Ovened bean-veg with Nutty Rice and EggMato

You’ll need:

• Butternut squash, red onion, garlic, lima beans (broad beans), corn kernels, brown rice, random chopped nuts, an apple, 1 tomato and 1 egg person, possibly a bit of fetta and pesto.

For your ovened veg:

• Chunk up your butternut and red onion, oil up with some crushed garlic, make introductions with the oven until they soften to the idea of being comestibles. Meanwhile have your corn kernels and double-podded broad beans ready- and add them when the other veg are nearly done.

For your Nutty Rice:

• Cook your brown rice in plenty of salty water, drain if necessary, heat it up again with your random chopped nuts and a chopped apple. Season.

For your EggMato:

• Get a LARGE tomato per person, slice top off (reserve), hollow out, season, add a smidgeof feta and pesto if there’s room and the ingredients, break an egg into each tomato (whole), put the reserved top of the tomato back on and pop in the oven. It does take a surprisingly long time considering it’s only tomato and egg – I’d allow them 20-25 minutes of cooking time in the general scheme of things. If you don’t put the fetta in be sure to season well.

The whole lot makes a very interesting-textured ensemble, lots of stuff going on there. Good health points too, I’d imagine. Have fun!

Lentil Lasagna

First, catch and immobilise your lentils. You need to do this by boiling them slowly in some very good stock – I had some excellent beef stock and it did the trick nicely. On this occasion, using a mix of Green lentils and Red lentils – the green ones take far longer to cook, so simmer these slowly until almost completely done, then add the red. Don’t cook the red for any longer than 20 minutes or they’ll turn into mush.

Once this is done, prepare your sauce base – a nice bit of mirapois, can of tomatoes, good bit of seasoning, and a generous cup of red wine – simmer it down, then add the lentils. The longer they can sit there with the heat turned off (possibly even in the fridge overnight) the better – it takes time to get to know a lentil properly.


Armed with this sauce, make the lasagna as usual – the white sauce and the lasagna sheets rarely change. Cooking it slowly on quite a low heat gives it all time to mulch through without burning on top. You can also prepare it quite a while ahead, and it can just sit there, quietly expectant in the oven, ready for you to turn the heat on. Always lovely served with a nice salad. Enjoy.

Italian White Bean and Chicken Stew

Rather nice one, this – very hearty, but still quite nice and ‘clean’. Recommend for cold days when you want to set the grumps aside.

Need:

• plenty of chicken red meat, off the bone and cut into chunks

• Cannellini beans

• Onions, fennel, garlic, fresh tomatoes diced, plenty of courgette

• Basil and oregano (fresh).

1. Coat the chicken chunks in oregano, season, brown. Extract from pan.

2. Thinly slice onion and fennel, soften (I added a carrot – didn’t do any harm and a bit of colour).

3. Return chicken to pan, add a bit of stock, simmer down (the broth, not you).

4. Add cannellini, chunked tomatoes and courgettes, minced garlic. Season to taste.

5. Mix in reserved fennel tops chopped, and the basil (actually I forgot the basil – was really nice anyway).

Served this one with little bread-balls from a basic pizza dough.

Poached chicken in citrus Wakame Broth

All the comfort of Jewish Chicken Soup, minus the schmaltz, plus Thai freshness and clarity. One to be enjoyed in health and in sickness.

1. Prepare a stonker of a good chicken stock. Any free-range chicken carcass will do.

2. Soak 5g of wakame in some water, drain when rehydrated, and chop coarsely (swearing optional but keep the chunks to about 2-3 cm square).

3. Chop and mince the Usual 3 (garlic, ginger and chilli). Also add a couple of kaffir lime leaves… Just discovered they sell these things in jars, shredded and preserved.. SO much better than the desiccated items we’ve been forced to use so far, really give a kick.

4. Add to the 1 litre of the stock, and poach a couple of chicken breasts in it (this is for 3 very hungry people). For about 10 minutes, then let cool in the broth for another 10 while you:

5. Cook the soba noodles (100g approx). I see no reason why one wouldn’t do this in any residual stock you may have left – plus extra salt.

6. Strain the noodles. Extract the chicken from the stock and slice/shred thinly, and then strain the poaching stock of its store of solids. Return to pan.

7. Chop some bok choi, put into the strained stock, and simmer ever so slightly just to take the rawness of – heat it up, even.

8. Montage time. Combine wakame, some fresh bean sprouts, the bok choi, the strained noodles and the chicken together with the stock and add 80ml of zesty fresh lime juice, and a couple of spoons of Nam Pla. Technically you’re meant to assemble this in the dish and pour a bit of the stock over it but judicious scooping from the well-mixed pan should probably do it. Fresh, zingy, light yet satisfying. I believe the Health Points are at pretty much maximum level. Enjoy!

Baconed Pui lentils with Garlic Cabbage

Fantastic Autumn dish, I thought. Note of caution, I think it was the stock that really made this one, I don't think I'd make it with stock cube. I tend to chuck stock-bones in the freezer just as they are these days, and use them for stock when we need them. You don't even have to defrost them, just bung them in a return a few hours later, it's very easy and the stock is better fresh, I reckon. Yesterday did some pork stock with some gristly, fatty bones and just an onion and loads of very wilting celery – onion with skin on, just chopped. Plenty of salt pepper and bayleaf. How unappetising can it sound... it was just divine stock. Slow simmer in the background for nearly two hours. Well enough about the stock, I'm sure you can make your own, and all you have to do then is:

Soak the pui lentils in it or not, as you feel inclined – soaking will of course reduce cooking time and tend to make them cook more evenly. Cook until tender – hopefully you'll measure your lentils and stock so that most of the liquid is absorbed.

Fry up some chopped red onion and bacon – quantities as you see fit. Tip the result into the lentils.

Boil up some finely shredded cabbage (not too much). Meanwhile deglaze the fryingpan with a bit of white wine, and as it's reducing in the onion and bacon juices squeeze in plenty of crushed garlic, so it cooks through but doesn't get burned. Leave a bit of liquid in there. Then tip in the drained cabbage. Serve with the lentils.

SO tasty.