Chicken & Chorizo Couscous

Yes, I know, I know, another chorizo recipe. But I was talking about this recipe on a Facebook group I'm part of and was looking to see if I'd posted it on this blog as an easy way of passing the recipe on, and I realised that I hadn't - or if I had, I couldn't find it. So here it is. Chicken & Chorizo Couscous.

I'm not a great fan of leftovers of cold meat, but for reasons of economy and saving the planet, it is better to buy a whole chicken and use it up scrupulously, down to the boiling of bones to make stock, rather than buying portions (although I do admit to buying chicken thighs occasionally). This dish has almost become a reason to have a roast chicken at the weekend in itself. It's a ridiculously easy and tasty midweek dish and if you are roasting a chicken this weekend, I suggest you keep back enough cooked meat, and boil up your bones, to knock this up early next week.

This is of course open to various adaptations depending on what you have in the cupboards, and I freely fiddle with quantities and ingredients. I have used tamarind paste in place of harissa, and made it veggie too. You definitely need spice of some sort, though, A bit of a kick, otherwise it's just a bit bland, especially if you're leaving out the chorizo (although why would you?). I also recommend serving with your favourite chilli sauce. Tabasco is good, as is Hot Smoky Bastard.

 And finally, seeing as how we're bring scrupulous, I believe this once came from a Good Food magazine. I can't find it on the Good Food website any more, but the index card I meticulously copied it on to (obviously when I was going through an organised phase) has the initials 'GF' by the recipe title. Anyway, I'm sure they won't mind me repeating it here.

Chicken & Chorizo Couscous

serves 6 (allegedly - but don't bank on it if folks are hungry)

350g couscous
350g cold cooked chicken, chopped into bite-sized pieces
150g cooking chorizo, skinned if necessary and diced
3 medium tomatoes or equivalent cherry tomatoes, chopped up
a couple of handfuls of frozen peas
900ml hot chicken stock 
2 tsp harissa paste
generous pinch of saffron (if you have)
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tbsp olive oil
chopped fresh coriander to serve (optional - more often than not I don't have it but parsley works, or just go without).

Pre-heat the oven to 180C/160 fan.

Combine the couscous, chicken, chorizo, tomatoes and frozen peas in a large dish.

Stir the harissa paste spices and olive oil into the stock, then pour the spicy stock mix over the couscous mixture and stir together.

Cover the dish with foil - or, if it has one, a lid - and bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes. Fluff up with a fork before serving.

It really is that simple, and believe me when I tell you it's utterly delicious. If there are leftovers, they are great cold, the next day for lunch.

Potato Surprise Pie

Just as surely as things that go up have to come down, it is also the case that, unless they are incredibly organised and have a bigger freezer capacity than I, people who go out and enjoy themselves 2 weekends on the trot end up with nothing in the fridge and a bit of a crisis - especially given that it's now officially 'Christmas' (having got the Husband's birthday out of the way) and my organisational skills have had to be turned to that rather than the day to day food regime.

I do have a meal plan for December. It's filled in with the many Christmas related events the children are involved with, the Husband's not inconsiderable absences through work-related travel, some parties (more! hooray!) and  a couple of food-related scrawls. I see "salmon?"  against tomorrow. And (rather obviously) "turkey" against 25th. But for the rest of the time? We are doing a lot, and not, apparently eating much.

Actually that's not quite true - closer inspection reveals "leftovers" written in for Monday with an arrow wiggling across the rest of the week (until tomorrow when we are supposed to be having salmon...).

Leftovers on Monday and Tuesday consisted of a rather luscious cauliflower and bacon cheese using up the remnants of various cheese from the weekend, and a sausage and sweet potato casserole, again using up sausages we didn't cook on the beach. The same was on offer on Tuesday, and by Wednesday we had Sausage Casserole left. Left overs from the leftovers, you could say. (I'd over achieved when I bought the sausages). 

Throw into the mix the fact that I've had to scrape together packed lunches and the fridge painted a rather grim picture this afternoon.

But a pot of cream, although a day out of date, was unopened and passed my 'does it taste off' test, and - hallelujiah! 4 slices of bacon. Potatoes an onion and some tired looking tomatoes, and dinner was born. A kind of take on a dauphinoise, I suppose, or a bacon hotpot.

I hesitate to offer a recipe - my dish is, shallow approx 20cm by 20cm, and I thinkly sliced 3-4 maris piper potatoes and an onion, then layered with the bacon and tomatoes plus a grated clove of garlic, salt and pepper and a mixture of 300ml of veg stock and about 100ml of cream, cooked for 40 mins in a hottish oven.

Coupled with some peas (from the freezer) and bingo.

Dinner. 

As I haven't done so for ages, I'm linking this up with Dom's Random Recipes challenge #46 for December. He challenged us to take a photo of our Christmas fridge and post it. Granted this is more the pre=Christmas fridge than the Christmas fridge, but still...Thanks, Dom.

What to do with 'leftover' pancakes

Now I do appreciate that the concept of leftover pancakes is a rather strange one, and that blogging about pancakes at all, a good 2 weeks after Shrove Tuesday, is a little odd, but each to her own, as they say. And the IDEA for this was born around Shrove Tuesday, when, as it always does, the act of making pancakes brought to mind the possibility for savoury stuffed pancakes - if only there were enough left over.

The idea hung about this year - I've made pancakes ('French' pancakes, as Pink likes to call them, to distinguish them from the American ones they've hitherto enjoyed as weekend breakfast fodder) a few times, so the stuffed pancake idea has been fixed firmly in my mind.

On Shrove Tuesday, we had a pancake-fest at tea time, but a strictly sweet affair: lemon & sugar, syrup, that kind of thing. I wasn't expecting to have any leftovers, and I was right. Then a few days later I made a big batch of batter up expecting the gannets to eat a few but to leave me enough to use another time.

Wrong again. They kept on eating them, and as I hadn't made it clear that I had an ulterior motive, they expressed a certain amount of outrage when I tried to limit consumption. I was left with 3 which I put in the fridge rather hopefully thinking that I'd knock up some more batter to make enough for what I had planned, but I didn't. As a slight digression, I did use them to make a rather great, if improvised pudding, making the most of some leftover tinned caramel (I've been making flapjacks again) and some pineapple. I put a large non-stick frying pan on a medium heat, spread the caramel over one side of one of the pancakes, and put it caramel side up, into the pan, covered it with pineapple pieces, then continued with the caramel spreading/pancake layering. I let it all heat through, managed, rather precariously, to turn the whole confection over, heated for a couple more minutes then gave the kids half each on the promise that I could have a mouthful. If was rather delicious, and has a number of possibilities - I'm definitely thinking banana would work...

But, as I already said, I digress. I had the last bits of chicken from a roast, some cooked ham and some chorizo in the fridge all needing to be eaten up, so this morning, I cooked the kids pancakes but on the strict understanding that they could have 3 each and I needed the rest. Once they'd satisfactorily established that I wasn't going to stand there and eat all the rest of them myself in some kind of pancake frenzy, they were happy.

Stuffed pancakes is something I remember very much from my childhood. I'm not great at eating up leftover meat if it's been reheated, but somehow, chopped up finely with other goodies in a sauce, and rolled into pancakes, it's OK. And this is very much a guide - you can put anything in. Cooked spinach is a great addition, for example, especially if you've got some bacon you can add in. Chicken and mushroom is also good. Tonight, for us, it was an eclectic mix of the meat in the fridge, some leeks and a load of parsely and chives that needed eating.

Stuffed pancakes

8-9 pancakes
25g butter
2 leeks, trimmed, washed and finely chopped
1 heaped dessert spoon plain flour
200ml milk
250g cold cooked meat (chicken, chorizo and ham worked well) chopped into quite small pieces
a big handful of appropriate herbs, finely chopped

In a medium sized pan, melt the butter over a gentle heat, then add the leeks and cook gently for 10 minutes or so till softened.

Stir in the flour, cook for a minute or so, then slowly stir in the milk a little at a time till you have a smooth sauce (well, smooth apart from the leeks). Cook for a few minutes, till thickened and add fresh ground salt and pepper if necessary, then set aside to cool down a little.

Pre-heat the oven to 180-200C.

Once the sauce is cooled, stir in the cold meat and the finely chopped herbs. You want the sauce to be quite thick, but if you think it needs it, do thin it down a little with some more milk.

Place a heaped dessert spoon on one side of the first pancake (or in the middle - as you like) and spread it lengthwise into a sausage shape, then roll the pancake up around the filling and place in an appropriate oven proof dish. 

Repeat with all the pancakes, and cover the dish with foil, then cook for 20 -30 minutes till hot.

Undermined by the veg box - PSB and chorizo pasta

So all those good intentions, about using up everything in my cupboards? Yeah, right.

Not looking much like chickpea curry, is it?

The week started off well enough, with the meals I'd intended over the weekend and on Monday, but Tuesday's chickpea ketchup curry and dahl went out of the window following a car fail (don't ask). The fact that we had leftovers in the fridge from both the lasagne and the sausage casserole, meant that when I finally got round to preparing tea for my 2 starving children (home eventually with the help of a bungee, 2 old bootlaces and a good friend), I couldn't be bothered to cook. Well - would you?

The other thing that happened was that I forgot to cancel the veg box. Usually, I wait and see what's in the veg box every Tuesday, and then go from there. However, as my plan for feeding us revolves around what I already have, it makes more economic sense to be able to choose my veggies for the next few weeks, rather than wait and see what turns up.

But, you know, I'm glad - GLAD, I tell you, because if I hadn't had the veg box this week, I probably wouldn't have got any PSB.

Purple Sprouting Brocoli.

My favourite.

So instead of writing Tuesday off as an exercise in fridge control and simply shifting that night's planned meal on to today, I am now down not one but 2 meals on my plan, because instead of either chickpea ketchup curry or chilli, tonight we are having PSB and chorizo pasta. With fried eggs for those that want.

You don't need a recipe (do you? There isn't one, I'm afraid). I haven't weighed out any amounts (my greed is driving this) although for 3 of us, I'm using 9 little chorizo sausages - about 180g, relatively thickly sliced, which I'm gently frying as I type this - mmm can't you smell the garlicky, smoky paprika? The pasta is on to boil and I'll steam the PSB florets over the pasta water for the shortest possible time so that they are just cooked but not at all soggy and limp. My veg box had about 4 big stalks of it - so I trimmed off the biggest leaves and split them up into the florets.

In a moment I'll be frying the eggs in the pan that the chorizo was cooked in. 

Hungry?

Just as good on a thick slice of bread as with pasta

Meal planning with a purpose

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you had a great Christmas and all that.

So here it is - 2014. One of the really good things about the Christmas break was that I stopped thinking too hard about the move to Wales: not that thinking about it was bad, but in the run up to the holiday, we were mostly doing lots of practical stuff around sorting out our current house, and doing all the Christmas stuff, with a view to dealing with the "where will we move to" bit after Christmas, and I think it was stresssing me out a bit.

Anyway, we had a lovely Christmas, and we've just come back from a whistlestop tour of suitable houses to rent (all 3 of them) which shortlisted themselves to 2 on the basis that one of the landlords wouldn't countenance a dog. While nothing is agreed on paper, this makes me feel a lot happier (not, obviously, the bit about Fred). I also had the opportunity to dine in a number of cafes in the Cardigan area, and stick my nose into various foodie emporia, and my friends, I am officially excited by what I saw. Watch this space.

As a result of this, not only am I happier, I am filled with renewed energy to make it happen.

So filled with energy in fact, that I tackled one of the cupboards this afternoon. In many ways, I only have Dom at Belleau Kitchen, and his last Random Recipes linky, to thank for this, but I've made several references to my hoarding tendancies in the past, and the fact that we could probably survive a nuclear winter on the contents of my cupboards, and the time has come to put this to the test. I know I could pack up the cupboards and move the contents with me to groan and mutter in another cupboard far away (would they groan and mutter in Welsh, I wonder?), but I've set myself a bit of a challenge to see if I can get rid of it all (in a constructive way) - even the bottle of pomegranate molasses, Phil...

So, I have cleaned out my fancy pull out cupboard, thrown away the tin of blackcurrants that went out of date in June 2009 (oh the shame), and I have planned a week's meals based on the the tins and what I have in the freezer (in my aim to get first from 2 small freezers to one).

So here is what we will be eating:

This evening (Saturday) - casserole - using up a pound of stewing steak that was in the freezer. Also rhubarb from the freezer, which I am stewing. Some will go into a type of Eton Mess using up the end of a tin of meringues that's been knocking round on top of the cupboard, and the last of the Christmas cream...

Sunday - Lasagne - will use up some of a kilo of mince that I have in the freezer, that I need to braise first, but it will also do for Wednesday's chilli, and some meals over the next few weeks. Also will use up the remains of a box of dried lasagne pasta, and a couple of tins of chopped tomatoes

Monday - Sausage casserole - 4 sausages in the freezer and a can (one of many) of cannellini beans, and one of chopped tomatoes

Tuesday - chick pea ketchup curry and dahl - chickpeas, ketchup, red lentils

Wednesday - chilli - in addition to the mince, this will use up chopped tomatoes and kidney beans

Thursday - corned beef & sweetcorn hash - using up a tin each of potatoes, corned beef and sweetcorn (this is the last of my camper van meals)

Friday - fish fingers, oven chips and peas (frozen from the garden in the summer. The fish fingers and chips are using up ends of packets in the freezer - there are times when everyone needs a bag of frozen chips, OK)

And I'm sure we'll be able to get through these remnants of the summer of camping some how...

There does of course need to be some shopping, but having planned the meals and worked out a shopping list, it is significantly smaller than the usual 'first shop of the month' would be.

I've been so enthused, that I have even re-ordered the shelves so that all the necessary tins are now to hand and organised for each meal. ready for me to use as intended, on one separate shelf of the cupboard.

Sometimes I even surprise myself.

Turkey melts

Yes, another post about what to do with the leftover turkey. Not from me - this is the first time I've posted since Christmas, but just generally, there are tonnes of ideas about what to do with the leftovers. And rightly so. Even having reduced my Christmas food shopping list to a minimum, bearing in mind that we weren't entertaining anyone on Christmas Day itself, my fridge is groaning with food.

I weighed up the pros and cons of buying a truly local bird, or getting a free range Copas turkey from the local butcher. In the end, the butcher won. I like buying meat from him. It's always great, he gets great fish for me too, and what's even more valuable, he tolerates my indecision when I have failed to meal plan, sympathises with me generally about life, and occasionally allows me to owe him if I've forgotten my purse. For all these reasons, he wins out when such choices have to be made.

I ordered the smallest turkey I could - which still ended up being 4.8 kilos. Very tasty it was, if I do say so myself. There seems to have been a mind shift about cooking turkey - gone is the requirement to be up at 5 a.m. to 'put the bird in', leaving it to cook for hours on end. I stuffed mine with a made up mix of sausage meat, grated onion, finely chopped parsley and the zest of 2 lemons, covered the breast with streaky bacon, and sat it all on some roughly chopped onion, bay leaves and rosemary which all helped to add flavour to the gravy. It took less than 3 hours, and sat comfortably under some foil while I sorted the rest of the meal out. Marvellous.

The Husband and I agreed that we would take a practical approach to the leftovers this year. As the big move draws ever nearer, there's no room to be stashing things away in the freezer - I'm meant to be emptying it - so we decided that we would keep the leftover meat in the fridge, and if it didn't get eaten in a few day, well, we'd just (gulp) throw it away.

But strangely, I've been even more zealous in my attempts to use it up than I would normally have been.

We had the traditional cold version of the turkey dinner on Boxing Day with my father in law and his partner: cold turkey, cold sausages, cold cranberry sauce, cold gravy - but hot bubble & squeak (yum).

Yesterday, turkey sandwiches for lunch.

Today, turkey melts. This idea came to me while I was writing an online article about using up turkey, and I thought I'd give it  go. Turns out, it was definitely a good idea.Not only was it a slightly different way to eat up a bit more of the turkey, it also used up some of the cheese. Now, as an aside, while the concept of 'too much cheese' is not one I am necessarily familiar with, it would be fair to say that there is currently rather a lot in the fridge.

8 soft tortillas
250g chopped turkey meat
4 spring onions, finely chopped
grated chedder, crumbled blue cheese, whatever you have

Heat a non stick frying pan, and lay a tortilla into it. Sprinkle some chopped turkey, spring onion and cheese over half the tortilla

 and fold the other half over the top of it. You should then be able to get another on in alongside depending on the size of your pan and the wraps you are using.

Warm till the underside is toasted brown, then flip over and toast the other side till the cheese is melted. Leave to cool a little, then serve.

I can also recommend making this omitting the spring onions (and, if you've run out the turkey)  including any cranberry saauce you happen to have lying around. Spread your half tortilla with the cranberry, and sprinkle over some turkey and crumbled/slice cheese. Camembert is good for this, as is Cambozola.

Toast on both sides as before, then devour. Mmmmm.
 

As a result, we're now down to one dish of leftover meat. And tonight - it's turkey pie. At this rate, we may avoid curry altogether.

The chicken continued - 'paella' of sorts

So where was I before I so rudely interrupted the ramblings of my kitchen - and our life - with the big news? Oh yes. The chicken.

After the chicken pie on Tuesday last week, we had meat-free Wednesday - not as catchy as meat free Monday, granted, but I'm not going to be tied to the alliterative benefits of a particular day of the week (despite my penchant for linguistic trickery) for reducing the amount of meat in our diet. Twice baked potatoes it was - a brilliant addition to our regular meals thanks to Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall (in Veg Everyday, I think). So easy it doesn't need a recipe - bake your tatties, scoop out the insides and mash them up with butter, or cream cheese (Philadelphia with garlic & herbs is good), plus extras - chopped up spring onions, tinned sweetcorn, that sort of thing. While you're doing this, pop the skins back in the oven to crisp up, then whip them out, pile the skins back up with the enriched potato and pop back in the oven for 10 mins. Easy peasy and very delicious.

Thursday, though, we were back with the chicken that I cooked for the pie on Tuesday, plus the joys of the veg box, which included 3 small green peppers and some small red onions. Paella - of sorts - beckoned. Plenty of smoked paprika and some chorizo to spice things up, and unfortunately no seafood - which probably means its not paella at all, but hey, I used paella rice, so I'm going to call it paella.

A couple of other notes - if I'd had a choice, I would probably have used red pepper rather than green, and I forgot to include any garlic. It's not fatal as the chorizo is quite garlicky, but it would have been nice. I think a bit of chilli would also have been good - we got some lovely looking ones in the veg box, but I suspect they are of the firey variety, and as I was feeding the kids, I had to make do with the tabasco bottle to spice up my portion.

Easy Paella - for 4

125g cooking chorizo, cut into bite size pieces
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
2 small red onions, or 1 large one, finely chopped
3 small green peppers - substitute for red if you have the choice, to be honest, but the veg box yielded small green ones...
300g paella rice
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 litre of stock (if you poached a chicken to make the pie, you'll have some lovely stock to use for this)
170g cold cooked chicken cut into bite size pieces.

Heat your stock up in a pan (or, if you're me, defrost the stock over a gentle heat because you forgot to get it out of the freezer earlier...).

Heat a large frying pan and chuck in the chorizo. Cook gently til lthe oils start to run then add in the garlic, onion and pepper and cook till softening, then stir in the rice and the coriander and paprika. 

Cook for a couple of minutes, then tip in the stock, bring to a simmer and leave to bubble away till the rice is cooked. 

Stir in the chicken and garnish with chopped parsely if you have it to hand.

Serve with a bottle of tabasco on the side for those that need a little more heat. 

The rest of the chicken meat went in sandwiches, and I still have 2 litres of stock left from poaching the original chicken too. So I reckon that's pretty good value. What do you think?

Winning the leftovers lottery - Caramel Apple Tart

Leftovers.

Either as a repeat of the previous meal (I'd go so far as to suggest that the whole Christmas turkey shebang is much tastier cold the next day -apart from the roasties, which need to be sliced up and fried) , or providing components for the next day's dinner - left over roast meat in a stir fry or risotto, left over veg chopped up as bubble & squeak etc, every fridge should have some leftovers in it.

I hit the leftover jackpot today, with the werewithal to make a mighty fine pudding.

Enough leftover sweet shortcrust pastry from a luscious lemon tart that I made yesterday, and half a tin of caramel leftover from making a batch of flapjack. And apples - still, apples everywhere. I have an idea that this might have started life as a Jamie Oliver confection, but regardless of its provenance, this is a pretty flexible dessert that you could probably adapt, and would certainly double up in size if you had more of the necessary left over, or even if you decided to make it in its own right, without waiting to have the required leftovers...

  Caramel Apple Tart

Enough sweet shortcrust pastry to line an 18cm tart tin
200g tinned caramel
1 large cooking apple
a dessert spoon of icing sugar

Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Butter and flour the tart tin, then line with the pastry. Use a fork to prick the pastry all over, and then line with greaseproof paper, tip in baking beans and bake blind in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Remove the greaseproof paper and baking beans and return the case to the oven for another 5-10 minutes till the pastry is golden and biscuity. Set aside to cool a little.

Spread the caramel over the base of the tart, then peel, core and slice the apple into fairly thin slices, and arrange over the top of the caramel. Sieve the icing sugar evenly over the apple slices, and then bake for 30-40 minutes till the apple is cooked turning golden, and the caramel is bubbling. Leave to cool a little before serving. 

It was very tasty with some left over soured cream... 

I'm linking up my leftovers pudding to this month's Credit Crunch Munch run by Helen on Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla at Fab Food for All hosted in October by Michelle at Utterly Scrummy

Pasta bake for days that don't quite go your way

There are some days when I almost feel like life is under control, that I know what I'm doing, that I'm parenting brilliantly, everything is running smoothly.

When I say some days, I mean, the occasional day.

Like may be once a year.

More often, I don't feel like that at all. And some days it's worse.

Days when I have to get a trombone, a bicycle and a dog up to school as well as the kids (on foot).

Days when I have no idea how I'm going to fit work in, and end up burning the midnight oil.

Days when I realise that they haven't forgotten, and not one but both children want to enter a Fairtrade cake in the Fairtrade cake competition the following day (and you know my views on such things, having vented here before).

They are BANANAS. OK?.

No, it's a fair trade logo & some bananas not a rampant blue & green Pacman

Days when I realise that the maths homework due the following day isn't a series of 'mental maths' tasks on the computer, but a full on 'investigation' of the type school helpfully expect parents to be on hand for the execution thereof: draw a grid 5 by 5 squares big, and then using 13 coins place them so that there is an odd number in each row, column and the main diagonals. Just try it OK.






Days when I have too much stuff to use up in the fridge.


Last Tuesday was one of those days.







Fortunately, there was a bag of pasta, and the things that needed using up were 2 courgettes &, a head of spring greens from last week's veg box, 4 mini chorizo sausages and half a tub of ricotta cheese. I put the pasta on, almost on auto-pilot, and as icing flew, and coins were placed and re-placed on the grid with accompanying sound effects (I'll leave you to imagine), I  engineered tea.

Having put the pasta on to boil, I fried off the chorizo, till the fat was running, then added the diced courgettes to the pan. Once the courgettes were a bit soft, I chucked in a can of plum tomatoes and a good dollop of sundried tomato pesto. 

Once it had all cooked down a bit, I stirred in the ricotta, stirred in the pasta, into a baking dish grated cheese on top and in the oven for some time. Probably about 20 minutes. And steamed the greens.

Oh did I mention, days when you can't get the photos to rotate and upload properly?

We eat something similar at least once a week. The chorizo could be leftover bacon, or cold meat - or no meat, in which case  I might use garlic and smoked paprika and an onion. The courgettes could be red peppers. The sundried tomato pesto could be tomato puree, ordinary pesto, harissa paste - frankly what ever is in the fridge without mold on it.

There's no recipe, and occasionally it's literally just cooked pasta and a tin of tomatoes cooked down with some garlic stirred through the pasta. 

I commend it to you!

The great big enormous ... PARSNIP!

This could be a post about the hunger gap - that time of the year where we've all but run out of stored food and nothing's growing (I'm talking veg here, not baked beans) yet, or about using up leftovers. It could also be a Samantha Barnes Google Recipe Challenge, and all because of a parsnip.

Despite the hunger gap, the atrociously cold weather and all that, we still have parsnips in the garden. Whether they are actually growing any more is debateable, but when they come out this size, does it really matter?

Anyway, size isn't everything, it's what you do with it. Thanks to the fact that we had people for dinner on Saturday night, I had a fridge full of leftovers looking at me when I opened it up  this evening, Left over bad stuff, like cheese and cream. I may be on a mission to reduce the circumference of my thighs and ensure that the only muffin tops around here are of the double chocolate variety, but I absolutely cannot see food going to waste, so the challenge was on. What to do with the enormous parsnip - and the leftovers?

Pink's not a fan, so parsnips usually get turned into some sort of soup for the Husband and I, or roasted as a side dish, ideal for her to pick out and be sniffy about (she'd refuse the soup point blank). This evening, though, she was out at a friend's so Blue and I got stuck in to some proper parsnip action.

A quick Google based on what I had in the fridge turned up 2 possibles - both gratins - one from Abel & Cole and one from a website called Epicurious - so we combined the two, in doing so using up the left over cream and Cashel Blue cheese from Saturday night, and raiding the garden for the only other things that are growing with any enthusiasm at the moment - sage and rosemary. 

I'm pleased to report that Blue got properly stuck in to the whole thing. Much as he'd hate to admit it, he's a bit lost when his little sister isn't around for hi-jinking or fighting, depending on the mood they are both in (actually, if we're being strictly honest, usually it depends on the mood Pink is in) and so it was good to get him involved while she was off giggling with her friend.

Mezzaluna baby!

 

The result was a delicious creamy (of course) warming dish, full of flavour - great food for a chilly winter Spring evening.

Parsnip & Bacon Gratin with leeks, hazelnuts & blue cheese

Serves 3-4 depending on appetite

60g hazelnuts
700g (peeled weight) parsnips, thinly sliced lengthways
200g (ditto) carrots, also thinly sliced
1 large leek, thinly sliced and washed
200g pancetta/bacon cut into pieces
250ml or so double cream & creme fraiche, thinned with a little milk if necessary
1 good tsp dijon mustard
2-3 sprigs of rosemary, needles only & a handful of sage leaves, finely chopped
80g or so* blue cheese (we had Cashel blue in the fridge), grated
salt & pepper

Pre-heat your oven to 200C

Put the parsnips and carrot into a large pan of salted water. Bring to the boil and cook for 3-4 minutes, then drain and leave to steam dry-ish.

While the veg is cooking, lightly toast the hazelnuts in a small frying pan, then when cool enough to handle roughly chip them and set aside.

Fry the bacon/pancetta till mostly cooked; drain off most of the fat (if a lot has been produced) then add the leek and cook for a few more minutes till the leek is softened.

Whisk together the cream, creme fraiche, mustard and milk if you need it, and then add in the herbs and salt and pepper.

To assemble, first put a layer of parsnip and carrot into your gratin dish, drizzle over about a third of the cream mixture and sprinkle with half the hazelnuts. Spread the leeks and bacon over this, then layer on the rest of the parsnips. Pour over the rest of the cream then sprnkle over the rest of the hazelnuts and the grated cheese.

Bake for 30 minutes of so till the parsnips are cooked, the sauce is bubbling and there's a delicious crunchy topping on your gratin.

If I'd had any salad in the fridge, I think it would have been good with it - something like watercress - but as it was we didn't, so we just ate it as it was. Delicious**.

I'm linking up to this month's Herbs on Saturday hosted by London Busy Body this month for Karen at Lavender & Lovage

 I'm also linking up the March Simple and in Season hosted by Louisa at Chez Foti

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* The chunk started off at 80g but Blue is very fond of blue cheese and I didn't keep an eye on how much was being grated and how much was being gobbled...

** I was quite surprised by how much Blue enjoyed this, regardless of the amount of effort he put into making it - those who read this regularly will know that I'm usually gnashing my teeth about how he doesn't like anything 'crunchy' like this gratin topping or the top of a cottage pie, and my efforts to get him to eat less sophisticated things with a cheese sauce - macaroni/cauliflower cheese have met so far with dismal failure. May be his tastes are changing - or may be it was the cream and blue cheese combo. Watch this space.

Everything tastes better with bacon - sausage casserole, pasta bake and the promise of soup

So, we're well into Austerity January, and so far, so good. The freezer has lots of stock in it - good for soups, and also lots of left overs from pre-Christmas bulk cooking: I know there is a venison casserole in there waiting to liven up a Sunday sometime soon. There's some ham and turkey, and a whole load of lamb, but I'm also trying to use up as much as I have accumulated in the cupboards in my subconscious hibernation/'what if there's a nuclear winter' strategy that I seem to have inherited from my mum. Shelves are there to be filled, and while it's nearly all in date (bar a tin of pineapple slices that I can't bring myself to either open or throw away), the cupboards are groaning. There are lots of pulses and tinned tomatoes, and I have jars of olives that I forgot I'd bought - plenty of stuff to make good meals out of, and to keep the post-Christmas shopping bills down.  Even more exciting, this week things have been livened up by the last pack of streaky bacon which has been lurking in the back of the fridge since Christmas, and was just about to go over.

The thing about bacon is that it's just so tasty. The Husband is of the 'there are only 2 food groups: bacon and everything else' school of eating, and I have to say that he has a point: Bacon always comes at the top - or near the top - of things most likely to make a vegetarian falter. For me, it's not a camping trip without a bacon sandwich to wake up to - preferably with a cup of a coffee and a blinding view, but even without the coffee (packing fail) and when the rain's sheeting down (or, more soul destroying, when faced with persistent drizzle), there's nothing more likely to lift the spirits. I went to school with a lot of kids from the Jewish community in Leeds, and they were always off to Macdonalds for Bacon Double Cheeseburgers (ssssh! Don't tell anyone). There is just something about bacon.


We had a sausage, bacon and split pea casserole which I managed to get in the slow cooker one lunch time, and by bulking up a pack of sausages with some bacon, along with the pulses and veg, I made enough casserole to feed us for 2 meals. I can't now recall exactly what I did, and I didn't take any photos of it (to be honest it didn't look very interesting), but it was mighty tasty. I did have to plan ahead and soak the peas over night, but that used up the end of a bag that would otherwise have leaked all over the cupboard until the next time I want to make pea & ham soup. It was also dead easy, and you could cook it on the stove top - or in the oven - if you didn't have a slow cooker: I sweated some chopped onion, celery and carrots before adding them to the slow cooker, and tipping the split peas (these had been soaked over night then boiled rapidly for 10 minutes) on top. I cut the bacon into pieces and each sausage into 3 (I find they go further cut up - if you leave them whole, people know for sure how many sausages they've had, and one is never enough), then fried these off and drained off excess fat. Chucked all that into the slow cooker with a bunch of thyme, then deglazed the frying pan with a slosh of red wine, a can of chopped tomatoes and some stock - probably about 2 tsp of stock powder made up in the tomato can to swill out the last bits of tomato. Poured into the slow cooker, stirred around and cooked on high for 4 hours. Perfect with rice for tea.

Yesterday, we had bacon and leek pasta bake which is one of my regular meals. It is very quick to make, and by baking it at the end, it gives you the option to make it in advance - otherwise it's just cold pasta, isn't it, and frankly, who wants to eat that? This way, if you want, you can make it earlier in the day, then put in the oven with some cheese on the top at teatime and bingo - delicious and comforting. I should 'fess up and say that Blue is ambivalent about it, mainly because he doesn't like the 'crunchy bits' (strange child) but everyone else loves it and it's one of the few meals that Pink will ask for seconds of.  Last night it was extra specially good because there was some left over double cream in the fridge that needed using up. Marvellous. When I made it last night, I actually concentrated on what I was doing and how much I was using, so I can share a recipe with you.

Creamy Bacon & Leek Pasta Bake - serves 4

woops! nearly all gone before I took a pic!

300g pasta
15-20g butter
3 leeks, cleaned and sliced fairly finely
200g streaky bacon, derinded & chopped into fairly small pieces
2 tbsps plain flour
2tsp stock powder
approx 30ml double cream (optional but lovely)
salt & pepper
grated cheese (I failed to weigh out how much I used, sorry - but you  know, you just need enough)

Cook the pasta according to the packet instructions. While you are doing this, melt the butter in a pan, and add the leeks and bacon and cook for 5 minutes or so till the leeks have softened and the bacon is looking like it's on the way to being cooked. Chuck in the flour and stir in so that you can't see any left. Cook it out for a minute or so. If necessary remove from the heat till the pasta is cooked. When you drain the pasta, reserve the cooking water and mix approx 400ml with the stock powder. Put your leeks & bacon back in the heat and slowly stir in the pasta water/stock till you get a smooth, thickish sauce. 

Depending on how thick or thin you like sauces in these kinds of dishes, you may want to use less than the 400ml or more to make a thinner sauce. Pour in the cream if using, and grind in some salt and pepper, then allow to cook for a couple of minutes. Tip the pasta into an appropriately sized oven proof dish and stir the sauce through it.

Cover the top with grated cheese and bake at 180C for approx 20-30 minutes (depending whether you need to avoid 'crunchy bits' or not - in a rare display of patience, last night I actually left a corner of the dish un-cheesed to reduce crunchy bits, but I'm not often that tolerant of foodie foibles!) 

The last of the bacon then, will go into what I hope will be a particularly satisfying soup for this evening. I was on one of my rare forays to a supermarket the other day and walking down the soup aisle, noticed a pot proclaiming bacon, red pepper and lentil. Mmmmm. In an uncommon display of harmony, the kids both chose today for their school lunch this week. As I know they are both having a hot meal (fish and chips) I can be a bit more relaxed about what to give them for tea, although the Husband has only had sandwiches.... We have lots of red lentils knocking around, and there's most of a red pepper needing eating up, so bacon, red pepper and lentil soup it is.This soup (in my head at least) seems to be a good solution to how to feed everyone this evening. We'll see!

I'm linking this up to a new blog event 'Credit Crunch Munch' hosted by  Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla at Fab Food For All. This is all about creating delicious food for less, and I think both the casserole and the pasta bake fit in with that idea. And I'm liking the logo a lot!