Grilled Aubergines With Pesto

Ah, aubergines.  You keep showing up in my life (and veg box) at the moment, and I'm running low on ideas on how to cook you whilst disguising your strangely squishy texture.  But then the other day, I was leafing through my recipe binder, where I keep a motley collection of ideas copied from library books/torn from magazines/stolen off my mum, and discovered a biro'd scribble for Aubergines With Pesto.  With basil being so plentiful in the supermarkets at the moment, it sounded like the perfect summer dish.

I'm pretty sure this is a Nigel Slater recipe. 

Aubergines With Pesto

Slice one aubergine per person into thick slices.  Criss-cross the slices with a sharp knife and brush with oil.  Oven bake for around 15-20 minutes until golden.

Meanwhile, make up a  portion of pesto.  Be generous with your Parmesan.  When the aubergine is ready, slather the slices with as much pesto as you can physically fit on, and then slide under the grill for 5 minutes.  It's ready when the pesto topping is bubbling and melting deliciously all over the place.

Before...

We served a brown rice salad with this, which sounds boring, but was actually a perfect accompaniment for the big, bold flavour of the aubergine/pesto combo.  Simply boil 100g brown rice in water and a little bit of stock powder until cooked through.  Add chopped spring onions, plenty of fresh or dried herbs (whatever you have - we used basil and marjoram), and salt and pepper.  Dress with olive oil, vinegar, and let it cool for about twenty minutes to absorb all the flavours from the herbs.

Mmmmm after!

We had fresh cherries for dessert.   I wore some of them as jewellery for a while.

Egg Noodles With Green Vegetables

We have a mid-week veg box delivery, which means that early on in the week we always have odds and ends of stray vegetables to finish up.  A courgette here, some cabbage there - not enough for a meal in themselves, which is why we often fall back on the tried-and-tested favourite: the stirfry.  Our go-to accompaniment is nearly always noodles - they last forever in the cupboard and take hardly any effort or time to cook, which is a big plus on a busy weeknight.

Here we had a green vegetable stirfry, including broad beans (which yes, I had laboriously podded), courgettes, and cabbage.  A bit of carrot may have sneaked in, but let's ignore that or the title of this post will have to be changed.   If you like a touch of luxury, it's a nice trick to crack an egg into your noodles just before serving - it cooks in seconds and binds everything together in a yummy gooey way.  Because the vegetables were all still fresh and perky, we didn't want to overpower them and so stayed away from the spice jars, relying on garlic and soy sauce for flavouring.   Delicious!

In case you were wondering from the picture above - yes, I was eating this meal off my lap whilst in my pyjamas.  Come on, we've all been there.

Roadtripping Snacks & Hangover Breakfasts

This weekend we road-tripped it to Birmingham for an epic hen party (there were strippers.  Plural.)  There are strict traditions when it comes to road trips - you have to over-stock the car with some late nineties pop tunes, and you have, have, have to organise both sweet and savoury snackage.   You know, for in case you break down and are stranded for hours on the roadside. 

There was much partying and much drinking on the Saturday night,  so on Sunday we needed some urgent R&R (rest and refuelling) before the drive home.  Luckily there was a Wetherspoon's just a short stagger from the hotel.  There's nothing like a cheap breakfast to cure a hangover.

Rehydrating.

Mmmm...fried things in a sandwich.

Pancaken!

And then we hit Sainsbury's for more snacks for the journey home. 

Mushroom Stroganoff

Thank goodness for Fridays. Just when you think the week is going to last forever, Friday comes along and everything seems much better than it did before. This Friday we had B's mother staying, but she was arriving on a late train, so we had to whip something nice but quick for dinner.   We had mushrooms (plus a little oozy interloper) in the fridge. 

Step forward Nigella's delicious recipe for Mushroom Stroganoff. This is such a good dish - it's a quick, throw-it-all-in-the-pan meal, but one that still manages to look and taste like a lot more effort has gone into it. It makes an inspired dinner party choice as well. 

Nigella recommends rice to have alongside, but we usually make Ebly, or pasta, on the grounds that we are lazy, and cooking rice for some reason seems more effortful than cooking pasta.

We had a (shop bought) chocolate tart for pudding. Look how nicely The Cat is sitting at the table with his serving. His manners are impeccable you know.

Inauthentic Moussaka

Yesterday I had the day off work, and I intended to housewife it up to the max and make moussaka from scratch.  We had leftover mince from the burgers at the weekend, we had aubergines in our weekly veg box, we had Vefa in the kitchen....it all seemed perfect. 

But it just didn't happen.   I got distracted by something and before I knew it, it was four o'clock and I had to rush out for a couple of appointments.  The Vefa recipe, which wanted me to salt and drain the aubergines and make a white sauce, wasn't going to happen.  Step forward the BBC food website, which offered a much simpler version.   Not as authentic as Vefa's, sure, but it took about half an hour to whack together.  That's a good result in my book.

I really, really love recipes that are an entire meal in one dish.  Forget your pesky side vegetables!  Reject that green salad!  Here you have carbs, meat, and vegetables in one place, all smothered with a delicious creamy sauce! 

I made the sauce too watery.  I rinsed out the tomato tin with water and added that to the pan as I was cooking the mince, but I really didn't need to. The aubergines produce liquid too, so you shouldn't fret about the moussaka being too dry.

We took the leftovers into work for lunch, and it's definitely a Second Day Is Even Better Dish.  Yay for those!

Dinner Fail

Oh dear.  I didn't really have dinner last night.  Unless you count cocktails.

And, um, shots.

Here are some things to distract you from the total lack of content in this entry.

• Get potential foodies started early with these.  
 
• Anyone hungry?  (WARNING - do not click if you're currently eating your lunch.  Really, don't!)
 
• A good place for daydreaming. 
 

Chorizo & Olive Pizza

B and I have a sort of unspoken agreement that whoever gets home first from work starts the dinner for that evening.  It doesn't always happen, but in general it means a pretty fair division of labour.  I was working late on Tuesday and got an email about five o'clock from B.

I'm making dough! And tomato sauce!

Homemade pizza.  One of the best dinners ever.  Yay!

The base is a simple bread dough (made with this), stretched as thin as you can make it.  If you use a pound of flour, you'll probably have enough left over to make a small loaf as well.  Bonus!

The sauce is a basic tomato sauce, made with onions, garlic, tinned cherry tomatoes and plenty of seasoning. 

I was home in time to oversee the toppings - just chorizo, olives, and mozzarella.

Perfect.