Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals

Okay, so I lied last week when I bragged about my OnePotWonder lunch for the family.

The truth is I am not a typical ‘1 pot wonder’ kinda-woman, particularly when it comes  to writing up the recipes.

What I am good at is fairly adept at creating meals from leftovers and a scratch of gnarly looking vegetables. I think we all prefer our vegetables to be fresh and crisp, but sometimes we’re so run off our feet that we just don’t get around to using up stock in due course. By the time it’s the end of the week, you might look at that cauliflower or piece of carrot that is looking too pathetic for a picnic basket, and you know that throwing out food is not what we should be letting ourselves do.

I guess there’s a knack to being able to figure out what spices, herbs and veggies work well together, and as a result, this sort of meal comes easier to me to create, although less easy to write up a recipe, often because it changes every single time, and by the time I put pen to paper, I’ve over-thought and over-complicated everything.  But I have tried to, and am plotting them all down below.

If only I could do live-streaming of my thought processes, but that’s a dream for another confinement period and me being 10 kilograms lighter.

Before I give you my ‘recipe’ for Savoury Rice, and also Cauliflower Chorizo, I have to confess that my current favourite spice condiments are paprika and garam masala. I suspect garam masala could be considered a bit of a cheats spice, but definitely worth sourcing it for your spice collection.

My other staples include vinegar and lemon.

And several fresh herbs.

Savoury Rice (with or without meat)

The trick to this is to have a piece of roasted chicken or pork (and the roasting juices) as leftovers in your fridge, but it’s not an absolute essential.

Enough for 4.

• 240g raw rice

• 100g frozen peas

• 1 large onion, diced small

• 2 large carrots, peeled and grated

• 20g butter

• 30ml olive oil

• 1 tablespoon paprika

• 1 tablespoon garam masala

• Splash of white wine vinegar

• 1/2 cup chicken stock *

• 2 ripe tomatoes

• chopped cooked chicken (or pork, or beef, or lamb).  In my home, it may only be half of a chicken breast, and the rest of the stripped chicken carcass, but about a cup size will be plenty.

Salt and Pepper

1. Cook the rice as you would normally. I personally prefer Basmati Rice, and for this, it’s fine to add the basmati rice to a pot of simmering water with salt, cook it for 10 minutes, add the frozen peas, and then drain it off over a colander. Set it aside.
2. While the rice is cooking, you can start with the rest: In a heavy bottomed deep saucepan, add the butter and olive oil, the diced onion and grated carrot. Start to cook this over medium heat until the veg starts to ‘sweat’.
3. Now add the paprika and garam masala. If you do have the juices and a bit of fat from the pan of a roasted chicken, add them now (just leave it out if you don’t have). Let the spices cook for half a minute, and then add a splash of white wine vinegar.
4. If you’re not using the juice and fat from a roast leftover, add half a cup of chicken stock.
5. Cut tomatoes into quarters, scoop the juice and pips into the saucepan, and then cut the tomatoes up into 1cm cube dice. You can add the tomato to the saucepan and cook for 3 minutes.
6. If you’re using cooked meat, add it in now, make sure you reheat the meat, so cook for a 2 minutes.
7. Add ground pepper to your saucepan, and if your rice and peas are cooked and drained, add it to the saucepan, stir it through the vegetables.  Add salt according to your taste and serve.

Should you prefer to go meatless, you can replace the chicken stock for a veg brouillon.  I would add cooked lentils if I wanted protein, and for an added texture, add toasted sunflower and sesame seeds just before serving.

Chorizo Cauliflower:

Enough for 4

The list of ingrediants is a bit longer here, but if you’re shopping for chorizo, you may as well buy the rest.

• 1 large head of cauliflower, cut into small florets

• dash of olive oil, salt and pepper.

Roast for 20 minutes in a hot oven.

To cook in a heavy bottomed deep saucepan:

• 200g Chorizo, sliced or cubed

• 40ml oil

• 1 large red onion (or white if you can’t find a red one), sliced lengthwise

• 1 red pepper, sliced into strips

• 1 carrot, julienne strips (or run a peeler across, it doesn’t have to be perfect julienne)

• 50g button mushrooms, quarters

• 1 garlic clove, chopped

•50g depitted olives, sliced

• A couple of sundried tomatoes in oil, chopped

• A couple of artichokes in oil, sliced

• A couple of gherkins(cornichons) sliced thin

• 4 tomatoes, quartered, juice and pips separated, and then diced

• 2 tablespoons capers, roughly chopped

• 1 large handful fresh parsley, chopped.

Salt and pepper

1. Place a heavy bottomed deep saucepan onto medium heat.Add the oil, chorizo, onion, peppers, mushrooms and garlic to the pan and cook for about 5 minutes. You may need to stir it occasionally to prevent it burning.
2. Next you can add the tomatoes, the olives, artichokes, sundried tomatoes, gherkins/cornichons and capers, stir everything through, adjust salt and pepper to your preferred taste.
3. Once your cauliflower is cooked, you can combine the dishes.
4. Lastly add the chopped parsley and serve.

As a side note, my kids don’t love all the cauliflower in this. Actually, Beth is not a huge fan at all, but I will get her to enjoy it at some point. Anyway, what I do is cook a pot of penné or macaroni pasta for the girls and stir through some of the ‘sauce’ with a little of the cauliflower and serve them before adding all the cauliflower for Anton and I. So it’s a good recipe for carbo-loading or not.

Also, once you have bought bottles of marinated sundried tomatoes and artichokes, store them on the fridge for future use.  They’re awesome on a pizza, or make a soda bread with them mixed in.  They’re great for snack platters or if your looking to do a light pasta salad.  The same goes for capers.  The preserved aspect of a caper plus the saltiness of it makes a great level of depth to one-pot wonders!

To give you an idea of the type of artichokes and sundried tomatoes I buy. They’re marinated and keep for a ages once open and stored in the fridge.

I’m dropping the word document recipes in in case you want to save and print them for future reference.

Quick and Easy Savoury Rice

Chorizo and Cauliflower

Do you have a favourite quick and easy dish that you do?

Time to tackle dinner- the last place I want to be in this heat that Europe is stuck with, but it’s half finished already since I cooked shin yesterday ;-).  We’re having Chilli beef and tortilla chips with sour cream and kimchi.  Yes, I know, I said it’s too hot to cook, so why are we eating chilli?  Because there is very little cooking left to do today.

Take care, love to you all,

Love

Me.

XXX