Tag: cooking

Frozen lettuce

The last step for my taco dinner was to chop some lettuce. My heart sank as I pulled the head of lettuce out of its bag. The green leaves glittered with a grainy shininess — ice. The fridge had frozen my lettuce.

Not too hopeful, I peeled two leaves off and ran them under the tap to wash them. As the frozen burst cells warmed up, the leaves melted into a green ooze. Sighing, I squeezed the water out and put the ooze and the head of lettuce into the bin.

Luckily, I had a backup cucumber.

Unfinished business

Last week, I lamented not getting around to cooking ‘Greek salad, stuffed peppers, Mapo tofu or sausages in chilli tomato sauce’.

This week, I managed to make:

  • Greek salad
  • Mapo tofu with turkey mince, capsicum and mushroom, topped up with passata (sieved tomatoes)
  • Stir-fried broccoli and green capsicum with oyster sauce
  • Sausages and omlette of mushrooms, red capsicum and parsley

I’ve also insured myself against the risk of not having any food to eat. In the freezer, I have spinach curried rice, sausages, and pork dumplings. It’s a nice change from not having a freezer (and microwave) last year.

Past my bedtime on a Sunday night

Bad habits I’ve picked up

  • Salting food before tasting it
  • Chewing gum

I’m looking forward to dinner tomorrow. To celebrate coming out on top after some busy weeks, our team is having Mexican food at Covent Garden.

What I got done this weekend

  • Went to the gym twice
  • Booked accommodation for my upcoming trip to Germany
  • Cooked ‘quick meatball casserole’ from my favourite recipe book. Tonight’s dish plus ‘oven baked risotto’ takes me up to 14% of the 101 recipes.
  • Roasted herbed chicken and potatos (with paprika)
  • Did a mega grocery shop
  • Researched and bought an MP3 player
  • Cleared my inbox

Things I didn’t get done

  • Tidy my room
  • Make Greek salad, stuffed peppers, Mapo tofu or sausages in chilli tomato sauce (but I bought the ingredients)
  • Laundry and ironing
  • Getting my hair cut
  • Finish reading Guns, Germs and Steel
  • Process all the photos from my Chinese New Year weekend.

A new year

Hobbies by the wayside
I’ve become rusty at blogging, diary writing, taking photos and writing social emails. The time I used to spend doing those things is now spent:

a) commuting
b) cooking
c) working
d) hanging out with Damjan
e) relaxing
f) going to the gym

I would like to keep up blogging, diarying, taking photos and emailing. I guess I’ll have to find ways to make other parts of my life more efficient so that I can do what’s important to me.

This week might be a difficult one. I have a rather important report to write by the end of the week. I can do it but the amount of writing that needs to be done might mean late nights in the office. The only bad thing about this, really, is that it threatens my fledgling exercise routine.

Going to the gym
I’ve joined gyms before and have fallen off the bandwagon after a few months. This year, I’m going to try to go to the gym at least three times a week. Without a routine, I stop exercising. This makes me feel guilty.

I’m enjoying the gym, actually. It’s a good way to relax and not think about very much. The only negative is that I end up having dinner at 9 PM, which is quite late.

Eating
So that I can come home and eat dinner immediately, usually I cook a big batch of food on the weekend. Last week, I made ‘Ants climbing up trees‘. This week, Damjan and I made a noodle soup. It is definitely convenient to have dinner already made but by the end of the week, I am usually sick of it.

Not a sheep

Add another run to the scoreboard!

Tonight, Di and I cooked ‘oven baked risotto’ from my favourite cookbook. It was very tasty. We fried bacon, onion and a bit of butter. Then we poured in the cherry tomatoes, white wine, and chicken stock and stuck it in the oven. Our oven is slow so it took 40 minutes instead of 20. But it got done, and we mixed in the parmesan.

I think I am a little tipsy from finishing the rest of the wine bottle.

Including the chilli I cooked earlier this week, this brings me up to 14 out of 101 recipes in the cookbook.

For lunch, I went to Matt and Rachel’s house for Matt’s birthday BBQ. I ate an ostrich burger. I’ve always wanted to eat an ostrich burger, ever since I saw it being sold at the Cambridge market. I also ate a giant slice of cake.

Nearly everyone at the party was Australian. There are a lot of Australians in the UK. I feel kind of like a sheep, especially now that I’m going to work in London. I feel like saying, ‘I’m not a sheep! I came here by accident! I’m here because I mean it, not because it’s the done thing!’

Broccoli lemon mushroom

I invented something yummy today. Well, actually, I took the ‘broccoli lemon chicken’ recipe in my 101 one-pot dishes book and replaced the chicken with mushrooms. I have cooked it with chicken before but did not have any tonight. Anyway, this (plus rice) should feed two small people or one big person.

  • 1 tbsp oil (I used sesame oil, how extravagant)
  • Three mushrooms (I used white ones about 5 cm diameter)
  • 2 garlic cloves, sliced
  • 170 g broccoli, cut into little trees
  • 200ml chicken stock (I used 3/4 of a stock cube)
  • 1/2 tsp cornflower
  • 1/2 tbsp honey
  • Grated zest and juice of 1 small lemon
  • Large handful of roasted cashews (I used unsalted)
  • Salt to taste
  1. Heat the oil in a frying pan or wok, fry garlic quickly, then add broccoli. Stir fry for about two minutes then cover for maybe three minutes.
  2. Add mushrooms, stir fry for a minute, cover for another minute (dash upstairs to check your email).
  3. Mix the stock, cornflour and honey. Pour into pan and stir until thickened (takes longer than you expect).
  4. Add lemon zest, juice and cashew nuts. Stir, then serve straight away.

I really like this recipe book, it’s so student-practical and has nice food porn.

Out of the 101 recipes, I have made (or been inspired by):

  1. Broccoli lemon chicken
  2. Chicken biryani
  3. Turkish lamb pilau
  4. Prawn pilau
  5. Spicy prawn and chorizo rice
  6. Potato and mozzarella tortilla
  7. Curried rice with spinach
  8. Greek salad omlette
  9. Macaroni cheese with mushrooms
  10. Oven egg and chips
  11. Spicy lamb with chickpeas
  12. Hob-to-table moussaka

Twelve out of 101 is almost 12%. That’s pretty good, considering that many people buy recipe books and don’t cook anything out of them!

English dinner for one

You can tell when I’m lonely solitary because I’ll post something about cooking. When I’m not interacting with people, I’m at home, cooking, which is why there are no other stories to entertain you with.

Without planning it, I cooked myself a very English dinner tonight. Di left me pork and apple sausages from our barbecue on the weekend — she’s in Florence this week so I’m making sure the food isn’t wasted.

For dinner, I grilled two sausages and made potato mash (seasoned with salt, a bit of milk, mixed herbs and paprika). I have paid £8 for a meal like this at The Big Bang.

But wait! There’s more! …Dessert!

I had some bread past its use-by date, so I made bread and butter pudding based on this recipe, but scaled it down by a third and used diced apple because I have no raisins or sultanas.

Interestingly, while I was chopping and mixing and mashing, my eyes kept drooping. I was very sleepy, even though it was only 6 PM. Normally, I wake up if I’m doing something but I must have been tired because when I finished eating and washing up, I flopped into bed and slept for an hour.

Bread and butter pudding with apple

Feeds…four?

  • 4 slices of bread (from my pantry: wholemeal)
  • Small, erm, handful of soft butter
  • 330 mL milk (from my fridge: skim)
  • 1 medium sized apple, diced (from my fridge: cox apple — really nice, never had it before I came to England)
  • 1 large egg, beaten (from my fridge: free range)
  • 2.5 tbsp sugar
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
  • 1/4 tsp cinnamon
  1. Butter one side of each slice of bread. Butter a loaf tin.
  2. Line loaf tin with bread (you will need to cut the slices into thirds). Save three thirds of bread slice to use as the cover.
  3. Mix in a bowl the milk, apple, egg, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon.
  4. Pour the mixture into the loaf tin. Sink the remaining bread slices into the middle.
  5. Pre-heat the oven to gas mark 3 (170°C: 325°F). Let the tin sit for about 20 minutes.
  6. Bake the cake until it is ‘golden brown’ or ‘not too gloopy’. Mine took a long time, about an hour. The recipe reckons it should take half an hour.

Food for the weekend

Last Thursday night, I was sitting on the grass chatting with my friends until midnight. Spring had come and the night was warm.

Now, it’s pouring with rain. I’m bundled up in my goosedown puffer jacket (sometimes called a ‘duvet jacket‘ or ‘fashion travesty’).

The good thing about the rain is that it helps me stay inside to read dozens of journal articles (oh my god, there are so many).

Damjan came to Cambridge this weekend and we happily did not much. A friend came over to cook Turkish lamb pilau with us, with strawberries for dessert. We also watched Iron Chef, Giant Lobster Battle. Iron Chef is the best.

Turkish Lamb Pilau

  • 500 g lamb, chopped to mouthful size
  • Small handful of pine nuts
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 large onion, sliced
  • 2-3 cups rice (the recipe book says 250 g rice but I just added enough until it looked all right)
  • 500 mL stock (I used chicken but lamb or vegetable is better, apparently)
  • Handful of minut, chopped
  • Some cinnamon (I shook the bottle three times. The recipe suggests two cinnamon sticks).
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  1. Lightly fry pine nuts without oil. Remove from pan.
  2. Fry onion and cinnamon in oil until transparent.
  3. Add lamb. Fry until browned.
  4. Add rice. Fry for a minute. Add stock.
  5. Simmer with lid on for 15 minutes or until rice is soft. You might need to add more water.
  6. Mix in pine nuts and mint.

We served it with cherry tomatoes, grated cucumber in yogurt (‘tzatziki’), grated carrot in yogurt (‘carrot tzatziki’), and cloudy apple juice. We had stuffed olives too but I forgot to take them out of the fridge. More for me, then.

Potato and reduced fat mature cheddar frittata

I cooked something yummy from my favourite and only cookbook: 101 One-pot Dishes. It was originally ‘potato and mozzerella frittata’ and it fed 6 people. I adapted it to make ‘potato and reduced fat mature cheddar frittata’, which fed one person.

  • 1 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 2 small-medium potatoes, sliced
  • 2 eggs, beaten with 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tomato, sliced
  • grated cheese
  • pepper to taste
  1. Fry potatoes with oil for five minutes.
  2. Spread potatoes across the base of the pan. Pour over the eggs so that potatoes are covered. Simmer for 15-20 minutes.
  3. Add tomato slices over the top. Sprinkle the shredded cheese.
  4. Grill for five minutes. Add pepper to taste

Caponata di pork sausage

As is now semi-customary, Damjan and I had dinner at Food for Thought, a vegetarian restaurant on Neal Street in the Covent Garden district. They cook large quantities of a limited and daily varying menu. When it runs out, they cross it from the menu. The food is hearty, tasty, healthy and good value.

On Saturday, we were fed caponata di melanzane, (caponata of eggplant). It was soooo delicious. I looked up the recipe on the internet.

Today, I made my own variation — caponata di salsiccia, if such a thing can exist. Instead of using eggplants, I used pork sausages.

*Serves one poor and hungry student*

  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 1/2 onion, chopped
  • 1 clove garlic, chopped
  • 1/2 fresh red chilli, sliced
  • 2 lean pork sausages, chopped to bite size
  • Small handful whole or chopped pitted black olives
  • 400 g can chopped tomatoes
  • 1 tsp Italian dried herbs (or mixed herbs or basil… whatever you like)
  • Salt to taste

Fry garlic and onion until onion is soft. Add sausages and fry until light brown. Add chilli. Add chopped tomatoes. Simmer for some time (5-10 minutes?). Mix in olives and herbs. Simmer and add salt to taste.