ramtops

We love roasted veg, but for some reason we haven’t had them for ages and ages, so I rectified that last night.

I cut up a courgette, a red pepper, a red onion, half of a huge sweet potato and about four carrots, tossed them in olive oil, then … looked at them for a bit and wondered what to flavour them with. My eye lit upon the test tube of fennel seeds and I sprinkled some in. Further inspired, I added sesame seeds, then threw caution to the wind and hurled in some pumpkin seeds too. A dash of shoyu completed the dish, with some ground black pepper.

Roast veg always take longer than I expect them too, so this time in a weaselish cunning, I gave them about four minutes in the microwave first, then bunged them in a fan oven at 190C for about 50 mins. They were utterly delicious.

We tried very hard not to eat them all, and just managed not to – there was a small bowl of kidney beans in the fridge left from a marathon chilli making session on Sunday, so I have combined the leftover veg with the beans, and that’ll make a nice lunch today with some of the chapatti mounting (see previous).

We ate the veg unaccompanied, as there was a pud of rhubarb and pear crumble. It was just going to be rhubarb, but there were some pears in the fruit bowl getting a little tired. Chopped up the fruit – just cored the pears, didn’t bother peeling them. Simmered with a little water and some fresh grated ginger for about 6-7 minutes – no sugar added, as we don’t have a very sweet tooth.

Made a crumble topping with 6oz wholemeal flour, 3oz butter and 2oz demerara, whizzed up in the Magimix, then added 2oz of porridge oats and pulsed.

Bunged it in the oven with the veg (oh, the joys of a fan oven :) and baked for about 40 minutes. Very nice.

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

As my loyal reader will recall, we had roast belly pork for New Year’s Eve dinner; it must have a hulking great porker, because not even our well known for trenchering friends could finish it off, and I put the remainder in the freezer.

I pulled it out of the freezer this morning, together with a tub of red cabbage. I warmed it slowly in a shallow Le Creuset casserole with a lid, and we ate it and the cabbage accompanied by roast potatoes, and a gravy made from chopped shallots and sage, apple juice and veg stock.

I made three gallons of rhubarb wine before Christmas, from a *huge* tin of rhubarb from Makro. The last of the rhubarb went in the freezer, so I dragged that out too this morning to make a crumble.

And as I looked in the fridge for the butter for the crumble topping, I spotted the last of the brandy butter I’d made for the festive season, of which, as usual, we’d used very little. Liberated, possibly, by tasting the rhubarb wine before I racked it today, and indeed the apricot wine before I bottled it, I decided to use it up in the crumble topping; “how hard can it be?” I asked myself.

I couldn’t tell you how much of other ingredients I used – I bunged it in the Magimix with brown sugar and flour and some porridge oats until it looked about right. Put the rhubarb in a pyrex dish, sprinkled it with ground ginger and bunged the topping on top. The brandy was barely discernable, but you could tell *something* was there. I’m not saying I’d do it again, but at least the brandy butter is gone!