Pasta

This was supposed to be a pasta bake but an unexpected visitor and my usual sloth transformed it into a quick 10-minute tea. Pasta with red pepper/tuna/olive oil/oregano/balsamic vinegar, plus some Texan champagne (chilli sauce) for me.

"Minestrone"

Of sorts, anyway: onion, carrot, celery, aubergine, haricot bean, new potato, tomato, pasta soup, stewed with the obligatory manky old end of parmesan.

Allotment dinner

I'd describe it as a "mezze" tea if that wasn't so terribly pretentious. Pitta bread; new potatoes from the allotment (with mint from the garden of course); aubergine and tomato salad; a salad of lettuce and peas both from the allotment; broad beans and radishes from the allotment, baby (fetal, really) carrots from pots on the patio and fennel with a miso/wasabi/mayonnaise dip; mushed chickpeas with tahini (not quite hoummous as no garlic).

Salmon

in "den miso", Nigella's faux-Japanese marinade (white miso, sake, mirin and sugar, cooked for 20 minutes unti it starts to darken then smeared over salmon fillets which are left in the fridge for a day or so before cooking on a griddle). With romanesco cauliflower and soba noodles.

Fish and lentils

Nil pwa for presentation: the fish is buried somewhere under that heap.

Fish was plaice. Heap was lentils, cooked earlier with onions and celery and stock.

When I got home I fried some curry paste (just a little because of M), stirred in the lentil mixture and some diced sweet potatoes and carrots that I had already cooked in the microwave. Balanced the fish on top, waited 5-10 minutes or so until the fish was cooked: hey presto.

Leftover lasagne

...from Sunday. With carrots.

Brown

Spelt pasta (bit nasty but good for babies) with sausages, fennel and chickpeas in marscapone and lemon juice. Tasted better than it looked but not enormously (although M spent the whole meal going mmm this is a lovely tea mummy so somebody enjoyed it).

Lasagne

Which I never usually bother with, finding it all a bit of a faff. But I have rediscovered my slow-cooker, which made the ragu much less hassle than it might have been; that and a waitrose cheese sauce made the whole process quite easy.

Stuffed squash

Hugh-Fearnley-Wotsit style with feta cheese, basil, mint and thyme.

With basmati rice and a salad of baby spinach and broad beans with a nice lemony dressing.

Burgers

These were loosely based on Jamie Oliver's "Botham burgers" - mince, finely chopped celery, crushed coriander and cumin seeds, with egg and breadcrumbs to bind - and cooked in the oven rather than grilled. With (frozen) sweetcorn and proper chips. And sauce, of course.

"Minestrone stew"

It would have been soup except the pasta absorbed all the liquid rather than just some. It tasted great though.

Sausages

Rather disappointing ones: they came from the butcher but tasted like cheap supermarket ones. Buttery baked sweet potatoes are delicious though.

Pasta

With an extremely quick and easy "sauce": crispy pancetta cubes, avocado and mozzarella.

Fish

New Zealand hoki, to be precise. Sauteed potato, onion, garlic, tomato, herbs, then the fish just laid on top for a few minutes to cook through.

PSB

Purple-sprouting broccoli picked literally 2 hours before cooking by one of the old boys at the allotment. (Oh, and a chickon/chorizo/chickpea stew. And rice.)

Spaghetti again

With a sauce of red onion, pancetta, tomato, rosemary, oregano and enoki mushrooms. With edam on top for a touch of authenticity.

Basmati rice

cooked with turmeric then mixed into a wok-full of onions fried with cumin seeds and some smoked paprika, peas, raisins, pine nuts and prawns.

Spaghetti carbonara

Following Nigella's good recipe but omitting the marsala.

Chinese takeaway

Yum yum.

Baked aubergine

...for about half an hour then smeared with yogurt, tahini and thyme and grilled. With couscous containing peas, toasted pine nuts, black sesame seeds and shimeji mushrooms, purely because I was so astounded to find them in Asda. And salad.

Lasagne again

I made extra on Saturday so here's the other half. Cameron is away and I've had no sleep so it was a bit of a life-saver.

Oyako-don

(chicken and egg rice-bowl).

Make a broth of 1 cup dashi (Japanese stock made from konbu and/or bonito, or out of a packet), 1/2 tsp sugar, 1 tbsp mirin and 1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce - I use a mix of dark and light soy. Bring to the boil and add half a sliced onion, then after a couple of minutes, some chicken thigh cut into 2-cm cubes. Cook until the chicken is done then slide 2 beaten eggs onto the top; cook until the egg is soft but cooked. Serve over a bowl of rice - inauthentic brown rice in our case - and with some nori crumbled over the top (or mitsuba is even better but I didn't have any). Do not add carrots unless you have a small child; they taste weird with it.

Jacket potatoes

with tuna mayonnaise.

Fishfingers, wedges and baked beans

With both ketchup and tartare sauce: it's been that sort of day.

Toast

...following a Pizza Express lunch. We eat a lot of pizza.

Lasagne

With some semi-hidden veg (carrots, yellow pepper, onion, celery, mushroom) and served with garlic bread made using green garlic - not a huge success but an interesting experiment.

Salmon with den miso

Den miso involves heating white miso for about 20 minutes with sugar, sake and mirin, until it darkens a bit. Nigella says to be sure not to let it catch but I have only managed that once: it doesn't seem to make much difference. After cooling, you smear it over some bits of salmon and put it in the fridge for a day or so, then grill it fast so the middle stays pink. With boiled potatoes and purple sprouting broccoli. ("Purple broccoli?" says M. "That's weird.")

Pizza from the freezer

(No energy, and not photographed either.)

Black-eyed bean and squash stew

Also containing potatoes, curry paste, parsley, onions. Makes a darn fine thick soup when blended the next day, too.

Pasta again

This time with half a kabocha-type squash, chopped up and roasted in olive oil, some bacon and rather more sweetcorn than intended (my hand slipped). I'd have liked to add cream but there isn't any.

Risotto

Risotto, made with shallots, thyme*, chicken stock**, parsley, left-over bits of roast chicken, a dollop of yogurt* and lashings and lashings of lovely parmesan. With steamed purple-sprouting broccoli on the side.

*Nige says to add creme fraiche (yogurt the closest thing I had) and thyme, which I would skip if I were to do it again.

**No, not from that chicken. Do you think I am wonderwoman?

A proper old-fashioned roast

Chicken, with potatoes, parsnips, jerusalem artichokes, carrots and (unusually for me) proper gravy. No bread sauce, sadly.

Cheese on toast

After a large lunch of chilli con carne, rice, salad followed by tarte tatin made by my own fair hands.

Sausages, beans and mash

(Mash is a funny colour because it's a mixture of real potatoes and sweet ones.)

Chicken

Chicken pieces braised on the hob (is that braising?) in a bit of cider with green garlic and parsley added. With rice and sugar-snap peas.

Butterbeans and chorizo

Softened onions; mixed in cumin, soaked saffron and some chopped rosemary, then a tin of tomatoes and a drained jar of roast red and yellow peppers. Added chorizo, chopped then fried hot until a bit crispy and butterbeans, soaked overnight then cooked earlier this afternoon. Simmered until not so liquid; spinach (washed extremely thoroughly by Maggie) stirred in at the last minute just until it wilted.

Quick pasta

Penne mixed with frozen peas (well, defrosted ones), frozen sweetcorn, tuna (sorry, fish again), red pepper, lots of olive oil and a splash of balsamic vineagr then with some chilli sauce at the last minute for the over-3s. And grated mozzarella mixed in.

lamb stew

Very uninspired: lamb, carrots, celery, onion, fennel, a bit of rosemary and some barley. It was OK.

Mackerel

Steeped in a mixture of lemon juice, cumin, coriander seed, paprika, cayenne and fennel seeds (and salt apart from Maggie's) for about an hour then baked for 20 minutes. With couscous mixed with peas, onions, sultanas, pine nuts and sesame seeds.

We've had our Omega-3 rations this weekend alright: I'm going to do the crossword in record time now.

Temaki-zushi

(Hand-wrapped sushi)
With prawns, salmon, tuna, cucumber, avocado, cress and sesame seeds as well as the usual accoutrements. A nice excuse to get out some of the crockery, too.
Maggie surprised me by rejecting the rice (it's a bit sticky) but scoffing huge amounts of raw salmon. With hindsight, I should not have given her wasabi.

Friday tea

Egg and chips. And sauce.

Chicken pie

Chicken, leek, tarragon, a bit of apple, and creme fraiche, to be precise. It was supposed to be creamy but the cream was a bit too far past it's use-by date so I added creme fraiche instead. It separated but still tasted nice.

With mash, carrots and green beans.

fish fingers (posh ones)

Monkfish, as an experiment, fried with a highly experimental crispy coating of quinoa flakes, ground linseeds and hemp seeds, chilli, cumin, smoked paprika, all stuck on with a beaten egg. The coating worked rather well although I think monkfish is probably better used in a fish pie or kebabs.

With sugarsnap peas, potato wedges and tomato sauce (4 large tomatoes peeled and simmered to thickness with a pinch of sugar, some balsamic vinegar, and a squeeze of tomato puree). Followed by bananas and custard.

Out to lunch

So just toasted muffins (one with cashewnut butter one with banana for me; M had just butter; C was out) and pears.

Pasta bake

Thrown together with a courgette, a yellow pepper, some left over sprouted seeds, some onions and garlic and, because the tin in the cupboard that I was expecting to be tomatoes was actually coconut milk, an emergency jar of sauce (Loyd Grossman tomato and chilli).

Salmon with a crispy topping

Melt some butter; stir in crushed cardamom seeds and some dessicated coconut and stir over a low heat until the coconut starts to brown. Add grated ginger and garlic, some turmeric, crushed coriander seeds and a little chilli and cook for another minute then leave to cool. Pile on top of salmon fillets then put them in the oven for 10 minutes or so (so still juicy in the middle).

With spinach mash and carrots.

Moussaka

Moussaka (slightly out of focus, sorry about that - by the time I realised, it had been eaten), with a salad of cucumber, yellow pepper and pine nuts, and pitta bread.

Mushroom risotto

Delia style, ie baked in the oven rather than stood over. Red wine in place of the madeira made it very dark - but very tasty. Accompanied with a salad of mixed sprouting things and watercress; followed by pink yogurt.

Spaghetti carbonara

...a nice one, with pancetta and freshly grated nutmeg (and sherry, because I had no authentic alcohol). Followed with tinned pineapple.

Baked sweet potatoes, freezer stew

The label on the stew says it is mutton with moroccan spices (whatever I might mean by that).

Salmon, avocado and rice

Too tired to follow The Plan so we had a thrown-together tea. Salmon baked in foil parcels with butter and a sprinkling of caraway seeds, then flaked and mixed in with hot basmati rice and some chopped avocado.

Turkish* spinach and lentil soup

Soften 1 large onion, chopped, in some olive oil. Stir in 1/2 cup bulgar wheat, 3 cloves garlic (finely chopped) and 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper and cook a bit more until it starts to look brown. Add about 8 chopped tomatoes, some rosemary, and some parsley if you have it and poke about until the tomatoes start to soften. Add lentils (measure 1 cup then cook) - big grey ones today, though I have made it with posh Puy ones - plus their cooking liquid, then a pot (500 ml) of chicken stock. Simmer for 15-20 minutes then stir in a couple of cups of roughly chopped (well-washed) spinach. Season, and serve with a dollop of yogurt and more chopped parsley.

*I have no idea why it is Turkish, but this is what the original recipe said

Guinea fowl

thank you Mr Waitrose.

Quick pasta and sauce

following a spontaneous afternoon at the zoo.
Sauce made from pancetta (fried until crispy), onion, garlic, mushrooms, white wine and a slug of passata. Easy peasy.

Enchiladas

No chilli to pander to a 2-year-old's taste buds (though she was very good and ate spicy lentils yesterday). Just chicken, peppers, onions and a tin of tomatoes with garlic and cumin for flavour. Rolled in tortilla wraps, covered in cheese and remaining tomato sauce, and baked for half an hour.

Fish with lentils; bread and butter pudding

Smash up carrot, celery, onion and garlic in the foodprocessor, then fry until softish. Add pre-cooked puy lentils and a bit of water. Add a couple of teaspoons of curry paste. Put fish on top for 10 minutes or so until done but definitely not over-done. Stir creme fraiche into lentil mixture before serving.

Bread and butter pudding, fairly standard but with ginger jam spread on the bread as well as butter.

Shallot tarte tatin

with a salad of alfalfa sprouts and carrots.