ramtops

We had friends coming for supper on Sunday evening – lovely, as I love cooking for people, and don’t do nearly enough of it since we moved! I wasn’t sure what I wanted to cook, but I went to the butcher and bought some beautiful lean pork, and there was a big bag of mixed peppers in the fridge, so that was a start. I wanted to use some beans too, to pad it out, so found some dried butter beans on the pantry shelf on Saturday morning, stuck them in to soak, then cooked them in the slow cooker overnight.

I started off by deseeding and slicing thinly four peppers, red and yellow, and a huge spanish onion, and cooking them down in some olive oil. I added some cumin seeds and a splash of honey and some garlic, and it was heading towards Middle Eastern. Then in went some paprika, and we were off with goulash. More paprika followed, some fennel seeds, some caraway and then a jar of roasted peppers, sliced up. These give a lovely depth to a dish, and when cooked in the slow cooker, they sort of melt into the sauce. A carton of chopped tomatoes, some rosemary, thyme, bay leaves and seasoning, and the sauce was done.

This all went in the slow cooker (now devoid of its butter beans), and I diced and browned the pork, hurled it in the cooker, and then we just left it completely alone apart from the odd stir for about seven hours. The butter beans must have been very old – I know they accompanied us from Somerset – because they needed another 40 minutes on the boil, so they were added a bit later.

The dish was gorgeous – it made six servings, and four have gone in the freezer, as unfortunately our friends had to cry off due to illness.

We followed it with Molten chocolate cakes with raspberries and cream. There’s two of them left too. <parp>.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

We had a couple of roasted yellow peppers languishing in the fridge in a jar – not enough to do anything substantial with, but needed using up all the same.

Working at home, lunches get very samey – usually soup, bread and cheese or cold meat, although I have to be careful with cheese now :( So occasionally, we branch out and do something a tad more exotic, and the peppers proved to be inspiration.

I chopped an onion in half and sliced it thinly, then sautéd it in some olive oil with some chopped garlic. Added some ras el hanout and stirred it about, then added the peppers, thinly sliced. Then in went a can of drained kidney beans, and a little stock made from Marigold bouillon and some arrowroot to thicken it). Warmed it all through for about 10 minutes. We ate it with toasted wholemeal pitta – delicious!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

I had a red and a yellow pepper starting to go a bit wrinkly, and some gingery chickpeas in the freezer, so I thought I’d combine them.

I cut a red onion in half, and sliced it thinly, then deseeded the peppers, and cut them into thin strips. Started them off on the hob in olive oil, with a dash of sesame, till they were hot, then bunged them in the oven while the bread was cooking.

After 30 minutes they were nice and soft, so I added the chickpeas, and put the casserole dish back in the oven for another 20 minutes. We ate with rice. Very nice indeed.