One pot vegetable pasta

After refocusing my mind on the point of this blog, I decided to give this one pot vegetable pasta a go.

This was inspired by this recipe on The Londoner blog, but with some of my top tips in mind. I liked the idea of this dinner as it is really easy to do and looked delicious, but I didn't have all the correct ingredients and had some other half vegetables that needed using.

I have used the basic principle of cooking all the ingredients for pasta and sauce together in one pot as inspiration, but experimented with my own take on it. And it actually worked! As Mr Store Cupboard Veggie said "this is actually quite nice" - high praise indeed.

This would work with a whole variety of vegetables. You can follow what I have done to the letter, or use similar vegetables that you have to hand. Things like sugar snap peas or frozen broad beans would be great, and you could obviously add more tomatoes and some fresh herbs like in The Londoner recipe.

Half an onion - sliced paper thin
Half a pepper, any colour - sliced thinly
1 carrot - cut in to batons
2 gloves garlic - sliced thinly
Some shredded white cabbage
Couple of handfuls frozen peas/broadbeans
12 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
Couple of good glugs of olive oil
1 tsp dried oregano
Plenty of salt & pepper
500ml boiling water
Pasta of your choice, snapped in half if using long pastas
Parmesan to serve

You will need a big pan for this recipe. Snap the pasta in half if using longer types such as linguine or spaghetti, and lay it flat in the bottom of the pan.

Basically just plonk all the other ingredients in on top, apart from the frozen veg and parmesan.

Pour over the boiling water. Pop the lid on and heat on high until it boils. Turn the heat down so it is simmering, but leave the lid on. Cook like this for 5 minutes.

Uncover and turn the heat up to medium-high. The only thing you need to do at this point is to keep stirring it, making sure to turn the ingredients at the bottom over to the top otherwise they will stick. Put in the frozen veg at this point - adding them at this stage is sufficient to heat them through and will stop them being over cooked.

Most of the liquid will be absorbed or evaporated. Once this has happened the pasta should be cooked and coated in a sauce of an almost creamy consistency - something similar to risotto. Serve with plenty of parmesan.

Top tips for reducing food waste

So this week I have been thinking about my top tips to help reduce wasted food.

This was inspired by both volunteering for FoodCycle (see earlier post), but also from the fact that I struggled a bit last week and found myself buying ingredients when I already had stuff ready to be used in the fridge.

I'm not going to pretend that cooking from the store cupboard is always easy - in reality some nights you are tired and feel uninspired by what you can see in front of you.

But then I was so annoyed at the weekend when I had to throw away food that could have been used during the week, or certainly rescued before making a trip to the bin. So I decided to come up with some tips to help me re-focus on what The Store Cupboard Veggie is all about - reducing the waste and making delicious  vegetarian food.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be trying to post recipes and ideas with the following in mind. Some will even tick more than one box...how's that for multi-tasking?! Try to remember these when deciding what to eat, and hopefully we can all reduce the waste at least a bit.

1. Experiment - don't be afraid to try using the ingredients you have to hand
2. Don't stick to recipes - use recipes as inspiration, not a step-by-step guide
3. Use it all up recipes - have these on hand for when you have a lot of ingredients that need using, and possibly not a lot of time to use them
4. Use the freezer - to both store left-over food, but also to keep some of those ingredients fresh!
5. Spices - stock up, and actually use them! Having the right selections of spices to hand can transform a lot of tired ingredients
6. Prioritise - what needs to be used? Try to use fresh ingredients before turning to tinned or frozen food
7. Plan plan plan. Think about what ingredients you have, and how to get the most out of them.

FoodCycle Volunteering

Today I spent the morning and some of the afternoon volunteering with FoodCycle Wandsworth - a great charity that is working to combine surplus food with hungry communities! As you know if you have read any of my other posts, I am on a mission to reduce the amount of food I waste at home - and FoodCycle does this too, but on a much larger scale.

They work with local shops to take any produce that is perfectly fine to eat but that people wont buy. Fresh bread from the bakery that didn't sell yesterday, slightly bashed fruit and veg, or boxes of eggs when one or two have been broken. I was astounded by the amount of food that was donated by the local shops. More than two shopping trolleys full of bread and two large bags full of boxes of eggs from one supermarket, for example. Where that would have gone if it hadn't been claimed by FoodCycle is anybodies guess, but I would imagine the bin.

The aim is to make three courses from the donated food, and then serve these to anyone from the local community with a sit down meal. It guarantees a filling and healthy meal once a week for those that may not get it otherwise, plus brings different people in the community together.

The starter was bruschetta, and given the huge amount of eggs we had we decided the best idea was frittata for the main course - already one of my favourites for using up eggs and sad vegetables, see my Home-made Mondays Cauliflower Fritatta.

I was put on frittata duty, and I have never fully appreciated before how long it takes to peel potatoes for 50 portions. Despite the lack of a frying pan, plus an oven that was as much use as trying to cook with a hairdryer, the frittata turned out pretty well I think...I hope....no-one complained so that's a good sign, right?!

This was all topped off with an apple compote with cinnamon eggy bread, and some brilliant community spirit!

So check out FoodCycle, or see if there is anything similar in your area. It was tiring but satisfying, and I would highly recommend it.

Home-made Mondays - Easy Cauliflower Frittata

My recipe for home-made Mondays this week was inspired by a rather under appreciated vegetable - the  cauliflower.

I tend to use it in curries, and it always works a treat. But I never use a whole head of cauliflower so end up left with some in the fridge. Not enough for cauliflower cheese, but I don't want it to go to waste as that would defeat the whole point of what I'm aiming to do! Must.reduce.the.waste.

I have seen quite a few vegan and gluten free recipes that use cauliflower as a substitute for anything from pizza bases to rice. I am yet to try this, but I will obviously keep you updated on my success/failure when I do!

In the mean time here is my recipe for cauliflower frittata. It ticks quite a lot of boxes; healthy, protein rich, left-over friendly, easy and delicious.

200g cauliflower florets - bite size
200g potatoes - 1cm cubed. Peeled if using older potatoes.
5 Spring onions - sliced thinly
5 eggs
100ml milk
Handful frozen peas
Olive oil
20-50g grated/crumbled cheese - cheddar, parmesan, feta

Preheat your grill to a medium heat.

Par boil the potatoes. Steam the cauliflower at the same time.

Break the eggs into a large bowl and beat gently with a fork. Add in the milk, spring onions, frozen peas, cooked cauliflower and potatoes. Season well, and give it a mix.

Heat a glug of olive oil in a non-stick frying pan (preferably one with an oven proof handle!). Pour in the egg mixture. Cook on a very low heat - be patient with this as otherwise you will burn the bottom and have uncooked egg on top. Not tasty!

After around 15 minutes on a low heat the bottom of the fritatta should be cooked. It will have firmed up around the very edges and be bubbling slightly in the middle.

Sprinkle the cheese over the top. Pop under the grill for 5-10 minutes until golden brown. Keep a close eye on it.

Serve hot, warm or cold with a side salad and some bread if you like.

Spring Veggies Risotto

Sometimes you want a dinner that's easy to make, but still feels a wee bit special. Risotto gets a bad reputation for being a hard work meal - but really it's just stirring. A packet of risotto rice is an essential ingredient in my store cupboard.

If you have fresh green vegetables in the fridge then you can use these for this recipe - anything like leeks, asparagus, sugar snaps will work. But equally frozen vegetables are good in a risotto too!

Using home-made stock from the freezer will make this a Home Made Monday recipe, but if you don't have this then try to keep a good quality stock on hand.

This is the recipe I follow, depending on what I have in the house. If you don't have leeks then start with a white onion instead. It serves 3 hungry (greedy) people, or 4 normal people.

350g risotto rice
50g Butter
Olive oil
1l vegetable stock
5 spears asparagus - cut in to 1cm chunks, apart from the heads
1 leek - cut in half length ways and sliced thinly
Handful each frozen peas and broadbeans
Vegetarian parmesan
Rind of half a lemon

Melt butter in a large pan and add a glug of olive oil. Saute the leeks on a low heat until softened - be careful not to overcook the leeks, if they go brown they get quite bitter.

Add the risotto rice and stir well. Cook until the grains of rice start to go translucent around the edges. Start adding the stock, a ladle full at a time. Stir until the stock is absorbed, then keep adding a ladle at a time.

Once you are about three quarters through the stock add in the asparagus.

Keep adding stock until it is all gone. Add in the frozen vegetables, parmesan and lemon rind with the last of the stock.

Check the rice is cooked through, it should still have a bite to it. If it is too hard then add boiling water, a ladle full at a time, until it is ready.

Serve immediately.

I actually garnished mine with baked leek fries - reserve a strip of leek at the beginning, drizzle with olive oil and bake for 15 minutes until crispy.

Lentil and Butternut Squash Soup

You may have guessed from my blog posts so far that there are a few ingredients that I always seem to have in my cupboards. This is for two reasons; they are delicious, and I have found the best way to keep food costs down is to be predictable with the ingredients you have available. My monthly shop doesn't vary that much in terms of what goes in my trolley and how much it costs, but what I make with these ingredients does.

This recipe is inspired by one of the recipes from my cooking lesson at Greenz, the vegan/vegetarian restaurant in Tulse Hill, but with my own stamp on it based on the food I tend to buy. These are the ingredients I am focusing on today...

And this is why they always find their way into my shopping trolley:

Lentils - cheap, healthy and delicious. Great source of protein.
Butternut squash - versatile, healthy and tasty. Not massively cheap, but you can get a few meals from one squash. Bulks out this soup nicely.
Ginger - this is again not something that one would consider a particularly cheap ingredient, and I'm sure goes to waste in many fridges. But just a little adds great flavour to so many dishes, and a great tip is that you can freeze it and grate it while still frozen as and when you need it.

If you like one or all of these ingredients then you should try this soup - it is Souper Douper healthy, easy to make and delicious. Adding the ginger at the last minute was one of the lessons I took away from Greenz - it gives the soup a really fresh zingy flavour. Pretty much all you need to make this is a large pan and a hand blender (see butternut squash "pesto" recipe for my thoughts or hand blenders).

Half butternut squash - seeds removed. Peel if you like, but the skin wont hurt and it will be whizzed up anyway. Chop into roughly 2 cm cubed pieces.
200g red lentils - thoroughly washed
Thumb sized piece of ginger - grated
2 tsps ground cumin
1 litre boiling water/veg stock
3 tomatoes, chopped into chunks
Glug of olive oil

Heat a large saucepan. Add a glug of oil to the pan. Chuck in the butternut squash and the ground cumin - give it a good stir and fry gently for a couple of minutes.

Make sure you have washed the lentils thoroughly in a sieve under cool running water, until the water runs clear. This will stop the scum that  can appear when cooking lentils. Add the lentils and the boiling water or vegetable stock to the squash.

Cook until the lentils and squash are soft, probably around 15-20 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and then take off the heat.

Stir in the ginger and tomatoes. Using a hand blender whizz it up in the pan until it's smooth. Give it a stir to check it is as smooth as you would like it. Reheat gently until hot through. Serve with a swirl of creme fraiche/yoghurt if you have it, and some crusty bread.

Use It All Up Easy Vegetable Stir fry

This week I was looking at an interesting piece examining the amount of food wasted by the average UK household in real terms. Just in the UK the food wasted by households each year is equal to 7 million tonnes - or roughly the same weight as the largest of the pyramids! Of this 7 million tonnes, 4.2 million tonnes represents food that could have been eaten, but ended up past its best and in a landfill.

This drives home to me the reason why I started this blog. Although one of the reasons is that I am trying to cut back on my spending and make cheap and delicious food, I also hate the amount of food that gets put in the bin. As a people we are too greedy and too lazy, and a small change to the way we shop and eat makes a difference to how much you spend on food as well as how much gets chucked away. I'm not saying that I don't still find ingredients festering in the fridge and regret not using them sooner, but I am making a conscious effort to change what I buy and eat to get the most from my shopping.

I always stock up on plenty of vegetables, and one of the best ways I know of using up any of those slightly sad or unusual ingredients is in a stir fry. Obviously this can be made as soon as you get your veggies home from the supermarket too! This sort of dinner is so flexible, and has transformed many a slightly limp vegetable before it can venture into the light and embrace the afterlife in the bin.

Obviously it is easy to buy a stir in sauce, but these can add unnecessary sugar and salt to your meals without you realising it. These are the ingredients I keep on hand for a basic but delicious stir fry sauce. This will work with pretty much any vegetable... I was going to include some vegetables here that wouldn't be suitable, but I'm having trouble thinking of any. A potato? Maybe. But I still think it would be worth trying.

1 chilli - red or green, as hot as you like. Sliced finely
1 glove garlic - sliced finely
Thumb size piece of ginger - grated
Glug of sunflower or olive oil
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce - I use light
Juice of half a lime
Vegetables of your choice
Rice or noodles to serve

Heat your wok - make sure it is nice and hot. Add your cooking oil (NOT the sesame oil yet!). Once the cooking oil is really hot chuck in the grated ginger, chilli and garlic. If you wanted to use tofu then add this at the same time. Stir fry on a high heat for a minute or so - it does need to be hot, but be careful not to burn these flavours. The key to it is that it's a STIR fry, so keep STIRring!

Add in the vegetables. If you have anything that might need a bit longer cooking - broccoli stalks for example (yes I said STALKS, they are delicious. Please don't throw them away) - then add them in first. Stir fry for a couple of minutes, and then add in the rest of your veggies. You may want to hold off adding any delicate vegetables until the very end, peas for example don't need much cooking. Add in soy sauce and sesame, stir fry for a minute or so.

Splash in the lime juice as well as any remaining vegetables - peas, bean sprouts, spring onions - for the last minute of cooking. Serve with noodles or rice, garnished with coriander or sesame seeds if you have them.