Cous Cous Quick Quick

I am home alone for lunch & I wanted something quick - so I flung together left-overs. If you cook then you will always have leftover bits and bobs. Well you will if you're smart enough to always make extra! 

This salad was so quick it's almost too cheeky to post it. But it was so good, and it demonstrates the art of kitchen magic. The kind of spellificarion that comes with a stuffed fridge & a bit of whizzbangery! 

Don't fret if you didn't have stuffed mushrooms last night - chopped raw shrooms will work perfectly! 

Here's what you need...

Left over cous cous (although lets be honest tipping water from a kettle over a 1/3 cup of couscous isn't going to slow you down. I make mine with a bit of chicken stock paste for extra flavour)

Left over Mushroom  Duxelle - posh for cooked, chopped mushroom.

1 large, ripe beef tomato chopped into big pieces

6 black, cured olives chopped

2 desert spoons of toasted pumpkin & sunflower seeds

Grated hard goats cheese (or cheddar, or buffalo mozzarella, feta, griddled haloumi... On an on it might go)

Hemp oil (or good olive oil)

In a bowl mix the cous cous, olives, duxelle, mixed seeds (reserve some for fancy presentation).

Top with chopped tomatoes & grated cheese & finish with a drizzle of hemp oil & a cheeky sprinkle of seeds.

Done & darned delish! 

Super healthy too - you could bump up the happy & serve on a bed of baby spinach or wilted kale. 

I just yummed it out of the bowl!

Enjoy & let me know your variations! 

Oh if you haven't got a bowl of leftover duxelle hanging about either ditch it & stir in some red or green pesto - or chop raw mushrooms finely & stir in to the couscous. Can't say fairer than that!

Won't You Come Home Pearl Barley | Summer Salad

Pearl Barley is an underused ingredient if you ask me. It's high in fiber, chock full of b vits and iron and a cup gives you 4gms of protein. It tastes great and it's as cheap as chips - so instead of leaving it in the back of the cupboard until the winter and then chucking it into a soup as an after thought - have a go at this brilliant summer salad that show cases the humble grain!

Heart Healthy Pearl Barley deserves our love.

This salad is brilliant on it's own or alongside some mixed leaves drizzled with hemp oil and lemon juice and we had it with a juicy classic tomato, basil and mozzarella combo. Heavenly!


Pop this lot on your next shopping list:

1 cup of pearl barley (I soak mine over night to make cooking even quicker!)
1 large bunch of parsley (curly or flat) - finely chopped
8 - 10 black olives cured in olive oil (not the soapy horrid things that come in jars or tins) - chopped.
3tspns nutritional yeast (particularly good for vegetarianeenies)
Olive Oil
Soy sauce (optional)
chicken stock (paste)
Hard Goats Cheese (grated) as much as you like!
pumpkin, sunflower, flax seed - toasted (do a pan-full and save any you don't use for spronklings)

You can also add peas - I didn't this time.

I also stir in extras - like ground seeds but this isn't necessary.

Do it like a Luli!

If you've soaked your pearl barley, then give it another rinse and put it in a saucepan with two cups of water. You can use a good heaped teaspoon of chicken paste stock if you like. Let the water come to a gentle simmer and leave it to cook and absorb all the water. @10 - 15 mins. Keep an eye on it - you can hear when it's getting close to sticking - it sort of crackles.

Turn the heat off, stir in the nutritional yeast, and any other ground seeds you're adding - sprinkle with a little olive oil. Put a lid on it and let it steam.

Meanwhile, chop the parsley and olives and grate the cheese.

Stir in the parsley and olives when the grains are still warm.

If you are going to eat it warm -then you can stir in the toasted seeds and the cheese an serve.

If you prefer to eat it cold - then wait for it to cool down before adding the cheese and seeds.

If you are putting in peas - these can go in whenever you feel like it!

I cup of cooked grains is @193 calories and this will make three good servings - so it's pretty waist friendly even with the cheese!

Spring Salads For Rainy Spuds

Here's a couple of fresh spring salads to cheer myself up. It's pouring down with rain & I've put two whopper sweet potatoes in the oven to bake. 

I oil my spuds with hemp oil to add a nutty taste & rub them with sea salt. 

I don't mind if sweet potatoes over cook and leak sticky juice into the baking tray. If I had a red pepper I would roast this too & add it chopped to the lettuce. 

Salad Leaves

Too easy. Baby spinach & chopped gem lettuce mixed together and dressed with lemons & hemp oil. 

Spiralized Courgette Pesto

With the small noodle blade, spiralise a whole courgette. If you haven't got one, then you can julienne your courgette but it's seconds work to spiralise & rinse the spiraliser so why wouldn't you!?

Add 2 teaspoons of good pesto & gently mix. Now add grated old Gouda (or any hard, strong, sharp cheese), 2 teaspoons of capers, a handful of pumpkin seeds and a handful of cashews. 

Perfect, raw, crunchy & indulgent! 

When the spuds are cooked serve with hummus & chopped chorizo & the salady goodness.

Yum!

Organic Spinach, Date & Courgette Salad

Good evening. Good Evening! I'm forced to wait another 15 minutes before the HUGE sweet potatoes have baked to perfection in the oven. Lets get one thing straight from the off - we can never be together if you consider microwaving any kind of spud acceptable.

Slow baked - with butter = heavenly supper without any effort. Right there - dollop on the hummus and off you go. No need to thank me.

So in fact - I have made a great salad to go with our super delicious sweet patooties.

Here's what you need to know - below...

Spelty Trout & Courgette Ribbon Salad

Yoo hoo! I'm experimenting this week with new grains. I'm trying out spelt tonight. Pearled Spelt - which has the rough outer jacket bashed off and makes it quicker to cook.

My good friend Aisha introduced me to this lovely nutty grain recently when she blew me away with a spelt, walnut and butternut squash recipe. It was just heavenly with some shaved mature, hard goats cheese. Oh lordy I'm hooked.

So tonight I'm having a go and in true cheffy style I'm using what I've got in my fridge.

Armed with some trout fillets & a couple of courgettes we're off!

Apols re: lack of pics - I'm having problems uploading... bear with... x

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.