Quick & Easy Fish & Chips

Oh dear.  It seems to be Sunday night and we're having fish and chips again.  I'm disappointed in myself.

And no, it isn't even virtuous fish and chips this time. 

So, here we have a petit filet de poisson, breaded and er...straight from the freezer.  Served alongside des pommes frites (McCain's finest), and an exotic mix of peas and edamame beans.  And ketchup.  And mayonnaise.  And a lemon wedge, to make the whole thing even more upmarket than it already is.

Pudding was a "trifle" (hmmm) made from some crumbled Soreen sultana loaf, plain yogurt, and strawberries.  I was too embarrassed to take a photo of that gastronomic masterpiece.  You'll have to take my word for it that it tasted much better than it sounds.

I promise to do better next week.

Simple Spaghetti Bolognese

When I mentioned at work yesterday that I was having spaghetti bolognese for my dinner, there was a collective sigh of approval.  It's one of those meals, isn't it?  A crowd-pleasing, carb-heavy, satisfying meal - and one that you can legitimately cover in cheese before eating.  Where's the downside?

We've made spaghetti bolognese in the past with lots of different vegetables chopped in (mostly to make the mince go further).  I don't mind a couple of mushrooms, I'll tolerate some small pieces of carrot - but my real favourite is just a chopped onion, lots of garlic, and meat.  And that's it. 

That was what B made me for me on Saturday night.  He always makes the tomato sauce from scratch, cooking it for as long as possible so that it gets really thick and covers the meat properly.

Meat, pasta, cheese.  Nothing to beat it.

Throw It Together Salad Nicoise

After the dinner party the night before, we went for a simpler, one-bowl meal on Friday night.  This was a proper use-up-the-leftovers meal:  eggs left over from making the blondies, the last of the salad leaves.  We also boiled some lovely new potatoes from the veg box, and threw in a tin of tuna from the cupboard.   We didn't have the traditional green beans for a salad nicoise, but we substituted lightly steamed shredded cabbage, and it worked surprisingly well.  B dressed it with balsamic vinegar and it turned into a big, gutsy, substantial salad - perfect for a Friday night on the sofa in front of How I Met Your Mother re-runs. 

Pudding was the last of the strawberries, smothered in Greek yogurt and sugar.  Hurray for leftovers!

Summer Dinner Party

Yesterday it was my turn to have my friends round for dinner.  We take it in turns to cook for each other, and it's a really nice excuse to try new recipes whilst also catching up all the gossip and drinking all of London's supply of fizzy wine. 

To start, we had roquamole with vegetable sticks and tortilla chips.  If you haven't tried roquamole yet, believe me when I say YOU NEED IT IN YOUR LIFE.  It contains avocado, blue cheese, and sour cream.  Could there be a better union of ingredients?  I think not. 

Look at the lovely colour of that dip.  Isn't it beautiful?  You can also see the first of many glasses of pink wine on the table there.

For the main course, I made Chicken Zorba.  It's a dish my housemate Abi used to make at uni whenever we had people over, and it was always a success.  I don't have the recipe, but I found it here.   I doubled the quantities of marinade, because I was using standard supermarket chicken and I thought it needed a bit of a boost.

I like having dinners where you assemble your own food - that way, there's no pressure to eat something you don't like, and you can have as much or as little as you want.  So, we had a basket of pittas, dishes of sliced peppers, cucumbers, and a big dish of chicken and another of hummus-yogurt sauce.  It used all the dishes I own, but what else is a dishwasher for.

For pudding, we had something I spotted in the Guardian over the weekend and knew I had to try:  blondies with macerated strawberries.   I know, right?

It reads like a strange recipe (soaking the coconut in orange juice? adding cardamon?), and it was fiddly, but oh my gosh it was worth it.  The variety of flavours actually worked very nicely and although the texture wasn't of a traditional brownie (more like a heavy sponge-cake), that meant they were fluffy and moreish.  We ate the whole tray.  Whilst drinking dessert wine. 

After the meal, I believe there might have been some dancing around the kitchen to some classic Meatloaf tunes.   The sign of a successful dinner party, I would say.

Spicy Butternut Squash Soup

I know this sounds unseasonal - I usually make vats of butternut squash soup to last us through long dark autumn evenings - but a gigantic squash turned up in our veg box this week, so I decided to make the most of it.  I really love this soup, and it made a nice change to try it so early in the year.   It's not a recipe you can rush through, so make this on an evening when you've got time on your side. 

Spicy Butternut Squash Soup

Firstly, peel and chop your squash into biggish chunks.  Spread out on a baking tray and drizzle with olive oil.  Roughly chop an onion and three cloves of garlic and add these to the baking tray.  Sprinkle over 1 tsp crushed coriander seeds, 1 tsp cumin, and 1/2 tsp dried chili flakes.   Give the tray a good shake to make sure everything is evenly coated, then stick in the oven on a low heat (about 140) for an hour, until the squash is soft and the onion has caramelised and your whole house smells delicious. 

Tip the vegetables into a big saucepan, and deglaze the pan with some hot stock - you want to get all the yummy sticky bits off the tray and into the soup.    Add in some more stock until the vegetables are well covered, plus a few fresh tomatoes if you have them, and bring to the boil.

Let everything cool, and then blitz until smooth.  Check the liquid, adding more stock if necessary.  Reheat when needed, and serve piping hot.

This time around, the soup turned out to so thick we're thinking of using the leftovers as a sauce for pasta.  It really is a whole meal in itself, but we have been known to have cheese on toast alongside.  Just saying.

Stir-Fried Prawns With Fennel & Broccoli

Yesterday we both got home from work late, so we wanted something quick and easy - and using store cupboard ingredients so we didn't have to run to the supermarket.  So, into the wok went a chopped onion and garlic, plus half a bulb of fennel we had kicking about.  We added in a packet of frozen prawns, plus a head of broccoli that had really seem better days.  All this got quickly stir-fried with the juice of a lime (another forgotten-in-the-fridge find) and some soy sauce, then tipped over some freeze-dried noodles. 

For a dinner that took fifteen minutes to make, it was delicious.  

The stirfry was lovely, but the pudding really made the whole meal.

CHERRIES!

I adore cherries.  I really do.  My heart jumps for joy when I see them for sale on the little fruit stand outside the tube.   I think they're the perfect fruit - bite-sized, no peeling required, and you can play counting games with the stones to work out what profession your future husband will have.  What could be better? 

Mushroom & Pea Risotto

In general, B and I share our cooking pretty equally.  The majority of our dinners are joint efforts, where we potter about together in the kitchen, each doing something towards the meal we're making.

Risotto is not a joint effort. 

Now, don't get me wrong.  I LOVE risotto.  It's so satisfying - simple, yet kind of luxurious.  But I just don't have the patience for it.  Within two minutes, my hand is aching from stirring and I'm stressing that all the rice is sticking to the pan.  Luckily, I'm married to a cooking maestro with endless patience, so my life isn't completely risotto deprived. 

My duties start at chopping....

...and end at eating.