Left-over Butternut Squash "Pesto"

One of my favourite things in the kitchen is to use leftovers to make a completely different type of meal. In my last post I mentioned reserving a couple of spoonfuls of roasted butternut squash from the spicy quinoa stuffed squash. This could apply any time you roast any type of squash, or even something like roasted peppers - hold back a bit and use it the next day for this perfect pasta dish. I have called it "Pesto" as this is what inspired this sauce, but I put it in "" to protect myself from the wrath of any pesto purists!

I moved out of my parents house just over a year ago, and as yet haven't built up much cooking equipment of my own beyond the basic pots, pans, wooden spoons and roasting tins. One thing I did invest in, however, is a hand blender.

I use the word invest quite loosely - the hand blender I own is a Tesco's own brand one. I tried to find it to post a link, but it isn't on their website. The point is, however, that you don't need to spend lots of money to get a hand blender that has the right attachments for you and does a perfectly good job. I used the small processor part for this recipe.

This would also be a great way to use up a little bit of basil - sometimes you don't have enough to make pesto, but then you risk it going limp and wasting it. I didn't have any for this, but do add it in at the whizzing up stage if you have some.

30g hazelnuts (I had these - use pine nuts if you have them)
20-30g vegetarian parmesan/grana padano
2 gloves garlic

Left-over butternut squash
Olive oil
Mange tout/sugar snaps/peas/broadbeans
Pasta for the number of people eating

Get the water on for the pasta, salted of course.

Combine the hazelnuts, cheese, garlic, squash and a couple of glugs of olive oil in the mixer. Whizz up until smooth, and something like this...

Season to taste.

Cook the pasta according to packet instructions. A couple of minutes before it is ready add in some green vegetables - I had some sad looking mangetout in the fridge so I used those.

Before draining the pasta reserve a little bit of the pasta water. This is a good tip for any pasta dish - it helps the sauce and pasta combine.

Drain the pasta. Return to the pan and add a knob of butter. Stir in the butternut squash mixture, heating gently. Add in some of the reserved pasta water to loosen it slightly.

Serve, garnished with some parmesan shavings.

Home-made Mondays - Spicy Quinoa Stuffed Squash

I sometimes have a tendency to be a bit lazy and rely too heavily on processed foods rather than making from scratch.

I'm not so much talking about ready meals, but more meat substitute type foods such as Quorn. Although Quorn and the like are great sources of protein and tend to be low in fat they are, ultimately, still quite heavily processed foods. I certainly don't use processed foods in every meal, but I thought it would be quite nice to have one night a week where I consciously create meals from scratch. Meat-free Mondays are a given anyway, so my vegetarian alternative is Home-made Mondays (not a very catchy title I'm afraid)!

I urge you all to try this. Embrace it! Add it to your Meat-free Monday! It is really good to be aware of what you are putting in your food, or what someone else is putting in your food for you. You will be surprised how many processed ingredients you use without even realising. Or maybe it's just me - give it a try and see if you learn anything about the way you cook and eat.

As always I will be aiming to make a meal that also uses up some of those good-for-you but neglected ingredients, and keep it as cheap as possible. As it's a Monday night it also needs to be fairly straightforward to make. Not too many boxes to tick then...

I have based this weeks Monday meal around two of my favourite ingredients - butternut squash and quinoa. Quinoa is really healthy - unlike couscous (which is processed durum wheat) it is a natural grain, which is low in fat but is a complete-protein and high in fibre and iron . It is also gluten-free!

So here it is...spicy quinoa stuffed squash, topped with an egg and a side of tomatoes. So comforting and really, truly delicious. You will have to take my word for it, as the picture quality is pretty dodgy for this post. These are genuinely things that I cook and eat, and tonight I was super hungry (greedy) and kind of forgot to take a picture before sitting down to eat!

Butternut squash
Olive Oil
80g quinoa
Chillies (as many/few as you like) - sliced
Red onion - cut into half moons
1 clove garlic - sliced
1 tsp of Paprika, cumin or chilli powder
3 tomatoes - halved
Pinch of fresh or dried herbs
Olive Oil
Eggs (same as number of people).

Pre-heat the oven to 180°. Cut the squash in half, remove the seeds, and put into a roasting tin. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Put it into the over and roast until soft – about 40 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the squash. Mine was HUGE so took closer to an hour.




While the squash is cooking prepare the quinoa according to packet instructions. I tend to use water rather than vegetable stock as advised on most packets - I'm not a massive fan of the stock taste, plus it is Manufactured Free Monday so would have to make my own stock from scratch! I also use a little less water than recommended as soggy quinoa is to no-one’s liking. Cooking the quinoa takes about 15 minutes. Once cooked, drain and leave to one side.

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan and add the onions. Fry gently until they start to soften, and add in the chillies and garlic. Add in the spice powder – I gave a few options here because they would all be tasty, I used smoked paprika because that’s what I had – and heat quite gently for a minute or so.

Remove the onion mixture from the pan using a slotted spoon, and add to the quinoa.

Once the squash is soft remove it from the oven. Take a large spoon and scrape the flesh from the skins, leaving enough flesh to hold the skins together. Leave aside around two table spoons of the squash – this will be used in another meal tomorrow. Mix the rest of the squash with the quinoa mixture, season to taste, and spoon into the squash skins.

Return to the oven for 25 minutes.

Place the halved tomatoes cut side up in a roasting tin, and sprinkle with some dried or fresh herbs and salt and pepper (I used fresh thyme). Drizzle with olive oil, and place in the oven until soft – about 20-25 minutes.

Finally, use the spiced oil that remains in the frying pan to cook the fried eggs. Covering with a lid means you won’t need to add any additional oil as there will be heat on all sides of the egg.

Remove the squash and tomatoes from the oven. Serve, top each half of squash with a fried egg.

Left-over Cheesy Pasta Bake

I met up with my old housemates from university this week for a cheese and wine night - how very civilized of us! The host very sweetly made sure that all the wines and cheeses were vegetarian too. Look at this delicious lot...

I think this might be a sign that we are well and truly adults now. We have also started a Brunch Club. Once a month one of us will choose somewhere delicious to have brunch - I now need to find somewhere in South West London that has interesting vegetarian brunch options to wow my friends with. It's not a competition, and yet it would be horrible if you chose somewhere that no-one liked! I do LOVE the fact that the majority of our meet-ups are now focused around food rather than Jaegerbombs. Goodbye evil hangovers, hello satisfied food belly.

No matter how hard we tried, we simply could not eat all the cheese. My host said he was going to throw the left-over cheese in the bin as he wouldn't eat it. This is an OUTRAGEOUS waste and basically money down the drain, so the cheap-skate opportunist in me begged for a plastic seal-able bag to take some of the left-overs home.

There are all sorts of things you can do with some ends of cheese. Even the rinds can be used to add flavour to things - dropping a cheese rind into a tomato-ey vegetable soup sounds weird, but actually works to add a lovely cheesy depth of flavour. I decided to make an unctuous cheesy pasta bake. This is not an exact recipe, as I was simply using what I had, so adjust for how many people you have as well as what you have left-over. If you need an exact white sauce recipe then there are plenty to chose from on the BBC food website - I tend to wing it a little bit. **Warning, this is NOT a healthy recipe!**

I always buy tortelloni when doing my monthly shop, as it is always on offer, keeps well in the freezer and makes for a slightly more interesting pasta bake. This is one of my favourites...

Start by making a basic white sauce. Melt butter in a non-stick pan, then add the same weight of flour-to-butter and cook for a couple of minutes until the flour is cooked out. Start adding in milk, stirring continuously. I use a whisk for this as I find it helps stop lumps in the sauce. Bring to the boil - keep stirring! Then heat gently until the sauce thickens. Season with salt and pepper (white is best, but black pepper is fine too).

In the mean time boil water for the pasta. Add salt to the water.

Grate your cheese - I used about 100g. The selection I had was Cheddar, Lancashire, and smoked Cheddar. I wish it had been my brilliant lightbulb-type-idea to add smoked Cheddar, rather than just what I had, as it worked really well and I would like to be able to take credit for it.

Pop the tortelloni in the boiled salted water - it only takes three minutes to cook.

Take the white sauce off the heat and add in most of the cheese. Leave some aside to sprinkle on top.

Once the pasta is drained combine with the sauce and mix well. Put in an oven-proof dish and sprinkle with the rest of the cheese. Pop in a pre-heated oven (about 180) until brown and bubbly on top. I served with peas as a nod to healthiness, and they break through the rich cheesiness too. Also good would be sliced tomatoes, or a green salad.

A brilliant use of unwanted cheese and tortelloni from the freezer!

Lazy Saturday lunch - Spiced Chickpea Salad

This week I was in bonny Scotland visiting my grandparents - also known as "spend 4 days eating your own weight in cakes, biscuits and tea". So after gaining about 15 stone, and eating a lot of sweet and sugary foods, I was craving something savoury, fresh and healthy. But left to his own devices Mr Veggie Store Cupboard had only been eating pizza, beans on toast, and whatever his mum made him when he went begging. And he certainly hadn't been to the supermarket. So what to make for lunch?

I always keep various tins of pulses and beans in the cupboard - they are cheap and can bulk out a meal perfectly. Fresh vegetables like lettuce or spinach tend to get bought and used at the beginning of the month, but heading towards payday I can't always afford to replenish the fresh supplies. This is when I turn to the store cupboard for salad ingredients. Chickpeas can be the saviour of any lean looking salad! Without them this salad would just have been tomato, cucumber and onion - nothing too much wrong with that, but not particularly filling. The beautiful little chickpea is also a great source of protein and fibre, and half a tin is one of your five a day too!

So this is what I had to work with, plus the tomato, the end of the cucumber and a pitta bread. When I buy pitta bread I will always freeze it, that way they will keep even after opened and can always be used when you run out of bread. The cumin seeds can be expensive when you buy them, but they really are an investment spice. This bag will last me quite a long time, and I can create a whole variety of dishes with cumin seeds in the spice rack. If you have an Asian supermarket nearby then you can pick up spices super cheap too!

This makes enough for a good lunch for two people. I have also made this as a selection of salads for a healthy dinner with friends, and it always goes down a treat.

Ingredients:

1 can of chickpeas - drained

1 tspn cumin seeds

1 chilli - sliced

1 large clove garlic/2 small cloves - sliced

1 red onion - halved and sliced into half moons

1 tomato - cut in chunks

Cucumber

1-2 pitta breads

Olive oil

Lemon juice (if you have it)

Heat a glug of olive oil in a pan. Add cumin seeds and heat gently until they start to pop. Add the chilli and garlic and heat for a minute - be careful not to burn these as they will become bitter. As with everything I make that involves chilli, I leave the seeds in...but do remove them if you don't like anything too hot! Add in the chickpeas and heat until warmed through. 

In the meantime grill or toast your pitta bread, then cut into chunks. I quite like them to be bite-sized, but also a bit uneven and rustic looking.

Once the chickpeas are heated and the pitta bread ready, combine with the other ingredients and another couple of glugs of olive oil. Mix together well so that the pitta bread soaks up some of the flavour. I would also have added some lemon juice for acidity and coriander or parsley if I had them - but as this is an end of the month lunch I was sadly without. I added a couple of mint leaves from my mint plant though. Serve still warm!

Vegan cookery class

On Sunday I went to my very first cookery class. And it was excellent!

It was at a little vegan restaurant in Tulse Hill called Greenz, run by a lovely lady called Ermine. My mum and I found vouchers on Groupon, and as neither of us had been to cookery course before (never mind a vegetarian cookery course!) we decided it would be fun.

The course was perfect timing, as it completely embodied everything I started this blog to do. Super healthy and cheap ingredients turned into filling and delicious meals! And it gave me great ideas of what to do with some things that I always have in my store cupboard - red lentils and brown rice.

The standout dish for me was Ermine's take on Jollof rice - a lentil and rice dish found throughout West Africa. There was also a delicious lentil soup that was fragrant and fresh with ginger and tomato. And the best thing of all? Taking home samples for dinner and lunch the following day!

Interestingly not everyone on the course was vegan or vegetarian, and Ermine said it is actually quite unusual for her to have more veggies than carnivores. I was the only lifelong vegetarian. I have never really thought about it before, but I guess a lot of vegetarians have made a conscious choice to cut meat and fish from their diets, be it for moral or health reasons, whereas for me it is and always has been just a way of life. Some would say I have missed out, but I actually think I am quite lucky.

It was only an hour and a half long but I definitely took away some ideas and delicious recipes (as well as Sunday night dinner). Watch this space for when I try these or similar on my own!

If anyone knows of any other good vegetarian/vegan classes then I would love to hear about them.

I served the left over Jollof rice with some steamed brocolli and minted broad beans for a healthy and comforting dinner.

I grow my own mint and I cannot recommend this highly enough. It is not difficult to grow and spreads once established. It can really save money in the long run, and in a lot of cases can pick up an other wise dull meal. Great for digestion too, and you can make your own mint tea. Added bonus!

There will definitely be some rice and lentil recipes to come, but for now here's the dressed broad beans.

Frozen/Fresh Broad Beans
Olive Oil
Small handful of mint
Lemon Juice
Salt & Pepper

I used frozen broad beans as I always have a supply of these in the freezer. I personally don't bother removing the skins - I don't find them particularly offensive, and every part of the bean has it's own flavour and nutritional qualities so for me it would feel like a waste.

Plunge the beans into boiling water (unsalted) for 2-3 minutes.

In the mean time chop the mint up and mix it with a couple of glugs of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, and mix with lemon juice to taste. You want it to be reasonably acidic to compliment the sweetness of the broad beans.

Drain broad beans, and combine with the dressing. Serve hot or warm.

Apologies - no pictures this time, as in all honesty I  forgot!

Cheesy chilli leftover tortillas

It’s Saturday and I had one too many (2 for 1) cocktails last night. Feeling delicate, lazy and perhaps most importantly RAVENOUS.

I want something comforting and perhaps cheesy to dig into. But - disaster - there is no bread! If there is one thing that we rarely waste it is bread. Carl is a bread fiend.

But what’s this lurking in the cupboard? Left over tortilla wraps from a fajita dinner earlier in the week! We have limited space in our freezer and inevitably I always have left over tortilla wraps and never use them all before they go mouldy. Eight is just too many for one dinner, and making a wrap for a work day lunch inevitably ends with a soggy wrap (gross) and both me and my desk covered in mayo. Just not cool.

This idea was a bit of an experiment but bear with it – it really was delicious!

Here’s what I used – but you can add or take away as you see fit.

The cheese is Caerphilly as this is what I had left, but any hard cheese would be nice, or feta or mozzarella would be good too...or even sliced halloumi would be delicious...or maybe some brie...mmmmm...too many cheese fantasies... Use as much as you like - I had a thumb sized bit left so that's what I went with.

This was a perfect opportunity to use up a few bits from the fridge. My spring onions have definitely seen better days, but don’t let the dark green slightly slimy outer leaves fool you, underneath is the same crisp and slightly sharp little spring onion that attracted me in the vegetable isle. The chilli is also left over from fajita night, and adds a lovely kick.

Preheat the oven to 180° - remembering to check you have no baking trays or baking parchment in there first. Woops...

Caerphilly (see what I did there?!) slice the chilli and a couple of spring onions. I left the seeds in the chilli because I like it spicy, but you can remove these if you like it a bit milder or add another chilli if you like it HOT.  Cut the tomato into chunks.

Grate, slice or crumble your cheese onto half of the tortilla wrap and sprinkle the other toppings on. This would also be a great place to use up any leftover coriander or parsley – that is the sort of thing that almost ALWAYS turns in to green mush in the fridge before I get to it.

I also added some Sumac, because I love its citrusy tangy taste. And white pepper, for a bit more of a kick. Black pepper would be fine too.

Tuck all your left over bits into the tortilla wrap, pop it on a baking tray.

Bake for 15 minutes, flipping over half way through.

And it’s done! Serve with some plain or Greek yoghurt or crème fraiche if you have it.

Time to close the blinds and shut out the rain (will it ever stop?), embrace the hangover, and stuff my face with this cheesy, spicy - and thrifty - lunch.