differently to him in that I blitzed the carrot element to be quite silky smooth (I like a smooth soup) and then stirred the tomatoes through to add texture at the end. The carrots were the mellow backdrop to the peppery, sprightly basil flecked tomatoes with a final zing from the feta. Lovely. I must admit, I also used a bit less oil than he recommended. Weight Watchers habits die hard...
Ingredients
Tbsp olive oil
Large onion, roughly chopped
400g carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
Litre of very dilute veg stock (I used a tsp of Bouillon powder in total)
Tbsp olive oil
500g cherry tomatoes, quartered
Garlic clove, peeled and lightly bruised
Small handful basil leaves, shredded
To garnish:
120g feta cheese, crumbled
Basil leaves, torn
4tsp olive oil
Serves 4
Place a nice, large saucepan over a low heat. Warm the oil and then cook the onion until pale and soft. Then in go the carrots with a hefty whack of salt and pepper to cook slowly for a further 10 minutes. Pour in the stock, bring to a gentle simmer and allow to bubble away for half an hour until the carrots are soft. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly before blitzing to a smooth purée with a stick blender (or in a processor). This can all be done in advance.
Shortly before serving, put the quartered tomatoes in a second pan with the oil and garlic and cook down, over a low heat, for 10 minutes or so until you have a sweet mush. Season, stir through the basil and then add to the carrot mix and heat the whole gently.
To serve, garnish with the crumbled feta, some torn basil and a drizzle of olive oil.
Tuesday, 6 August 2019
MPM: 5th August 2019
Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of "the only blog post of
the week" aka Meal Planning Monday.
This week posted on a Tuesday!
Is anyone else wilting in the current weather? I feel like I am physically melting most of the time. I completely take on board that I have more insulation that some other people but combine that with general warm-bloodedness and a genetic propensity (thanks, paternal grandmother) for a sweaty brow and nose and you do not end up with a pretty picture. The current combination of heat and humidity is a particular killer and whatever I try, the cat refuses to fan me with palm leaves as I drift off to sleep, so I end up tossing and turning and harrumphing and generally being most annoying and annoyed.
I don’t, however, seem to be one of these people who lose their appetite in the heat, which is a shame. I’m permanently thinking about ice cream, which is also a shame. If you’re a fan of Lotus Biscoff and haven’t yet tried the Lotus Biscoff ice cream stick then hie thee hence to your nearest supermarket frozen-food aisle and buy some. You can thank me later.
Anyhoo, meal planning. D picked a few of the meals this week, direct from the archives of The WW Foodie, which is exciting. We were originally going to be having a third WWF recipe on Saturday night but this has now been bumped to next week in order to use up some chicken we have going spare. Someone may or may not have accidentally cut right through a chicken breast on Sunday when he was preparing homemade Kievs and that same someone may or may not have stormed off to the supermarket in an expletive studded squall of self recrimination to buy a second pack rather than try and patch the hole with trimmings. The remaining chicken, and, indeed the remaining breadcrumbs from the Kiev, will be put to good use.
Monday: sigh. Still soup but now we are going homemade, having come to the conclusion that most shop bought soup is shit. The aim is to try and make it at the weekend so that Monday can still be a night “off” cooking. Last night, we made a Nigel Slater recipe: carrot and tomato with feta. And, to be fair, it was miles ahead of anything that we might have recently had from a supermarket.
Tuesday: there is half a cauliflower lurking in the fridge and I fancied making mustardy cauliflower cheese, a recipe from Ottolenghi’s “Simple”. D suggested throwing in some pasta and making it a mac-and-cauli-cheese. Excellent suggestion.
Wednesday: roasted veg with feta and couscous. A bump from last week.
Thursday: corned beef hash. Woohoo – a house favourite! In an exciting twist, we don’t have any homemade corned beef to hand so we are going to try it using a tin. Given that tinned corned beef is one of the definitive tastes of childhood for both me and D, I am genuinely looking forward to this.
Friday: lemon sole with brown shrimp butter. Classic, easy, delicious Friday fish.
Saturday: homemade chicken goujons (or nuggets if that feels right) with oven fries and possibly (this is still under discussion) a wedge salad. Just because I am intrigued by the idea and want to make one.
Sunday: another Nigel Slater recipe – I am loving his work at the moment. This time, sausages with herbed chickpea mash. Sounds like a lovely, summery twist on a classic.
Have a good week everyone!
Is anyone else wilting in the current weather? I feel like I am physically melting most of the time. I completely take on board that I have more insulation that some other people but combine that with general warm-bloodedness and a genetic propensity (thanks, paternal grandmother) for a sweaty brow and nose and you do not end up with a pretty picture. The current combination of heat and humidity is a particular killer and whatever I try, the cat refuses to fan me with palm leaves as I drift off to sleep, so I end up tossing and turning and harrumphing and generally being most annoying and annoyed.
I don’t, however, seem to be one of these people who lose their appetite in the heat, which is a shame. I’m permanently thinking about ice cream, which is also a shame. If you’re a fan of Lotus Biscoff and haven’t yet tried the Lotus Biscoff ice cream stick then hie thee hence to your nearest supermarket frozen-food aisle and buy some. You can thank me later.
Anyhoo, meal planning. D picked a few of the meals this week, direct from the archives of The WW Foodie, which is exciting. We were originally going to be having a third WWF recipe on Saturday night but this has now been bumped to next week in order to use up some chicken we have going spare. Someone may or may not have accidentally cut right through a chicken breast on Sunday when he was preparing homemade Kievs and that same someone may or may not have stormed off to the supermarket in an expletive studded squall of self recrimination to buy a second pack rather than try and patch the hole with trimmings. The remaining chicken, and, indeed the remaining breadcrumbs from the Kiev, will be put to good use.
Monday: sigh. Still soup but now we are going homemade, having come to the conclusion that most shop bought soup is shit. The aim is to try and make it at the weekend so that Monday can still be a night “off” cooking. Last night, we made a Nigel Slater recipe: carrot and tomato with feta. And, to be fair, it was miles ahead of anything that we might have recently had from a supermarket.
Tuesday: there is half a cauliflower lurking in the fridge and I fancied making mustardy cauliflower cheese, a recipe from Ottolenghi’s “Simple”. D suggested throwing in some pasta and making it a mac-and-cauli-cheese. Excellent suggestion.
Wednesday: roasted veg with feta and couscous. A bump from last week.
Thursday: corned beef hash. Woohoo – a house favourite! In an exciting twist, we don’t have any homemade corned beef to hand so we are going to try it using a tin. Given that tinned corned beef is one of the definitive tastes of childhood for both me and D, I am genuinely looking forward to this.
Friday: lemon sole with brown shrimp butter. Classic, easy, delicious Friday fish.
Saturday: homemade chicken goujons (or nuggets if that feels right) with oven fries and possibly (this is still under discussion) a wedge salad. Just because I am intrigued by the idea and want to make one.
Sunday: another Nigel Slater recipe – I am loving his work at the moment. This time, sausages with herbed chickpea mash. Sounds like a lovely, summery twist on a classic.
Have a good week everyone!
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