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.