green beans and pasta

This is another ridiculously quick and easy supper, and pretty cheap too (depending where you shop) – certainly well under £1 per serving. Works well with runner beans as well. serves 2: 1 pack green beans (89p from Aldi, I think) 125g of pasta (fusilli, quills, whatever – Aldi fusilli is 49p for 500g, so that’s…

indian black-eyed peas

I made a batch of these for a friend’s curry evening, and they were so nice, I’ve just made another huge batch for us! I might have gone ever so slightly overboard with the quantities, so think on if you’re going to try this 🙂 1kg black-eyed peas (£3.69 for 2kgs from our local Indian…

basic lentil mix

This is one of my standards – you can use it for lasagne, moussaka, shepherds pie … anything you do with mince, really. There are just two of us in the household, but I always cook for at least six so I can freeze some. Also, this recipe is a bitsa, using up what I…

two caulis, two bunches of asparagus

We were in Norfolk last weekend, to celebrate the 7th birthday of our grandson. A very nice time was had by all, and on our way home on Sunday afternoon, we kept an eye out for roadside stalls, looking for asparagus and strawberries. Nothing on the roadside, but we stopped at a huge farm shop…

cheesy irish potato scones

Potato scones are a doddle. 3-2-1 potato, flour, butter or marg. I usually do 150g of spud, but there was 225g leftover from last night and really, what am I going to do with 3oz of mash? To hell with it, it’s Friday, I used it all. So – rub flour and marg/butter together to…

a vegetable curry … ish

Well, it was meant to be a vegetable curry, but I’m not convinced it turned out like that. I love pulses and beans, and keep serried ranks of jars in my cupboards, all containing various varieties of same. Last weekend, I thought I’d cook up some kidney beans, so I poured some into a bowl…

pasta with stilton and mushrooms

There seems to be Quite a Lot of Stilton in the fridge, so yesterday I made a start on it. I had oatcakes with stilton for lunch, accompanied by rather a lot of silverskin onions, and some of the coriander chicken soup (which is a triumph, though I say so myself). Then last night, I rummaged…

making good use …

We held a small gathering here the other night, to celebrate a friend’s birthday. We cooked up a slow cooker’s worth of lemony chicken and coriander, and  a big pot of dhal to accompany it, and also for the vegans/veggies in the throng. We also served (bought) chapatis. That recipe, incidentally, is a base –…

a quick lunch of leeks and pasta

We’re having a bit of a funny day today, food wise. A friend asked if we could hold a birthday party here for him tonight, and said he would order takeaway pizza. *Takeaway pizza*. I ask you. So I said we’d cook, and indeed I have – a vat of Madhur Jaffrey’s lemony chicken with…

Moooooosewood curry

We had a cauli in the fridge last week. Now, I like cauli, and we make cauli cheese, or a cauli and lentil curry. Sometimes we even just have it as a side veg. But none of them appealed, so I went rummaging through the books, and came up with Satyamma’s cauliflower curry. I didn’t…