Emperor Nero's new clothes. Or griddled lamb, mashed chickpeas and cavalo nero

When I was about seven years old, restaurants were for special occasions only. And on my annual outing to a restaurant, there appeared to be only three things you could have as a starter in a restaurant:

• A chilly slice of melon topped with a single glace cherry. 
• Tomato soup. Seemingly from a tin. With a cress garnish and a granary roll. 
• Or the absolute height of sophistication - half an avocado stuffed with prawns in a Barbie-pink sauce. 

You would follow this with a steak in a peppercorn sauce for the men or duck a l'orange for the ladies.

And, weirdly, pudding would always be a Rum Baba. I don't really know what Rum Baba is but there's probably no need to find out, given that this hasn't appeared on a menu since 1982.

But my seven year old view was that my family was pretty sophisticated in our eating habits. My rationale for this being (a). that we were very early adopters of the beansprout and (b.) that we weren't allowed to have Angel Delight (I now understand this to be because my mum thought it was "a bit common").

It's odd how food fashions come and go isn't it?

When I was at university two important food events happened - pesto and the sun-dried tomato. No one could imagine a world without them today but I remember them being mysterious and slightly intimidating - what was this bright green sauce which could be stirred into student pasta without further cooking?

And today? Well, we're all obsessing over garnishing our plates with micro greens, making mackerel ceviche and sourcing locally produced raw-milk butter. And then there's Cavolo Nero. All the kale, chard, greens-y sort of veg seem to be having a bit of a moment but Cavolo Nero seems to be the big one. And do you know, like pesto before it, it IS delicious. I like it boiled for a couple of minutes in salty water and splashed with a little peppery olive oil. Or finely chopped and sauteed with some chorizo. And, with a sprinkle of chili flakes, it makes a nice accompaniment to grilled meat.

So, no recipe needed here really - just a suggestion to try some cavolo nero finely shredded, lightly boiled in salty water and served with some unfashionable but frugal griddled neck of lamb and tin of chickpeas mashed with some good olive oil.

Followed by Angel Delight for pudding. As long as my mum isn't coming for dinner, of course.

Fear of Frying: Green tomato soup with guacamole and walnut bread

This recipe was born out of still having a lot of green tomatoes on our balcony which, at the back end of November, were never going to turn red but which, in the spirit of frugal-ness, I was loathe to get rid of.

I really liked the deep-south-y Fried Green Tomatoes idea so did a little internet research into how to cook them. But interest turned to panic as the first recipe I came across suggested you deep fry them as, you see, I never deep fry anything. Ever.

I believe this Fear Of Frying is probably a result of being born in the 1970s when every household lived in fear of 'the chip pan'... For the unenlightened, a chip pan was:

1. A huge blackened old saucepan that was too heavy to lift and looked like a relic from the iron age. 
2. Always full of manky old oil which was used several times for different meals - surely that must be illegal now? 
3. Apparently just a house-fire waiting to happen according to public service TV ads of the time.  

So anyway, feeling nervous of deep-fried green tomatoes, I thought maybe a spicy southern inspired soup might be nice. So I made a very quick, fresh-tasting broth of green pepper, celery, onion, chilli and green tomatoes and served it with a dollop of guacamole and some very moreish walnut bread (both bought not made - oh the shame...).  It was really tasty - like a warm, substantial and spicy gazpacho - and there was no risk of dousing myself in boiling old chip fat.

Green tomato soup with guacamole

About 10 small green tomatoes

Green pepper

Stick of celery

White onion

A red chilli

Guacamole

Walnut bread

Drizzle of walnut oil

Dice all the vegetables. Soften the onion, chill and celery on a low heat for 10 minutes. Add the pepper and green tomatoes and stir from time to time. After another 5 minutes cover with boiling water (chicken stock would probably be even better but I'd run out) and simmer on a low heat for another 15 minutes. Blend with a stick blender, check consistency and add more liquid if too think. Season well and serve with a drizzle of walnut oil, a blob of guacamole and some chunky wedges of bread.  

Turning Japanese: Miso blackened chicken, japanese aubergine and wild rice

I like Japanese food. Well, so far I like it, but I just don't feel like I've done anything other than scratch the surface of it.  I mean I've been to a couple of very nice Japanese restaurants (admittedly in London not Tokyo...) and, frankly, could have qualified for an Itsu loyalty card when I worked at Canary Wharf - but I'm not sure that really qualifies as any sort of knowledge about a nation's cuisine. 

So one of my gourmet goals has been to experiment a bit with Japanese ingredients - which is why I had a pack of white miso paste in my cupboard for about 3 months and no idea what to do with it. 


I know everyone had a Miso Moment a few years ago when the infamous Nobu black cod became the most talked about fish in London - but it largely passed me by. So, in a fit of Cupboard Clearance I decided to marinate some chicken thighs in the miso paste and serve them, blackened,  with asian-inspired aubergines and a mixture of wild, red and basmati rice. 

White miso paste is sweeter and milder than the salty red miso paste and, with hindsight, my griddling/blackening probably overpowered the mild miso flavour somewhat. So if I were going to do this again I think I might try roasting the chicken pieces instead.

Anyway, I'm certain this is desperately inauthentic but it was still really tasty and just a bit unusual. 

Miso blackened chicken, japanese aubergine and rice

A pack of chicken thighs (usually about 6 in a pack - enough for two) 

A pack of white miso paste (most supermarkets have this - its in a sort of plastic sachet thing) 

One aubergine 

Good glug of soy sauce 

Tablespoon of caster sugar 

One red chilli finely chopped

Handful of coriander chopped 

Enough rice for two (I used a mixture of brown basmati, red and wild rice - it's sold in big packs at Waitrose) 

A little oil in which to fry the aubergine

Marinate the chicken thighs for as long as you can manage in the entire sachet of miso paste - I left mine overnight. Chop the aubergines into chunky pieces and brown in a little oil along with the chilli. When the aubergine is lightly browned slosh in some soy sauce, sprinkle over the sugar and the pour in enough boiling water to come about halfway up the aubergines. Turn the heat down low and cover with a disc of tinfoil and leave to cook down for about 20 minutes so the liquid is significantly reduced. 

Get your rice on - mine included wild rice which needs about 20 minutes so I put this on as soon as the aubergines were on the go. 

Put your griddle pan on the heat and allow to warm up for a good 15 minutes - so it is smoking hot. Open the doors and windows, point the fan at the smoke alarm - you know the drill...

When the griddle pan is hot enough place the miso covered chicken into the pan - remembering to do a couple of pieces at a time so that the temperature of the pan remains high. Don't be afraid to leave the chicken to form a blackened miso-y crust on each side before turning the pieces. I cooked my chicken pieces through on the griddle (about 10/15 mins) but I think you'd be better to blacken them a little and then finish them in the oven to ensure they stay juicy. 

When the aubergines are soft and the liquid very reduced, stir in a little fresh coriander. 

Pile the rice into the bottom of a bowl with a big spoonful of the aubergine stew and juices on top of the rice and then the blackened chicken pieces in top of that. 

Cauliflower and parmesan soup with truffle oil

This was always going to be a hard sell.

My boyfriend hates cauliflower and I have tried over the years to give it to him in various appealing disguises but with no success.

So cauliflower and parmesan soup wasn't ever going to fill him with joy. Even if I really tried to pimp it up with a load of cheese and a glug of truffle oil.

To give him credit he got through about a third of a bowl before retiring to the fridge for some cheese and pickle. Ah well. I, on the other hand, thought it was pretty good and also pretty frugal - admittedly the truffle oil was a bit of an investment but it'll last forever - and cauliflowers are less than £1 so it wasn't bad at all.

Now I know this is a bit smug...but I actually save all my parmesan rinds and put them all in a plastic bag in the freezer for making stocks and soups. I know it's a bit hateful and Martha Stewart-ish but it's super-frugal because you'd just bin the rinds otherwise and they do add a really nice savoury-ness to home-made stock. And here, they add a deep, delicious cauliflower cheese-ness to the soup which, with the earthy truffle oil, makes a quite luxurious tasting, wintery broth.

Cauliflower and parmesan soup with truffle oil 

2 pints of vegetable stock ( I made a quick stock with some water, a few peppercorns, a couple of bayleaves, 1 stick of celery, 1 carrot, 1 onion, 2 cloves of garlic and a parmesan rind simmered for half an hour and then removing the vegetables & rind before use)

1 cauliflower broken into small pieces

A few heaped tablespoons of parmesan plus extra for sprinkling

Truffle oil

Throw the cauliflower pieces into the stock and simmer gently for about 15 minutes until the pieces are soft. Add a couple of tablespoons of parmesan and stir until melted. Use a stick blender to whizz up until smooth. Season well with lots of black pepper and serve with a drizzle of truffle oil and a sprinkle of parmesan.  I thought it went very well with some seedy brown bread sliced thickly. My boyfriend didn't.

Artichoke carbonara (sorry, rubbish pic)

As you know, I'm trying to be frugal about my gastronomic adventures so, with this in mind, I've been avoiding some of my usual indulgences. Deli bits and pieces are my absolute favourite sort of nibble but olives, charcuterie and antipasti are just a bit "spendier" than I can justify at the moment. So when I saw artichokes in a tin in Sainsburys for less than £2 I thought it would be worth a try.

I assumed they would be a bit rubbish so thought the best thing to do would be to give them a supporting role in a recipe rather than the main event. So I made a classic carbonara and added them to the frying pan with the pancetta to cook them through before adding in the pasta. The end result was actually pretty good. The artichokes were a little watery-er than is ideal but I think I should probably just have let them drain for a little longer. And the flavour was good - not as meaty as usual perhaps - but really not bad at all for a quick, cheap fix. I wouldn't use them as a substitute for their pricier cousins on an antipasti plate but I'd definitely use them again as part of a warm salad or something like that. Anyway, they worked pretty well in this pasta dish - a good one for quick-mid-week dinners as it takes literally only as long as the pasta takes to cook.

Artichoke Carbonara
Enough spaghetti for 2
Handful of pancetta cubes/lardons
2 cloves garlic
2 eggs beaten
Big old handful of pecorino
A tin of artichokes
Get the pasta water on while you grate a big pile of pecorino and beat together 2 eggs in a little bowl. Put the pasta onto cook. Fry the garlic in a little olive oil until soft, throw in the pancetta cubes and brown gently. Drain the artichokes thoroughly and cut into bite sized pieces. When it looks like the pasta is nearly ready (remembering it'll continue to cook in the frying pan) put the artichokes into the frying pan with the garlic and pancetta and fry gently. Using a big spoon, scoop up the pasta and a little pasta water and add it to the frying pan. Turn the heat off now and add the beaten eggs and a big handful of cheese. Mix thoroughly, moving the eggs around to cook very gently in the residual heat of the pan creating a creamy sauce. Serve immediately with lots of black pepper and extra cheese for sprinkling.

Guilty pleasures and quaesadillas

In our house things have been a bit weird recently, food-wise. I am the Designated Cook at home and, because I've been working late at my new job, our usual dinner routine has gone a bit awry - leaving my boyfriend very well acquainted with the local turkish restaurant (www.maedahgrill.net - very good incidentally).  And when I do get home I am usually so knackered that it's all I can do to make myself a quick snack and fall into bed.

It's made me think about how people have a "signature snack" - something you always make when you get home late from work or you fall in from the pub and just have to climb onto the sofa as quickly as possible with a some food and a cup of tea. It needs to super-quick, really comforting and, I think, just a little bit embarrassingly retro. I'm thinking of a fish finger sandwich, white-bread-toast with Dairylea or that strangely soothing Knorr chicken noodle soup made from a packet (or is that just me?).

My best-ever-quick-snack is a sort-of quaesadilla. It's basically two wraps sandwiched together with grated cheddar cheese, jalapeno peppers and whatever is left lying around in the fridge. Lay one wrap into the saucepan, sprinkle on the cheese and any other fillings, place the second wrap on top, squish down a little and turn the heat on to dry-fry it for a minute or two on both sides until the cheese melts sticking the two wraps together. The sandwich should be golden brown and crisp on both sides. I serve mine piping hot and cut into wedges.

This is a great way to use leftovers - you can throw in spring onions, red onions, tomatoes or a sad old avocado with a squeeze of lime juice - just sprinkle it into the filling mixture. And you can even posh-it-up a bit by serving the wedges with a dollop of creme fraiche and a sprinkling of fresh coriander.

Next time you find yourself starving and staring into the fridge hoping for inspiration, give these a go and you'll be on the sofa, snack-in-hand, in under in 5 minutes.

Urban pepper (and sausage) kind-of-risotto

Have a look at this pepper. I am rather proud to announce that it was plucked from our balcony in Whitechapel about an hour ago and it was, naturally, all the more delicious for being grown inches from our kitchen. I know it's a bit late in the year for peppers but we seem to be harbouring some late-growing fruit and vegetables with our peppers, tomatoes and lemons still ripening nicely. We're very novice veg-growers and we chanced our luck planting them a little later than we should have done. But thankfully our little balcony is very sheltered so we're still benefitting from our amateur horticultural endeavours!

Anyway, as I was at work all day today I wasn't really up for any massive culinary adventures tonight. So, we had a spicy chorizo lurking in the fridge and I dug out some arborio rice so I made a slightly peculiar (and slightly Spanish I suppose...) risotto with my Urban Pepper in the starring role!

Pepper and chorizo almost-risotto 

Enough arborio rice for two
A spicy sausage/chorizo
A red onion
2 cloves of garlic
Green pepper (ideally locally sourced...)
A tin of tomatoes
A little shaved pecorino
A little olive oil
Finely chop the onion, garlic and green pepper and fry gently in a saucepan with a little olive oil. When soft but not coloured, chop or crumble in the sausage and fry for a couple of minutes until the oil starts to seep out of the sausage. Then add the rice to the saucepan and stir to coat the grains with the spicy oil. Add a tin of tomatoes and then fill the empty tin with boiling water and add this to the saucepan little by little. This isn't a proper creamy risotto so I was quite relaxed about just sloshing the liquid in two halves and stirring well  - although I didn't bother to stir continuously like I would with a "proper" risotto. When the liquid has been absorbed and the rice is soft, serve the spicy rice in bowls with a generous handful of pecorino shavings.

Blogging Crisis of Confidence (oh and Beef Rendang)

Well, I've been having a bit of a Blogging Crisis of Confidence. I've started a new job where everyone is Super Foodie. I mean, really, these chaps know their stuff. These are people who actually age their own cheese. Who can taste the difference between French Charente butter and supermarket Lurpak. Who know what to do with a crystalised rose petal...

And to be honest, in the face of such massive expertise, I've been feeling like a bit of a fraud. I mean why would anyone want to read the ramblings of an entirely unqualified home cook? I know as much (little?) about food as anyone else who makes the dinner every day. Yes, I love to read about food and cooking and ingredients but I don't currently possess any special knowledge about the best rice-growing conditions in northern Italy or how to store a Trevisano lettuce.

But after a week of dithering, I have come to the conclusion that perhaps it's ok not to know everything there is to know about food and yet still enjoy writing about it. I may not have any expertise in the subject yet but I do know what I enjoy eating and what my friends have enjoyed when I cook for them. And I guess that's all this blog is about - just inexpensive ways to eat well.

So here I am again, just letting you know what we ate tonight.

We had some stewing steak in the freezer and a whole load of chillis so I decided on the spicy Malaysian stew, Beef Rendang. The meat is cooked gently in the spices and you let the liquid reduce down to a very thick, quite dry sauce. Really spicy and warming.

(By the way, for anyone who is interested (I was!) this is what you can do with a crystalised rose petal: pop one in the bottom of a glass of Prosecco with a splash of rose syrup. Sounds a bit fabulous - I definitely plan to have a go!).

Beef Rendang

Enough chuck/stewing steak for two

Big knob of ginger

Tablespoon of galangal if you can find it

3 cloves garlic

2 lemongrass stalks

3 cherry bomb chillis

1 red chilli

2 white onions

2 limes zested and juiced

Heaped teaspoon turmeric

Tin coconut milk

Bunch of coriander

Couple of tablespoons of dessicated coconut

White rice to serve

Dust the beef with flour and fry in small batches to brown on all sides. To make the Rendang paste put one of the onions, the cherry chillis, stalks of lemongrass, ginger, galangal, lime juice and zest and garlic into the blender and blitz to a rough paste. Fry the paste in a saucepan for a couple of minutes in a flavourless oil. Add the turmeric into the saucepan and stir into the paste. Add the browned beef and stir for a couple of minutes. Pour in the coconut milk and turn the heat down to very low. Simmer gently keeping an eye on it to ensure the sauce doesn't completely dry out or catch.

After a good two hours the beef should be soft and melty. Stir in some chopped coriander. Then you can get the rice on and also make your sort-of-sambal. Fry a finely chopped onion and a red chilli in a little butter until brown. Add the dessicated coconut to the onion and chilli mixture and brown gently - taking care not to burn the coconut.

When the rice is ready, serve topped with the beef rendang and sprinkled with a little of the coconut sambal.

It's getting chillier

Just a quickie to say I bought a massive stash of chilli from the farmers market in Marylebone last Sunday for just a fiver. As you can see there were loads of different varieties - from those fruity little cherry ones to the super-hot long thin green ones. I always get through loads of chilli but apparently you can freeze them so they're actually a pretty frugal purchase.

I wish I'd photographed them in their packaging because they came in a big cone shaped bag which looked brilliant - I reckon they'd be a good token pressie to take to a dinner party instead of chocs.