Meat Free Monday – spring, week 12

So, here I am and it is Monday! I didn’t manage the breakfast but I did have the side dish of baked courgettes, feta and tomatoes for lunch. I could easily have had three lunches because I also liked the two lunch options – fatoush salad with grilled halloumi or tangy cauliflower pickle and cheese sandwich. I may have them later in the week. The courgettes were good – sprinkled with a little diced feta, fresh thyme, olive oil and balsamic vinegar and baked until tender.

Tonight’s dinner was asparagus risotto. The risotto was supposed to have fresh morels and marjoram or oregano. I couldn’t get any of these so I left the morels out and used tarragon instead of the marjoram/oregano. I also left out the mascarpone – too much fat for me. It tasted very good but I would really like to try it with the fresh morels, so whenever I see them I’ll buy some and report back.

Oooops

I’m really sorry if you came to visit last week and found nothing at all for Meat Free Monday – I’m afraid I was just sooooo busy ……..

…….. busy trying to decide whether I should sit in the sun or the shade, take a swim, read my book, have a drink – or just chill (or rather bake). Such difficult choices!

I’m sure you’ve guessed I wasn’t in my back garden – I went to Portugal for the week and the weather was fantastic! OK, I’ll shut up about the weather – I’ll talk about the food. I ate lots of fish – golden bream, sea bass, corvina and squidlings. The squidlings were my favourite. They were tiny and pink and plump and sooo delicious cooked in olive oil with lots of garlic! That night my sister-in-law had this strange dream about having alien creatures inhabiting her stomach …. but perhaps I should stop there, I wouldn’t like to put you off eating them!

We also had lots of excellent wine. I was not as rude as to count exactly how many bottles we had, suffice to say it was a few! We thought the Casa Ferreirinha Planalto White Reserva 2010 was particularly good.

We had dessert on the last night – almond cake flambéed with Grand Marnier. The outside of the cake was all chewy and the middle full of booze! What more could you ask for? Oh yes, a scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side. Yummy. It was quite a windy evening so they needed a windbreak to shelter the cake while they did the flambé bit!

I always look forward to my Meat Free Mondays but tomorrow even more so – I ate so much fish last week I think I’m growing fins!

Meat Free Monday – spring, week 10

Believe it or not, today I actually had the Meat Free Monday breakfast for breakfast! It was fruit and nut breakfast bars and they were yummy. I was very organised and made them yesterday so that they would be ready and waiting for me this morning. They’re made from a mixture of rolled oats, nuts and seeds coated in melted butter and then baked. It should have been almonds and hazelnuts but I really don’t like hazelnuts so I used pistachios instead. I had dates but swapped the dried apricots for dried cranberries because that’s what I had in the cupboard. There were also some sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds in there too. I really liked this combination and would be very happy to make them again. The great thing about this kind of recipe is that you can switch the ingredients very easily just as long as you keep the overall quantities the same. Once they were baked the bars were a little bit crumbly, a little bit chewy and not too sweet. Yum. They would be excellent as a granola substitute. The book says they’ll keep for a week in an airtight container. I’m not so sure -I think they’ll be long gone by then. Maybe if I keep them out of sight my hand will not stray into the tin quite so easily …….

Breakfast and dinner only today I’m afraid. I was out this morning and was so hungry when I came home I just made a panini – vegetarian of course! Had I been even more organised, I could have had crunchy cauliflower and macaroni or pasta with fresh spring herbs. Mañana.

Dinner was a stir-fry with spring veg and noodles. Tenderstem broccoli, baby broad beans (skinned please), pak choi and spring onions stir-fried with some chilli, garlic, ginger and lots of thin egg noooooodles. Stir-fry dishes are all about the preparation – don’t be like me who had everything cooking and then suddenly realised I hadn’t skinned the beans! Luckily my sous chef stepped in to assist. The dish came together nicely with the addition of the soy and hoisin – I didn’t measure, just enough to coat the noooooooodles. It was deliciously spicy – I used a whole chilli for the two of us and it was a hot one! I knew I should have tasted it first.

Meat Free Monday – spring, week 09

Where does the week go? I have managed two posts since last Monday so I suppose that’s something!

This week’s breakfast was crepes with lemon and sugar. I always think of this as dessert so I’m afraid to say it was muesli as usual for me today. For lunch – vegetable pilau (packed lunch) or creamy broccoli soup? Given that I ate far too much cheese over the weekend and my gallstones were shouting (very loudly!) at me, I opted for the creamy broccoli soup (Laura and Woody Harrelson). It was just right. The usual suspects were there – broccoli and potato, steamed rather than cooked in the stock and leek in place of onion which was cooked in water instead of being sautéed gently in oil or butter. Olive oil was added to the soup at the end, when it was whirling around in the blender. The recipe used vegetable bouillon and salt but I found it was perfect with just the bouillon.

I couldn’t decide if I was looking forward to dinner or not. I love pasta but pasta with almonds? Not sure. Well, I needn’t have worried – it was really nice. I enjoyed the different texture given by the chopped almonds and the little bit of heat from the dried chilli. I couldn’t get Caciocavallo, a cheese from the south of Italy, so I used Parmesan instead.

I had the garlic bread too (side dish) and I can confirm, with absolute certainty, there will be no vampires in this house tonight!

and the leftovers …….

I had some tuna leftover from the niçoise salad and made a delicious bruschetta for our lunch yesterday. I haven’t been eating much mayonnaise lately – probably since I returned from Ballymaloe . This is because there was always fresh mayonnaise on the go there and it tastes a zillion times better than anything you can buy in a jar, so with my last *happy egg I made some mayo. I used to think it wasn’t really worth making it in small quantities but it definitely is and it’s very simple.

All you need for this is one egg yolk, a little Dijon mustard, a teaspoon of white wine vinegar, pinch of salt and roughly 100mls oil (I used sunflower). It’s really good exercise if you make it by hand but much easier and quicker if you have an electric whisk – a food processor is great if you’re making a larger quantity. Put the egg yolk in a bowl with the white wine vinegar, salt and Dijon mustard then gradually whisk in the oil until the mayonnaise is the consistency you want. I didn’t need all the oil.

To my mayo I added some chopped hard-boiled egg (my second last happy egg) and chopped parsley. I then adjusted the seasoning and put it on my toasted sourdough along with the leftover tuna. Fab.

*I do always buy organic free range eggs but it is extra special when you know the chickens, so to speak, that laid them.

happy eggs

Earlier this week I was lucky enough to be given some eggs from some happy chickens! I wanted to make something where they stood out rather than use them for baking. I decided on tuna niçoise. I like to make a deconstructed niçoise salad so you can as much or as little of the different ingredients as you like. I normally put in tuna (no surprise there!), hard-boiled eggs (well, kind of squidgy in the middle is how I like them), little gem or something similar, green beans, new potatoes, tomatoes, anchovies, red onion and some olives BUT – you knew there was a but coming – I had some spring onions which needed eating so I used them instead of the red onion, and I had no olives. I also used marinated anchovies from the fishmonger – I suspect it should probably be salted ones – but I l-o-v-e the marinated ones! In fact, it was only good timing that meant there were actually some left for the salad! I made some red wine vinaigrette and served it on the side. I love this kind of meal – and it can be multiplied up or down really easily depending on how many you have for dinner! I think I prefer the salad with red onion – my spring onions were quite hot – but otherwise it tasted lovely. The eggs were particularly good.

Meat Free Monday – spring, week 08

I’m afraid I was a bit naughty – I posted the Meat Free Monday breakfast yesterday. I thought the huevos rancheros deserved their own space so you’ll find them in ‘Sunday brunch – huevos rancheros’.

The packed lunch option for today was soooooo yummy. In fact, today was the third time I’ve made it! You know when you spot something in a cookbook/food magazine and think that looks really good …… well, for me, the carrot and hummus crunch on sourdough (by Nick Sandler) was one of those. The grated carrot used to top the open sandwich was sautéed in a little olive oil with garlic, chilli and caraway seeds. It’s left to cool while you make the rest. Toast some sourdough, then spread it with some Greek yoghurt, followed by the hummus and then the grated carrot mix. Finally, sprinkle some chopped coriander over the top. And then enjoy! Mmmmmmm.

If you don’t fancy the packed lunch, you could always have the alternative – good old fashioned macaroni cheese.

I skipped the snack – Laban bil bayd (eggs in yoghurt garlic sauce) – only because I had no room left after the lunch and, in the interest of my waistline, I didn’t make the biscotti either. Sorry.

Dinner was an asparagus tray bake. When I hear ‘tray bake’ I always think of a rectangular sponge cake with icing but thankfully (only ‘cos I didn’t fancy cake for dinner) it was a lovely, light puff pastry tart! I could eat asparagus every night when they’re in season. Lots of delicious asparagus spears laid on a bed of puff pastry which has been covered with a mixture of creme fraîche, egg, Dijon mustard and Parmesan, then baked. Delicious.