Bacon, lettuce and cannellini stew

A few months ago, I found a really lovely blog that's become really quite famous, Loveaudrey. With hindsight, finding it in the middle of exams was perhaps not the best as it meant that when I really should've been revising the history of the French language, I was reading back through her posts and feeling... Well, feeling like a massive underachiever, if truth be told.

I'm pretty sure that Loveaudrey is actually a superhero in disguise. She managed to juggle two degrees, with all the stress and essays they entail, with being a wife and a mother to two kids - and she always leaves the house with really lovely lipstick on. To say she's become something of an idol to me is putting it mildly.

As I read through her posts, I realised that I really don't have the excuse of being too busy to make a decent meal every day. If she can do it, then I definitely can.

I'd copied down one of her recipes because it had really appealed to me, and last night, with the house (read: the kitchen) to myself, I decided to give it a bash.

Here's the recipe as written up on Loveaudrey's blog:

6 rashers of bacon (or a generous handful of chopped black olives if you're craving something vegetarian)

2cloves of garlic

4 tbsp olive oil

1/4 tsp fennel seeds

1 x 400g tin of chopped tomatoes

200ml chicken stock

1 x 400g tin of canellini beans (I also used a small tin of pinto beans and a drop more stock)

150g lettuce (the recipe calls for cos but I used 2 little gems)

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Chop the bacon and garlic. Heat the oil in a pan and add the bacon. Cook for a few minutes, then add the garlic and fennel seeds.

2.Pour in the tinned tomatoes and cook on a high heat for 5 minutes.

3. Add the stock and the drained beans, and cook for a further 5 minutes.

4. Season well, add the chopped lettuce, and allow to wilt before serving.

5. Drizzle with a little olive oil and sprinkle with lots of black pepper.

I made a couple of adjustments - firstly I halved(ish) the quantities as I was only making it for me and I still had some left over for lunch the next day. I also added a spring onion as we had a few that were languishing in the vegetable drawer of the fridge, looking very sad indeed. We didn't have any tinned chopped tomatoes either, so instead I just cut up a big beef tomato and added some water. The final change I made was to throw in a glug of white wine.

I've really become a convert to adding lettuce to hot dishes and just letting it wilt down, but I think the trick is to pick a variety that won't just go totally soggy. Cos lettuce or baby gems have quite a rigid 'spine' (anybody know what that thing is actually called??), which means that the leafy bits go soft but there's still enough crunch for it not to just turn into mush.

It was really delicious and felt very virtuous - the fact that there was plenty left over for lunch the next day is always a bonus; and it's the kind of dish that would be perfect in the middle of winter when you're really craving something warming. It was still delicious even at the height (ha!) of summer because it's not too heavy. I cooked the sauce down so it was quite thick and resembled a stew, but it'd be easy to let it stay quite clear so it's more like a soup.

I can highly recommend giving Loveaudrey's blog a look - as long as you've got plenty of time to waste going back through all of her posts! 

Loveaudrey| loveaudrey-loveaudrey.blogspot.co.uk

Fruit salad

I have, as my parents will doubtlessly testify, always been a bit of a magpie. This is particularly true for food. And now that it is moving towards summer and the fruit section of my local supermarket is full of beautiful, fresh, local produce, the only logical thing to do seems to be to make fruit salad - and lots of it.

Kiwi, strawberries, mango and apple - all, apart from the mango, from France. It's the perfect thing to have in your fridge in the summer, and is gorgeous either as it is or with a dollop of Greek yoghurt on top as breakfast or even as a virtuous pudding. This was also my first attempt at preparing - or, as my friend's family calls it, "hedgehog-ing"- a mango. I had a quick look online to see what was the best and easiest method of getting the fruit out, and it turned out that hedgehog-ing it was the most popular and simplest way. Delia told me to slice down around the stone, then to score into the flesh, being careful not to cut through the skin, then push it and cut the cubes of mango off the skin and into a bowl, making sure you have something to hand to catch all the juice. 

It seemed simple.

It isn't. 

When Delia said "stone", what I didn't realise she meant was "massive flat thing that's as big as the mango itself and impossible to locate when you're cutting down through the fruit". After butchering the poor mango trying to find where the stone finished so I could have as much fruit for my fruit as possible, I then failed to avoid cutting through the skin, forgot to put a bowl underneath to catch the juice, and generally made a bit of a hash of it.

Word to the wise - mango juice stings if it gets into cuts. I found this out the hard way.

Despite my apparent inability to do something that should've been pretty simple, I did eventually succeed in getting the mango from the fruit into a bowl and then added my strawberries, kiwi and apple - all of which were much easier to prepare, poured in some orange juice, and gave it a stir.

Et voilà! Pudding/breakfast/part-of-your-five-a-day all in one very pink bowl. It is officially summer.

Ratatouille

I'm about as good at eating my vegetables as I am at updating this blog: sometimes, I'm all about making sure I get my 5 a day, and sometimes I sort of... forget.

It's a lot easier now it's heading towards summer and the idea of salad is particularly appealing, but last week my friend Ellen cooked for me in a bid to get shot of her vegetables before she went off for her weekend in Paris (lucky thing). It was based off a Turkish dish, but essentially what it amounted to was ratatouille with chorizo and couscous, and it was delicious. As I was doing my food shop this week, I thought to myself, why not make that? It's quick, it's simple, it's cheap, and it's delicious. Basically, it's everything I want when I'm cooking. Plus, it's easy to make extra so you have another meal or two already made!

So make it I did. There are probably as many different recipes for ratatouille as there are people who eat it, but this is how I made it.

1. Chop up a red pepper, an aubergine, a courgette, half a large onion and two cloves of garlic, and add to a big saucepan (a casserole-style pot would be perfect).
2. Heat this for about five minutes on the hob - this helps to soften the aubergine and courgette, and makes space for the next step!
3. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes, a little bit of water and bring to the boil, then put a lid over it and let simmer for another 5-10 minutes.
4. For the meat-eaters, whilst the ratatouille is simmering away, chop up some chorizo into rounds (the ready-cooked type), and heat in a frying pan. Once it's golden and slightly softened, tip into the pan and stir through - try to get as much of the oil that comes out of the sausages into the ratatouille for an added paprika kick.

And that's it! I'd reckon that will make between 3 and 4 portions' worth (not including the chorizo), depending on how hungry you are. The last thing to do is to make the couscous, which is perhaps the easiest thing ever, particularly when you do it my way. I know you can make it on the hob but this is much easier.

1. Take a mug.
2. Boil the kettle.
3. Fill your mug with as much or as little couscous as you want.
4. Pour boiling water over the couscous - the optimum amount is so that the water level is just a fraction over the couscous. Too much and it'll be watery, too little and it'll be dry.
5. Put a lid over the mug to trap the steam.
6. Take the lid off after about 2 minutes and fluff up with a fork.
7. Add butter if wanted.

Couscous added to ratatouille is perfect as it soaks up all that yummy liquid, and some salad because... well because why not?

Possibly the healthiest meal I've eaten since I got here - the only 'naughty' bits would be the sausages, the tiny bit of butter I added to the couscous and the dressing on the salad. And, I've got leftovers that will do for later in the week.

Bon appetit!

Good things come to those who wait...

... Or so goes the adage. Well, let me say, that is totally and utterly true. You may remember my stumbling upon a recipe for a chorizo and bean soup over on the BBC Food website and mentally filing it away to make this week. I made it tonight and my goodness was it good. The recipe calls it a soup but mine turned out as more of a stew - a 'stoup', if you like - which I think was from using a tin of chopped tomatoes rather than cutting fresh tomatoes into quarters and putting that in. It's the longest I've waited for a meal to cook since I got here but it was well worth the wait. It was also a good way of finding out that the hobs in my kitchen switch off after being on for an hour - luckily this particular discovery was made just as I was coming in to collect it after leaving it to simmer for 45 minutes.

The joy of this recipe is that once everything is cooked through, which doesn't really take that long, it's up to you how much longer you leave it before digging in. I used normal, rather than cooking, chorizo which means you don't have to wait for it to cook through. Plus, I tend to find that this kind of chorizo tends to have a more intense flavour than the uncooked ones, which means that the spicy paprika from the sausage really flavours the rest of the 'stoup'.

This was definitely the perfect meal for a day like today when you want something that'll keep you full for a while. I had it at dinner with a slice of bread and butter because I didn't surface early enough to have a 'proper' breakfast; but it could easily be had as a late-ish lunch so you'd just need a bit of bread and cheese for your dinner. Even better, I've got some batter left from the cinnamon cake pops I made earlier in the week so I think I'll be making some of those for eating as I sob into my jumper during the "Sherlock" finale. It's funny how on days when I can't summon up the energy just to make a sandwich I can still find the motivation to make teeny tiny little cakes, dipped in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar while still piping hot. Scrumptious.

New Year's resolutions

I’m not usually one for New Years’ resolutions, but this year I’ve broken the habit and have made a promise to myself to start eating properly. And by properly, I mean making a real effort to have one filling yet healthy meal a day. To be honest, I don’t really have much excuse not to. I enjoy cooking, I can cook, and I’m well past that childish attitude of “ugh, vegetables”. It’s incredible how easy it is to eat healthily and inexpensively.

This bright Saturday morning, as I had no real plans until the evening,  I was enjoying a good lie-in, watching cooking programmes on the iPlayer and drinking a cup of real coffee – none of the instant stuff that I rely on to get myself moving in the morning. In “Nigel Slater’s Simple Suppers”, he made a sausage and bean soup. It really couldn’t have been simpler. Onion, garlic, celery, carrot, tomato, cannellini beans, chorizo sausage and some herbs (if you’re feeling fancy). None of that needs to be particularly expensive, but it’s a full, flavoursome meal that is actually quite good for you. Plus, it’s just as easy to make enough for four meals as it is to make enough for one, so it’s easily frozen and then just needs to be warmed the next time you fancy some and bingo – instant meal.

However, I had a meal plan and I fully intended to use it, so this recipe was set aside for next week as today was down for “cassoulesque” – which seems appropriate as cassoulet is a mainstay of the cuisine down here in the Languedoc. My student budget-friendly version is one of those dinners that feels so much more luxurious than it actually is. I cut two sausages into rounds and threw that into a saucepan with a diced chicken breast, some bacon lardons, about half a red pepper and a bit of butter. I cooked that for about 5 minutes, then added some (store bought, the horror!) tomato sauce and left that to simmer for another 5 minutes. Then, I added around about half a tin of drained and rinsed cannellini beans (saving the rest for a meal I’ve got planned later) and left that to simmer for around about five minutes with a lid covering it. I came back in and turned the heat up, gave it a final two minutes then took it back to my room, lid still on so that it could continue cooking a bit and keep warm. Finally I added a teaspoon of Boursin, gave it one last stir for luck, plated up half and put the other half into a container and into the freezer to prevent myself from snacking on it. I’m sure there’s a healthier way of thickening an overly-runny tomato sauce but I’m not particularly fussed about finding it!

Simple, filling and tasty – plus I now have a bonus meal for a day when I can’t be bothered to cook something from scratch. Perfect!

"An owinge owinge..."

I'd like to thank the little old lady who was eating clementines on the tram today. There is nothing as tempting as the smell of oranges as they're being peeled, and nothing as satisfying as eating one that is perfect in every single way: sweet, but with enough sharpness to cut through the sugar and perfectly juicy. First thing in my shopping basket once I hit Monoprix was a bag of clementines and I am pleased to say, this one is absolutely divine.

"Houmous on bread, it's the future. I've tasted it."

The fastest and most immediately satisfying lunch/snack (depending on how strong your willpower is) has to be this:

It really has become my most recent food obsession. Grilled 'petits pains' dipped into a tub of plain houmous. Incredibly more-ish but, all things considered, not actually all that bad for you. I first tried this last Friday, when I went to the zoo with some of my friends here and we had a picnic. I can't believe it had never occured to me that grilled bread + houmous = three bites of heaven, but it is.

Thursdays are pretty hard going for me. I have one lecture from 11.15-12.45, then have a coffee and panini in the canteen with my friend, then I go home for a couple of hours to pick up the work we're going to do when I come back onto campus to meet her and our other friend at 3.15 after their lecture. We have a two hour natter - I mean, work session - before our (give me strength) three hour lecture from 5.15-8.15. Needless to say, by the time I do eventually crash through the doors at about 8.30 the idea of cooking anything is pretty unappealing, but if I eat a big meal just before the lecture, I'll get even sleepier than can be naturally expected of a person in a hot lecture theatre being droned at about "les sciences du langage" for three hours. The solution seems to be to have a coffee before I go to the lecture, something sugar-y to give me energy in the break we're given halfway through, and then have something like this when I come back in. That way, even if I cannot summon up the energy to cook, at least I've eaten something.

A heads-up for anyone thinking of coming to France: make sure you come with an open mind when it comes to carbohydrates because this really is a country built on bread. And what good bread it is, too...

Oh, and, happy December! I'd be opening the first door of my Advent Calendar, only I haven't got one. If it's not Dairy Milk, it just doesn't feel the same :( Psst, Mum that's a 'subtle hint' for  my triumphant return...

New term, same old routine.

Thankfully, my new Mondays aren't nearly as horrific as they once were. But for the first two weeks, the Erasmus Soc meetings are going to be at the same time as before, so a bit of forward planning for tonight was pretty crucial. I hadn't had salmon for quite some time, and knew there were some fillets in the freezer, so got my lovely housemate Georgia to take one out when she was going to get the things for her dinner out.

Earlier on, I'd found a Jamie Oliver recipe on his website for pesto salmon parcels, wrapped in foil and cooked in the oven. Although the recipe calls for beans to be partly boiled and then put in the foil parcel along with the salmon, I don't really like green beans and I'd bought some sugarsnap peas and babycorn earlier, so decided to go for that instead.

Firstly, I preheated the oven to 180 degrees and got some baby new potatoes on the boil. I placed the salmon fillet, skin side down, onto a long piece of tinfoil and put a generous tablespoon of pesto on top, then the juice of half a lemon, a drizzle of olive oil and seasoned. This went into the oven on top of a baking tray while the potatoes bubbled away happily.

About 10 minutes in, I popped the steamer full of my veg - and a very good portion of veg it was too, my mother would be proud! - on top of the saucepan of potatoes and left to steam while the salmon finished cooking, which only took about another five minutes. After that, I took the baking tray out of the oven and opened it, to be greeted by a waft of lemony pesto. The salmon flaked off of the skin (a small mercy, as I am quite squeamish when it comes to fish skin!) and left a lovely juice to be poured over the salmon, potatoes and veg on the plate. A final squeeze of the half lemon over everything (and a bit of butter, because it is the first Monday of term, after all) and I was really very ready for it.

Definitely, definitely, better to do that than to just have toast or something junky, or worse, nothing at all. It only took about 20 minutes and used three dishes - a saucepan, a steamer and a baking tray, and I think I could've avoided having to wash the baking tray if I'd doubled the tinfoil so the oil didn't seep through.

Truly yummy, very easy and surprisingly quick. Another one to do again!

Monday madness

My Mondays are absolutely horrific. On a good day, I'm on campus between 10 and 11 for a lecture, then I have my Monday Mondial (the café on campus) with my coursemate, Jack, before heading home for lunch. Then it's back on to campus for 3, another break at 4, a lecture at 5, and then a meeting for the Erasmus committee from about 6 onwards. On a bad day, I stay at Mondial too long with Jack watching YouTube videos so we end up lunching, and then I head for my 3 o'clock lecture. Today was arguably worse. Replace the morning lecture with selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts for the Erasmus society in the bitter cold between 11 and 1 and having a panic about an assessment at my friend's house between 1 and 2.30 and you've got the day I had today. Coming home and having to think about cooking is, frankly, the only thing I don't look forward to about coming home. The temptation to just order a takeaway or, even worse, not eat anything, is utterly overwhelming. Particularly when it's too cold to run to the shed where the freezer is to grab something that's a quick fix and Mr Sainsbury's isn't coming for another two days.

But today, while standing around in the cold outside the main lecture building on campus, I started chatting to my fellow Erasmus committee member, Olivia, about, of all things, pesto. We were sharing a mutual appreciation for pesto and cheese sandwiches, when suddenly, I remembered a recipe I'd seen on Nigella's most recent TV programme.

Pesto alla genovese

Now obviously, Nigella advocates making your own pesto, and while I have no doubt that this adds something really special to this dish, ultimately, I am a student and the last thing you'll find in my kitchen is a food processor (although I do have a stovetop espresso maker to make the 9am lectures more bearable...).

The most interesting and unusual aspect of this meal is the idea of adding potatoes to the pasta. Well, personally, all I can say is that I am a total convert. It turns fairly typical student fare, pesto pasta, into something that is much more filling and just something a bit different. The potatoes break down beautifully and get all mushy, just bulking up the pasta. Or, at least, I'm sure they would if you put the potato, peeled and diced into approximately 1cm cubes, into the bubbling, salty water about five minutes before you add the pasta. It's not that putting them all in together doesn't work, I can testify to how nice it was, but the potatoes don't break down as much as they would if they'd had a bit more time to boil.

After draining the pasta and mushing down the cooked potatoes a bit, I added a couple of fairly generous teaspoons of ready-made green pesto (thanks, Georgia!) and stirred it through the pan while off the heat, as the saucepan was still quite warm from having been on the hob. One thing I can strongly advocate is keeping a little bit of the starchy water the pasta and potato was cooked in before you drain it, and adding this just after you've put a couple of dollops of pesto into the pan. I'd read in Jamie Oliver's tried-and-tested Jamie's Dinners that this is something I should get into the habit of doing, as when you put it back into the pan, it really helps to coat every bit of pasta with whatever sauce you're using. Again, this is something I've definitely become a convert to, especially with pesto (I can't imagine an even coating really being a massive problem with using a tomato sauce, for instance). When I usually make pesto pasta, I find that the pesto tends to cling to some bits of pasta but I'm left with a couple of totally bare pieces. With this simple trick, the sauce thickened and it really did cover every bit.

I'm definitely a fan of this recipe, it really helps to welly up an already simple and delicious meal. Without doubt, the best part of this recipe is the fact that it really doesn't matter if you've barely got anything in your cupboard, you're bound to have the ingredients for this one. We always seem to have pasta coming out of our ears, I always have a couple of different varieties of potato in the house (blame it on the Irish genes), and Georgia tends to have some pesto in the fridge and she's quite easily convinced to let me nick some - I don't even have to pay her back in Haribo Tangfastics most of the time!

Without much doubt, whenever I'm making pesto pasta without any meat like chicken in it, I'll be adding the potato just to beef up (for want of a better word!) this classic student favourite. Beans on toast be damned, it's pasta alla genovese for the next time I need a quick fix!