ramtops

I soaked and boiled some chickpeas on Wednesday, in preparation for a vegetable tagine. But then I didn’t fancy the tagine, and our schedule for the next few days doesn’t really accommodate it, and anyway, we had no soup left for lunch. Shocking, I know.

So into the medium slow cooker this morning went some chorizo, red onion and a bit of olive oil. An hour later, I added the cooked chickpeas, a little boiling water, some lemon juice, and some chicken Bisto granules. And some sea salt and black pepper. And then some Ras el Hanout, because it seemed to be lacking something. Left it another couple of hours, added some of the enormous bunch of parsley, chopped, and consumed it with a mini naan bread. And there’s enough for a second round tomorrow.

Tonight, I shall be experimenting with a Philips Airfryer; not sure it’s my sort of thing, but I’ve been given it to review, so it would be rude not to.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

(I said it was a busy weekend).

The last of last weekend’s roast chicken was languishing in a bowl in the fridge, and the weather forecast was Not Nice. So we decided that A Pie was called for.

Due to the unexpected trip to Lakeland, I started the filling in the tiny slow cooker before I went out. In went two chopped rashers of back bacon, about 30g of finely diced chorizo (oh, chorizo, how I love thee), a chopped leek, and about half a punnet of tired chestnut mushrooms. A small glug of olive oil, a grate of black pepper, some fresh thyme, and I set it on low, and went to Beverley. I’m getting so much use out of that thing, I just love it. I want a medium slow cooker now, but I really don’t think I have anywhere to keep it :(

There was a gorgeous smell when we returned! Once the cake baking marathon was over, I transferred the mix to a deep frying pan, added the chicken and warmed it through. And then, while warding off the Senior Cats, I added about two or three tablespoons of plain flour and cooked that off, and then just enough milk to make a sauce. No idea how much, just until it was right.

Pete manfully rolled out the puff pastry (which came from the freezer – I’m not that daft), and we ate it with mashed swede and carrot, and very nice it was too. And we were so hungry I forgot to photograph it, but I will do so when we have reheated the other half for tomorrow’s supper.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

The remains of the haricots from the shepherds’ pie mix. What to do with them?

There was a cabbage in the fridge. There’s nearly always a cabbage in the fridge, and we are very samey with the way we use it, so I thought I’d do a little experiment. So I chopped about 30g of chorizo* quite small, and slung it in the baby slow cooker with a roughly chopped onion and a little olive oil.

Then, at supper time, I steamed some finely shredded cabbage, while the beans, chorizo and onion were transferred to a bigger pan, and warmed through. I added some herbs too.

*Chorizo is one of my go-to ingredients – oil and paprika and garlic in one hit. Delicious. I buy it in rings from Aldi, usually, where it is dead cheap compared to anywhere else. This one I’m using now is a fancy smoked chorizo from the food market, but even this one would have been about 50p for 30 grams.

I finely diced about 30g, and roughly chopped an onion, and slung them in the small slow cooker for an hour or so (I’m getting so much use out of that thing!), with a splash if olive oil. I shredded about 1/3 of the cabbage, and cooked it in very little water and some ground black pepper for about six minutes. While the cabbage was cooking,tThe haricots went into a deep frying pan with a tiny bit of water to warm up, and I added some chopped herbs and the chorizo/onion mix. Drained the cabbage and added it to the bean mix. It was spectacularly good, much better than I actually expected Will be making it again!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

I looked at the remaining kidney beans, and I really felt that they weren’t going to make a substantial meal, so I bunged a load of black eyed beans into soak. I know you don’t generally need to soak/boil them, but these were quite elderly, so I thought it best.

On Sunday morning, I nipped round to the Turkish greengrocer and bought six red peppers, a huge mound of broad beans in their pods, a bunch of flat parsley, two aubergines, and two courgettes. And an enormous tin of tomato puree for 99 pence!

So on Sunday, into the slow cooker went three red peppers and two onions, thinly sliced, plus four carrots and a courgette, some diced chorizo from the very old one I found in back of the fridge, and a little olive oil. And a bit later, four diced cloves of garlic, because you can’t have too much garlic.

Left that for a while to soften the veg, then added the remainder of the kidney beans, the black eyed beans (which I had boiled for 30 minutes earlier). I put half the tomato purée in a bowl, added about a glass of red wine left over from the other night, and some water, then added that to the slow cooker. Also added some bay leaves, and chopped fennel leaves, from my herb garden. Seasoned it a bit and left it for a couple of hours.

I’d made some barley bread (because i found some barley flour in the flour cupboard) in the morning and left it to rise, so baked that off to accompany the bean stew. It was so gorgeous we went back for seconds, and there’s still a load left.

The rest of the tomato purée was mixed with the last of the red wine and a little water, and put in the freezer. That’s really cracking value, and I shall be using it again.

Using up:
chorizo
black eyed beans
barley flour

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

(sapo is Spanish for toad)

We had some snacking chorizos left from this month’s Discover Unearthed tasting box – they’re the first thing we’ve had from them that we didn’t really like, so after the first taste, we decided to cook something with them. And thus a chorizo toad in the hole was conceived.

I made a batter from 3oz wholemeal flour, 1 egg, good pinch of salt, 5oz of semi-skimmed milk. This batter was in itself an experiment – I’m trying to cut down on white flour – and it worked very well. Cooked down the chorizos in a little oil on the hob first and drained off the excess, then added the batter, and bunged it in the oven at gas 7 for about 30 minutes – came out lovely!

While it was cooking, I bunged a finely sliced onion in the Remoska with a little olive oil, then at the end turned it into onion gravy with the aid of some cornflour and a beef stock cube. Consumed it all with steamed cabbage.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We had a load of cold cooked chicken left over from a roast, some rather tired coriander leaves, a wizened yellow pepper, so time for one of our favourites.

Roughly chopped two onions, several cloves of garlic and the yellow pepper, and sauteéd them off in some olive oil. Added some chopped chorizo and let it cook down, and then added some cumin seeds. Hurled in the chicken, a load of chickpeas (which I’d soaked and boiled, but tinned is fine).

Made a stock of Marigold bouillon powder (no home should be without it) and a teaspoon or so of arrowroot to thicken it. Squeezed in the juice of a lemon, and some salt and pepper. It looked a bit unbalanced, so I bunged in half a jar of roasted yellow peppers, sliced thinly. Left to cook for about half an hour with a lid on, then added the chopped coriander and cooked for another ten minutes.

Delicious!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We accidentally (as you do) consumed a small fry up while on a 7 mile walk today – this is progress, as normally we’d have gone for the large version, but we did feel we deserved it, especially as I’d already walked 2.5 miles and swum 16 lengths this morning!

Anyway, we didn’t want a lot for supper, so we had a rummage in the fridge.

Into a pan went three small chorizo chopped up, with some olive oil – the chorizo came from Discover Unearthed, who very kindly sent me a whole load of new stuff to review this morning, so you’ll be reading about those soon.

Then we added chopped onion and garlic, and a thinly sliced red pepper, and cooked it all down for about 15 minutes. Added some sesame seeds, chopped rosemary, a dribble of honey and about a wine glass water, popped in the last of the chickpeas, and left it all for another ten minutes.

Ate out of bowls, accompanied by toasted wholemeal pitta – delicious, quick, healthy, tasty. Perfect.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

Was the last of the chickpeas, that had already been enhanced with peppers. There were two elderly chorizo sausages in the fridge, so I chopped them up and fried them with a little olive oil – as always, they gave forth some lovely paprika-y, garlicy oil of their own, and once they’d crisped up, I added the chickpea mix, and warmed it all through for 15 minutes.

We had it with some toasted pitta bread – Pete managed to burn the first lot (!), but we had more in the freezer, thankfully. Was all very nice, apart from the smell of charred pitta through the house … :)