Mean Bean Feast

The night before the Tesco chap is due is always a challenge round our house, and last night the fridge divvied up eggs, left over mashed sweetpotato and butternut squash and half an onion... Perfect for a whipped tortilla - but there wasn't a fresh bit of green in the place.

To the Freezer!
There nestled, under an emergency, bought pizza and a stack of quorn products (partner's eldest is a committed vegetarianist) I spotted a small bag of baby broad beans and another of soya beans... Hurrah hurrah - tonight we feast! If you think you don't like broadbeans - think again. I'm not talking about the monsterous things with horrid, milky blue-grey suits we used to get fed when we were kids. These are tender, baby greenies - that you shell before you scoff...

Easy Peasy Spring Soup

After whining about a truly horrid 'bought' Winter Veggie soup this week - my great pal Kim, who is an infinitely superior cook, suggested I get seasonal and Go Freezer! So here for you is Kim's answer to fast food. The simplest of pea soups - now then pay attention, because Kim doesn't do measuring, so we'll have to work this out together...

You will definitely need:

A bag of frozen peas - I opted for garden peas but you could use Petits Pois and mine weighed @1kg.
A lemon - preferably unwaxed.
White or brown onion and/or a couple of garlic cloves.
Stock if you like (Kim doesn't specify - I use a bit of unsalted bouillon powder).
Litre of boiling water (you may need more or less and this makes a lot of soup so make your adjustments).

This is what I did...

I peeled and finely chopped a small brown onion. I figured  a red one might muck up the colour of my beautiful pea green soup, but if red's all you got - don't sweat it - well do, but don't ... sigh. I Sauted my onion in a little butter and olive oil (just use oil if you prefer, and this would be a good time to sling in a clove or two of garlic).

I boiled the kettle, opened the peas and ratatatated them into my gert, big pot with the rind of the lemon, pouring about a litre of boiling water in after them and a teaspoon of powdered stock.

In the meantime I made cheat's melba toast.

Toast your bread. Take a jolly big, scary sharp, knife and carefully split the toast in half so you have one toasty side and one untoasty side. Keep your hand flat to the board. Now spread loads of butter on the untoasty side so that no-one notices... and Tadah!

Back to the peas pot plot

After about 5 - 6 mins on a gentle rolling boil. I added the juice of the lemon and whizzed the soup up with my trusty handheld whizzeratorer. Slung it in a bowl with loads of black pepper and some salt - dolloped a blob of creme frais on the top and some toasted pine nuts* and scoffed it warm. If you can wait that long this will be peatastically fresh and delish when served cold - but I'd already made my toast.

Post Prandial Observations:

Getting the liquid to peas ratio right is a matter of practice and taste I reckon - if it's a bit thick you can knock it back with some water - but I wouldn't want to do too much of that last minute for fear of diluting the lovely pea-ey flavour.

*I always have a bowl of toasted pine nuts on the side and a tub of creme frais in the fridge - together they can make any soup taste fancy, also brrrrilliant mixed into rice and cheese. Uhh uhh uhh! Try it first.

It's Tortilla Jim - but not as we know it...

Uber quick post on what to do with your left over 'bashies' (don't just limit yourself to spuds, sweet potatoe, butternut squash, any friendly root veg will all do splendidly and if you tried the low carb ideas I posted in February* and had leftovers sling them in too).

Eggs is eggs but these is eggselent eggs...

• Use two eggs for every cup and half of mashed veg. Mix the eggs and mashies together.
• Chop up  half an onion (red or brown is fine, but maybe slow cook the stronger brown cousins for a bit longer for sweetness hmm?), gently fry the lil' darlin's  in a good tablespoon of olive oil. 
•  Now pour in the gloopy mash and eggs mixture and spread it into your pan without scrambling the eggs. In the meantime turn on your grill.
• Cook the egg mix gently - you can draw some into the centre and angle the pan to run the mixture into the gaps - just like you're making a thick omlette - but don't fret too much because...
• Pop the pan under the grill to finish the cooking.

This should be served with a huge dollop of mayonaise. You can also grate cheese on the top before you stick it under the grill - or you can add chunks of cheese like feta or taleggio or brie into the eggyveggie mixture.

I know you don't need me to tell you how to make this stuff. I'm just reminding you - how good it tastes!

Arriba!

* aw bless she really thinks someone reads this twaddle!

Anyway you like it. As long as it's mashed!

February's damp chill still has a grip on supper around our house. Most nights we cuddle ourselves up in a slow cooked stew or a big hearted soup for tea - shivering and longing for Spring - proper.

February is also usually the month I face facts about the toll of Christmas scoffing, New Year's failed resolutions and Valentine's chocfest - so I am invariably cutting out carbs, saying 'no thank-you matey' to the butter dish and torturing myself by deliberately looking at myself in the mirror, instead of skipping past my reflection doing the eyeball equivalent of 'la la la la la I can't hear you'....

So here for you are just a few of my recent experiments in low carb mash. Or guilt free bashies. So called because although they do have some starch and carby content - they are not nearly as carborific as spuds and and and - they are really, good for you...

Griddled Salmon with Sweet Potatoe Tax Mash

If like me, you've got to fill in your tax return online before the end of January and your activation code has deactivated - then you'll need a double whammy fix of brain and comfort food to help you face your demons.

This my friend will do the trick...

Megsie's Shortbread - For Christmas and beyond...

I have many friends who are complete Goddesses in the kitchen. Megsie is an Australian Kitchen Witch - Check out her fantastic natural lifestyle blog Accidental Earth Mother >> Megsie has been making these little beauties for years, she claims she found the recipe in Aunty Barbar's Sunbeam Mixmaster Cookbook from 1961 - as she says... they are vintage gold.  

Dearly beloved we must gather together:
7 oz/ 200g butter
2 1/4 cups or 300g plain flour
1/2 cup or 65g corn flour or rice flour or potato starch
1/2 cup or 65g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla

Who'sa what now?
1. Beat butter and vanilla until soft on low speed. (If you are a lazy Maisie using equipment - otherwise get a kid to do it.)
2. Add icing sugar gradually on low speed. (Hmm now I'm thinking you might need yer magimixitupgood machine).
3. Increase speed and beat until light and creamy.
4. Fold in sifted flours on low speed.
5. Turn onto lightly floured board and roll out to 5mm thick (1/4″)
6. Cut with cookie cutters or cut into strips
7. Place on greased tray
8. Bake in barely moderate oven for 15-20 mins or until very light golden.
9. Cool and decorate.

Megsie's favourite addition to these gorgeous Shortbreads is dark chocolate, she makes them with heart shaped cookie cutters and dips one side in chocolate - which sounds like a damned good idea to me. Just enough time to make a few batches of these in time for Christmas.. y'all.

Oh no Emergency Soup Emergency!

Unlike her curvacious highness Lady N'gella I am often caught out by a badly timed Tesco delivery. Today found me heating up an emergency can of organic leak and potato soup. How desperate do you have to be to resort to tinned soup? Carrot free and two hours to delivery desperate, that's how much Nigella love - walk a week in my slippers lady.

Calamity! The soup started to make such a poppin' and a thwoppin' (it's a word!) noises in the microwave that I was forced to put on my specs and inspect the sell-by-date on the already recycled can. Oh NO! and Ahem. Dec 2008! Emergency. Soup Emergency...

By now I'm freezing, starving and going off my Larmin'* So here's what I did - those of an organic knit yer own knickers disposition look away now.

Rice and Cheese a la Louise.

• 1/2 packet of Tilda rice (I used the brown rice with corgette and red peppers, but you can use any and you can always, always make your own and add bits if you fancy it)
• smoked salmon bits (left over from indulgent breakfast plans that never quite came off this week)
• grated strong cheddar
• big blollop of fromage frais (you can use yogurt or creme freche too)

Rice and cheese and yogurt are wonderful together. So this lot all mixed up makes a delicious bowl of loveliness and if you've got some mange touts or beans or sugar snaps - you're really onto something... 

*derivation of this phrase in another post perhaps - particularly if the originatrix submits a tasty treat for us to try. She is the most bodacious of all cooks. Proper job too, not my nonsense madey up stuff.