Chick Pea, Chorizo and Orange Salad

I spent most of last week sleeping and reading, trying to shake off a nasty cold. As a result we hadn't worn down the food stores quite as much as usual, so this week I'm attempting to cook entirely using whatever I have left in the fridge from last week. OK - I definitely cheated here, as there was a HUGE bag of red peppers going cheaply at the grocers' when I popped into the park centre to buy milk, and I did have to top up the onion supply. Now that I've made this salad, I think it's actually worth going out to get the ingredients, as it was amazing! No internet link this time; I just had ingredients I needed to use and found the right flavours to link them together.

Ingredients:

• one tin of chick peas
• one medium white onion
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• a handful of green beans
• a small handful of raisins
• a fat, spicy chorizo sausage
• two roasted peppers, skinned
• an orange
• a small handful of mint
• 1 heaped tsp dijon mustard
• 1 1/2 tbsp white wine vinegar
• 3 tbsp olive oil

Drain the tin of chick peas and tip into a salad bowl. Thinly slice the onion into slivers, and fry over a very low heat until golden, translucent and falling apart - about 12 minutes. Add the sugar and cook for a further minute, then tip out of the pan onto the chick peas. Meanwhile, top, tail and blanch the green beans and raisins, then drain and add to the salad bowl.

If the skin of the sausage is tough, skin it, then finely slice the sausage and fry in the onion pan for a couple of minutes, until crisping up and colouring. If you like, blot the excess fat with kitchen paper before adding to the salad bowl. Slice or tear the peppers into strips and add to the bowl. Using a sharp knife, cut the peel and pith from the orange, then segment into the bowl; squeeze out the core over the bowl to retain all of the lovely juices. Finely chop the mint and add to the bowl.

Whisk the remaining ingredients together to form a dressing, pour over the salad, toss well and serve immediately.

Purple Salad (and Potato Rosti)

It's the end of the week and the fridge needs clearing out, so it's time to reinvent old recipes by substituting almost all of the ingredients! I also had a go at making a potato rosti, but the edges of my pan were too tall, so it was impossible to detach and flip cleanly. We'll buy a good skillet and sometime I'll put a recipe for rosti up.

Ingredients:

• 3 medium or 4 small beetroot
• a big handful of green beans
• 1-2 ripe avocados
• a few handfuls of salad leaves
• a generous handful of basil (chives would work too)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 4 tbsp white wine or cider vinegar
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• 4 tbsp crème fraîche
• 1 tsp dijon mustard
• 1 tsp grain mustard

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Scrub, top and tail the beetroot and slice into wedges; peel if the skin is tough. Brush with olive oil and roast for an hour, until soft, sweet and caramelised. Top the green beans, halve and steam until green but not overdone: they will continue to cook after you remove them from the steamer. Peel and stone the avocadoes, and slice into wedges. Blend half of the basil and the rest of the ingredients in a food processor to make a thick dressing; taste and season.

When the beetroot are cooked, fold them gently with the beans, avocados and salad dressing until slightly but not totally combined (or everything will be bright magenta!). Serve immediately.

Minestrone

Minestrone is one of those things I rarely get around to making, but when I do I always wonder why Iit's been so long since I made it! It's really easy, fast, you can make an absolute mountain of it, and it just tastes better and better after it rests in the fridge. The best thing is the way the spaghetti swells up and absorbs all the stock flavours, and then you have to add a bit more hot water to loosen it all up again. Love it!!

Ingredients:

• a large white or red onion
• a couple cloves of garlic
• a carrot or two
• a large handful of green beans or runner beans
• a sweet corn-on-the-cob (optional but I love it)
• a medium-sized bunch of parsley
• five ripe tomatoes
• a tin of chick peas
• 1.5 litres of vegetable stock
• a large handful of spaghetti
• parmesan cheese
• black pepper

Finely chop the onion and fry gently in olive oil for a few minutes, until it begins to soften. Meanwhile, crush the garlic cloves, chop the carrots and green beans, and slice the corn kernels from the cob. Add the vegetables to the pan and fry for a further minute or so, until the garlic starts to smell awesome. Chop the parsley and tomatoes and add to the pan, along with the chick peas and stock. Snap the spaghetti into short pieces into the pot, then cover and simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the vegetables are tender. Meanwhile, grate an enormous bowl (...or, more healthily, a small bowl) of parmesan cheese. Serve the soup with the cheese ready to scatter and the black pepper ready to grind over the top.

BBQ Aubergines and Double Bean Salad

At last, a meal this week that I put together and actually feel happy about. As I previously covered, aubergines work great on the barbie; this time I spiced them up a little with some ground black pepper, Chinese five-spice and ground coriander. While the aubergine slices and a couple of sweetcorn slowly toasted over the BBQ, I put together a tasty little salad.

Ingredients:

• 250g green beans, tailed
• two ripe red tomatoes
• a small bunch of basil
• a tin of butter beans
• 2 tbsp capers
• juice of half a lemon
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp olive oil

Steam the green beans for five minutes, until just cooked. Drain and rinse briefly; they will continue cooking while they're hot, so if they're in danger of going soggy, blanch them in ice cold water. Cut the tomatoes into small cubes and tear the basil into pieces. Drain the tin of beans and combine with the vegetables and capers in a large salad bowl. Whisk the lemon juice, sugar, salt and olive oil together in a jar or bowl then pour over the salad. Toss and serve immediately.

Asparagus, Bean and Peanut Pasta

At the weekend I made a humungous batch of chicken satay for the Australian family, including my awesome satay sauce. There was a little left over at the end, and I needed a light meal to use it up. Oddly enough, I spent a few hours today going through some of the massive stock of recipes we shipped over from the UK, and found all of these ancient Sainsbury's recipe cards. Many of them were guides to creating things I could cook in my sleep nowadays, but some caught my eye, including a recipe for 'asparagus and bean strangozzi, with peanut sauce'.

Strangozzi is a kind of pasta from the Umbrian region of Italy; the name means 'priest strangler noodles', which of course I couldn't find anywhere. Not to be deterred, I substituted some linguine, added a tin of bortolli beans for bulk and protein, and used my satay sauce instead of theirs. It was surprisingly balanced and tasty - I wouldn't put together a peanut sauce specifically for this recipe, but it was a great way to use up the extra from the barbeque.

Ingredients

• enough pasta for two - really, any kind will do, but if you find strangozzi, well done you
• a small bunch of asparagus, ends snapped
• a generous handful of green beans
• a 340g tin of borlotti beans, drained, or the equivalent freshly podded and boiled
• 4-5 tbsp satay sauce

Boil the pasta in plenty of water until al dente. Slice the asparagus and green beans into long, bite-sized pieces, and steam for 4-5 minutes, until green and tasty. Drain the pasta, return to the pan, and stir in the vegetables, beans and sauce. Heat through, but don't bring up past boiling temperature or the borlotti beans will toughen. Serve!

Artichoke and Soft-boiled Egg Salad

Apologies for the lack of updates but I have been in Croatia, first at a conference and then for a short holiday! I was hoping to write a long post about Croatian food, but while it was all very fresh and delicious, the Northern Dalmatian cuisine was not particularly innovative or exciting. Mostly it was grilled fish or squid served with a simple salad, and potatoes or fries, or pizza with any sort of random topping - we even had one with kidney beans!

So when we returned we'd had that typical holiday experience where the only vegetables you've managed to eat for a week are the side salads, and you start to feel just a teensy bit scurvy. So we had a big salad of all sorts of tasty things, with a strong storecupboard emphasis as we're preparing to move house!

Ingredients:

• a 400g tin of artichoke hearts
• 10-12 baby plum tomatoes
• 200g fine green beans
• a large handful of basil
• 5-6 baby new potatoes
• 2-3 eggs
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 1/2 tsp dijon mustard
• 2 tbsp red or white wine vinegar

Set the tin draining in the sink. Scrub the potatoes and simmer gently for 15 minutes until tender. Get a pan of water simmering and then lower the eggs into it, and cover. Count out one minute on a timer, and then remove the pan from the heat and leave for a further seven minutes, after which you should drain the eggs and cool them, then peel and slice into quarters. (If I could cook the eggs at exactly 57 C as per Molecular Gastronomy, I would!) 

Cut the beans into bite-size pieces and blanch in boiling water for a few minutes, until bright green and sweet, but not soggy. Slice the tomatoes into halves and the artichoke hearts into quarters, and put in a large salad bowl. Tear in the basil. Add the potatoes and cooked beans, and season with salt and pepper. Combine the dressing ingredients in a jar, then pour almost all of it over the salad, then toss well. Lay the soft-boiled egg quarters on top and add the rest of the dressing.

Roast Mackerel with Beetroot Salad

This is a fuss-free way of preparing mackerel, with a nice accompaniment of fresh vegetables. We ate this with my home-made bread, which went down a treat! I've scaled this for four.

Ingredients:

For the fish:

• 4 fresh mackerel
• plain flour

For the vegetables:

• 1 onion
• 1 carrot
• 1 clove garlic
• two bunches of green beans
• chicken stock or white wine
• 1 tsp thyme

For the salad:

• 1 boiled or raw beetroot (not pickled)
• 1 duck egg or a couple of hen eggs
• 4 tbsp white wine or cider vinegar
• 4 tsp caster sugar
• 4 tbsp crème fraîche
• 1 tsp dijon mustard
• 1 tsp grain mustard
• 1 tsp horseradish sauce
• rocket or watercress

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Gut, clean and scale the mackerel, and dip in plain flour to coat. Place on a baking sheet and cook in the oven for 25 minutes, or until the eyes are opaque, the juices are clear and the flesh is bouncy.

Finely chop the onion and carrot, and fry in a deep frying pan for 10 minutes, until the onions are caremlaised and the carrots are soft. Crush in the garlic, stir and cook for a further minute. Top and tail the green beans, add to the onions and carrot, and add a splash of chicken stock and the thyme. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, for ten minutes or until the green beans are tender.

Put the egg in a pan of cold water and bring up to the boil. As soon as it reaches a hard boil, turn off the heat, cover the pan and remove from the heat. Leave it to cook through for 8 minutes, then run under cold water and leave to cool before peeling, and then quartering.

For the salad, roughly grate or chop the beetroot into small pieces and place in a pyrex or other non-staining bowl. In a separate bowl, dissolve the caster sugar into the vinegar (microwaving it for 10-20 seconds helps). Pour half of this syrup over the beetroot, toss it and leave to the side to marinade. Add the crème fraîchem, mustards and horseradish sauce to the remaining syrup and whisk until it forms a thick dressing. If it's too thick to pour, you can thin it with a few tsp of milk.

Arrange the leaves on a plate, top with the marinaded beetroot, quartered egg, and drizzle over the dressing. Serve the mackerel, beans and salad on the table with a big loaf of bread and plenty of butter for spreading.