Currying Favour

Tonight I tried something new. 'Vegetable curry' was not something I was really expecting to go down terribly well, but I loved the idea of the combination of flavours and textures in this meal, so I decided to be brave and go for it.

Softening the (potential) blow of a totally vegetarian meal was made easier by a first course of a large plate of Potato Bhajias (made according to Madhur Jaffrey's recipe). I then brought the steaming pan of curry to the table and awaited my judgement with bated breath. What a relief! The children positively inhaled it , despite having already gorged themselves on the bhajias. I think Hubby was probably less keen, but he is more of a meat-and-potatoes-man and, give him his dues, his plate was clean.

Vegetable Curry with Red Lentils

I used an organic Tikka Masala curry powder, blended by Steenbergs, which we received in a hamper at Christmas (ta, G+E).

1 small onion, chopped
2 tsp 'lazy' garlic
1 tbsp curry powder (your choice, natch)
100g red lentils
600ml vegetable stock
1 small cauliflower, in florets
1 big carrot, peeled and sliced
100g fine beans, trimmed and halved
2 good handfuls spinach leaves

Heat some oil in a wide pan and cook the onion and garlic together until softened. Add the curry powder and lentils, then pour in the hot stock. Drop in the pieces of cauliflower and carrot, then cover the pan and simmer for 20 minutes. Stir in the beans, then lay the spinach on top of the curry and recover the pan for a further 5-10 minutes. Mix well and serve, with brown rice and condiments. I liked yoghurt and lime pickle with mine, Hub just the former. James wanted lots of mango chutney with his, I think he thinks it's jam. Christopher is still going through his (apparently never-ending) 'suspicious' phase when it comes to added sauces and dressings, so he had his 'as was'.

Saying that, I notice that his wariness doesn't seem to apply to chocolate sauce on ice-cream, nor to custard with puddings...

Quack-amole

I love avocados, though I'm sure my hips don't thank me for that. They are (she writes in her defence) full of so-called 'good' fats and extremely good for the skin and hair if the (mainly self-appointed) experts are to be believed. Incidentally, the avocado is a fruit, not a vegetable, though much like the tomato I always think of it as the latter.

While we are all recent converts to Mexican food, I've never been particularly keen on traditional guacamole (i.e. with tomato in it) and I remain indifferent. As I have taken to adding soft cheese to this, for a milder flavour and to lighten the calorific load, this has no business calling itself 'guacamole', nor would I presume to do so. I feel that the food I cook must have some integrity, however silly that may seem. Avocado Dip it is.

I usually serve this as a first course with tortilla chips or, occasionally, with hot toast. Breadsticks and crudités accompany it well as part of a buffet spread and, if you want something a bit more celebratory, it also goes very well with smoked salmon.

Avocado Dip

I pinched the idea of seasoning the lemon juice before adding it to the other ingredientsfrom one of Nigella Lawson’s books, though I forget which.

2 or 3 avocados, depending on size
2 fat spring onions, very finely chopped
100g low-fat soft cheese (or 0% Greek yoghurt if you prefer)
juice of ½ to 1 lemon, to taste
a good pinch of salt and a twist of pepper

Mash the avocados well, then add the spring onions. Beat the soft cheese until smooth, then stir this into the avocado mixture. Stir the seasoning into the lemon juice and then pour it in, mixing well. Scrape the dip into a halfway decent-looking bowl, then cover the surface with clingfilm immediately and keep it there until seconds before you serve it. The lemon juice helps the dip to keep for a little while before turning brown, but don’t push your luck...

After our first course we enjoyed a pasta bake made with 200g of pasta, cooked and mixed with some leftover cooked chicken from Sunday's roast and some tinned sweetcorn. It was all bound together with a cheesy sauce and baked with more cheese atop.

Noshy Gnocchi

Much as I do love a pasta bake (and plan one for tomorrow evening), I' d never cooked anything with gnocchi until tonight. Tearing a riff on a favourite pasta recipe seemed appropriate, though, so I knocked up some blue cheese sauce and replaced the broccoli with spinach (yum...).

We started with a platter of Antipasti (read: I foraged in the fridge for anything feeling remotely Italianate and laid it all out on my big SYNTES SKISS plate from IKEA. With a glass of breadsticks and another holding celery it was a respectable first course that encouraged the children to try a little of everything, though not to like it all straightaway. As I'd included olives and anchovies, I was not particularly surprised!

Gnocchi with Spinach & Blue Cheese Sauce

The gnocchi I used was 'The Best' from the chiller cabinet at Morrisons. If you'd rather make this into a pasta bake, just substitute an equal amount of cooked pasta (i.e. about 200g -250g dry weight) for the gnocchi and proceed with the rest of the recipe.

30g cornflour
30g butter
1 pint milk

Put all three ingredients into a pan and bring to the boil, whisking all the time.

200g Danish Blue cheese, chopped

When the sauce has thickened, remove it from the heat and stir in the blue cheese, along with some pepper (but no salt)

2 big handfuls spinach leaves, washed
500g pack 'fresh' gnocchi


Wilt the spinach by putting it into a colander and pouring a kettleful of boiling water over it. Squeeze the excess water out with tongs and arrange this with the gnocchi in the bottom of an ovenproof dish. Pour the sauce over, pushing everything down well to cover it.

50g fresh parmesan, grated
50g breadcrumbs

Mix together and sprinkle over the top of the gnocchi. Bake at 200°c for 15-20 minutes until golden on top and bublling around the edges.

Cheese Saves the Day (again)

I feel compelled to pass on this little idea quickly. Yesterday, when Chris and I were preparing an Idle Pie for dinner, we trimmed off the pastry and found we had quite a bit left over.

I wasn't willing to waste it, or worse, wrap it in clingfilm, put it in the fridge and waste it in two days' time (!). So, I rolled it out thinly and we scattered grated cheese (parmesan) over it. Fold it like a letter (in thirds), roll it out again and repeat. Cut into strips and 'twist', putting them onto an oiled baking sheet. We put them in the oven with the pie (at 180°c) for about 10 minutes, until an enticing toasted cheese aroma filled the kitchen, then I cooled them on a rack.

Et voilà! A lovely pre-dinner nibble and no pastry trimmings in the bin!!

Perky Turkey

It's been soooo hot today; not that I'm complaining, you understand. I've been shivering in "It's Spring, dammit!-denial" for weeks now, so it's rather nice that the weather has finally caught up with my wardrobe. James and I spent the afternoon (while Chris was at school) outside, playing and sitting, chatting to friends, respectively. I wasn't sure, on the way home, if the meal I'd planned for this evening would go down terribly well because of the heat. I'm happy to report that it did, after all - clean plates all round.

This is definitely a throw-it-together kind of meal. You can vary this in all sorts of ways to make it suit your mood and (in my case, anyway) what needs using up from the freezer.

Turkey Enchiladas

300g turkey, sliced
400g can mixed beans, drained and rinsed
2 x 400g cans chopped tomatoes
6 flour tortillas
100g cheddar cheese, coarsely grated

Heat a little oil in a large pan and fry the turkey strips until just cooked through. Add the beans, then stir in half of one can of tomatoes. Use this mixture to fill the tortillas, laying the 'wraps' side-by-side in an ovenproof dish. Tip the rest of the tomatoes into the pan, along with 100ml water, and bring to the boil. Pour this sauce over the tortillas, pushing the edges down to cover everything well. Top with grated cheese and bake at 180°c for 25 minutes until golden brown and bubbling.


For an easy first course, I set out a bowl of yoghurt and another of Salsa Mexicana Verde (from a can!), with some shop-bought tortilla chips. The salsa, which came from Mexgrocer, is quite tangy and piquant but nonetheless addictive for that. The boys aren't so keen, but there's time...

24 Carrot Gold

Tonight's first course was based on the memory of a salad my mum used to occasionally pack in my school lunchbox; shredded lettuce and carrot with cheddar cheese and salted peanuts. I always loved the combination of carrots and peanuts and have tried here to recreate that particular taste sensation, though in a slightly more dinner-friendly way. I suspect that it will also make a brilliant 'side order' salad for barbecues in the summer, but that little experiment will have to wait. You'll notice no cheese is included here, though - while I admit that it would (almost certainly) be fab with some crumbled feta cheese, sadly once again I am the only one willing to travel down that road... It did in fact go down very well with all of us tonight and my dreams of lunch tomorrow were dashed by the scant leftovers.


Carrot Salad

3 large carrots
handful of raisins or sultanas
100g bag salted peanuts
fresh parsley, chopped

Peel and coarsely grate the carrots. Combine all the above ingredients in a large bowl.

2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp garlic vinegar
1/4 tsp ground cumin

Whisk together, pour over the carrot salad and toss well to coat evrything in the dressing. The salad will sit happily for a bit while you get other things sorted out.

Speaking of which, we followed this salad with a Tuna Lasagne, made tonight with some leftover mixed bean salad, from the other day, in place of the peas. A successful substitution, one I was pleased with and which used up most of the remaining bean salad. I will (thankfully) be able to add that to the laughably minute serving of carrot salad to cobble together a lunch tomorrow.

Getting Saucy!

It's been a while since I blogged, chiefly because my parents visited and I wanted to spend time with them. However, now we're back in business! Still going with the plan-ahead weekly menus and I have to tell you, it really does make life easier, not having to hear that daily whinge of "what's for dinner?" with no definite answer to give. It makes the weekly food shopping easier, if I don't have to 'guess-timate' what food we might eat during the course of the week. It certainly saves money, plus it avoids the guilt of impulse-buying food that might get thrown away because it goes off before we get around to eating it.

Tonight we started with a simple platter of ham and mozzarella with French bread and basil oil, which I make by whizzing a bit of pesto (from a jar) with some olive oil. This is one of those really easy first courses that is always well-received but which takes (relatively speaking) no work at all. You could, depending on your constituency, add a few olives to the plate. As the only keen olive-eater in the house, though, I don't bother and just snaffle a few while I'm cooking.

Afterwards, we left the bread on the table as an accompaniment to our main course of Broccoli Cheese, to mop up every last scrap of the tasty sauce. I've mentioned the all-in-one method of sauce-making before, but it deserves a repeat entry; discovering it revolutionised the way I cook and for that I thank Saint Delia. And for the top of the broccoli (or cauliflower, for that matter) cheese, please consider using a 50/50 mixture of grated cheese and fresh breadcrumbs. Such a lovely crunch.

Basic All-in-One White Sauce

40g butter
40g cornflour
1 pint milk
1 tsp mustard (if you're making a cheese sauce)

PLUS

grated cheese or chopped fresh parsley (for cheese sauce or parsley sauce respectively)
grated nutmeg (if it's to be a plain white sauce)

Bung everything into a pan and bring it to the boil, whisking all the time. Simmer briefly, to thicken the sauce and cook out any floury taste remaining, then flavour if necessary (with grated cheese, chopped parsley or whatever). Bada-bing, bada-boom!

Go forth and make sauce...