ramtops

Aug. 5th, 2009

Tesco hides figures after missing target to reduce plastic bag usage

Britain’s biggest supermarket chain has published misleading figures giving the impression that it had met an industry target to halve the use of plastic bags.

From The Times.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

And I completely forgot to photograph it.

Contents:

big bag of curly kale – I always struggle to know what to do with this. We’ll stir fry half and eat it for lunch with noodles, I think. Will mull over how to cook the rest
three smallish courgettes
one cucumber
carrots
white onions
two papaya pear squash
potatoes
one ruby grapefruit
half a dozen pears
oranges

We also got a rye sourdough loaf (yum) and some toilet roll (how exciting :), and Abel and Cole threw in a free copy of their recipe book, Cooking Outside the Box, as a “welcome to our new customer” sort of thing. Which was nice.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

an excellent vintage, originally uploaded by ramtops.

I have already laid down (!) five bottles of Shiraz (the kits say 6 bottles, but by the time you’ve discarded the sludge, you seem to get 5 red, and 5.5 white). However, the Shiraz came with poncy labels.

This Pinot Grigio kit didn’t, so I printed some off on my trusty Dymo Labelwriter.

I have 1.5 gallons of apple wine maturing in the kitchen, 1 gallon of elderflower (kit), 1 gallon of gooseberry (from the fruit) and 1 gallon of Barolo (kit) on the go in the hall.

Time to write a database to keep track of them, I think!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

As I’ve mentioned before, our local CoOp is really not bad, and I always take a beak at the reduced section where they put the items that have reached their sell-by date. About three weeks ago, I picked up two packs of chicken thighs – 11 thighs for £3.30. I stowed them in the freezer under the stairs, as had no particular plan for them.

Pete came home from his foraging on Saturday with a big bunch of coriander, and so we decided to make lemony coriander chicken. This is a Madhur Jaffrey recipe that we have refined over the years, and one of our favourites.

I did ours in the slow cooker, but I’ll give you the destructions for the more conventional means. If you want to use a slow cooker, bung everything in, and cook on low for about 6-7 hours.

Brown the chicken pieces in groundnut oil in a shallow pot, ideally wide enough to keep the chicken in one layer – I usually use a Le Creuset saute pan. Set the chicken to drain on some kitchen paper. Keep the oil.

Chop up some garlic small. Blend some fresh ginger with about 4 tablespoons of water – as much as you like, we use lots, as we like things gingery. Chop up 1/2 – 1 green chilli; up to you whether you use the seeds or not, depending on your chilli tolerance. Take some ground coriander seeds, cumin seeds and turmeric, and possibly a pinch of cayenne. Chop up lots and lots of fresh green coriander. Halve a lemon.

Re-heat the oil, and add the garlic – stir till browned. Add the ginger/water paste and stir about for a minute or so. Add the ground spices, the green chilli, juice of the lemon, and the coriander. Stir a bit.

Put the chicken back in; I put the lemon halves in too – shame to waste them. Bring up to a simmer, put a lid on and cook for about 40 minutes. Turn the chicken pieces part way through if you feel like it – I don’t generally bother.

Eat with basmati rice – utterly delicious, I assure you.