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!

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.

Lemon Steak with Tomato and Garlic Beans

Not much to this, but pretty damn tasty. Just the way we like it.

Beans: boil your beans briefly, and add them to a mix of lightly oil-fried crushed garlic plus tomtatoes chopped (or even tinned ones) and reduced down somewhat.

Steak – do as you will.

Serve with lemon.

Here we also had with two types of salad (though small), the main of which was baby spinach, peas, red onion finely diced, bit of feta, very light dressing. Yum.

Hope you all have as fine a repast of it as we did!