A Rich Cabinet

So that all went a bit crap for a couple of weeks. First off, the week before last I had a steenking cold for several days, leaving little appetite or energy to cook. This led to pizza, tubs from the freezer, fry ups and general uselessness. On the Monday before it kicked off, there was a rather yummy Sausage, potato and cabbage dinner; and on surfacing at the end of the week I did roasted chicken leg with parsnip, carrot, potatoes, etc. Very nice too.

Then it was my birthday towards the end of the second week, and I was away from home for a couple of days, then had friends to stay and we mostly went out to eat. A bit of proper cooking at the beginning of the week: spinach and potato curry; a kind of lamb, leek and mushroom fricassee. Oh, and on Sunday one of my friends showed me how to make Irish potato cakes, so I’ll hopefully be doing those again. After all the pigging out and drinking I didn’t really need much to eat Sunday evening, so just had a tub of sweet potato soup from the freezer.

Will hopefully get back to normal this week!

Monday: tinned tuna and linguine (spaghetti would do equally well) in a quick sauce of onions, tomatoes and green olive tapenade (plus some thyme and rosemary). Nice. Some toasted breadcrumbs on top (as in this favourite) would have worked well, but I didn’t think of it till it was way too late.

Tuesday: bit of an experiment; venison kidney and bacon in tomato and paprika cream sauce with peas and rice. The kidneys also came from the farmers market, something I’ve never tried before. OK, but didn’t light my fire.

Wednesday: baked potato day; with some baked flat mushrooms (topped with bacon bits), and topped of course with lots of butter and cheese. Yummy.

Thursday: sweet potato soup. Based on this Waitrose recipe, especially the idea of topping it with fried haloumi. Interesting alternative to the recipes that use bacon as a topping. (Didn’t bother with the ‘chilli-infused olive oil’ or the ‘Waitrose Five Seed mix’, however. And I used fresh sweet potatoes.) A couple of extra portions went into the freezer.

There are things in the world that really can’t go far wrong; turning sweet potatoes into soup is one of them.

Friday: sort-of moussaka. Not the real thing because I didn’t feel like making white sauce (also, no milk). I layered lamb mince (cooked with onions, tomatoes, cinnamon, thyme and oregano) with fried sliced aubergines and potatoes, and topped it with cheese and creme fraiche mixed with a little warm water (plain yogurt would work too). If I’d thought of it earlier, some feta would have been nice. Still pretty tasty though. Some leftovers, but not really enough to freeze; microwaved for lunch on Sunday.

Saturday: egg fried rice with stirfried cabbage. Some ginger, garlic and a sachet of miso soup went in for flavouring.

Sunday: tried quinoa for the first time - a simple pilaf-type recipe, with tomatoes, purple sprouting broccoli and fried haloumi. It was pretty good.

Monday: tofu and veg stirfry with noodles. I’m not really a tofu fan, but the pre-marinaded kind isn’t too bad. Sauce made with lime, honey and soy, didn’t quite get the sweet/sour balance right (a bit too much lime).

Tuesday: I was late back from work, so a quick dinner. Scrambled eggs with bacon, with fried mushrooms, onions and cherry tomatoes, and bread on the side. Not terribly healthy, especially as it seemed a nice idea to fry the mushrooms in butter. Mmmmm.

Wednesday: SAUSAGE AND MASH!! Yay! The sausages were particularly good ones from the farmers market (smoked, and very high meat content judging by the texture). The mash contained a lot of butter, cream and a dollop of creamy goats cheese. Mmmm…. Beetroot and purple broccoli on the side (these both microwave remarkably well. Specially since I feared the beetroot was well past it). Plus onion gravy.

Thursday: roasted mixed veg and tofu, with a mildly spicy tomato sauce. I personally think that boiling is about the worst way to cook most winter root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, turnips, etc). Roast them and they come out with much better flavour and texture. And it’s so easy. Chop ‘em up, chuck ‘em in a roasting tray with a bit of olive oil, put ‘em in an oven for about 3/4 of an hour (turn them over once. The tofu only needs 20-25 minutes). The tomato sauce was the last tub in the freezer. Will have to do something about that.

Friday: Back to the Freezer for a tub of curried lamb mince. Have a feeling the recipe came from the internet, but don’t know exactly where now (which will be annoying when I want to do it again). Jolly nice though - definitely included such things as coriander, cumin, cardamom, garam masala. Added chopped aubergine and tomato for some fresh veg. With that and cooking some rice, took about 20 minutes in total.

Saturday: Creamy tomato sauce with spinach and (bought) tricolore gnocchi, and some parmesan on top. Quite good, but I’ll probably stick to plain gnocchi in future.

Sunday: Pork and sweet potato stew. Very good indeed. It turned out a wee bit sweet (perhaps in scaling down I didn’t use enough mustard) so I added a little red wine vinegar, which did the trick.